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“Fucking run!” Ryan cried, grabbing Shane by the hand and all but dragging him out of the room. He could feel the touch of the ghost on his back, feel the snap of its hatred on his heels. Shane’s hand was warm in his own, and that was only thing keeping him going. Without Shane, Ryan would have been scared stiff – unable to move – but when Shane was beside him, Ryan was… brave. He had to be, if only for Shane. If Shane wouldn’t believe in these things – if Shane wouldn’t believe that ghosts and demons and evil spirits were real – then Ryan had to believe for him, and keep him safe.
Shane laughed when Ryan stopped running. He wasn’t out of breath, and he didn’t look afraid. Ryan was one wrong sound away from passing out, but Shane was- Ryan had no idea how Shane was never affected by this stuff.
Ryan said, “Holy shit, dude!”
“What?” Shane laughed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Har har.” Ryan straightened himself, his chest still heaving, to shove Shane in the arm. “You can’t tell me you didn’t feel that.”
“Feel what?”
“That!” Ryan stressed. He had felt the ghost touching him – felt the malice of it washing over him, suffocating him. He had never had a supernatural experience like that before, and he would be damned if he was going to let it go.
He said, “We have to go back in, dude.”
“What?” Shane looked incredulous. “Ryan, no. Look at you, man. You look like you’re gonna faint.”
“Shut up,” Ryan snapped – but he couldn’t argue. He felt like he was going to faint. But- he said, “My camera’s still in there, dude. I need to see if I got any footage.”
“We can come back for that in the morning.”
“In the- that was a two-thousand dollar camera, Shane.”
Shane sighed. “Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll go. You stay out here. I don’t want you risking a heart attack for a fucking camera, okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” Ryan said. He felt sheepish, all of a sudden, and found himself rubbing at the back of his neck. The way Shane had said that – it was almost as if he cared.
Did Shane care?
They had known each other for less than a year, but Ryan was- he couldn’t remember life without him. Life without Shane – life before Shane – was a blur, barely even a memory.
Ryan only knew that, if Shane were to leave him now, he would never recover.
“Right,” Shane said, completely unaware of Ryan’s internal revelation. “See you in five.” He turned his back on Ryan, and headed back inside the (haunted?) building.
“Alright, fucker,” Shane said, when he was back in the room with Ryan’s camera. “Where are you?”
There was only silence, for a moment. But then, across the hall, Shane heard a quiet, scraping sound. He turned towards it, and saw deep trenches appearing jaggedly on the wall. The ghost was angry, and seemed to want nothing more than to take it out on the two living creatures that had unsuspectingly wandered into its home.
Unlucky for this ghost, however, one of the living was not so unsuspecting.
Shane said, “Show yourself,” and like always, the apparition did. Its body was flickering in and out of existence, its body swathed in electric blue. It looked like a software glitch, its body jumping around and quietly humming.
Shane grinned when he saw it. “There you are.”
The ghost howled when Shane ran towards it, and could do nothing but stare as Shane plunged his hand into its chest. He spoke some Latin – loud and clear and perfectly pronounced – and the ghost burst from existence in a shower of burning embers.
Dusting off his hands, Shane sighed without relief. He said, “I’m sorry I had to do that. I would have left you alone, normally, but you touched Ryan. Do you understand what that means?”
The ghost was gone, it couldn’t hear what Shane had to say, but he was saying it none the less.
“That means I have to destroy you,” Shane said, “because nobody touches Ryan but me.”