Buried Within
Ghost Hunt

"Everything is simple and straightforward," Maisie thought after they went over the plan and how she would be involved, or in reality, her lack thereof involvement. "There's nothing to be scared of."

Yet this in itself was a lie, a lie Maisie told herself to come to terms with her fears. Even with Lucy in the room, she was plagued by nightmares of sleeping in the car, or trying to, with ghosts flying around. And now there was the dream of running into a house where she clearly saw a dead body in the wall, and she could never escape.

Her fears were all too real, grounded in a reality where her mother denied the existence of The Problem affecting them, their family, as it had everyone else. And while Maisie could brush those thoughts away during the middle of the day when she first agreed to the plan, this was much harder to do when the nightmare started, and she woke early in the morning, long before they would be headed out.

The time finally rolled around, and her mother was on the couch. She thought of calling out to her mother to let her know where she was going, and yet there, along with the fear of the ghosts, was, in fact, the fear of her mother stopping her from doing what she needed to do, for the chances of ever coming across an agency willing to let her tag along just to face her fears, let alone a job like her mothers where even an eccentric one like Lockwood & Co. would be able to allow her on the trip - that was never going to happen again.

And so they arrived at the place, and Maisie couldn't feel anything at first.

"That's pretty normal," Lockwood said before entering the house.

Lucy added, "Ghosts aren't active during the day, so they tend to—how to put it, keep to their own? No, that's not quite right."

"What she means is because they're only active at night, that is when we have to worry about them. They also tend to be stuck in one place because of whatever their source is, but by that, I mean their source is where they go, not anything else."

"Can a ghost have multiple sources?"

Lockwood's mouth twisted into a frown. "I'm not sure."

"There are theories about that," George said. "For example, the baby killer is said to show up wherever one of the bodies of her dead babies showed up, but is it that, or does the ghost of the baby take the form of an adult woman because that's easier to scare people, and what fuels these phenomena is the infant latching onto whatever trauma it faced in life and replicating it onto another person? Nobody has an answer to that, to be honest."

"That's an interesting thought," Maisie said.

"You'll be fine," Lockwood said, grinning ear-to-ear, which she found pretty annoying. George seemed more enjoyable to be around, which seemed a bit strange, given that he was nerdy, and there was the particular mention of his yoga activity when they first started staying at the Lockwood agency.

"Why couldn't there have been a guy more like Lucy there," Maisie thought, trying to think of something that would distract her from what kept switching from a feeling of utter joy to a sense of utter doom.

"Yes. We've got you," Lucy said. "And as we said, we'll start with the body."

"Something about you needing to look at the source, to know that you don't need to be afraid of it during the day, a source that is. That during the day, it can't harm you," George said. But then he had to add. "Well, for the most part. There are some theories…."

"George!" His fellow agents said at the same time.

And so Maisie went and looked at the body in the wall, seeing how little her other had gotten done, but then—

Much to her surprise, even though it was a part of the plan, Lockwood and his fellow agents started to tear the wall open more, revealing the dead body even more. She took a deep breath and swallowed. "So, why are you doing that?"

"Because," Lockwood said.

George nodded his head.

Lucy noticed her agitation, or so Maise liked to believe, and answered her question. "It allows us to place a net over the source much better."

"And we're going to check for anything that falls away and actually be the source because we all know what happened the last time," George said.

"Hey! I didn't know when I grabbed it, and the house burned down that it was the source. But that ended up just fine."

"Fine, if you count signing papers that we couldn't disclose any information regarding how we finally took care of that particular case, we still have a negative rep in the papers because while normal people tend not to forget, the newspaper journalists don't."

"Okay. Time to stop arguing," Lockwood said, turning to Maisie. "So, you've seen the body? What is the potential source since we've never seen anything that might come loose at first glance?"

"Yes, but how will this help me?"

"To, as we said, show you sources during the day, don't hurt people," George said, rolling his eyes and pushing up his eyeglasses.

"And now we're going to set up a protective barrier," Lucy said, dropping her bag. There was a loud thud as if something was metallic in there, which was confirmed when she pulled out a huge iron chain.

Maise took a deep breath, nodding her head as she did so. "I can do this. I have to do this."

"But you don't have to do this," Lockwood said. "We came to set up in time for you to change your mind and get home before curfew, remember."

"I rmemeber," Maisie said. "I'm going to be fine, but if I don't face this fear of mine, the fear around my ability to see ghosts," she continued.

"Hey. That's Lockwood's ability," George retorted.

"Oh, thanks," Lockwood said. "Don't mind old George here. He can be a bit eccentric."

"Aren't we all," Lucy said, forming a circle with the chain. She then pointed to the circle. "When the time comes, you'll want to be inside the chain because the iron in the chain will protect you from the spirit and any potential other spirits in the room."

"Not that there are other spirits," George said. "The records I dug up on the house only showed one particular ghost story about this place, but it was frightful enough to end up recorded."

"Not that it's frightful," Lucy said. "Level twos vary greatly."

"You two aren't helping," Lockwood said. "All Maisie knows is that we will keep her safe from what she sees. She just, as you already said, Lucy, has to step into this circle here, and then she'll be safe."

And when the time came, she did indeed step into the circle. She sat there. What she didn't expect was for Lockwood to hand her something.

"Just in case, know that this is made with iron, and you can stab with it," Lockwood said. "But that's not there in case of just in case. I'm giving it to you so you feel like you can defend yourself from what you see, so you don't potentially bolt and run out of the circle, which means we couldn't protect you from the ghost."

"Defend myself," Maisie said, nodding, holding the handle tightly, and waiting for the sun to go down. And then—

At first, nothing made her think that her mother was right in saying there wasn't a ghost. Lucy held up her hand. "IT can sometimes take time for ghosts to get active. The curfew is more of…."

"Something for when people should start going to bed, getting off the streets," George replied.

The ghost appeared, and Maisie breathed deeply as a chill ran down her spine. She wanted to scream, to run away, but then she remembered she could stab the whispy thing in her hands. She took a deep breath and said, "Seeing is believing."

"Certainly is," Lucy said, grinning as she and the others drew iron rapiers. "Although mine is Touch and Listening, rather than Sight."

Maisie nodded her head, and then the ghost, the apparition lunged, and then there came a swishing motion which made the spirit move back until it could cover the hole in the wall with an iron net, and then the ghost disappeared in a puff of smoke. Maisie lowered her hand, which had been prepared to stab with the blade as Lockwood had told her. Her head tilted. "Wait. Is that it?"

"Yeah," Lucy said, sitting in the circle beside Maise. "That's it."

"It seems so," Maisie set the blade down.

"Anti-climatic? George joined her in the circle.

Lockwood did as well. "Now we have a slumber party, where we stay up late and see if anything else happens. Although, this isn't how our missions usually go."

"He means they're not usually this easy and typically a lot more scary."

"But," Maisie took a deep breath. "I just faced my fear."

"You certainly did," Lockwood said, grinning ear-to-ear. "And glad you and your mom aren't going to be suing us," which earned him a glare from his two friends.

And nothing happened the rest of the night.