Eviction Notice

by Andrew E. Moczulski

I live with myself? Oh, wait, I knew:

  I smiled and waved, bottle in one hand, gun in the other. “I see you missed me too!”

  Ah, being just a generally insufferable human being in the face of utter horror. You always make me feel better.

  I took one last look at the room, wincing at the stench, even as Harry began to slosh towards me, hook raised. I admit, I felt better about this plan, now. I was gonna need to refurbish the whole room no matter what, so no need to worry about that.

  I threw the bottle at the manifestation. It didn't shatter on impact; real glass is tougher to shatter than a lot of people really think it is. It just kind of bounced off his barrel chest and splooshed pathetically in the ghosty-corpsey-goo at his legs. He actually stopped briefly, his masked head tilting to the side in seeming curiosity.

  I winked, leveled my little Beretta, and fired two rounds at the bottle. I was a pretty good shot, and one of them apparently hit, based on the reaction I got.

  There are people in this world who would say that taking a bunch of flammable chemicals (many of which are not clearly labeled and of dubious origin), mixing them all up in a big glass bottle, shaking it thoroughly so it starts to make a weird and kind of ominous hissy-fizzy noise like an angry cat drowning in soda, then throwing it into the middle of a ghostly manifestation and shooting it with a gun is a bad idea.

  Suicidally so, even.

  I say that those people lack vision.

  Sure, on paper, there were some things that could go wrong. I admitted that. But come on, it was just such a cool moment. I felt the risks of burning myself to death in a chemical explosion were worth the rewards of setting a ghost on fire.

  The explosion was a bit larger than I'd expected, but I got off with minor singeing... due in part to the fact I was soaked in liquid already! Suck it, blood-filled room, you ended up saving me! I would have stuck out my tongue at blood-filled room, but the kitchen was currently full of both a burning chemical fire and ghostly corpse juice, so I didn't wanna open my mouth any more than I absolutely had to.

  I got off with minor singeing.

  Harry was not so lucky.

  The flames were a sickly sort of reddish, at first, but as I said before, you'd be surprised how many things fire works on. It's a very symbolic thing, your basic fire, and symbolism counts for a lot when you're dealing with spirits. In this case, fire symbolizes both purity and destruction, and that's a pretty darn potent combination when you're pressing said fire up against something as nasty and corrupt as the spirit of old Harcourt 'I love serial murder' Stanfield over there.

  So the pale red chemical fire changed as it roared across the ghostly body, flowed like water across every inch of the viscous black sludge that coated the room. The masked figure screamed as it was engulfed by red flames that then turned pale blue, then blinding, searing white...

  It sort of exploded.

  I really can't think of a better way to put that, frankly. It was like... there was light, yes, so bright that I had to avert my eyes. But no heat, no shockwave of any sort. There was an explosion from the bottle itself, but it was like the ghost just sucked up all the power from it to ignite its own, weird, sort-of-explosion. A room literally filled with fire, and no heat to speak of, isn't that weird? Nothing but a huge burst of pure white light that made you think, really believe that there should have been an explosion, but there really wasn't one at all. Can you have an implied explosion? Like, a situation where the universe is all like, “Look, there really isn't the needed physical components around here needed to create the complicated chemical reactions required to make an explosion, but you trust me when I say that from a moral standpoint you really should have been sent flying across the room while a kickin' guitar riff played in the background. Also it should be your last day before retirement and you should be partnered with a loose cannon who breaks all the rules but he's still a damn good cop.”

  In a just and kind universe, that would be a thing. I'm gonna go ahead and claim that right now, thanks.

  I opened my eyes when the light stopped searing through my eyelids, and looked around the room. It took a few seconds of blinking to get any kind of clear image, but I was enthused by what I saw: nothing. Small licks of flame burned, scattered all over the room, burning most thickly around a huge, black scorch mark in the center of the kitchen floor where the ghost had been standing. And other than that, nothing. Just fire, and soot, and a lot of smoke, and...

  Man, I was gonna have to re-do this whole room. Stupid goddamn ghost and his stupid goddamn hook making me need to set my stupid goddamn kitchen on fire. The house had already been a fixer-upper, but now I had fire damage to worry about on top of the extant problem of the place just being seriously old. And it's not like I was going to have any chance to put this fire out any time soon! It didn't look like it was going to be spreading, I think that burning the ghost all up had sucked most of the nastiness out of it, but that didn't save the kitchen from needing new flooring, probably new goddamn plumbing if I ever wanted a sink in here, and seriously it smelled like somebody had been cremating bodies all over the place in the room I was supposed to have my food in.

  Oh, hey, my clothes weren't bloody anymore. Ghost-fire must have gotten it out.

  Score one for Team Margrave! Sometimes these plans work out in little ways you don't expect. Good stuff.

  I walked through the kitchen, smothering tiny flames and kind of... cleaning. Sort of. I couldn't do much beyond like, picking stuff up and putting it on top of other stuff. It wasn't the cleanliest clean in the world, I admit that. But one does what one can.

  I sat down, checking my watch. I waited for fifteen seconds, then drew my remaining knife.

  “Five. Four. Three. Two. O-”

  The whistling of metal slicing through air filled the room, and I got the dagger into position just in time to keep a rusty metal hook from diving into my right ear.

  I smiled despite the sudden need to keep a metal thing from stabbing me. “Knew you weren't gone yet! God, I love being right.”

  The ghost just let out an inhuman howl this time. He had seen better days; his mask was half gone, revealing a mouth full of blackened teeth gritted in fury and surrounded by rotten (and, I noticed with some satisfaction, burned) flesh. The blood-soaked clothes were in similar disarray; blackened, huge chunks of them just missing to reveal decaying flesh or even, in the case of his right arm, sickly yellow bone.

  There were also a lot more maggots. Just like, in general.

  This was, despite the commonsense logic of 'maggots = bad' a generally good thing. The less alive he looked, the better; showed he was being forced back into his natural state. Even better, his form, which had already been leaning toward the blurred, was now very nearly insubstantial. I could see clearly through him from this distance. While he still had physical form, he was struggling to maintain it and couldn't make it look anything close to alive anymore. I had actually done some damage to him this time.

  Hee, hee, hee. No... no, that little chuckle will do it for little triumphs, but this was big. BWAHAHAHAHA!

  Still, couldn't chill yet. He was still a threat, obviously, and he was kind of trying to chop my head off with a big ol' rusty hook. Again.

  He snarled, pressing forward with all his considerable weight; I rolled with the effort, coming to my feet with my knife between myself and him, backing away as he limped in my direction, growling like a rabid dog.

  Okay. Not so bad! If I could just keep my cool, he wouldn't be a major threat. He was strong, but slow, and his power was waning. Maintaining a manifestation as advanced as Mr. Hook over there took some serious ghostly muscle, he'd lost a fair chunk of power with the fire, and Stanfield no longer had a limitless power source to draw on since Lydia's emotional collapse. I didn't need to kill him; I just needed to run out the clock.

  I backed up several steps, vaguely wondering if I could just endless
ly back up while the rotting nasty hook thing shuffled ineffectually after me. It would be kind of a lame ending to the case, but, Hell, I'd take it. I love me some of that sweet, sweet anticlimactic surviving without any major injuries.

  I backed out of the kitchen into the living room, and heard a low buzzing sound. I closed my eyes and let out a deep sigh of frustration.

  “Oh, fuck you, Harry,” I said, just before the first giant fucking demon wasp bombed me.

  I don't know why I'd thought the other manifestations would have faded, I really don't. My eternal optimism is just a curse, I guess. But whatever the case, I was suddenly very glad I had missed this room on my first trip, because it turned out the flavor of terror in the dining room this week was, again, 'giant fucking demon wasp'. The thing was at least the size of my thumb, and while it didn't seem a healthy wasp - its buzzing somewhat strained, its flight slightly erratic - that didn't change the fact that it was the first of what appeared to be roughly five bajillion of the things crawling all over the ceiling and walls.

  And I noticed, from the pain in my face, that however unhealthy their wings were, their big freaking mandibles and big freaking stingers still worked just fine. Because nothing can ever just go smoothly.

  I smashed the first one against my own cheek with the hilt of my knife; it hurt like a