It had all started out as a combination of events easily written off as disconnected. He’d purchased the little trinket for his daughter. It was a small copper heart on a thin silver chain; it seemed an innocent enough gift for a young girl, and he’d gotten it for quite cheap as well.  The first couple of days after the chain had made it around his daughter’s throat seemed relatively normal. Perhaps now that he thought back on it the foundation of the house had creaked just a bit more than usual. There was a possibility that the shuffling on the floor above his head hadn’t been one of his children up from bed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, but rather something more sinister. It was after those quiet days that Jackson took wholly for granted, however, that things started to become off kilter.<br/><br/>He’d awoken to screaming on the fifth night that the locket was under their roof. Dashing up the stairs, Jackson came to find his dearest Sylvia sprawled out on the floor, tears and mucus pouring copiously down her face as she clutched at her neck. The necklace had been torn from her chest, the chain snapped and dashed across the room, the skin where it had sat was red and agitated. It almost looked like a burn, but Jackson and his wife ultimately concluded that it was merely an allergic reaction. They’d washed it off thoroughly, applied a copious amount of topical antihistamine and invited their daughter to join them in their bed for the remainder of the eve. Jackson had stored the jewelry piece in his bedside table, and by the morning he’d nearly entirely forgotten about the thing. Two days passed, which were wholly uneventful, and the copper piece was gone from his memory, buried under a mound of freshly washed socks.<br/><br/>It had been seven days since the purchase of the unfortunate gift when Jackson awoke to the sound of a ruckus outside. It sounded as though a mob was just outside their bedroom window, screaming, chanting, hooting and hollering. Jackson had muttered to himself something about blasted teenagers, though he wasn’t sure precisely what it had been, before making his way to the window to throw it open and give the hooligan’s a piece of his mind. He needed to arise early the following morning, after all, and all three of his youngsters had to attend school. They needed proper rest were they expected to succeed, and what was a mob of young adults doing parading the streets at that ungodly hour on a school night anyway? He’d marched up to window, fully prepared to shout out a piece of his mind as his wife began to stir in the bed he’d just left, but once he’d thrown open the curtains his body went rigid. Standing in the center of a dimly lit street was a single man, clothed in a loosely fitting white shirt and ragged buckskin breeches. His feet were bare, and his top was haphazardly tucked in. Sticking with the rugged aesthetic was a mane of wild red hair, whipping about his head as though caught up in a wild gust of wind. The rest of the street sat still as death around him, as though the world was watching, waiting with baited breath to see what would happen next. His gaze seemed to be locked on the man in the street, and an impending sense of doom rapidly began to encroach as the volume of the shouting increased until it was deafening. Jackson would have covered his ears were he capable, but he couldn’t move his body even the slightest bit.<br/><br/>“Jackson? Darling, come back to bed,” mumbled a sleepy voice from the bed, cutting through the chaotic screams and afterward bringing on chilling silence.<br/><br/>A small hand reached from beneath the duvet, searching about in the dark for a few moments before grabbing hold of its mark. Jackson glanced briefly back at the lump in the bed that was his wife, though he quickly turned back to look out of the window again. He was met with an empty street, however, and the silence that greeted him was less frightening and more peaceful. He’d been known to sleepwalk in the past, and he was also the victim of nightmares from time to time … It must’ve just been a trick of his mind, remnants from whatever images had plagued his sleep.<br/><br/>“I’m coming, love,” he’d murmured, slipping his hand from hers and carefully tugging the curtains closed before retreated to his spot in bed, pulling the slight form of his bride in close before drifting off into a fitful sleep.<br/><br/>Three more days passed before the next incident. They were peaceful, and the horrifying experience was chalked up to nothing more than a bad dream. This particular incident was one that sent him flying over the edge; it began an obsession that would drag on for roughly two months before the Englishman ultimately decided to board a plane to the United States. There was an expert, he’d heart, that resided in New Orleans, the French Quarter. Jackson and his family had been antique dealers for quite some time, hence why he was at an old estate sale to pick up the locket, to begin with. He’d heard from a handful of others that dealt in antiques that he’d find an expert on supernatural oddities on a little easily dismissed corner shop that dealt oddities and antiques. This man could help him with his problem, for a price, and God knew that he needed assistance.<br/><br/>“I swear to you, Sir, I’ve never seen a flame fan itself to such magnitude that bloody fast. Luckily, I was the only one in the home, elsewise I’m not sure I’d ever forgive myself for bringing the blasted thing into the house,” he tossed the little locket onto the countertop the sat between them. “It was the only thing that survived the fire, and such a flimsy piece should’ve melted down in minutes in the middle of such scorching heat. After I found the thing looking for any salvageable pieces I pried it open, found the ashes behind the little glass barrier,” he forced open the stubborn little locket, revealing a small chamber filled to the brim with soft ash, the class slightly warped and cloudy with age but still holding strong, somehow. “If you ask me that’s someone’s remains in there, Master, and whoever it is must be awfully angry to destroy everything I have like that, the life I’ve built for myself and my family.”<br/><br/>Jackson looked up at Drae, a deep crease marring his brow as he scanned him.<br/><br/>“Please, there must be something you can do about this. I don’t want …. Whatever is trapped in that thing following me for the rest of my life. I’ve got a wife, three children, an entire life that I cannot risk having ruined by a damned trinket. I don’t have much after that disaster, but I have money, I can pay whatever fees you might ask, just take it off my hands and make sure it leaves us be.”