13 – Saying Goodbye is a Complicated Affair

“Why didn’t you text?”

“No signal in this place.”

Rick did not look happy with that response. Erika wasn’t all that happy with it either. The whole reason she had come here was to get a better feel for these ghost hunters… and to help out and maybe see something interesting, she supposed. Mostly, it was for evaluation. The fact that they had been out here for almost an hour without checking in didn’t bode well.

Erika wasn’t all that happy to disparage her gender, but Rick seemed like he knew what he was talking about, and she had noticed that Leslie, when he had his gun out, was exceedingly careful not to aim it anywhere near them. There was at least competence there. However, the two women in the group failed to call in. That felt irresponsible and worrying.

Especially when Sofia didn’t look all that well off. Her face was set in an expression of utter misery as she sat on one of the old tables that occupied the majority of the second floor. It looked like she had been crying. For the longest few moments, Erika thought her mascara or eyeliner was running all down her cheeks. A second look made Erika’s stomach churn.

It wasn’t makeup. It was that same black sludge that Erika vomited into the sink.

Anna, on the other hand, sat in front of a series of items with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.

A pentagram spread across the floor, drawn in white chalk. At each of its five points, there was an object: a plastic celebratory party hat for the year 2022, an anniversary clock with cracked glass, an old photograph with the faces violently scratched out, a pair of tarnished wedding rings, and a battery-operated toy train with paint both chipped and faded. Despite the clear preparation it would have taken to set that up, someone opted to craft a makeshift Ouija board out of an old pizza box and an upturned shot glass, both of which sat at the center of the pentagram.

“You couldn’t have taken two minutes to step outside?” Rick grumbled, arms crossed over his chest.

“Have you tried leaving this place?” Anna retorted, her voice tinged with irritated defiance.

The anger in Rick’s posture diminished, replaced with concern as he looked about the second floor of the bar. “No,” he said, drawing out the word. “Is that… a problem?”

“Don’t know. Maybe you all are trapped in here with us now.”

Leslie stopped setting up equipment around the room. He had been trying to figure out precisely where the ghost was. It was made a bit complex because, based on the readings he was getting from the various devices he and Rick lugged upstairs, the ghost kept moving about.

“I’ll check it,” he said as he slowly stomped down the stairs.

“Careful,” Sofia called out, her voice trembling a little. “When I tried to leave, I…” She wiped at her cheek with the palm of her hand, doing little to the streaks of tar that dripped down from her eyes.

Erika couldn’t help but shudder. It had been bad enough throwing that stuff up. She couldn’t imagine getting it in her eyes.

Anna looked up with a small sigh, giving a heavy frown to both Erika and Rick. “Sofia said she felt something—”

“It was just like at my apartment. That same feeling of impending doom.”

“So we swung by,” Anna continued. “Didn’t intend to stay, just wanted to check and see if there was anything to her feeling.”

Rick drew in a breath and let it out in a long sigh. “From now on, you report in the second you get a strange feeling. Before checking it out. This is how we lose people.” He squared his shoulders, losing the hunched look he had kept since Erika first met him. His attempt at a stern and imposing demeanor, though he really should have left that to Leslie. “Sofia is new, so at least she has an excuse, but you should have known better.”

“We’ve never been trapped before,” Anna said, hardly concerned with Rick’s posturing. She took a long drag on her cigarette, drawing the embers up to the filter before tossing it on the floor and stomping it out. “Couldn’t open the doors. Couldn’t break the windows. Figured we would have to send the ghost back. Honestly, surprised you managed to get in at all.”

“Unless it only lets things in and not out,” Sofia said, followed by a quick under-breath hiss. “Maldita sea.”

“Nope,” Leslie said as he thumped back up the stairs. “Back door opened up. Even walked all the way out to the sidewalk to check.”

Erika had been staring at Sofia. Or the tar-like streaks running down her face, rather. Either way, she caught the moment of genuine surprise as Sofia hopped off the table before the woman smiled.

“We can leave?”

“No.”

“Certainly not.” Rick and Anna glanced at one another, both having spoken at the same time, before Rick looked over at Sofia. “Now that we’ve come across this, we aren’t about to leave it for someone else to stumble across.”

Erika felt a mix of apprehension and relief. Having come a little too close to the ghost for comfort already, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to more. At the same time, she wanted to see this. If her initial plan of delving into those archives again was to go incomplete, she at least wanted to see some actual ghost busting. She looked over the pentagram and the makeshift Ouija board, wondering how they were going to proceed.

“Alright,” she said, feeling that apprehension shift to anticipation. “What’s the plan then? Where’s the proton packs?”

“Shouldn’t be needed,” Rick said slowly as he joined Anna in crouching near the ritual circle. “Seance Spirits are typically trivial to deal with.”

“You actually have proton packs?”

“Of course not.”

“Seance Spirits, as the title implies, are spirits summoned deliberately for a seance,” Anna said, ignoring the side commentary. “Usually, someone alive wants to ask their loved ones a question or two, resolve something or other, or even find out how they died. Rumors say that ghosts, being part of the afterlife, are knowledgeable about far more than just what the living person once knew, so people often ask for secrets or power or such. But it all goes the same. Upon ending the ritual, the ghost returns, and everyone moves on with their lives. Or deaths.”

“But,” Rick cut in, “if a seance is not ended properly, the ghost can’t return. It’s stuck, lingering. Its presence starts affecting the surroundings, leaving psychometric impulses behind in objects or specific places.”

“Or actions,” Sofia grumbled.

Rick dipped his head, acknowledging her point. “Normally, all you have to do is finish the seance and the ghost will leave.”

“Normally,” Erika said, nodding along with the explanation. “That implies this situation isn’t normal.”

“Five summoning anchors in a pentagram,” Anna said. “Never seen anything like it. Did they try to summon five ghosts at once? You normally only need one.”

“Wedding rings, anniversary clock, photograph,” Rick pointed out. “Likely one of the two people pictured.”

“Counterpoint, children’s toy and party hat.” Anna took a pen from her pocket and pointed at the wedding bands, the plainer one in particular. Something was etched into the back. “Somehow, I doubt someone married in 1932 would have been celebrating 2022. Nor would they play with a plastic train.”

“Unless the rings were handed down.”

“Does it matter?” Erika cut in, a bit confused. “How do you end a seance properly? Just do that five times to be sure you’ve sent all five ghosts home.”

“You can only close a door once. I haven’t seen something like this in person,” Rick said as he moved his dousing rods over the ritual circle. They wiggled a little at some of the items around the pentagram, but not for others. “Everything I’ve read agrees that anomalies in rituals are… not good to mess with. We might end the seance and assume we’ve returned the ghosts to where they belong, only for four of them to sit around, lingering in this place, no longer able to return because we closed off the door back.”

Erika pushed off the table she had been leaning against, moved past Sofia, and crouched down between two of the pentagram’s points. Rick looked mildly alarmed that she was about to touch something, but calmed down when she kept her hands well to herself.

She touched enough spooky things for one night. No need to vomit up more of that tar.

Or worse, leak it from other orifices.

“How does a seance work normally? Not the ending, just the rest?”

Rick leaned forward, his eyes scanning the makeshift Ouija board and the surrounding items. “Establish a connection. Pentagrams are traditional ways to breach the boundaries of reality. I’m not sure why, they just are. Then you need an anchor—a way of calling a specific ghost, typically a physical object related to or important to whoever you’re trying to contact. No anchor means no ghost; if the pentagram is the door, the anchor is the knock.

“After that, there will typically be signs of the spirit’s presence. Wind in an enclosed space, whispers in the air, even levitating objects for a particularly active spirit.” Rick then focused on the Ouija board. “You generally get about five to ten questions before the ghost stops responding coherently. You call them out, and the spirit will answer using whatever medium you provide. Ouija board, in this case. I imagine whoever set this up asked a question, saw the planchette move on its own, and got spooked and ran away.”

“Alrighty then,” Erika said. “Does the summoner touch the planchette, and the ghost works through them, or does the ghost do it on its own?”

“It’s traditional to touch it.”

That didn’t answer Erika’s question at all. “If I touch this, how likely am I to vomit up more ectoplasm?”

Rick’s brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. “Objects inside the pentagram are protected from the entity…”

Erika raised an eyebrow. “You put objects inside the door and the ghost doesn’t bump into them on its way through?”

“It’s… just a metaphor…”

Erika wasn’t sure all this ghost business made a lot of logical sense. Then again, it was ghost business. But, as she stared at the circle and the makeshift Ouija board, an idea started percolating in the back of her mind. A better, certainly safer idea than invading the Old St. Patrick’s Church again.

Her eyes drifted around the room, watching as Rick and Anna discussed something with one another and Leslie as he stalked around with those various devices. Ghosts from beyond could answer questions, could they? Even questions the living person might not have known…

She leaned forward and touched her finger to the planchette, clearing her throat as she moved—it still felt a bit raw from earlier. “Ghost! Spirit? Whoever or whatever—”

“What are you doing?” hissed Rick.

“How many ghosts are with us tonight?” Erika continued, focused entirely on the upturned shot glass that served as the planchette. “How many of you are in this building?”

Erika waited, breath held. The others fell silent as well, all of them watching the old pizza box with the letters and numbers scrawled across it.

At first, nothing happened. Erika was ready to call the whole thing a bust. Not the ghost part—she believed that with what she had experienced downstairs—just the seance aspect.

Then the glass trembled. It jiggled beneath her finger, just a little, like someone else rested their hand on top. A short moment later, it slid across the pizza box, coming to a stop atop the scrawled number 2.

Erika let out her breath, drew in another one, and forced a smile onto her face. She wasn’t feeling ill, there were no visions, and she hadn’t vomited tar all over the floor. She had been a little nervous about that.

But now they had an answer.

“Better than five,” Erika said, pulling her hand back.

“Worse than one,” Anna said with a frown, looking over the anchors once again.

Rick ran a hand through his hair, breathing out a heavy sigh. “Please don’t do that again.”

“Alright, no more impromptu seances,” she agreed, though she couldn’t help but grin. Part of her was buzzing with the thrill of having communicated with something beyond the veil. She got what she wanted for now. A little test in an environment with people who would likely know how to help if something went wrong.

Catching a glimpse of Sofia made Erika lose her smile, wondering if her mouth and teeth were stained black like the poor woman’s face. The Spanish-speaking woman looked utterly miserable, hunched on the table as she was.

Standing as Anna and Rick engaged in a debate over what to do with the new information, Erika rounded the pentagram, approaching Sofia. She was fairly certain she had gotten a bead on the rest of the group.

Leslie was the muscle and likely the one with the most experience, even if he was less knowledgeable about the exact mechanics compared with Rick or Anna. He was kind, willing to offer aid, and strong enough to back that offer up. Despite being a conspiracy theorist, he could probably be relied upon in a pinch.

It was easy to see where some of Daniel’s personality came from.

Rick was the brains of the group. The one who spent long hours researching and compiling all they knew. He organized things, owned the van with all the equipment, and probably got very little sleep. He was also a bit jumpy, which might relate to his lack of sleep. Erika wondered if the thought of ghosts kept him up at night.

Similar to Rick, Anna knew things. If Rick’s assertion that Anna would want a sample of that sludge she had thrown up was any indicator, she was probably more practical in her knowledge. Erika hadn’t spoken to her much, and she wanted to talk more, though she was busy with her debate at the moment, but she seemed more the type to press forward and take more risks rather than fall back into Rick’s more cautious nature.

Then again, she had sat around for at least half an hour before Erika and the others had arrived.

They all seemed a bit hung up on Erika’s little question. But Rick had said, just then, that ghosts tended to know more than the living. It probably came from being on the… other side or whatever. The ghost busters might want to put ghosts back where they came from—for good reason, if they left traps lying about like that cursed whiskey bottle—but as long as the ghost was here, might as well make use of it.

At least in Erika’s opinion.

Then there was Sofia. She was new, she didn’t want to break into a church for religious reasons, and she could maybe sense spirits?

“Hey,” Erika said, sitting on the edge of the same table that Sofia was using. She pulled the very much not cursed bottle of bourbon from her coat pocket and set it on the table. “You look like you could use a little of this.”

Sofia stared, eyes boring into Erika. “Vaya tela,” she murmured with a shake of her head. “What are you, sixteen?”

“Seventeen,” Erika said, offended.

“No wonder, coming up to me with a stereotypical line like that.”

“If we’re talking stereotypes, you better cut back on the random Spanish phrases. Dios mío? Vaya tela? I’ve only known you for like an hour. At this rate, you’re going to be saying the same five lines every time we talk.”

Sofia glared, but she wasn’t able to maintain it for long. A small crack formed around the corner of her mouth. The woman quickly hid it, snatching the bottle off the table. She turned her glare onto its label. “This shit any good?”

“No idea. Used it for rinsing, not for enjoying.”

Sofia looked up, startled somewhat. Erika watched her brown eyes dart to her lips before a look of comprehension dawned. “Ah. You got got too, huh?”

“Wasn’t my favorite experience I’ve had. Not the worst either.”

“Not the worst? Really?”

“I didn’t say it was average,” Erika said with a small laugh. “Still rates somewhere above finding out that my mother has been replaced with some kind of creepy body snatcher that goes out and talks to nuns in front of a church at odd hours of the night.”

Sofia sucked in a breath. Or tried to. It was a bit difficult with the bottle at her lips. She ended up spraying a bit into the air, sputtering and coughing, in the process.

Talk about stereotypes, Erika thought to herself, mildly amused.

“No getting drunk around the paranormal,” Rick said, tone flat. He didn’t even look up from his work.

Sofia flipped a middle finger at him, not that he saw, as she calmed down from her spit-take. “You should be careful. The Church isn’t someone to mess with.”

Erika stiffened. All of a sudden, Erika stopped paying attention to Rick and Anna’s theories on how to send both ghosts back. She no longer cared that Leslie was slowly crossing the room to join them. Even the idea of the ghosts themselves fell by the wayside. Sofia had her full attention.

“They have power and resources that go beyond anything you can imagine,” Sofia continued, her voice a whisper that barely carried to Erika’s ears. “If you make an enemy of them, you will make an enemy of everyone. I might have played up a fear of God earlier, but no. God, if He exists, sits up in His clouds doing his best to ignore His creations. I’m much more worried about The Church. They’re the ones who will come after you.”

“You…”

“I mean, look at what the church lets their clergy get away with,” Sofia hissed in sudden anger. “Hundreds, maybe thousands of allegations every year for crimes ranging from sexual to tax evasion and the rare one that makes it to court gets off because they’re ‘upstanding members of the community who simply made a mistake’ or some bullshit.”

“Religion is the chains of the weak and the tools of the powerful,” Leslie said, coming up behind them.

The two fell into a bit of a rant about religion. Erika sat there, only half listening.

Her thoughts were on Sofia’s earlier words. Currently, it sounded like Sofia might have had a bad experience with some aspect of a church at some point. Not the kind of thing to ask about as someone who only just met her. But at the same time, for a moment there, Erika swore she heard The Church, not simply the church. The same The Church that had been in the emails to her false mother. The same The Church that Erika had snooped about and had a little fight with.

Did she know? Or was she just saying things?

Erika wanted to ask, but didn’t get a chance before Anna clapped her hands together.

“Alright,” Anna said, cutting the rant off as everyone looked back to the pentagram. “We’ve got our way forward.”

“Probably,” Rick said, not sounding all that happy.

His plan must have been shut down.

Anna continued, “We think we can end this seance safely by simply saying ‘Goodbye’ to the spirits, then removing the anchors. Usual seance ending.”

“If they were summoned as one, they’ll leave as one,” Rick said. There was a silent I hope that went unsaid.

Erika shot one last look at Sofia and decided she might try to bring up the topic of The Church later, preferably in private. For now, she turned back to the pentagram. “Why not ask the ghosts? I’m sure they’ve been listening. Just ask if the plan will work.”

“Erika,” Rick started, his tone mirroring that of a parent when about to engage in a lecture with a child. “Ghosts… Entities are a complete unknown, unbound by bodily needs or social contracts of us mortals. Their words cannot be trusted. Nothing about this seance enforces the truth. If they have goals and motivations of their own, they could feed us all kinds of bad information.”

That sounded fair enough. They were the experts and Erika wasn’t going to pretend like she knew better. At the same time, these guys were, as far as she could tell from her short experience with them, completely self-taught and figuring things out through trial and error. That meant their words couldn’t be taken as absolute fact.

“Alright, so we say goodbye?” Erika said, deciding to go along with their plan just to see what the standard protocol was. “How do we manage that?”

“Well…” Rick turned back to the pentagram and touched the planchette. He cleared his throat and spoke much louder, “Goodbye!”

The shot glass jiggled slightly, just as it had before, before sliding down to the bottom of the pizza box where GOODBYE was spelled out.

Rick and Leslie split off, both picking up some of the equipment Leslie had stationed around the room. They walked around, waving their tools about, checking to see if they could find remnants of the ghosts.

All the while, Erika was left staring at the pentagram, utterly bewildered.

“That was it?” she said. “All that yapping and all you had to do was say the word goodbye?”