Light swirled and the sky howled, screaming from the pain of being ripped apart at its very seams. Phantasmal colors, green, blue, and purple, shot like firecrackers around Caroline’s steady form. One errant beam shot too close, grazing against her brown skin. A red line, a streak of scarlet, scratched against her cheek. Blood oozed from it, dripping down her face, but she paid it no mind.
This was what she had been waiting for. Her favorite part.
Caroline reached her arms above her head, opened her mouth, and screamed.
“O’ Hallowed Ground, o’ spirits that wrestle beneath,” she chanted aloud, yelling into the windy abyss.
“Listen my call, obey my beseech. Abandon this land and journey onwards, beyond the veil!”
And then, like a sheet of fabric stretched beyond the capacity of its fibers, the sky split. The inky cosmos parted unwillingly, slowly, collapsing in gassy tendrils that scattered the stars themselves. And beyond it was a sight Caroline never got tired of seeing.
The portal.
A smoky miasma of lavender and gold that swirled in a hypnotic pattern, a spiral whose center was infinitely deep. She couldn’t see past it- she wasn’t supposed to, it wasn’t her time- but there was nothing else in the world that could compare to its beauty. It was almost enough to take her breath away.
Almost.
Caroline gulped, and started again.
“Dispel!” she yelled, and the earth began to shake. A tremble, ever so slight, but it was there. Pebbles vibrated, dancing across the concrete, as the trapped spirit was jostled from its earthly prison. A low moan vibrated through the walls, the last words of an undying.
“Dispel! Dispel!”
A crack began to form in the ground ahead of her, spindly hands reaching out like a spider web. It raced across the surface, black smoke spilling out from beneath. It filled the air with a rancid smell, one that circled the lungs and made you choke. Still, Caroline chanted on, screaming as loud as her body could handle.
“Dispel!” Like a magnet, the smoke began to drift towards that swirling vortex, unable to resist its pull. The earth moved even more as the remnants of human spirit- a ghost- was forcefully evicted from this world, and into the next. All things considered, this one wasn’t putting up too much of a fight.
Caroline wasn’t sure the next one would be so easy.
And finally, after what seemed like hours, the air cleared. Not just the smell- it was lighter, like some heavy burden that had been hanging, crushing everyone beneath its weight, finally lifted. Even the night sky, still hanging in fragments, seemed brighter.
The last of the ghost had been drawn to the portal, and finally satisfied, the vortex flickered twice. With another burst of energy, it began to circle in on itself, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared back into universe. The night pieced itself back together, re-aligning until it was that familiar stretch of moon and stars again.
Caroline’s arms dropped to her sides and she collapsed to her knees, exhausted.
Eyes fluttering shut, she allowed her breath to leave her body in one long, tired sigh.
This job was killer on her nerves.
She focused on steadying her heartbeat, counting to ten in her head, and her eyes snapped open. A whimper sounded, right next to her.
Caroline turned to the family of four, huddled on their backyard grass next to her, huddled together with barely contained horror. They were shaking, eyes wide and pale as- well, as ghosts.
“Oh! “she exclaimed. “I forgot you guys were here!”
The father fainted.
#
Hail fell like scattering pennies, tiny frozen pieces of sky, belting the cobblestone pavements. It should’ve been loud with the force they held-- heavy, thunderous booming that would strike fear in the unlucky few still straggling outside, but it didn’t. Instead, the layers of dead autumn leaves that blanketed Beauxmont provided just enough cushion to absorb the sound.
Plink. Plink.
Like glass.
Beauxmont was like most of the Boston suburbs Carolina had journeyed to (invaded) in the past-- small, old, and charming. The tiny neighborhood was like something out of a picture book, with stony walkways and pleasant shopping avenues. The gaping windows of residential houses blinked at her as she walked past, lights flickering with snippets of happy families following late night routines.
They looked warm- the exact opposite of what she was feeling right now.
Caroline paused outside one of the homes, watching a mother and son animatedly chat over a pot roast. She burrowed her hands even further in the rust-red hoodie she wore --her signature-- wishing that it were thick enough to fight off the chill in the air.
“I look like such a creep right now,” she realized, speaking aloud to herself. “I’m standing outside in the middle of the night, watching people through their windows-- I need to go.”
She shook her head to clear her mind, and started walking. There was no time to waste fantasizing over warm walls and family dinners (Caroline’s chest panged at the thought, but there wasn’t time for that), not when she had a mission to accomplish. The trunk she carried clunked against the sidewalk, her arms too exhausted to carry it properly.
Caroline’s visit to the postcard-worthy town of Beauxmont, Massachusetts wasn’t for leisure—it was business. Business in the form of a haunting in the town’s old church.
Church hauntings were some of the most common, especially in an old place like this. People died there all the time: the elderly overcome with too much emotion during a particularly rousing sermon, or even sinners who keel over from the weight of their own guilt. Not to mention the funerals. It was all too easy for a ghost to attach itself to a building like that, like a parasite that feeds off the living world.
It sounded cruel, but that’s what ghosts were-- parasites. The fantasy of friendly spiritual apparitions was just that: a fantasy. In reality, spirits couldn’t retain any part of their old selves once they left their physical forms. Their personalities, their memories, all were gone to the wind. All that remained were whatever they felt right before they died.
Even their appearances would fade over time as the ghosts forgot themselves, until they were nothing but plumes of dark smoke.
A ghost could never be at rest until it passed on into the next life- still, sometimes, one would accidently get stuck in the living world. Maybe they ignored the call to Go Into The Light, or maybe they just didn’t notice. Still, they would remain where they died, clouding the air with their dreary miasma, and draining the emotional energy from the living humans who were near them.
Those were the easy ghosts- then, there were the Hellions. That’s what Caroline called them, anyway.
These beings were ghosts who died in unusual ways: murder, execution, the list was endless. The common thread was the emotions they felt at death. Strong, poisonous ones like fury or betrayal, strong enough for them to carry that hatred with them even into the afterlife. These beings didn’t just ignore the call to pass over, they rejected it wholeheartedly. Instead, their dark emotions twisted them into malevolent beings who would cause chaos to the living.
In the worst cases, they would go much farther than that.
Caroline hadn’t dealt with a Hellion since The-Disaster-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, a blessing she didn’t take for granted. She couldn’t tell what spirit was awaiting her at her newest case. From what details she could parse from the Pastor’s frantic emails, it could’ve gone either way. Bumps in the night, items suddenly going missing, mysterious whispers when no one else was around…
She received the call for help only a few days ago, popping into her inbox like a shiny beacon of interest between spam mail and prank attempts. It was surprisingly hard to find legitimate cases of ghost hauntings in the modern day, and business had been slow. Caroline tried to dissect a more objective view of the situation, but the sender was near-inconsolable.
"The situation has worsened dramatically over the last few weeks", he had written her. "At first, incidents were only isolated to one individual. We even thought that she may had been… exaggerating the truth. But it is truly undeniable now; we walk into rooms and see hundreds of bibles upturned onto the floor. Ceremonial candles will light simultaneously, all by themselves."
"And I fear things may deteriorate even further. Last night, I awoke to myself levitating nearly three feet above my bed. Like a mysterious chill had frozen my bones, a metal vice clamping my throat shut, there was nothing I could do but contain my screams of fear.
And then, as if the beast were satisfied by that taste, of my terror, it released me.
And I fell, just like that."
Caroline could easily imagine the Pastor, probably a frail old man, trembling as he typed the email. Hunched over some ancient computer, desperately staring into that glowing screen. For a man of his status to call upon the services of a Ghost Hunter? It must be bad. But, surely, his panic had colored his version of events.
Another sudden breeze left her shivering from the chill, and she tightened her hoodie around her. Was it an omen? There was only one way to find out.
Caroline suddenly steadied to a stop and looked up at the two-story mason chapel ahead of her. In the dark of night, the building looked like a mystery-- coated in the grime only decades of age could grant. The spires reached modestly into the sky, framing a huge cross that loomed over her.
To her side, a crumbled sign read 'Beauxmont Ever-Lasting Church', bobbing noisily in the wind.
She was here.
