The Followers - Luna

Following, that’s my job. I follow spirits to ensure that they follow the natural course. Each spirit has a purpose. Followers like me rarely have to intervene. On one occasion, a rouge spirit will cause enough problems that Followers have to “dissolve” them. I have only ever had to do that once.

I apologize introductions are in order. I am Mirika. I work a normal 8-5 job it is dull work as a computer programmer. Some think me rather slow outside of my work. That is the way I like it. Unfortunately that is furthers from who I really am. I read every News Paper, internet clip and two bit news rag I can lay my hands on for news of the bizarre Most of them are nothing more than hoaxes. The people are liars and bad ones at that.

I have the power of telepathic travel. I can look at a map and be there within the blink of an eye. Nighttime is the best time for travel of this sort. Not many see well at night and the shadows hide the rest.

It is also the easiest time to track spirits. Many only need to sense me to be dissuaded from there malevolent courses. No one wants wiped from existence, not even a spirit. So, when I arrived in a small country town in Maine I was surprised to see a white cat in a tree.

The cat, Luna, was indeed a spirit, and a cat. Luna was not the cause of the strange happenings though. She seemed drawn to the bizarre things. I had been ’assigned’ by the head of the Followers to find out what was happening. I was also told that if Luna, a spirit, happened to be there that I was to detain her.

I am not sure if you have any idea how to “detain” a spirit or not. Most of the stories on how to detain a spirit are farfetched to the extreme. As I said, finding Luna was easy. I was surprised that the spirit was attached to a form of a pure white cat. It felt so cliché, as far as stories go. You know a cat and a “spirit”
However, in most stories, the spirits were evil, and this was not true of Luna. It was also rare for a spirit to attach to any host, animal or human. Possessions are rare as far as possessions by a spirit are concerned. Most of the time possessions are by demons, and that’s a different story, one for another time.

Luna was easy to see, anyone could have seen her. She was a real white cat, slightly luminous in the moonlight. Most people would never have seen more than a white cat. I however knew better and had been trained to look for the spirit.

The sight of Luna was almost a relief. What sent chills down my spine was when her luminous green eyes met mine and a voice echoed in my mind. NO spirit I ever tailed before could communicate directly.

“Follower, beware. Danger lurks here.”

Startled I jumped and broke protocol speaking allowed. “What”

“Quite, do you wish to be the target or perform your duty?”

I immediately stopped. My speech became telepathic instead of verbal. “How can you communicate with me? What danger is this?”

“Much better. The danger that I followed is a darkness that you only sense. It’s not a normal spirit in any sense of the word. This is pieces of the dissolved that have formed to make a whole, many pieces of evil together to make a whole.”

“That can’t happen. Can it?”

“This is a first.”

“The committee will need to hear about this. They will need to hear it from you. They asked me to detain you. Will you come willingly?”

“Yes, your method of travel will be suitable. Open your arms.”

She jumped and landed in my arms, and before I could curtail my thoughts slipped. “God how can a spirit weigh so much?”

“When the spirit, is actually attached to another body and soul, the mass doubles. Now quite bitching and take us to the committee.”

After our arrival, I was quickly briefed on our new dissolving method and advised to go for with a group. We never, ever went in groups, this was a first. This time travel was more of an issue. I was the only one of the group of four that had the gift of travel. We had to fly and take a car our entire trip would take a week.

Before we reached Maine, the mysterious deaths had begun, four deaths within five days. Of course, Luna was there two full days before our arrival, though I have never quite figured out how. During my briefing, I was told of Luna’s special Follower status. Luna was a spirit Follower. She had been an extremely talented Follower in life and had found a way to attach her spirit with the white cat, her pet as a willing host as she lay dying.

Now these degenerates drew her spirit to them. She could not dissolve these spirits. However, she was frequently able to get them to change their course of action. Normally all she had to do was let them know that she could call other Followers.

This time it didn’t work. When we arrived Luna’s spirit floated over a pile of fur that was more red than white. The cat lay mewing in pain and Luna wept. One of the Followers in the group was a healer another was an Empath. Luna and the cat occupied both of them.

That left two of us. We had no choice but to dissolve this malevolent spirit. The first step was the easy part, that of locating the thing. It left behind a sort of dark shadow, not quite visible to most humans. We however could see it quite clearly.

We setup our can trips that drew it. Then we had our own special wards. Before we could finish all our wards, it was closing in. I could feel the wrath and anger it harbored. Thirty spirits pieces made this thing, each of them vile souls. He came at us with an innocent young girl in tow. She walked as though in a trance, her eyes were slightly out of focus. She was not possessed, nor did she have one blot of evil on her soul. We had to save her. Yet we had to dissolve this beast. Her massacre would be bad thing on too many levels. First, it would lead the police to us and a media circus with the Followers as the focus.

We stopped in not sure how to proceed. We decided that dissolving the spirit would have to be done first and the girl dealt with later. As we were about to cast the dissolving spell from two sides Luna as her cat self came trotting up. She weaved her steps in and around the girls legs. It woke her and she knelt wrapping her arms around Luna.

We unleashed the spell. The spirit started to dissolve for a minute it looked like victory, until it stopped and reformed with a wrathful laugh. The other two Followers arrived and flung their spells as we through a second set of spells. All four at one time hit the spirit and this time it finally dissolved with a loud screeching moan.

We double and triple checked to make sure no pieces remained. Luna led the girl back home and removed the memories of her midnight stroll. The small town had no more odd deaths; they could live their lives without ever knowing what we had dispatched that night.

Luna, now stay’s with me two kindred souls and fluffy white cat, Followers forever.


**This was written based on a prompt for a contest of ‘A Cat’. The contest was for odd, scary or horror it also had a word count which I could not fit this story in of 500 words. Even though it would not exactly fit into the word count or the exact genera, I had to write the story! Current Word count of 1,307