The Bone Collector’s Apprentice

The last time I saw Marta, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor at three in the morning, her knuckles raw and bleeding, the bristles of the brush worn to a nub. She looked up at me with eyes that weren’t hers anymore—they were black pools, devoid of the warm, steady gaze I’d known for twenty years. I had come to her house that night because she’d called me, her voice cracking, saying, ‘I think something is wrong with me, Leo. I’m not myself.’ But by the time I arrived, she was in the middle of her nightly frenzy, and she snarled at me, ‘Why are you staring? There’s work to be done.’ She shoved a bucket of soapy water at me and went back to scrubbing, muttering curses at the grout, at the tiles, at the world.

Marta had always been my anchor—a librarian with a soft laugh and a love for old poetry. But over the past month, she’d transformed into a whirlwind of manic energy. She’d quit her job, saying the books were ‘lies and dust.’ She’d thrown out all her plants because they were ‘breathing filth.’ She slept maybe two hours a night, and when she wasn’t scrubbing, she was reorganizing her pantry by color, alphabet, and size, then redoing it because the ‘pattern was wrong.’ She accused our mutual friend, Delia, of stealing her grandmother’s ring—Delia, who’d been at the hospital with her when her grandmother died. She screamed at a cashier for looking at her ‘wrong.’ The anger was always just beneath the surface, ready to explode at the slightest provocation. And worst of all, I noticed that after I spent time with her, I’d find myself snapping at my wife for leaving a cup in the sink, or suspicious of my own colleagues’ motives. Her poison was contagious.

I knew about the signs because my own aunt had been possessed by a demon called The Unmaker—a spirit that fed on order and chaos both, driving its host to create and destroy in endless cycles. Marta’s symptoms were textbook: the sudden violence, the pathological activity, the paranoia, the blasphemy. She’d told me she still believed in God, but she’d also said, ‘God is a lazy gardener; you have to pull every weed yourself.’ That didn’t sound like the Marta who’d once cried at a sunset.

I tried to reason with her. I sat her down one afternoon, forced her to hold still, and said, ‘Marta, you’re not yourself. You’re sick. Something is inside you.’ She laughed—a harsh, brittle sound—and said, ‘Sick? I’m the only healthy one. The world is full of filth and lies, and I’m cleaning it out.’ Then she turned on me, eyes blazing, and hissed, ‘You’re just jealous because I see the truth and you’re sleepwalking.’ I felt the familiar surge of anger rise in my chest, but I bit my tongue.

I sought help from Father Malachi, a priest known for dealing with the occult, but he took one look at Marta’s house and refused to step inside. ‘That’s not a demon,’ he said, his face pale. ‘That’s a convergence. Something older. A parasite that thrives on unresolved guilt and despair. You can’t cast it out; you have to starve it.’ He gave me a small vial of holy water and a prayer, but said, ‘This will only give you minutes. You need to find the source.’

The source, I realized, was in Marta’s basement. She’d never let me down there, but one night, while she was obsessively reorganizing her spice rack, I snuck down the creaky stairs. The basement was cluttered with old furniture and boxes, but in the corner, beneath a tarp, was a collection of bones—hundreds of them, all neatly arranged in spirals and grids. Some were animal, but others—I recognized the shape of a human femur, a skull. On a small table, there was a leather-bound journal. I opened it to find Marta’s handwriting, but it was frantic, filled with diagrams of circles and sigils, and a single phrase repeated over and over: ‘Break the spiral, feed the spiral, become the spiral.’ The last entry was a date—the day she’d found the bones buried in her garden while planting roses.

I knew then what had to be done. I gathered the bones, the journal, and a bundle of dried sage, and I carried them to the burn pit in the backyard. Marta burst out of the house, screaming, ‘What are you doing? Those are my treasures!’ She lunged at me, but I held her back—her strength was terrifying. ‘It’s killing you, Marta!’ I shouted. ‘This is the source! You have to let go!’ She clawed at me, her nails drawing blood, but I managed to light the pile. The bones caught fire, releasing a foul, greasy smoke. Marta stopped struggling, and for a moment, her eyes cleared. She whispered, ‘Leo? What’s happening?’ Then she collapsed, and I caught her.

For three days she lay in a fever. I stayed by her side, wiping her brow, praying. On the fourth day, she woke up, looked at me, and said, ‘I remember everything. The anger, the chaos—it felt like being inside a storm. Thank you.’ I hugged her, crying, and she hugged me back, and I felt the warmth return to her.

But as I left her house, I noticed something. The smoke from the burned bones had settled on my hands, and I couldn’t wash it off. And that night, I found myself organizing my bookshelf by color, then by height, then by author, unable to stop until it was ‘perfect.’ I called Marta, and she said, in a hollow voice, ‘I’m feeling that urge again, Leo. It’s not over. It’s transferred.’ I looked into the mirror and saw my own eyes flicker with that same black emptiness. Now I’m writing this, but I can already feel the pull to clean, to arrange, to accuse. I keep seeing the spiral pattern in everything—the grain of the wood, the tiles in the bathroom. I don’t know if there’s anyone left to save me, or if I’ll become the next bone collector, passing this curse on to someone else who comes to help.