Paranormal Activities Unit

by Chris Slusser

Chapter 6

  Will and Emily drove around the convenience store another time, looking for suspicious activity going on around it. They were still soaking wet and made squishing noises every time they moved.

  "I think that's it," Emily whispered. "We have to go in."

  "We can't go in. We're sopping wet. How will we explain ourselves?" he whispered back.

  "Maybe they won't notice," Emily said quietly. "Maybe they are busy being attacked by a freezialmort... why are we whispering?"

  Will shook his head at her. He parked the car and they got out. They walked to the convenience store entrance in their soggy clothes, leaving wet footprints behind them, and went inside.

  Nothing was going on inside. Nothing supernatural. Not even another customer besides them. The cashier looked up from his magazine and gave them a curious look.

  "Uh," Will said.

  "It's raining cats and dogs out there," Emily said, and started brushing the water off her clothes. "Whew!"

  The clerk glanced out the window. "I don't think it's raining." He checked another window, and gave them another weird look.

  "Oh, it must have stopped," Emily said, and sloshed toward the candy rack. She and Will just stood near the counter, looking at candy, glancing at the magazines, never touching anything or intending to buy anything.

  "Can I help you with something?" The man said finally.

  "No, no, thank you," Emily said. "We're just waiting for a friend." She smiled.

  He looked at them warily, then went back to his magazine. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, had dark blond hair and a mustache.

  Nothing at all happened for several minutes. A clock ticked loudly on the wall. They could hear the buzz of various machines. Slush-maker, etc. Then the bing bong of the customer bell rang as someone walked into the store. It was Henry.

  He stopped right in front of them and looked like he was trying to place them. Then the light dawned and he pointed at them and was about to speak.

  "Henry!" Will said boisterously and put an arm around him. Henry looked surprised that Will knew his name, and even more surprised that he had slapped his wet arm around him. "Let's go outside, shall we?" Will said, "I want to have a word with you."

  He led Henry outside and around to the side of the building, the side facing the alley. Unfortunately, he seemed to be unaware he had stopped just outside a tinted window. Emily watched with a fake look of disinterest as Will put his arm around Henry again and pulled out the tranquilizer gun and shot him, then wrestled him to the ground as Henry leaned into him in a dead faint. The clerk's back was to this the whole time. Will popped back up and noticed the window. He looked horrified. He met eyes with his wife who was giving him a stern glare. He immediately popped right back down to the ground and out of sight to finish erasing Henry's memory.

  A few minutes later, Will walked back in, "Phew! Brisk night out there," he said to the clerk.

  The clerk said, "What happened to your friend?"

  "Oh, he just wanted directions," Will said.

  Will smiled at the clerk and led Emily by the elbow toward the back of the store. "I think we might have to buy something or look like we have business here. This guy is getting suspicious."

  "I could eat," Emily said. She went over to the hot dog self serve station and began putting together a meal. Will did the same.

  They each got a pop and put their money on the counter, and then sat at the round plastic table in the food area of the store. Partly out of sight from the clerk.

  "So, where's the unnatural weirdness?" Emily whispered.

  Will shrugged.

  "And how come," Emily continued quietly, "this alarm thing doesn't go off constantly? Or continuously? I mean Henry must have been possessed for a while. And that swamp monster didn't just pop out of a tear minutes before we got to him. That werewolf guy has probably been a werewolf for months. Or at least ever since it got dark tonight. So, what's up with that?"

  Will pondered this seriously as he chewed. "I don't know," he said finally. He scrambled to find the book.

  He shuffled through it as Emily leaned over to look over his shoulder and read.

  "Ooo, maybe here," he said excitedly, pointing to the page. He read aloud, "'The Paranormal Activity Alarm prioritizes threats and alerts to the worst cases first.' A-ha," Will said. "It also spaces the alarms to go off at intervals. Somewhere between 45 minutes to 2 hours. Seems kind of random." He frowned. "'If you want to find the next paranormal anomaly, you may switch the 'Manual Override' switch to force the alarm to sound an alert for the next case, and show you its GPS position.'"

  "Hmm," Emily said, interested.

  Will looked at her, "Hey, your hair's starting to dry around the edges."

  "Excellent," Emily said.

  They sat at the table a while longer, reading the book, eating snack cakes, and glancing around for paranormal activity. They sat there long enough for their clothes to become damp instead of soggy. And their hair almost completely dry.

  Emily casually glanced down the aisle at the counter to see what the clerk was doing. He folded his magazine in half, put it in his back pocket, stretched his arms in the air while he yawned, and then casually walked through the counter and disappeared into thin air.

  Emily leaped out of her chair so fast she knocked it over. It startled the hell out of Will and he jumped up too. He pounded his sternum once or twice to dislodge some misguided snack cake. He coughed and then swallowed again the right way.

  "What?" he croaked out.

  "The clerk is the paranormal thing!" Emily exclaimed.

  "What?!" Will asked in a stage whisper.

  "It's okay, he's gone," Emily said, jumping up and down. "He's a ghost. He just walked through the counter and disappeared."

  Will's eyes got wide and he walked quickly to the front of the store. He looked left and right, no sign of the clerk.

  "Where's the shoe horn?" he said.

  Emily ran back to the table to get it. She flipped it on and turned on the tear revealing light. Sure enough, right in front of the counter was a big old tear. It glowed white limey green in the haze of Veil Sealer light.

  "Holy crap," Will said, "Right in front of us the whole time." He looked amazed.

  Emily was in awe too. "I guess we should seal it up or something?" she asked, trying to remember the drill. "Oh," she said, "We have to do a count for life forms first." She messed with the settings again, "In a 30 foot radius range, let's say..." But just then, the ghostly clerk came back through the tear, and brought about 20 friends with him. It looked like a dead frat party about to happen.

  "Ugh," Emily said.

  "Oh, no no, I don't think so," Will said to the dead party boys. "Hop right back there inside the afterlife."

  They ignored him. One of them even carried a ghost keg of beer. "I don't know how they're going to drink that," Emily said.

  "How do we make them go back in?" Will asked, confused. He started paging through the pocket guide again.

  "'Ghosts'," he read. "Okay, they like sparkly things, and jingly tinkling little noises."

  "What?" Emily asked.

  "Yes," Will said, "wave your keys at them or something and see if they come."

  Emily rolled her eyes, but did what Will asked. She got out her keys and shook them at the ghosts. They turned around and kind of started to look entranced. "Oh, my God, it's working," Emily said.

  "Here," Will handed her a handful of cat collars with bells from a nearby rack. She jingled those too. The ghosts started to come towards her. He grabbed a sparkly fourth of July hat off the shelf and started waving it at the ghosts too. They came towards them as if mesmerized.

  "Toward the tear!" Will reminded her. She shifted over to lead them through the tear.

  "This is so stupid," she said. "They look like grown ups. Why are they falling for this?"

  "I have no idea," Will said.

  "Maybe they're extra stupid
or something," Emily said helpfully.

  Will read more from the book as he waved the sparkly hat around. "No, it says here it works on all ghosts. Or most ghosts."

  "'Most'? Yeeks," Emily said.

  One by one they faded into the tear. "Quick!" Will said. "Seal it!"

  Emily ran around to the other side of the tear. Will joined her. They looked at the Veil Sealer, and switched its settings to seal the tear. Then Will read the instructions from the book. "'Start with the bottom of the tear and make sure you have the edge of it in the sealer. Then press the 'Seal' button and slowly move the sealer upward. It should close the tear as if you are zipping up a zipper. When the tear is sealed it will disappear from view.'"

  Emily did as she was told and slowly zipped the tear up with the sealer. "Oo, it moves around like real fabric, I can feel it." She was a little grossed out by this for some reason. She didn't want to feel anything ghostly. When she got to the top of the tear, the whole thing disappeared, just like the book said it would. "Hey," she said happily.

  She turned the sealer off, and turned around to go get the backpack. Will turned with her, both smiling. Their smiles immediately faded as they saw what had been behind them for God knows how long.

  An entire team of junior high soccer girls stood behind them in green and yellow uniforms, eyes wide, in a daze, mouths open. An old gray haired man with a pot belly and a baseball cap who must be their coach stood with them, equally amazed. Their green and yellow team bus stood big, bright and shiny just outside the door behind them. How had Will and Emily missed all this?

  Wearily Will picked up the backpack from the floor and dug through it for the tranquilizer gun and memory eraser. Emily thumbed through the book. Her eyes lit up, and she handed the book to Will and pointed to a section.

  He nodded, with a happy expression of discovery on his face. Emily was digging through the bag now. She pulled out two little folded packages and handed one to Will. The team just watched them do this.

  Em and Will each unfolded a frighteningly solid looking gas mask and put them on. Then Emily pulled out of the bag what looked like a little gray ball a cat had chewed on too much. She pulled a white string from it, and dropped it onto the ground. The girls and the coach watched it drop. Then they all swooned slowly and went down to the ground in a comfortable heap of sleeping people.

  Emily then took the memory eraser and held it up. Will looked for a particular release on the side and unlatched it. Suddenly little antennas popped out of each side of the eraser. Expanding the range. They both stood well behind it as they set it to erase memories en masse. In a few minutes all memory of the paranormal events in the store had been erased from the girls' and coach's minds. They folded up the antennas and took off their gas masks.

  "Batch mode," Will said happily. Emily let out a little laugh. She put all their stuff back in the bag and put it over her shoulder. They started to walk towards the door, climbing over sleeping girls, when the customer bell went off again. They looked up. Henry.

  "You two," he said.

  "Henry!" Will said happily, and pulled out his tranquilizer gun and shot him. Emily handed Will a memory eraser, and went to wander the store.

  "Hey, Will," Emily said.

  "Yeah?" he said, concentrating on the memory eraser screen.

  "Where's the real cashier of this store?"

  He popped his head up to look at her, puzzled too. "I don't know."

  Emily wandered back behind the counter to check things out. "Well, here he is," she said, surprised.

  The real clerk was a young skinny twenty-something guy with short brown hair. He was lying on the floor curled up happily, with a smile on his face, snoozing away. He had sand sprinkled on and around him.

  "But—pahah," Emily said.

  "What?" Will came around the counter to join her. They both looked down at the man.

  "Does it not look like he's had a visit from the Sandman?" Emily asked, bewildered.

  "Yes," Will said. "We don't have to hunt the Sandman now do we?" he asked wearily.

  She shuffled through the book once again. "No," she said, equally weary. "He's too hard to catch. If you don't catch him in the act, you may as well not bother." She closed the book. "Good," she said. "’Cause I am exhausted."

  "At least we're all dry now," Will said sleepily as he helped her over girls lying on the floor.

  "Yes," Emily said with a yawn. "You know, I don't remember this much bizarre stuff happening before. Or at all. Especially not in one day," she said. "Has this stuff always been going on and we just didn't know about it?"

  "I don't know." He shook his head as they stood just inside the convenience store door, where Henry slept soundly behind them.

  Emily suddenly gasped as a new thought hit her. "You don't think we've ever had our memories erased. Do you?" She asked in a childlike whisper.

  They both looked horrified by the thought, and pondered it for a moment. Then they looked at each other and shook their heads, "Nah..."

  One of the girls started to stir behind them, tossing and turning in her drug-induced sleep. Probably about to wake. They hurried out the door and out to their car. Finally bound for home. They hoped.