Amanda was quite surprised when Stacy fell asleep under the guidance of Dave, she did not see what Dave’s palm looked like, and before she could check it out, Dave already retracted.

 

“How did you do that?” Amanda snorted in disbelief: “That’s really impressive.”

 

“Yeah, a small trick I picked up from my family.” Dave chuckled and sat back down, “Now we wait.”

 

“Wait for… what?” Amanda asked.

 

“Wait for the unclean presence to manifest itself.” Dave said, still holding onto the jar in his hand: “Like I said, it latched not onto her physically, but onto her thoughts. I need her to fall asleep and re-trigger these thoughts. Actually, do you know if there might be something that could be it?”

 

“What?”

 

“Do you know something that might be the source of this unclean being?”

 

“Umm… not really.” Amanda thought for a while: “I guess… her ex boyfriend just disappearing all of a sudden a couple of weeks back could be something.”

 

“Okay. Can you explain?” Dave nodded and asked.

 

“Well, her ex boyfriend - he kinda just dropped all contact a few months back. She was really super in love with him, like an idiot. ” Amanda took a look at Stacy, making double sure that she was still asleep, and said: “And she tried to find him after he'd gone completely radio silent, and dragged us along as well. Such a douchebag and a creep. When we went to his apartment, we found some pretty creepy and cult-y stuff in his place. But we were not able to find him anywhere or hear from him. Oh… oh my god! Could it be the cult stuff?!”

 

“Maybe. ” Dave nodded: “If this ex boyfriend is indeed a cultist of some kind, he could have been messing with power he could not comprehend and infect everyone around him, especially the ones close to him. What was the cult’s name? Do you remember?”

 

“I… I don’t know.” Amanda shrugged and shook her head: “Some really cheesy and on the nose name, I think it’s Spanish...”

 

“Hmm, look.” before Amanda could finish her thoughts, Dave cut her off by pointing at the space right above Stacy’s head.

 

Following the direction of Dave’s finger, Amanda saw a faint and vague shadow floating above Stacy’s head, spinning, twisting and changing in shape. And at the same time, Stacy started squirming on the sofa, with a heavy frown on her face, she started mumbling something: “Tuch-Tach-Saaash …. Tuch-Tach-Saaash… Tuch-Tach-Saaaash !”

 

“What the fuck is that? What’s she saying?” Amanda was a bit freaked out.

 

“It means ‘to witness’. It’s an ancient word.” Dave frowned: “What do you know about her ex boyfriend and this cult of his?”

 

“What do you mean? Is it related?” Amanda stared at Dave: “Holy shit! Do something!”

 

“Don’t worry, it’s not time yet.” Dave shook his head, then he clenched the jar in his armpit and took out his phone, and started dialing a number one digit at a time.

 

“What are you doing?” Amanda asked, a little freaked out.

 

“I think I need to report this to Mr. Yu… I mean Caroline’s boss.” Dave sighed, while still paying attention to the shadow.

 

“Why? Can’t you handle this first?” Amanda yelled.

 

“This is bad … not for Stacy, but for a lot of people.” Dave shook his head, “Stop yelling, she’s gonna be okay. Let me make this call first.” Then he finally finished tapping in all the numbers on his phone, he waited for almost a minute, the one he called still did not pick up.

 

“That thing looks like it’s getting bigger and darker, is it time now?” Amanda paced in front of the sofa while staring at the shadow: “What the hell are you waiting for ? When are you gonna do something?”

 

“It’s not time yet.” Dave shook his head and looked at his phone with a frown: “How come? It’s a blessed line...”

 

Stacy’s mumbling became louder, and her squirming became slightly more violent. The shadow finally manifested into a clearly visible shape: it was like a grey, ugly, deformed or mutated baby that had a large head, small eyes, big mouth and huge chunky body with no neck; its all four limbs were small and short, and on its belly it had a twisted umbilical cord connected to Stacy’s forehead.

 

“That… oh my god!” Amanda almost screamed, but she could not contain her disgust and started retching.

 

Seeing that he could not get a hold of Jianmen at this moment, Dave gave up and put the phone back into his pocket. Then as he looked at the ugly shadow infant that was floating and screaming silently in midair right above Stacy’s head, he scoffed: “Huh, just a piece of it. I thought it’d be … more.”

 

“What do you mean more!? Do something!” Amanda cried and grabbed onto Dave’s sleeves.

 

“Relax. ” Dave got away from Amanda’s grasp, Amanda just felt that Dave’s sleeves slipped away from her fingers like a piece of slippery silk. Dave then twisted open the jar in his hand, and extended his spare hand at the shadow infant.

 

The infant seemed like an immaterial entity consisting of smoke, fog and some other kind of dark energy, but somehow Dave’s fingers still locked onto it. The infant struggled and twitched as if it was touched by pieces of hot iron. But hard as it tried, Dave still successfully grabbed it in his hand. And just like an extremely irresponsible midwife, he just yanked, fast enough that Amanda almost didn’t see what he did. Before Amanda could process what was going on, Dave already shoved the infant into the jar, and snipped the dark umbilical cord connecting to Stacy’s forehead with his fingernails.

 

“... Tuch-Tach-Saaash… AAAAAHH!” Stacy was mumbling when the umbilical cord was snipped, and she woke up screaming and crying. Amanda was shocked at first, but was quick to rush to Stacy’s side and held her friend in her arms.

 

“It’s okay. It’s okay...” Amanda tried to console Stacy, then she looked up at Dave, just in time to see Dave twisting the jar close, and the ugly infant being torn apart by something inside the jar: “...What… what did you do?”

 

“Evil spirit-ectomy.” Dave chuckled, but then realized it was no time to joke: “Sorry, my apologies. I just removed the spirit latched onto Stacy’s thoughts. The procedure is quite simple - I hypnotized her and constructed a temporary small crossover limbo for her to dump the most negative of her negative thoughts - then the spirit was drawn to it and fell into the trap. I then removed it almost entirely.”

 

“... I don’t get it. But, almost entirely? Is there something left?” Amanda asked while patting Stacy on her back.

 

“Yeah. It’s impossible to cleanly remove this kind of evil spirit.” Dave raised his finger and gave Amanda a “hold on” gesture: “Sorry, I gotta answer this first.”