So you want to know what happened when that spirit
ward in the Outer Darkness failed and let out a Big Bad Bastard into our patch? Yeah, you were
correctly informed that I was there, and yes, I do get a lot of green recruits coming up to me
and asking me what it was like to take on a Banshee. So pull up a chair from that desk over there
and I'll tell you what happened on that operation last year. But do excuse me while I waffle on
about events before that operation...
I woke up in a cold sweat at around five am, and saw that the TV was on BBC News
24. I had left it on when I fell asleep and it was still blaring away. My flat felt colder than
usual, and I had woken up to find myself entangled in my bedclothes, with my head where my feet
should have been and the pillows on the floor. I probably kicked them off in my disturbed slumber.
The window was closed, which meant that the coldness of the flat was left somewhat unexplained.
It was the middle of a balmy English summer and usually everything would be swelteringly hot,
even at five am. But I was cold, as was my flat.
I got up and tottered over to the en suite bathroom and pulled the cord to the neon strip over
the mirror. Nothing happened. No 'thunk' as the bulb died or as a fuse blew. Just sweet nothing.
There was no power cut because the TV was still blaring out News 24 and the timepiece on the DVD
was still winking 05:01 hours at me from across the room. Time seemed to be moving rather slowly
to me, but I just put it to the back of my mind and to the fact that I had only just woken up and
time always seems to go slow when you're not quite awake. “Fuck” I said beneath my breath.
Something was up.
Suddenly a shape disembodied itself from the wall beside me and I leapt backwards out of its way.
Mist curled up around it as it reformed into its usual ugly visage. It's face was a picture of
horror trapped in the moment of death, the signs of Mortis still there for me to observe. I
immediately had my ISM Pistol trained upon it, ready to shoot whatever it was when I realised it
was just another spook from the Met where I worked as one of its few “flesh” operatives.
“What the hell are you doing in my bathroom, Nathaniel?” I demanded of the disembodied spirit that
stood before me as he pulled himself together into a more human form.
“Sorry Governor, but the spooks at central had something unusual on their waves and decided that
you needed to be informed of it.” He looked at me pleadingly as I slowly holstered my pistol. I
looked like a dumb schmuck for a moment until I pulled myself together enough to remember to get
dressed before leaving the flat. I put the safety on the pistol once I had dressed and holstered
it beneath my half-length leather trench coat. Like a full length it could conceal most of the
specialist weapons us spook-haunters used to deal with the restless dead, but it had a lot more
movement in it, which could give you the edge in a tight spot. We're called spook-haunters because
we haunt spooks like they haunt others. We scare them into behaving because they're pretty hard
to destroy. That's what my instructor said during training with the Metropolitan Police's Ghost
Squad anyhow. The MPGS, or spook-haunters.
Those who formed the organisation had no sense of glamour, which is why we got such a dumb name
as the MPGS. I personally think we should have been called the “Spook Squad” or something like
that. You'd think that those who actually believed in ghosts and other such spookies would have
imagination in spades, but oh no, they're the most mundane bunch of twerps to have ever worked a
specialist department within the Met. I guess once you get a handle on whatever alternative
realities there are, you have no more room for imagination.
Anyway, I got my shit together and followed Nathaniel through the floor to the
underground car park below my apartment block. Yeah, training with spooks has its advantages,
like never having to rely upon lifts to get you between floors because the spooks have shown you
how to see the gaps between atoms and use them to your advantage.
We're only supposed to use shit like that in emergencies, but one gets to liking the sensation of
atoms rubbing against atoms like an all-over body wank with no mess to clean up afterwards. And
yes, before you ask, you can have sexual relations with a ghost, and yes, it does count as
necrophilia. But unlike normal human relationships you can have no children as the dead no longer
have the capacity to create life. According to the few Baal Shem of the Hashidim that work along
side us, ghosts no longer have the 'Breath of Lives' that God breathed into Adam during his
creation or something like that. That is what those Hashidic mystics say, for what it's worth. I
just thought that they couldn't breed because they were dead, but there you go.
We dropped through the ceiling of the underground car park and luckily there was
no one else about to see us do it. Non-operatives don't like seeing us do that kind of shit as it
gives them the willies. Can't say I blame them for that.
“I supposed you flew here,” I said to Nathaniel, indicating my black unmarked police car. He was
alive in the last millennium, and I guess cars were not around when he died.
“Yeah Governor, I did,” he said. “I suppose I am to entrust my unlife in that contraption with
your driving?”
“Either that, or you can fly back to New Scotland Yard...” I replied.
He got into the car without any further argument after that, and I blessed my foresight that I
had the front seats covered in plastic as well as the back ones. Ectoplasm was a real bitch to
get out of upholstery at the best of times, and the more a spook exerted itself the more of that
gunk they produced. Therefore, this was not the best of times. It wasn't just Ectoplasm that the
seats were covered from, but it was to also protect them from the whole gamut of human bodily
functions possible from a carload of scared shitless civilians. And I am being quite literal h
ere. The amount of civvies that piss, shit, or puke all over themselves after being spooked is
unbelievable... That is why we have to deal with rogue spooks – to stop the human population
dying of heart attacks everywhere and adding to the problem.
I pulled out of my assigned parking space and drove up the ramp onto the main street where I
lived. Nathaniel just sat there with his eyes tightly shut, praying to whatever deity he still
believed in.
“So,” I said, trying to make conversation to help him take his mind off my driving, “What is so
important that the spooks at central had to send you to wake me up at five o'clock in the fucking
morning rather than handle it themselves?”
“Just a Banshee,” he replied, relishing the words as they tripped off his tongue like some kind
of perverse undead nursery rhyme. I nearly swerved off the fucking road at that.
“How the hell,” I said as I regained control of the car, “did a freaking Banshee get out of the
Outer Darkness and into our realms? I thought the wards were strong enough to keep those Big Bad
Bastards at bay...”
“So did we, but it appears one has worked out how to break past the wards that Mishima had
developed way back in the teens.” Mishima Shinto Psychic Wards Company, or MSPWC, was the
Japanese company that worked out how to create Spirit Wards and Spook Traps combining modern
technology and ancient Shinto rituals of exorcism. The technical Geeks at the Met called those
things “Lucifer Hawk Traps” in reference to some Japanese comic book called Silent Mobius.
With that I reached out my side window and slapped the blues and twos onto the
roof of the unmarked car. With a flick of a switch we were screaming down the King's highway
with the lights flashing and the sirens blaring. To be honest with you I wasn't looking forward
to this job. Not one little bit.
We pulled up outside of NSY with the lights still flashing but the sirens turned off after
getting past the various road blocks that encapsulated the Square Mile of London. They had been
up since 9/11, but in recent years spook wards had been added. Some blamed 9/11 on the explosion
in hauntings that happened towards the end of 2004, but Afghanistan and Bali and Iraq and various
other atrocities had added to the overflowing of the Pale Lands that caused the Samhain Tearing
of 2004. Apparently, from what some of our spook operatives have told us who were already dead
before the end of the nineteenth century, the Pale Lands had started filling up from the time of
the Great War. It just reached saturation point in 2004 when it all spilled over into the land of
the living.
Normally I would just flash the ID and drive through when the mundane barriers were lifted, but
I had a spook operative with me in the car, and had to get the spook wards lifted as well. They
were courtesy of MSPWC, naturally. The Japanese get to make all of the cool shit these days while
we get lumbered with making silver bullets in case of irreversible possessions where the victim
goes psycho and on the rampage, and the only way to take the poor sucker out is with a silver
bullet – you may kill the host with an ordinary one, but the spook controlling it will only
release the stiff after being hit with a silver bullet. If you cannot get it out of the human
'host' you have to shoot it with fatal results for the poor host. I was glad that I was no longer
on the street beat with the MPGS, but this means I had to deal with all the weird and really
dangerous shit, like this situation.
I hit the front desk and found a swat team waiting for me to go out and deal with the mutha the
hard way.
“Just in time, DI Jones. The show is about to begin,” the grizzled old sergeant behind the desk
called to me as we all piled back out of the door and into our respective vehicles. He was as
nervous as the rest of us, being a veteran of the Samhain Tearing all those years ago – it was
his generation of MPGS officers that had to deal with the likes of Banshees without the
technological advances of MSPWC or our spook operatives. They had a real freaking hard time of it
then, but I still envied his comfortable job behind the desk back at NSY. He had fucking earned
it, at least.
Nathaniel jumped into my unmarked car along with two other spook operatives armed up to the nines
with enough fire power to take out New York's central grave yard on All Hallows Eve. I recognised
one of the others as lieutenant Jane O'Hannagan, who in life was a seventies rock chick who
committed suicide after the death of the Lizard King in '71. She once told me that she had found
Jim Morrison to be a “right lecherous fuck” in death and went off him within a decade. I guess
joining the MPGS as a Spook Officer kinda gave her a second chance in death.
She was a solid officer [excuse the phrase] who could hold her own in a fire fight, and I was
glad to have her on board. Most of the other living operatives were in the meat wagon, or
scattered in other unmarked cars. There was a certain amount of separation between the living and
the dead in the department, which I considered to be a load of bull shit. You're a short time
alive and a long time dead, and if you're not careful in this job you might one day find yourself
being promoted to amongst the spooks before your time. So you had better learn to get along with
them as one day you will be joining them. There is no retirement in this job, just an extended
vacation when you get too old to do the job while still alive...
We pulled out of NSY and screamed off towards the Millennium Dome where the Banshee had been
spotted last. Why that old wreck of a building hadn't already been condemned was beyond me,
but it came in handy for luring the Big Bad Bastards away from civilian areas, so it still had
it's uses at least, Just not the ones originally envisaged by the architects that designed the
God damn white elephant.
By the time we got to the Millennium Dome there were already signs that the
Banshee had gone on the rampage inside it – Ectoplasm around a great freaking hole in the side,
dazed spook operatives laying around, and there was a distinct chill in the air. You could have
taken a piss that sunny June morning and still see it freeze before it hit the ground and shatter
upon the pavement. Being daylight meant that the Banshee was a lot harder to spot, so us living
operatives had to rely upon special goggles that were developed by Mishima to allow us to see
spooks in broad daylight. Kinda like night vision goggles, but in reverse. Spook operatives just
looked like disembodied police uniforms floating around without them, so they were kinda
comforting in that respect while operating in daylight, as well as enabling you to see the spook
that you was going after in the first place. The spook operatives didn't need such gadgets –
being dead already meant that they could see in that “wavelength” without technical
augmentation.
So I sent O'Hannagan forward to the edge of the hole in the dome to see if she could spot
anything without getting her freaking head ripped off. She managed that admirably, as I knew she
would, only to report back that there were “loads of fucking debris flying all over the place
towards the centre of the building.” At least we knew where the Big Bad Bastard was. More or
less. Now we had to catch and contain the bitch, and that was no mean feat by anybody's
standards. My training kicked in and I remembered how we dealt with Banshees in simulation
training. It was kinda like playing Doom or Quake, only it was a simulation of real situations
where you could get yourself, or at least, your virtual self, killed – which meant a bollocking
from the training instructor. The Quake engine had evolved a lot since the Nineties and now
supported Virtual Reality which was facilitated to work in real time by running it on a Linux
super-node. Still, it wasn't quite the same as going head to head with the real thing, I can tell
you.
So I signal my troop to enter the dome through the hole already made by the Banshee and fanned
them out into an arrow formation, taking cover behind crates and stuff while looking for an
opportunity to get up close and set a Spook Trap under its sorry ass. The tactic was simple
enough, but little did I know how easy it was to fuck up big time. We got up close to the bitch,
close enough to tickle its ass if we had wanted to, but it then got wind of us and went ape shit
us. I think it was because some stupid schmuck let the cage rattle as he tried to lay it under
the bitch's ass. She just turned around and splattered him against the far wall. Ah well, at
least he got his promotion to amongst the spooks in short time, but he wasn't pleased by the
prospects in the slightest. Being dead has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. Like no more
fresh bagels and coffee first thing in the morning as it all tastes like ashes in your mouth
once dead, no more hot and sweaty sex with a hot broad from your patch [unless she just so
happened to be into stiffs...]. And if you're married with kids then you usually end up moving
out as your dearly beloveds cannot cope with having a dead relative still hanging about.
The spooks amongst us were not faring much better than us meats, but at least they could take
more punishment than us. Several had to untangle themselves from crates and stuff before
re-joining the fray, but they couldn't get themselves killed at least. Well, they were already
dead anyhow. O'Hannagan and I end up in the back of the Dome watching for a space to act when
suddenly she spots the Banshee getting over-confident and hatches a plan – one which I didn't
like that much but what the hell, it had to have worked or I'd be dead right now. As you can see
I am not, so I had better tell you what happened next...
I edged out from under cover and tried to get as far across the dome away from where I was
originally hiding as I could before the Banshee spotted me and gave chase. She was just standing
there for a moment, and it was then that I finally got a good look at her for the first time.
Through the goggles she had a ghostly green hue to her slender form, with greenish-white hair
that fell evenly down her back. For such a dangerous spook, she was pretty attractive, in a
Femme Fatale kind of way, but I wasn't about to ask her out on a date at this point. Bunny
Boilers are just so "not my thing".
I didn't get too far before the bitch spotted me so I had a fuck load of running
away to do, and I wasn't that young even then. So there I was running across the floor of the
Dome while O'Hannagan behind me was sneaking up behind it to lay a Spook Trap under its ass
before it got a hold of me and ripped me limb from limb.
Not only had I to avoid capture, but I had to lead the bitch away from O'Hannagan's position
while she laid the trap and primed it, before ducking back so I could lead it around to my
original position and over the Spook Trap, hopefully being just in time for when she hit the
magic button so that the Banshee would be right over it when the trap was sprung with myself
well out of the way. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it?
So here am I running away from a Big Bad Bastard with others calling for me to duck into cover
as they were unaware of our plan, but I couldn't as I had to lead it back over the Spook Trap
that was still being set up by O'Hannagan, and I was absolutely shitting myself at the prospect
of being caught by the Banshee and being torn limb from limb in the process of executing the
craziest plan that I had ever let a junior officer talk me into during a clean up operation.
Needless to say I didn't stop running when I heard the Spook Trap spring behind me at long last
just in case O'Hannagan missed and I'd have to carry on running while she re-set the trap. But
within a few seconds I heard the hiss and pop of a spirit being trapped then raucous applause
from the rest of my troop as they finally realised what I had been doing and that it had
worked.
Needless to say, when we got back to NSY we filed the normal reports and
nominated officers who acted particularly bravely in the operation for citations from the Brass
Bastards in head office, posthumous or otherwise. I got promoted but refused it as it meant a desk
job from then on and took on O'Hannagan as my partner. Having a spook like her covering your back
is worth any amount of cat calls and necrophilia jokes from your colleagues, and besides, spooks
do make the most interesting of lovers...