Chapter 7: The Keeper of Forgotten Lore

Chapter 7: The Keeper of Forgotten Lore

Finding a ghost was harder than summoning a monster. The username 'Elara' from a ten-year-old forum post was less than a needle in a haystack; it was a single speck of dust in a hurricane. For two days, Leo worked with a frantic, obsessive energy born of pure desperation. He subsisted on stale crackers from Sam's cupboard and the dregs of a forgotten coffee pot.

He cross-referenced the username on other esoteric forums, building a digital shadow of a person who had been active in the deep, weird corners of the internet in the early 2000s and then vanished. He found a linked, long-defunct blog about astrological charts and tarot, and through the site's registration history, unearthed a name and a P.O. box in a small, forgotten town two hours north of the city. It was a long shot, a desperate leap of faith, but it was the only one he had.

The address the post office had on file for the box owner led him to a small, dilapidated Victorian house that seemed to be actively sinking into its overgrown garden. The paint was peeling, the porch sagged, and the windows were dark and blank like the eyes of a skull. It was a place the world had decided to forget. Taking a breath that did little to calm the frantic hummingbird of his heart, Leo knocked on the heavy oak door.

For a long moment, there was nothing. Then, the sound of multiple bolts being drawn, a metallic grinding that spoke of long disuse. The door creaked open a few inches, and a pair of eyes peered out from the gloom. They were sharp, intelligent, and shockingly pale, seeming to see right through Leo’s exhausted exterior to the terror coiled in his gut.

"What do you want?" a woman's voice rasped, dry as autumn leaves.

"Are you Elara?" Leo asked, his own voice sounding thin and childish.

The eyes narrowed. "Who's asking?"

"My name is Leo Vance. I… I need your help. I found your name on a forum. The post was about a symbol…" He fumbled in his pocket, his shaking hands retrieving a folded piece of paper. He pushed it through the crack in the door.

The woman took it. The silence stretched as she examined the drawing of the five-pointed seal he’d meticulously copied from his memory of Sam’s book. He heard a sharp intake of breath from within the house. The door groaned open wider.

"Get in," she said, her voice stripped of its earlier hostility and replaced by a grim resignation. "And close the door behind you. You don't know what you've brought with you."

Leo stepped inside and was immediately enveloped by the smell of old paper, dried herbs, and melting wax. The entryway led into a study so cluttered with books and strange artifacts that the room itself seemed to be made of them. Tomes were stacked from floor to ceiling, their leather spines cracked with age. Astrolabes, crystal balls, and bundles of dried sage covered every surface. The only light came from a single green-shaded banker's lamp on a massive desk, casting long, dancing shadows.

Elara was exactly as the disembodied voice had suggested. She was tall and gaunt, her late sixties etched onto her face in a web of fine lines. Long, silver hair was haphazardly tied back from a face dominated by those piercing eyes. She looked him up and down, her expression one of weary diagnosis, like a doctor examining a terminal patient.

"Another group of children playing with matches and wondering why the house burned down," she said, her tone devoid of sympathy. "How many of you were there?"

"Five," Leo whispered, the word catching in his throat. "There are two of us left."

"Not for long," she stated, matter-of-factly. She tossed his drawing onto the desk. "You didn't just perform a ritual, boy. You didn't 'speak to the dead.' You rang a dinner bell across dimensions and invited something ancient and hungry to a feast. And you were the main course."

"What is it?" Leo asked, his desperation cutting through the haze of awe and fear. "Sam called it… The Taker of Tithes."

Elara's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "He got the name right, at least. Most don't. The book you used must have been a rare one. The Taker of Tithes is what the old texts call it. It's a predator. A very old, very patient predator that feeds not just on life, but on the terror that precedes death. It finds it… delicious."

She moved around the desk, her movements slow and deliberate, a strange grace in her aged frame. "It operates on rules. Rigid. Unbreakable. The ritual you performed was a contract, signed and sealed in your own blood. One tithe, every seven days, in the order the blood was given. No exceptions. No delays."

Everything she said confirmed his worst fears, cementing the fragmented pieces of his nightmare into a coherent, horrifying reality. The schedule, the pattern, the countdown—it was all real.

"My friend… the one who just fled… he thinks he can outrun it," Leo said, a final, desperate plea for a shred of hope he already knew was gone. "He got on a plane."

Elara let out a short, harsh laugh. It was a sound completely devoid of humor. "Run? You think it's bound by geography? By airline schedules?" She stopped and fixed him with a look of pitying intensity. "It isn't bound to a place, boy. It's bound to you. To your life force. The contract is a metaphysical tether. You can run to the moon, and on the seventh day, it will be there waiting for you when the clock strikes twelve."

The last of Leo's hope for James withered and died. He saw him, clear as day, strapped into an airplane seat, blissfully unaware that his frantic flight was just a scenic route to the same inevitable, bloody end.

"So there's no escape," Leo said, the words a flat, dead weight in the incense-thick air.

"No," Elara confirmed, her gaze unwavering. "There is no escape. Not for your friend. He is already dead; the act is merely waiting to happen. And once his time is up, the contract will have one name left on its ledger." She paused, letting the crushing weight of her words settle onto him.

"The Taker's gaze will fall solely on you."