The Assistant (Prt 2)

(Hello loves! Sorry for the delay in posting another Fiction Friday, I was traveling over the weekend. This is the second part of the Assistant short story! The story will wrap up this Friday so the last Fiction Friday of October can be a slightly scarier short story for Halloween!

I hope y'all enjoy!)

The cemetery was quiet as Regina and Jack walked to the farthest row of tombstones. No crickets chirped as they crept through the tall grass, no chilly breeze swept through the air, and no cars roared by. It felt like they were the only two living things for miles around. Under different circumstances, the night would have been peaceful.

Regina saw the eerie silence as a bad omen.

"This doesn't feel right," she whispered.

Jack's answering sigh was as loud as a gunshot in the quiet atmosphere. "Look, I know no one wants to spend their Friday nights digging up a corpse, but there's no reason to start complaining about it."

"That's not what I'm talking about. Something just seems. . . wrong. Like this isn't going to end well."

He stopped and looked around. Regina gripped her shovel tighter, waiting for him to confirm that this was a trap or that they had missed some crucial detail in their research. Just something that would give them an excuse to leave this place. But when she saw that Jack was grinning, she wanted to smack him with her shovel and go back to the car without him.

"We're in an old cemetery, in the middle of nowhere, at night. Of course, it feels 'wrong', we're technically about to break the law. And possibly kill someone, depending on how you view it. Personally, I don't think it counts," he shrugged and resumed walking. "Guy's already dead. Can't kill the dead again."

"But the dead can kill us," Regina muttered.

"Only if we're unprepared." Jack shook the duffel bag he was carrying. "Which we're not, so why don't you relax? We're not in a horror movie, Harker."

She frowned at him but held her tongue. He was right, they weren't in a horror movie. Working for Jack was so much worse than that.

After a few minutes of searching, they finally found the right grave. The neglected lot was overgrown with weeds and brambles that nearly obscured the cracked, mossy tombstone. There were no flowers left by loved ones, no indicator that this had once been a human life aside from the small weathered rock at the head of the grave. Regina squinted to read the faded letters etched in the stone: Noah Hammond, 1853-1924.

They had found him---the man who was terrorizing the Donovans and hurting poor Chrissy.

"There's our guy." Despite Jack's flaws (& there were many), Regina did appreciate his trust in her research. "Right. Why don't you get digging and I'll set up the circle."

She crossed her arms and scowled. "Why do I always have to do the digging? It'd be faster if you did it."

"Can you read Enochian?" He taunted as he held up a thick, leather-bound book. "Didn't think so."

"I could if you bothered to teach me."

"You're not ready," he said simply before pointing at the ground. "Come on. Night's not getting any younger."

"Neither am I," Regina grumbled as she stuck the shovel into the earth.

When the job application had said 'mild physical labor required', she had assumed it meant carrying boxes of paperwork or standing at a desk. But during her month as Jack's assistant, Regina had been forced to dig up at least 6 graves, block the entrance to a cursed well, learn how to fire a gun while hanging upside down from a tree, and out-run one very angry housecat.

Regina doubted she could list any of these as skills on a resume. She'd asked Jack once, and he'd said the only interview she'd get was with the cops.

"But don't worry about them. If we ever get caught, just tell them the truth," he had said with a smile. "The insanity deal always worked for my dad."

That was the most Regina knew about Jack's past. He refused to say anything else and Regina had stopped caring enough to ask. If he didn't want to share his private life with her, then so be it. Regina had never been one to push boundaries. She only wished Jack would show her the same courtesy.

"Think this guy got buried with anything good?" Jack asked as he poured a salt circle around them. "Like nice jewelry or antique coins or something?"

"I'm not accepting stolen gold as payment."

"That's not why I'm wondering" Jack grabbed a bundle of candles from the bag and carefully set them around the circle before lighting them. "Trying to find a good birthday gift."

Regina paused in her digging to stare at him. Jack had friends? Friends that he got birthday presents for? "For who?"

"You."

"What?!"

"Hey. We're in a cemetery." Jack made a shushing gesture. "Show some respect, Harker."

Part of Regina wanted to storm off right then and there. Jack could handle things without her, especially if he was going to be such an ass during the job. But then she thought of Chrissy, and the way that poor girl was getting flung around like a ragdoll the longer it took them to finish this.

She stabbed the shovel into the dirt and grit her teeth. "You don't need to get me anything."

"Sure, I do! What kind of boss would I be if I didn't get my favorite employee a birthday present?"

"I'm your only employee," she pointed out. To her relief, the shovel finally struck wood. "And last I checked, I never told you when my birthday was."

Jack joined her in the small hole she dug and tilted his head. "You've seen me hack into the Pentagon's database multiple times, but sure, Facebook is far too advanced for me."

The idea of Jack using an app as mundane as Facebook made Regina uncomfortable. She had never really thought of him existing outside of the job, but she supposed it made sense he had a somewhat average life. Probably had an apartment and friends that he met up with for drinks like a regular person.

Still, this realization made the gap between her normal world and the strange one she worked in just a touch smaller than before. And that was a nerve-wracking thought. Would there be a point where she learned too much and could never go back? Would she be like Jack and have to carry the heavy secret of what truly inhabited the world while her loved ones remained oblivious?

Or was her original estimation of Jack correct, and Regina too would embrace loneliness to keep others safe?

"Oh, was that crossing the line?" Jack asked when Regina remained silent. "Sorry, I just thought. . . I mean, I thought other people did it that way but. . .," he shook his head. "Sorry, just forget I said anything."

Regina stared at him in surprise. He almost sounded worried. Was Jack concerned that he'd offended her? He'd never seemed bothered by that before. Then again, he'd never compared himself to 'other people' before, not like this.

Maybe Jack also struggled with comparing his life to the normal life 'others' got to have.

"No, it's fine," Regina finally said before she schooled her features into an amused smirk. "I just didn't expect you to do something as simple as that. I thought for sure you were about to say you'd printed out my social security number and parents' address, too."

She pretended not to notice the relief on his face before he took the shovel from her.

"You're remarkably calm for someone who thinks her identity is about to be stolen," he said, smiling as he drove the shovel into the rotting coffin below them.

"Seems like a lot of work for one scam. I mean breaking into some guy's grave?" She gestured around them. "I can appreciate the dedication to the bit."

Laughing, Jack used the shovel to break through the rest of the coffin. Though she was prepared for it, Regina couldn't help but shudder at the grinning skeletal face that greeted them. It was always so disturbing to see the physical remains of what was once a human, and even worse when she knew what they were about to do.

At least this one was old enough to be mostly bones. The more recent ones always upset Regina for days.

"Mr. Noah, you've terrorized your last innocent girl," Jack said pleasantly as he hoisted himself out of the hole. He pulled Regina up after him and handed her a gallon of gasoline and a matchbook. "Hope you end up in whatever afterlife you deserve or whatever."

Wrinkling her nose at the fumes, she watched as Jack poured salt over the skeleton. Once it had been thoroughly coated, Regina added the gasoline, before lighting one of the matches. This was the part that always made her nervous. The moment when her fears about this being the wrong person came crashing down and made her want to check through her notes again.

But she wasn't going to let the Donovans down. And she wasn't going to let Jack down either. So, at his nod, she pushed through the nerves and dropped the match into the grave.

Flames erupted from the earth as the gas caught fire instantly. Regina scrambled back, careful not to disrupt the salt, and stood next to Jack. The circle never felt like enough of a safeguard against the angry spirits that would be coming for them. Still, she tried to appear calm as Jack began to read from the ancient book in his hands.

Against the crackling flames, Jack's voice was quiet but confident. He'd read this passage more times than he could count and had grown up hearing it recited far before he knew what the words meant. He'd given Regina a vague idea of what the Enochian words meant, but she felt nowhere close to understanding them.

Hearing the foreign language made Regina's skin prickle. It was both unsettling to hear such an ancient tongue----one that her very essence knew did not belong to humans---while also being oddly reassuring. The words were supposed to encourage vengeful spirits to move on to the next life and not to resist the pull they would start to feel as their last ties to the earth burned. She didn't know if the passage helped or not, but Regina always hoped it gave the spirits some peace as they went to their final resting place.

The longer the fire burned, the less fear Regina felt. Jack was right, she had been acting silly before. This exorcism was going as smoothly as all the others did. Even if there was something wrong, she and Jack were completely safe outside of the salt circle. No ghost, no matter how angry or strong, could break through it.

Everything was going to be fine.

Just as the last of her tension left her shoulders, Regina felt a light breeze. The wind must have picked up again as it toyed with her hair and fluttered the pages of Jack's book. She was about to ignore it when she glanced down at the circle. Her stomach sank as a gust of wind blew through the salt, dispersing the small white granules throughout the cemetery and breaking the one protection she and Jack had.

"Jack!"

He looked up from the book in time to see the flames go out.