Ali

I woke to sunshine dancing along my eyelids. I opened my eyes to see... a car roof? I sat up, then remembered where I was. The car was stopped, and Sam and Dean were nowhere to be found. I looked out the window to see a diner. I could see people moving around inside, so I assumed it was open. There wasn't anything else on this stretch of road, so I got out of the car, stretched, and walked inside. I looked down at my watch and saw that it was already noon, meaning I had been asleep for almost eight hours. Not too bad, I figured.

Once I was through the door, I spotted Sam and Dean sitting at a booth a few yards away from me. I walked over and pulled up a chair. "So guys," I said, with a pouty smile. "Did I miss anything? Because I noticed a distinct lack of being woken up."

"Dean was afraid you'd fry us if you were cranky, so we let you sleep," Sam chuckled.

"Bitch," Dean said, shoving Sam.

"Excuse me?" I said, raising an eyebrow. "I thought we already went over this. I am the queen bitch."

"Oh, no, not you," Sam explained. "Dean and I have a thing where he calls me a bitch and I call him a jerk."

"You two are assholes," I laughed. "So, where are we?"

"Well, we're not there yet, but we're on our way to the ghost town known as Ong's Hat, New Jersey." Sam responded.

"What, did someone see a ghost?" I joked.

"Actually, yes," Dean said.

"Local legend says that the ghost of a woman appears as the sun sets on Sunday evenings, saying she's sorry, pleading for her life." Sam explained.

"So, then why does she need the ghostbusters?" I asked, confused. If she wasn't hurting anyone, why did we need to travel to the middle of nowhere, New Jersey?

"Well, if someone is there, she notices them, then goes after them, saying it was their fault, not hers, and she strangles them."

"She sounds like fun at parties," I muttered. "So why Sundays? Why not Tuesdays, or Fridays?"

"Well," Sam started. "We think she was killed on a Sunday, and from the legend, it sounds like someone blamed her for something she didn't think she'd done."

"How did she die?" I asked.

"We're not sure, we haven't done nearly as much research as we would have hoped."

"Wait, guys, isn't today Sunday?" I questioned. "We only have a few hours to figure this all out?"

"We don't need to figure any of it out, we just need to kill it," Dean said, forcefully.

"So how do you kill a ghost?" I wondered aloud.

"Salt and burn the remains," Dean said, as if everyone knew that.

"What if you can't find the remains?" I asked. "What if there aren't any records of where they were buried, or if they were in multiple pieces and you missed a part?"

"Sometimes spirits are attached to certain items," Sam suggested. "Like a necklace, or a doll."

"What if it's trying to hurt you? What then? Do you run and scream like a little girl, or do you throw grass at it and tell it to screw off?"

"Ghosts can't cross salt circles, and iron dissipates them."

"Well gosh, I feel so prepared. I say we go hunt some ghosts!" I said with mock enthusiasm. "But first, I want some waffles."

After breakfast, we got back into the car and started to drive. I sat in the backseat, googling the history of Ong's Hat. I learned that the town was founded over a century ago, and was known for having alcohol. It was a social hub, great place to get drunk and hang out with your buddies. As time when on, the population decreased. By the early twentieth century, there were about seven residents. Two of which were a polish couple, the Chininskis, who disappeared not long after they had come to town. Several years later, hunters stumbled upon Mrs. Chininski's skeleton. Police tracked down Mr. Chininski, but nothing was proved. As a freaky memento of the unsolved case, the county sheriff kept her skull on his desk for years.

I shuddered after reading the articles. Who keeps human remains on their desk? "Hey guys, I think I found something," I said after reading a few more articles.

"What could you have found? It's been fifteen minutes," Dean demanded, skeptically.

"Well, first off, ever heard of Wikipedia?" I was getting kind of sick of Dean's... Asshole-ness. "Anyway, I found out that the ghost was Mrs. Chininski. Police thought her husband killed her, but they never proved anything. And I even have a theory."

"Oh goody, the demon has a theory," Dean mocked. That was the last straw.

"You know what Dean? I'm trying to help you, you don't have to be such a dick about it. I figured it would be easier to stop something if we knew what made it that way, we could predict how it would react to certain things. Did you know all of the victims were male? Did you know that many times, groups of men and women went ghosthunting, and the woman were never touched by this ghost, while the men were strangled? Every time.

"And did you know that when questioned, Mr. Chininski said his wife had been cheating on him with their neighbor, Alan Gregory? Who was strangled about a week after the couple left town? His murderer was never caught. So when I say that I have a theory, are you going to mock me again, or do you want to hear what just might save your asses?" I finished my speech and was greeted with a stunned silence.

"I'll take that as a yes," I smiled, starting up again. "So I'm thinking, Mrs. Chininski cheats on her husband with their neighbor, and her husband finds out. He freaks, kills her, stashes her body somewhere, and leaves town. Dear old dead wifey blames Alan, maybe he told the husband, maybe he started the cheating by hitting on her, I'm not sure. She blames him for her death, so she kills him.

"Because she's a ghost though, she decides to stick around and haunt and shit like that. Whenever people stumble upon her shack of a house, which happens to be the only one left standing, she kills the guys because she's pissed off at guys as a whole. She spares the girl because she doesn't feel the need to kill them, killing the guys is enough for her. In my research, it says her bones were cremated, except the skull, which we should hunt down before tomorrow night, or she'll go after you two chuckle heads."

"Sounds plausible," Dean muttered.

"Plausible? Dean, she just did hours worth of research and speculating in twenty minutes," Sam said, looking at me in a new light. "Ali, you're a genius."

"I like to think so," I smiled. "But we can thank my phone for most of that. Anyway, I looked up the sheriff, and he's still alive. He's in a nursing home though, but I could probably get in to talk to him."

"How? We don't have any fake IDs for you yet," Dean asked, his first words since I yelled at him.

"I don't think I'll need one, I can just say I'm doing a school project. Because honestly, how old do you guys think I am?"

"20?" Sam asked, hesitantly.

"I'm turning 25 next week," I replied. "I'll tell them for my college course, I need to talk to people who worked as law enforcers. I'm surprisingly good at making up plausible stories, I'll make it work."

"So, where's this nursing home?" Dean asked, slowing down the car.

"About twenty minutes from here." I gave him directions, then relaxed into my seat. I spent the rest of the ride fabricating a story. When we pulled up, I hopped out. "Okay, you guys get lost. If you stay here, I'll look suspicious. I'll call you when I'm done. Go get burgers or something." As they drove away, I wondered if everyday with them would be like this. Googling,theorizing, acting. I could get used to a life like this.

I walked into the building and headed straight for the front desk. "Hi, I'm here to visit Elliot Shepards?"

"Alright," the nurse smiled. "Who should I say is visiting?"

"A fan," I said. "You know he used to be a sheriff and a detective? I've read up on some of the cases he closed, and I'll have to say, he was amazing."

The nurse lead me down a brightly-lit hallway, stopping at a door marked Shepards. She pushed the door open, calling out to Elliot. "Mr. Shepards? You have a visitor."

"Who would want to visit little old me?" I heard him say. The desk chair spun around to reveal an old man, wrinkled and speckled, but smiling.

I stepped forward. "Hi, my name is Ali, and I've been reading up on some of the cases you worked on back in the day." His face lit up in a way that told me he loved talking about the glory days, and it made me smile. I may be on a ghost hunt, but at least I made an old man smile. The nurse left us alone, going back to whatever it is she was doing before.

"So little lady, what do you want to talk about?" He motioned me over towards him, patting the chair by the window.

"Well, I read about the Chininski's, from Ong's Hat, and I read about how you kept the skull of Mrs. Chininski as a memento?"

"I did indeed. That thing sat on my desk in a glass box for ten years."

"What did you do with the skull after that?" I asked, trying not to sound too interested in the skull itself.

"I still have it," he said, gesturing towards a glass box on his desk. I walked over to it.

"This is it?" I asked, awestruck. Was it really this easy?

"It is," He smiled. "You know, that was one of my first big cases. I was twenty-one, just joined the force. It was in the middle of the day when we got a call from some spooked hunters, claiming they found a skeleton. We thought they were just pulling a prank, but sure enough, there was a skeleton alright."

I had the skull in my hand, now all I needed was for the old man to take a restroom break or something. Seconds after that thought crossed my mind, Elliot got up and reached for his cane. "Where are you going?" I asked.

"I'm old, I need to pee." My eyes widened. As he left, I grabbed the glass box and put it in my coat pocket. It was surprisingly small, and fit well. As I walked out of the room, I grinned. I just used my powers, I thought.

"It was great talking with you Mr. Shepards, but I need to get going. I hope you have a great day!" I called out on my way through the door. Once I was out front, I called Sam. "I got it," I said into the phone.

"You actually have the skull in your possession?" He asked, skeptically.

"Yes, I have it. Shepards had it in his room and I swiped it while he peed. Hurry up before the guilt of stealing from an old man gets to me." I sat down on a bench.

"We'll be there in a few minutes, act natural," Sam said.

"I got this," I hung up. I pulled out my phone and pretended to be text someone. I even smiled and laughed at random intervals. Ten minutes later, Sam and Dean pulled up. I slid into the back seat, pulling the skull from my pocket. Once I closed the door, we were off.

"How did you get the skull? You were there for like fifteen minutes," Dean inquired.

"He still had it with him and I think I used my powers to get him to use the restroom, so I grabbed it and left. I feel kind of bad about it though," I said.

"Why?" Sam asked. "We're killing a ghost. We're saving lives."

"But when he talked about this, his only memento of his first case, his eyes lit up," I explained. "Now that we have the skull, I've been meaning to ask, can we go visit this ghost town? I've never been to one, and I've got to say, I'm intrigued."

"Well," Dean said. "Whenever things go this well, it means we're missing something. We should probably check it out, just to make sure." So for the next couple hours, I listened to classic rock, and Dean's off-tune singing. At around four thirty in the afternoon, we reached Ong's Hat.

I stepped out of the car to be greeted by a blast of November wind. I pulled my jacket closer to my body, zipping it up. I looked around, taking in my surroundings. There was yellowed grass as far as the eye could see, and plenty of dead trees. To my left was what remained of a shack, leaning precariously in the wind. I watched Sam and Dean take the skull out of the box and douse it with something I figured to be gasoline.

I started towards the house, wanting to get a closer look. So this is what a real haunted house looks like, I thought. I stepped inside, hearing the wood creak beneath my feet. I walked through a doorway to find a room which I assumed was the bedroom. A bookshelf stood in one corner of the room, filled with books. I stepped closer and realized they were rotted and falling apart. I saw a desk in another corner of the room. I walked over and pulled out a drawer, finding a silver locket on a long chain inside. I popped open the locket to see a picture of a young woman, smiling. Inside was also a curl of brown hair. I looked out the empty doorway to see that the sun was setting. I looked back down at the locket.

"Guys!" I yelled. "We missed something!" I ran towards the door, but something stopped me, and invisible wall. "Guys! I found a curl of hair and I think it was hers!" Dean turned his head, as if he were looking for me. I realized they couldn't hear me. I tried to push through whatever was holding me in, but it was no use. I turned around only to find the house was no longer falling apart, but instead looked as if it had been built last month. I looked back towards the bedroom to see a figure on her knees, pleading to someone invisible. It was starting.

I looked around the room, frantically, for a way out. There were no windows, a door had appeared in the frame, and I could hear Mrs. Chininski begging, pleading, and crying. Out of curiosity, I walked over towards her room. I figured she couldn't hurt me, she only ever went after the guys. I reached the doorway and saw that Mrs. Chininski was an echo of a once beautiful woman. In the locket, her features were delicate, her face a light pink. What stood before me looked as if someone had taken a picture of her, then printed her out with the last of an ink cartridge. Her skin was gray, her features smudged. She looked now as if someone were holding their hands around her neck, cutting off her air supply. She struggled, until she saw me.

Her eyes met mine, and I immediately felt the temperature drop. She stood up, and rasped, "You. This is all your fault!" I stepped back, trying not to trip over anything.

"No, look, Mrs. Chininski, you're dead," I tried. that worked sometimes in the movies. "It was Alan, not me! I'm a girl, see? You don't hurt girls!" My words had no effect on her. I kept retreating until my back was pressed up against the door. I reached into my pockets, looking for something, anything that I could use. All that was there was my wallet, the locket and a packet of sugar from the diner we went to earlier. Wait no, it wasn't sugar. It was salt!

I pulled the packet from my pocket and ripped it open, throwing it at Mrs. Chininski. She screamed, and I felt the door behind me disappear. I turned and ran, I didn't want to be there when she got her strength back. I ran to where Sam and Dean were standing, watching the skull burn. Dean saw me run up, then he saw the ghost chasing me. "What the-?"

"Locket," I gasped. "Hair." I pulled it out of my pocket and showed it to them. The ghost was getting closer, disappearing then reappearing like a computer glitch. I pulled the hair out of the locket and threw it on the fire, and watched as Mrs. Chininksi burned up, just inches from my face.

Okay so I want to say a few things about this chapter. First off, oh my god there were a lot of typos in the first chapter. That's probably because I wrote it on my iPad.

Another thing I want to say is that Ong's Hat is a real place in New Jersey. It is a ghost town, and there was a man and his wife named Chininski. She was murdered, he was questioned, nothing was ever proven. Look it up on wikipedia, it's actually pretty cool. Also, the detective/sheriff, his name wasn't Elliot Shepard. It was Ellis Parker, and he's real too. He solved some interesting cases. Google Sheriff Ellis Parker, Burlington County.

Finally, I want to say yayyyyy 70 views in four days! And yaaaay a review! But I would literally be over the moon if you guys reviewed for every chapter. Even visitors can review. I don't even care what you write, you could recite digits of pi for all I care.

Stay fabulous.
-Fox