[x] Inspect and possibly exorcise a haunted house.
From the outside, the house didn't look like anything special. Sure, it was a little dilapidated, and yes, the lawn clearly needed some work, and the garage door was lined with rust, but other than that it looked like a normal house.
The house itself was a boxy, brickwork building with a porch connected to a deck on the second floor, which was overlooked by a loft on the third floor. It had three bedrooms and office space leading to the deck on the second floor, a large, spacious entryway that lead to a living room on one side and a kitchen and dining room combo on the other side, along with a basement and two bathrooms, one on each floor.
All in all it was probably more than he needed. The house was clearly intended for a family of four or more, not a bachelor and his baby sister.
Still, it was dirt cheap and after some renovation would only grow in value, so maybe after Maggie had grown up and gone to college he could sell it and recoup his investments.
Assuming of course, he could remove the angry ghosts that were hanging about.
Malcom hadn't spotted them yet, but through his second sight he could clearly see evidence of dark spirits haunting the building. Even in the bright noonday sun, the house was cast in dark shadows and ugly rust, with the angles of the house becoming sharper and more violent under his supernatural gaze.
"Heeeeere ghosty ghosty ghosty." Malcom called out as he opened the front entrance. It swing open roughly on rusted hinges, letting out an ominous squeak as he cautiously worked his way inside.
"Here ghosty ghosty. Uncle Malcom has a present for you!" He called again, brandishing his Valkyrie issued handgun as he looked around the main foyer. The dining room was to his right, and further past that was the kitchen. To his left was the living room, which had a fireplace he hadn't been aware of. In front of him were a set of stares leading up to the second floor, and a hallway leading to the back entrance.
Much like the outside, the inside was awash in dark spiritual energies. Vague impressions of death and torment could be seen on every surface, and a sense that he was constantly being watched pressed at the edges of his awareness with every step he took.
A chunk of ceiling plaster and damaged support beams feel with a crash where he had been standing not a second ago, sending a cloud of dust and debris everywhere. Had he been anyone else, that probably would have given him a concussion and left him lying on the ground, slowly bleeding to death from a head wound.
"Nice try asshole. Next time give it your A-game." He groused. That would only drive up the costs of the renovation. He needed to find this thing and end it quickly if he wanted to keep costs at a minimum.
The next hour saw Malcom slowly making his way through the house, dodging or brute forcing his way through the various attempts at murder the ghosts attempted to throw at him:
A dozen rusty kitchen knives launched themselves at him of their own accord, only to be impaled on the broken remains of a chair he shielded himself with.
The basement door locked itself shut and the heating unit began to spew noxious gas, so he crushed the gas line to cut off the flow and bashed the door down to escape.
A massive portion of the floor gave way underneath him when he was in the loft, forcing him to jump on the debris mid-air and make it back up.
The shower house came alive and attempted to strangle him, making him pull it from the wall and flood the bathroom before he managed to tear it to shreds.
The fireplace in the living room spewed gouts of flame at him as he inspected it, but he slammed the grate shut to keep the flames contained.
"Gotcha!" He shouted in triumph, firing two shots at the spectral apparition. Soaked, burned, scraped and slightly dizzy from gas exposure, he nonetheless had managed to sneak up on the ghost. It was vaguely feminine looking, her entire front a mess of bloody rags from jaw to the hem of her dress. If he had to speculate as to her origin he would saw that she was murdered at a party.
He didn't really care, though, she was driving up the costs of renovation, and for that she had to die again.
The sunlight laced bullets impacted her with a brilliant golden flash, and the ghost shrieked in rage and pain, sending violent tremors throughout the building and causing cracks and fissures to appear on the floors and surroundings that shone with an ominous pale, sickly green light.
"That's a load-bearing wall! Cut it out!" Malcom shouted as the cracks grew and a gaping hole opened up in the floor. Violent winds whipped in to existence, sending debris flying at high speeds and pulling everything towards the black vortex forming under the ghost, threatening to cast them all in to oblivion.
"Do you know how much this is going to cost me?!" He fired again and again at the shrieking specter, causing it to stagger in shock from the impact. Golden fires sprung forth from the point of impact, eating away at the corpus of the ghost until finally nothing remained but ash and glowing residue.
The winds subsided, the hole vanished, and Malcom collapsed on to the floor. He wasn't hurt in any meaningful way, but after playing hide and seek with a homicidal poltergeist, he was out of breath and needed a five minute break.
Then new shriek sounded throughout the house, joined by second, and a third.
"...damnit." Malcom sighed. This was going to be a long afternoon.
...
Three hours, two explosions, four near decapitations and at least a hundred impalement, dismemberment or evisceration attempts later and Malcom walked out of the house. The interior was slagged, his shirt was burnt to a crisp, his left shoe had gone missing at some point and he was completely covered in minor cuts, bruises, burns and abrasions, but he had finally, finally rid the house of those damned ghosts.
[x] Go home and take a nap.
[x] Get the groceries like you said you would. Also, a new set of clothes.
