Viscount Augustus looked much healthier today. His voice was strong, and the persistent cough from their first eting was gone. Jenkins sincerely hoped the poor man would make a swift recovery.
He then volunteered to take a look around the mausoleum, politely declining a servant's offer to guide him and setting off toward the burial grounds alone.
Of course, this was rely a pretext. He didn't head for the Augustus family cetery at all, but instead made his way to the abandoned burial grounds where the Ouija board ga had taken place.
The place was just as he rembered it, but the door to the gravedigger's cabin, which the group had shut upon leaving, now stood open—no doubt because the Church had sent people to investigate.
He did a quick sweep of the cetery grounds, confirming with his Eye of Reality that nothing was amiss before cautiously stepping back into the gravedigger's cabin.
The round table and wooden chairs from the other day were still there, so he sat right down. As he pulled out the Ouija board, he inevitably startled the cat nestled in his inner pocket. The feline clearly disliked the place, but it hopped onto the table anyway.
"Now, how to use this thing?"
Jenkins stared at the Ouija board, a little frustrated. After a mont's thought, he stood up and went outside. Bending down, he brushed away the lting snow until he uncovered a reasonably intact headstone.
Following the procedure he'd seen the won use, he set up the small statuette, then used a pencil to write the na from the headstone onto the board's decorative tombstone illustration. Placing his fingers on the planchette, he began to whisper the na.
He could feel the Spirit flowing through him as the Ouija board itself began to glow with a faint yellow light.
An intense, bone-deep chill spread from his fingertips through his entire body. He frowned, and the inexhaustible fla from his candle automatically flared, driving the cold away.
Just then, a strange, humanoid figure leaning on a cane materialized before him.
Unlike the one summoned by the won, this spirit showed no aggression. Jenkins suspected it was because he had used the board correctly, not just borrowed its power.
He glanced over at Chocolate, who was boredly batting at the green bead on the table. As expected, the cat couldn't see the spiritual entity.
That was for the best. If Chocolate discovered that his spiritual form looked different from his physical one, it might just confuse the poor cat.
"Are you Rudolf Leggett?"
The spirit stood there, vacant, as the planchette guided his fingers to the word: YES.
"I heard there are no bodies buried here anymore," Jenkins asked. "So why was it so easy to summon your spirit?"
It was a pertinent question. Summoning required a dium—sothing to connect to the specific spirit. A mistake could easily call forth sothing far more dangerous.
Yet both he and the won had used no such dium, only nas from the cetery itself. There were two possible explanations for their success: either there were still bodies buried here, or the deceased had died on this very spot.
The planchette remained motionless. The spirit offered no answer.
Jenkins narrowed his eyes in thought, then posed another question.
"Where is your body now?"
The planchette moved from letter to letter, spelling out the na of a public cetery on the outskirts of Nolan City. This matched the information he had received from Briny Mikhail.
"Where did you die?"
As he asked, Jenkins grew wary. With every question, a strange black mist began to coalesce around the spirit's form, swirling with visible dark particles. The spirit was becoming increasingly unstable.
If his assessnt was correct, it would attack him in three more questions, at most.
The answer spelled out was simple: RIGHT HERE.
"Who killed you?"
The planchette moved faster this ti, spelling out THE GRAVEDIGGER. The instant it stopped, the spirit lifted its face, its aura thick with malice.
Without a mont's hesitation, the old man on the cane lunged at Jenkins, only to be struck down and utterly annihilated.
He sighed and went back outside to find another na. Not every spirit could be summoned; those who had died between fifty and fifty-three years ago seed to be the most responsive.
After summoning four different spirits, he finally managed to piece together the events of five decades past.
One detail stood out: the gravedigger back then hadn't been from the Church of Death and End, but a lonely old man from the nearby village. He was a cultist, a follower of the 'Lord of the Undying.' In pursuit of so dark goal, he had spread a plague through the village that induced a state of suspended animation.
Once the "bodies" were brought to the cetery, he murdered them for real inside his cabin. This explained why so of the spirits were tied to this specific location.
One of the victims, a man of so knowledge, had recognized the holy symbol used in the ritual just before he died. It was only through his spirit's testimony that Jenkins learned the truth five decades later—a stroke of luck, all things considered.
As for what beca of the cultist—whether he left on his own or was eventually discovered by the Orthodox Church—the spirits had no idea.
Jenkins also discovered that each spirit could withstand a different number of questions, depending on the integrity of their spiritual form. One old woman, who appeared as little more than a dissipate mist, transford into a vengeful phantom and attacked after only the first question.
Still, his efforts yielded an unexpected discovery: the cultist had a secret workshop nearby. It was located directly beneath the gravedigger's cabin, but the entrance had been sealed long ago.
Following the spirits' descriptions, Jenkins spent a great deal of effort searching behind the cabin before finally finding faint traces of the sealed entrance. Fifty years had changed much, and the spirits' mories were unreliable. In the end, he had to project his soul out of his body and explore downward to pinpoint the exact location.
"Twin Demons!"
A shadowy figure erged from behind him, lunging at the level ground and detonating in a massive explosion. He had made sure no one was around before acting, but the deafening blast still made him scan the area nervously for a long ti before he could relax.
The explosion blasted the entrance open on the first try, confirming his judgnt was sound. When the smoke and dust settled, a flight of stone steps led downward. The space had been airtight, so apart from the dislodged earth, there was little dust.
He waited for the air to clear before daring to enter. As he examined the entrance, however, he got the distinct impression that it had been sealed from the inside.
And sure enough, after summoning a silver orb of light and descending the steps with Chocolate in his arms, the first thing he saw was a desiccated corpse slumped over the nearest table.
Judging by the clothing, it was the cultist gravedigger from fifty years ago.
"Well, well..."
Jenkins murmured to himself, then waved a hand, sending two more orbs of light spreading out to fully illuminate the underground chamber.
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