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The feline gently rested Beck atop the pile of blankets he called a bed, then gazed around at the mess inside the poltergeist’s houseboat, eyebrows furrowing. The floor was unkempt, scattered with empty wrappers and the husks of bugs long dead. He thought he could hear them crunch as he stepped about the room, and the very thought of such made his stomach twist and the corners of his mouth downturn as he envisioned their depraved exoskeletons pressed between his toes.

Turning around, Crow noticed what appeared to be a cassette hastily discarded on the ground, its label faded with age but otherwise pristine in condition. A scuff on its plastic proved to come clean with some brief rubbing, and the feline located its box several feet away, black with red lettering, and both labels read the same: Psycho. It must have been one of Beck’s horror films; what other type of film would have such a sinister title, anyway? He shook his head and slipped the tape into its respective casing, then as he went to shelf it, he noticed another, and another, all in a line as if forming a trail which rounded a corner, and should he have watched any of the assortment of films he discovered, he would have known better than to peer past that corner.

There he was met with an unpleasant surprise; a tangle of vines emanating from what was the infamous Audrey, and Crow repressed a gag as the monstrous plant opened its jaws to chew on a soggy, grey heap of fabric dangling from its teeth. The stench was unlike anything he had ever smelled before, and each movement of the plant’s jaws seemed to propel the odor of bile and flesh in his direction. He would have simply walked away, but it seemed Audrey had sensed his presence, most likely alerted by his fitful breaths just moments before. The cloth it held crumpled to the floor as its attention focused on the now inconvenienced tabby cat, and it outstretched a pseudo limb to begin its crawl forward.

An annoyed growl escaped Crow’s lips as he struck the beast, and with a rustle of leaves it recoiled from the impact and gaped its jaws menacingly in the direction the hit had come from. Another blow and Audrey began a retreat, its vines pulling it effortlessly out of the nearby window and disappearing over the side with a clunk as it dragged itself across the outside of the boat to escape Crow’s reach. Good riddance.

The feline stuck his tongue out as the last of the creature’s greenery disappeared from sight, then he remembered the object Audrey dropped, and upon prodding it, he determined that it was a cloak. A very, very old grey cloak that had definitely seen better days before it ended up where it was right now, in a sopping pile on the ground. Nearby laid an aged dagger, and to his shock a large, weathered bone, and that was when Crow realized that this cloak and its contents must have been very important to the poltergeist. “Then I can’t just leave this lyin’ here,” he mumbled to himself as placed them inside the cloak, then he scooped it up in his jaws and walked back around the corner, gently kicking the movies along with his steps. Crow folded the cloak with care, placing it atop a shelf with the rest of the items he picked up out of Audrey’s grasp.

After he walked outside, he cracked open a can of black paint that he dug out of the junkyard and began his work, muttering invocations under his breath as he carefully traced a pentagram in the dirt. He made sure to go over each line multiple times so that it would not wear away quickly, and like that, it was done. Beck was trapped and would not be able to leave until the paint wore away, and that knowledge was comforting to the cat. Crow stepped back to admire his work, plopped the lid back on the paint can, then carried on his way. Now he had other things to take care of, and it was only the beginning of the longest day of his life.

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