Chapter Three: A Message from Beyond

 

Chapter Three: A Message from Beyond

            Summerville, Oklahoma.

            It was a nice enough town to get away from it all. Spending years living in the loud, bustling atmosphere of New York, Dr. Sean Spengler was more than grateful to trade it in for the quiet, tranquil countryside of Summerville. His reason for being there was more personal than business, visiting his sister, Callie, and his niece and nephew, Phoebe and Trevor.

            Callie and her children had recently been evicted from their home in Chicago. She had called Sean and Egica about it the week before, hoping either of her siblings could offer a place to stay in New York. That was until something strange occurred: an old farm inexplicably appeared out of nowhere and Callie got a good claim on it. None of the townspeople could explain how it got there and that only made Sean more intrigued to uncover its properties.

            So, his visit was in fact more business than personal.

            Of course, the day he arrived in town, he was forced to consent to Callie’s regulation on science and ghost-busting, knowing of her brother’s exploits in New York and how they’ve made him something of a celebrity across America. She especially didn’t want Phoebe involved.

            Phoebe was practically cut from the same cloth as her famous uncle, sharing in his deadpan delivery on things (including jokes), his love of science and technology, and his impressive intellect. They spent a lot of time together, tinkering away in his room in the farmhouse.

            “It’s like having two of her around,” Trevor groaned.

            “Let’s just be happy your sister’s found someone to connect with out here,” Callie told her son. “As much as I prefer it to be someone her age, your uncle’s a good substitute…for now.”

            “If they take apart the only working TV in the house, I’m kicking both their Geek Squad butts,” Trevor vowed.

            Sensing her son was a bit hangry, Callie treated the whole family to a night of dining out. There was a place she and the kids found on the way to the farm called “Spinners.”

            “This place doesn’t look to code,” Sean observed when they arrived.

            The rest of the Spenglers secretly admitted how right he was in his observation. From the outside, Spinners’ architecture was stained and the “Shakes” portion of its neon display was missing an “h” and a “e,” spelling “Saks.”

            “No telling what the meat is like or how old it is,” Sean added. “You can never tell, considering it’s processed. Meat like that can be left out for years, and it would still look like—”

            “Hey, bro?” Callie interrupted. “How ‘bout we just order and hope for the best?”

            “We should’ve had quesadillas,” Phoebe said. “Mom makes great quesadillas.”

            “That’s sweet of you, hon, but I don’t think the stove back in the house is safe to operate yet,” Callie confessed.

            As they waited for one of the roller-skating waitresses to come up to Callie’s SUV, Sean randomly inquired, “Has anyone noticed any unusual activity in the farmhouse lately?” He heard Callie huffing from the driver’s seat.

            “Are you serious?” She shot him a glare through the rearview mirror.

            “My chessboard fell over the other night,” Phoebe told her uncle. “Does that count as unusual?”

            Genuinely intrigued, Sean asked her, “Did it fall over on its own?”

            “O.K., we’re not doing this right now,” Callie restricted. “We came out for a nice evening of dining at this centuries-old burger joint. There’ll be no talk of ghosts and goblins.” In her ranting, Trevor had suddenly left the SUV. Noticing this, Callie teased her brother, “Oh, great. You drove your own nephew away.”

            “I think he’s been driven by hormones,” Phoebe indicated how Trevor was virtually stalking one of the roller-skating waitresses – a teenage African-American girl with a puffy afro.

            Callie scoffed at her son’s interest. “I’m losing control of my family here.”

            “HELLO!”

            Sean, Phoebe, and Callie jumped when a 13-year-old Thai-American girl pressed up against the window of Sean’s side of the SUV. She stared right at him with excitable dark brown eyes. “Uh…hello?” he awkwardly responded.

            “The second I saw you, I just had to come up and say ‘Hi’!” The Thai-American girl said. “I’m such a huge fan of you, sir! My friend Scratch is scared to death of you, but I told him that you only bust the bad ones and that he’s as safe as a kitten.”

            “Your friend Scratch?” Sean frowned.

            “He’s a ghost,” Phoebe clarified for her uncle.

            “Oh, hi, Phoebe!” The Thai-American girl waved. “I didn’t see ya there.” Looking back at Sean, she asked, “Did she tell ya that we sit together in Mr. Grooberson’s summer school class? Podcast is always recording everything we talk about. He’s such a weirdo, but we still love him. Isn’t that right, Phoebe?”

            “I only just met him…and you, Maggie,” Phoebe dryly admitted.

            The Thai-American girl was a little miffed. “It’s, uh, Molly actually. Molly McGee?”

            “I’m sorry,” Phoebe told her. “Because I only just met you doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. I look forward to seeing you and Podcast again tomorrow.”

            Molly’s eyes twinkled with excitement. “We’re gonna have so much fun! And you can bring your uncle, too!”

            “Oh, I wouldn’t want to interfere with your education,” Sean said.

            “There is no education,” Phoebe told him.

            “Yeah, all Mr. Grooberson does is let us watch a bunch of horror movies all day,” Molly specified. “It’s actually kinda fun.”

            “Oh,” Sean uttered, reconsidering the invitation. “Well, then I might just stop by.”

            Molly was even more thrilled by his guarantee. “Tomorrow is gonna be so awesome! I’ll see you then, Phoebe! I gotta get back to my family and finish eating. By the way, do not order the fries. Rumor has it they’re the same ones they served since 1998.” On that revolting note, Molly rushed away from the Spenglers’ SUV.

            “I’m thinking of taking my chances with that stove,” Callie grumbled.

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            Later that night, back in the farmhouse, while Sean was tinkering away in his room, his PKE meter sparked to life, its blinking wings extending as it detected ghostly energy. He hadn’t told Callie or the kids that he brought it with him from New York, and he was glad that he hadn’t in that moment, if his suspicions of the unusual presence he felt in the farmhouse were correct.

            Using it like a compass, he followed the direction that the PKE took him in, heading out of the house and into a work shed near a barn that had the word “DIRT” spray-painted in yellow letters along the side. It was actually one of many oddities that came with the farm, including a quote from Revelation 6:12 spray-painted on sheet metals around the estate entrance.

            In the work shed, there was an assortment of junk around a fireman’s pole – not unlike the one back in the Ghostbusters firehouse HQ. His curiosity piquing, Sean slid down the pole and emerged in what appeared to be an underground lair containing ghostbusting equipment.

            “What the…?” he muttered as he looked on items that he didn’t think belonged anyplace outside of the New York area. Sitting on a worktable was another PKE meter that had the same design as Sean’s, albeit with a taser function in which the wings lined up perpendicular at the front to generate a proton charge. “Well, that’s a neat design.”

            In response to his compliment, a lamp on the worktable moved on its own, shining in his face and momentarily blinding him. “Do you mind?” he rebuked to the invisible force that led him to the lair. It obliged, moving the lamp slightly downward. “Much better. Thank you.”

            “Who are you talking to?” Sean jumped when he heard Phoebe’s voice speaking from the lair entrance.

            “Why are you not asleep?” he asked her.

            “I couldn’t,” she answered. “Something’s moving the pieces on that chessboard in my room.” The lamp moved again, this time on Phoebe.

            “I believe it’s our friend from the other side,” Sean gathered.

            “Who is it?” Phoebe queried, prompting the lamp to shine on a locker that was filled with Ghostbuster jumpsuits. Phoebe went up to one of them and spotted a nametag stitched above the left breast pocket that had the name of “Spengler.” Seeing this, Phoebe looked to her uncle and said, “It’s yours.”

            “It can’t be,” Sean negated. “Except for this PKE meter, I left everything back in New York.” Analyzing the jumpsuit, he plucked a crumpled Crunch bar wrapper from out of the left breast pocket. “It certainly could be mine. I keep my wrappers in the same pocket.”

            “Ew,” Phoebe nauseated. “That is a disgusting habit, Uncle Sean.”

            The lamp shot on Phoebe again after she addressed her uncle by name, and then it drooped, as if by sadness.

            “Did it react to my criticism?” Phoebe presumed.

            “I think it reacted to you calling me ‘Uncle Sean’,” Spengler surmised. “Perhaps whoever this entity is, he has some sort of connection to you.”

            The lamp shined towards another area of the lair, one that had a wall of old pictures of a single person, from infancy to young adulthood. Phoebe recognized the person in them. “It’s Mom,” she indicated in surprise.

            Turning to the lamp – the only physical representation of the entity, Sean asked in deep suspicion, “Who are you? What’re you doing with these pictures of my sister? Why do you have our equipment in this room?”

            The entity answered by shining its light on a wall of diplomas.

            Sean approached one of them and read the name on the certificate:

            Egon Spengler.