Prologue: Ghosts Aren’t Real

  Dire. Dire. It’s a dire, dire situation. Michelle Oner, better known as Milly, shudders as she crouches in the closet she’d managed to leap into in the last minute. Through the slit between the closet door and the wall, she can see it. Its figure is wavering, hazy, somewhat transparent. But it’s undoubtably there.

  It’s… grotesque. Humanoid, but undeniably inhuman. Dark, scarred eyes bulging so wide that they seem to hang out of the face, with greenish-yellowish streams of pus running from its eye sockets. Its nose is bulbous and swollen, its lips so thin and dry that they seem to be fused into the figure’s face. And that face is held together by a paper-thin layer of flaking skin— if you could even call it that. The ‘skin’ has bits of moss growing on it on some places, and in other places it’s torn. From out of those tears drips a mucus thick and black and disgusting, as different from blood as mud is from freshwater. Draped over its thin, emaciated figure is a tattered apron reading— most inappropriately— “Kiss the Chef.”

  But to be honest, what’s most off putting about the figure isn’t its appearance. It’s what it’s holding in its hands. A rusty meat cleaver, covered and spattered with the blood of— Milly doesn’t want to know.

  Clasping a hand over her mouth, Milly tries to quiet her breathing. She shifts slightly and bumps into the bodies of her fallen colleagues. They’re not dead, thankfully— just unconscious— but that’s exactly the problem.

  ‘With just its Fright Factor alone, it caused my subordinates to faint? It wasn’t supposed to be this strong… it— it wasn’t supposed to be this— why? Oh God, why!? Association, why would you give us such an impossible task!?”

  Even Milly herself, being a cut above her subordinates, isn’t immune. Slowly, she can feel her consciousness starting to fade. She can hear her heart as if it was her ears, each beat resounding like a chorus of gongs. She tries to calm herself by keeping a firm grip on her gun, but even that is slipping.

  The figure is looking around the shadowy, darkened room slowly. Carefully, closely, methodically— its eyes scan every inch of what used to be a grand kitchen and dining area. Milly is lucky. She’d at least managed to damage the figure’s eyes before being forced to take cover in this side closet. The figure, as high as its Fright Factor is, at the very least seems to not be able to sense Soul Energy yet. If the Association leaves it alone, at the rate it’s growing stronger, it probably will be able to within the end of the week. Even as Milly watches, the figure seems to become more anchored in reality, more solid, more there— all telltale signs that it’s going corporeal. But even without doing that, it’ll find her soon enough, and that’ll be the end of both her and her colleagues.

  *tmp*

  ‘Oh. Oh, no. Oh please, oh please, oh please— no. No, no, no—’

  All of a sudden, the figure starts to walk. Slowly, dragging its malnourished-looking feet, it walks. Through the crack— that Milly doesn’t dare close for fear of being heard— she can see it begin to move. At first, it seems to be moving randomly. But slowly, but oh so surely…

  *tmp* *tmp* *tmp*

  ‘Get away. Get away don’t come over here leave us alone don’t don’t Don’t DON’T!”

  The figure’s fingers— oh God, Milly almost throws up what little contents are in her stomach on the spot. The hand reaching for the closet’s door only has two fingers, the thumb and the pointer, with stubs of moss and bloody chunks of disfigured meat going where the other digits should be. The figure’s fingers reach out for the doorknob, and it begins to turn with a *creaakkkkkkk…

  Until, abruptly— it stops.

  ‘—!?’

  The figure… actually turns. Turning aside from the prey that it had just located, it rotates its neck— if you can even call it a neck, with more than half of its mass being missing in a giant bite mark— almost a full 180 degrees to look at the door. Not the side closet door, but the room’s main door that leads to the hallway.

  Milly, tilting her face as far as she dares, attempts to get a slightly better view of the main door. She doesn’t just focus her sight; every single sense she possesses, every single nerve in her body, bends to allow her her full capacity for observation. And as she does—

  *tmp* *tmp* *tmp* *tmp* *tmp*

  Wait. That’s right. The figure— no, by this point it deserves to be called by its proper name. The spirit… it hasn’t yet reached the corporeal stage of the spirit cycle. As such, even if it walked around the room, it wouldn’t make noise unless it specifically desired to. Which means that… those footsteps… could they belong to someone else?

  ‘The Association, did they detect the incongruency between the reports and the actual spirit, and send backup? Oh, thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank the heavens! I’ll never complain about working overtime again, I’ll do everything my bosses ever ask of me, I’ll never steal one of the pens that lie in the office that you’re supposed to return but no one ever does—’

  Milly’s eyes widen.

  ‘—huh?’

  Because what walks into the room, is not a seasoned Association member with a crisp suit and tie. It isn’t an Association veteran either, it’s definitely not an Association newbie. Heck, it isn’t even the Police! No, what walks into the room is… what walks into the room is…

  “Hmm. Looks like this is the last room I’ve gotta check for ghooOOooOOoosts. Let’s take a look.”

  …a young-looking boy with white hair, safety goggles, and a strikingly pristine… is that a lab coat!?

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  He looks around the room slowly, from left to right. Given that it’s a large room and the closet is on the right, it takes a bit for the boy’s sweeping gaze to land on the grotesque figure’s form. He talks and talks as he looks:

  “No sign of anything. Hah! Honestly, people nowadays are so gullible. They hear a story about a perfectly normal house and start spouting nonsense.”

  But when he finally looks in the direction of the horrible spirit, he clams up quickly. His eyes widen, his face contorts, his hands fly up in front of him in a pointing motion, and he opens his mouth as if to scream. He even starts stumbling backwards, presumably in abject horror.

  ‘No. No, don’t scream, that makes them stronger… damn it! I can’t let… a civilian die… come on Milly, move… buy him some time… MOVE…’

  Milly strains to twitch even a single muscle of her drained body, but can’t dot it even the slightest bit. And still, she tries, because at the end of the day, she’s a protector. No matter how much she may groan and complain, she would never let an innocent die. Such is the weight of her ideals.

  And yet, at this very moment, the weight of her ideals mean nothing. A child’s going to die right in front of her eyes, and she can’t do a thing to stop it.

  The grotesque spirit stares the boy in the face. It stares, stares, stares— and then moves. Faster than Milly’s eyes can track, it changes positions entirely. One second, it’s standing next to the closet, about to uncover her hiding place. The next, it encroaches on the boy’s position, raising its bloody cleaver and embodying the true essence of MENACE— no, that isn’t right.

  Milly rubs her eyes as silently as she can manage and looks again. The spirit didn’t move to be closer to the boy. Quite the opposite in fact. Instead, it had zoomed away and *SLAMMED* into the far wall, excreting a disgusting amount of that viscuous black substance from all its open sores as it did so. Milly can’t quite process what she’s seeing.

  ‘Wait. Wait, hold on a second. Am I… going crazy? Isn’t that… isn’t it… doesn’t it look like it’s…’

  It shouldn’t be a possibility. The boy isn’t exuding any Soul Energy at all. And yet…the grotesque spirit…

  ‘...Doesn’t it look… scared?’

  #

  There are some things that you just can’t deny.

  I mean, do you know anyone that would argue that gravity doesn’t exist? Or that time flows backwards? Or that pancakes are best topped with barbecue sauce?

  For your sake, I hope you don’t. Because I’ll give it to you straight: those people are crazy. Complete and total whack jobs.

  Though, if we use that definition of crazy, then I suppose I’m surrounded by crazy people on a daily basis. For some reason or another, nearly everyone I seem to meet is determined to deny the rules of reality. Raving lunatics, all’a them!

  …

  Okay, okay, maybe I’ve been a little harsh. There are some people who’ve seen some crazy things, and that’s what convinced them that the unreal is real. I’m not saying that their experiences are invalid or whatever. But what I am saying is that, if you dig deep enough, there’s always a logical explanation for them.

  I’ll show you what I mean.

  Here’s another example of a thing that you can’t deny: ghosts aren’t real.

  Poltergeists, phantoms, ghouls, whatever you want to call them. No matter how you slice it, they just aren’t. People love deluding themselves into being afraid of them, but ask them to provide solid proof and they clam up quicker than my little brother when you catch him near the cookie jar.

  I’ll say it again: Ghosts aren’t real, but sometimes there are natural— and scientific— phenomena that could convince people that they are.

  Which is exactly why I’m staring so hard at this knife floating in the air in front of me, seemingly unsupported. Tuning out the eerie wails dancing at the edge of my conscious perception and the way the curtains in this rotting old house seem to wave around on their own, I’m 100% devoting all my attention to staring at this weird floating knife.

  It was really quite surprising, you know. A big old knife, just floating in the air, and then— get this— once I take a few steps into the room, it flies back towards the end of the room! It’s truly a strange phenomenon. I feel like if I squint, I can see a hazy figure behind the knife, but that must just be a trick of the low lighting.

  Some might say this floating knife is a sign of the supernatural. But I wouldn't. Ever since I got to this supposedly ‘haunted’ house, I’ve seen nothing but perfectly natural phenomena. Old floorboards creaking from rot and decay. Wind causing fabrics to rustle. It’s all perfectly explainable, you see. And this floating knife is no exception. I just have yet to find the explanation.

  Huh. Honestly, what could be causing it to stay suspended like that? Alright, I’ve decided— I’m going to walk towards it and inspect it more closely. It’s not like I’m in any danger— knifes don’t just move on their own. Honestly, is it even a knife? I feel like there’s another name for it, but I can’t remember it for the life of me. I give a small shrug— if an A-grade scientist such as myself isn’t familiar with the proper terminology, then there probably isn’t anything else to call it. A knife it must be! It’s kind of big for a kitchen knife, it’s rusty, and the edges of it are dripping with some strange red substance. Maybe ketchup? I can’t wait to find out.

  ##

  A step, another step, a few more steps, and one last step. The boy is close enough to the spirit to reach out and touch it.

  ‘DON’T DO IT!!’

  Milly wants to scream, wants to burst out of the closet and hold him back, but she can’t do it. Even if the spirit is acting strangely, its Fright Factor is high enough that it’s still incredibly dangerous to regular humans. Making skin contact could be lethal. She can only watch as the boy approaches his certain doom without a care in the world.

  The boy reaches out and brushes the slimy, mossy, disgusting knub of an appendage that in another life might have been a finger. Milly squeezes her eyes tight, not wanting to see the boy’s end. He was brave, and now he’s gone. Bless his soul.

  …

  …

  …

  *thud*

  But after a while, Milly hears a distinct lack of screams of terror. In fact, she hears something that sounds more like the spirit’s meat cleaver hitting the ground— no, that’s impossible. She opens one of her eyes ever so slightly. And then, she is amazed.

  ###

  *plop*

  Just like that, the weird knife falls to the floor, and I pick it up. Huh. Weird. I try to hold it up into the light, but no dice— it’s nighttime, after all. So then, I—

  ‘waaaAAAaaaaAAAAaaaaah’

  Brrr, cold. I feel a slight wind brushing by me, as if something has suddenly rushed out of the room. The sensation is accompanied by a funny sound too. Sheeesh! Talk about a haunting wail! But, being the super genius scientist that I am, I know that that’s just caused by me stepping on a particularly creaky floorboard. Did you know that wood floors degrade with age, causing them to make noises like this? Well, now you do. Be proud— that secret knowledge isn’t something I’d give out to just anyone.

  Wait, did I get off track? Hm…. oh yeah!

  Anyways, this investigation was really quick. So quick, in fact, that I didn’t even have time to form my usual Hypothesis. I guess I’ll have to jump straight to making my Conclusion.

  I take another look around the room. It’s a big old kitchen, with plenty of room for people to both cook and eat. At least, it used to be— now, it’s dusty as hell and covered in disgusting cobwebs. But still, a true naturalist— whoops, scientist— can’t allow the conditions of a research location to deter their experiments.

  I rub my thumb and pointer finger against my chin, putting my supercomputer brain to work.

  “Hmm hmm hmm…”

  And then I snap my fingers— I’ve got it.

  “Heh heh heh. Hah hah hah! I’ve got it! This funny-looking knife wasn’t just floating in midair, that’s impossible… so it was suspended in mid-air by the cobwebs! It didn’t just zoom around the room on its own… the wind that was making those curtains move on their own must have blown it across the room! So that’s why it fell as soon as I touched it! There we go, case closed. Science wins again!”

  I chortle to myself, satisfied. See? See? Don’t you get it now? Weird things like this may happen, but that doesn’t mean that the supernatural really exists. It’s all perfectly explainable if you just think about it rationally for more than a few seconds.

  Even if weird stuff happens like this all the time.

  Even if, for some stupid reason, people keep asking me to investigate their stupid ghost stories all the time.

  Even if all I want to do is run my lab experiments, but I keep getting interrupted… ALL THE TIME.

  It’s just like I said. No matter how long I do this gig, I’ve never spotted a ghost or even a hint of a ghost. Not even once. But I have been able to come up with a bunch of Hypotheses and Conclusions for strange phenomena, so it’s at least a tiny bit worth it. And… ahem… the cash doesn’t hurt either… not that a soon to be legendary scientist can be bribed! I am in the utmost pursuit of knowledge and knowledge only? Hmph!

  I clap my hands together and turn around. All’s well that ends well. Now, I’m really very tired. I think I’ll get outta here and back to my house to turn in. Right after I record this little incident in my log— I am the vice-president of my school’s Science Club, after all.

  “Another one solved by the super scientist… the soon to be legendary Doctor Eid! Ha ha ha ha ha… sheesh, I really need to stop talking to empty rooms. Is that something that Einstein would do? No, I seriously doubt it.”

  Lifting my arms into the air in a celebratory pose, I exit the old kitchen, and that’s the end of that.

  ####

  Milly simply stares as the boy exits the room as if nothing ever happened. He walks, he walks, and he’s gone, just like that. And all of a sudden, the haunted old mansion is silent. Empty. Truly empty— now, it’s just a regular house.

  She doesn’t know how to make heads or tails of what just happened. She doesn’t even know if she’s emotionally prepared to stop hiding in the closet yet. All she knows is one thing:

  ‘When I get back to the office, I’m asking for— no, I’m DEMANDING a pay raise.’