Author's Note: Due to the shortness of Chapter Five, I have also uploaded Chapter Six today. Please enjoy both chapters and may I remind you that the ritual described in this chapter is completely improvised on my behalf. It borrows aspects from other strange things I've read and isn't in itself, a real ritual. Capturing ghosts by this method is not guaranteed to work, if ghosts exist, which I severely doubt they do.
Chapter Six: Midnight
"Ah!"
Danny sat bolt upright.
That dream. He had been having that dream for many nights now, ever since he had escaped the hospital. Danny dreamed of being back at Streete Court, only to find it a charred ruin. He had dreamed of walking the ruined corridors and underneath fallen beams of blackened wood that formed triangular archways of splintered lumber that he had to step over and or walk under.
The raven-haired youth had dreamed of walking through the corridors in search of someone, passing charred paintings from which eyes still stared, unblemished by the fire that had raged through the corridors and halls. He had dreamt of walking along the burnt floorboards and the broken marble. He had dreamt of passing broken windows, ruined staircases and the burnt remnants of what had once been a satchel.
And though it was a dream, Danny could smell the vast, overpowering odour of charcoal and of dampness. He could still smell it in his nostrils, even though he was now awake. It was an overpowering aroma that he felt as if he would never forget.
Danny sighed, as he cradled his head in his hands.
"What does it mean?" he wondered out loud, before he brushed his hair back with both his hands. He looked up at the ceiling, as if he expected to see the answers he wanted up there and then frowned disappointedly. "Alex," he muttered under his breath.
Why did he still have memories of this person in his mind? Why did Alex haunt his dreams? He couldn't understand. He just couldn't understand why Alex haunted his dreams so. Was it possible that Alex was dead and that he was contacting Danny through his dreams? Could it be that Alex was a ghost that Danny had somehow absorbed in hospital and that the ghost was inside of him?
If only he knew. If only Danny knew the answer to his questions and if only he could get to the bottom of it all. Only then would his troubled mind be at ease. Only then would he be able to sleep soundly at night.
There had to be a way to find out. There just had to be, but what could it be? He wanted to find out the truth. Danny wanted to figure out who or what Alex was but how could he go about that? If only there was a way to communicate with the dead and…
Danny looked up suddenly. An idea had formed in his mind, becoming tangible thoughts that could be understood and read and possibly turned into physical reality. It was possible to contact the dead and find out about Alex. It was very possible, but for him to carry his plan out, he needed to wake someone up. He needed to get up and out of bed for that matter and get dressed.
He quickly slid out from underneath the covers and tugged his clothes off the chair he had flung them on. Danny quickly slipped them on over his pyjamas and slipped on a pair of socks, after all, it was cold in the Mason household after midnight, since having it on all night would lead to an uncomfortably hot house.
The raven-haired youth rushed over to the door and slowly turned the handle and was careful to not make a noise. He pushed down slowly and bit by bit, he edged the door open until there was a suitable gap for him to slip through. It was only when he had slipped past through the gap in the door when he realised that all that effort had been completely unnecessary, that all he had to do was become intangible and walk through the door like a ghost, as a ghost.
He turned round and looked at the door and then shrugged to himself, before becoming intangible and floating through the corridor down towards Sam's Room.
Upon reaching her door, Danny wondered whether he should knock or just walk through. If he knocked, surely he would end up waking more than just Sam. Not knocking would be rude. Still, he didn't want a repeat of that incident when he walked in, or rather, floated in, on a nearly half-naked Sam.
Danny decided to knock to save embarrassment, but he knocked very lightly before poking his intangible head through.
"Sam," he whispered, keeping his eyes closed just in case he might see anything that weren't meant for his very eyes. "Sam," he whispered again. "You awake?" He thought again about the question he had just asked. "Of course, she's not awake; it's one in the morning," he muttered to himself chidingly. "Hey, Sam!" he hissed. "Wake up! Sam!"
He decided to open his eyes and looked through the night darkness, to see a lump in Sam's bed that seemed about the right size to be Sam herself.
The girl seemed to be sleeping and Danny could just about see the rise and fall of the covers, indicating that she was still breathing underneath all that linen. That was a good sign.
Taking a deep breath, Danny became completely intangible and walked through the door. He became physical once on the other side before stepping quietly across the carpeted floor towards Sam's purple bed. It wasn't a long trek and once Danny made it, he slowly laid his hands on the lump in the bed.
"Sam," he whispered, as he slowly shook the lump in the bed. "Sam, wake up!"
There was a mumble or maybe a groan from underneath the covers and then Sam turned.
"Sam!" whispered Danny.
"Five more minutes," mumbled Sam sleepily.
The raven-haired youth exhaled through clenched teeth and then looked around him. Even in the darkness, he could see the posters that adorned Sam's Room featuring the bands she liked so much. They reminded him exactly how Goth she was and then there was another poster, one of Escher's prints, a strange psychedelic sort of picture where it was impossible to tell which was up and which was down. That particular picture reminded him of just how intelligent Sam was and how well-read she could be.
Was this the wrong time to wake Sam up? After all, it was one in the morning. Perhaps he could bother her about it in the morning, but then again… Was that waiting too long? What if things were to change? What if the answer he was seeking was to change in the time he waited for Sam to awaken?
"Sam!" he called out quietly to the black-haired girl, as he shook her gently. "Sam, wake up!"
Sam twisted in her sleep, her head breaking free from the covers.
Danny found himself unexpectedly blushing. He didn't know why either. There was something about the way she looked to him that made him feel… That made him feel all strange inside, as if he… But surely that wasn't so? He had always denied it and so had Sam. They had always denied having feelings for one another, but he still remembered when the ghost, Ember, placed him under that love spell. He could still remember that undying love he had felt for Sam, a love that seemed to burn as bright as the light from a thousand suns.
He turned round abruptly, the blush slowly turning him redder than a tomato. Danny didn't know what was wrong with him. Was it possible that he truly had feelings for Samantha Mason? He looked behind himself and at Sam's sleeping form. She looked so peaceful, sleeping there and Danny could swear that she looked like an angel, even if that did seem a little bit clichéd.
"It can wait," he sighed to himself, before he tripped over something and fell flat on his face with a heavy thud.
"Huh? What? Who's there?" snorted Sam, as she sat up. She reached out gingerly and switched on her bedside lamp. "Danny?" she exclaimed, after seeing no one was there and then checking the floor, to find the raven-haired youth sprawled on the ground. "What are you doing in my room…" she began, and then spotted the display on her alarm clock, "and at this time in the morning?"
Danny raised his head and looked back, to see that he tripped on her heavy black boots. It reminded him of the time he had first met Sam and how she had deliberately tripped him, and he had ended up careering head first into a trash can. He never thought that he'd trip up on those boots again and certainly not by the boots alone.
"Oh, Sam, you're awake," exclaimed Danny. "Yeah, uh, sorry about that."
"What," repeated Sam, "are you doing in my room?"
Would it be wise for him to explain everything to Sam? Was she really that awake to listen to his entire story or was it best for him to give her the short version? Danny thought about those questions long and hard, but it seemed too long for Sam, as she repeated herself again very sternly. The way she spoke made Danny fear she was getting angrier and wouldn't think twice about beating him with her pillow.
"You mind if we do something with your Ouija Board?" asked Danny, giving her the best smile he could muster under the current conditions.
"At 2 in the morning?" exclaimed Sam in disbelief.
"Please, Sam?" pleaded Danny, giving her the puppy-dog eyes routine he had been practising for many nights on end. "It's really important."
Sam groaned, as she looked away.
"Don't look at me like that," she told him in an irritated tone of voice. She peeked out of the corner of her eye and saw Danny was still staring at him with those puppy dog eyes and the now quivering lip. It seemed rather pathetic and Sam wouldn't have been surprised if Danny had started whining too. "Fine," she sighed. "Just let me put something warm on."
She looked at him.
"Erm… Danny, do you mind?" she asked him.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry," he apologised. "I'll wait for you outside, 'kay?"
"No, no," replied Sam with a shake of her head. "Just don't look, okay?" She then slipped out from underneath the bed covers after Danny closed his eyes. She quickly slipped a sweater on. "Right, let's get to it, shall we?" Sam then pointed to the shelf behind her. "Grab that box and I'll get the board."
It wasn't long before Sam had set up the board on her bed. The two teenagers sat cross-legged on one side of it with a box filled with antique coins sitting right next to Sam's right leg.
"Danny, do you know how this works?" asked Sam, as she looked up at him.
"Erm… yeah, we've done it before," replied Danny.
A strange smile spread across Sam's face momentarily, only to disappear as she checked herself.
"Yeah, but that was just for fun," she replied. "We weren't really doing it properly." She then delved into the box of coins and fished out four sets of coins, each kept together by a thread of string through the square holes in the middles of each one.
They were Chinese coins, hence the hole, and had been threaded into a sword design.
Sam let shook two of the sets free from her hand and let it drop back into the box. As far as she was concerned, two were enough to ensure there was no interference. However, she looked back at Danny and realised that he was half-ghost too. Was it possible that he would provide interference as well? She looked back down at the coin swords in her hand, the very things that were meant to prevent any old ghost from approaching and giving them a rogue answer.
She sighed and shook her head, as she placed a coin sword at a corner of the Ouija board.
"Now I know why your Dad started making all those inventions of his," said Sam. "The old ways are so impractical. They can be pretty fun, though." She then picked up the pointer and held it in front of her. "Right," she said. "Danny, listen carefully. This time we do it, I want you to use all your strength in pushing it in any direction you want to see fit.
"Don't have your eyes opened either," she continued. "Have them closed and stop the marker only when you really feel you have to. Whatever you do, don't open your eyes and always keep your mind on the question. Your mind only. You don't ask the question out loud. You think it and meditate on it."
The reason for having the eyes closed was a good one. Sam had read about how researchers found out that people using a Ouija Board tended to guide the marker to spell out words, but when they were blind-folded so they couldn't see what they were doing, the letters they ended up pointing to became random and garbled. If they had their eyes closed and still could end out spelling words or sentences, then they could be definitely sure that their answers came from ghosts and not from themselves.
Danny nodded in acknowledgement.
"Yeah," he agreed. "Okay, gotcha." He exhaled before saying, "Right." Danny then watched as Sam placed the marker firmly down on the Ouija Board.
Gingerly, Danny reached out towards the wooden block, as if it was a lump of white hot iron and he was afraid of burning himself on it. He gently laid a hand on the marker and felt himself blush from being so close to Sam. The angle at which he was reaching out to the marker brought him in close contact with her and he could feel her body heat against his own. It made him think of auras and possibly how their auras were interacting and mingling and…
"Danny, you okay?" asked Sam, as she looked at the raven-haired youth. "You've gone all red."
"Yeah, I'm fine," replied Danny abruptly. "Can we… can we just do this?"
Sam didn't say anything in reply. She was wondering whether Danny was all right. To say that she was concerned for him was an understatement. She was very worried for him and for the past few nights after she had helped Danny bust out of the Maudsley Institute, she had laid awake at night, never sleeping. She thought that it would have helped if Danny stayed over at her place, but somehow even that didn't seem to comfort her.
"Yeah, okay," she agreed with a slow nod of her head. "Close your eyes, then," she said with a sigh and closed her own eyes too. "You ready?" she asked Danny.
"As I'll ever be," was Danny's reply.
"Let's do this then," said Sam and she cleared her mind so there wouldn't be any thoughts in it. She had to clear it completely, as she knew that her thoughts would probably interfere with those of Danny's. That couldn't happen if they were to get a good answer from the right spirit.
Sam felt a tugging. She felt as if she shouldn't interfere and tug in the opposite direction. She felt as if she should guide the marker towards its position and did that. All her concentration was on the marker and that was all she felt.
It stopped.
Sam opened an eye to peer at what the marker had stopped at.
"Yes?" she read out aloud, questioningly. She turned round to face Danny and the crimson that had once speckled his cheeks, only a short time ago, was now replaced with a deathly white. "What was your question?"
"So, it's true," Danny muttered to himself, as if he hadn't heard Sam's question. "He is dead." He then looked back down at the board. "I've got another question," he said sternly, before he took one deep breathe and then closed his eyes. "You ready, Sam?"
"Danny, you shouldn't take that first answer too seriously," said Sam calmly. "With this method, there's a huge chance of ghostly interference, especially with you taking part. You are half-ghost after all." She received no reply, but the silence she heard was enough. "Okay, I'm ready," she told Danny, as she closed her eyes.
They repeated the same thing and every time the marker stopped, they opened their eyes to see what letter they had stopped at. It was slow, having to write down the letter one at a time, and then closing their eyes again to redirect the marker. What made it even slower was the constant impulses they had to act on. Sometimes Sam felt as if she had to tug against the marker and pull in the opposite direction that Danny was directing the marker in. Other times, she moved it in the same direction as he did.
Eventually, they came up with something akin to an answer to Danny's question. It had taken them the good part of an hour, but they came up with it.
"That's one talkative ghost," exclaimed Sam, as she looked at the notepad.
"The spelling's real bad too," added Danny.
"There's a few words missing," pointed out Sam, "but that's to be expected with you being half-ghost. After all, your ghost side was interfering with the spirit's ability to channel the message through us." She looked at the words and read it carefully. Her face went paler than it normally was. "Danny, what's going on here?"
Silence followed her question, as if Danny didn't want to explain himself. Yet he knew he had to. Sam was his friend, after all, and he had to tell her sometime. It was the right thing to do, especially if he was to undertake action against those that had did those horrible things to him.
"Ever since I was put under, I've been having this dream about a school," began Danny calmly. "In it… In it, I keep meeting this kid called Alex. He's… I think he used to be a student in this school, where the Maudsley Institute is now." He inhaled deeply and then exhaled as best as he could. "I kept meeting him in my dreams, even the ones I've had for the past few nights. He keeps talking to me, telling me that he needs help getting out."
Danny then glanced back at the notepad and at the words that were scribbled on to it, words describing how Alex's ghost had remained there in the burnt out ruins of the boarding school to the day when the hospital was built over it. He read the words describing how the actions of Zeross and his Blue Bow Army were interfering with Alex's chances of escaping the world of the living and to the world of the dead.
"That mental patient, that doctor… They aren't the only ones who keep calling me Shou Ge Wang," continued Danny calmly. "Alex does too. They think I'm some kind of Chieftain or something."
"Of the Mao Shang?" asked Sam curiously.
"Yeah," replied Danny with a nod of his head. "He keeps asking me to help him, but I don't know how and I always wake up before he can tell me." He wrapped his arms around himself, as he shivered. Danny could feel cold. He could feel the cold despite being wearing two layers, yet it was not from the cold air around him. That was not why he shivered and that was not why he felt cold.
"I feel so helpless," whispered Danny, but loud enough for Sam to hear. "Alex keeps pleading to me for help, but…" He shook his head. "I can't. I just can't help him." He then looked up, as he felt an arm wrap around him. Danny looked at Sam in surprise. "Sam, what are you…?" he began.
"Shh, it's okay, Danny," said Sam quietly. "It's okay. We're here to help. You can rely on me and you can rely on Tucker. You don't have to do it all alone."
"Can you help, Sam?" asked Danny. "Can you really help?" He heard only silence in reply.
"Let's get some sleep first," Sam told him calmly. "Perhaps, we'll be able to think better about this in the morning."
"Yeah," agreed Danny with a slow nod of his head, "I guess you're right."
Red banners hung from the ceiling, a dark entity that couldn't be seen no matter how hard you looked. They were hung haphazardly in the room and all of them were about the same size and pure red with nothing inked on to them and they swayed in a breeze that he couldn't feel.
Through the billowing banners, he could just about see the two figures on the other side of the room. There was a woman dressed in nothing but white robes that fell down to the floor like a cascade of white water. Her hair was worn in the same fashion and was like black ink flowing from a pot, and it was as black as her face was pale and as her smiling lips were bright red.
The woman sat there on a humble-looking chair that occupied a small space at the bottom of the judicial bench, that was like the ones in which judges sit a when in court. Yet this one was as black as night and hung over it was a yellow banner with something written on it in red ink in Chinese.
Sitting there in place of a judge was a man dressed in yellow, silk Oriental robes. He was blindfolded and on the blindfold was painted a few Chinese words in red ink. In the place of the white powder wig that judges wear, this man wore a black hat with two pieces of fabric that curved out from its side and a veil of pearls that hung from the top of the hat to end just above his forehead.
Danny watched as the raven-haired woman got up and started to walk down the steps of the dais, and she walked in such a way that she seemed to float down the steps towards him. And he couldn't help but feel that she was a ghost and so was the blind-folded man that seemed to stare down at him regardless of the blindfold.
The raven-haired woman had Oriental features and there was a gentle smile on her face, as of a dream, as she approached him with a Chinese tea cup filled cradled in her hands. She stopped at the base of the steps and then knelt down on her knees, so that she was level with the kneeling Danny. Then with one gesture, she moved the cup towards Danny, offering the dark liquid that resided in it to the young black-haired boy…
The images of that dream was still fresh in Danny's mind, as he sat in Sam's Room with his arms leaned against the back of the chair he was seated in. He didn't know what to make of it. Danny didn't know if he should have told Sam, but he thought better of it. Sam didn't need to know about it.
The door opened and Sam returned with Tucker.
"Danny, guess what?" exclaimed Tucker, as he followed Sam in. He received no reply, so he continued, "Last night, I was in the chat rooms when I came across a real live member of the Mao Shang!"
"You what?" exclaimed Danny, as he looked up to face his best friend.
"And I managed to arrange a meeting with him too," added Tucker.
Danny stared at Tucker in disbelief and was right to do so.
"What? I don't get it," he said with a shake of his head. "Tucker, how did you…?" He began, but then thought carefully about whether he wanted to hear about Tucker's exploits on the Internet. "Don't you think it's a bit… well… reckless to just set up a meeting with a complete stranger?"
The smug smile that had been on Tucker's lips didn't fail to leave him. It was almost as if the smile was glued on to his lips.
"Don't worry," he told Danny. "When have I steered you wrong?" He then realised that he had done so on many occasions, so before both Danny and Sam could reply, he said, "Wait, scratch that. Never mind. Look, it's going to be okay. You're the Shojiwing or whatever they keep calling you. You're their Leader!"
"Huh?"
"Yup, Sam's not the only one with mad researching skillz," said Tucker.
Danny sighed, as he placed a hand against his forehead and leaned into it.
"First thing's first, it's Shou Ge Wang," he told Tucker. "Secondly, Blind Gerald was also a Mao Shang member and he used me like some kind of human meat puppet! I think Fordyce is a Mao Shang too and he tried to turn me into a human vegetable!"
The black-haired youth shook his head.
"Nope, when it comes to Mao Shang, I think I'm better off staying well away," he said. "Well, well away!" he added, as if it could stress his current position on Mao Shang.
Sam thought for a while.
"Yeah, but they really shouldn't be doing that to you," she said for a while. "Maybe… just maybe, the Mao Shang we've been facing are rogue Mao Shang, ones that've been kicked out of the Mao Shang, maybe." She thought carefully, before saying, "Maybe we should go meet this Mao Shang member. Perhaps he could help us figure out what's going on here."
"Et tu, Sam?" sighed Danny.
"Don't say it like that," protested Sam sharply. "We'll be there to watch your back, won't we, Tuck?"
"We sure will," replied Tucker with a nod of his head, before he turned round and dragged a bag into the room, which then fell open in front of him to reveal lots of gadgets taken from the Fenton Laboratory. "Kind of borrowed these from your parents. Hope they won't mind."
Danny sighed. Once again, it seemed as if fate was against him and he was being dragged into something he clearly didn't want to do. It's just, he never figured that it would be his friends dragging him off into the unknown. They had never done that to him before, except that time with the car battery, the pot of honey and the broom handle smeared with Vaseline, and that was something that Danny preferred not to remember.
Still, Sam and Tucker had promised that they would be there with him and more likely than not, they would be armed with the array of gadgetry that Tucker had 'borrowed' from his parents. Would there be any harm in meeting the Mao Shang? More importantly, would he find out what he wanted to know?
"Okay then," Danny sighed. "Let's get this over with."
Dr. Michael Fordyce removed his toupee and planted it squarely on the faceless white bust that had once been used to display the toupee in the wig shop. He then walked over to his cabinet, as he delved into his pockets with his left hand and fished out a key, whilst the other hand clenched tightly into a fist. As he approached the cabinet, he hit the side of the wooden panel, making a secret hatch fall open to reveal a metallic door and a lock, in which he placed the key and turned.
Slowly and carefully, Fordyce lowered the metallic hatch and picked out a box and two red candles on which were inscribed Chinese characters in yellow, complete with two candle holders which he placed squarely on his desk. These he lit before he placed the box squarely in front of him and turned round to face the cabinet.
The doctor had almost forgotten one of the most important parts of the ritual. He walked over to the cabinet and opened it up, taking out the bottle shaped like a gourd. It was the one possession he had brought with him over from Hong Kong when he had followed Professor Zeross over, and he had always claimed to visitors that it was a souvenir from the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Sha Tin Wai, which wasn't in itself an entire lie.
Fordyce walked back to his desk and sat down in the vast leather, placing the bottle down to the side next to the second bust he had bought from the wig shop. He then set about opening the metallic box he had taken out from the secret drawer in his cabinet.
Inside were a brush and a pot that he had filled with a mixture of ink, black dog's blood and chicken blood, a second pot containing some holy water he had stolen from a church, and several oblong sheets of yellow paper. He opened both pots, shoving the box back so he would have room to write and picked up the brush and four pieces of paper.
The doctor, a former Mao Shang, dipped his brush in the pot of ink and blood. He then placed the brush to the paper and was then about to write. Fordyce always had trouble remembering what he had to write on the pieces of paper. He scratched his bald scalp, his fingers running across the tattooed skin on which was scarred the image of a green four-leaf clover and a red Chinese character meaning 'sky', as he looked at the blank piece of paper.
Suddenly, he started writing as if inspiration had hit him. He wrote quickly on each piece of paper, writing the same thing first on one sheet, then on the second and then on the third. Fordyce then picked up an individual sheet, which he held over the flame close enough for the ink to dry but far away enough to prevent it from burning. He did the same for all four sheets before dipping his brush into a glass full of water he had provided himself for the purposes of washing the brush.
Next, Fordyce dipped his brush into the pot of holy water and smeared each sheet of paper with water before drying them over the candle again. He then turned the sheets over and near the top of all but one of the four sheets, he smeared more holy water, wetting the dried glue that existed as a strip near the top like in those yellow sticky notes.
Each one of these sheets of paper was then stuck on to a forehead. Two were placed on the foreheads of the inanimate busts and the third was placed on Fordyce's very own forehead. There was no need for him to place one on the gourd bottle, as the incantation had already been carved into its surface. The fourth was for the patient.
A smile spread across Fordyce's face, as he delved into his box and brought out two other objects. One was a Native Indian tobacco pipe and the other was a packet of tobacco that had been mixed with garlic cloves and black dog's blood. It was a noxious mix and Fordyce loathed its taste and the hypocrisy associated with a doctor that smoked, yet it was only for ritualistic purposes and he didn't have to do that very much, only when he hungered…
"Bring him in!" called out Fordyce, as he sat there with the Talisman stuck to his forehead. He took out the stopper from the gourd bottle before he began stuffing the pipe with the tobacco. "Seat him in the chair," he told the two security guards and they did.
The patient that sat in the chair opposite was held in a white straitjacket and was fidgeting uncontrollably. He was also babbling incoherently, his words like an unbroken chain and seemed to grate on the nerves of the two guards, whom both looked just on the verge of snapping themselves.
Fordyce handed them the last Chinese Talisman he had prepared, but not before wetting the sticky patch with holy water.
"Here, put it on his forehead," he told them and then he waited. "Done yet?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," came the reply.
"Good," said Fordyce with a nod of his head, as he lit the tobacco in the pipe.
The patient that sat in the chair opposite him suffered from multiple personality disorder. When he first came in, he had many but through Fordyce's special rituals, the patient had been reduced to only three. They weren't rogue personalities, you see, made from abnormal electrical impulses in the brain. No, Fordyce quickly figured out that they were ghosts after he had discovered that a compass pointed towards the patient had its pointer deflected abnormally.
"Leave now," ordered Fordyce sternly and he waited calmly for the two security guards to leave.
It was imperative that they did, for they would negate the effects of the two busts he had provided. They were there to confuse the ghosts and the Talismans were there to protect Fordyce, not the busts. The ones on the busts were merely there to give the ghosts the impression that the busts were real people with real personalities, or at least had real personalities inside them.
Reluctantly, Fordyce took a puff from the pipe and nearly chocked on the noxious fumes. He kept it in his lungs for a while, before exhaling and was grateful to be rid of that first lungful of tobacco smoke. Yet the strange garlic and copper taste of the tobacco remained on his tongue and made him shiver in disgust.
"So, tell me, what's yer name?" asked Fordyce curiously, as he picked out a silver bell from his box, the last of the objects in his box that he had not used.
There was no reply, so Fordyce rung the silver bell forcefully.
"What is your name?" asked Fordyce sternly. "Tell me or I'll ring the bell again and believe you me, you won't like it." He knew that ghosts couldn't stand the sound of bells, especially church bells, but this little silver bell was the only one available to him. "Your name. Tell me."
"We are Legion," replied the patient from his seat, "for we are many."
"Liar," retorted Fordyce, before he rung the bell again. He took another puff from the pipe and this time, he exhaled the smoke out into the gourd bottle. "What's your name? Are you the James personality or the Frederick personality?" A smile spread across his face, before he asked, "Or are you the Ember personality?" He raised the bell again.
"Stop! Stop!" cried a feminine voice from the male patient. "Yes, you're right. I am her. I am Ember."
Fordyce took another drag from the pipe, as she said her name.
"Ember?" he said and the smoke poured out from his mouth as he said her name. He placed the pipe down and picked up the gourd bottle, aiming it at the patient.
From behind the Talisman on his face, Fordyce watched as the patient choked and a wreath of smoke from him reeled away from him and snaked its way towards the unstoppered bottle. He watched as the smoke entered and when the last of it was inside, he placed the stopper back into the gourd bottle.
Fordyce was confident that the ghost was now inside the gourd bottle, which he placed firmly on his desk. He removed the Talisman from his face and then placed it firmly over the top of the bottle, as he debated whether to let the ghost mature and marinate or whether to consume it right then and there. He bit his lip, as he thought carefully.
Perhaps it would be better to set the ghost against the Shou Ge Wang, Daniel Fenton. Personally, he liked to take care of his enemies by himself. It was O'Donnell that preferred setting ghosts and the undead against his enemies, but Dr. Fordyce wondered whether using this particular ghost against Daniel Fenton would be a much better idea. After all, Zeross had ordered him to find and render Daniel Fenton unconscious.
"What better way of doing it than by introducing a new personality into the little brat?" he wondered out loud. "Yeah, let's see how he likes that!" He grinned.
