North Avenue Beach in the late afternoon should have been a place of life and energy. Even on a weekday, there would usually be joggers, cyclists, and tourists dotting the shoreline, soaking in the iconic view of the Chicago skyline rising up behind the vast, blue expanse of Lake Michigan. But as Kevin and I approached the south pier, the atmosphere felt… wrong. It was the same kind of subtle wrongness I had felt at the Lily Pool, a quiet but pervasive sense of dread that seemed to suck the warmth out of the air.
The beach itself was nearly deserted. The few people around gave the pier a wide berth, their paths curving away from it as if repelled by an invisible wall. They probably didn't know why they were avoiding it; they just felt an unconscious, primal urge to stay away. I was learning that most people were far more sensitive to these things than they realized. The world was full of haunted places, and we navigate around them by instinct.
"You feel that?" Kevin asked, his hand resting almost unconsciously on the strap of his duffel bag. "It's like a spiritual vacuum. A cold spot. The energy here is just… draining away."
I nodded, focusing on my empathy skill, but keeping it dialed low as Kevin had instructed. I didn't get a single, focused emotion like I did from Jessica or the Hungry Shade. Instead, I felt a chaotic, overlapping mess of feelings emanating from the area around the pier. It was a slurry of misery. There was the sharp, bitter tang of regret, the dull, heavy weight of despair, the lingering ache of unresolved loneliness. It was a hundred different heartbreaks all crying out at once.
"So this is a 'Weeping Spot'?" I asked, the charm Kevin had given me feeling solid and reassuring in my pocket.
"This is the beginning of one," he corrected. "Think of it like spiritual mold. You get a little bit of lingering emotional residue—someone has a bad breakup here, someone gets some bad news, someone just feels lonely looking out at the water. It's normal. But if enough of that residue gathers in one place, it can reach a critical mass. It starts to actively draw more negativity towards it, feeding on it, growing stronger. Left alone, this spot would eventually become a permanent emotional wound on the landscape."
"And it attracts scavengers?" I recalled from the app's brief.
"Exactly," Kevin said grimly. "Things like the Shade are drawn to places like this. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet for them. Our job is to clean up the spill before the bigger cockroaches arrive."
We walked out onto the pier. The wooden planks groaned under our feet. The water here was choppy, slapping against the pilings with a melancholy rhythm. The source of the negative energy was strongest at the very end of the pier, where a lone, weathered bench sat facing the endless horizon.
As we got closer, my empathy began to resolve the chaotic mess of emotions into individual echoes, faint and translucent like old photographs. I could feel the ghostly imprint of a young woman crying after a final, angry phone call. I could sense the deep, hollow loneliness of an old man who came here every day for a year after his wife passed away. I could feel the sharp, fleeting despair of a teenager who had stood on this very spot, contemplating a leap into the cold water before changing his mind and walking away.
These weren't ghosts like Jessica. They had no consciousness, no will. They were just emotional stains left on the world, replaying their saddest moments on an endless loop. But their combined sorrow was creating a toxic, spiritual pollution.
Kevin stopped about twenty feet from the end of the pier and unzipped his bag. This time, he didn't pull out the peach-wood sword. The problem here wasn't a single, monstrous entity that needed to be destroyed. This was a mess that needed to be cleaned.
He took out three objects. The first was a small, bronze bell with intricate carvings. The second was a bundle of dried sage and sweetgrass, tightly bound with red thread. The third was a bag of what looked like coarse sea salt.
"This is a dispersal ritual," he explained, seeing my curious look. "It's a gentler form of cleansing. We're not exorcising anything. We're just… airing out the room. Helping these echoes fade naturally. The salt grounds the negative energy, the sage purifies it, and the bell's frequency helps to break up the stagnant spiritual patterns."
He handed me the bag of salt. "Your turn to do more than just stand there and look terrified. Walk a circle around the end of the pier. As you walk, leave a thin, unbroken line of salt. You have to seal the area, contain the energy before we disperse it. Don't break the circle, no matter what."
I took the bag. It was surprisingly heavy. I started my circle, my boots crunching softly on the wooden planks. As I poured a steady stream of salt onto the pier, I could feel a strange resistance in the air, as if I were pushing against an invisible current. The whispers of despair in my mind grew louder, a chorus of faint, sad voices trying to convince me to stop, to join them in their sorrow.
It's hopeless…No one cares…Just give up…
I gritted my teeth, focusing on the solid weight of the salt bag in my hand. I thought of Kevin's calm, confident expression. I thought of the twenty Merit Points sitting in my account. I was not going to be overwhelmed by sad ghost echoes. I completed the circle, connecting the end of the salt line with the beginning. The moment the circle was closed, the chaotic whispers in my head dropped in intensity, muffled as if by a thick wall. The salt circle was working.
Meanwhile, Kevin had moved to the center of the circle. He lit the bundle of sage with a lighter, and a thick, aromatic smoke began to billow from it. He held the bronze bell in his other hand.
"Get ready," he said. "When I ring the bell, it's going to stir things up. The energy will spike before it fades. Just stay outside the circle and don't break the line."
He began to walk slowly around the inside of the circle, waving the smoking sage bundle. The sweet, clean scent of the smoke filled the air, a stark contrast to the cloying feeling of despair that had permeated the pier. Then, he raised the bell.
He struck it once with a small, wooden mallet.
The sound was not loud, but it was the purest, clearest note I had ever heard. It resonated not just in my ears, but in my bones, in my very soul. The air inside the salt circle shimmered. The faint, translucent images of the sorrowful echoes suddenly became sharp and clear. For a terrifying second, I could see them all: the crying girl, the lonely old man, the desperate teenager, a dozen other figures of grief, all standing at the end of the pier, their faces etched with pain.
The emotional backlash was immense. A wave of pure, concentrated misery washed over me, so potent it made me stagger. It was the combined pain of every heartbreak that had ever happened on this spot, all released at once. Even Jessica's presence recoiled, her own trauma resonating with the sudden, overwhelming despair.
Kevin stood firm in the center of the storm, a calm anchor in a sea of sorrow. He struck the bell again. The pure note sang out, and the ghostly figures began to thin, to fade, like smoke in the wind. He struck it a third time, and with a final, collective, sighing sound that was more felt than heard, they were gone.
The oppressive atmosphere on the pier vanished. The air felt light and clean. The setting sun seemed to reclaim its warmth, and the sound of the waves slapping against the pilings no longer sounded melancholy, but rhythmic and peaceful. The Weeping Spot had been cleansed.
Kevin walked over and kicked at the salt line, breaking the circle. "Job done," he said, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. The ritual had clearly taken a lot out of him.
As if on cue, the black phone in my pocket pinged.
[Assignment Complete: Spiritual Contamination Dispersed.] [Reward Issued: +5 Merit Points.] [Balance Update: 25 Merit Points.]
Twenty-five points. I was starting to feel wealthy.
"You know," Kevin said, packing his bell and the remains of the sage bundle back into his bag. "You did well. You held the line, even when the emotional feedback hit. You're learning."
Coming from him, the simple praise felt like a medal of honor.
"So, what now?" I asked. "Back to the other problem? The human one?"
Kevin nodded grimly. "Back to the human one. The whispers you started are good, but they won't be enough. We need to escalate. We need to find a journalist. Someone fearless, someone who can't be bought, someone who will take your proof and run with it all the way to the front page."
He looked out at the Chicago skyline, now glittering with the lights of a thousand offices, including the one on the 34th floor where Harold Finch was probably starting to feel the pressure.
"And I think I know just the person," Kevin said. "But getting her to listen to us? That's going to be harder than fighting a hundred Hungry Shades."