Tonight was the third night Emily had awoken around midnight from nightmares.
It was the same nightmare every time. She was back in the cemetery with her bag of salt, staring into the eyes of some kind of demon.
Sometimes during the day, she felt someone or something staring at her. And sometimes, if it was completely silent, she thought she could hear that unearthly sound in the distance.
They were calling her back to the cemetery. They wanted more salt.
She wasn't sure she would survive another night there. She wasn't yet desperate enough to try.
There were plenty of rituals promising protection that she could try first, on the off chance that something she'd encountered that night was following her.
Her mother was once again gone for a few days, so she had the house to herself, allowing her the freedom to summon things without fear of anyone else's presence screwing up things. She knew that her mother had any clue what she was doing, she'd likely never leave her alone for a second for the rest of her life.
This particular ritual promised greater rewards the less time it took you to complete, but she was really only concerned with her physical safety, so she planned to take as much time as she could get. The house was so big, she was sure to need all of it.
At 9PM, she lit her candle (she briefly wondered how much money she'd spent on candles in the last several weeks) and went out to her backyard. It was windy that night and she had to relight the candle a few times before she could get started.
Into the dark emptiness of the night and the vast emptiness of the wealthy suburbs, she whispered, "But who will scare the crows away?"
Over and over she whispered it, until an emotionless voice behind her answered, "That's not your biggest problem."
Without a backward glance, she went back inside and locked the door behind her. She wasn't sure if the lock would stop the Man in the Field should she fuck up, but she certainly wasn't going to make it any easier for him by leaving it unlocked.
She grabbed her grandmother's old crucifix off the wall where it hung, in a constant reminder of Father Guimino and everyone else who disapproved of her every life choice. She took it into the small bathroom off the hallway and rested it on the counter. This was the only fail-safe should something go wrong and she tried not to think about the doubt in the back of her mind that pointed out that a crucifix had never protected her before.
Her plan was to start on the ground floor and work her way up.
When she'd read about the ritual online, she had thought to herself, 'How hard can it possibly be to close everything?'
Now, standing in the middle of the kitchen, she nearly burst into tears of frustration, silently cursing her naivety.
When she started the ritual, everything in the entire house that could be closed had burst open. Closing each and every one had seemed simple enough in theory, but her thinking had been limited to doors and windows and closets and drawers. The sheer magnitude of things she had overlooked washed over her like a tidal wave.
In trying to protect herself from one monster, she might have seriously fucked herself over by inviting another one upon her...
Every single item in the fridge was open. Every spice had lost its lid. Every Ziploc bag was unzipped. She lost nearly twenty minutes trying to match every Tupperware container to a lid, cursing under her breath the entire time.
She was in the laundry room closing bottles of household cleaners when she first spotted the watcher. He was always in the corner of her vision, never directly in her line of sight. He looked unassuming enough, like an old farmer with skin the color of cement. She imagined his face must be frightful since he was never to be looked directly at. She didn't have time to dwell on him, though, he was just there to make sure she didn't miss anything, a referee of sorts.
Somewhere outside was the one she needed to worry about. The Man in the Field. She was avoiding closing the windows for fear of accidentally seeing him. If you saw him, he in turn saw you...
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she muttered as she crouched in the bathroom, screwing bottles of nail polish closed and putting caps back on toothpaste tubes. She decided that once this ordeal was over, she was going through and culling her collection of make up and toiletries.
She was really glad she hadn't gotten greedy with the rewards because she was no longer sure three hours was going to be enough time.
'When did mother get so many purses?' she wondered as she refastened each one.
'Jesus, fuck, there are a lot of damn windows in this place,' she thought as she shut and locked each one.
'How the hell did we accumulate so many boxes when we move all the fucking time!?" she shouted to the empty attic. At that point, her tears of frustration started to spill over.
It was five to midnight and she could think of nothing else that could open and close. She had closed everything she'd come across that was obviously opened and even more that would not have been obvious. She hadn't looked at the Man in the Field. She hadn't seen the watcher in awhile.
She was 75% sure she had gotten everything and even if she hadn't, there wasn't time left to do anything about it, aside from wait and see if she woke up the next day.