"TOC to Alpha One Actual, we are go for entry. Over." The decrepit door of the old house that had looked for decades ready to give in to the first stiff breeze was blown to splinters by the breaching charge. The elite operators filed into the cobweb covered foyer, slicing pies as they cleared the shadowed rooms with the finest NVG taxpayer money could buy, their overlapped fields of fire highlighted by the crisscrossing lasers projected from their rifles. "Negative contacts, Command. We are green. Over."
"Copy that, Alpha One Actual. Standby for specialist on site. Over."
Dave swallowed the lump in his throat as he left the blacked out command van where he had been sipping coffee while three humorless men had sat flipping important-looking switches in front of a wall of TVs and holding terse radio chats. How much these guys really meant business kept shocking him.
Ever since that thing in New Orleans they were calling the supernatural 9/11, ghosts were suddenly domestic terror enemy number one. Billions were being spent on sealing up old wells, sanctifying war memorials, battlegrounds, and Indian burial sites, destroying paraphernalia suspected to be haunted such as VHS tapes and other old electronics or dolls, inspecting graveyards and shipwrecks, scrubbing canceled cartoons from the internet, certifying mirrors as safe, repainting portraits, and deploying squads to clean up condemned buildings like this one.
Dave had been a part-time ghost hunter for a few years now. The job had been a complete joke that he'd felt guilty over doing more than anything because the saps that paid his boss, fat and balding Mr. Darnell, really seemed to buy into this stuff and looked genuinely relieved after he would play them a recording of static he'd made after walking around their house or old factory all night and accomplishing nothing. Even after the big incident, the fact that the media now insisted ghosts were one hundred percent real and plastered them everywhere in the news cycle gave Dave serious doubts. It was wild living in a world where cutting holes into a bedsheet could get you detained without a warrant.
Darnell had leaped at the chance to rake in the fat stacks Uncle Sam was giving out like candy to experienced experts in the field and had managed to latch his company onto a gig as consultants attached to the Department of Defense's Special Paranormal Operations Organized Counterforce Echelon, SPOOC-E. The actual job had barely changed for Dave, he mostly walked around in the dark looking busy but now it happened with extremely serious people wearing body armor pointing guns over his shoulder while doing it.
Dave followed the operators through the moldering house, his flashlight beam passing over water-stained wallpaper and broken picture frames. He tried not to look nervous as the tough guys hovered around him, a pimply-faced dork pretending as hard as he could that his bargain bin EMF meter was really important. As he climbed the uneven, creaking stairs, the needle picked up in a way he'd never seen before. It was really popping off. He waved the meter around, watching the signal peak as he traced it to its source, overcome by a prickling feeling that clung to his skin and a cold weight in his gut as he turned the knob to the bedroom.
"Boo!"
Dave jumped at the feminine voice that seemed to come from over his shoulder, stumbling further into the room and becoming entangled in spiderwebs.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" On the crumbling remains of a bedframe, a translucent teenage girl sat, semi-nude with what looked like a gaudy, torn shower curtain draped around her body. Her long hair was drenched, clinging to her pale blue skin. "I've never tried to scare anybody before. I thought that was how I was supposed to do it. You don't seem like an army man. Are you okay?"
Dave stared, dumbstruck.
"Wait, you can see me?" She shrieked and wrapped her arms around her chest. Dave blushed, apologized, and introduced himself. What else was he supposed to do when he met a real ghost? He could fumble for the walkie-talkie, he supposed, and call the men in to pump bullets to their hearts' content in her direction. Would that even work? Dave thought it would be rude to try shooting her first, at the very least. "You… haunt here?"
"I live here!" She paused for a moment as if considering what she said and rolled her eyes. "Figure of speech. You know what I meant. Haunting?" She pouted. "Makes me seem like I have a grudge or something. Please. Don't be dramatic. I slipped in the shower and bonked my head" —she snapped her fingers— "and that was it." The spectral girl loosened her stance, still protecting her modesty and said, "Hey, can you tell those guys to stop breaking my house? They've been going around smashing stuff for, like, no reason. Nobody ever comes to visit me for years and years and suddenly you bozos decide to tromp around the place and wreck everything. I'm Sylvie, by the way. And don't try to tell me that it was already a mess. It's not my fault I can't fix anything." She swiped her arm at the bed post, demonstrating it phasing through as if it wasn't there.
"I'll, uh, see what I can do.