ghost story back up 5/22/16

  As Shelly drifts through the flooded town, the sun beats down on her. She has few options without oars, almost on pur instinct she throws the beads out of the boat. She is unaware she is being watched through a telescopic lens.

   A woman's voice says, "Looks like you were right, the demon inside her adapted to the beads."

   "There is no demon inside her," comes a man's voice.

   "I thought you said..."

   "No," he replies, "her soul is the demon, thus she is a demon with a human body."

  "Is that guy we hauled in also a demon then?"

  "No, he is a human soul."

  "But...his body, it healed so quickly..."

  "A soul body," the man pauses collecting his thoughts while watching Shelly looking about the sides of the row boat and paddling in the water with her hands, "that man was a soul that escaped Hell, his body is what they give you...to torture over and over again with fresh unscarred meat."

   "Wait...then how'd we not find him sooner? I thought the dossier said he found this town."

   "Because," says the man moving as Shelly is paddling to a two story house's second story window and climbing out of the boat, "his soul isn't from our world."

   "Okaaay," says the woman as they move to get a better view of Shelly as she climbs into an open window of a house, apparently tying the boat with a bed sheet to the rails of a bed inside, "So we have an alt-universe soul who escaped from Hell in an immortal body who founded a town and used magic to bind a demon into the body of a fetus twenty years ago...to play a game slash keep another stronger demon from just dragging him back to Hell?"

   "Yes," says the man, "Maria...I also read the dossier. and I don't think they have it right."

  He stops as they watch Shelly climb out of the window with hockey sticks.

  "Resourceful," he says, "and lucky."

  As Shelly is rowing away, the man says, "You saw the photos they got of the old chapel basement, even smashed up, Mr. Conners was very resourceful and clearly well read...but I don't think what was there...was what he thought. Seems to me we have a pair of Onryo, a Nure-Onna, and assorted Yokai...look at the destruction here, the storm, the flooding...the fact these other revenants regarded one as their master..the thing he stole seems to be a Nekomata if not a sub-species of it. We have a Goryo, no doubt."

   "A what?" asks Maria as the two black clad individuals move their position on the overlook of the town to keep an eye on Shelly as she rows in uncertain directions; apparently trying to get her barings if nothing else, "I mean....I know what a Goryo is...but its just an Onryo, feudal bull shit to make people think the aristocracy had stronger souls than the common folk. Besides what would a host of Japanese ghosts be doing in Indiana?"

   "Maria," says the man, "you know as I do, how universal some of these creatures are, the Goryo was just what they called the regal acting spirits. We've seen these weather and water aligned creatures in other cultures as well. The top of the supernatural food chain on Earth; even demons and gods respect these far removed from humanity entities. But they also demand sacrifice."

   "Wait...." says Maria, "I thought the girl was the reincarnation of a demon servant of this...entity."

   "Look around," says the man, "once it starts...it already started, it has taken people, killed them, killed people it took before. Getting its servant back is just part of this, we are looking at an Alpha class apparition trying to cement its self in America...no way we can allow that."

   "In other words," says Maria, "its another sleeper that thinks its waking up in the world it knew and starting shit...but still...this feels Asian not American..."

   "That escaped soul," says the man, "his soul reading shows he did in fact come from another Earth like he claims...he thinks these things followed him to retrieve him. I surmise that instead he left a door open, and things that would normally appear elsewhere appeared here from that world. Not that it matters, before the day is over....it will be ours."

   He taps on a device on his ear, "Sector B-12, the bait is moving into Sector B-12, be advised the bait is now self mobile."

   ******