Ghostly Encounters of the Angry Poltergeist

I, Aamon—Arch-Demon of Wrath and Grand Marquis of Hell—am quite easily frightened by the disembodied spirits of the dead. While it’s an embarrassing weakness to have in Hell, here on Earth, I can fortunately play it off as having a socially acceptable, perhaps even a healthy amount of superstition.

Having been banished to Earth toward the end of my losing battle against the Heavens, I have taken on the appearance of a mundane human in order to fulfill a contractual obligation to my new human companion, Alex. And although he is concerningly susceptible to possession, he has no connection to the Weave at all. Making him a rather brazen and fearless idiot who unwittingly gets himself into trouble with the supernatural world.

Today is no exception.

Alex films our expedition with his digital camera as we walk the halls of an old, dilapidated psych ward. I never expected I’d willingly subject myself to this kind of torment. Waltzing into a very obviously inhabited place uninvited is rude and invasive. Yet Alex insists his YuToob channel—whatever that is—will “pop off” if we manage to capture footage of supernatural activity. What he doesn’t know is that as we walk through this half-demolished hall with faded teal paint chipping off around circles of water damage and creaky wooden floors with sunken puddles of mildew, a poltergeist is following us.

I know it’s a poltergeist by the amount of energy it emits through the Weave. Ghosts have a relatively weak emission. Poltergeists can range from a little bit stronger to a lot stronger. The Weave is the fundamental first realm of the universe. A realm made of pure energy where our souls reside. Its energy permeates every other realm of time and space, connecting all living things. It’s also the reason that those born with a weaving system have magical abilities. Not all beings evolved to have a weaving system. Humans are especially lacking in Weavers—like Alex.

This particular poltergeist isn’t all that powerful, and its naturally white energy is tinted green. Meaning the emotions keeping it tethered to the third realm—the physical realm—are rooted in the sin of envy. It’s a detail that only demons can pick up on due to our nature. This one could leech off the energy of nearby human souls to possibly manipulate small aspects of its surroundings. On its own, it’s not much of a threat, but depending on what’s in its surroundings, it could be deadly.

I ignore it for now since it’s not doing anything except floating uncomfortably close to my shoulder. But I’m seconds away from losing it. If it’s chilly figure so much as grazes my shoulder, I will not be able to maintain my composure.

The pale green apparition rubs its bony hands together, arms curled into its chest. It watches Alex intensely, staring holes into the back of his head. A stray hair tickles the edge of my ear as if someone brushed me with an ice cube. Shivers tingle down my spine. My body stiffens, preparing to fight or flight at a moment’s notice.

“Woah, check this out!” Alex says, swiftly ducking into a room up ahead marked with a sign that says “operating room.”

The poltergeist perks up, creating some space between us. I relax just a little bit.

A broken red light hangs on the wall above the door frame. The door itself reaches awkwardly into the hallway, holding onto its frame by a single rusty hinge at the bottom. I maneuver between a collection of dusty, broken wheelchairs and a tall pile of boxes filled with patient files. Their yellowing pages curl at the corners. The poltergeist leaves me behind, phasing through the file boxes and the wall as if they aren’t there.

“Ugh,” I shiver involuntarily. I hate it when they do that.

Luckily, it didn’t touch me, but I’m going to have to enter the room where it’ll most likely be waiting.

What if it jumps out at me?

I stare into the room with dread.

“Hey Aamon, are you coming in?” Alex asks, panning his camera over to me as I stand a ways back from the doorway. “Don’t tell me you’re scared, are you?”

“I am not scared.”

I am.

“Then come in and take a look at this.”

Reluctantly, I walk in, keeping my eyes peeled for the poltergeist. Relief washes over me when I spot it in the far corner of the small room, mumbling to itself.

“Isn’t it cool in here?” Alex asks with his camera pointed at me.

“Oh yeah, sure,” I pretend to care about the room, looking around while keeping the poltergeist in the corner of my vision. Alex finds something more interesting to focus on, yapping to his camera as he walks around.

The ground is slightly damp and has grown green moss. The half-tiled walls are littered with graffiti, and the large windows on the far wall look to have been deliberately broken. Shattered glass peppers the floor beneath them. Layers of old off-white paint dangle from the high, arched ceiling. In the middle of the room sits a medical examination chair. The beige vinyl is busted in a few areas, exposing the foam interior. All the metal parts are rusted around the joints, including the two leg stirrups sticking out from the base. A small metal cart to the right of the chair looks to be less affected by rusting, except for the single scalpel sitting on the top tray. To the left of the chair stands a large, circular light fixture. Its eight busted lights look like empty eye sockets. Alex hops into the chair, and it shakes a little as he settles in.

“Be careful,” I caution him.

I don’t know what might trigger the emotions the poltergeist has associated with this place that’s keeping it here. There’s a possibility it’s simply following us around. The other possibility is that this room is of significance to it. If that’s the case, we should try to be as respectful as possible.

“Don’t you think it’d be hot to have sex on this chair?” Alex says bluntly, kicking his feet up into the shaky stirrups.

By Satan’s wrath, this idiot…

My eyes shift from Alex to the poltergeist in a split second of horror. I think it’s just as shocked as I am, staring at Alex in silence with its jaw hanging open. I hear the buzzing sound of the camera lens adjusting as Alex zooms in on my face, grinning brazenly.

“Excuse me?” I break the awkward silence.

“Y’know, like, I think it’d be kinda hot in a morbid sort of way. Like taboo—”

“On second thought. Stop talking,” I cut him off, taking a quick stride to reach him and cupping a hand over the lens.

“What? Why? Do demons get embarrassed about those sorts of things, too?” Alex asks innocently.

I guess he remembers I’m a demon today.

“No, it’s just—”

The poltergeist’s color changes from its sickly green to a frosty red. An indication of the sin of wrath.

“I… was… tortured in this room!” The poltergeist’s shrill voice rings in my ears like the sharp tip of a pitchfork scraping across a concrete floor.

I freeze as the sound overwhelms my sensitive ears. It’s too painful for me to hear a voice created directly by the Weave, but I can’t show that I heard it, so I just have to take a moment to internally cry in pain.

“Hey, are you okay?” Alex’s worried voice feels relieving to hear. Like applying a heating pad to joint pain.

“I’m fine,” I reply.

A sudden tremor ripples through the room, shaking loose objects like a miniature earthquake.

“Woah,” Alex returns to filming, panning the room and turning his back to the pissed-off spirit. The rusty scalpel sitting on the metal cart in between us and the poltergeist takes off, shooting through the air and heading straight for the back of Alex’s head. In a flash, I catch the stupid thing just before impact.

I don’t want to. I really don’t want to.

Agitation flares in my chest, and I crush the soft, metal scalpel’s handle in my palm out of frustration.

I don’t want to fight it, but when facing an enemy, you should never show fear.

I straighten my back and stare down the poltergeist as menacingly as I can. It startles at my glare, realizing I can see it.

“Hey, where’d you get the scalpel from?” Alex asks me, whipping his camera around to get a close-up of it.

Taken off guard, I stammer out the first thing that comes to mind. “Oh, uh—the floor?”

“Can I have it?”

“Uh… sure…”

I hand him the deformed scalpel.

“Woah, it’s all bent up. I wonder what happened to it. Leave a comment down below if you think the cause is scientific or supernatural.”

I try to rein in my amusement, but I can’t stop the corners of my lips from twitching up. He is… not the most perceptive human I’ve met. Perhaps having no connection to the Weave lowers his overall spatial awareness. That or he’s… a dull blade, as we hell-born would say.

Alex hops off the chair to get a closer look at the graffiti on the wall to our left. I look back at the poltergeist, but it’s gone. Fear grips my chest as I scour the room.

“What are you looking for?” Alex asks.

I turn to him just in time to see the spirit phase through the wall behind him and take possession of his body. Alex’s faint aura shifts from its usual red to pale green as the poltergeist’s aura overtakes him. I prepare myself to knock him out. I don’t know how to exorcise spirits. That’s holy magic stuff. But if you kick someone in the head hard enough, you might make the spirit want to self-evict to avoid the pain.

The problem is that I don’t want to cause my contractor any harm. It’ll look bad during my performance review once I collect his soul and return to Hell. Alex laughs maniacally. It sounds weird coming from him. He drops his camera, and I stealthily catch it before it hits the ground using the telekinetic ability bestowed upon me by our contract. My hand and the camera glow with red energy from the Weave. I set it on the ground gently. The poltergeist doesn’t seem to notice, too enraptured by his own return to mortality.

“Finally, I live again! Now I can get rid of you and pay a visit to those doctors who had their way with me all those years ago.” His voice is hoarse and creepy.

His dark brown eyes have lost their usual light. He grips the bent scalpel in both hands, readying himself to rush me. I don’t know how he thinks this will be a fair fight or why he chose to possess Alex over me, but spirits aren’t so creepy once they’re back in a meat sack. I huff with newfound confidence. The scalpel won’t do me any harm. I’ll bait him into close quarters and punch him in the solar plexus. It’s a spot on the body close enough to where their soul resides, so it should rattle him enough without dealing massive damage to Alex.

“Ack!” He grips his face and stumbles. “Why are my eyes in pain? What—who? Who’s there? How are there others in possession of this body?”

Ah, so he’s meeting the others.

I relax my stance. I might not have to get involved at all. A few days into our contract, Alex mentioned to me that he has a mental disability called Dissociative Identity Disorder. He calls himself a “system,” which is a term referring to himself and the others as a group of individuals living in his mind that make up a collective consciousness. They call themselves the Riot Gang. I’ve only met a few so far. Both times, I thought Alex had become possessed by some sort of spirit. It wasn’t until after I threatened the first one with torture that the “alter,” as they’re called, told me it was an illness, not a supernatural occurrence. Although the second alter I met claimed to be a demon like myself. I didn’t know him by his moniker, and he wouldn’t tell me his real name, so however true that may be, I’m still trying to figure out.

“Oh, god. It’s so crowded in here.” The poltergeist grips his hair in agony. “Why are there multiple humans in here? Why—demons? There are demons… and spirits… shadowy creatures… get away from me! Stay away!” He flails the scalpel around uselessly. Whatever he’s interacting with, they aren’t physically present. “Oh, god. These memories—this pain—there’s so much. Ah! No! It hurts! Please, please stop! I’ve been through enough myself.” Tears fall from his eyes, and his body shivers. It pains me to watch. “Ah!” He screams abruptly and stumbles backward into the exam chair.

On impact, the poltergeist ejects himself rather violently, trying to catch the breath he doesn’t need as he swirls around above Alex. I swoop in before his limp body falls to the floor and prop him up in the corner closest to me. Using my telekinesis again, I bring him his camera and place it in his lap.

“Just what are you beings?” The poltergeist asks fearfully.

When an enemy is deeply wounded, it’s best to break their spirit as well so they never think to challenge you again. I’m not supposed to reveal my true self on Earth, but what’s a lone poltergeist tied to an abandoned asylum gonna do?

I shift forms, growing taller and larger as I turn to face it. “I am the arch-demon Aamon.” My skin color changes from a deep tan to crimson red. My arms and legs darken in a gradient from crimson to coal black. “Marquise of Hell, ruler of 47 legions.” My feet become cloven hooves. My wings spread to encompass the whole room. I have to crouch in order to fit into such a small space. The poltergeist phases through the chair, backing itself up against the floor. I crush the chair in my grasp, using the deformed stump to prop myself up. “And you have made a grave mistake messing with my employer.”

“P-please don’t hurt me,” It begs.

“You have three seconds to get out of my sight before I rip your soul to shreds. Three…”

The poltergeist immediately rushes for the closest wall and phases through it. I cringe at the sight but take a deep sigh of relief as I return to my human form. I don’t have to fight this time. Lucky me. I adjust my necktie as Alex stirs behind me. I return to him and scoop him up into my arms. He’s light as a feather.

Still disoriented and droopy, he asks, “Did I dissociate again? I feel… really tired all of a sudden.”

“Then rest. I’ll take you home.”

His head flops back onto my shoulder, and he lazily turns the camera around his chest so it captures his face.

“That’s all for this episode of Ghostly Encounters… of the Fourth Kind,” He says sluggishly. “Tune in next week… and don’t forget to… like and… subscribe…” His words dwindle in volume as he promptly falls asleep.

I use the tip of my tail to press the big button with the red dot on it, and the beeping sound tells me I have successfully ended the recording. I’m still learning to use human technology, so this small triumph ends our adventure on a good note.