By Relm
Lina's eyes widened slightly. A part of her was sure that she was imagining the smile of the ghost's face. It wasn't a menacing smile; it was just a small happy one. Though Lina didn't have long to ponder this as the ghost wandered off.
The ghost in all intensive purposes looked like he belonged in the publishing office. Had he not been a ghost that is.
Lina, Sylphiel and Filia were hot on the ghost's trail noting anything strange. Normally a ghost walking around an office would be strange but not to the Ghost Slayers.
"Lina I'm getting massive thermal readings from the ghost." Sylphiel said while reading her scanner while walking, and almost walking into a desk.
"How massive?"
"The scanner is reading his thermal energy as if he was alive. In fact the scanner is having troubles telling the difference between him and other people in the building."
The question of this 'spectre' really being just a person pulling an awesome prank bounced around Lina's head. It was, April Fools after all. Of course it didn't matter how resourceful the pranker, living people can't walk right through walls. Which the ghost did and caused Lina to crash into said wall. "Ouch! Damnit." Lina cursed rubbing her now sore face. "What's on the other side of this wall?"
"Umm… it's our boardroom I think." Miss Norman guessed.
"Where's the door?"
"Down this way."
Miss Norman led them to the door. The room was large with a big table, chairs and a screen with a projector. Had an actual meeting been occurring in that room at that moment those attending would have been surprised at the sudden appearance of a ghost walking through their table. But as it was there was no meetings scheduled in that room till two o'clock.
"Where did he go?" Lina scanned the room.
"There!" Sylphiel pointed to the ghost as he walked through another wall.
"What's on the other side of that wall?"
Thus the chase began. The four of them followed the ghost through the whole building. They followed him through the break room, the washrooms, printer room, the administration offices, the roof, and the underground parking lot. They followed that ghost everywhere. The only time the ghost stopped was to get a cup of coffee. Which was strange since he was reaching out to thin air and all of a sudden a steaming cup of transparent coffee appeared in his hands.
Eventually the four lost sight of the ghost unable to figure out in what direction he might have gone.
"Can't you find him with your scanner things?" Miss Norman said impatiently. She hadn't expected for the Ghost Slayers to take so long getting rid of the ghost.
"No we can't. Our scanners are meant to locate absence of thermal energy, not an abundance of it. The scanners have no way of telling the difference between our subject and living people. As far as our scanner is concerned he's alive and not a ghost." Sylphiel explained in exasperation.
"But he is a ghost." Miss Norman insisted.
"You know I can't say that for certain Miss Norman." Lina answered tapping her chin in thought.
"What do you mean you can't say that for certain? He walks through walls and people! Only dead people can do that!" Miss Norman stomped her foot to emphasize her point.
"I know that Miss Norman. But what we're dealing with here is something that I've never seen nor have I read being documented. Ghosts draw out the thermal energies in the surroundings to move about. They never give off thermal energy as a rule. And there are other characteristics that are a bit off too." Lina mused.
"Like what?"
"Well ghosts usually move things around or react to their surroundings. This ghost seems oblivious to what was going around him and things materialized for him. It was though we weren't watching a ghost haunting a building but more of a residual imprint left within the building."
"A what?" Miss Norman was clearly getting lost and her facial expression expressed just that.
"A residual imprint," Filia started to explain, "is not an actual ghost haunting an area. It's more of an impression left by a ghost. Like for instances a woman is murdered in a house. And years later a family moves into this house and notices that every day at a certain time they see a woman dying in their living room. It's the same thing every time. It's not a ghost but a loop in time where a certain event is being viewed over and over again even though it happened years prior. The people involved in the event are dead and you can't touch them so they seem like ghosts but they're not."
Lina sighed. "Though even that has problems explaining what's going on here. You said that this didn't start happening till recently?"
Miss Norman nodded.
"Well with a residual imprint they don't just start up out of nowhere. If there was something shady that happened in this building's past then you would have known about it from the day the building was built or when the event occurred. But as you saw the 'ghost' did nothing more then walk around. There is no indication that anything bad happened to him, and I personally don't remember reading anything about his 'death' in the area. And believe me when I started up Ghost Slayers and bought my base of operations I did heavy research of the neighbourhood. I wanted to know about every possible ghost there could be in the area. I found nothing about any deaths that happened in this building before or after it became Sailune Publishing. And even if this was a residual imprint he wouldn't be giving off thermal energy." Lina sighed again.
"Well can't you just zap it anyway?" Miss Norman really didn't care less about what they did as long as they got rid of the ghost.
"If it's not a ghost something unexpected could happen if we try and 'zap' it. Even so we need to find him first. We can't get a clear shot if he's speeding off every time we get close to him." Lina personally was starting to get irritated. This seemingly simple job was turning into a big problem then Lina anticipated.
"Hey Pearl the guy is outside on the bench in front of the building!" A co-worker of Miss Norman explained looking out the window.
Within mere seconds the Ghost Slayers trio and Miss Norman were outside to confront the ghost.
The ghost seemed to be quite content sitting and reading his newspaper. The newspaper in question happened to be the Sailune Times… from nine months ago.
Lina frowned as she looked at the newspaper date. 'This doesn't seem right.' Her gut was telling her something was wrong here.
"Well go on zap him!" Miss Norman encouraged them waving her hands in impatience.
"Lina what should we do?"
Lina bit her lip in thought. "Let's just try it. We're running out of options and we don't have time to sit around and study him."
Filia nodded and got the spectre containment box ready while Lina charged up her phase gun.
Sylphiel looked around worried but she also got her phase gun charged.
"Fire!" Lina commanded shooting her gun on the ghost, as did Sylphiel.
A first the ghost didn't seem to react. Then it howled as the rays from the guns were being sucked into the specter containment box and the ghost disappeared.
"Well thank goodness that's over! Now if you'll just come with me I'll write up your check." Miss Norman motioned for them to follow her.
"Lina." Filia whispered. "The box isn't showing that it's holding something."
"I know." Lina whispered back. "We didn't catch the thing."
"So what are we going to do?" Sylphiel joined in with the whispering.
"Take the money and cash the check. If the ghost comes back we'll just deal with it then."
"Lina we can't do that!"
"Sure we can. And we can do some research in the mean time. Maybe we can get some answers before it pops up again."
Sylphiel frowned but didn't protest it any further.
Lina hummed slightly as she walked out of the Sailune Publishing building with Sylphiel and Filia. In Lina's hand she held a very large check made out to the Ghost Slayers. It was more money then Lina got in a month of ghost slaying jobs so she was pretty pleased with herself. Of course after accepting the check Lina had made sure that Miss Norman got her business card and instructed her to call her if there's any more problems.
Filia was also in a cheery mood. She too had been equally delighted at the amount of money they had been paid.
Sylphiel was the only one not happy with the situation. She didn't like taking money for a half done job.
The sun was brightly shining in the sky now as the storm had lifted leaving the day nice and cheerful.
"Ahhh! Isn't it lovely outside?" Lina asked ginning and doing a little twirl.
"Yes it's surprising how quickly the weather changed." Filia mused.
"I still think we shouldn't have taken the money." Sylphiel mumbled.
"Don't worry it will all be fine Sylphiel."
"If Amelia had been here we wouldn't have taken it you know." Sylphiel frowned.
"Yes which is good that I made her stay back at the office. Now let's get... hey what's that still doing there?" Lina walked over to the bench where the ghost had been sitting. On the ground was the very newspaper that the spectre had been reading.
"It's solid." Sylphiel said in amazement.
"That shouldn't be here now should you be able to touch it Lina." Filia observed.
"I think we should take it back to Ghost Slayers HQ and look it over more carefully." Lina observed putting the paper in a plastic bag. "As I was saying, let's get back to the office."
They all took their respective seats in the car and Lina adjusted the mirrors before starting up the engine. And sitting in the back seat Lina saw the very ghost they had just 'zapped' sitting back staring at her.