They didn't have any food to make any sort of subsequent meal, so Paul's father had just bought them fish and chips, not that anyone was complaining of course. Jim's cooking, it was... it was different.
At eight o clock in the evening, Jim and his two sons sat around a large, old, wooden table and dined on fish and chips. Despite the fact Paul didn't eat much, and Mike was falling asleep in the chips, it made for a very enjoyable meal.
That is, until the kitchen door flew open, letting in a freezing wind that blew Jim's newspaper off the table. "What?" Mike groggy lifted his face out of the food. Jim sighed and shut the door, muttering about how there was an awful draft in the place.
Paul's eyes flashed with excitement, his food long forgotten. There really is a ghost, he decided, and sat there, giddy and delighted until they were excused. Finally this moment occurred and both boys bounded up to their rooms, both for very different reasons.
Mike would have gone straight to sleep, probably on the floor, Paul thought with a snigger. He himself had dug around in his boxes until he found his ghost hunting machine. Or "spirit detector" as it was labelled, whatever, Paul liked his version better.
It took him about twenty minutes to set it up, but by the time it was done, it looked really cool, like something out of ghostbusters. Paul checked his watch, seven minutes past ten. Both his brother and father were long asleep, so, creaking open the door, he stepped into the dark hallway.
Paul would be lying if he said he wasn't scared, but he started making his way along, holding up the little box and listening to its quiet, steady beeps. Obviously not much was happening, but the boy was determined to find something. This is why a smirk formed on his face when the beeping quickened.
Following the box like a metal detector, he creeped through the darkness, a feeble torch as his only light source. It is rather like a metal detector Paul thought to himself, except instead of treasure it was ghosts, which quite frankly, Paul would take over treasure any day.
The beeps took him to a staircase and without hesitation, Paul began to ascend it. The machine was going mad by the time he reached the top, so loud he worried someone would wake up.
Paul was so busy staring at the thing, he, quite literally, crashed into the wall, falling back and glaring at it, as if the wall was somehow at fault. He sighed and looked back down at the device on the floor next to him. A consistent beep. Paul's heart was pounding against his ribs. If this machine really does work then...
"Hey"
