Bring on the Poltergeists

by T Paulin

  “You were fighting over that thing?” Eli leaned forward to take a closer look at the miniature gun. “I thought you were talking about a video game.”

  “He said I’d accidentally shoot myself with it.”

  “With a cigarette lighter?”

  “You think I’d wrestle that smelly buttwad over a cigarette lighter? Some of his dank breath went straight up my nose. My taste buds won’t be the same for days.” He turned the shiny object so that it glinted in the sunshine. “This is the real deal.”

  “A real gun?” Eli asked. “Is it loaded?”

  “Not with bullets. And, technically, it’s not a gun, exactly. More like a delivery system. Watch what it does to these garden seedlings.”

  Eli took a step back and cast a guilty look around the room. He had let himself into someone else’s family home to hunt down alleged poltergeists, and he wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure it was even the right house. They should have been proceeding with caution, not shooting innocent houseplants.

  Khan aimed carefully, holding the comically-small gun as if it were a deadly weapon.

  “Three,” he said, “Two… and—”

  Chapter Eight

  Khan pulled the trigger.

  The room flashed with a dazzling light so bright and strangely illuminating, it gave Eli the gift of super-sight.

  Now he could see straight through the family’s square, clean-lined sofa cushions, to the change that had fallen between the cracks: one quarter and two dimes.

  His vision took him even further, through the floorboards, down to the crawlspace beneath the house. A raccoon slumbered there, curled up like a cat. She was expecting a litter of three, not yet born.

  Eli blinked and blinked. The raccoon stirred in her sleep, lifted her head, and seemed to look right at him.

  The floorboards came back, then the frame of the couch, the change beneath the seats, the cushions and pillows, and the whole living room. Eli’s vision was back to normal. There must have been a sound with the blast, because his ears were ringing now.

  Khan said excitedly, “Look, look. You’re missing it.”

  Missing what? There was more? More than seeing through walls and into living things? Eli wheeled around, still blinking rapidly.

  The plants, which had been tiny seedlings no more than an inch tall, were already a foot high, and growing like they were on a time-lapse video. Tendrils snaked out, budded, and burst with pale green leaves.

  Khan whooped with joy and quickly added more water to the pots.

  The growth was soundless, which made Eli wonder if he was imagining this—hallucinating. He reached out to touch a leaf, and a vine wrapped itself around his finger. The growing plant whipped its way up his arm.

  “Gah,” Eli said.

  “It likes you.”

  The plant continued to grow, its speed increasing. The vine tickled as it passed under his armpit, then looped around his neck and chin.

  Eli meant to say, Khan, should I do something? Is this plant about to murder and eat me? Instead, he pushed one intrusive vine out of his mouth with his tongue and repeated, “Gah.”

  “Stop horsing around.” Khan tucked the tiny pistol into his waistband. “Okay, enough fun and games. I’m not paying you to grow zucchinis on your head.”

  A yellow flower blossomed in front of Eli’s right eye. He didn’t know much about gardening, or he’d have corrected Khan and said it was a squash plant, not a zucchini, but instead, he just said, “Gah.”

  “Do you think any of these are tomatoes?” Khan leaned over the rapidly-growing plants. Roots poked through the sod pots, and the new leaves now blanketed the entire window, darkening the living room in an ominous manner.

  Eli shook himself into action and began unraveling the vines from his head—carefully, so as not to damage the plant.

  He found his voice and asked, “What was that gun? And when do I get to use it? How is this even possible?” He let out a nervous, excited laugh. “How have I not heard of this revolutionary technology?”

  Khan pulled the gun back out of his waistband and offered it to Eli. “It’s a Ray-gun. You get to use it… never. If I told you how it worked, you wouldn’t believe me. And, lastly, you don’t know about these things because you never asked.”

  Eli accepted the object with care. “Ray-gun. Cool.” He rubbed his sweating palms on his cargo pants one at a time so the gadget didn’t slip from his grasp. He looked closer at the shiny side of the barrel, which held an engraving: #112 AZZURE.

  Khan’s eyes went wide as he noticed the gun pointing at him. He jumped sideways. “Careful, my man. If you kill me now, you’ll never get that raise.”

  Eli pointed the gun down at the floor, the way he should have held it from the start. His cheeks grew hot under Khan’s admonishment. He should have known how to hold a gun, because he’d taken that gun safety course back when…

  Actually, Eli hadn’t taken a gun safety course. Why were these ideas in his head?

  He shook another vine off his arm, then vigorously slapped away the one that was getting too friendly with his leg.

  The memory of the gun safety course slipped away like bath water. Had he seen it in a documentary?

  No, it was something else.

  The realization came to him with a flash of cold sweat. The gun safety course was a Donny memory. Before he’d become a junkie, he’d taken a number of training courses.

  Eli clenched his free hand into a fist. That bastard Donny. He’d let him in as a favor, so Donny could hug his father and say goodbye, and now he repaid Eli’s kindness by leaving a pile of crap in his head. And it was crap. If the memories had been the useful kind, he would have remembered the gun safety tip before Eli embarrassed himself by pointing a loaded weapon at his friend.

  “Are you wondering why it’s called a Ray-gun?” Khan asked.

  “I am now.”

  “They’re all named after their creator, Ray Kurugawi. He was the lead designer at Azzure Technologies before they… you know. The prototypes were never named, just numbered. Ray was a kickass guy, obviously.”

  “Obviously?”

  Khan took back the pistol and aimed it at the plants. Eli narrowed his eyes and waited for the flash, but Khan didn’t pull the trigger.

  “This is an agricultural tool,” Khan said. “Ray Kurugawi could have made number 112 look like anything, and he chose a toy pistol.” He chuckled. “Kickass.”

  “Azzure Technologies sounds familiar.”

  “Yup. Their headquarters were dead center in the Crashdown Zone. They were on the top floor of the first building that crushed in on itself. Patient Zero, so to speak.”

  “But not Ray, right? I mean, he got out, didn’t he?”

  Khan’s look said that no, he did not. “The world lost a lot of remarkable human beings that day. And some bankers too, but not enough to balance the scales.”

  Eli looked over at the still-growing plants. Now the roots were bursting the bottoms of the sod containers and snaking toward his feet.

  Eli got the feeling he wanted to sit down and have someone bring him a glass of water. Between seeing the shocking power of Ray-gun #112, and getting hit with another dose of Donny’s memories, today’s excitement was getting to him. His eyes were still boogity from the bright flash. A blurry shape seemed to be moving around the living room.

  Eli blinked repeatedly, but his eyeballs remained boogity.

  Boogity was a word he’d learned from his adoptive father, and even though it was a nonsense word, he’d never figured out a better descriptor for when a part of your body is beyond hinky, but not entirely borked.

  Khan cleared his throat and said softly, “Are you seeing that?” His gaze was aimed at the blurry glowing shape, currently moving into the corner of the room, toward an overflowing toy box.

  Eli stood very still, his breathing shallow. The blurry thing was real. Eli’s sweat glands decided to assist in this emergency the only way they knew how; they produced sweat and
flooded his buttcrack.

  “There,” Khan whispered.

  Eli replied in an equally hushed tone, “Yes, I see something shimmering over by the toy box. Is that the you-know-what?”

  “The poltergeist? You can say poltergeist.”

  “I didn’t want to offend it.”

  “What politically-correct term would you suggest? Never mind, I don’t need you making this more complicated than it needs to be. I told you, Eli, this is an easy one. Textbook easy.”

  “I should get a copy of that textbook.”

  “It’s more of a figure of speech. But that’s a good idea. I’ll get you trained up, and you write a textbook for… your successor. In case something grisly happens to you.”

  Eli took his eyes off the glowing, foggy form to look over at Khan. “Well? We found the poltergeist. Are you going to shoot it, or what? Where’s the Ray-gun?”

  “Shoot it with the Ray-gun?” Khan let out a wheezy chuckle. “That’s the last thing we want to do. I have no idea what would happen. But if you want to, say, increase the poltergeist’s size and strength by a factor of one hundred, go for it, my man.” He kept staring in the direction of the toy box while the corners of his mouth twisted up. “To whom should I address your box of scraped-up remains? Did you say your girlfriend’s name is Brenda?”

  “That Ray-gun’s not for shooting poltergeists? Then why do you even have it? What’s the point?”

  “How many comic books do you own, Eli?”

  Eli nodded. Point taken. He closed his mouth and waited for further instruction.

  As they watched, the foggy form settled down and disappeared inside the toy box.

  “There we go,” Khan said. “I’ll go get the hexapods, and you dig through that toy box and find the vessel.”

  “Explain it to me like I’m stupid. The vessel?”

  “Poltergeists are basically paranormal hermit crabs. They like to hang out inside something. Look for a creepy old doll with eyes that look at you, or a Jack-in-the-box. I know it’s cliche, but poltergeists aren’t known for their originality.”

  Eli took a step toward the toy box before his body realized the mission and locked up. How could he be so excited, in a good way, yet scared, at the same time?

  “Keep an eye on your intestines,” Khan warned.

  Oh, right. The danger part was scary.

  “So, look for creepy things?” Eli asked, stalling for time and courage.

  “Use your intuition.”

  “What about equipment? You have those sensors and stuff.”

  “Are you stalling because you’re scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “You need to get over that if you’re going to keep doing this.”

  “I know.” Eli inched toward the toy box. The room was now dim, due to the overgrown plants blocking the main window. He paused by a side table and switched on a lamp. The light bulb crackled and flickered, then held steady.

  “Try breathing.” Khan stood watching from the doorway.

  Eli stopped holding his breath and inhaled, which did help, actually.

  “Use your intuition,” Khan repeated. “And there’s a temperature shift in possessed objects. Sort of like… it feels hot and cold at the same time.”

  “Mr. Quentin’s microwave felt like that.” Eli reached the toy box and knelt down to open the lid. “Okay,” he said, as much to himself as to Khan. “I can do this.”

  Because he couldn’t lie, he had to believe himself, and so, confidence rushed into Eli Carter.

  Armed with this confidence, he began digging through the full toy box. If he were a poltergeist, what sort of toy would he curl up inside? Some toys were intrinsically more fun than others, such as dollhouses and things with wheels. Within seconds, he was pleasantly absorbed in the task.

  Eli didn’t notice Khan leave to check the other rooms, nor did he notice a wispy fog slip out of the toy box. He patiently inspected each item in the toy box while the white fog turned orange and streamed over to the room’s fireplace. It swirled up and funneled into the orange model train caboose sitting on the room’s fireplace mantle.

  Chapter Nine

  Eli’s search through the toy box yielded no results, unless you counted fun as a result. He particularly liked the functioning miniature cash register, and the sounds it made.

  After he’d checked everything from the toy box twice, he left the living room in search of his boss. He found Khan in the home’s kitchen, and gave him a report. Khan was scanning the interior of the family’s microwave, using the same tool he’d used at Mr. Quentin’s house.

  “Good call on the microwave,” Eli said.

  Khan grumbled, “I’m getting nothing. So much for this being a slam-dunk job.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “The ghost is being shy? Because it’s daytime? Would you hook up that booster box thing to wake it up or whatever?”

  “Boosting the juice is dangerous.”

  Eli’s arms convulsed again at the memory of being zapped by the thing. “No kidding.”

  “There’s a world of difference between the wandering spirit of the recently deceased and a poltergeist.” He leaned against the counter by the sink and rubbed his eyes again. “And then there’s plain old craziness. Did the client sound crazy to you?”

  “Mostly agitated.” Eli looked around the kitchen, in problem-solving mode. He went to the cupboard where he’d keep vitamins and medication if he lived there, and looked inside.

  “Good idea,” Khan said, and they both looked through the family’s medications and vitamins. There wasn’t anything stronger than painkillers prescribed by a dentist, and that bottle held five of its six pills.

  As they put the bottles back, Khan suddenly pointed to the microwave and said, “What was that?”

  Eli turned to check the digital readout, which was still blank. When he turned back, he saw that the bottle of painkillers was gone.

  “Too bad your first official job isn’t going so well,” Khan said quickly. “The thing about poltergeists is they love para-professionals. They love to show off. I expected things to be flying off shelves within minutes of us getting here.”

  “It could be something else. Maybe a recently deceased? I should have gone through the questionnaire when I had him on the phone.” Eli walked over to the fridge, which was covered in children’s art and colorful magnets. “I can check for memorial stuff, or other clues.” He leaned in to read a grocery list. The handwritten list contained the usual things: milk, bread, Oreo cookies. At the bottom, in messy block letters was the word ENGINE. That struck Eli as odd, but he didn’t know what to make of it.

  Khan looked in some more cupboards, then stopped.

  “This is pointless,” he said. “Maybe what we saw in the living room was just retinal damage from the Ray-gun. We should have worn eye protection.”

  Eli looked around the brightly-lit family kitchen. The place didn’t feel haunted or creepy in any way. If anything, it made him want to stay and hang out, maybe have a beer and check out the attic. The attic.

  “You checked the attic?” Eli asked.

  “Done.” Khan opened the fridge. “Ooh, pickled eggs.”

  “What? Does that mean a poltergeist got in there and did something to the eggs?”

  Khan pulled a big jar from the fridge and set it on the kitchen island. Inside the jar, pickled eggs bobbed around in pale green liquid.

  “It means we’ve got lunch,” Khan said. He yanked open three drawers before he found the forks, and then he dug into the jar.

  “You eat the clients’ food?”

  “Babysitter’s rules. We’re basically paranormal babysitters.”

  “You have to get permission from the parents. The rule is you’re allowed to eat something if you’re there for a meal time, but you still have to ask.”

  Khan sprinkled some salt on his egg and ate it in two bites. “What do you know about babysitting?”

  “I used to look after some kids in the building where I grew up
. Parents trusted me because…” Eli forced himself to pause that confession. Although he’d blurted out way too much about his intimate life, he was more careful about who he talked to about his microchip secret.

  People never treated him the same once they knew, and they certainly never told him anything private. Most didn’t want anything to do with him. Brenda was different. She actually told him that he’d spoiled her for all other people, because she could never trust anyone like she did him.

  Khan was back in the fridge again, whooping over the treasure trove of leftovers. “Pepperoni pizza, no way.”

  “What do you want me to do now?”

  “Watch me eat and make me feel bad.” Khan handed the pizza box to Eli. “Or, you could always eat up, my man.”

  Eli didn’t feel right eating someone else’s leftovers, but he didn’t feel wrong, either, because nothing tastes as good as saturated fat and triple your daily allowance of sodium.

  * * *

  After lunch, they both returned to the living room, where Khan used the hand-held scanner to check all the toy box items.

  Eli watched, scowling. He wanted to hold the scanner, but Khan wouldn’t let him. He felt fidgety. The same personality traits that made him unsuitable for a desk job also made him unsuitable for standing around doing nothing.

  He checked on the plants by the windowsill. They’d stopped growing at an accelerated rate, but they did need water. He took the watering can to the kitchen to refill it.

  As he stood at the sink, Eli heard someone come into the kitchen behind him. The back of his head tickled. He whipped around. Nobody was there.

  He continued filling the watering can, and he sighed dramatically and leaned forward onto his elbows on the counter. The back of his head tickled some more. With his eyes lower, he used the reflective surface of the nearby toaster to watch the space behind him.

  Something orange flicked by. His eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat. The orange shape flicked by again.

  Eli was so excited, he shouted, “Ghost! Khan, come quick! It’s in the kitchen!”