Paranormal Research Part I

Bryant Fontenot burst through the door panting and covered with sweat.  The Office of Paranormal Investigation and Experimentation were located, coincidentally enough, on the 13th floor.  In a time when most buildings didn't label the 13th floor or skipped it all together, the O.P.I.E offices were purposely placed where they might gather any luck, even the bad kind.  Finding a building that still had a thirteenth floor had been tough; finding a building with an elevator had been impossible. 
         Bryant hesitated for only a second, before locking the door and attempting to push a purple couch in front of it. 
         Carol hardly looked up as Bryant came in.  She was the Administrative Assistant at the south side O.P.I.E. office and by the nature of the job one had to adapt to strange days.  An agent running into the office was more common than one would expect and Carol needed time for her tea to cool.
         "Slight problem, Carol." Bryant said as he threw a small fichus tree on top of the growing pile of office furniture that was blocking the door. 
         "I see that," she answered without looking up.  "You realize that whatever is chasing you is probably going to be able to pass right through a locked door, so I doubt a coffee table is going to stop it."
         "They said it was a sighting.... a small one...," another small end table crashed on top of furniture pile.  Bryant leaned against the wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
         Carol was patient with the new agents.  They came in ready to vanquish every spook and poltergeist, all fire and brimstone, more heart than head.  Bryant Fontenot was no different, he came highly recommended from the academy, and his talent was off the charts.  The bio-file said that he could trace his heritage to the voodoo creoles of old New Orleans, back before the Veil weakened and hedge witches, palm readers, and psychics became so much in demand.  The fact that Bryant had made it into the Offices showed that his relatives had not been con artists and frauds but had actual connections to the other side.
      "It's an apparition...a powerful one." Bryant admitted, "more powerful than most...."
      "Even if it is an apparition, you should be able to dispel it with a simple....Oh, sweet Lord, it manifested." The situation became horrifyingly clear and Carol picked up her four-wheel leather office chair and tossed on the pile.
Manifestation was almost like coming back to life. It gave physical form to a normally corporeal entity. And with physical form came power over the physical plane.  To be able to take a physical form on the human plane of existence was what every ghost wanted.  Even if they didn't know it.  As a sighting or poltergeist there was little damage that can be done as long as the person stayed away, but a manifestation gave supernatural power in the real world.
      Carol reached into her desk and pulled the O.P.I.E field manual from her top drawer. "What level of apparition is it?  A booger?  A spook?  What?" a level of hysteria had entered her voice as she put her back to the wall and turned to the section marked "A" of the manual.
      "It is definitely beyond Spook level."
      "Who preformed the manifestation?" she asked.
        "I did", Bryant said, his shoulders slumped and an apologetic half grin spread across his face. "I know how it sounds, but it was an accident." 
        The Veil that separated this world from the other side had been weakened in recent years, yet there were still rules.  The main one being that crossing over can be done; but crossing over in physical form requires help.  In most cases that help came in the form of a sorcerer or warlock.  Good or evil, every sorcerer used spirits in some way, and helping a spirit manifest was a surefire way to have control over that entity, if it was done following the proper rules.
        Carol closed the manual and placed it on the desk, the last piece of furniture still in its original place.
        "You manifested it."  A look of pure confusion crossed her face, the type of look that was given to drunken overweight karaoke singers belting out "I'm too sexy".
        "How?  You need time, circles, a personal item...you need...." 
        "I thought it was a sighting, I was trying to mind-dispel it...you know practice." His confusion was plain. "I wanted to confuse it and then pass it through a vortex, but it used my power to gain access to this plain."
        "You thought it into existence?  Your a high class mind bender."  Carol was impressed.  Only the most powerful sorcerers had the mental control and the talent to manifest spirits without the tools of the trade.  Bryant had shown real power.  If a very powerful ghost wasn't about to kick down the door, Carol would have found that type of power dead sexy.
        "It gets better," Bryant mumbled.
        "What!! Better?  How better?"  Carol was moving again.  Since the office furniture in front of the door might delay whatever was coming, they may have time to create a portal or some vanquishing tool, at a minimum a chalk circle. 
"Well, when it manifested it took a form. A very familiar form to me."  Bryant looked a little sheepish, almost red.  It was a childish reaction, one that worked for Bryant, for a second time Carol thought dead sexy.  The one thing about spirits is that if they got into your head they would use what they found.
      " Spit it out.  Ex-girlfriend, old gym teacher, first lover?"
      "Mother"
      Carol stopped.  Mischievous spirits would play with what was in your head if they could.  They would torment you, tease you, and replay every horrible, embarrassing memory if it helped them.  To manifest as a person's mother spoke lots about the source material.  Carol realized she didn't have the proper education to tackle what this might mean.
      "Ok.  You used your talent to manifest an angry spook shaped as your mother.  As we know, this spook will try to kill you to retain physical form and truly be free.  You are going to have to fight your mom.  I don't really want to know how or why it came as your mom, or what your childhood may have been like.  All I want to know, Oedipus, is how are we going to stop this."
      "I have chalk and iron, and an old Latin vanquishing scroll from the Vatican..."
A slight knock interrupted the list.  Both turned and faced the door.
      "Bri, Honey, I think we need to talk."  The blood drained from Bryant's face turning him snow white, which made him look like one of the ghosts he spent so much time chasing.
      "Dear God, don't let her in.  I can't face her right now."
      "Her? Her? That is not your mother," Carol screamed as she grabbed a piece of chalk.  "We need time, draw a protection sphere, I'll get candles."  Bryant didn't move.  He had been working for O.P.I.E. for only 2 weeks.  He had managed to dispel two minor haunting and one gremlin; never had he faced a spirit of this magnitude.  He's frozen, Carol thought, before saying: "I need you Bryant."
        The second time the apparition made its presence known was not a barely heard knock but a scream that shattered the door into so many toothpicks.  Hastily stacked furniture flew through the air. The couched passed over Carol's head by inches, and she was saved by a small lamp stand that used to sit next to the chair in the corner.  It took her full in the stomach, knocking the wind out her and causing her to duck as the couch slammed the wall behind her.  Bryant stood untouched.  The furniture bouncing over and around him as his talent deflected the debris unconsciously.
        The apparition stood in the shattered remains of the doorway.  Carol looked up from the floor.  There she stood, Bryant's mother.  And she was not what Carol had expected. In their short working relationship Carol had never asked about Bryant's family.  She knew what the file said; Bryant's mother was a rather attractive older woman.  Though in a way it seemed as if she was trying to hide the fact that she was no longer a young woman.  The apparition looked as if you walked into a house with lights off only to notice that paint was peeling and there were cracks in the walls when you got close enough.  Carol knew that some of this was due to apparition twisting what was pulled from the mind of Bryant, but much was gleamed directly from how Bryant perceived his mother.  She had Bryant's blue eyes, probably made all the more striking by the way that Bryant remembered them.  They were the deepest blue and fixed right now on Carol.
      "Who is this tramp?" the apparition screamed. 
      "Listen...Ah, Mom she just works here."  Smart, Carol thought.  Trying to turn the attention back on him.  He is after all the one with talent.
      "I don't think so.  You are lying. Lying to Mother."  She stepped towards Carol.  Power radiated like waves off her.  Papers that used to adorn the desk now swirled in around the blond blue-eyed apparition.  Heat waves seen off summer black top simmered on all sides of the apparition and any paper brought to close disappeared in short bursts of flame. 
        Carol tried to scoot backwards, she felt her breath catch and pain shot up her left side.  She grasped her rib cage.  Bryant saw the pain cross her face.  He reached in his coat and pulled a small bag of yellow powder.
        He jumped in front of the apparition, sprinkling yellow dust in its path.
The powder erupted in a bright blue flame.  Bryant held his hands spread on either side the flame danced and pulsed responding to Bryant.  The flame seemed to coalesce into each palm.  Without a word the flame leapt toward the apparition joining the swirling paper maelstrom that followed Bryant's mother.  The blue flame swirled around the ghost and sweat beaded on Bryant's head.  The blue fame continued on its path, sending sparks of gold and silver as it passed through the simmering heat waves.  The apparition continued to advance. 
        A small gasp escaped the ghost as the blue flame touched her.  It seemed to grow in intensity as light burned like sulfur.  Carol shielded her eyes.  Bryant stood like a black cross, arms upraised against the approaching menace, his bodying rigid as he focused his will on the blue flame.  Bryant's voice became raised as wills fought for dominance.  The furniture pushed against the walls, as anything lighter that hardbound book took to the air.  The voices became strained, the light grew brighter.  A moan of pain.....
        Darkness. 
        Carol opened her eyes.  Nothing had changed.  The apparition with her blue eyes fixed on Carol, stood before Bryant.  Bryant seemed broken.  His arms were no longer up, his shoulder slumped, and his face was pale white.  Dark rings had appeared under his eyes. 
        The apparition turned to look at Bryant and with a freckled, vein-covered hand reached up to stroke his face.
      "That was foolish and a little disappointing, son." 
      She flicked her wrist.  A small spider web of lightning crackled in front of Bryant as his Talent tried to fend off this attack.  It did nothing as Bryant was thrown four feet into the wall, landing with a thud on top of Carol's desk.
      "Now tramp, you and me have some business to discuss."
        Carol felt the cold touch of spirit as invisible rope wrapped around her neck and body lifting her from the floor.  She gasped as the ghostly rope tightened around her body, hanging her helplessly in front of Mrs. Fontenot.  Carol flayed wildly at invisible restraints as she fought for breath.  The apparition stood in front of her, one hand on her hip the other with an index finger pointing at her bright red lips. 
        "You having nothing to say.  I raised a smart boy, a good boy, and you think you can come and wiggle your muffins and take him away."
        Muffins? Carol felt her mind start to shut down as oxygen became scarce.
        "I will not tolerate some two bit secretary, eye balling my baby..."
        "Hey!! I am not a baby," Bryant yelled.  As he sat up on the desk his body rebelled in a series of rolling jolts of pain.  Whatever talent he had had been used up in the early battle and all that was left was anger.  Anger at the current situation.  Anger at not being able to help Carol.  Anger at not being strong enough.  Anger at his mother.
        He reached back and grabbed the only thing on the desk, the only thing that had not been touched.  Carol's tea was still hot, sending off little waves of steam as Bryant threw it at the apparition. The cup shattered as it hit the wall of heat, but the tea passed through. 
        The liquid hit the apparition full in the face.
        Instantly, Carol dropped to the floor and air filled her lungs.  A scream filled the air as Bryant's mother, seemed to melt into cloud of black smoke. The room lost heat quickly.  Carol sat stunned as a piece of paper containing last month's electric bill settled onto her lap.
      "What the hell was that?"  She asked.  Scooting along the floor to rest her back on wall.
      "I have no idea.  I couldn't summon any power and I grabbed what I could."
      "You threw my tea and ruined my World's-Best-Line-Dancer mug."
      "Yeah....I guess I will buy you a new one." 
      "Did you dispel it?"
      "No.  Whatever was in that mug was able to counteract the manifestation. "
He sat up, legs dangling over the edge of the desk.  He looked terrible.  He had gone white as a sheet and seemed to lost weight.  His skin seemed stretched thinly over his body, giving him a cadaverous look. 
      Carol had seen it before.  To much energy taken from the body to power a spell.  What most people didn't realize was that the energy for a spell had to come from somewhere and unless you pulled the energy from another thing, it had to come from the user.
      "So where is it?" she asked.
      "It lost its physical form.  It will probably go back to where I found it this morning.  Carol, what kind of tea were you drinking?"
      "Sage.  I was drinking plain sage tea I got from the Chinese medicine store by my house."
      Bryant was moving slowly through the debris, kicking plies of paper and turning over furniture.  He stopped and slowly bent down, every movement registered pain on his face, and picked up a small box.
    "It seems you are out of tea," he said, shaking the box. 
    "Maybe on the way to the hospital, we could stop and pick some more up."  Bryant moved to help Carol to her feet.  Together they leaned on each other and moved over strewn papers and what was left of an end table, to the giant opening that used to act as an entrance to the Office of Paranormal Investigation and Experimentation. 
    "You sure you want to stop on the way to the hospital?" Carol asked seeing how slowly Bryant was moving.
    "Yes," he answered, turning to look back on the ruin of the office.