"What are those ghosts anyway?" Rebecca mused while munching on a sandwich.

Mike sat beside her, and drew a little item from his pocket."Maybe...lost Christian souls or something. Doomed to wander the earth, we need to find a priest or something. "

"Mike, we're not going with the Christian concept of ghosts — No one here is Christian, remember?" Devian said, and ripped half the toast from her sandwich, the bitch. His name didn't rhyme with deviant for nothing.

Mike nodded, and lit what turned out to be a blunt. "Right, I'm an atheist now, and Rebecca is Jewish as hell — forgot."

Devian looked concerned at Mike's sudden newfound amnesia.

"....Maybe you should stop chain-smoking blunts," he said like the preppy goody two shoes he was.

Mike gave him the middle finger and inhaled. Because he was punk that way. "Maybe you should go fuck yourself. "

Devian cocked a brow, sly smile in place."Maybe I will."

"Ew."

Rebecca stood, rest of the sandwich in hand, and approached a ghost. If she joined in the banter they would bicker the whole day, and something about the tingling in her stomach told her they didn't have that time.

"Everyone concentrate, if we wanna know how to get the ghost out of me we first have to understand how they work." She crouched to eye level with a ghost, turquoise pink hair falling in her face. The catlike ghost eyed her dripping egg salad sandwich with a quiver.

"Seems like they like egg salad," Devian said, keeping a safe distance.

"Which means they're their own living organisms, something dead wouldn't need nutrients. They're just somehow— " She reached out, and her hand went through the ghost. The ghost arched its back and booked it. "Somehow not quite as atomically firmly fixed as we are. It's like they're only partially there. Stuck between states."

"Schrödinger's ghost," Devian said. "It's a cat and a horrifying supernatural being at the same time."

Mike nodded grimly in agreement. Took another obnoxious drag. Devian swatted the blunt from his hand.

Rebecca bit back an exasperated sigh. "We need to talk to Mike's weird esoteric aunt, we're at an impasse on our own as far as I can tell, and she's been researching this stuff for years so she might have some insight we've missed."

Mike frowned. Put a hand up. "Wait, wait, wait — I have an aunt?"

"Maybe you really should cut down on the weed." She shot him a flat look. "Anyway, if we're lucky we can call an uber, everyone rack up the money. "

They piled about 20 bucks in one-dollar bills.

Rebecca grimaced. "Good enough."

Part of her was glad they probably wouldn't make it back here on their own, the school was creepy as fuck. But considering the blood she could taste at the back of her throat from something squirming in her guts, unraveling the ghost mystery was in their best interests.

"Come on then," she said. And the boys did.

After an embarrassing ride filled with handing over a bag of one-dollar bills, and the uber driver questioning their life choices — they made it to a shed that looked like a glorified garage.

Mike's aunt responded after the 6th knock, grease-stained hand waving them in without taking a glance at their faces.

A wide space opened before them, filled with machinery Rebecca could only vaguely guesstimate the purpose of and what looked like Geiger counters and pieces of weapons.

Mike's aunt bend over one of these weapons on a counter, screwing in silence.

Devian glanced at the water blaster looking thing on the counter like it was gonna bite them, and kept Mike from going closer. Mike himself didn't seem any less queasy.

"I'll be honest I didn't expect the prodigal nephew to return," she shot them a quicksilver smile over her shoulder after a minute. "After ya hit ya head last time while calibrating the dark energy trace counter I figured ya forgot about little ol' me."

Her smile was kind, despite being teasing, no comparison to the watery grimace Mike returned. The only thing Mike had in common with his aunt was the potato nose, everything else, Mike's blue mohawk, his shoes and jacket with way too many buckles to be reasonable or functional — was replaced with big brown eyes surrounded by smiling lines, conventional short hair, and a dirtied up overral. She looked almost obnoxiously normal besides their little makeshift group.

"Yeah, ya know," Mike gestured vaguely. Shuffled his feet. Then fell silent. "Yeah."

"What he's trying to say—" Rebecca injected and elbowed Mike. "Is that he's terribly sorry but we've been really stressed and busy with this weird ghost plague going around."

She stilled.

Rebecca could tell they really caught her attention now.

Mike's Aunt leaned back, gaze sharp. "Do tell."

And so they recounted their adventures, up until the point when a beam of white light hit Rebecca and one of the ghosts went inside her.

"It was like straight from an exorcism themed movie, total batshit," Mike said.

"Highkey terrifying," Devian agreed.

"Do you know what could have caused that, the ghosts, the light?" Rebecca cut through the bullshit.

"Hm," Aunt hummed thoughtfully. Tinkered with a screw. "The beam might have been a light phenomenon caused by the pathway thinning."

"The pathway?"

"Yes," Aunt said. "A pathway between the physical and the metaphysical plane, I waited years for it to thin to this point, prepared myself, kept track of the energies like a woman possessed these last few weeks. Just for the peak—"

Something peeped, louder than a siren, and Rebecca's hearing almost cut out.

"What the fuck—"

Aunt gasped and ran to the Geiger counter looking thing, eyes wide as she rapidly pressed buttons. Reading flashing results.

She yelled and threw a fist in the air. "Hell yeah!"

"What just happened? "

Aunt twisted around, eyes wild and grin giddy. "The energy peaked, the planes are merging, this is the only chance to cross over and clear up your ghost problem."

"How, where?" Devian injected, "We won't have to meditate for this, right?"

"No. The pathway is located where human minds wander over to the other plane the most, excessive day-dreaming, disturbing the normal balance — where else than your school's roof could it be? That's how the ghosts got in, through the wall cracks like mice."

"We should have left the life traps out after all," Mike murmured. Devian nodded sagely.

"Stop messing around," Rebecca said, turned to Aunt. "So how?"

"Oh I prepared proper machinery for years for this," She swung a closet going to the ceiling wide open. Rows and rows of blasters hung from all sides and a giant door stood in the middle. "Once disassembled and assembled again we will easily cross planes through the door, but it has to happen by your school and it has to happen now."

"What kind of Danny Phantom bullshit is this," Mike breathed.

"Hey, no Butch Hartman references in this household."

"Sorry ma'am, grew up with it."

"So did most people with Harry Potter, and look how that turned out." She snorted.

"Death of the author?" Mike proposed meekly.

Aunt grinned, flashing a fang, and removed the safety of a giant ghost blaster.

"Death of the ghosts, my boy."

Once Aunt drove them to school what greeted them was an image out of an apocalypse flick. Half of the school was flickering in and out of existence, glitching, and returning shaped wrong moments later.

Rebecca twisted her striped arm warmers, anxiety now finally taking as much hold of it as it did the others. The taste of blood at the back of her throat seemed so much stronger now.

They carried the parts of the door up the wing of the school that seemed still semi existent, but shadows followed them from every corner. And after they assembled the door on the roof, the green-tinted sky grinned at them with a hundred faces.

Rebecca stared at the door. Wondering what the hell they were about to do.

"In for a penny in for a pound, right?" she whispered.

The boys returned her watery smile and took her hands in theirs.

"Cross your heart and hope to die-" Devian said.

"- and other cliche phrases." Mike finished.

Rebecca's smile twisted. "I'd rather we won't."

The machine made a whrilling noise. Aunt gave them thumbs up.

Rebecca took a deep breath. The door opened.

They stepped through the doorway.

And something quivered inside her. Something that hungered for egg salad. 

---

Written by selen, vamp by night, idiot by dayhttp://selenthediscountvamp.tumblr.com/