With his mother's urn on his lap as the moon crept toward midnight, Nijel "Whoreson" Shamrock pressed the point of his pocketknife into the copper casing of the sixth cartridge, etching his damned father's name into the final bullet as well. Using lead as his instrument of vengeance, he'd turn that wicked monster into a wandering ghost before losing his own soul tonight.
The first bullet's engraving read, "Remember me now, Dad?" while another said, "Let's play catch, Pa."
Bringing the last one closer to his face, Nijel blew away the specks of copper dust clinging to its carved words. On the other side of the deadbeat's name, it also bore a little message for his old man: "With love, your son."
Casually sitting on the opposite side of the rain-slicked street from The Rookery, Pub and Lounge, a premier establishment in Salt Barrel, Nijel picked up his mother's urn and set it beside himself on the sidewalk.
"Was waiting for his own decisions to kill him, swear on your sweet soul, Ma," Nijel relayed to her truthfully while reaching inside his jacket. "Forgave him, like promised. Even after what the piece of shit said to my face when I told him you died. Kept my mouth shut. Walked away." Replacing his pocketknife, he pulled out his revolver.
"But things have changed, Ma. Can't wait anymore. I'm sorry." His eyes moved from the urn to the six bullets, his ears hearing whispers that weren't there. "'When shit gets nasty, don't expect others to clean it up for you.' You taught me that. And tonight, I'll show you just how much I've learned."
Under the fluorescent glow of a dimming streetlamp swarmed by moths, Nijel cracked open the snubnosed revolver. Small enough he could almost enclose it between his hands, it was an old Bumblebee Hive model pistol from before North Sanc was a warzone, packing a hot sting despite its deceptive size. Perfect for assassination.
With practiced deftness, Nijel picked a cartridge off the damp sidewalk, read its etchings a final time, then inserted it into the chamber, loading up the cylinder to its max capacity, one by one.
Finally, giving it a good spin, Nijel snapped his revolver closed. It clicked into one piece with the sweet promise of justice, for even ghosthunters bled when pumped with lead.
"He'll die before I do," Nijel vowed to his mother, pointing the pistol at The Rookery's neon red "closed" sign. "Before this Phantom claims my soul, I'll claim his instead. Maybe even afterward if he has one, who knows? The only sure thing is that once I enter through that door… I won't be leaving it in this life." His eyes lowered from the entrance to himself.
The skin of his hand gripping the gun was bloodless, with the sickly yellow shade of an old wax candle tinging its paling complexion. Even his poking knuckles and fingerbones round the trigger seemed nearly translucent. Yet the veins underneath it all were dark as bruises. So dark, in fact, it was as if the midnight sky itself had injected itself into his bloodstream, flowing toward his heart to blacken it as well.
"Even if bullets and blades don't kill me in there," Nijel confessed to his mother, "I'll still die. Not because I'm sludging a so-called guardian of humanity, but because," and his corrupted hand slid down to her keepsake necklace round his throat, "your boy is possessed by a bloody ghost, Ma."
His vision darkened right then, sucking the world of all its shades like a charcoal sketch as the surrounding shadows came alive, stretching their umbral tendrils to seize his own shades and shadow—before snapping back into focus, the colors coming back to it.
Nijel shook his head frantically to drive away—or at least delay—the spectral being corrupting his body and mind and soul. It did not work. Never did. Nothing short of an exorcism would, with how far gone he was now. But since he wasn't rich enough for even three meals a day, he could never dream to afford the luxury of someone saving his soul.
"I'm holding onto life with nothing but hate, yet there's no doubt I'm losing it." Nijel pulled back his Wraithlike hand, wrapping its wrist with his other. His grip on the pistol still shook and slipped. "I'm losing myself, Ma. Slowly but surely. I'm sinking into the abyss—"
A whisper snuck from his left ear to his right one, stiffening his neck and clenching his jaw. It was suggesting how delicious he'd find human flesh upon learning how to cook it properly. The breasts of a woman with a child still in her womb tasted best, it claimed, after they were turned inside out—
Crawling toward the streetlamp on his knees, Nijel puked in his disgust, losing precious calories he'd hard won by thieving thugs and other such dangerous gigs. Yet even with his gut's contents splattered onto the sidewalk, the revulsion remained right in its emptied room.
The symptoms of his possession had worsened from even the day before. And only worsening further.
A week ago, he was seeing shapes from the corners of his eyes and hearing murmurs near his ears while falling asleep. Now he felt as if something was under his very flesh and within his bones… licking him with its many slimy tongues.
Nijel breathed in the cool midnight air to collect himself, then let it all hiss out through his gritted teeth. "This fucking Phantom will devour my soul, Ma, but not before I make a ghost of my own." Tightening his grip on the revolver, he steadied his shooting hand. "It's not as if things will get any better for me. So, I just want them to get worse for him too."
The false whispers loudened around his head, making him recoil as the disturbing noises inside his ears interrupted and overlapped one another, congealing into a bloodthirsty chorus demanding brutality—
"Fuck off!" Concealing his Bumblebee back into his jacket as the Phantom possessing him chewed off another chunk of his soul, Nijel climbed to his feet. "You want death? I'll give you death!"
A shitty death to a shitty life.
Without glancing back at his mother's ashes, he left her on the sidewalk with some final words: "You always told me I'm the son of a Phantom Vanquisher. So, isn't it only right for me to follow in my father's footsteps and hunt down the ghost that killed you, Ma?"
Kissing her keepsake, Nijel Shamrock walked into The Rookery to kill the man who never loved back his mother, even when she kept waiting for the damned monster to acknowledge the existence of their son till her dying day.