Paranormal Activities Unit Read online

Chapter 3

  The sun was setting as they sat at an outdoor table on the walking mall. The library and the park next to it were at one end of the mall, and a busy street was at the other end, but if you turned left, there was the movie theater. They had just eaten dinner from a sandwich shop and were resting from their crazy evening.

  Emily zipped her red sweatshirt up more, to keep out the slight chill of a summer evening. "I think my muscles are sore already," she said. "Is that possible?"

  "Mine too," Will said. "I think they're offended that I used them."

  Emily smiled. Will chuckled.

  They sat in comfortable silence then, Emily reading the pocket guide and Will watching people walk by. The shops were closed now, it was after nine. A bar or two were open, though. The alarm was sitting on the table between them, turned on. Nothing more had happened of a paranormal nature since they exorcised Henry an hour or two ago. So much for Emily's full moon predictions.

  The last orange rays of the setting sun finally disappeared behind the horizon and a blue twilight fell over the town. It was too dark to read now really, and the quaint looking streetlamps hadn't turned on yet. Emily put her book down. She looked at Will.

  "Maybe we should go home now, get some sleep. There's no telling what tomorr—"

  Just then the alarm went off. A dainty little music box song sweetly echoing off the empty buildings all around. It was quiet enough on the mall that the sound seemed to fill the area.

  Both Emily and Will looked worried as they leaned in to look at the GPS screen on the alarm. But before they had a chance to check out the location of the anomaly, something distracted them. A blood curdling scream.

  It came from right in front of them. A wail, a woman's voice, screaming bloody murder.

  Shocked, Will and Em jumped out of their chairs and looked toward the sound. Unbelievably it came from a person. Or at least they thought it was a person. Standing in front of them. It was a woman, young, very thin, with long wispy hair, that looked... blue, at first gray, but now they realized more like purpley blue. She was as pale as death, and her eyes were large and dark blue. Almost glowing. She wore a long white flowy gown. It fluttered around her in the evening breeze, as did her hair. She never stopped screaming to take a breath. Then suddenly she disappeared, with the sound.

  Emily let out her breath. "Oh, my God, I didn't realize I'd stopped breathing."

  "Yes, uh huh, I agree," Will said nervously, catching his breath as well. "What the hell was that?!"

  They scrambled for their books, eager to read about it before it came back. "Screaming, screaming... screaming. Ah—yes, here it is, 'Screaming'," Will said as he turned to the page. He read quietly to himself for a moment, then breathed out a long exhale. "I'm going to say that was a banshee," he said with certainty.

  "Banshee..." Emily repeated, looking through her book for info. "Ohh!" She dropped her book as the banshee reappeared and started screaming again. Her heart stopped for a moment and then she grabbed her book off the chair where it had fallen. She tried to ignore the banshee while she looked up information about it.

  Will very cautiously crept toward the banshee and tried to shoot it with a pellet gun. It gave him a quick disgusted look and then disappeared for a moment. Only to come back louder than ever a few feet away. "Well... I mildly annoyed it," he said loudly to Em.

  It disappeared again. "Thank God," Emily said. "Okay." She looked at her book as she spoke to him. "It says here that disturbances in the thickness of the veil between this reality and others confuse banshees. They sort of teleport here and there, and the stamp technology stuff is messing with their... navigational systems or something. They are supposed to scream and wail outside of the homes of people where there is about to be a death." Will shuddered. "But... well, they lose their way now and scream in the wrong places... God awful horrible screaming..."

  "It says that? 'God awful horrible'...?" Will tried to look in the book.

  "No, that was me. I'm not reading." She shook him off.

  "Well, how do we stop it?" Will said. The banshee reappeared then and continued screaming. "And I swear to God, does the sun setting have anything to do with this?"

  "Yes!" Emily shouted above the screaming, which seemed louder now. "They only come at night, after sundown." She looked through the book further, looking for the spot where it told how to stop them. Just then, the banshee apparently decided to move. But it didn't walk, though it was shaped like a person. It glided. It floated. In the direction of the nearest bar. And continued to scream.

  "Well, we've driven it to drink anyway!" Will shouted. "Yay, us!" Emily gave him a worn out smile. They followed it into the bar. It stopped just inside the doorway. Emily kept reading the book. She and Will stood just outside the doorway.

  "Ah! I've got it!" Emily shouted. She took the backpack from Will and began digging through it. She pulled out the black shoe horn shaped Veil Sealer. Will gave her a quizzical look.

  "It has other settings!" Emily shouted at him. She looked at it in the light of the streetlamp and bar and pushed a few buttons on it. "You have to set it to 'Thicken' and walk around the banshee in a full circle!" Will grabbed the sealer from Emily, to take it inside the bar. "Press that button! Hold it down!" Emily shouted. He nodded.

  They went inside the bar. The banshee seemed to have a light of her own inside. Or maybe it was just dark enough to see it now. An unearthly hazy white gray light. It kind of blocked out the view of anything around her. Will pressed the button Emily had pointed to and walked quickly around the banshee. With every step she got quieter and more transparent. When he got back to where he had started, she was gone. And so was her scream.

  Will grinned.

  "Oh, thank God," Emily said.

  "Now why did that work?" Will asked her.

  "I don't know, it doesn't fix the problem really. It just sort of restores their equilibrium. Though, they might still get stuck in a location warp in the future," Emily said.

  "Wow," Will grabbed the book from her to look at the banshee page.

  Just then they both noticed how quiet it was in the bar, and realized why with a sickening feeling creeping into their stomachs. They looked up.

  Every customer of the bar was staring at them, mouths agape. Shocked at what they had just seen and heard. Em and Will realized they would have to erase every single one of their memories. What a horrible night.

  In the silence, one woman in the back let out a quick sigh and fell to the floor, fainting from the excitement. Will turned to Emily, "Well, one down," he said sheepishly.

  They both pulled out their tranquilizer guns, which they now realized looked a lot like small regular guns because people started freaking out. "Call the police!", "Oh, my God!", "Please don't hurt me!", etc.

  "Dammit," Emily said under her breath. Will pulled out two little cartridges from the backpack and handed one to her. She looked at him, puzzled.

  "Extra ammo, honey," he said.

  "Oh," she nodded, and put the extra pellet cartridge in her pocket. Then they started shooting people in the bar with the pellet gun. They went down gently one after another to the ground. But obviously the people not tranquilized yet were running around in a panic, looking for back doors and such.

  Which made Will think of the bartenders and cooks, etc. "I'll get the back door!" he shouted to Emily as he ran through the bar, shooting people along the way.

  He came back a few minutes later. "I think I got them all," he said, "In the kitchen." She nodded.

  She was still chasing strays through the bar, hopping over bodies, trying to stay between people and the doors. She ran for a woman cowering against the far wall. "Sorry, ma'am!" she said as she shot her. She turned back toward the main door. Will was closer to the bar, shooting a few old men who hadn't even bothered to get up when the banshee came in. And one stray middle aged drunken man was now running toward the door. "Ah! Escapee!" Emily shouted at Will.

  "
Got it!" he said, shooting the last of his barflies and running out the door. He chased the drunken man in the direction of the busy street. But before he could even aim his pellet gun at the man, the man collapsed onto the sidewalk. Will ran up to him, panting. He said, "Thank you, kind sir." He bent down and felt for the man's pulse. He had one. "Fair enough," Will said.

  Emily ran up to them then. "He passed out," Will said. "But I got him." He smiled sheepishly. "I'll erase his memory. You start working on the others."

  "Okay," Emily said, still out of breath. She ran back to the bar to get to work erasing memories before people started waking up. Or before new customers arrived. Yikes.

  Ten minutes later they were still working on people's memories inside the bar. They had closed the doors and locked them just in case anyone else decided to come in for a drink. They were working frantically before the pellet medicine started wearing off.

  "I swear to God we are going home after this," Emily said.

  "Yes, yes," Will agreed, calibrating his memory eraser to a new victim. "Yes."