Spooktober 2022

1 Portrait A wave of shudders, tilted heads, and furious tapping followed Ainslie as she speedwalked through the main library floor. It didn't matter whether it was a painting on the wall or a profile image in a student's social media app, every portrait she passed gave her air kisses with the pouting duck lips face popular back in the 2010s. The mundane students probably wrote it off as a weird illusion their brains spat out, high on too much energy drink to too little vegetables, but Ainslie knew it was very real: Magic saying good morning. She honestly wasn't sure if she envied them their ignorance or not.
By the time she finally found Julia, Ainslie's nerves were frayed enough that she skipped past any and all social pleasantries.
"You could have warned me the pictures could do the creepy Harry Potter thing!" she hissed.
"Creepy Harry Potter thing?" Julia said slowly, one perfectly drawn eyebrow raised. Ainslie just pointed at one of the portraits lining the hall, where an elderly Liang with a long thin beard leaned ever so slightly forward, lips pursed. Seeing their attention, he raised one hand out of his lap and did a little finger wave. For all that it didn't look that great in a photograph, the kissy face was absolutely obscene in oils. Julia swallowed.
"As much as I sometimes wish I could ask my elders for advice," Julia said, "It's probably for the best that grandfather Tianyu isn't around for this."
2 Vanish Rafael Suarez
3 Abandoned
4 Enchant
5 Misfortune
6 Chasm
7 Thorn
8 Howl
9 Mirror
10 Broken
11 Escape
12 Slime
13 Haunt Humans have no respect. All cats know this basic fact of the universe, but it was the bane of Librarian Merryweather's life. If it wasn't the students pulling every book and scroll off the shelves and then leaving them in piles (very difficult to manage without opposable thumbs), it was the faculty squirreling away any written material they got their grubby human hands on. Merryweather had finally given up and employed several specialized Librarians specifically for the task of hunting down said faculty members and (gently, of course) re-possessing the library's property. (Well. Gently for the books). Then the faculty complained to the Dean that they were being "haunted" by "book thieves."
Hah. As if humans had any idea what a haunting could actually do to you. Aside from caring for the books, scrolls, grimoires, maps, and other materials of the library's impressive collection, Merryweather's primary duties revolved around keeping the library free of paranormal influence. It usually started small--some rattling pipes here, a bit of a cold spot there, but--like black mold--if you didn't nip it in the bud early, it grew out of all proportion.
14 Ruin
15 Mist
16 Whisper
17 Shadow
18 Spirit
19 Relic
20 Unquiet
21 Shatter
22 Lock
23 Door
24 Curse
25 Possess
26 Abyss
27 Echo
28 Darkness
29 Hunt
30 Tear
31 Drown