The Amity Park Haunting

A Grave Mistake Part 6: Ghost Hunting

On instinct, I bolt out of my seat and chase after the creature, flying through the air at full speed, trying to catch up to the creature with no idea about what I'll do when I reach it, but I can see it in the distance, it's body pulsating with bright green light, inspiring me to fly faster. I notice that we have looped around and are heading back towards the high school, passing by a mass of people at mach speeds, most of whom turn their heads to look at us as we charge forward. Well, great now everyone knows that there are ghosts around.

The chase continues as the ghost barrels past city hall, where the mayor no doubt saw and immediately reported it. "Hey!" I shout, barely behind the figure, who dives into an alleyway to shake me off, while I barely manage to make the turn, colliding into the far wall before continuing my chase. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" The ghost doesn't stop, even though I'm gaining on it pretty quickly. It swims through a few buildings and I follow, barely able to phase through each time, until we get to the street just in front of the high school. The ghost slows upon seeing the sign for Amity High, giving me just enough time to grab one of its tails, which feels slimy and slippery to the touch. It resists my grasp, but I pull it backwards and slam it into the sidewalk, hovering over it as it cries out in anguish, meanwhile the pedestrians around us begin to panic, screaming and running for cover.

It's not gonna be long before they get here.

"What are you doing here?" I question. While it tries to recover, my eyes drift down the ghost's body, analyzing it. It has multiple tails— no, tentacles on its body that squirm around and produce a strange goo, but his body seems to maintain a human like shape, though its head is obscenely large. "Hey, come on, you're not hurt that bad."

"That's where you're right," it says, reaching out a tentacle towards me and wrapping itself around my waist. I writhe around, trying to get free as its grip tightens around me, toying with the idea of crushing me. "So you're the stupid kid who opened the portal for us." It analyses me, moving its bobble head closer to my face.

"What do you mean?" I gasp, struggling to breathe.

"When you turned on that device that those idiot hunters have," he chuckles. "You created a rift between the ghost world and the human one." My eyes widen in shock. "You didn't know? We assumed that's what you were trying to do in the first place."

"I..." it's tentacle is wrapped so tightly around me at this point that I can't speak, and my words come out as a high pitched wheezing sound. I let this thing out? I opened the ghost portal? That can't be right, it wasn't working when I left the lab last night.

"You seem distracted," the ghost shakes me around, bringing my attention back to the present moment. "Don't be rude, focus on our conversation before you die." Before I have time to react, I hear a loud whirring sound and both me and the ghost turn to see my mom firing off an ecto-annihilator, which rips through the ghost's tentacle and drops to the ground with me in it, where it writhes around for a moment before melting into goo. The tentacle ghost scoffs in irritation, diving into the concrete, while my mom reloads and aims her gun at me, and all I can do is just sit there like a ghost in headlights, until Tentacles pops up behind her and dad. I manage to find my strength, flying forward as fast as I can to stop him from attacking them, but the ghost hits my dad into the side of van, knocking him out before I can reach him and distracting mom so that she misses her shot at me.

"Stop!" I scream, charging at the ghost and tacking it towards the ground, inadvertently pushing us underneath the surface together, and when we pop up, we are within the school gates. In response, he reaches out and grabs me again, choosing to slam me into the roof of the building instead of crushing me to death, which I almost appreciate. Luckily, I just barely manage to phase through, landing inside one of the classrooms and breaking a table in half when my power wears off. I roll onto my side and prop myself up to look around, scanning to see if I've hurt anyone, when I lock eyes with Sam, who stares back at me with mouth agape and eyes widened. After forcing myself to look away, I notice the octo-ghost lifting it's arm up towards the wall, preparing to cave it in, and I manage to knock the students next to the impact zone out of the way just in time for me to get buried underneath the rubble. Without thinking, I phase myself through the floor and fly through another populated classroom, only to emerge in the main hallway, where my mother is situated with her weapon, making me question if I should've just let the ghost knock her out.