During the second day of the curse, Walter spent most of his morning in bed, provided by Louis, bedridden and weak. Later as the day grew longer, with Louis gone into town, Walter went back to the woods to set up the purification ritual that he would do the next day. After painstakingly climbing the hill that led to where he emerged from the forest, he nervously, but even more determined than before, ventured once more into the forest.
Inside Purgatory was the opposite of the scene he had encountered last night. Instead of the demon that lurked in the night, it was replaced by beautiful trees that would have covered the forest floor with its shade if the season was different. Fallen leaves covered the forest carpet instead, making it seem as if the ground was made of gold. There was also a faint musky smell that came for the forest, that reminded him of the time when his father would take him out to go camping to hike and swim. It pained Walter to remember all these things about his parents. In fact, to avoid the memories from resurfacing, he focused on his task and ventured deeper in the woods.
Deeper in the woods, Walter noticed a small circle of trees just big enough to fit a piano in, in the center of the circle was a lump of leaves. Curiously, he stepped into the ring of trees and headed towards that lump of leaves. Just seen from the surface of leaves was the backpack that he used to hit the demon with. Snatching up the backpack with one hand, he used the other to unzip it and shoved a hand inside, and let out a breath of relief. Everything was still there. Inside, fortunately his grandmother's book of transformation and rituals circle was left undamaged, his survival knife and flashlight was unscathed, and his collection of hand picked stones used to make the circle placed safely into a leather pouch. The stones were charmed by his grandmother to attach itself to the earth in order for the circle to keep from breaking once activated using the simple latin word ligare, which stood for linking of human and divine.
Taking out the stones one by one from the pouch, he quickly placed each stone at the five corners of the circle, mumbled the activation word and watched as the stones glowed blue and sank to the ground. After deciding that the trees would serve as a circle, he placed a stone at the trunks of each tree.
Slinging his backpack on to his shoulder, he started back to the house.
YOU ARE READING
The Three-Day Mark
ParanormalA short story very very loosely based off a ep from Natsume Yuujinchou. (Some may know if they had either read the manga or watched the anime) This is a prequel of a story that I will later write. (Will add an actual description once I think of one)
