Work Text:
I sat on my couch doing what I usually did on friday nights, watching one of my favorite shows and eating popcorn. I had hoped my friday night binge watching wouldn’t be interrupted like it had the last few weeks. Well I was halfway through an episode before my popcorn decided to fly across the room. I sighed. The first time that it happened I freaked out and left my house, too scared to sleep there, but over the weeks I just got used to it. The entity, whatever it was, never seemed to want to hurt me. But this was starting to get annoying. I knew I’d have to call someone to get it out of my house eventually. So I pulled out my phone and dialed the number of someone who I knew had handled ghost problems before.
“Hey Tango!” Skizz said energetically on the other end of the line.
“Hey man you are part of a ghost hunting group right?” I asked.
“Yup. Why gotta ghost problem?” Skizz laughed.
“Yeah actually I do have quite the ghost dilemma. I think I got a poltergeist in my house.” I said.
Skizz stopped laughing. He must’ve been making a joke earlier about the ghost thing. “Oh, umm I can be over there in a few minutes with some gear.” He said then hung up.
_______________________________________________________________
Once he arrived he lugged in a large duffle bag full of ghost hunting gear. “Are you sure you need all this?”
He nodded. “Trust me man I’m a master at this stuff! I’ll have your ghost busted in no time!” He said excitedly grabbing a notebook out of the bag. “Now what made you think there was a ghost here?” He asked.
“Well for the last few weeks a bunch of things in my house are moving around and now they’ve started moving in front of me so I figured I’d call you.” I said.
He nodded along and looked through his notebook as I spoke. After a few moments he seemed to find the page he was looking for. “Ah ha! The poltergeist section. This doesn’t look too difficult. I’ll have this outa your house in no time. I just have to sage the house and it’ll be good to go.
He pulled out a bundle of sage that was wrapped up with a rubber band and like it had been sitting in the bag for a while. He pulled out a small lighter and lit the tip of the bundle. He moved around the house and managed to hit every room. After he was done he went back to the kitchen and threw out the sage.
“Alright that should be go-”
Skizz was interrupted with the sound of a crash from the back of the house. We both looked at each other with a look of shock and confusion. We ran to the back office and saw that the small bookshelf had fallen over.
I looked at Skizz confused. “You sure you got the whole house Skizz?”
He nodded. “I know I did. Maybe it just fell on its own. Things like this fall all the time and it's probably just a coincidence.” He rationalized.
I was starting to believe him till we heard the sound of a glass breaking in the kitchen. I knew there was no way that happened by itself. “I don’t think it was by itself.”
Skizz sighed. “Yeah I don’t think so either. But I just don’t know what else it could be!” He said frustrated.
“Is there something else you can do to get rid of a poltergeist?" I asked him.
He nodded. “Yeah I’ll just have to check the notebook.”
We walked down the hall just in time to see the notebook floating in the air and towards the now lit fire in the living room.
Me and Skizz both jumped to grab it shouting “NOOOO!”
Neither of us reached it in time before it went entirely up in flames. We both sat there staring in shock. Neither of us knowing what to do. However we couldn’t stay there for long before one of the table lamps came flying at us. We both dodged in opposite directions and looked at each other with an understanding. All we had done was made this thing mad.
“Skizz please tell me you know a way to fix this.” I said in a slightly fearful tone.
He was looking around the room thinking. “Ughhhh maybe we could-” A glass smashing next to him on the wall scared him out of his train of thought. “Actually I really don’t know any other way. We usually don’t get rid of the ghosts, we just identify them.”
I looked at him slightly angry. “But you said you could do this!”
“And I thought I could!” He yelled back.
The tv turned on and suddenly went to full volume on a random news channel. Me and Skizz both covered our ears. I started looking around the room for the remote while Skizz tried to find anything to get rid of the ghost.
I gave up on looking for the remote after about two minutes because there was no way the ghost hadn’t just hidden somewhere complicated, and just went back to helping Skizz.
“Any ideas!” I yelled as loud as I could.
He was rummaging through his ghost supply bag. “I’m still trying to find something! I don’t know if-” He cut himself off and pulled out what looked like a fire starter wood stick. “Palo Santo! Of course I had some in here!” He seemed to be mentally slapping himself before he pulled out a lighter. He lit the stick while I sat there slightly confused. He moved it around the room and seemed to be chanting something in latin that I couldn’t quite make out over the sound of the tv.
A ton of things from the living room started floating yet still seemed stuck in place, not being able to go towards Skizz as he kept chanting. I wondered how he kept the whole thing memorized. The moment the chant stopped all of the objects fell to the floor.
It was quiet. Neither me or Skizz moved for a good minute and a half, although it felt like an hour. We were both waiting for it to have not worked. And that moment never came. All seemed fine.
We both looked at each other and sighed in relief. It was finally over.