Dispatch! a guide to the paranormal

                      If you knew anything about ghost, you would know that despite who they were in life, in death they become a primal thing. they aren't your loving aunt Melissa anymore, they become ruthless and violent, Unyielding and unsympathetic and they will hurt you. Not like a punch to the face or a kick to the groin its more like a 3rd degree burn really, the ectoplasm they are made from does terrible things to skin and objects and they will try their Hardest to use it to do damage, if you've seen a ghost fly through a wall on TV and leave the wall unscathed well, its nothing like that. i once watched a small apartment complex go up in flames because a very Pissed off specter flew in and out of several connecting units. The heat from the ectoplasm erupted the dry wall and insulation. we aren't sure why they come back, but we know one thing, they pose a threat and only specific people have the ability to dispatch these spirits, and I'm one of them.

                          My names Jericho and after a near death experience i was left in a perpetual limbo. Between life and death... able to see the dead and walk among the living. This is how it went, my employer says that when you've crossed over and come back you're imprinted with sight, the ability to see, Its almost like you've been given a pair of glasses to the other side. Most people can feel spirits of course but its more like a sense of dread and despair, they typically cant see the spirit until its to late. The spirits feed off this despair and as they become stronger their ability to manifest and cause harm increases. to an average person it may seem like they've hit a depressive episode, or their medication isn't strong enough, or life is taking its toll on their mental health, but we know better. That's why we probe psychiatric facilities, go over patient evaluations and determine if their depression and anxiety is caused by a specter. We of course have our foot in the door in the psychiatric field but we can only do so much. Its hard to track down potential hauntings, but that's why i do the grunt work and my employers do the rest, i wasn't much of a researcher in my normal life, but i was a damn good fighter.

                  Their are others of course. The ones gifted with sight that aid in the fight of spirits. We operate in pairs. Its a lot safer that way so says our employer. I liked the company, Not just because dispatching a pissed off ghost was no easy task, but it was nice to know someone else was plagued with the ability to see the morbid things i saw on a day to day.

                   Walking passed graveyards was a big no-no, you'd see spirits hovering over their plot, clawing at invisible coffins or letting out silent agonizing screams replaying their final moments. The worst was demolished hospitals...especially the ones that held children, imagine a vacant lot, with a cluster of shimmering twisted figures intertwined with each other.... stretching and screaming in agony...i usually avoided places like this.

                      Tonight there was only one ghost to deal with. I stood across the street from a lovely townhouse bathed in orange glow from the streetlight. The house was beautifully landscaped, and anyone walking by wouldn't suspect that the inhabitant was plagued nightly by a violent presence.

                              I leaned against my car surveying the street. It was quiet, but  that was to be expected at 9pm on a Tuesday. Most of the neighborhood was asleep, or finishing up nightly routines. Some houses had lights on in the living rooms or upstairs bedrooms, some you could hear music and laughter coming from the back patio, normal people enjoying the early fall weather before it got to cold i envied them, but number 7 Tolstoy rd was pitch black and nothing moved about in the lovely town home, nothing alive that is.

                                 I was waiting for Gabriella, we were often put together on dispatch jobs i liked her well enough, she had saved my life a few times, she was competent and thorough and also... late. I pulled some gum out of my turncoat and popped a few pieces into my mouth. i was a couple hundred feet from the house but i could already taste the death within. the malaise was emanating even where i stood. i rummaged in my pockets for my flask and just as i felt the cold metal i heard a motorcycle speeding up the road.

                          I watched as gabby cut her lights and slowly came to a stop in front of my car, she booted the kickstand and shut the motor off, pulling her helmet off allowing her black hair to fall silkily down to her shoulders. she looked nervously at me her pale green eyes avoiding mine. her voice tense.

                        "Been waiting long?"

                 "Way to long Gabby, ive eaten all my gum" i picked up the duffel bag at my feet and gabby removed a black book bag from her bike she smiled over at me.

                      "Well ive got chocolate so well be ok, have you gone inside?" i did int answer i slung the duffel-bag over my shoulder and trudged past her towards the house "you're not still upset about The James church ghoul are you?"

"What getting stabbed in the ass by a throwing knife? nawww i hardly remember that" i looked back at her an smiled, she became relaxed

"I wasn't aiming for you you know" her smile was wolfish.

                      In our profession we used anything we could get our hands on to destroy spirits as long as it was blessed, and no not by an orphaned minister, we used blessed water to soak our weapons in. where the water came from we had no idea, but it held a super natural charge and was never out of stock, also it cut through ectoplasm like butter, you could dip a yo-yo in the stuff and fight off a ghost if need be.

              we often carried vials of it on our person, used as a makeshift grenade, some of us even drank it, hence my flask, it worked like an energy drink of sorts, in my experience more like an adrenaline shot. there were other ways of course to ward off spirits, brick dust being very useful to keep them at bay. preferably brick dust from a haunted location or a location that had seen lots of blood shed, there was also iron and silver but both were hard to obtain due to their price. the easiest stuff to fling about was standard table salt, an urban myth recently approved by our employers after a young dispatcher warded off a set of twin spirits with a salt shaker. to this day Donovan Atrell keeps two cow themed salt shakers in his equipment bag.the last defense was sound, everything has a frequency and we found one that tears ectoplasm apart. its compressed in a can like an air horn and sounds like a banshees wail. that was a last resort as it tended to deafen us.

           Normal noise just seemed to agitate the spirits, rile them up, that's why when i stepped onto the stoop of the elegant townhouse i proceeded to knock and ring the doorbell

               Knock knock knock knock knock DING DONG. Gabby made an annoyed grunt and pulled two flashlights from her back pack, she handed me one, then turned the doorknob. we held our breaths as it clicked and swung open. we were met with pitch black silence. we scanned the foyer with our lights and spotted a staircase in the center of the home that spiraled up into abyss, the air was stiff and made it difficult to breath you could feel the negative energy emitting from the open door like dark tendrils reaching out of the darkest part of the ocean, we poked our heads in and made a quick layout of the first floor using our flashlights sparingly, spirits were known to cause electrical interference as well so we wouldn't have the luxury of lights much longer. i gestured a hand into the dark home and gabby stepped inside. she walked a few steps then reached into her backpack pulling two white candle from the larger pocket and lighting them with a lighter. she then placed the candles on the floor on either side of herself, illuminated with orange glow she rummaged in her bag again and pulled out a black canister of brick dust. she began forming a circle of dust around the candles. a protective barrier.

                I walked the perimeter of the circle and set my duffel bag on the floor just in front of the staircase. I unzipped it and pulled a small cutlass from within, it gleamed with a shine only blessed water can produced I eyed Gabby's circle approvingly.

                 "Do i even wanna know where you got the bricks for this?" i asked, she pulled a few throwing knives and a dagger from her pack and started strapping them to her belt and vest. once she was done she frowned mournfully

                  "That old refinery in suffix, the one where all those workers died in that blast. a couple of people were trapped under the rubble firefighters heard them screaming for days...so i..." she never finished her sentence.


At first i thought it may have been the creaking of a floorboard above us, somewhere on the second story.