Episode Three

Catching Ravens

Daisy sat on her bed with a sigh, her back slightly aching from walking to and from the library. She melted into her pillows that were leaning on her bed frame. The wall behind her was covered in horror movie posters and paper cutouts of books and articles related to the Grim Reaper. The book she had taken from the library rested on her stretched legs. She opened it again to the page she had seen the illustration of death and intently see the features.

Usually death was represented as a skeleton or a headless monster. But it was the first time Daisy saw him depicted as a handsome man. She found trying to think if the book was anything serious or the work of a delusional person trying to romanticize death. She flipped to the next page, trying to read the smutched writing. It felt like someone had started writing the book with great care, but as they came to the end, they started running out of time.

One page struck Daisy's attention, making her sit straighter. She read the heading again ‘How to summon the lord of death’. Her eyes excitedly read the whole page and gasped,

“Is it really possible to call for him myself? She thought rushing to read it again.

“Thee who desires to summon death yourself must remember, once thee calleth that gent, they can't ask it that gent to leaveth, his is farewell shall be still in his hands.” Daisy read that out until went down her spine.

“Should I call him? He might start haunting me? Daisy asked herself. She frantically began to read again.

“Thee who wills to attach thyself to death shouldst remember that Death desires and pleasures in thy torment. At each moment protect thyself with the Holy Spirit and never mentioned his name to another.”

Daisy skipped the warnings and jumped to the paragraph on the ritual to summon Death Certus.

Thus pursue the guidance penned beneath in my own words. One, gather, have wings of a raven, have lost object claimed by another, a nail. Two, went to a location beyond you visits, three, burn a garment of a deceased and chant the spell nine times, four Lastly, at which hour the immediate Death, avoided looking into his eyes unconditionally.

After being through the book Daisy in satisfaction. Tomorrow she was going to meet death no matter what.

Next morning, Daisy woke up with an extra burst of energy. She emptied her backpack and replaced her schoolbooks with the one she had found last night. She also placed her grandmother's old handkerchief in the bag.

Before she passed away, her grandma was the only person who listened to Daisy. Sighing sadly at the thought of her, Daisy rushed to pack other things. She had found an iron nail in the shed and packed the $20 bill she had picked up from the street yesterday.

“That will count as an unclaimed item, right?” Daisy wondered to herself. She nodded in confidence and zipped her backpack closed. She bit her lip thinking about the last item she needed.

“How will I find the wings of a raven?” she asked out loud in frustration.

Suddenly, a knock broke her cycle of thoughts and she turned in time to see her mother's head poking inside the room.

“How are you feeling honey?” She asked.

Daisy nodded in assurance.

“I'm okay.”

“You're planning to go to school today? You can be off if you want,” her mother offered.

Daisy bit her lip in consideration. If she didn't lie to her mother about school, then she would not be allowed to go outside the house at all.

“No. I mean, it's okay. I'll feel better if I go,” she started out.

Her mother smiled and nodded, “Great. That's good. See you at dinner then, Okay?”

With that her mother was gone. Daisy sighed in relief. She hated lying more than anything else in the world. After her parents had gone to work and the coast seemed clear, Daisy made her way out to find a location where she could perform the ritual. She walked around many areas trying to find a quiet secluded place. But most of these areas had at least one stoner, the creeper, a homeless person. Walking around with a heavy backpack and a broken leg was tiring for Daisy. And it wasn't until dusk that she found the perfect place.

She had stumbled across an old cemetery that no one frequently visited anymore. Maybe because even the people who used to visit were dead, leaving the buried ones long forgotten. She sighed as she finally heaved the backpack from her shoulders onto the ground. She turned her head around trying to inspect her surroundings. The place was deserted and only the sound of birds interrupted the quiet evening .

“Birds.”

Daisy remembered she needed to find a dead Raven. But how? She started to look around the trees hoping to find a bird carcass but unfortunately her luck had ceased for the day. She looked up towards the tall trees from where she could hear loud croaking noises. She frowned trying to make up her mind about something. Looking at the setting sun Daisy knew that she needed to hurry if she wanted to reach home before her parents did.

She shut her eyes in frustration and tried to find another solution. But she couldn't think of anything else rather than striking a raven herself. Taking a deep breath for courage, Daisy picked up a handful of pebbles to throw at the trees. She took a step back and hold her hand backward, aiming as carefully as she could. Daisy threw the pebble right at the center of a branch. Chaos started as dozens of ravens started flight in a panic screaming loudly. Daisy heaved a sigh of frustration thinking her attempted failed, but then her eyes landed on arriving blank object.

“It's a raven,” Daisy realized that her excitement quickly melted into despair she saw the bird was still alive. It tried to fly but one of its wings seemed cricket. Guilt and realization of what she had just done washed over days and she felt a rush of nausea.

“If I fell in so far that'll hurt an animal?” Daisy questioned herself feeling disgusted. “For your own good. You need to prove to people that you're not crazy,” A voice inside her rationalized. Daisy nodded and that she clenched her jaws tightly and approach the injured bird. Slowly, she extended her hand as straight as possible and picked up the struggling Raven. It flapped its wings helplessly as Daisy carried it where she had placed all the other things for the ritual. Placing the bird next to the book, Daisy wiped her hands together as if to brush away the dread that had started to settle in. It was finally time for her to start.

She opened the book to the page of the summoning spell and put the objects in the order it was mentioned. Then she stood in the center of it all and cleared her throat to start the chanting it,

“Egabon, Afreon, Death and pi austria god e mondian and soul on the sendeth an Angel demise, who make men how from then on Egan and convert eekmantan.”

The spell was in a foreign language that Daisy had never heard before. And she struggled to pronounce it initially. But as she continued something inside of her sifted. By the third time of chanting the spell her voice had become louder and more confident. And as she read out the words they started to make sense, as if unlocking a part of her brain that could understand the ancient language all along.

“I summon the lord of death and darkness. God protect my soul and bring forth your angel of Demise whom I whom I must see from my own eyes and converse with my tongue.”

A strange sense of power seemed to surge through Daisy as she continued to read. The air around the circle she had created started to thicken making Daisy choke on her own words. She persisted, burning her grandmother's handkerchief as it was instructed in the book. By now the spells seemed to have become the most familiar phrase and Daisy didn't even have to reference the book before continuing to chant.

The tension built higher. The still evening becoming a scene of chaos as the wind the fire and crying ravens took over the sky. Daisy’s heart thundered inside her, excitement overpowering the fear she had felt earlier. She was coming to the end of the spell left with Genting the spell one last time she was ready, ready to face death once and for all. As the spell came to an end, the rush Daisy was feeling dissipated.

She looked around in anticipation but the night had become silent again. The fire dying down and the bird settling in for the night. She looked around frantically trying to see any sign of the lord of death she had tried to summon but no one was there. Daisy crumbled on the floor; her face buried in her arms.

“Of course it wouldn't work. She exclaimed angrily. It was my fault to set my hope so high on a random book I'd found in a library. Her phone began to ring and she pushed her hair out of her face to see the caller ID. It was her mom.

“Great,” she started sarcastically knowing that there was no point in staying back, Daisy got up to leave. She left all the things behind except the book and started to walk away.

Suddenly she heard a wrestling coming from behind the tree and she turned around expecting to see death but side and disappointment when she realized it was just a rabbit. His eyes glowing red in the dark. She shook her head and turned around to leave but as she walked away, a pair of dark eyes stopped her every move.

“Oh, silly. Little girl. You have no idea what kind of trouble you have brought to yourself,” a deep voice whispered. He smiled darkly flashing is sharp.