After he took a shower he checked under his daughter's bed, just in case. Nothing seemed to be disturbed which was the most alarming thing. For those scratches to appear on her but no other evidence to be present had him confused. Finally he went back to the occult store only to find it was still closed, yet there was a sign on the front shop door now. It read: 'Gone to sweet heavy metal concert, be back 2-morrow bright and early-yeah right.' George calmed himself and took a deep breath. If he had not been a law abiding citizen he would have just broken in and taught the miscreant owner a lesson.

That night he let the dog sleep in Danielle’s room. She still insisted on having the fortress weapons with her though. This was not a problem, since they seemed to help in calming her so she would go to sleep.

Morning came and George woke early from an uneasy sleep. Once he made it to his daughter’s room his mouth opened wide at what he saw. His dog Rex was ripped to shreds and was no more than a bunch of bloody fur with a few small bits of bone and flesh.

He worked feverishly to clean up the bloody mess as his daughter slept and all the while George was trying not to go mad with panic. As he finished she began to wake. He stroked her face and smiled a worried smile and tried not to let her see the worry within as well. Within moments she was off to preschool and he had called in sick for a second day. At this point he did not even care if they fired him; this was his only daughter.

After noon he found himself at the occult shop and to his surprise the ‘open’ sign was displayed in the window. When he opened the door a waft of patchouli almost knocked him back. Again he kept his thoughts to himself as he walked past the young man at the counter with the dreadlock hairstyle.

Near the back of the store he found his prize was locked in a glass case, which was no surprise considering the rarity of the book and his dire need for it. As he turned the young man from the counter was already behind him with the cabinet key in hand. George followed the book from the case as the young man plucked it from its place. George grabbed it and went to wait at the front counter for the hippie to return to his post. On the book were strange markings around the edges and of course no price tag. That meant that this was going to be expensive. After trying to haggle the price of the book for about five minutes he finally was on his way home to read it.

Once he cracked open the cover a flume of dust rose from the book; it had not been read in ages. He felt lucky that the musty pages were still intact and tried to make sense of the listings of chapters within. Although the book dealt mostly in what were considered myth and unusual occurrences he finally found the section he was looking for. It was a section on shadow spirits and the book went on to say that these types of spirits were once human and were so corrupt and so evil that even hell had refused to take them. They were left to wander the darkness in search of a body to rein havoc in and since children were most susceptible to attacks of this nature they were the primary targets.

As George read further he discovered there were only two weaknesses which these spirits had, yet as he followed the process on how to use the weapons he found the next page had been ripped out as had several pages thereafter. All he had were the two key ingredients to fight the monster and perhaps one chance to use them correctly.