You Make Me Feel Alive

Part 1

"Dammit! The EMF stopped beeping. The Spook is gone."

Lauren glances up at her coworker and best friend, Dinah. Dinah's long blond hair is tied back in a ponytail, a headlamp strapped across her forehead, and her face turned into a frustrated scowl. Like Lauren, they both wear similar uniforms; army green, tight fitted cargo pants with too many pockets, a thin long-sleeved t shirt tucked into a bulky belt that held all sorts of ghost hunting supplies, heavy brown hiking boots, and black gloves that were cut off mid finger.

Dinah dims her headlamp before turning in the direction of Lauren so that she doesn't blind the girl. "I really thought we had that damn spook." She grunts, pushing the small EMF device into its specific place on her belt.

Lauren nods, breathing out a small sigh of relief. "It's okay Dinah, it's not like there aren't plenty of others."

Dinah nods, but huffs immediately after. "But we have been following this one for nearly a mile!" Dinah moves to go in the direction she came from, squeezing past Lauren in the tight space.

They had been in the process of tracking down one of the seemingly endless amounts of spooks dotted across the world. The spook had led them to a small tunnel leading underground to where there seemed to be an entire maze of connecting tunnels. They had been walking deeper into the earth for nearly two hours now; following the small beeping of their EMF machine into the darkness while their hands got colder and their headlamps were the only sources of light. Lauren is pretty sure that the inside of her nose is coated with a thin layer of dust by now and each breath tickles.

Dinah turns her lamp back to full blast and Lauren gets a glimpse of her footprints in the jagged dirt floor as well as how cramped the tunnel really was. She guesses that the tunnel is maybe six feet high, but there had been some parts where Dinah and her were forced to duck as they walked to avoid hitting their heads on the ceiling. Width wise, she would see only a foot or so wider than her body. She is really glad that she isn't claustrophobic because otherwise she would probably be freaking out right now.

"You seem awfully calm about the fact that we are who knows how far underground and we didn't even get the spook." Dinah comments as she walks slightly in front of Lauren.

Lauren bites her lip. "I'm frustrated, but it's not like I can do anything about it. We can't just call the ghosts to us you know." She lies easily.

"Well technically, we can. We would just need one of the Magnets to do so." She counters with a joking tone although she isn't wrong in the slightest. Magnets are the terms for the people trained to summon ghosts to a specific area, almost like a ghost magnet, hence the name. Summoning ghosts can be very dangerous however, and rarely do ghost hunters ever use that option because the ghosts being summoned are very hard to control and sometimes you end up with more than just spooks and there is always a possibility that you call ghosts that have already been returned back behind the veil instead of those that have escaped and you will just have to return them all over again. Anyways, there are many reasons why Magnets aren't usually a good idea.

Lauren snorts. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah, yeah but still, you look, I don't know...almost relieved?" Dinah glances back at Lauren with questioning eyes, tripping over an uneven patch of dirt and instantly forcing her attention back in front of her.

"What?" Lauren says a little too loudly. Her voice echoes through the tunnels at a higher pitch than normal. She cringes a bit and calms her voice. "I am not relieved." She argues.

Dinah shrugs. "I'm just saying. It hasn't been the first time you seem less than unwilling to do your job."

"Dinah what are you talking about? That's crazy." Lauren huffs, she silently thanks the tunnel for its lack of light because otherwise Dinah might noticed the small layer of sweat that breaks out nervously on her skin or the fact that her eyes seem to look a bit panicky.