Ghost Guard 2: Agents of Injustice (5 page)

“Bobby, watch your sister,” he raced out the door. Father Thomas and Monty both went with him, sprinkling holy water and reciting revered phrases and pledging to return.

“No problem,” the scheming kid grinned. As soon as the others left the room, he started shooting video from the best angles he could. What he captured stunned his fifteen-year-old brain.

The features on his sister’s face had altered to the point of becoming a totally different person. Not ugly by any means, only different. He wanted to scream, but the beauty of this ethereal being shocked him into silence. And though the loveliness was beyond the comprehension of such an immature, selfish little mind like Bobby Hardgrove’s, the one prevailing emotion he felt was fear. Terror, in fact. It started as a tightening in his sphincter, then spread up his vertebrae. But he controlled it. In fact, he laughed at it. Laughed in the face of his own fear, and in the face of this stranger who was holding his sister hostage.

“You’re gonna be cast out of my sister’s body,” he watched the thing’s reaction through his recorder’s screen. “Whatever you are…What are you, anyway? A demon?”

“I am
not
a demon!” the spirit inside Melissa was terrified. She didn’t know where she was or this strange boy with the odd contraption. “I just want to find my husband!”

“Satan, right?” laughed Bobby. “You’re married to Satan? Oh, this is
so
good.”

“Stop teasing me! Don’t you know he’s in trouble?”

“Awesome!” Bobby’s agenda was clear. “My YouTube channel’s gonna blow up!”

Just when Bobby’s dreams of internet stardom were at their slimy zenith, several alarming events burst his bubble. First, the temperature dipped to where he could see his own breath. During several moments in the exorcism he felt chilling winds and temperature fluctuations. This one, though, was different; it had an accompanying cloud formation that sent rivers of ice through his bloodstream. Nearly vertical, the cloud kept feeding on itself, rolling and curling in a strangely familiar shape. A man. One of distinction and style. A smooth strong jaw and impeccably pomaded hair, fashioned in a timeless way. Green eyes offset a black suit jacket, stunning silk shirt, and manly but gorgeous slacks. Even Bobby, steeped in teenage naivety, appreciated the obvious sense of style and taste. This was why he found it difficult to harbor any sort of fear. More than anything, he felt a sense of wonder, even admiration.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a ghost, Bobby,” Rev widened his emerald green hypnotic glare, waving a semitransparent hand. He also produced a filtered aurora around his whole frame, for added effect. “Scared?”

“Uh, no,” the pimply teen stepped back, resuming his photojournalist’s stance, camera high, red tally light on to show he was recording. “Why should I be afraid of you?”

“Fair enough,” Rev had a certain smirk. Using his thumb, he pointed over his shoulder. “But I bet you’re afraid of
him
!”

As he uttered that last word, the atmosphere behind Rev became a violent storm, as if a tornado had formed inside Melissa’s bedroom. The grayest, nastiest, murkiest storm ever witnessed by human eyes. Spanning from floor to ceiling, blocking out all light, transforming what was already a tense and bizarre scene of spiritual possession into an all-out chaotic chapter straight from The Book of Revelations. Bobby’s respiratory system failed him, but he somehow found the temerity to hold the recorder steadily on the unholy apparition in front of him.

A giant plume of soot and ash and sizzling coals. Fire and smoke and boiling anger. Bobby knew in his heart it was a monster. Seething eyes with no trace of mercy. And a hungry smile, drenched with malice in an unending pyroclastic flow from the pits of Hell.

That was all for Bobby Hardgrove. The boy staggered, stammered, and finally fainted in a heap. Rev applauded his cohort’s good work, hostile and demonic as it was.

“Excellent, Brutus. Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Stop messing around!” Abby, clad in soiled pajamas, crawled in through the window. She’d been staged outside for an hour, and now was her moment. She had on the exact same putrid clothing as Melissa. Vomit-stained purple PJs with a floral print. Her hair was done the same. Even her facial features were made to look similar, with prosthetic additions to her nose and eyebrow ridge. All in all, her makeup and wardrobe gave her the stunning effect of perfect mimicry. As usual, Abby was the master of disguise.

All they had to do was make the switch with Melissa. Brutus went to work untying the teenager from the bedframe, loosening the ropes on her wrists and ankles. In her possessed state, she tried getting up and running, but Brutus subdued her, muffling her screams with a ghostly hand over her mouth.

At the same time, Rev went to work on erasing any evidence by locating the memory card inside Bobby’s video recorder. With a wave of his hand, he supercharged the magnetic field in the immediate radius, scrambling the digital data.

Abby rushed to the bed, eager to get into place for Phase Two. It was imperative the family be convinced the exorcism was a success. Abby’s job was to make sure that happened.

“You sure you can do this?” Rev materialized in rapid fashion next to the bed.

“Of course,” Abby said. “Pretending to be possessed is easy, especially with Morris’s help.”

“No,” Rev smiled. “I mean impersonating a seventeen-year-old girl. Don’t you think it’s a little bit of a…stretch?”

“Just tie me up,” she sneered, hoping he was being the same old playful Rev and not being malicious.

“Where have I heard that one before?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Hurry, they’ll be coming back any time now. Ruby can’t hold them forever.”

“Relax. We’ve got this, Abby,” Rev had a good time tying her wrists nice and snugly. She gasped at the firmness at first when he cinched them, but sighed in passionate release when they met eyes. Another time, another place. Not now. Not here. They had a job to do. But at that moment they paused and stared, unable to break from the allure of each other’s gaze.

“Guys,” Brutus issued a flinty warning. They both cleared their throats. Rev stood and dissolved into miniscule particles. Just like that, he was standing in the doorway next to Brutus, who still had solid custody of the fair young Melissa Hardgrove. Rev became all business, and so did Abby, preparing for the most crucial stage of the mission. The culmination of days of planning and rehearsals. Time for the professionals to do their jobs. But they burned for each other, and, out the door behind Brutus, Rev seized his chance for one last glance at her, and she at him.

“Be careful,” he commanded.

“You too.”

Chapter 5

“Sharon! What’s wrong! Sharon!” Greg Hardgrove was frantic because his wife was frantic, though he had no clue why exactly. When he’d first gotten there, he found a terribly disquieting thing—the door was locked and his wife was behind it, screaming bloody murder as an eerily festive sound echoed throughout the room. Greg banged and banged. The priest offered a prayer. The door wouldn’t budge, and the screaming and strangely cheerful noises wouldn’t stop.

Then, abruptly, all fell silent. The door swung open. Greg rushed inside to find nothing amiss or disturbed in any way. It had sounded from the outside as if a dozen children were in there, playing with the trains, planes, dolls, and music boxes. However, all he saw was a neatly organized playpen, toys put away, sheets folded and everything still and lifeless. The only thing moving in the room, the only thing making any sort of noise, was Sharon, his wife and mother of his children. She knelt on the floor in an awkward way, cradling a blanketed bundle in her arms and rocking back and forth, sobbing.

“Oh, my baby. My sweet, sweet baby!”

Greg made a beeline to his wife and child. The priest’s prayers grew louder. They all thought the worst, that a demon had now possessed the youngest in the household. But Sharon’s cries weren’t out of agony or grief. They were out of joy, and Greg realized that when he laid eyes on Brittney. Little Brittney. Only a year and a half old. Too young to be caught up in this horror. Yet when he looked in her eyes he saw nothing but contentment. Sharon smiled nervously when she explained to him and Father Thomas what had happened. Greg, believing his wife, wanted answers.

“What would a spirit do that for, Father? Why do all this?”

The priest whispered into his assistant’s ear. Monty thought a moment and whispered in return. When a consensus was reached, Father Thomas announced their theory.

“It was a diversion. Meant to keep us from doing our real job, which is the exorcism of your daughter, Melissa.”

*****

When they returned to Melissa, Greg, Father Thomas, and Monty were in such a hurry they didn’t notice Bobby had gone missing. They didn’t know Brutus had dragged him into the closet to hide him from view. Out of sight out of mind he was, and after the initial rush to make sure Melissa wasn’t harmed, the exorcism then proceeded in earnest.

“I cast you out, unclean and unwanted spirit! Go! The Heavenly Father and Christ order you to leave this innocent child immediately!”

“NO!” Melissa’s possessor shrieked. “Stop tormenting me!”

“Be gone with you!” the priest shook the vial of holy water fiercely. Melissa’s possessed body curled upward in violent spasms of pain. Sharon sobbed, shielding baby Brittney in her arms. Greg, protecting Sharon and the baby, shuddered with simmering remorse. Father Thomas stood firm. Assertively. Expertly. He was determined to defeat this parasitic spirit. Determined to send it to the great beyond.

“Be gone! Be gone Satan and all of his sycophants! The word of God and the power of his Son, Christ the Lord, command you…be GONE!”

The possessed girl roiled and rolled as the bed bounced violently. The wind howled like the dogs of hell. Windows rattled, bedposts shook, and a small tremor rocked the foundations. Of course all of this was artificial. Hydraulics and pneumatics and hidden fans, remotely controlled by Morris, provided the special effects. Abby provided the theatrics.

“No! No! Leave me alone! Leave me be, you-you heartless bastard!”

Abby hated being so harsh to a man of the cloth, but the part called for it. Besides, it would end well for the guy. She’d make sure of it. She’d let him think he won. And she’d make it look good. But not until after she stalled a little longer. She had to stall. In her head, she heard Rev still trying to coax the spirit of Alexandra out of Melissa’s body.

*****

“Alexandra? Can you hear me in there? Alexandra, we need you to come out!”

Rev shook Melissa’s lifeless body. She was alive and breathing but unconscious, presumably from the stress of it all. It didn’t matter why. All that mattered was Ghost Guard had precious little time. Time he needed for extracting the rogue spirit from the young innocent host body. However, the spirit wasn’t cooperating.

“Hello?” Rev tapped the young woman’s cheek lightly with the back of his materialized hand, solid so as to have the most effect. It didn’t work. He glanced at Brutus, who only shrugged his immense and smoldering ashen shoulders, chagrined confusion on his brooding face.

In a faraway corner of the basement in the Hardgrove home, they set up a makeshift extraction point. Extraction, the process of removing a spirit from a body in which the spirit didn’t belong, took patience, and often times a firm hand.

Rev tapped the girl’s cheek again, this time a little firmer. Then he slapped her.

“Emile! Emile is that you?” Melissa’s eyes opened and fixed on Rev. “Emile! I thought I’d lost you!”

This was the moment, the shining and stellar culmination of countless hours of prep and execution. The climax of their mission. Alexandra Petrovic departed her host body, leaving the corporeal safety of the physical realm for the vulnerable state of an itinerant spirit. Like a translucent holograph, the basement walls, garden hoses, washing machine, and worn out water skis all could be seen through her. She had an ethereal beauty, a misty, dewy dreaminess. Skin like a heavenly fire. Long hair drifting in some unearthly liquid. The second she left Melissa’s body, the teenage girl slumped in a heap on a stack of wood pellet sacks. Brutus, with imperceptible speed, captured her before she hit the concrete floor. He cradled her gently and sat her down, then watched what happened next in stunned wonder.

“Emile! At last!”

The ghostly Alexandra Petrovic flung herself passionately at Rev, wrapping her arms around him with abandon. He wasn’t even in full physical form yet, and still the electricity of her touch sent waves of fervent fever through his essence. He felt her deep commitment, her heartfelt and unending affection. Her love.

“Emile! I love you, I love you, I love you!”

She covered him with kisses, static charged pinpricks of passion. In stunned immobility, Rev caught gazes with Brutus and they exchanged looks that said,
What the hell?

“Uh,” Rev kept his arms straight down, not affording the woman any encouragement at all. Alexandra remained locked onto him in a communion of highly charged emotions. “Uh,” was all he could say, and all he could think was…
what would Abby think?

*****

“Stop! That’s not Melissa!” Bobby Hardgrove made himself seen and heard. Until that moment, no one knew he was even in the room. Greg, his father, as well as Father Thomas, had hoped secretly he’d gotten bored and went back to internet chats or MMA on Spike TV. Anything but hang out there and continue to be a supreme annoyance. But no. He’d been passed out cold, on his face in a pile of Melissa’s dirty clothes in the closet. He emerged with an accusatory scowl, and aimed his vitriol at Abby. “I’m telling everybody right now, that’s not Melissa!”

“Bobby, knock it off,” Greg already had enough of his son’s foolishness. “I’m serious. Cool it.”

“But dad, this girl…she isn’t Melissa. Look!”

He rushed to the bedside and took a handful of Abby’s hair. Only it wasn’t real. It was a blonde wig. When he yanked it off her head, revealing Abby’s own much darker hair, there was an audible gasp. Sharon held her baby even closer. Greg was paralyzed for an instant. Father Thomas and Monty were beside themselves with confusion. Abby, for her part, stole the wig back from Bobby and attempted to put it on again. But the jig was up, and no one knew it more than Ruby, who did the one thing she knew best—become a pest.

Appearing in a primal crimson glow, Ruby positioned herself so Brittney would see her. The resulting fit of laughter from the infant precipitated her mother to investigate. When Sharon saw Ruby, she went straight into panic mode.

“No! You’re not getting my baby! Not again!” She ran to the door. However, Ruby had a distinct supernatural advantage, and simply dematerialized, reappearing in position to block the exit, at least by traditional means. Sharon retreated to her husband’s side. Greg hauled her in and turned his back to the ghastly apparition with stubbly arms, no legs, and the strangest laugh. It had boundless energy and bounced off the walls and ceiling and floor, playing a game of tag with itself…and winning.

“It’s okay, honey,” Greg reassured his wife. “It’s okay. Father, can’t you do something about this!”

The priest, recovering from his stupor, nudged his assistant and they both set about their ritualistic prayers and readings in even greater earnest. Ruby delighted in the attention, skirting about and laughing at each of them, paying particular mind to Father Thomas. The priest flung his aspergillum and she dematerialized, allowing the holy water to pass through her and splash against the wall. That made her laugh even more, and it had Father Thomas confounded. What course of action to take next?

Abby didn’t have any such confusion. She knew Ruby’s wild behavior had a purpose, and when the chaos reached a fever pitch, when each of the bystanders were out of their minds with angst over the hyperactive poltergeist, she took advantage of the distraction and stole away.

Before leaving, Ruby infused each and every electronic device in the room with paranormal power, turning them into automated robots. Melissa’s cellphone, her tablet computer, her portable stereo, alarm clock, every lamp and overhead light, even the old CD player and a Hello Kitty lamp she put in the closet, all came to life. And the resultant chaos allowed Abby her escape.

Her feet moved on autopilot. She’d memorized the floor plan well in advance, and could navigate the place in the dark. Barking orders over the radio the whole way, she took charge of the final phase of the mission.

“I’m on my way to the extraction point! Morris, power up the Phantom, put it in autodrive, and send it to the back entrance, quick!”

She didn’t give anyone the time to respond.

“Rev, Brutus…I’m on my way! Do you have the target extracted yet?”

Sprinting at full speed, she found her way into the basement staging area. There, as she rounded the corner, she had to halt in her tracks. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Then again, it made perfect sense, and she wondered why she was surprised at all.

Abby had no words during that initial millisecond. Rev made her insane with anger. He had one last second remaining in his existence, then Abby, so help her, would find a way to send him to the fathomless void. In the center of the basement, Rev had another woman all over him, draping him with kiss after kiss after kiss.

“Rev!” Abby rushed to the impassioned couple and tried to tear the woman away. She got another heavy dose of astonishment when her hands went right through the woman’s shoulders. At that moment she realized it was Alexandra Petrovic. Her spirit was unencumbered by the carnal boundaries of Melissa Hardgrove’s body, which happened to be lying peacefully and silently, unconscious and unharmed, on an old sofa.

Abby, after failing to separate the two ghosts, turned her ire once again on the one person who she knew deserved it.

“Rev! What did you do to her?”

“I—” Rev couldn’t use his physical mouth to form the words. Alexandra, covering it with caresses, wouldn’t let him. So he used telepathy.

…I have nothing to do with this, I swear!

“Bullshit!” Abby shouted. “I know exactly what happened! You couldn’t help yourself! Damn it, Rev, something’s wrong with you. You get within twenty feet of an attractive woman and-and this!”

But I didn’t do it, Abby! Tell her, Brutus!

Brutus didn’t know what to say, since he was finding it difficult to walk the tightrope between the two of them. What Abby said next made him even more uncertain.

“Yeah, Brutus,” she sneered. “Tell me what happened? Because I thought I asked you to keep an eye on him. You couldn’t even do that?”

Brutus outstretched his large and ashen palms in a wholly subservient gesture as he shrugged and backed away.

“That’s what I thought,” her words were laden with bitter scorn. “Some tough ghost we have here. Afraid to step in and do the dirty work. Rev! Knock it OFF!”

“I’m not doing it!” Rev collapsed into a dusty film of nothingness, then manifested out of thin air on the opposite side of the basement.

“Can the crap. Why else would a sensible, normal, otherwise intelligent spirit fall for the likes of you?”

Just when Abby asked the question, it was answered by Alexandra’s fervent cry.

“Emile! Don’t go!” she dashed in an incandescent haze, a tracer of light zipping across the room and enveloping Rev in a halo of passionate caresses.

Abby’s jealous rage evaporated into something akin to wonder. “Emile?” she threw out the name with incredulity. “Did she say Emile?”

“Yes!” Alexandra shouted back. “Emile! My Emile!” she showered Rev with even more fervent kisses.

“Emile Petrovic? Your husband?”

“Yes, my Emile! My wonderful Emile!”