If you prepare a cup of coffee as black as night, at midnight, he’ll show up. The coffee can’t be made for you or a loved one, but must be especially prepared for him. I hear he likes a nice arabica.
Where you prepare the coffee is inconsequential, but the most important thing. It is inconsequential because he will arrive, regardless of your location. It can be in your home, at a crossroads, in a camp deep in the wilderness. However, the location is also critical because it is where he will clean.
Many a would-be sorcerer has summoned him thinking they would bring forth some minor demon or imp, a creature to help tidy up around the laboratory. But then he arrives, cloaked in gray, like the dust and ash of centuries, tools jangling from his belt, moving with a walking stick that might be a broom. His eyes are felt but never seen as he takes stock of the mess you’ve made, the disorderly piles of your life, the unresolved matters, and prepares to clean.
Like the making of sausages, it’s best not to watch. More than one person has tried to interrupt, to give direction to the dusty spirit, and regretted it, either in this life or the next. Do not try to leave, though, as you might miss what it takes.
A lucky man from Mumbai, having brought the grey spirit forth, found that when the spirit left it did so with his consumption. A shrewd, miserly woman from Wessex watched the spirit carefully, to make sure it didn’t take anything valuable, but later counted five of her children when, for a brief moment, she remembered having six. A shaman from the Red River had an entire store of poisoned grain, intended for an enemy, delivered to the table of his family. A rebellious nun from Milan, certain no such spirits existed, found her cell in a perfect state of cleanliness, its dust swept away with her faith. A middle-aged woman from Georgia returned home to discover her infirmed mother was gone, as if she had packed up all of her things and left on her own.
The gray spirit comes, takes what you don’t want, and goes. The human heart rarely know its own contents, though, which makes the cleaner as dangerous as Mephistopheles himself.
See the author’s published work here.
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Really good story. I enjoyed it!
I LOVE THIS! thank you master Matthew!!
Thank you for the extremely flattering words.