There was a small bar and grill in the outskirts of the town of Friendship. Everything inside seemed pretty normal tonight. People were eating and drinking at the tables, playing pool, and listening to the jukebox.
Suddenly, a horrible stench of rot filled the air, and people started to cough and gag. "Well, there goes my appetite," a woman said, pushing away her plate.
"Man, why would you do that?" One of the bar patrons said to his friend.
"Dude, it wasn't me!"
The jukebox started to speed up and switch to different songs every couple of seconds, and the lights started flickering. The bar owner sighed. "Every damn Thursday..."
Bottles went flying, and tables shook and turned over like there was an earthquake, except there clearly wasn't. People screamed and started to run for the exits, which were being held shut by some kind of invisible force. A few very drunk men even smashed their bottles and started waving them around to fight the invisible threat.
"Come on, you damn ghosts!" One of them yelled out.
"Try and haunt me, you sonsofbishes..." Another guy slurred out.
"They're GHOSTS, you idiots!"
"Who you callin' a..." The man was suddenly slapped in the back of the head. He turned around and shoved the guy behind him. "What was that for?!"
"I didn't do anything!" He was then pushed forward and knocked the drunk guy down, but to everyone watching, it looked like he had tackled him.
Within a few seconds, a bar fight had started. The bar owner just sighed and continued to read his paper even while bottles went flying right past him. "Every damn Thursday," he muttered. "Goddamn it, I hate ghosts..."
Eventually, the doors swung open and people went screaming into the night as wild laughter filled the bar. "Alright, girls," a disembodied voice said. "Time to go home!"
Two other laughing voices could be heard. And then there were three swirling masses of... something headed in the direction of the Nightingale Manor.
"And don't come back," the owner yelled into the night, slamming his doors shut.
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"Dean!" Katherine gasped as she burst into the room, hurrying over to her son and helping him up from the floor. "Are you okay? What happened? Why'd you scream?"
"Mom- a ghost- a ghost girl- came out and- I fainted- and-" Dean babbled on as Katherine took his shoulders.
"Whoa, okay, okay, slow down honey! What are you saying?"
"I saw... a ghost," Dean said more slowly. "A ghost girl was right here in the room, and she had these bright green eyes, long hair, and she was talking to me and she..." He decided to leave out the part about the ghost apparently slapping him on the butt.
Katherine let out a sigh, rubbing his shoulders. "You scared me, Dean. I thought a murderer had come in here or something."
Dean raised an eyebrow, noticing his mom seemed a little too calm. "Well, yeah, not a murderer, but a ghost!"
Katherine chuckled. "Sweetie, ghosts are very unlikely to appear in corporeal form. It's very rare! There's almost no record of it! The only possible times are usually in cameras. You remember our experiments, right?"
Dean rubbed his head in annoyance at the complete irony. This can't be happening... years of absolutely nothing, and NOW she doesn't believe that I saw a ghost?
"You probably just had a bad dream, sweetie."
"Mom," Dean moaned. "Don't treat me like I'm some kind of headcase. I'm telling the truth!"
"Okay, okay, just let mom handle this." she giggled and checked under the bed. "Nope, no ghost!" She checked behind the door with a grin. "Nope!"
Dean rolled his eyes. "Mom..."
"Hold on, hold on..." Katherine then opened the closet, revealing Vera. She turned to look at Dean with a smile. "There, see? No ghosts!"
A second passed, then another, and she veeery slowly did a double take to look at the very surprised looking ghost girl. "Um... pleasure to meet you miss!" Vera said, holding out her hand with a smile.
"AAAAAAHHH!" Katherine's scream filled the air and she slammed the door. She turned and ran right towards a surprised Dean like a football player. "Oof!"
The wind was nearly knocked out of him as Katherine hoisted her son up on her shoulder with surprising strength and ran out of the door, bumping Dean's head on the doorway as she did. "Ooow! Mom, what are you doing?! Put me down!"
Katherine didn't answer, wildly looking back to see if they were being chased as she ran. "Mom, you're making me dizzy! Put me down!"
Katherine finally stopped, opening a random door and practically tossed Dean through as she shut it tightly behind her. "There... that should be good."
"Um, Mom... we're in a closet..." He heard his mom fumble around, and Dean blinked as a light bulb clicked on, and Katherine looked down to see her son lying in a pair of old women's shoes and covered with some old dresses he'd dragged with him as he fell. "Well... we're safe, aren't we?"
"Whatever you say, mom..." Dean muttered, picking himself up. "Why the heck are we even running from her, mom? I thought this is what we were looking for all this time."
"Because they don't do this, or at least they never have before," Katherine rambled on, desperately trying to make sense of things. "I've never seen a ghost be able to take form like that, or attack like that."
"I'm pretty sure she was gonna give you a handshake, mom," Dean mumbled.
Katherine grasped his shoulders tightly. "Okay, now listen, Dean, you stay here no matter what. Okay? Don't even think of coming out! I need to reach our supplies. I'll go out and... handle things, okay? You understand?"
"Okay, okay, mom, ease up on the shaking," Dean said, holding up his hands. "I'll stay put."
"Good," Katherine said, opening the door and stepping out, looking around for any sign of the ghost girl.
"Oh, and... I'm sorry, mom."
"For what?"
"For starting to disbelieve everything you said about ghosts. For starting to think they don't exist at all. Thinking it was all just a waste of time."
Katherine beamed. "Oh, sweetie..."
"And for thinking you were a total loser."
"Apologize later," she huffed, and shut the door.
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"Blew it, blew it, blew it..." Vera groaned, banging her head against a bedpost over and over. "You stupid, stupid, stupid..." Now they're off no doubt packing up and leaving and I'm gonna be stuck here all alone all over again. Why did I even bother trying to... what's that sound?
There was a sound like howling wind getting louder and louder for some reason. Vera floated out through the double stained glass doors to the outside balcony of her room. She then heard laughing in the wind. Very familiar laughing.
"Oh, no..." Vera said, slapping herself in the head again. "No, no, no... why now?"
Things had just gone from bad to worse.
In the distance, she saw three strange shapes like three small swirling tornadoes approaching the house. They floated up to the balcony she was floating above, kicking up super powerful winds right in front of her. And then they finally stopped and melted away, revealing three cackling ghost girls, all older looking than Vera, as well as a lot bigger and more intimidating looking.
Lena, Stella, and Bertha. Her three cruel ghost sisters, pranksters who loved to torment the living. All of them had old-style dresses like she did. Lena was the tallest of the group, her eyes a similar shade of green like Vera. Stella was the shortest, almost close to Vera's height, but her eyes were a shade of blue. The same was true for Bertha, who was the second tallest, but was more heavyset than the other sisters.
Months ago they had left to go torment more people instead of just silly teens who snuck into the manor while on dares and were very quickly scared off. Now they'd finally returned, and Vera knew this could only mean trouble.
The sisters were all still laughing out loud at whatever they had just done. "Been too long since we turned that nest of drunks upside down," Lena jeered. "Most of those losers are probably gonna go sober after that!"
"We're out there performing a service and they treat us like we're the bad guys," Bertha declared with a laugh. "No respect! What's the world coming to?"
"Speaking of no respect," Stella said, pointing towards the silent Vera cowering from her sisters' shadows.
"H-hey girls," Vera squeaked. "Have fun?"
The sisters chuckled. "Well, on a scale of 1-10," Stella said with a smirk. "10 being fun and 1 being you, then yeah, we had fun."
"So what's been going on since we've been gone, baby sis?" Lena asked.
"Oh, you know..." Vera said, her voice shaking. "Same as usual. Kind of quiet these past nights."
"Been keeping up with your chores?"
"N... no?"
"Damn right!" Lena said, causing all three to start laughing. "You keep this place disgusting, worn down, and cockroach infested! Just like it's meant to be. Cleaning is for the fleshies."
Vera laughed along with them nervously. All she could do for now was hope she was buying the family enough time to pack up and escape before the sisters found out they were in the house. She didn't want to see them go, but she figured that had to be better than her sisters figuring out they were here.
"So... funny thing we heard through the grapevine," Lena said, leering at Vera. "Something about some pair of ghost hunters headed this way?"
"What?" Vera asked innocently. "Where'd you hear that?"
"Around," Bertha added. "We've been pretty busy, baby sis, going around the country, making some friends, and waking up some ghosts to start causing some trouble. Restarting old myths about haunted places... stuff like that."
"Or filling in for them," Lena added. "If they happened to take a vacation to the afterlife."
"We're starting up a real revolution," Stella said with a chuckle. "Should have been with us, sis. Should have seen all those fleshies run for cover."
"Anyway, the point is, all the spirits, specters, and poltergeists we talked to told us that these ghost hunters are going around trying to mess it up for us," Lena said. "Apparently, some spirits even decided to pass on to the afterlife because of these people. That's actually why we started heading back this way. Can't have some no good humans messing up our good vibes."
So it was them, Vera thought, remembering what the news had said about a lot of reports of strange paranormal activity lately. I should have known it'd be them causing trouble. Vera was also very interested to hear that Katherine and Dean hadn't always failed at their investigations. They had been successful at least a few times, they just hadn't known it.
"So they're gonna have to pay for cutting our vacation short too," Stella said evilly, cracking her knuckles.
"Don't suppose you've heard anything at all about that?" Lena demanded, turning to Vera.
"Nope," Vera said quickly, hoping that she was buying enough time for the family to get out of the house. "I mean, I did see a news report about it, but you know... things have been pretty quiet around here."
"Good," Lena said. "Well, in that case, let's just head on inside..."
"No!" Vera gasped, blocking their way. "Um... I mean... you just got back! Why don't we just... um... have some quality sister time out here?"
"Well, that sounds nice... if we had any such thing as quality sister time," Lena sneered, starting to push her aside when the sound of something falling and a loud scream was heard.
Vera froze as the three sisters grinned evilly.
"She lied to us! Our little Vera is becoming a rebel," Lena gasped in mock sadness. "Where did we go wrong?"
"How long did you think we were just going to hang around outside?" Bertha laughed.
"More importantly, how dumb do you think we are?" Stella asked.
"I bet she was hoping we left for good and would never come back," Lena said. "Isn't that right, sis?"
"No," Vera protested. "I didn't think that."
"Oh, I can see right through that vacuous little air head of yours." Lena said, rubbing Vera on top of her head. "You disappoint me, little sis. Gonna have to put you in time out... in China!" Lena's hands suddenly morphed together into a golf club. "Fore!" She yelled, whacking Vera and sending her flying and screaming far away across the ocean.
"Bye bye!" The sisters chorused together before Lena raised a finger to her lips to silence her two partners in crime. She then motioned for them to follow her.