Gary Brewster pulled the blue cargo van into the driveway and stared at the house for a moment before turning off the ignition. It didn't look like a haunted house, though most really didn't look like the decrepit Victorian houses portrayed in the movies. Even so, this one looked completely innocent of the evil goings-on its owner had described in their telephone conversation. It was a narrow but deep two-story, built-oh, maybe in the fifties, by the look of it, with a detached one-car garage. It was covered in blue, vinyl siding with white shutters on all the windows and had hanging flowerpots along its front porch. Maples ran along one edge of the property line and a row of evergreens along the other. The grass was mowed and the sidewalk edged. It was a delightfully maintained piece of property on the outside, something most owners of haunted houses neglected, considering what was happening within. That struck Gary as odd, but he never questioned a job.

Tal Gordon tapped him on the shoulder from behind, and he finally turned the idling van off.

Gary unbuckled his seatbelt and said as he wiped a line of sweat from his forehead, "Let me go tell the owner we're here before we start unloading."

"Right," Tal replied as he turned to the others sitting with him. "Maury, Walter, check over your equipment one more time. Make sure all batteries are at full charge. If you don't, and the electricity goes out during tonight's session, this job is toast. Got it?"

Maury began doing what was asked of him and turned to some black boxes in the space behind the seats where the equipment was stowed, but Walter sighed loudly. "You'd think we'd never done this before."

"Check twice and cut once," Tal quipped

"Yeah, yeah. Your daddy was full of neat, little catch phrases," Walter replied dryly.

As Gary closed the van door, he looked back up at the house one more time, eyeing the vacant and shadowed windows at the front of the house. Though, admittedly, it was probably the least menacing looking of all the homes they had held sessions in, an unexpected chill coursed down his sweat-soaked back when, inexplicably, he saw the curtains sway slightly against a blackened room on the second floor. He saw no one brush by it. If it were a fan, even an oscillating one, the curtain would be in constant movement. Now, it just hung there as limp as it was before being disturbed. He knew full well that looks could be deceiving. He felt this house's deception clear down to his bones.

Finally, Gary leaned through the open window with a knowing smirk on his face as Tal and Walter continued their bickering and Maury, behind them, shook his head silently as he readied his equipment. "Tal, don't be too hard on these guys," he said. "It's bad enough dealing with all this heat. And I have a feeling this is going to be a long night, so you might just want to save that enthusiasm until two in the morning when you'll be needing it to stay awake."

They agreed but started up again when Gary left the van and headed to the house. As he climbed the porch steps, a humid breezed whistled through the evergreens, and the current sent the hanging flowerpots gently kissing one another with a quiet plink, plink. He raised his hand to knock on the screen door, but the inner door opened before he had the chance.

"Hello, Mr. Keller," Gary began. "We spoke earlier this week. I'm Gary Brewster from the Northern Alliance of Ghost Researchers."

An old man poked his large nose against the screen of the door. He eyed Gary suspiciously then eyed the van in the driveway for a moment. Suddenly, a smile creased his wrinkled face, and he opened the door.

"Hello, hello," he said as he came out onto the porch to greet him, patting a handkerchief on the back of his neck. "Sorry about the scowl, there. I've had so many Kirby vacuum cleaner salesmen stop by the last couple of months, that I'm getting tired of answering the door, so I am."

He was a little troll of a fellow, barely making Gary's chest with the top of his head. And the wrinkles on his weathered face were as numerous as the stars. Nonetheless, there was a twinkle in his eye and a quickness in his step that betrayed his ancient covering.

"I am so glad you came," he said, shaking Gary's hand. "This house has been mine since the day she was built. I've taken about as good a care of her as anyone can. But I'm at my wit's end, so I am. You're my last hope, or else a for sale sign goes up in the yard next week."

Gary smiled consolingly. He was good at that, and many people living under the spell of the supernatural needed it. That was why he was the team leader. "Give us a night or two and once we find the problem, we can focus then on a remedy."

"The house is yours," Mr. Keller said. "I've packed my bags, and I'm going to stay at my sister's house till your done, so I am. Her number's on the fridge door, so you can call me when you're done."

"Okay, then. With your permission, my team and I will unpack our equipment and get set up."

Mr. Keller sat on the porch and watched curiously as the four men brought in briefcases and small trunks full of equipment. As the last piece was lugged up the steps, Mr. Keller fell in behind it and followed its carrier into the kitchen where the rest of the equipment was being unpacked.

Gary, who had been holding a large briefcase, set it on the kitchen table and motioned for Mr. Keller over to where he was standing. "Let me introduce everyone to you and what their respective field of expertise is," he said.

"First, he pointed to Walter. "That's Walter Lemming. He's an electromagnetic expert. He keeps track of the static electricity and electromagnetic fluxes of each room. Once he comes up with a baseline, any variant could denote possible infestation."

"Infestation?" Mr. Keller wondered. "We ain't after termites, so we ain't."

Gary laughed. "We've adopted some loose terminology to try and put what we do into an explanation that makes sense to the general public."

"Well, when you start talking about breaking out the Raid to get rid of my ghost infestation, I'm calling someone else." He pointed to Maury, who was blowing and talking into some small microphones and watching the feedback across a computer screen. "What's he doing there? Looks like you'll be doing some karaoke later on. I'm not paying out good money for you guys to set around and belt out crappy renditions of 'Feelings', so I'm not."

That produced a chuckle from all four men, and the smile on the old man's face betrayed the stern look given when he made the comment.

"That's Maury Eichman," Gary continued with a grin. "He's our EVP specialist. That stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon. He'll take recordings of all the hot spots in the house and play them back at a wavelength much lower than humans. If there are any ghosts who are trying to speak to us, it'll be picked up by Maury."

Gary pointed to Tal. "That's Tal Gordon. He's our video man. He's the eyes of our whole operation."

"I'm also second in command, should anything, God forbid, happen to Gary during a session," Tal let Mr. Keller know.

Walter moaned. "I'm still puzzled by what you think just might happen to him, exactly-besides going in sane from your insatiable banter about being second in command. Sometimes I think you hope something happens to Gary."

"Absolutely not!" Tal exclaimed. "Everyone knows you should have a contingency plan in case the number one guy goes down. That's where I come in."

Walter turned to Mr. Keller. "Please excuse him. He just got done watching twenty-four hours of Viet Nam movies on the Superstation, so he thinks we're after Gooks instead of ghosts."

Gary coughed scoldingly at the two. "When the work starts, these two are pure professionals, I assure you, Mr. Keller."

"Considering what it is you do for a living, I really wasn't expecting bankers in shirts and ties, so I didn't. Squabble all you want as long as you can help me."

Gary hadn't noticed that Maury had gotten up and was already recording the dining room. "Hey Gar," he said. "You got a second."

Gary turned to Mr. Keller and whispered with a smile, "Truth be known, Maury is probably the only professional. He takes his job very seriously." With that, he went into the dining room.

Standing next to a small, round dining table in the middle of the room, Maury was looking down at an instrument that was strapped around his shoulder while holding up a microphone. "Look at this," he said.

Gary joined him and looked down at the instrument. The needle on the meter jumped wildly as Maury moved the microphone around the room.

"I don't hear any extraneous noises," he said. "So why is the meter jumping like that?"

Maury shrugged his shoulders and looked perplexed. "I don't know. It's supposed to only jump like that when it picks up our voices. I base lined it before starting, so providing everything's working correctly, it means--." He stopped short of saying what he was thinking.

The thought was finished for him, though. "It means there's a lot of something being said in this room right now that we can't hear."

A worried look washed over Maury's face. "But Gar, even in our best sessions-remember Euclid, Maine and Waterford, Pennsylvania-those barely got a register on the meter, and they've been praised as some of the best EVP ever recorded."

At the utterance of that statement, Gary suddenly felt a numbing coldness on his neck, starting at the back and quickly moving its way forward, like frozen hands readying themselves to choke off his jugular vein. In the unbearable heat of mid-afternoon anything cool would have been a welcome relief, but this was a burning cold, a cauterizing chill. He gasped and flailed himself around to find nothing behind him. Luckily, no one but Maury had heard him. Everyone was still in the kitchen unpacking and chatting with Mr. Keller about their equipment.

Rubbing his neck, he quickly turned back around to Maury, who was eyeing him with concern. He said nothing at first. They had been to enough sessions together for Maury to know what had just transpired. The look on Maury's face said as much.

Gary remembered the feeling that enveloped him as he looked upon the innocent, almost virgin-looking abode. He suddenly felt as though the swaying curtain in that window upstairs was a sign-a warning sign.

He said with as much authority as he could summon, "I think it's time to ask Mr. Keller to leave and get this thing started."

Maury nodded resolutely, and they returned to the kitchen.

After Mr. Keller left, nothing was said at first of Gary's incident in the dining room. Everyone set about setting up for the up coming night.

Tal set up video cameras in every room of the house. Each one was numbered and connected to its corresponding video screen on one of three computers set up on the kitchen counter. Each screen was set up to show up to four different sights for a total of twelve rooms at its full capacity; this house had nine, including the basement.

Walter went from room to room with another instrument similar to the one Maury used, except that instead of a microphone, this one had a hand-held sensor that picked up electrical currents from the air. He recorded everything on a clipboard; that would be his baseline for that house.

Gary followed Maury around as he recorded each room. There was a slight jump on the meter from time to time, but it was hard to tell if it was picking up voices of the dead or just Walter telling Tal to shut up. Surprisingly, in the room where Gary had seen the curtains move, nothing registered on the EVP recorder. He knew that it didn't mean there were no ghosts in that room. It just meant that, if there were, Maury would have to work harder when extracting what may have been said there. With EVP, nothing was for sure until Maury did his voodoo on the computer downstairs.

After a couple of hours setting up and familiarizing themselves with the house, they met back in the kitchen. Gary closed the dining room door and the door to the front foyer of the house, effectively barricading themselves inside that room. 

Walter took out a Pepsi from a cooler they had brought along and slumped into one of the kitchen chairs. "This is going to be a bust," he complained. There's so much free electromagnetic energy running through this place that it was hard to get a baseline for my readings. Usually, you can just tell that a place is infested-get a gut feeling about it. I get nothing gas from this place." He took a long drink of Pepsi and let out a big belch.

"High readings are usually indicative of hauntings," Gary said. "You don't thing your readings have any significance?"

"Usually, sure. But if I use the numbers I got for baselines, there's no way, short of a lightning strike, that the numbers will go any higher then what I've already registered. Now, I've taken note of the abundance of electrical lines in the area. This house in only six blocks from I-90 and the multitude of lines that run right along side it. Plus, there's a power station not far from here where a lot of these local electrical lines originate from. With that in mind, I don't put any credence in the high readings I'm getting."

Tal said, "I see you've done your homework."

"Only when I have to."

Gary sighed as he sat on the floor and leaned his back up against the stove. "I'd put a little more stock in those readings, if I were you."

"Tell them what happened in the dining room, Gar," Maury said as he was copying what he'd recorded onto his computer.

Gary told them about the icy current that passed over him. Ghosts were usually first sensed as a cold current of air, especially noticeable in a hot room.

"So I don't think this'll be as boring as you think, Walter," Gary said after telling them what had happened.

Tal took a seat next to Walter, turning the chair around and leaning up against the back of the seat. "So tell us again what's up with this house."

"Well, the owner didn't have a lot of anything significant to say. No one had ever died in the house, so I ruled out a familial haunting. I also did a record search of the area and didn't find any old cemeteries that had been dug up to build here. I only found one hint as to what might be the cause of the hauntings-an old road."

"How does an old road tie into this house?" Maury wondered aloud.

"Well," Gary began, "there was an old road that, at one time, people used to travel from here to Kramersburgh eighty miles north. We're talking early eighteen hundreds. Irish immigrants and Gypsies used the road extensively when they looked for work. It was cheaper to live here and travel to the bigger town than it was to stay there. Besides, Gypsies were rather nomadic, anyway, so it was in there blood. Well, whole families traveled together because whole families worked together, mostly. If some unfortunate accident or illness had overcome any member of the family during the trek, they would bury them along side the road and continue on. As far as I can tell, that road passed near here, maybe right on this very spot."

"Why the hauntings now?" Tal asked. "This house has been here for fifty-some years. And why not any of the other houses along this street?"

Gary rubbed a heat-induced weariness from his face and wiped the perspiration on his pants. "As for why here, I suppose we're probably sitting on or near some of those old grave sights. As for why now--." He shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose we'll never fully understand the anatomy of the supernatural. That's why what we do for a living will never be accepted as science."

Not much happened for the next two hours. Walter checked the rooms for any electromagnetic variations and found none. Tal kept vigil at his monitors for anything out of the ordinary, but nothing stirred in any of the rooms. Maury was having a hard time getting his EVP's to run properly and twice had to take the system apart and rewire it. Finally, he had to go out into the van and get new cables.

Near sunset, a breeze kicked up, ruffling the curtains on the open kitchen window. Its coolness was a welcome reprieve from the choking heat that had settled on the area like the lid over a boiling pot. But with that draught came the sudden disappearance of the red-orange glow of the sun. It had disappeared behind ominous, slate-gray clouds that were rushing in headlong from the west. A storm, created from the humidity of the day, was almost upon them.

That was when things got interesting.

Long shadows began to overtake the kitchen from the abrupt disappearance of daylight. The only illumination in the room was from video displays, and no one seemed to welcome the sudden gloom; a melancholy had settled over the group. It was an apprehension over the surreal knowledge that something besides a storm was looming. Anxiousness was always part of ghost hunting because you never knew what you'd get. Mostly, you'd get nothing. Sometimes, only hints into the deeper realms, a pin-prick of something otherworldly that would make the hairs on the back of you neck stand on end with excitement. But rarely did you ever get something that you could really sink your teeth into-something substantial. He couldn't speak for the others, but despite the house's quaint look of naiveté, Gary felt something here. Something-substantial. He knew instinctively that they were going to get a belly-full tonight. 

He got up from the floor and closed the kitchen window then went to the light switch near the dining room door and returned a blanched light to the room. 

A quick flash of lightning spilled through the window and, after a long silence, the distant bellow of thunder followed.

"Is everyone's auxiliary power at full strength?" Gary asked. "I don't want this storm affecting any of the readings by using the house's power."

Everyone nodded and began unplugging their equipment and using battery back up.

But Maury said, "I'm almost through with the EVP conversion. I'll finish it then go to back up-unless you want me to stop now. If I do, I'll have to start from the beginning, and that'll be another hour before we have anything to listen to."

Gary shook his head. "No, finish up. If there's anything significant on that EVP, I want to know what it is as soon as possible."

He then turned to Tal. "Turn the video display off on number six. I have to go to the john."

The basement doorway was in the kitchen next to a pantry. Mr. Keller had told them about another bathroom in the basement that they could access from the kitchen. That would leave the upstairs bathroom-and the entire upstairs-free from their comings and goings. The less they disturbed the areas under surveillance, the more likelihood of spotting anything out of the ordinary.

The basement was cool and damp. It felt refreshing, and a tingle wiggled its way down Gary's wet back as he felt for and found the string that activated the overhead light.

In the far corner was the other bathroom. It was not housed within a separate room but was open for all to see. It was obvious that this was put in at a later time, probably out of necessity. The four daughters and wife plastered on his living room wall had probably facilitated that necessity. 

As he relieved himself, he closed his eyes, took in a deep breath and sighed. He was tired already, and it wasn't even 9 p.m. This was definitely going to be a long night.

Another sudden chill opened his eyes. This bite was numbing. He looked around the room. No one. He felt someone. Some-thing.

As he re-zipped his pants, he noticed it: his breath. It was whisping to the ceiling in vaporous plumes. He felt as though he were standing outside in a blizzard.

Something was happening.

He quickly went to the sink to wash his hands and looked into the mirror. He gasped in horror. It wasn't his face he saw. The blurred outline was the rotted face of an old man. A face that had been eaten away by decomposition and by ants and by worms. It was the fractured face of carrion.

The image in the mirror smiled devilishly at him.

Gary's heart leapt up into his throat, and for a moment, he couldn't breath. Every heartbeat was an explosion that loosened his head from his shoulders with its pain. His feet seemed cemented to the floor, and he could not force himself to look away from the horrific sight staring back at him.

Without warning it closed the gap between them, as if it were about to come out of the glass that separated it from Gary. The fetid figure appeared to be only inches from his face and closing in quickly.

Suddenly, the door to the basement opened up across the room behind him.

"Gar!" Maury yelled down.

The face in the mirror abruptly disappeared. Gary's chains of horror finally unloosened, and his feet were freed from the floor. He breathed out but no more vapor issued from his mouth. 

He stared at his reflection. It was his reflection.

"Gar?" Maury yelled again.

Did he really see what he saw? Or was the heat of the day finally getting to him?

"Gary!"

Maury never called him Gary unless something important needed his attention.

He turned around as Maury descended about half of the stairs.

"What is it?" Gary asked in a shaky voice.

"You need to hear what I got," he said in an admixture of giddiness and fear. "You really need to hear what I got."

Gary smiled anxiously. "You got good EVP's?"

He nodded. "And it was talking specifically to you!"

When Gary emerged at the top of the stairway, everyone was huddled around Maury's EVP unit. There was a look of both fear and astonishment on all the faces. Maury had quickly rewound the tape and was now fumbling with a myriad of buttons as he motioned for Gary to join them.

He was still not quite able to shake off the horrific image that had stared back at him through the mirror downstairs. It had features he'd never seen on a specter before. Most images were of people as they were in life, not how they looked in or after death. This face was a face that was meant to scare, and it worked. He sighed, flexed his hands as he stared down into that dank, tomb-like basement then quickly closed the door and joined the others; he would tell them what he'd seen after he heard the EVP.

"Tell him what you told us, Maury," Tal prodded.

"Give the poor bastard a chance to speak," Walter shot, "and maybe he will."

"See, I was getting nothing at the 300 range, which is where the typical spectral voice can be heard. But they've been heard as low as 100, so I kept reducing in increments but always had to stop at 100. The makers of the software knew ghosts weren't heard below 100 so their software could only take me down that far."

"That's why he thought something was wrong with the EVP," Tal noted.

"Especially since the meter registered so high in the dining room. I really thought I'd get something at 300. Then, I decided to get brave and it took a little jimmy-rigging, but I got the computer to go lower." He smiled triumphantly. "We got it at 88. Listen."

Gary listened intently as Maury turned the machine on. At first, only static buzzed through the air. After about 15 seconds he heard it:

A woman's voice: "You are in danger."

Static.

Something unintelligible then: "They know who you are and what you do."

More static then: "They will never leave here and are bound and determined to never let you leave either, Mr. Brewster."

Static-

"Beware . . ."
Static-

". . . the. . ."

Static-

". . . light."

Suddenly, there were screeches and howls like a pack of rabid dogs descending on their victim. The female voice screamed and fell silent. A wet phlemy growl came over the speaker. It was a sinister snarl that shook everyone when they heard it.

Gary looked back at the closed door to the basement and wondered if the face he saw belonged to the thing he now heard. A sudden anxiety could be wrung from him like a saturated sponge.

It spoke. "We've been waiting . . waiting for you. Now, you will never leave!"

All went silent.

An alarm suddenly sounded on one of Tal's video screens. Everyone turned to monitor number 3, which was the bedroom where Gary had seen the presence in the window earlier in the day. Tiny glowing lights called orbs were shooting haphazardly across the room. 

Walter said, "I don't think I've ever seen so many orbs at once in my whole life."

"So, are you still only getting gas from this place?" Tal asked.

Walter ignored him and went to his own equipment and checked his trifield meter. The needle was shaking in an epileptic fit as it climbed higher and higher up the scale. He checked it against his baseline for the room.

"Gary, the trifield has gone over double the baseline for this room. I can only imagine what it is beyond the kitchen. Should I go check?"

Gary, now dividing his time up between the monitors and the trifield meter with quick jerks of his head, said, "I don't think we need to have the meter telling us what I think we already know what's happening here. Let's just stay put for now and watch."

They all clustered around the equipment, taking notes and adjusting knobs, but mostly they watched Tal's video monitors.

"So, what do you make of what Maury's EVP recorded?" Walter finally asked.

"Well, what we do for a living must make it's way around the haunting circles," Gary replied with forced levity. 

Maury asked, "The fact that the female ghost called you by name-doesn't that bother you?"

"Scares the hell out of me."

"Why do you think she warned us?"

"It's obvious that something bad is going on here. She was a good entity that wanted to warn us, keep us from harm."

Tal said, "So, we've moved beyond a classic haunting, here. I'm not so sure I'd even classify this as a poltergeist or apparition. What exactly are we dealing with?"

"Possession," Gary stated emphatically.

They all stared silently at each other for a moment. Each look, one to the other, conveyed the same lost look; they had never encountered a possessed house before.

Lightning ripped open a momentary hole in the heavens and the sound of its mending pealed shortly afterward. The rain outside now came down in sheets. 

Maury asked, "So, what, exactly, has possession of the house? Who was that woman on the EVP warning us about?"

Gary shot a glance to the basement door. "I met him-or it-in the basement. I saw it in the mirror as I was washing my hands."

"What was it?" Walter asked as he glanced up from his negative ion detector and wrote some numbers on a clipboard. He was trying to keep busy, but his voice betrayed an anxiety that everyone now felt.

Gary wrinkled his brow in a nervous contemplation. "It-it was a man, yet not a man. Something-something different. Something that chilled me more than anything we've dealt with up to now. And I dare say it was something entirely foreign to our field of study. It had qualities that seemed both spectral and physical at the same time."

Walter said, "But you can't have both. Only one or the other."

"Or so we thought up to present. I have a feeling that tonight will forever change the way people study the paranormal."

"Uh oh," Tal blurted. "Gary, come here and look at this."

Gary was by his side at the monitors before he finished his sentence.

There was something in one of the rooms. A figure was beginning to take shape in the corner of the room. Colors seemed to warp around an invisible sphere, and the air seemed to undulate like ranks of heat radiating from a desert road.

"Which room is that?" Gary asked.

Tal looked over Gary's shoulder to the door directly behind him. "Whatever that thing is, it's just beyond the dining room door."

Without warning, the lights in the kitchen went out. 

"I guess it's good that we went to auxiliary power," said Walter.

No sooner had those words issued from his mouth, all the equipment went dead.

"How can that be?" Walt trembled. "How could they have access to our battery backups?"

"Maybe more powerful entities can manipulate electrical currents," Gary wondered out loud.

"What else might they be able to control?" Tal added.

Suddenly, a great light shined through the keyhole and out from around the edge of the door. Everyone gasped and took a step back from the doorway but only for a moment. There was something about the light. Something oddly reassuring, something-benevolent. It seemed too bright to be anything sinister, for surely nothing dark and malign could hide where its rays reached.

"Maybe the good entity, that lady that warned us, came back with others to fight off whatever it is that doesn't want us to leave," Maury guessed.

Gary swallowed hard. "I don't think so. Remember what she said about the light. Beware the light."

Tal shook his head no. "That's all we could make out. There were other things in that statement that we couldn't decipher. Maybe she was saying 'Beware of all you see until you see the light', or something along those lines."

"For once I agree with Tal," Walter said. "I think we need to see what's beyond that door. It's our duty as ghost hunters."

Gary raised his voice and became more insistent. "You didn't see what I saw in the basement." He sighed and brushed his hair back in frustration. "We just discussed this; if it can manipulate electricity, what else can it do?"

Tal reiterated, "We still aren't certain that the female entity was warning us about the light. I say, let's open the door and find out what it is."

"Though I agree with Gar," Maury said with only a slight reluctance in his voice, "I think we need to see what's behind that door, get pictures of it. We need proof of some sort before we leave here or else everyone both inside and outside our circle will think we made this up for the publicity."

Everyone but Gary agreed and Tal grabbed his camera out of a briefcase that was sitting on the floor under the table.

"I can't be held responsible for what happens when that door opens," Gary pleaded.

"Damned it, Gary!" Walter shot. "Aren't you the least bit interested in what's making that light shine behind that door?"

"And aren't you the least bit afraid? I know we've been doing this for a long time without incident, but this kind of work isn't without its hazards. Maybe one of those hazards is going to hit us out of the blue, if we don't proceed carefully." 

"You've always approached ghost hunting with a scientific eye. Now, you're acting like a superstitious child."

"Look, of course I'm curious. This stuff runs through my blood, always had. But maybe I'm coming to realize that there are some things that we just don't need to know the answer to. Ask any astronomer if they'd want to take a rocket into the center of a black hole to see what happens to them, and I bet they'd say no. I'm just saying that sometimes it's better-and safer-to speculate."

Tal stepped over to the dining room door. "Sorry boss. We disagree, and if you're not going in then I'm taking charge."

Gary looked at Maury for support, but Maury shrugged his shoulders and said, "I just want proof, Gar. I'm tired of being laughed at when I tell people what I do. This is a golden opportunity to show the world that we aren't kooks, that this stuff is real." He pointed to the door with determination. "That is the proof we've been looking for."

Tal said, "Are you two ready?"

Walter and Maury shook their heads yes.

Gary pleaded one more time for everyone to stay in the kitchen, but his petitions fell on deaf ears.

Tal opened the door, and all three went into the dining room.

Gary went to the door and listened for a moment. "Wow," he heard Walter say.

"Get the picture," Maury said.

Gary heard two snaps from Tal's camera.

For a moment, he thought that maybe he had overreacted to seeing the face in the mirror. Everything from the moving curtain, to the icy chill on his neck in the dining room, to the face in the mirror, to the pleas from a long-dead woman had culminated in an apprehension he'd never felt before in any session. Maybe the newness of the feeling bothered him more than the events that precipitated them.

Everyone beyond the door was taken up with an awe of which he was now beginning to be jealous. Their voices held a note of wonder and excitement. Whatever they were seeing had not given any of them the slightest uneasiness.

Yes, Gary decided that he had overreacted and now wanted to join his team. 

He was about to push open the door when he felt a coldness upon his shoulder. It was an icy grip that he couldn't break; it prevented him from entering.

Something whispered in his ear. "Don't duplicate the others' folly. I warned you, but they did not listen. Go now, for their demise in that room will follow you in here, if you stay any longer."

Gary shuddered in disbelief; it was the voice of the woman on the EVP recorder. He could hear her as though she were flesh and blood right behind him.

"Wh-who are you?" he asked.

"You were right to call me good. I am a-friend, who believes in the work you do. Unlike those who loathe the living. Those who your friends are about to meet."

Suddenly, Gary heard Tal say, "What the hell is that?"

"Go now, before it's too late."

The icy embrace left him as quickly as it came.

"My god! My god! What is that thing?" Maury exclaimed.

Faint growls, grumblings in the distance, began to swell, growing louder and louder. In an instant they were just beyond the door, chittering and screeching with baleful voices. The noises were from what sounded like hungry growls and laments from what could have been a legion of damned souls. There was no mistaking their nefarious intent; it was the sound of bloodlust. 

Gary could hear cries from the three men trapped inside, but he couldn't make out their pleas through the pandemonium. Part of him wanted to rip the door open and help his friends. But they were warned. He warned them. He knew that if he opened the door he would share in their fate.

The door rattled on its hinges. Something on the other side was pounding on it. Was it a demon trying to make its way to Gary or was it one of the three trapped inside desperately trying to escape.

The noises. So ear-splitting, so eerie, so laced with evil that they shook him to his marrow.

He grabbed the doorknob, let go, then grabbed it again. Maybe he could open it just enough to let one of his friends out. He turned the knob slowly.

The door shuddered violently in his grasp, and he quickly let the knob go.

Suddenly, the door flung open and the sight in front of him welded his lungs closed so he couldn't breathe. In the brief moment he was able to stand there, he saw the darkened images of grotesquely shaped beings hovered over a shadow-hidden mass on the floor. There was a light behind them, like a stadium light, making it so nothing in the room was discernable. One of the figures reached down into the pile on the floor and pulled up what looked like the outline of a torn limb.

The shadow-hidden face of the entity holding the hewn limb turned to Gary. "Won't you join us, Mr. Brewster? We were just about to have a late dinner."

The beings turned to Gary and began closing in.

The voice in his ear again: "Your only safety is outside. Get outside, and they won't be able to follow.

Gary ran as fast as he could, almost taking the door to the front foyer off as he went through it.

The malignant laughs grew louder as the specters chased him down the hallway to the front door.

He reached it.

--Closer. 

Tried to unlock the door, but the knob turned in his sweaty grip.

--Closer, faster.

He could almost feel them at the back of his neck. 

The door wouldn't open

--Closer, faster, hungrier.

He knew they were almost there. 

To his immediate right was the living room with a large picture window along the front wall. Without any hesitation, he turned and ran into the living room.

The beings were now upon him.

As one reached out a shadow-cloaked claw to snare him, he leaped headlong through the window and landed in a pool of glass on the front porch. Not satisfied that the porch was still far enough away, in one smooth motion, he kept his momentum going and jumped over the porch railing, narrowly missing a hanging flowerpot, and landed in the rain-soaked yard. He got up and ran to the van.

When he got in and started the ignition, he looked up at the house. There was no more bright light, but he thought he could see the outline of someone at the broken window. Was it one of the ghosts? Was it the woman who had saved him? Was it one of the others he'd left in the room? The last thought he doubted.

Gary put the van in reverse and left as quickly as he could.

A week later, Gary Brewster sat in his van a half a block away and watched Mr. Keller put a For Sale sign on his front lawn. The picture window had since been replaced, and no doubt all the equipment left behind had been thrown out or hocked to pay for the window, since none of the calls from Mr. Keller were returned.

As he watched, he thought about Maury and Tal and Walter. He thought about the mysterious woman who had warned them. He thought about the beings that had torn them to pieces. He shivered.

As He pulled out of that parking space and headed back the way he had come, Gary knew he'd never ghost hunt again. What was the purpose? He knew that they were there, but outside of their existence, he knew nothing about them. He'd decided that that was okay; some things we just weren't meant to know.