Silver for Rest
© Joel Aguilozi, 2020
Helsinki, 1920. Jukka and Kalevi were looking for the town doctor, a man named Eikki. The work had to be quick and easy. The pay was good.
With the rifle with silver bullets behind them, they arrived at the doctor’s house when the sun was just rising. They knocked on the door without caring if the man was still sleeping. He opened it, and upon seeing them, he suspected who they were (in small towns there are things that are impossible to hide). After a brief presentation he learned that the legends were true, Jukka and Kalevi the ghost hunters, were real and not mythical tales. Furthermore, it was said that they were also ghosts.
“Let me offer you a glass of cider, the best in town,” Eikki said as he served them, and without detours, he began to speak; “The job consists of putting an end to a ghost that haunts the forest causing terror and death.” among the inhabitants of the town –. The mission of our hunters was to kill him and take his ashes to Eikki’s cabin. It seemed like a simple job, however, according to Kalevi, something was wrong. Why did the doctor want the ashes of a soul in pain? Intrigued, he asked the doctor who answered. –I am working on the formula to achieve immortality.
They decided not to get involved in other people’s affairs and complete the work; At the end of the day what mattered was the money to be collected. Ask they had to inspect the house before leaving. On an altar surrounded by candles, there was the photo of Eikki’s wife, who had died a month ago due to an epidemic that took several lives, and supposedly the ghost they had to find. They waited until dusk to enter the forest, the place where she had been seen the night before.
The wait was long. Almost at dawn it appeared and there was no room for confusion; It was Eikki’s wife. The apparition tried to steal the spirit of both men, not knowing that it was not in front of two humans; but in front of two benevolent ghosts, who tried to give rest to the souls that still wandered.
The legends were true, Jukka and Kalevi did not belong to this world. When Makki was finally able to rest in peace, she confessed that Eikki had murdered her and was responsible for creating a formula that caused the plague that hit the town. According to the doctor, to achieve immortality he needed to find the “spiritual essence of love”, an essence that he could only obtain in the ashes of his wife’s ghost.
Eikki was wrong, he just wanted to give his wife a rest to recover some of his lost sanity, and why not, forgiveness, but that’s another story.