Chapter

Revenant

As I write this, I am alone in the mountains. My companion is dead, and I am at my wits end. The two of us were heading for a goahti outside the foundry, and we were late. It was midnight, although the sun still shone upon the earth. My fellow traveler pushed rapidly ahead. I came across a plant previously unknown to me, picked it, and named it Andromeda. When I looked up, my companion was gone. I hurried after him, eventually entering the goahti. My companion lay dead before me, his face frozen in a dreadful grimace. Something emerged from the shadows. I screamed and ran. Now, here I am, the pen shaking in my hand. Where my pack is, I do not know.

— Carl Linnaeus, July 20th, 1732

A revenant is the undead spirit of an evil human, full of hatred for mankind and an urge to frighten, harm, and kill. Usually it wants to torment its family or other people it used to loathe back when it was still human. Revenants are usually invisible, but can appear as monstrous figures with sharp teeth and claws. Sometimes they are black as night and several meters tall. Revenants suck the life out of people by ghost-pressing them, but are also known to eat humans alive. They generally make their lair in a tree, a pile of rocks, or a ruin near the place of their death, where they must stay until nightfall.

Ritual

A revenant cannot pass a Christian symbol painted with tar or harm a person wearing a cross around her neck. However, it can use magic to make the person take her necklace off. A revenant who cannot get back to its abode before sunrise stays where it is, invisible, as a so-called day stander. It can neither be harmed nor cause harm, but Thursday's Children can hear it hurl threats and insults at all who pass it by. Accidentally bumping into a day stander can cause a human to have a stroke. The revenant can be banished using the remains of its human corpse. If it was not buried in a graveyard, it can be banished by digging up the body, carrying it across a graveyard wall (rather than through the gate), and burying it in consecrated ground with a cross on the casket. If the body has already been buried in a graveyard, it must be dug up again, carried across the wall three times, and reburied with a cross and the shovels with which the grave was dug. Another way is to burn the dead body.