A Ghost At The Movies
~~by Bobbie Cabot~~

Debbie Delaney, professional photographer, had just transitioned into her new chosen gender, but didn’t have time to get used to the new her – she just got a new assignment. Of course, this wasn’t like any kind of photo assignment that she ever had before…

-----

I was moving into my new place. It was about a month after the operation, and though it still hurt, and I had some more healing to do, my gender reassignment surgery was more-or-less complete. I was done. One would assume that I would be happy now that it was over, but the pain was something extraordinary. In the beginning, it was blindingly painful. Literally. And it’s colored my expectations from the surgeries.

I had thought the expression “blindingly painful” was quaintly funny, and that I rarely heard it used anymore. But the expression was apparently not just an expression. After my operation was done and I had eventually gone home and slowly weaned myself away from the painkillers, there were times where I felt shooting pains from my groin that was so debilitating I collapsed and actually went deaf and blind from the pain for a moment.

But that was several weeks ago. I still had pain, but not enough that I was rendered immobile. In fact, I felt good enough that I had already gone and had my cheek implants and the trachea shave a week ago. And I had started dilating already.

The stitches on my neck from the tracheal shave were taken out yesterday, and all that remained of that was a small bandage like a big Band-Aid. There was no need to take out the stitches used inside my mouth from the cheek implant since they used the kind of sutures that dissolved.

I could have waited until I felt better before I had the implants and the tracheal shave, but I wanted to get everything over with. And, as it is, I am now weeks ahead of my own personal “schedule.” I was essentially “done” now. All that’s left now was the final healing.

“It was all a little bit anticlimactic, actually,” I sighed as I looked at myself in the mirror. I’d assumed it would feel more satisfying. But I don’t regret it.

-----

I directed the movers where to put most of my stuff, and left the boxes of clothes, personal items and knickknacks in their boxes for the moment. After they had left, I had a quick lunch, a quick shower, got out a very office-y kind of outfit, but no pants – instead, I wore a knee-length pleated skirt, my fancy, new high-heeled boots and my favorite leather jacket, which I put over a formal kind of long-sleeved cream blouse and necktie à la Angelina Jolie at the BAFTAs. I picked a skirt as the slight pinching of pants still hurt.

I lightly spritzed myself with perfume, ran a brush over my hair, clipped it into a ponytail using a blue butterfly clip, and inspected my face. I decided that the minimal makeup I had on was good enough.

Someone rang my doorbell.

“Who’s there?” I called.

“Miss Delaney?” someone said through the door.

“Yes, I’m Deborah Delaney,” I replied.

“I’m Leonard Smits, the building superintendent.”

I hurried to open the door.

“Hi, Mr. Smits. I’m Deborah Delaney. I got the email saying to expect you. Glad to finally meet you.”

The tall, friendly-looking handyman smiled and shook my hand. “I just wanted to stop by to say hi, Miss Delaney, and introduce myself. Welcome to the building. If ever you need me, I’m in unit six on the sixth floor. My door is the sixth one to the left from the elevators.”

“Call me Debbie. Thank you, Mr. Smits. Appreciate you letting me know.”

“I see you’ve already moved in,” he said, peeking in.

“Just about. But I have to leave the unpacking for later. I’m heading out - I have a project.”

“Oh? What is it that you do?”

“I’m a photographer. I do a lot of stuff for fashion and travel magazines, news outlets and science journals.”

“That’s great! Would I have seen any of your stuff?”

“I doubt it, unless you subscribe to women’s fashion catalogs or travel magazines.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said apologetically.

“Oh, wait! Are you a National Geographic subscriber? My pictures were featured there six months ago, on a piece about old houses in New Orleans.”

“I do, actually. Six months, you say? That would be the May issue. I’ll dig it up later and take a look.”

I was able to leave the friendly Mr. Smits, eventually (nothing worse than a chatty, friendly handyman, LOL), and rushed down, my camera travel kit backpack over my shoulder.

My Uber ride arrived as I stepped out of the building, just as my app said it would, and it was a short thirty-minute trip to the Flagstaff University grounds (it’s not in Arizona – it’s just the name). A campus security guard pointed me to the Spengler Hall, the home of the university’s Department of Parapsychology.

I, of course, had the normal preconceived notions about parapsychology – you know: all that nonsense about ESP, ghosts and goblins and the laughable characters in the Ghost Hunters TV show. But I did some research – apparently, Spengler Hall was more known for its contributions to the very serious science of Neutrino Particle Detection, and many of the researchers here had worked in a lot of high energy science projects, most notably on the LHC project in Geneva, the Thorium research project of the NEA, and the development of nuclear leaks management policies for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority.

I eventually found the right door, knocked and stepped in. A cluttered room greeted me, typical of the faculty offices of the academics you see on TV or in the movies. A tall, bespectacled man was sitting at a desk, working.

“Dr. Lewis Tully?” I asked. “I’m Debbie Delaney. The photographer? I’m here for the photography job.”

“Ah! Miss Delaney!” the science-y-looking man said. “Just in time. Let’s go.”

And with that, he stood up, shook my hand perfunctorily, and started walking me out.

“Wait, wait!” I exclaimed. “Where are we going?”

“To the theater, of course!”

Huh?

He asked me what camera I used and I said I used a Canon DSLR camera (I didn’t have an MILC yet).

We stopped at a lab for a second, where Dr. Tully picked up what looked like a camera lens bag, and handed it to me.

“There,” he said, handing it to me, “those are the EOS compatible ones.” Ahh. I was right – camera lenses.

He was walking so fast, I was having trouble keeping up. I just gritted my teeth against the ache and walked more rapidly.

We then had a quick ride to the airport, boarded a plane, and after an hour-long trip, we landed.

On the way, Dr. Tully briefed me. Apparently, we were actually going on a ghost hunt – what I was dreading. Apparently he was a crackpot.

He saw my expression and said that, if I didn’t want my name used or mentioned or connected with the project, he could make sure of that. He was used to the reluctance of people being connected with ghosts and ghost hunting and he understood. I felt a little small for wanting it, but I accepted and thanked him.

Apparently, we were heading for the Paramount Theater, an old movie house that opened in 1915, and, over the years, had hosted stage shows and music and film festivals. Though they still do that, what really pays their bills are the movies that they show nightly.

Anyway, their operations had been almost completely halted because of a haunting. Yep, a haunting.

In the past, the Paramount had been known for the Lady in White, whose sad face was usually spotted during pre-production of stage plays, and the Man with the Cigar that paces the the opera boxes in clouds of billowing cigar smoke.

Actually, this had helped attract patrons. Dr. Tully doubted if these were real ghosts. They were probably just a case of wishful thinking. But six months ago, a new spectral entity had appeared, and had been causing trouble. Several people had been hurt already, and one had almost died, all attributable to attacks by this new entity. Naturally, the owners tried to get help, and the Parapsychological Association contacted them when they couldn’t do anything about it.

Dr. Tully and his team had been working on the case for a month now, but they couldn’t understand how this entity was able to manifest itself in this way, and, more importantly, why was it attacking people?

Normally, research into the history of the entity would help in the usual techniques that most “psychic investigators” (the kind that everyone made fun of) used to banish these spirits. However, this one was completely unknown. And these “charlatans” (that was Dr. Tully’s word for them) used that excuse for not being able to get rid of it. For the moment, Dr. Tully and his people had taken to calling the ghost “Jane Doe.”

“So, Doctor,” I asked, “why was I called in? I don’t know anything about ghosts…”

Apparently, they needed a photographer to get better pictures of Jane Doe so they can try and find out who it was - they hadn’t had much luck getting pictures. So they decided to get a professional to help, and apparently, I came highly recommended.

“Plus,” he said, “you’re a girl…”

“Girl?” I asked. What has that got to do with anything? And besides, I don’t know if I…

“You see, Jane only attacks men. Women and children haven’t been attacked.”

He then showed me a bunch of Polaroid shots and they showed a creepy, transparent girl wearing what was, frankly speaking, a very weird kind of outfit – long-sleeved, high-necked blouse with a long skirt that reached the floor. The clothes seemed contemporary, so the spirit was probably from this time. But what girl would wear that kind of outfit?

And, if you can believe it, Jane was wearing what looked like a coronet of flowers on her head. And that made her outfit look even more bizarre. She looked more than a little off. She must have been the ugliest ghost I’d ever seen.

But there was something very familiar about her. I couldn’t put a finger on it.

The shots were pretty scary, with the ghost in various poses that showed she was attacking the photographer, or attacking the men in the shot. But the picture of the girl was always a bit blurry, especially around the face.

I then took out the lenses that he gave me earlier. They looked like pretty standard EOS lenses except that the front lens was bright green. Apparently, the lenses were a special kind of arrangement of filters that makes the energy that makes up ghosts visible. So, they worked like any normal lens except that you can see ghosts with them.

Sure, you can…

I attached one of them to my camera.

-----

It was nighttime already by the time the cab from the airport let us off at the old-looking structure. At the front, over the entrance was an old-fashioned marquee surrounded by big light bulbs. A big sign above the marquee said “The Paramount” in big, bold, three-foot-high letters.

On the unlighted marquee itself, it said “CLOSED FOR RENOVATION.”

“It looks pretty conventional,” I said. “Nothing scary at all.”

“How about you pose in front of the entrance and I’ll take a picture?”

I shrugged, not really minding, and he snapped a picture using my camera with his special lens.

He then handed me my camera and I saw my picture in the camera’s little LCD display. There was a ghostly image of a scary, partially transparent apparition behind me. The girl in the Polaroids!

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I involuntarily spun around to check. But, of course, I didn’t see anything there.

I shivered, but tried to act normally. I took my camera from Dr. Tully and looked at the picture again.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The entity has a kind of boundary. She won’t leave the theater.”

I nodded. But even with that assurance of safety, I couldn’t stop shivers from racing up and down my spine.

“What now?” I said in a shaking voice.

“I’m waiting for my team. I’ve already called them. They should be here in… Ah! There they are now.”

A trio of grad students was walking down the deserted sidewalk towards us.

“Hey, Doc!” the one in the lead, a diminutive little brunette, called and waved. The blonde and the tall, dark-haired guy with her just waved.

“Guys, this is Debbie Delaney,” he said when they got to us. “She’s our photographer.” There was a flurry of handshakes all around.

“And guess what? She’s already had an encounter with our Jane Doe.”

“She did?” Jackson, the tall guy said. “But it’s only eight PM!”

“Yeah. She’s out early tonight,” Helen, the blonde, commented.

“Maybe she’s reacting to Debbie’s presence?” Lucy, the other girl, said.

“Whatever it is, we’ll start early tonight. Maybe we can start now.”

The three nodded, went to a van parked nearby and started getting their equipment.

In a few minutes, they were ready. No proton packs for this bunch. All they had were backpacks filled with recording equipment, cameras and lights. I got ready myself: I replaced my Speedlight flash with my big Neewer LED video light, attached my battery grip and replaced my camera strap with a Black Rapid strap. I also made sure I had extra battery packs and spare SD cards in my jacket pockets. With that, I shouldered my own camera kit. I looked as close to a ghostbuster as they did.

“So, what are we doing now?” I asked.

“Ghost hunting, of course!” Helen giggled.

I shivered again. But I wouldn’t be shown up by these pseudo-eggheads.

“Dr. Tully,” I asked, feigning bravery, “what would you like me to do?”

“Just keep close to the team, Debbie,” he said. “Take pictures – as many as you can. We need clear shots of Jane Doe.”

“How will I know if the ghost is around?”

“With Jackson and I here? You’ll definitely know if she’s around. Trust me.”

I nodded, as if I understood.

Lucy led our group inside. She unlocked the metal accordion gate that served as the security door. Jackson pushed it aside and we filed in, with Lucy at the lead.

“Do we have to navigate this place in the dark?” I asked.

“No,” Dr. Tully answered. He went to a room at the back of the snack counter. He probably switched on some breaker because the lights switched on, but there were a lot of areas still in shadow.

“Not all of the lights are on, doctor,” I called.

“Oh, that’s not the light breakers,” Lucy said. “That’s damage care of Jane.”

The lights did reveal a lot of glass on the floor, upturned trashcans, and broken fixtures and furnishings.

“Okay,” Dr. Tully said. “Let’s break up into two teams. Jackson – you and Lucy go into the theater itself, we’ll take the other areas starting here.”

Jackson nodded and they walked through the main theater doors, moving the velvet ropes aside first.

I looked around and I saw lots of movie and TV posters on the walls. One wall was, in fact, covered from top to bottom by these posters. I thought that was a great gimmick – it looked like fancy wallpaper. But some of the posters were ripped, across the face of the people on them, although most were okay.

I tapped Helen on the shoulder and pointed to the poster wall.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s Jane.”

“But most of the posters are intact. Why did she tear up those particular ones?”

She shrugged. “Just a random thing.”

I looked at the ripped up ones. Something told me they weren’t random. For example, there was a set of the “Lethal Weapon” movie posters side by side. All of them were ripped up, but the rest weren’t. And I noticed that all the Mission Impossible posters were ripped as well, but the surrounding posters weren’t.

That couldn’t have been random…

Putting that aside for the moment, we searched the snack bar and the surrounding areas.

I saw Helen grab a Milky Way. I was about to say something but she rang up the cash register and put some money in the cash register’s drawer. I giggled at her honesty and fastidiousness.

We looked around some more, but it was clear things hadn’t been touched for a while here.

We then looked at other places – the theater manager’s office and the utility room, to name a couple. We then started for the bathrooms. Ekkk…

Just before we were to enter the ladies’ bathroom, I felt a peculiar kind of coldness just in front of the door.

“Wait!” I said, just as what felt like ghostly fingers raced up and down my spine.

“What is it, Debbie?” Dr. Tully said.

“I’m feeling something. Right here.” I pointed to the spot where I was standing. But it was gone, now.

“I felt something at this spot, too,” Helen said, “all the time.”

“You did?” Tully asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

She shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, Doctor… I didn’t think it was significant…”

Tully sighed exasperatedly. “Okay. Check the database. See if anything happened here.” He turned to me. “We’ve downloaded all the information we could about the theater. Anyway, turn on your camera and check around if you see Jane.”

I waved it around slowly. I shook my head. “No, nothing at all.”

After typing on her tablet for a while, Helen turned back to us. “There was a short news item, Doctor. I put ‘bathroom’ and ‘paramount’ as keywords. Apparently, about eight months ago, someone got beat up here, in front of the women’s bathroom. There was a 911 call, and the man was sent to the hospital. Someone named Kevin Nyland.”

“Ah. Then that probably isn’t our ghost.”

“Will do, Doctor.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why doesn’t that have anything to do with the ghost?” I got Helen’s tablet and looked at the information.

“Well, it’s a guy, so it’s not our Jane Doe. But you’re right - we need to do more research. We can work on that some more tomorrow.”

I checked the net and looked for anything about Kevin Nyland, and I found an obituary.

As I was about to tell Tully about it, we heard someone scream. It wasn’t Jackson or Lucy. It was blood-curdling and terrifying - it was the high-falsetto sound of the ghost screaming.

The doctor and Helen rushed towards the theater. I followed, but more because I didn’t want to be left alone.

We entered the dim theater, and we saw Jackson being pelted by stuff. Mostly trash and detritus like old soda cans or popcorn boxes.

I brought up my camera and saw the ghost in the little LCD display in all her ectoplasmic glory. She was throwing the trash at Jackson, but was virtually ignoring Lucy. By her movements, clearly, she was getting more and more frustrated since the trash wasn’t really hurting him.

I kept on snapping pictures while Helen and the doctor gingerly approached Jackson and the ghost.

And as the ghost got more and more frustrated and angry, she was becoming more visible. Eventually, I didn’t need my camera to see her. But I continued to snap pictures.

But she didn’t become visible all the way. You could see through parts of her, and see the bones and muscle underneath.

She was screaming louder and louder, and I was actually wincing every time: it was so high, loud and piercing.

Jackson had retreated to the stage below the curtained screen, but he wasn’t really being hurt.

But the ghost was running out of junk to throw. I looked at her and we could see her looking around for other things, but she couldn’t find anything.

The ghost looked down, saw the movie house chairs and wrapped her ghostly fingers around one.

With a long and loud, high-pitched falsetto scream, she tore the chair, in fact a whole row, off its bolts. The chairs were connected to each other apparently.

With incredible power, she threw the entire row at Jackson. Jackson jumped to the right, dodging the chairs, and they hit the edge of the stage with great impact, cracking and splintering the stage’s wood surface. The whole row overbalanced, tipped up and then fell into the orchestra pit with a great metallic “clang!”

Instinctively, my finger was hardly moving from my camera’s shutter button, and I was catching everything on camera.

“Jackson!” Dr. Tully yelled from where we were standing. “Are you okay?”

The ghost, upon hearing the doctor’s yell, flew to us, screamed and backhanded the doctor across his face.

Tully flew back and fell among the chairs. Helen ran to him to see if he was okay. I looked at the ghost and saw her absentmindedly adjust her coronet of flowers, then fly towards Jackson. And then it clicked.

“Stop!” I yelled. “For God’s sake, Kevin, stop it!”

-----

The ghost stopped.

“Yes, I know. Oh, Kevin, I know…”

The ghost looked towards me.

“We’re the same, Kevin,” I whispered, as she floated near me.

“I’ve felt what you’ve felt,” I said. “I’ve gone through what you went through. I know, Kevin. Believe me.”

I found myself holding my hand out. The ghost looked at it, like she wanted to take it, but at the same time, looking like she was afraid.

“Growing up not feeling like things were right, growing up like you didn’t belong. And when you tried to, you were rejected. Your classmates would hurt you or beat you up, girls you tried to be friends with would think you weird and make fun of you. And your folks…”

She looked at me, and the half-transparent skin started to become more solid, and she started looking more and more normal.

“So you pretend and try and be more ‘normal,’ more like a real boy. And soon, it becomes like a habit. But the pain – the hurt – the longing and the wanting – it grows. Eventually, you say to yourself, you don’t care what people think anymore, and you come out, and try to live the way you want to, but no one understands.”

She floated near me, looked me straight in the eye.

“But the haters and the losers – they’re still there. They haven’t gone away. And one night, at the movies, they catch you when you went to the bathroom.

“And they beat you… they beat you to death…”

I couldn’t stop myself, and I started to cry. The ghost reached for my hand. It was like it was made of smoke. It was cold, but I didn’t pull away.

“But you know, it’s all over now. It’s done. No need to fight anymore. Oh, honey, it’s over now. No need to hold on to it. No need to hold on to the pain, and the hurt, and everything.”

I sighed. “It’s done, Kevin. It is. Let yourself believe it, and you can move on.”

She looked at me, with a question in her eyes.

“I promise you, we’ll find out who did this to you, and we’ll make him pay. On my life, I promise.”

After an eternity, she nodded. Behind her, there was a light. She looked behind her and then back to me.

“They’re calling you, huh?” I said.

She nodded.

“Then you should go.”

She smiled.

Slowly, she moved closer, and gave me a hug. It was like I was surrounded by smoke, but I didn’t shrug it off.

She let go, smiled at me and drifted to the light.

“Hey!” I called.

She stopped and turned to look at me.

“What’s your real name?” I asked.

“Anna Marie,” she said, and slowly disappeared away.

“Goodbye, Anna Marie,” I whispered.

-----

A few days later, we were in the local hospital visiting Dr. Tully.

He’d sustained some broken ribs, a broken arm and a concussion, but he was mostly okay now.

They had been poring over the pictures that I had taken, and were marveling at the quality of it. The pictures of Kevin, I mean Anna Marie, were pretty clear, and there were details that I caught that were never seen before. Dr. Tully said that this could open up a whole new range of psychic investigations.

I shrugged. I didn’t care, one way or the other. As far as I was concerned, this was my first and last ghost project.

“But I don’t get it, Deb,” Jackson asked, going back to what we were discussing. “How’d you find out?”

“There were signs, actually,” I said. “It was there, if you knew what to look for.

“The fact that she only attacked men…”

“Not a good enough clue, if you ask me.”

“Also, only certain posters were torn up in the poster wall.”

“Explain that.”

“Only the movies that starred gay bashers were torn up.”

“Wow…”

“Also, the ghost’s entire look. Didn’t she look a little, you know, off?”

“Yeah!” Helen said. “I was just thinking that, but I thought it wasn’t important.”

“Also,” I said, “did you see how she moved, and her voice? It was obvious it was a boy in drag. She was even wearing a wig.”

I reached for the pile of pictures, looked through them, selected the one where I caught her adjusting her coronet and her wig, and showed it to them.

“Ahhh!” Jackson and the girls said in belated acknowledgement.

“It was so, so obvious.”

“Well, it wasn’t obvious to me,” Jackson said.

I shrugged.

“Good work, Debbie,” Doctor Tully said from his bed.

“Thanks, Doc,” I said.

“Hey,” Helen said, and put her arm through mine. “Game for some lunch?”

I blushed. “Sure,” I said.

“Let’s go!”

After saying our goodbyes to Dr. Tully, we left his room, and I allowed Helen to lead me towards wherever we were having lunch. Jackson and Lucy trailed after us, maybe about a dozen feet away.

“I still don’t believe that she used to be a guy,” I heard Jackson say.

“Oh, shut up!” Lucy said in exasperation.

---end---

Note - The picture was a collage made from publicly accessible pictures of the Sena Kashiwazaki character and other pictures. No ownership is claimed. No IP infringement is intended.

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My Night At The Cemetery
~~by Bobbie Cabot~~

Being known in one’s professional circles helps to get gigs and assignments, but this kind of gig wasn’t what Debbie Delaney, professional photographer and reluctant ghost chaser, was hoping for. That’s because this assignment involved visiting a cemetery…

-----

The recovery from my SRS (or GRS) procedures was slow, but recover I did. And, aside from the need for regular dilation (which I am supposed to taper down eventually after a year or so), I was practically, ummm, done.

Today was my first time to jog again (well, not jog but more a brisk walk) and I had just got back to my apartment. I had a few twinges, but I knew these twinges would be happening for a while. Par for the recovery. That’s fine - I can live with that.

“Hi, Mr. Smits,” I said to my building manager.

“Hello, Ms. Delaney,” he said. “Had a nice workout?”

“Pretty great. I was just gonna grab a bottle of water. Wanna come in for a drink?”

“Thank you, but I’m pretty busy.” He indicated the ladder he had on his shoulder. “No rest for the wicked,” He said and chuckled. For some reason, that phrase stuck with me, and had me worrying about Mr. Smits.

“Okay,” I nodded, stepping into my place. “Have a nice day.” Though a very nice guy, there was something off with Mr. Smits.

As I drank a cold bottle of water from my fridge, I picked up my mail, which I had dumped into a little bowl beside the door earlier before I went for my run. And there was a bunch of letters from the Parapsychological Association mixed in with the usual ones (as I found out when I met the guys from Flagstaff, the association was the main authority in the country on ghosts and goblins and monsters and anything that went bump in the night).

After participating in that thing with Flagstaff University’s Parapsychology Department last year, I suddenly found myself on the mailing list of the association. I had been getting emails and phone calls from their members until I changed phone numbers and installed a filter app to screen all my emails. It’s nice to have fans, but this isn’t exactly the fan base I wanted. Would you?

But there was no stopping them from sending snail mail to Flagstaff University (thank God I had kept my new address unlisted), and the University people would dutifully forward my letters to me. At least only a few letters a week arrived, and it had been tapering off for a while.

I looked at this week’s batch and dismissed most of them, but there was one that caught my eye, simply because the envelope was clean and neat, and my name and the return address was neatly typewritten instead of freehand in pencil, crayon or magic marker.

Thinking that I would regret it, I decided to open it and read the letter.

Minutes later, I was on the phone and talking to Dr. Tully.

Days later, I found myself on the road with Dr. Tully and his team, on our way to yet another haunting.

-----

“So, Debbie,” Helen, the tall bubbly blonde said while giggling, “the old team back together again! Fun, huh?”

I was sitting in front with Dr. Tully driving. I could see her from the mirror in the visor. She was looking at me expectantly so I stuck my tongue out at her, and she responded with yet another giggle.

There were five of us in the van: Dr. Tully, Jackson the big guy with curly hair and the deft touch with electronics, Helen, the tall, giggly blonde, Lucy the brunette who, I think, was the bravest of us all, and me.

“We’re almost there, Ms. Delaney,” Dr. Tully said. “Why don’t you brief us again about why we’re here?”

I nodded.

“Well,” I began…

I explained (again) that I’d gotten this letter a week ago, and it came from this family that found their little town being terrorized by some kind of entity. Almost half of the town had already relocated while the rest all lived in fear of this whatever-it was that terrorized the town.

The man who wrote was an English teacher from the town’s one remaining school (the other two had shut down for lack of students). He had been living with this fear for over a year now when the association referred him to us.

The townies (as the teacher called the townsfolk) believed that the whatever-it-was came from the town cemetery, and the… terror usually started to happen at around eleven o’clock to midnight. Many people who were out and about at night reported being chased by some night creature - maybe some wild dog or wolf - and others were actually attacked. This couldn’t be corroborated because they were soon infected with some kind of wasting disease, like tuberculosis, and passed away in less than three weeks.

The rest listened to my recitation politely until I was done, and then Jackson said, deadpan, “we already knew that.” And everyone started to laugh.

-----

We arrived at the cemetery at around ten in the evening, and the man that wrote to me was impatiently waiting for us by the gates. After some quick handshakes, he gave us a quick tour of the deserted cemetery. Clearly, he didn’t want to be there because he rushed us through the cemetery and its main sections. After which, he jumped into his car.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Lucy called after him.

“It’s almost ten thirty!” he yelled back. “The fun starts about midnight. I only have about an hour and thirty minutes to get home! Sorry I can’t stay! Have fun!” He waved through his car window and sped home.

The cemetery was indeed spooky: headstones all over, covered with moss, and the rest of the cemetery overgrown with creepy plants and trees trailing little vines and rootlets. The guy said the cemetery hadn’t been in use for at least a year, and no one came and visited their loved ones anymore. It was disused, and it looked it.

There was no sound at all except for the wind, and all of us shivered in the cold.

“Dammit, it’s so cold!” I exclaimed.

Helen giggled. “Well, who decided to wear a miniskirt to a ghost hunt?”

“Haha. Very funny. Now what?”

We looked at each other sheepishly, at a loss of what to do next.

“Well…”

“Ms. Delaney, bring out your camera,” Dr. Tully said.

“What?”

“Just do it.”

I brought out my Canon DSLR that had Dr. Tully’s lens attached, switched it on and peered into the viewfinder. I gasped.

-----

In my camera’s little viewfinder, I saw the cemetery in the greenish cast of Dr. Tully’s special lens and saw that we were practically surrounded by the ghostly spectral figures of people In normal everyday clothes, but all of them were clearly dead.

They weren’t gory or anything like the zombies from The Walking Dead, but they were standing like they did in that show, heads tilted and looking at us with blank expressions. I could see gravestones and trees through them. I’ve seen many ghosts since that first time in the theater and, though they still gave me the willies, I didn’t jump out of my skin. At least not anymore.

I started clicking the shutter. “Oh, my God,” I whispered.

And as I clicked, they lifted their arms and pointed to one direction.

I put down my camera and brought out a flashlight.

“Come on,” I whispered and gestured for the others to follow me.

From time to time, I would check my camera and followed where they pointed. We were slowly getting closer to the center of the cemetery. I pointed my camera to where we were apparently making for, and I saw one of the larger grave markers.

It was about seven feet tall, and had a large cross on top, or what should have been a large cross if the left side of the crossbar hadn’t crumbled away.

As we got close, we noticed that the dirt covering the grave of whoever this was, was actually disturbed.

I looked at Dr. Tully and he nodded.

“Jackson,” he said, “dig this up. I would help but I need to do something.” With that he walked away.

Jackson and the others looked at each other and shrugged. He picked up one of the shovels we brought and started digging.

I looked around and felt cold again.

I lifted the camera to my eye and looked into the viewfinder again. The specters were now all around us, looking at Jackson and the grave as he continued to dig.

Lucy, the most scholarly among the three, used her tablet to take a picture of the gravestone.

“What kind of writing is that?” I asked.

“Cyrillic, I think.”

“So. Russian?”

She consulted her tablet. “It’s Serbian. It says, ‘Ovdje lezi Petra Plogojovitz. Neka Bog oprosti njoj zbog svojih grehova, a ne dozvoljava joj da opet ugrozi zivot.’”

I giggled a bit. “What?”

“In English, it says, ‘Here lies Petra Plogojowitz. May God forgive her for her sins and not allow her to afflict the living again.’ The gravestone says she was buried in 1725.”

“Wow. More than fifty years before Independence. This grave is almost three hundred years old.”

I reflected on the translation. “Afflict the living?” I thought aloud.

-----

When Jackson was almost three feet down, Dr. Tully returned. “I know what we’re up against,” Dr. Tully said. “Here.” He then handed each of us what looked and felt like pieces of wood, or rather, more like branches from a tree.

“Good thing we’re in Virginia,” he said. “Ash trees are plentiful.”

“What’re these for, Doc?” Lucy asked.

“I’m sure you can figure it out.”

“Oh…”

Helen searched around and handed us large rocks.

“Now, what are these for?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “it’d be pretty hard to pound down a stake with your bare hands.”

“Are you done now, Jackson?” Dr. Tully asked.

“I think so, Doc,” he said. “I hit something. Sounds wooden and hollow.”

“I would have assumed the coffin would have disintegrated hundreds of years ago. Let me help. See if you can open the thing. And hurry, Jackson, it’s almost midnight!”

Jackson pounded on the side of the coffin and he eventually grunted in satisfaction. He must have gotten it open.

“Doc!” He grated. “Help!”

He was in trouble!

“Hold on, Jackson!” I cried. I was the nearest so I got there ahead of the others. Looking down, I saw him being strangled by a woman in a tattered black cloak inside the coffin. In the dark, her eyes seemed to glow. The others crowded around me and peered down as well.

For some reason, I lifted my camera and took several pictures. Is there anything like a photographer’s instinct?

But that was just for a moment. Another kind of instinct took over. Dropping my camera and allowing it to hang from my neck, I grabbed Lucy’s rock and stake and jumped in. Transferring the rock and stake to one hand, I grabbed Jackson by his collar.

With all my strength, I was barely able to wrest him from the… thing’s grip on his throat, and I leap-frogged over him.

Without thinking, I rammed the rudimentary stake into the woman’s chest, causing her to fall back.

With that, it gave me an opportunity to use my rock and start pounding it onto the top of the stake.

The rough point that Dr. Tully had carved wasn’t too sharp, so I wasn’t really doing much. But Jackson grabbed the stake and rock from me and, with his stronger muscles and larger size, he was able to pound it into the creature.

A scream like a banshee’s echoed through the cemetery and she tried to pull the stake away from Jackson. I squeezed in beside him and tried to hold down the woman’s arms. The feel of her skin was unpleasant - she was cold and a bit slimy, and as I increased my grip, her skin started to tear.

I guess I was helping because Jackson was able to pound the stake in deeper. And, with each strike of the rock on the stake, the screams became weaker and weaker until the screams faded away.

Not taking any chances, Jackson continued pounding, and only stopped when he felt the stake punch through and into the wood. At which point, I let go of the woman’s arms.

In Dr. Tully’s flash, I saw that I really had torn the skin of the woman’s wrists. I saw what looked like bone and muscles exposed but, curiously, no blood.

We looked at the woman but she wasn’t moving.

“So,” Helen called down, “is she dead?”

-----

We stayed there for the rest of the night, taking turns watching over the body and waiting for dawn. Dr. Tully had also asked us to document as much as we could, so we started treating the thing like a kind of archeological dig. For me, I acted like it was more like a crime scene and I was a CSI photographer.

While we worked, the Doc just stayed in the shallow, three-foot-deep grave and watched over her with another stake in hand. “Just in case,” he said.

As we worked, I couldn’t help but notice that we were still surrounded by dead people, but, somehow, the atmosphere around us had also changed despite the ghosts.

I looked through the viewfinder and a lot of them were still there. Some looked down into the grave and walked away, and as they got further away, they faded into the night.

But dawn was coming, and they were starting to thin out.

One of them, a tall man in a suit and tie, looked at me. He looked like some well-to-do businessman who was just on the way home or something. The only thing that ruined it was the blood dripping from his mouth, and the fact that he was a transparent ghost.

I couldn’t hear it, of course, but I knew he said “thank you.” I could read his lips.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

He nodded to me and smiled, turned and walked away. I followed him with the camera until he faded away.

“Who were you talking to?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, no one. Just some guy.”

And then the sun peeked over the horizon.

---end---

Note - The picture was a collage made from publicly accessible pictures of the Sena Kashiwazaki character and other pictures. No ownership is claimed. No IP infringement is intended.

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Someone’s In The Library
~~by Bobbie Cabot~~

Libraries are good places to study. They're also good places to meet people. Including ghosts.

-----

After that thing with the vampire, my reputation, and the reputations of Dr. Lewis Tully and his team, have just continued to grow.

That became painfully obvious when I made my way to the student dorm where Dr. Tully got me a room to stay in for the duration of the event. There were about three dozen people by the gate, apparently waiting for me. At least they were polite enough, but as soon as they saw me, they started badgering me about how it felt to fight the “malevolent” ghost in the movie house, or how I killed the vampire.

I didn’t know how to respond, and had to wonder where they’ve been getting their information. I asked them this point blank, and they said they get the Parapsychological Association’s quarterly newsletter. One of them handed me the latest one, and I leafed through it and found the piece about “the real ghostbusters” – obviously, it was about us, though it didn’t mention anyone by name except for Dr. Tully.

Before I could do anything except scan the article, the girl who handed it to me asked me to autograph the magazine. I didn’t know how to turn her down so I just signed it and gave it back.

My “fans” couldn’t follow because only residents were allowed in, so I had a bit of a respite, and I had time to prepare for this shindig. Any excuse to wear a dress, you know, lol – one gets tired of pants all the time. I even got Dr. Tully to reimburse me for the one I just bought… I’m attending this thing for him, after all. The least he could do was buy the dress for me, heehee.

Per instructions, I got my camera and fitted one of the special lenses – guess he wanted to show off his tech. I picked the 80-125mm - a good walking-around lens. The camera incongruously hung around my neck, and didn’t complement my haute couture dress. Oh, well.

I met up with Helen, Lucy and Jackson in the university’s Dana Barrett Memorial Library, a very large library whose walls were lined with shelves full of books, and appointed with rich carpeting, expensive-looking vintage lamps, fixtures and furnishing, and large, expensive-looking oil paintings. (I wasn’t enough of an art connoisseur to recognize the names on them.) With the study tables and chairs removed, the place was big enough to play basketball in.

Dr. Tully and I, Jackson, our electronics guy, Helen, the tall, giggly blonde who’s our designated hacker, and Lucy, our ass-kicking brunette, made up doc’s own little ghostbusting team.

We didn’t use proton packs or like that, and except for my camera lenses with the greenish glass, we had nothing in the way of ghostbusting tools. Nevertheless, after taking down that vampire in the cemetery, rescuing that ghost from that movie house, and “properly” documenting them, we were at least genuine ghostbusters. The guys were jazzed about that, whereas I tried to keep a low profile to maintain my reputation as a legitimate photographer and newsperson. No one had twigged yet except those who read that damn newsletter apparently and, to use a phrase, that lunatic fringe didn’t count.

Anyway, here we were, standing around in this fancy library and sipping drinks. Mine was just Sprite in a tall Collins glass so I could walk around and not get drunk and fall on my ass. Walking around in a tight dress was a skill I hadn’t mastered yet.

This was the university’s little yearly fundraiser, when the faculty brought out their pet projects and paraded them to potential patrons and sponsors. This year, it included Dr. Tully and his electromagnetic detection and ranging technology. The technology jumped weather detection, radar, ECGs, and X-ray imaging by at least a generation, and, incidentally, allowed us to see ghosts and other paranormal stuff through the doc’s funky camera lenses (other than that, though, they worked pretty fine as regular EF lenses).

So we smiled and shook hands with the academics and captains of industry that filled the place, and we listened to the boring speeches. Dr. Tully’s speech was the best of the lot, but that didn’t say much.

Instead of just standing around and pretending to have a good time, I thought I could actually be useful. An undergrad had been drafted to be the event’s photographer but he clearly didn’t know what he was doing, so I decided to help out.

So as I took pictures of the speakers (with special attention to Dr. Tully, of course) and the VIPs, I noticed one particular woman across the room.

She was very beautiful, in an aristocratic kind of way. And was dressed vaguely like Jackie Onassis when she was still Jackie Kennedy. She was so drop-dead gorgeous, that I wondered why the PHDs and doctoral candidates and CEOs and VCs weren’t all over her and vying for her attention.

She noticed me and smiled in delight, and started vamping and primping for me. I laughed and started taking lots of pictures of her.

She clearly enjoyed the attention, and acted like it was a fashion shoot just about her.

And as I happily clicked away, and she laughed and primped and giggled, I slowly made my way across the room to get close to her. The people who kept walking in between us were irritating me, and I needed to get closer since I only brought the 80-125. I should have brought the super-zoom one.

I continued clicking away, and as I did, one of the guests – the academy president, I believe – approached her, and actually walked through her!

I stopped in shock, and as I looked at her, she looked at me with incredible sadness, and faded away.

-----

Later, after the event was over, Dr. Tully and the team met with me in a nearby bar, and I told them about it.

The guys looked at each other with expressions that said, “Ohhh! So that’s why Debbie was taking pictures like that!” Because all they saw was me taking pictures of nothing.

Everyone took their turn with my camera and looked through the pictures I took, the doc being the last.

“You know,” Tully said, “I think I know her.”

He brought out his big valise and got out what looked like a thick, glossy catalog, but instead of being a fashion catalog, it was the Barrett Conservatory’s newsletter from last year – which was all about the institute and the programs it was helping to fund.

He opened it to an article about the Dana Barrett Memorial Library, and along with text describing it as a “haven for brilliant academics and intellectuals,” there were several pictures of the library. In the beginning of the piece was a portrait-picture of Mrs. Dana Barrett, the young wife of the patron and benefactor of the library, former Senator Barrett, who passed away in 1966. The ghost was Dana Barrett.

-----

We agreed to meet up in the library later that night, and per the doc’s instructions, I brought my camera with the doc’s widest wide-angle lens attached, and a gorilla pod.

Having changed into something lots more comfortable, I rushed over. I was the last to arrive.

The guys had arranged five chairs on one side of a large table, and a big projector and screen on the other, but about five meters away.

Dr. Tully had me mount my camera on my little tripod, put it on the desk on the opposite side from the chairs, and facing away. I set the focus-point midway between the camera and the screen. And switched on live-view. Jackson then attached the camera to the projector. And we saw Jackson projected on the large screen, with the picture-in-picture-in-picture effect that you get when you focus a camera onto a TV screen. I adjusted my angle so we only saw one Jackson instead of dozens.

Belatedly, I noticed a laptop on a coffee table near the screen, as well as a monitor on the table.

We took our seats and waited. And after 15 minutes of waiting, we started to feel silly.

“Mrs. Barrett?” I called, a bit impatiently. “I’m Debbie Delaney. I was the one who took your pictures earlier. Do you remember? I’m with Dr. Lewis Tully from the university, and my friends Helen, Lucy and Jackson. Please don’t be frightened. We mean no harm. We just want to meet you, maybe get to talk to you. Please come out…”

After minutes of cajoling, the ghost relented and her image faded into the screen. And with a good angle to and from the screen and the camera, it was like we were looking at her in real life.

She waved and said hello. We could tell by the lips. And then she said something longer and we couldn’t understand it.

“Mrs. Barrett?” Dr. Tully said, “we cannot hear what you’re saying. Can you see if you can type on that keyboard over there? Maybe we could talk that way.”

She went to the laptop and typed, but clearly it wasn’t working.

“Oh… that’s too bad,” he said. “Well… anyway, let’s forget that for now. I’m Lewis, as Debbie said, and we know who you are. But… do you know who you are? I mean what you are now? That you are a ghost?”

She nodded sadly.

“Well, how long have you known?”

She held up her hands, palms facing forward and fingers splayed.

“Ten? Ten years?”

She closed them into fists, then splayed them again.

“What… oh, you mean another ten. So twenty?”

She popped her hands again two more times.

“My God, you’ve been stuck here for forty years?”

She nodded again, sat down and cried into her hands. It was sad to see her like that. The fact that there was no chair for her to sit on…

“But Mrs. Barrett,” I asked. “Why? Why stay here? Why not move on?

She held her hands palm upwards and shrugged. She said some more but we couldn’t understand it. Still, we understood from context.

“She doesn’t know how,” Lucy said to Helen. Helen, the most emotional among us, started to cry quietly.

-----

Over the next few days, we learned some more about what happened, about her plane accident, and, for our part, we updated her on current events. None spent more time with her than Dr. Tully (I think the doc had a crush on her, heehee). In fact, a PC with a modified Airbar, adopted to work on the doc’s EM tech, allowed her to surf the net, update herself with the latest news, watch movies and TV shows, and, most importantly, allowed us to communicate with her more easily.

The doc had it set up in a secluded part of the library where no one would notice, and during nights and on weekends, the guys and I could spend time with her and learn more about her and about ghosts and, ummm, the ghostly realm. Lol

More than that, it was pleasant chatting with her, and we all became close friends. We only noticed that we’d been “chatting” the whole night because the sun started to come out. I guess our little team had acquired a new member. I can’t imagine how our next ghost case will go.

---end---

Note - The picture was a collage made from publicly accessible pictures of the Sena Kashiwazaki character and other pictures. No ownership is claimed. No IP infringement is intended.

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Me And Marilyn
~~by Bobbie Cabot~~

Halloween costume parties are pretty fun things, Debbie Delaney, professional photographer, thought. Of course, the costumes need to be good, and as close to being realistic as possible. But this is taking realism too far!

-----

 

I could have been doing something better tonight, especially in New York City, but here I was standing around the entrance of a big fancy ballroom, waiting for my two friends. If our boss hadn’t said it was mandatory, I wouldn’t have come.

I was dressed as Marilyn Monroe, complete with the bright red lipstick, overdone lashes and the permed bright-blond hair, and I was wearing a duplicate of the dress she wore in The Seven Year Itch. It was a Halloween costume ball, after all, I thought, and if I had to wear a costume… Yeah, yeah, I know – it’s a bit of wishful thinking, but I can dream can’t I? For a transgender girl, Marilyn was more than just an icon.

“Now where the heck are my guys!” I said as I took pictures. I was the photographer, after all. “It’s almost seven PM!”

Looking at the end of the hallway, I finally saw Pete and Simone come out of the elevator. Thank God!

Pete was the photography technician that was assigned to me, and Simone was the department’s EA. I called them up earlier in the week and roped them into going with me to this shindig. I won’t be the only one wearing a costume!

“Thank God you’re here!” I said. “The director’s about to start the program.”

I looked them up and down. Pete was wearing leather pants, boots and a leather jacket with spikes on the shoulders, and a big chain wrapped around his shoulders. As for Simone, she was wearing a black halter top, black jeans, a silver ankh on a chain around her neck, and a henna tattoo of the Eye of Horus around her right eye. Over it all, she had a gray-brown hooded robe with the hood thrown back.

“Who are you guys supposed to be?” I asked.

“I’m Teleute,” Simone smiled, “the Angel of Death from Sandman.”

“How about you, Pete?”

“I’m the Ghost Rider! Cool, huh?”

“Yes, you are,” I said impatiently. “Now, let’s go and get this over with already!”

 

I dropped my little Canon Powershot into my clutch – the one with Dr. Tully’s lens attached. Also in my clutch was my wallet, a tube of lipstick, a comb, some other little things, plus my wayfarer sunglasses with the experimental lenses, also from the Doc.

Dutifully, I turned off my phone’s ringer. Everyone knows that at formal fund-raising occasions like this, one’s supposed to turn off her phone, just like at the movies. Otherwise, you might, gasp! Interrupt some dowager as she made her point to some social-climbing mid-level politician or something.

I looked around and only half of the people were in costume. Dammit! It wasn’t mandatory!

Most of those in costume hadn’t put in much effort into their outfits, though – policemen, firefighters, construction workers, punk-rock guitar players and that kind of costume. For the girls, there was the slutty nurse, the Arabian princess, the cheerleader, Hermione from Harry Potter and a lot of ho-hum outfits. In my own humble opinion, I think I looked far better than most of them.

 

To me, this was the lamest of all cocktail parties ever, but you do what you need to do. Otherwise, I might lose my standing as staff photographer.

It had been more than three hours already, but somehow, I didn’t feel too tired. A while ago, I felt something weird – my breast implants suddenly felt different and the little twinges I still felt from time to time because of my gender realignment surgeries sort of disappeared. I also felt, I don’t know, looser, you know, down there, and my panties felt fuller behind me. I was glad I’d worn the full 60’s-style panties. And, I don’t know, I felt gigglier and more flirty. I thought I could last a couple more hours, especially with all this attention from everyone.

Anyway, I ignored the weirdness of it, and we continued standing around drinking watered-down drinks and eating little cubes of ham, pretending they were fancy canapés. I made the expected polite hi’s and hellos to the directors and the other bosses.

I sure wished that guy in the werewolf costume would stop bothering people with his leering and wolf-whistling and slobbering. Clearly, the guy in the Dracula costume was getting fed up with him, as well.

I decided to get another glass of champagne.

 

There were a few interesting costumes, though, and after hours of milling around and chatting, we all picked out our favorites for the best-in-costume contest. And, surprisingly, Pete, Simone and I were in the top twenty.

The twenty of us found ourselves ushered on stage as the director, in a lame Emperor Napoleon costume, stood there saying all the expected boring blah-blahs, and thanking everyone for the generous donations and contributions that the foundation had been receiving all year round, and toasting everyone.

He did an excellent French accent, though. I thought he wasn't French. Hmmm.

 

As we listened to the director drone on in his weird mish-mash of English and French for more than thirty minutes, I looked through the room. I changed my opinion. Most of the people in costume had actually done a good job with their outfits, after all. Very realistic!

“Everyone looks so cute!” I said to Pete.

He looked at me in a funny way. “I guess,” he said.

“You’re no fun!” I said, and leaned to my right. “Don’t you think so, sweetie?” I said to Simone.

She looked at me funny, as well. “’Sweetie?’ What’s wrong with you?” she said. “Why are you talking like that?”

“Huh? What do you mean?” I said breathily.

It would be so wonderful when they announced the winner! I hope I win!!! Heehee!

Suddenly, someone screamed. I couldn’t help myself and reacted as well with my own scream.

We looked down the line of people standing on stage and we saw the one in the werewolf costume struggling with the one in the Dracula costume. After a final punch at Dracula, werewolf guy leaped off the stage, screamed at everyone and ran to the fire exit. He ran on all fours, like a real wolf.

At the last moment, he turned back to us and howled. We all gasped at that, and he again turned and loped out of the fire door.

“My goodness!” I exclaimed.

“You shall not escape me, you foul denizen of the night!” the Dracula character declared in very over-acted yet authentic-sounding Transylvanian Bela Lugosi tones. What a cornball... He jumped off the stage and, with cape outstretched, like he was trying to take off, he ran after the werewolf.

Several of the others, mostly the ones dressed like policemen and soldiers, chased after them. “Come on, you jarheads!” the one dressed like a World War II marine yelled and waved for us to follow. Talk about stereotype GI dogfaces. Heehee.

Even the girls that were dressed like the slutty policewoman and the sexy soldier followed.

“I don’t understand what’s going on!” I exclaimed loudly in high, girly but sultry and sexy tones. Everyone turned to look at me, especially the men. Their expressions were unmistakable, and it made me want to hide or something. What had made me yell that! Why am I acting like a bimbo?

 

Suddenly, someone slammed open the ballroom’s main doors – I think it was our department’s assistant director - and ran into the room. He was carrying what looked like a TV remote control. He went directly to the director and whispered into his ear.

Clearly, the director didn’t want to believe and they had a short argument, the director’s faux-French accent echoing in the room.

“I can’t hear what they’re saying!” I whined plaintively, and one of the men near me, this one wearing a Prince Charles-esque costume, reached for my hand and patted it comfortingly.

“There, there, child,” he said in RP English. That was strange…

After a few minutes of arguing, the director turned back to us.

“Mesdames et Messieurs,” he began, “I have just been told ce qui s'est passé – umm, what has happened. I shall let l'assistant directeur explain.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the man began, “about thirty minutes ago, this was broadcast on CNN and the three major networks nationwide. Normally, this would just have been laughed at, but the proof is all around. Here, let me play it for you.”

He pointed to the ceiling with the remote control and a projection screen started coming down. In a few moments, the news piece started playing.

Apparently, magic was real, and there were still witches and warlocks still around. And a bunch of these witches that called themselves the Shapers’ Coven had, for funzies, made a little magic spell. Well, not ‘little...’

Anyway, apparently, everyone that was affected was quite literally turned into the person that they were dressed as.

Oooh! So that’s why I was acting strangely! Goodness!

There were other details, but I didn’t think of any of that. I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. But my phone had mutated into a retro something that someone like George Jetson would have used.

I dialed Dr. Tully’s number and fidgeted while it took its time connecting.

“Hello?” Dr. Tully said from the other end.

“Oh, Dr. Tully,” I said breathlessly (and sexily), “thank goodness you’re there!”

“Who’s this?” he responded.

“It’s me, Dr. Tully!” I said. “Don’t you recognize me? It’s me! Debbie!”

“Oh, no, Debbie,” he said. “You’ve been affected!”

“I knoooow!” I moaned, just like Marilyn Monroe would have. “I don’t know what to dooo!”

“Debbie, calm down! I know what’s happened. Keep it together!”

“But, but, but…”

He sighed. “What are you wearing?”

“I’m wearing a Marilyn Monroe costume!” I said excitedly, giggling. “You know? From that movie, The Seven Year Itch? It’s that one where Marilyn was wearing this white dress and, while she was walking over a subway grate, the air blew up and flipped her skirt up?” I giggled. “It was so funny but so sexy, too. And then…”

“Debbie, Debbie! Stop! Keep it together – whatever compulsions you have now, you can control it, Debbie! Just remember who you really are and you’ll be fine!”

“Oh, Doctor! Will I ever…”

“The ones on the news – those Shaper witches – they said that everyone that was affected will change back to normal at sunrise so long as you keep your costumes on and intact until sunrise, so just keep telling yourself you’re Debbie Delaney, and in a few hours you’ll be back to normal.

“But, Doctor… there are some people here…”

“I know. It’s happening all over the country. The authorities are doing their best to take care of it. Did anyone there change into anything dangerous?”

“Well, nooo… most of the people here had very lame costumes, so we’re mostly okay, except… oh, my goodness! There was one dressed like a werewolf and there was one like Dracula, and…” (I couldn’t seem to stop talking like Marilyn, darnit!)

“Say no more. Helen, Lucy and Jackson are actually on the way to you now. Sit tight – they’ll help you round up those Dracula and werewolf characters, and whoever else needs help.”

“Yayyyy! But… you know,” I whispered, “will the ghost be coming with the guys?” I remembered our new ghost team-mate.

“Dana?”

“Ummm, yes?”

“Yes, she is. So keep your camera handy. Did you bring the sunglasses?”

“Yes?”

“Good. Use them. You'll need the glasses and the camera to see Dana. I have to say goodbye for now – lots of other calls on the line.”

“Oh! All right. Thank you, Doctor.”

“And, by the way, you sound so cute right now.”

I couldn’t stop myself and giggled.

 

Pete, Simone and I sat at a table and drank some of the party’s remaining prosecco, and I looked into my bag. It seemed that my Canon Powershot had morphed into a vintage late-model Leica M-Series camera, but the lens’s material was still Dr. Tully’s lens, and my Wayfarers had turned into vintage cat eye sunglasses, but the lenses were also still Dr. Tully’s. I giggled at that.

Sitting beside me was Pete, and he was almost fuming. His head hadn’t really turned into a skull like Ghost Rider, with fire surrounding it. Instead, his face had turned so gaunt that it might as well have turned into a skull, and his face was so bright red, he looked almost apoplectic in barely-contained anger.

I put on my fancy sunglasses and, through the glasses, I could see a vague nimbus of something like fire surrounding his head.

“Yikes!” I exclaimed.

He did something and his skull-like head returned to normal, and the ghostly fire-aura disappeared.

I turned to Simone, and she looked pretty normal, even through the sunglasses, but I could feel a kind of cold coming off her.

She smiled at me as she sipped her prosecco. “I’m fine, sweetie,” she said, apparently reading my mind.

Well, I thought she was more than fine. She looked much thinner and cuter than before she changed.

She had complained that she was feeling warm and wanted to doff the cloak, but I was able to stop her in time. If she did that, she’d be like this permanently.

“Sunrise was like five hours away, honey,” I said. “You could take it off then?”

As for Pete, he wasn’t complaining much. Since he mostly looked like himself (when he wasn’t in his “Ghost Rider” persona), he didn’t mind it much.

As I was looking at him though my Jackie Kennedy glasses, I saw Dana fly through the doors and float towards me, smiling and waving.

I waved back, and I didn’t care if the people around me thought it was weird I was waving at nothing.

Dana stopped and floated in front of me. She gestured at me, up and down, and wolf whistled.

I giggled and waved her away in false modesty. Pete looked at me like I was crazy while Simone smiled in an indulgent way. Clearly, she knew to whom I was waving.

Seconds later, my friends, the rest of the unofficial Ghostbuster team of Flagstaff University, burst into the ballroom, and went directly to me. (Just to be clear, though, Flagstaff University isn’t in Arizona – it’s just the name.)

There was Jackson, our electronics guy, Helen, the tall, giggly blonde who’s our designated hacker, Lucy, our ass-kicking brunette analyst and all-around toughie, and, of course, our newest ghostly member, Dana, floating right beside me.

The girls gave me a hug, and Jackson wolf-whistled. “Wow, Debbie – you look super-sexy!”

I smiled and preened.

“So, Debbie,” Lucy said, “Doc said there were some people that were changed…”

“Oh, nothing dangerous except maybe for these two” – I gestured to Pete and Simone – “but they’re okay.” My guys nodded hello to the two. “Oh! There was also one who was dressed like a werewolf and another one like Dracula.”

“That could be a problem,” Helen said. “Where are they now?”

“Last we heard, they were running through the offices upstairs, being chased by Hogan’s Heroes.”

“Hogan’s heroes?”

“Oh, just a bunch rejects from the Police Academy movies,” I giggled. “Guests dressed as soldiers and policemen.”

Just then, we heard several shots.

I looked up and saw Dana waving towards the fire exit.

“Come on!” I said. “Dana’s signaling us to follow her!”

I got up and everyone followed me as I minced to the fire exit. Keeping in mind what Dr. Tully had said, I switched to normal running instead of the mincing, tapping fast-walk I’d originally fallen into.

I followed Dana up the stairwell as she floated up to the roof, and we came to the roof deck’s door. One of the people from the party that was dressed like a marine was blocking it.

“I’m sorry, Miss,” the man said, “I can’t let you through.”

“But we have to get up to the roof!” We heard several other shots.

“You’re very pretty,” the man said, “but this is a military operation. Please…”

Pete came up and slugged him in the face. The faux-marine fell down like a sack of potatoes.

“Military operation, my ass,” Pete growled.

“Petey!” I exclaimed. “You didn’t have to do that!”

What was I saying? I thought to myself. Petey? Really?

Anyway, I peeked around the metal door and saw several of the fake marines and police on the ground either dead or unconscious while the rest that were still standing were firing at the Dracula lookalike.

Dracula just stood there absorbing the shots, but he wasn’t really invulnerable – the bullets were actually hurting him but, for some reason, he was still standing.

Dracula had his right hand at the throat of the werewolf lookalike, the werewolf struggling in his grip, while he had his right arm wrapped around the sexy faux-policewoman as he fondled her. She was also struggling to escape.

It seemed that Pete couldn’t leave it alone. Taking the chain from around his shoulders, he used it to rush the vampire-lookalike, his face looking like it was about to burst into fire, and wrapped it around the Dracula-wannabe’s neck, forcing him to let his prisoners go.

The werewolf fell on the ground, unconscious, while the girl escaped and limped away. Helen and Lucy grabbed the girl and pulled her to safety.

Having let go of his prisoners, Dracula brought both his hands down and around Pete’s neck, and the two struggled, whoever choked the other first would be the winner. The others stopped firing so that they wouldn’t hit Pete, and tried to find a clear shot.

Dana floated in front of me to catch my attention, and waved to two of the unconscious fake policemen’s belts. I saw their handcuffs and tasers, nodded to the floating entity, grabbed the cuffs and tasers, and then ran towards Pete.

I crouched down and snapped a pair of handcuffs around werewolf-man’s wrists and another around his ankles, and then signaled Jackson to drag him away.

I then turned my attention to Faux-Dracula. I stood up, pressed both tasers against his temples and pressed the triggers.

That sent electricity directly into his brain and, after shaking in electric shock for a minute, he fell down unconscious.

After a beat, I giggled into the silence. “Wow! I’m good, aren’t I.”

A beat after that, I saw Dana giving me a razzberry.

 

A few hours later, the real military had come over and taken the affected people away. I was told that they were going to be put into holding cells until the morning, and since the witches said that, for those who were lucky enough to have stayed in their complete costumes, they should revert back to normal when the sun rose.

However, for the others who didn’t, the military would keep them isolated until the witches who’d started all of this could take charge of them.

As for Pete, Simone and I, we went home to my apartment while Jackson, Helen and Lucy went back to Flagstaff.

It was sad, though – Pete was permanently stuck the way he was. Simone, too.

Since Pete had inadvertently taken off his chain during his fight with Dracula, he couldn’t change back to normal anymore, but since he mostly looked like he used to, I think he didn’t really mind.

As for Simone, she had taken off her robe earlier, too, so she was stuck as well. But since she looked very similar to her old self, she could just pass for normal, and just pass as herself later after all of this is over, and just say she'd had a bunch of plastic surgeries, tattoos and a lot of liposuction to the people who knew her.

At present, the two of them were in the living room – Pete was sleeping on my couch while Simone was sitting and watching TV.

I looked at them from my bedroom door – Pete snoring and Simone munching popcorn. Without turning, Simone waved to me – she didn’t need to look: she just knew I was there.

I knew enough of the Ghost Rider comics that I knew what Pete could do now, but I didn’t know much about the Death character from Sandman. I guess I’d find more about it later.

As for me – well, I didn’t really have any special abilities, except to look and sound sexy. But at least I knew now that I didn’t have to act like a bimbo if I didn’t want to.

But if I did, I knew that I could make most guys do anything I wanted just by asking. I guess that’s enough of a super power for me.

But at the moment, I had a question I needed to ask myself.

I could now be a real girl if I wanted. My only worry was that I might lose my photography skills, and whatever other talents I had learned or accumulated over the years if I permanently stayed this way. And, of course, I’d have wasted the thousands of dollars I spent for my GRS and other operations… Well, not really.

I took my little Canon camera, which had changed into a vintage Leica film camera. Nope – this camera won’t do.

I grabbed my other camera, the DSLR, and tested things – taking pictures of my bedroom, living room, the buildings outside my window, and everything else inside the apartment. I grinned – seemed I hadn’t lost any of my photographer’s magic.

Hmmm…

I guess I’ll take a shower, i said to myself.

I took off my white dress as well as my underwear, went to the bathroom and had a long, refreshing shower.

After my shower, and as I rubbed the water from my bright-blonde hair with my towel, I watched the sun peek over the horizon.

“Good morning, Marilyn,” Simone said.

“No,” I replied. “It’s Debbie, actually.”

---end---

P.S. The picture was a collage made from publicly accessible pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Ghost Rider, the Grim Reaper and other pictures. No ownership is claimed. No IP infringement is intended.

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