06 – Haunted

Erika strolled into Varn’s Friday evening, glancing behind her every few steps for any sign of pursuers. Her eyes found every reflective surface, every glimmer of movement, and every flutter of white cloth. She slipped past the sparse crowd and, with nothing more than a wave to Daniel as he manned the arcade’s prize counter, barged into the back room. Glassware rattled on the table as she clapped her hands to its surface. Sofia, present for once, jolted back in surprise. Rick and Anna turned away from a bubbling chemistry set, both looking concerned.

Staring them down, focusing on Sofia, Erika drew a deep breath. “Do you sense anything off about me?”

Without missing a beat, Sofia leaned forward. “I thought you were weird since day one.”

“Yes, yes,” Erika rolled her eyes, ignoring Rick’s snorting laugh. “Very funny. Is there anything spooky about me? Ghosts,” she added before Sofia could come up with some other joke. “Use your psychic powers and scan me.”

“Is something wrong, Erika?” Anna asked, stepping closer.

“I think I picked up a hitchhiking ghost from the cemetery.”

Her admission wiped Rick’s smile off his face. “You didn’t mention this before?”

“I don’t know if I actually got a ghost or if I’m just imagining things. I keep seeing a little flicker of white in the corner of my eyes, but when I look, there is nothing there. I genuinely can’t tell if I’m haunted or not.” Erika looked to Sofia, arms crossed and eyebrow raised. Erika didn’t know what she wanted out of this. Reassurance? Confirmation that she wasn’t insane? Sofia seemed like her best bet. “So? Am I haunted?”

Sofia huffed, but closed her eyes and adopted a strained expression. Her eyebrow twitched, the corners of her lips tightened, and she kept twisting her head like she had a kink in her neck. Erika waited, patiently, watching in mild curiosity; none of the other times Sofia had sensed something involved straining.

“What can you tell me about your hitchhiker?” Rick asked, his voice a whisper to avoid disturbing Sofia’s concentration.

“I think it is the woman in white,” Erika said, matching his volume. “Not the one we got, but the other one, the one I first saw which led us to the clearing.”

“Women in white don’t haunt their targets,” Anna said with a shake of her head. “They lie in wait, like Venus fly traps.”

“They don’t target women, normally,” Rick added, shooting a worried glance at Anna.

Erika folded her arms, glowering at nothing in particular. She had heard all that before, yet here she was, targeted by a ghostly woman in white. It reminded her that, for all she liked The Hunters, they were amateurs. They cobbled together everything they knew from nothing and scraped along the best they could.

Anna raided the cabinets and armed Rick with an EMF reader and some metal baton. He promptly got to work, waving them around Erika. The EMF reader swept past her face so close that Erika could feel the hum of static off the casing.

Frowning at the lack of response from the EMF reader, Rick switched to the baton. He started at her head, swishing it back and forth. It hummed at her earrings, but Rick moved on without pause, sweeping it down her chest.

Erika grimaced in irritation, tapping her foot impatiently—it reminded her of high school when a former teacher suspected her of having knives and called the cops on her. She restrained herself from breaking Rick’s metal detector like she had broken the cop’s wand.

Both of them jolted as the detector squealed when he waved it past her wrist. Heart rate spiking, it took a second to realize what happened. “My watch,” she said, pulling back her sleeve just in time to catch a spritz of holy water in the face. “Thanks,” she said, tone flat.

“Sorry. Can’t ever be too quick on the draw,” Rick said, offering a half smile.

Erika ran her hand down her face, flicking the droplets at him with a snap of her wrist.

“Sorry,” he said again.

Anna pointed a thermometer at various places in the room, scanning, then checking, then humming before repeating the process. As she searched for cold spots, she asked, “Does it show up at random, or in the same specific spots? Any times of day that you see it more often than others?”

“What about around people?” Rick asked, frowning as his EMF reader didn’t even budge. “Do you see it when alone or around others or does it not matter?”

“Random locations, but always from afar. The closest I saw was outside my bedroom window, peering over the top of the neighbor’s roof. I ran out, tried to chase it down, but it was gone before the chase could even start. I’ve seen it both day and night. It doesn’t seem to care if people are around or not.”

“We could try an exorcism?” Anna asked. “A generic one.”

Rick turned a glare on her. “Please no. I just had the floor cleaned.”

“Tibetan gutor?”

“Wrong time of year for a cleansing ceremony.”

Anna considered, brow furrowed in thought. “Yajna?”

“And burn down the whole block?”

Erika shifted, starting to get a little nervous over their suggestions.

Anna rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “We wouldn’t do it here—”

Sofia sucked in a sharp breath, eyes snapping open. She stared around, dazed and delirious, before her wide eyes focused on Erika.

All three stared at her, waiting and expectant. “Well?” Anna prompted.

Sofia shook her head, bracing herself against the table from the sudden dizzy motion. She opened her mouth, but only coughed a bit of dry rasp out, like she had just woken from a groggy nap. Holding up one finger, she grasped a glass and swished a mouthful of water in her mouth, swallowing a moment after. Offering a sorry shrug, she said, “I got nothing.”

Erika blinked, hopes sinking. “What do you mean, you got nothing?” She glowered at the woman, feeling defensive. “I’m not lying.”

“¡Sáquenme de aquí! No te llamé mentirosa,” Sofia muttered under her breath. “You’re the one who said you couldn’t even tell if you were haunted or not!”

Erika pursed her lips, unable to reject that.

Sofia took the silence as a victory, smiling as she asked, “Do you see a ghost at this very moment?”

“No…”

“Then I’m not gonna sense anything, now am I?”

“That’s…” Rick started, but trailed off to glance at Anna. Only after getting a shrug from her did he start over. “That’s not entirely accurate.”

“Oh? You know how I sense things better than I do now?”

“I didn’t say that, but if Erika is being haunted, she should have some evidence on her,” he said, frowning at the inert devices in his hands. “Could it be a location-based haunting? Somewhere you keep visiting and seeing the ghost?”

“Not location-based,” Erika rejected immediately. “I’ve seen it at the graveyard, here, through my window at home, behind the arcade, and while I was restocking my storage shed. Maybe a few other places too.”

“Then a fetter you inadvertently picked up, but aren’t carrying at the moment?”

Erika stopped to consider his question, digging her hands into her pockets.

She couldn’t recall picking up anything at the graveyard, and she felt no foreign objects on her person. Just her phone, her watch, and her clothes. This jacket wasn’t even the jacket she took, since that one ended up lost.

“I guess it is possible some rock or a small bone fragment fell into my boot and I’ve been lugging it around unknowingly.” She glanced down at a stylish pair of buckle-covered lugs. They were not the same boots she had worn to the cemetery, but she couldn’t recall whether or not she had been wearing those boots at the times when she had seen the ghost.

“We might have to backtrack everywhere you’ve been to try to find this thing,” Rick said with a sigh.

“Assuming it is even real,” Sofia grumbled.

Erika glared, but didn’t gratify Sofia with a response. “We’re in luck,” she said to Rick. “I saw it on the way here, just before I pulled into the parking lot. So if it is haunting a thing and not me, that thing isn’t far.”

“You drove here?” Anna asked. “Maybe something in your car.”

Erika snorted. “I took your van to the graveyard, not the car. That said, the car is an old junker. Maybe it is haunted…” She trailed off, watching as the mood in the room shifted.

All three froze. Anna’s eyes widened. Rick lowered his EMF reader. Even Sofia’s annoyed facade cracked for half a second. Almost in unison, they turned to face each other with identical hums of understanding.

“A stigmatized car?”

“It fits,” Rick nodded, then looked to Erika. “Do you have any car history reports? Did someone die in that car?”

“Let’s go take a look,” Anna said, gathering up all the tools they had spent the last few minutes waving around Erika.

Erika followed along in the rear, not convinced despite having been the one to say it. She meant it as a joke. There couldn’t be many haunted cars out there, so the odds that she, someone associated with ghost hunters, just so happened to buy a vehicle with a hitchhiking ghost felt too extreme to be true.

Daniel jumped from the stool behind the prize counter the moment the door opened, watching as the senior members of their troupe hurried out the back door. He stopped Erika, hand brushing her elbow, with wide, worried eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“Eh,” Erika grunted with a shrug. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“Should we send people home?”

Erika cast a glance around the arcade; a little tablet behind the counter cycled through cameras, showing blind spots further from the counter. True to her expectations, the popularity of Varn’s waned past the opening night. She counted up a mere six people on a Friday, although that number did surprise her with how tomorrow was Valentine’s day. Most people she knew weren’t about to spend a prime date night in an arcade.

“If there is something spooky around, it is outside,” Erika said. “Better let them run around here while The Hunters check things out. I’m sure Rick will send them away if he senses danger.”

Reassured, Daniel nodded, sinking back onto the stool. “You’ll shout if something interesting is going on?”

“And call you outside?” Erika grinned, teasing in her tone. “Nope,” she said, rounding the counter. “You are stuck on register duty, my friend.”

Erika laughed off his glare, hurrying outside to catch up with the others.

Anna circled the car like a buzzard, tools in her spread arms waving around the roof as if she were flapping her wings. Rick, inside the car despite her having locked the doors, tapped a tuning fork against the steering wheel, dashboard, stick shift, and anything else that stuck out. Off to the side, Sofia leaned against the old brick of the arcade, eyes closed and presumably trying to sense something.

“Find anything yet?” Erika called out as she approached.

The EMF reader in Anna’s hand buzzed at level three, halfway to its max, as Erika called out. She froze, holding it in place, watching the little amber light. When it didn’t fluctuate, she moved it left, waiting until the light dropped to the second position, then back to where it was before, which lit up to a steady three once again.

“Should I be worried?” Erika asked, raising an eyebrow.

Anna swept it back and forth a few more times, checking the consistency of the beeping, before shaking her head. “I’ve never seen a steady light from a ghost. They’re always flickering or maxing it out.”

“Antenna,” Rick pointed out. Popping the door ajar, he scooted out. “I’ve got a few dissonant resonances here, but nothing that screams ghost. We haven’t been able to get in the trunk.”

“Ah, yeah. Previous owner said it jammed twenty years ago.” Erika glared at the rear of the vehicle. “I figured I could break it open if I needed. Want me to?”

Rick jolted in shock, gripping the steering wheel as he leaned further out. “You didn’t check for bodies?”

“Uh… no?” Erika shook her head, exasperated, then rounded Anna to reach the trunk. Pulling her bobby pin out, she stared at it and sighed.

Every use meant she had to go dump the ripples. She had gotten better about not smashing things out of habit, but instinct forced her hand every now and again. Tonight, she had managed to keep her hands to herself so far, and this didn’t feel worth ruining that streak.

This didn’t feel like an emergency.

“I think I would have smelled a rotted corpse,” Erika said, stalling.

“Not if it decayed twenty years ago,” Rick said, stepping around the rear of the car.

“Doesn’t have to be a body either,” Anna added. “Could be a chip of a tombstone, a lone skull, or a poppet with someone’s hair tied around its neck.”

“Fine.” Clicking her tongue in annoyance, Erika jammed the bobby pin into the keyhole and wrenched her wrist off to one side. The latch disengaged with a grinding thunk, dumping a dusting of fresh rust through a small crack in the car’s body. Erika slammed her palm up against the underside of the trunk, earning another loud grinding noise, before the entire rear popped open.

Erika clamped a hand over her nose, stifling a cough as a dusty musk wafted out into the open air.

“Ugh.” Rick backed away, tugging up the side of his Hawaiian shirt over his mouth and nose.

Black coated the inside of the trunk, absorbing every scrap of light except for a faint sheen of highlights on irregular edges. An old cross-shaped tire iron, rusted completely through, jutted up, resting against the edge of the opening. One head had sheared off completely, leaving fresh metal visible beneath—likely broken by Erika just now.

“Ectoplasm?” Erika said, backing further away.

Anna slowly shook her head, peering inside, but visibly breathing as little as possible. “Worse. Mold.”

Sofia, still well and away from the car, kicked off the wall with a low chuckle. “Want me to grab the blessed bleach?”

“Get the gasoline,” Rick grumbled. “You shouldn’t be driving this car.”

“I know,” Erika hissed. “I said I would get a different vehicle, but cheap cars don’t exactly grow on trees. I miss my poor truck.”

“Maybe we can pick it up when we go fight this Carrion Eater.”

“Yeah right, like it’ll—”

Erika froze solid, staring at her car. She didn’t dare flick her eyes to the side, because she could see it. A strange white column nestled between buildings behind the arcade, billowing like fabric, faint but present at the very far edge of her vision. She couldn’t focus on it for fear of it vanishing again, but she could still see the blurry and indistinct person.

Slowly, carefully, ignoring the worried looks from the others, Erika reached into her pocket and pulled out the spray bottle of holy water from where they left it on the office table. As soon as it was fully in her hands, Erika whispered, “I see it.”

As soon as she spoke, the figure at the edge of her vision fluttered.

Erika wasn’t about to let it get away again. She bolted after it, keeping her eyes on the ground and off the figure in the distance. If she didn’t look at it, maybe it would stay.

It didn’t. Gone the instant she moved, Erika kept running anyway, boots hammering the pavement in the hopes that it might have left some evidence behind. A cold spot, a flicker on the EMF, or anything would prove that she wasn’t just imagining things.

She started to slow where she thought she saw it, only to catch another glimmer of white at the edge of her vision once again. Erika’s boots pounded against the ground as she dashed under the elevated tracks and behind one of the old tattoo parlors on the street. She turned again at another glimmer, and plowed straight into someone standing in the middle of the alley.

Arms wrapped around her; they felt unintentional, but panic and instinct made Erika break out of the grapple. She stepped back, tense and ready to fight, then raised an eyebrow at the woman in front of her.

The Stalker stood, looking surprised, wearing a thin white dress. An upper body harness, strapped around her breasts and waist, held it tight to her body while emphasizing her assets. Knee-high stripper boots were a new addition to The Stalker’s attire, revealing a thin strip of bare skin between their tops and the bottom of the short white skirt of the dress.

Erika narrowed her eyes, confused now. The boots and the black leather harness didn’t quite fit with what Erika thought she saw, but the stringy black hair and white dress felt like too much of a coincidence.

Stepping back, Erika glanced around, both to check for anything else around and to check out The Stalker with the corner of her vision, just to see if she matched, but it was hard to tell with her so close. Finding nothing conclusive in either direction, Erika scowled at The Stalker.

Actually, Erika thought with a frown, stringy hair doesn’t quite fit. The Stalker’s hair looked unusually glossy and… healthy. Erika wouldn’t call it lush, but it was a far cry from her usual appearance. Now that she was looking, The Stalker’s skin looked healthier too, not all dried out; her lips weren’t cracked, and the bloodshot veins in her eyes looked a little less prominent.

Aside from her intense stare and strip club attire, The Stalker looked mostly normal.

“Agent?” The Stalker said, finally breaking eye contact. Her eyes shimmered violet with her power, going wide as she scanned around. “Is something wrong?”

“Were you at the arcade just a moment ago?”

“No?” The shimmer in The Stalker’s eyes died out. “How did you know I was here?”

Erika narrowed her eyes, searching The Stalker’s face for any sign that she was lying. She was a brash, somewhat crude woman, who didn’t seem the type to lie, but Erika couldn’t shake that niggle of coincidental suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you, but then you started running to me…”

Flicking her eyes to The Stalker’s hands, Erika withheld a sigh of relief. Twice now, The Stalker had aimed her revolver at Erika, both times over misplaced suspicion, but a pattern was a pattern. With no weapon this time, it looked like more of a social call than her getting mad over some nonsense with The Hanged Man again.

“Damn.” Erika straightened her back and shook off some of her tension. “You didn’t happen to see a ghost around? One that dresses like you, a little?”

“Uh…”

Rick and Anna sprinted around the corner before The Stalker could answer, though the confusion on her face left that answer plain even unspoken. Rick promptly slid in front of Erika, taking up a defensive stance, though his sword was still in its cardboard tube. Anna just cocked her head.

“The Stalker?”

“Hunters,” The Stalker replied, tone far cooler than she had used when talking to Erika.

“Are you…” Anna turned to Erika. “Is she…?”

“I have no idea,” Erika said honestly. The Stalker couldn’t have been the one following her around the graveyard, but tonight? She couldn’t say. “What are you doing here? Did something happen with The Puppet?”

“No, everything’s fine. The Warrior’s new armaments are on schedule and everything. I was just…” Her eyes flicked to Rick and Anna before her mood shifted, stalking toward Erika aloof and uncaring of their presence. “I wanted to know if you were doing anything tomorrow,” she said, eyes boring into Erika.

“Yeah… I’ve got a big meeting with The Eclipse. We’re hoping to—”

The Stalker’s mood plummeted, both visible on her face and audible through the grinding of her teeth. “Always the fucking Eclipse,” she hissed. “Fuck!” A crackle of static wrapped around her body, freezing her, before the lingering clone dispersed as The Stalker teleported away.

Erika, left with just The Hunters in the alley, slowly glanced around to make sure they were well and truly alone. “What the fuck was that about?”

“What’s going on tomorrow?” Rick asked, scratching his head. “The Warrior has my number, she would have called if something was up.”

“Same. She said the bullets were on schedule, so nothing bad has happened—”

“Was she your ghost?”

“I… don’t think so…”

Anna shook her head, turning back toward the arcade. “I expect this from Rick—he’s an idiot—”

“Hey…”

“But Erika too? What is the youth coming to?” Anna chuckled as she walked off. “Probably for the best. She’s a psycho.”

Erika’s face scrunched up. “What?” she asked, glancing to Rick, but he was as clueless as she was. “What.”