The Sinner Hunting System

Raphael’s hand moved toward the revolver before the thought fully formed.

Then the face changed back.

A perfectly ordinary middle-aged man, eyebrows furrowed slightly in mild puzzlement, already turning back toward the road.

"You alright back there? Looked like something startled you. Big reaction for someone half asleep."

He kept his eyes forward.

"Heading out to the outskirts this late, you one of those livestreamers?

Seen plenty of that type. Dare videos, haunted location stuff."

Raphael exhaled and settled the revolver back into the holster.

Given his constitution, genuine tiredness wasn’t a realistic explanation.

Then through the side window, past the tree line, he caught it.

Far from the highway, tucked against the back slope of a hill, something pale and grey rose above the canopy, just the highest portion visible, most of it swallowed by forest.

Even getting out here, reaching it on foot would take a while.

At the castle’s peak, something large was circling in the air. More than one. The scale of them against the sky ruled out anything ordinary.

The road deteriorated progressively as they moved away from the city.

Potholes began appearing, small ones first, then larger, one or two deep enough that the headlights caught the edges and the driver slowed to a crawl, hunched forward over the wheel.

The grass on either side had grown to head height and pressed close to the road’s edges, the kind of growth that made you wonder what was moving through it.

No maintenance. No patrol presence. Just the dark and the bad road and the trees getting thicker around them.

"You should have paid me more," the driver muttered. "Fifty Colin for a run like this. Middle of the night, out here..."

Raphael cleared his throat.

"Fifty is all I have."

The driver glanced back through the mirror with the expression of a man who genuinely cannot believe what he’s hearing.

"Then how are you getting home?"

Raphael didn’t answer.

The girl appeared without warning in the center of the road.

Red dress. Sitting cross-legged on the tarmac, playing with a stuffed bear.

When the headlights found her she looked up, skin with no color in it at all, two lines of red running from her eyes down her cheeks like dried blood, the expression of someone in the middle of a grief that had no end.

"Look out—!"

The driver had already seen her. He wrenched the wheel hard.

At this speed the car tilted to the threshold of rolling, swaying back and forth through several terrifying oscillations before the weight redistributed.

He pumped the brakes, kept pumping, the tires leaving two long black lines on the road surface as the car ground to a stop.

"Oh god, God—!"

His hands on the wheel were shaking badly enough to see from the back seat. The knuckles had gone white. His shirt was soaked through already.

"Hh — hh — hh!"

He worked through several breathing cycles before anything resembling calm came back.

The road ahead. The road behind. Both equally uninviting.

"Turn around. Go back and look."

The driver’s head snapped around at this suggestion, his expression confirming that he considered it insane.

"No. No, absolutely not. I’m not going near that. Who knows what it is, person or ghost?

It looked like a little girl but what if it’s a malevolent spirit? It could kill us both!"

"Take a breath."

Raphael lifted his jacket hem and showed the holster, the silver-barreled Magnum sitting in it.

"Silver rounds. Hunter’s ammunition. One shot and whatever it is will definitely be making noise."

The driver stared at the gun. His expression cycled from suspicion to something approaching reassured resignation.

"So you’re an exorcist. You’re an exorcist, aren’t you. That’s why you’re out here at this hour. Exorcist business."

Thanks for writing my cover for me. Raphael accepted this without comment.

"You could say that."

The driver’s shattered composure found a thin thread to hold onto.

He considered his options, found he had essentially one, and let out a miserable laugh.

"Not like I’ve got a choice. And honestly, one of those rounds hits me, I’d probably scream louder than any ghost."

He reached for the ignition.

Nothing.

He turned the key again. Again. Several more times, and not just no engine response, but the absence of the mechanical resistance the key should have met, as though the ignition mechanism had simply ceased to exist.

"What — what is?"

He turned back to Raphael in pure alarm, and Raphael pointed calmly at the key.

"Try again. Slowly."

The driver blinked.

When he looked at his own hand, he hadn’t turned the key at all.

He was certain he had, could feel the memory of having done it, and yet here was his hand, in the pre-ignition position, having done nothing.

He held a breath, turned slowly, and the engine caught on the first try with a normal, healthy rumble.

He eased into a three-point turn, crept back toward the skid marks, and stopped.

Red crescent of brake-light glow on the road surface. Clear landmark. At the center of the road, exactly where the girl had been: no girl.

The stuffed bear sat alone.

Raphael pushed the door open and got out before the driver could object. He walked up to the bear, crouched beside it, and kicked it.

His foot went through empty air. The bear was visible from every angle and untouchable from every angle, as though it occupied a layer of reality adjacent to but not coinciding with his own.

Projection. Not a spirit-type Demon.

He stood and turned.

The girl emerged from the tall grass at the road’s edge, stepping onto the tarmac in her red dress, going directly to the spot where the bear sat and settling back into her play, movements identical to before, the same sequence, the same angles, as though running on a loop.

Raphael crouched in front of her.

"Hey. What are you doing out here?"

No response. She continued playing. Her eyes didn’t track him. She was in a different layer entirely, present but unreachable.

He looked around. The hill behind the tree line. The castle visible in glimpses above the canopy.

The road with no maintenance and no patrol presence.

A structure this size, this close to a Federation city, any satellite sweep would have caught it years ago.

Saying it had gone unnoticed would be absurd.

Unless it hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Unless it was being actively ignored.

There it is.

The driver had been watching Raphael’s movements with increasing anxiety, one foot already prepared to be somewhere else entirely.

When Raphael turned and walked back to the car, he nearly wept with relief.

"Back to the city. I’m not going further tonight."

The driver needed no second invitation.

He was already moving before the door had fully closed, accelerating away from the girl and the bear and the tree line, heading back toward the glow of distant streetlights with everything the road would allow.

As the darkness thinned and the first real lights of the city appeared on the horizon, something in his chest loosened.

As if proximity to populated places carried its own protective quality. As if society itself was a kind of shield.

He was still puzzling over why the self-described exorcist had turned back. Fear? Maybe even that type had limits.

He checked the mirror.

The back seat was empty.

Raphael has disappeared!