Translucent

Chapter 36: The Ghost Hunters

When I was little, ghost stories were never particularly my favourite.

Yet now I grew sympathy at those beings as I was one of them now. Now I came to understand the pain and agony that explained all the haunting, and the questions that followed:

Why was I bound on Earth? 

What really was it that I was looking for? Was my true purpose of my existence as this creature to lash out and wreck havoc to those who wronged me years ago–my family? Would I achieve peace and be let on if that had happened? Now that years had gone by since my passing, my revenge and pain were no longer relevant. They turned into a perpetual understanding: that I was meant to die in that very bed.

With the questions remained unanswered, I decided to brush them off and began to embrace my fate as an immortal fairly as a distraction. Lurking had become a routine. I began to unlock new unearthly powers such levitating things, teleporting, how to appear or disappear in human's presence at will, and shifting myself into a breeze. Most of the times I chose not to be tactile. Doing so requires energy from the living, while there was barely anyone coming.

The area grew quiet. Footsteps of bypassers caught my attention and I hurriedly took a position at the window seat, sometimes sitting on the window frame. The bypassers recoiled in fear everytime they passed this house, whispering to each other. They started coming in and I didn't mind at all, from a pack of twelve-year-olds huddling with each other and carrying torches, to adults carrying cameras and calling me out. They barely called my name anymore and I went with 'Ghostie'.

Years later, one visit particularly caught my attention since this group of three men and a tall, lanky lady arrived in a rather peculiar looking big car, dressed in peculiar-looking jackets and donned big hairs. I must be somewhere in the near future.

"Gerald, you've got to see this place." one of the men's voices echoed in the entrance hall. A rather plump man with big curly red hair and beard that sported the same fashion of his hair, appeared at the door. "The Haywood house. Ya heard story of this place, mate?"

"Murders? Aye, boring." his partner, a tall skinny man with a crooked nose, responded. He was the tallest among others. "A house this grand, I wondered how much it was worth in the market."

The group pulled a couple of luggages out of their strange-looking motorcars, then they explored the house, scanned every room, and touched every surface of the house and treated them as their own. When the taller man repeated hit one surface of the wall to ensure the sturdiness of the worn-out material, my rage nearly boiled. Then the group settled in the main hallway of the second floor and opened their luggages. In them were a collection of even more peculiar-looking equipment. Some resembled screwdrivers at Norris' garage yet I believed these equipments bore different functions. The lady rolled out a long black wire and connected it in one of the equipments.

"Ay ghostie, come out wherever you are." the third man, possessing hair longer than the previous two, called out while holding smaller black equipment resembling a telephone. He pointed the 'telephone' towards the air as his voice echoed along the walls. "Can you give us a sign of your existence?"

Fascinated by their equipments, I let myself stay invisible so I could observe them. Accidentally, I brushed the long-haired man's body in the process.

"Do you feel it?" The long-haired man jolted. "It's getting really cold here."

"It's a yes." the only woman in the group answered. "It's giving us a sign. Eugene, did you get it?"

The plump man, Eugene, pulled out a notebook and scribbled hastily.

"Why are you here?" The long-haired man, whose charisma struck me as a leader of the group, called out again. I avoided creating any movement that could trigger any direct sensation. Instead, I moved swiftly to the side to see them from the distance. To tell you the truth, they looked pretty pathetic now.