Chapter 3 #2
“Bad enough that we drove over here at dawn with emergency breakfast,” Marge said dryly. “People are starting to compare notes. When one person hears phantom music, it’s a cute story. When five people hear the same phantom music, it becomes a pattern.”
And patterns were not good. They didn’t need a host of paranormal ghost hunters descending on Oriskany Falls. It would scare away the spirits who wanted to cross over.
After his parents made sure Slate and Dash had eaten enough to satisfy parental requirements, they insisted he keep the extra food, because “you’re both too skinny.” Marge suggested they take a walk through town to assess the situation firsthand. It made sense, but he and Dash needed to change.
“OK,” Dash said when they were alone. “If your mom thinks you’re skinny, she’s gonna stuff me like a Thanksgiving turkey every time she sees me.”
He suspected his mother lumped him into the same category to make Dash less self-conscious. “Two things: first, I love your body, so she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And second, Mom still thinks it’s the Victorian era when being plump was a sign of living well.”
“Oh, heck no.” Dash found a hoodie in the closet. “I refuse to be called plump. Ever. Tell her I’m going on a hunger strike.”
Slate wrapped his arms around Dash. “Unless you want her to come over every weekend, don’t say that around her.”
After a kiss, Slate dragged them back to reality. “They wouldn’t have come by if this wasn’t serious. Gary and friends could make it hard for spirits to use the portal.”
“Then I’ll be the model of serious.” He pulled a hoodie over his head and Slate groaned. “What?”
The front of his navy blue hoodie had a big yellow caution triangle with a goofy bug crawling out of it. ‘Warning: May contain logic errors?’ That’s what you call serious?”
“It’s better than my ‘Ask me about my bad decisions’ one. Or this.” Dash reached in and pulled out a dark green hoodie with “Professional Troublemaker” on the front.
Slate always liked Dash’s goofy side, but between his parents showing up unannounced, Gary inviting who knew how many ghosts to Oriskany Falls, and now those spirits were causing trouble, he needed a bit of serious.
Before he could express those thoughts, he saw Dash’s face.
He looked disappointed. Slate didn’t know if it was at him, the perceived need to tone himself down, or everything, but he knew how to fix it. “Wear the first one. It’s totally you.”
It took a few seconds for Dash’s smile to reappear, but when it did, Slate knew he’d made the right call. “Come on,” he said, grabbing Dash’s hand. “Leaving my mother unattended for too long might be dangerous to our renovation budget.”
It had been a long time since Slate walked around town with his parents. What should have been a five-minute trip to the town center took closer to twenty with all the times they stopped to greet people. He used the extra time to assess the changes Gary’s arrival had caused.
The answer was more than he expected.
Slate didn’t know how many spirits had accepted Gary’s invitation, but it had only been three days.
Counting only the ones he saw, it was a lot.
Adding the ones he felt but couldn’t see, it was more than a lot.
Toss in the ones he couldn’t perceive at all, and it was a small army.
Twice, he caught the faint sound of laughter drifting on the breeze—too distant to locate, too clear to ignore.
They’d just left the bakery—evidently, searching for ghosts also meant running his mother’s errands with her—when they walked past an elderly couple sitting on a park bench, reading the morning paper.
Behind them, three ghostly figures danced in a loose circle, their movements flowing and interpretive in a way that suggested they heard music the rest of the world couldn’t.
They were early twenties at most, and dressed in the colorful clothes of the late sixties.
Their forms were translucent, but when one of them spun too wide, he phased through the bench, causing it to shake.
The man looked up from his paper with a frown.
“Did you feel that, Helen?”
“Feel what, dear?” Helen asked.
“The bench just shifted.” He set his paper aside, looking around with the expression of someone trying to identify a threat. “Like a tremor.”
“Think it’s related to the minor earthquake we had in July?” she said.
The ghost stood, dusted non-existent dirt off his butt, and walked through the bench again, this time without incident. He returned to his friends, who seemed completely oblivious to the disturbance they’d caused, and continued their celebration.
“How come he didn’t react?” Dash asked. “He clearly heard what happened.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Clifford said. “Most ghosts tune out the living world. He might not have noticed they were sitting there.”
“Then why did he rattle it falling through, but not when going back to his friends?” Dash followed up.
Slate glanced at his father for an answer, but Cliff shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but I suspect he unconsciously tried to break his fall on the bench, but he wasn’t solid enough for it to stop him.”
Across the commons, small “accidents” happened. Two ghosts in a heated debate knocked over a thermos, spilling a liquid onto the dirt. Another group was play-fighting and showered a picnicking couple with leaves.
On Main Street, a spectral figure enthusiastically played air guitar while walking down the sidewalk.
He looked about Dash’s age and wore bell-bottom jeans and a psychedelic shirt that seemed to shift colors as he moved.
His performance was energetic, complete with spinning, jumping, and elaborate finger work on his invisible instrument.
His enthusiastic guitar solo, however, repeatedly took him through a streetlamp. Each time he phased through the metal post, the light would flicker on for a few seconds. It created a strobe effect that was impossible to ignore.
A woman Slate didn’t know—but his parents did—commented that the town needed to fix the lights because they were a fire hazard.
The ghost guitarist, blissfully unaware that he was creating a municipal maintenance issue, spun through the lamppost one more time before dancing his way down the street, leaving the light flickering erratically behind him.
While they’d been observing the various incidents, more spectral figures had materialized around the town center.
Slate counted eight new arrivals, and he felt certain there were more he couldn’t see.
They drifted through the space with the aimless joy of young people at a music festival, exploring and celebrating, and completely oblivious to the fact that their presence was causing increasingly obvious disturbances.
“Word’s spreading fast,” Marjorie observed. “Gary’s invitation is working better than he probably expected.”
“It’s like spectral social media.” Dash pretended to tap on a phone. “‘Hey bros, found this awesome party spot, bring friends and tell everyone you know.’”
Despite the seriousness and the fact his parents were frowning, Slate laughed at Dash’s lame stoner bro accent.
“This is serious, Dash,” Cliff said, turning his head to hide his barely contained smile. “How long before someone with a camera and a YouTube channel decides Oriskany Falls is experiencing genuine paranormal activity?”
His parents saw the same problem he had. He’d worried he was overreacting. “It would certainly cause a short-term economic boom for the town, but it would scare ghosts away who want to use our portal.”
“Agreed on both counts,” his mother said. “And if they can’t use the portal, some of them are going to get angry. Or worse. It will attract some of the more aggressive spirits.”
“I get we don’t want that, but how bad will it get?” Dash asked.
“The more belligerent spirits will need to be banished,” Marjorie said. “That will keep you two, Clifford, and as many mediums as we can recruit, very busy trapping and expelling unwanted ghosts.”
“Sorry I asked.” Dash shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket.
It had been Esmerelda Blackwood’s dream to create a stable portal to help spirits cross over.
After her attempt to do it alone nearly destroyed the barrier between planes, the Blackwood family spent the next century preventing a breach.
But now that his great-grandmother’s dream was a reality, Slate would be damned if he let some irresponsible ghost and his friends destroy her legacy.
These weren’t, however, malicious spirits trying to cause harm.
Gary and his friends genuinely didn’t understand why their celebration was creating problems. But that made it harder to address.
If they were dark souls, he’d banish them, but these were irresponsible beings who saw the afterlife as one long chance to party.
“We need to do something,” Slate said, more to himself than to the others.
“Yes, we do,” Marjorie replied. “If we can’t reason with them, we’ll have no choice but to banish them. Their desire to celebrate Halloween can’t endanger something good for the rest of the spiritual world.”
Slate truly didn’t want to punish them for wanting to have a good time. The weight of responsibility he thought he’d shed when they stabilized the rift had returned. If he didn’t fix this fast, it would be hard to get rid of it again.
Before he could solve the problem, he needed to understand what they were dealing with.
“I have an idea.”