They haul things to the nearest clearing past the tree line. Out of sight from the road, but not far to flee if they need to flee.

Sadde and Matthew can start setting up, Sadde's glasses off, when the first ghosts start to appear. Some more ethereal than others. All are disfigured by severe bite wounds.

The foremost ghost is among the clearest, and is speaking. "It hurts...why does it hurt. Why does my arm hurt, Day, it's supposed to be your arm. The car hit your side. Your arm, my legs! Day? My legs!" At the end, a stab of pain runs through all three living people's legs. It gets stronger as the ghost gets closer, then fades almost to nothing as the Shepherd completes a large ring of salt. Then he turns to the ghost and starts gesturing. His implement, to the ghost. His right hand over his left arm, corresponding to the bite marks the ghost bears. Pointing to the ghost again. Each time, the ghost gets more indistinct. Fuzzier around the edges, more transparent. And even less of an ache penetrating through the salt circle.

This is absurdly creepy.

He keeps an eye on the connections between the ghosts and... everything else. They will probably have a sort of nexus, which he should watch.

Visibility isn't great, so the only ghosts he can see are the ones in their clearing. The ghosts have only one or two connections each, always including one pointing off to the east. Hyena. The lines look roughly parallel, so they've got some distance for now.

Whatever it is the Shepherd's doing is slow but effective. The ghost unravels, echoing fainter and fainter. There's a last scream of "my arm" and both the arm and the legs start bleeding profusely. The feeling stabs at them, their legs being crushed and then heaved out of a wrecked car. The Shepherd's protections mitigate it, but it's still distracting. Finally the ghost is gone, and the Shepherd turns to the next one. By now more ghosts have arrived and more are coming. Most are more dissolved than the first, but he's not going to get all of them this way. Doesn't look worried.

"...you're sure you can get all of them this way?" he asks after he's recovered from the pain.

He shakes his head but pats his sack. While he may not have explained what he's got, there's definitely at least something he didn't have on him during the planning.

...is the Sight insightful?

It confirms that the bag itself is not magical. The Shepherd goes back to ignoring him and dissolving ghosts. He's not capturing or binding any of them, presumably for reasons.

An almost human howl of pain comes from the eastern edge of their clearing. A hulking figure moves just barely in and out of the edge where Sadde can see. If not for the Sight, it'd blend in to the trees. Bipedal, long arms almost dragging on the ground despite its height, and doing its best impression of a lurk. At least until the howl. Most of its movement is aimless, confused, almost random.

...is that the Hyena or some random Other?

(He continues setting everything up.)

Judging by the connections, the Hyena is still off deeper in the park. Eventually Matthew notices the Other. He gets its attention (visibly, to the Sight), then reverses the connection and repels it. "Let me know if there are more. The smart ones won't come while the ghosts are around." (For them, the ghost-related pain is an occasional unpleasant distraction. The Others don't have the Shepherd.)

They have a lot of cables to set up. The connections from the surrounding ghosts stop being parallel before they run out.

Sadde connects a car battery to the cables so that a current's running through them.

And they're—rather larger than what Matthew could have strictly brought with him in the car. Bob's to be thanked. Thank you, Bob.

The others aren't using their Sight as lookout, so the Shepherd keeps dispersing ghosts more slowly than they arrive and Matthew keeps laying snares.

Sadde will inform them of anything he thinks they should be aware of that they won't notice.

When they know the Hyena's coming, they hurriedly finish their current task and circle the wagons. Matthew checks his shotgun and the Shepherd starts acting faster. He lobs something over the edge of the circle, and several ghosts billow out. No, something else billows out. It looks horrific, and also absurd. Like seven different spectral shapes were crammed into a water balloon that was designed to hold only two. It's wailing with several voices, each of which is louder than the ghosts around them. And it rampages. Each of the ghosts it strikes unravels quickly, receiving several fatal wounds at once, and a few get absorbed with a scream. Subsequent strikes inflict that ghost's death on the target as well. The combined structure is unstable, but replenishes itself nearly as fast as it decays. Screams and fading echoes fill the area. The ghosts aren't gone, but they're lessened to the point where it's just a vague feeling of a crowd of different violent deaths. The affected area spirals outward. Eventually the monstrosity falls apart, leaving a much decreased number of active ghosts.

...well, then. That explains a thing or two. And buys them some more time to continue setting up their trap.

Not really. The ghosts were never the time limit.

The Hyena doesn't look like a laughing sidekick villain from a Disney movie.  It looks like a formerly bipedal dog, broken and reassembled until it's on all fours like it should be. Malnourished, with the flesh sucking in enough for its ribs to be clearly made out. Claws are untended and broken. They aren't going to cut anything, but might rend. And it's big. Probably six feet excluding the stubby-looking tail, and strong despite being half-starved.

Matthew shoots it.

...that's big.

But they're protected. A big part of their setup is a shark cage of sorts—complex, electrified for the extra element, modern. The Hyena effectively can't cross it. They're not done but they don't need to be. They can still take their time.

They're cornered, but safe. All according to plan.

The Hyena howls, then retreats. Its prey can stay besieged in their fortress without being able to shoot it. Tracing the connections shows that it's stalking around the clearing, coming between them and the road.

Predictable. They keep working. Almost done now.

They'll get a chance to finish. At least as much as they can finish while staying within an easy dash of their cage fortress. The Hyena isn't inclined to charge them in person.

Instead, it sends a wave of ghosts. A few scattered Others, too, that it managed to get under its thrall. And it blows at them from the edge of the clearing, harder than it should be able to manage. Fact: it has really bad breath. This doesn't directly do much of anything worse than make them want to vomit, but it also weakens and removes a segment of the salt circle.

They brought about four times as much salt as they thought would be strictly necessary, they can shore up those defences fairly quickly.

Yeah, running out of something they'd need so predictably would just be embarrassing.

But Others are walking across it, smudging the circle, and it's not going to stay a closed ring for long. Not to mention the fact that the Hyena can huff and puff again. The Shepherd is throwing salt as a weapon as much as he is creating a line, only to get outdone by a shotgun blast shredding every part of any ghost in a narrow cone. Rock salt rounds: hilariously ineffective against humans at any serious distance, but against ghosts he could do worse. It's messy.

Ghosts project their impression of dying horribly. Cold, pain, blood. Horror. The Shepherd is doing his best to make it less bad, but he's distracted too. Metal screeches as another car accident ghost continues echoing.

Then metal screeches. The ghost couldn't affect the physical world, but it could affect perceptions. Metal screeches. Glamour snaps and their everythingproof shark cage turns back into its pre-Bob form. Some strong bars remain, incongrously pointing out from the tiny wire job they can't even think about hiding behind. Not that they're in a state to think much anyway, what with feeling like they're dying eight times at once.

—fucking ghosts—

The brutish-looking Other rushes headlong into one ghost, then turns and flees into another. This does not do wonders for their salt circle, but at least it's not a threat right now. The ghosts themselves aren't actively trying to affect the practitioners, but they're fleeing the Hyena and every ghost's affect reaches a wide area. When they're aware enough to be more targeted, it's usually because they're running through their script trying to talk to one of the maddened Others. It's not pointed at them. So there is some good news.

Fuck fuck fuck okay though they still have enough to make a leash with—

Most of the snares are still in place. (The bogeyman or whatever it is gets tangled up in some and drops down whimpering. Other predatory Others are more interested in it, now, since the three of them aren't the weakest-looking target.)

The Shepherd must have gotten his act together, because the ghosts are effecting progressively less. But the Hyena sees its chance and starts moving. Matthew's gun is still loaded for ghost, and he's not recovered enough to aim well anyway. He grips one of the remaining steel bars that used to form a defensive cage, as much to steady himself as to use as a weapon. He's about to toss another toward Sadde, but thinks better of throwing things and extends it to him instead.