I Was a Teenage Ghost Hunter II

Chapter 4

Clive Welter-Manes stared straight ahead, a massive black wig covering his blonde hair and a scrawny pasted-on black beard and mustache adorning his face. He wore an olive jacket and camouflage shirt and waved a black beret in the air as he sang.

"We will control the sand, control the waves and all the people! The people on the sand will know how to stand and stand and stand!"

Clive's tenor voice, with its slight British accent, carried over a recorded track of pounding piano dissonance and a few pairs of hyperactive castanets.

Rex Hisakawa pulled back a little, shooting the performance on his Nectarscene video recorder. Trying to get the swinging beret into the shot, he stumbled awkwardly into a guitar case on Clive's bedroom floor. The Nectarine device shook out of control.

Clive abruptly ended his sonorous 'stand' cries and tore off his wig, his confident singing demeanor replaced with a sour expression. "Bloody hell, what'd you go and do that for? That was a good take."

Rex regained his balance, kicking the guitar case. "Maybe if you ever cleaned your room I wouldn't have tripped."

"Well, maybe if you planned out the bleedin' cinematography before you just start waltzing backward around the carpet you wouldn't destroy my things."

Devin had entered in the midst of the episode, watching wide-eyed from the doorway. "What in the hell are you guys doing?"

Clive peeled off his fake mustache and beard. "We were attempting to tape a scene from my groundbreaking new video opera, Guevara on the Sand."

"Guevara on the Sand?"
"Yeah, it's a surrealistic postmodern retelling of Che Guevara's revolutionary exploits, mixed in with snippets of contemporary cultural satire, military vignettes and chants based on government regulatory codes."

Devin was used to Clive's unusual compositional ideas, but this was extreme even for him. "Sounds very ambitious."

"Mozart already had thirteen symphonies done when he was my age. Gotta be ambitious, mate." Clive grinned and gestured to an easel covered with cartoon-like depictions of Che Guevara wielding a rifle, giving a rousing speech, landing a skiff on a beach and suggestively chewing on a cigar with a female compatriot. "I originally envisioned it as a four hour epic with chorus, a corps de ballet and battle scenes. But budgetary reality raised its tiresome head."

Rex sat on the bed reviewing their footage on his Nectarscreen. "Now we're down to recording three arias tops and maybe splicing in some newsreel footage."

"Not quite as spectacular. But perfect for a YouTube viddy." Clive held his fake facial hair at arm's length, regarding it pensively. "Shame. I don't think people have the patience for full operas on YouTube."

"Most people don't have the patience for full operas anywhere," Devin said. Clive looked like he was ready to argue this point, but Rex, eyes still glued to the Nectarsreen, interrupted.

"Just like with Ghost Hunchers. People don't watch full episodes online. All that walking through dark hallways and stuff. They go straight to the super spooky shit. That's what we gotta do. Post some vigil highlights. You know, three, four minutes of just the crazy stuff. Can you imagine if we had footage of those books flying off the library shelves?"

Devin sank into a canvas folding chair. "Yeah, but I don't want to imagine going back into that place. We talked about this a hundred times."