18 Nov The Entity and the Lad

Alright, let me get straight into it.

I hate kids.

Like, I loathe them. My best friend has two kids, both bright, both courteous, both talented — bless their hearts — and both of them absolutely suck. I know that sounds harsh, but I’ve only had a few hours of sleep and I’m kinda on edge.

For the past week I’ve been woken up again and again by all manner of ridiculous shit. I’m talking eggs splattering my window, ear-splitting renditions of Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory album (that always get the lyrics to Runaway wrong), and strobe-lights beaming into my bedroom. The weird part? All of it’s coming from the same place: the tree-house in my backyard.

You have to understand that when I bought this house the tree-house wasn’t really a consideration. It just wasn’t. I was looking for a cheap property with a decent layout and potential to renovate. I wasn’t looking for a pain in my ass, and yet here I am. I’ve been a home owner for a little under a week, and I’m almost ready to throw in the towel.

Initially I thought some neighborhood kid had started using my tree-house as a home base. It wasn’t until I went out three nights ago, while strobe lights were still firing at my window, and inspected the tree-fort that I realized I wasn’t dealing with a neighborhood kid at all.

I was dealing with something far worse.

See, after I demanded that the troublemaker show themselves, a ghostly apparition appeared. At first I thought it was just a short ghost, but then I noticed the backwards ball-cap, Sum 41 hoodie, and the middle finger it was giving me.

The son of a bitch was a ghost kid!

I stormed out of there, fired up Craigslist and started looking for some assistance with my problem. What I got was worse than useless. It was downright shameful.

Seriously, have you ever tried putting out an ad for ‘ghost removal’? Let me tell you, the people that respond are not society’s shining stars. Hell, I’m pretty sure at least half of them thought I was bullshitting and didn’t even believe in ghosts themselves. For example, one guy showed up with an open beer in his hand — a fucking Bud Light — and asked me how many people the ghost had killed so far.

Killed so far? Buddy, if this ghost had a body count I’d be contacting the police, not an alcoholic on Craigslist.

The people who actually believed in ghosts were even worse. Two came by — a guy and a girl — and they strolled through my house with EMF detectors, humming and mumbling to themselves.

I kept trying to tell them the ghost was up in the tree-house, but they wouldn’t listen to me.

“I feel a soul chained to this place,” the guy said. “It has unfinished business in this house.” I tried asking him where the ghost was chained, and what unfinished business it had, but the guy — Crowley (pretty sure that wasn’t his real name) — waved his hand dreamily and said the spirit had ‘ceased contact.’

Ceased contact? This is my house! You don’t get to just make some vague excuse about having ‘unfinished business’ and then couch-surf until the end of time. The girl wasn’t any better. First of all, she said her name was Raven, which I’m 90% certain was also a fake name, but she kept going on about crap like “there’s a strong aura in the bathroom,” and “I feel a melancholy energy in the kitchen.”

Yeah, that ‘strong aura’ was the burrito I ate for supper last night, and that ‘melancholy energy’ is the expired chicken I keep forgetting to take out of the fridge. I was feeling pretty sour about paying these hacks three hundred bucks, but once they climbed up to the treehouse I realized it’d been worth every penny.

They started wandering around with their dousing rods and chanting their mumbo jumbo. Crowley sprinkled some salt here and there. Raven said some words in Latin. I scowled.

It took all of three minutes for the ghost kid to get fed up and splat Crowley square in the face with an egg. The yoke ran down his nose and he stopped mid-chant, looking at me aghast as if I’d tossed it, then one, no two, no THREE more all rapidly pelted him in quick succession.

SPLAT. SPLAT. SPLAT.

“Ahhhhh! He ran around shrieking, ghost-eggs exploding all over his trench coat and getting in his lustrous blue hair. Raven started pleading with the ghost to spare Crowley, as if the little shit could be reasoned with, and then she too started getting showered in yokes.

The two of them ran screaming from the property faster than you could say ‘ghost busters’ (I know this for a fact, because I shook my head and muttered those very words. Before I could finish speaking, the gate to my backyard was already swinging on its hinges).

So in light of those two colossal failures, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I fired up reddit, did a little ghost research, then went out and picked up a few choice items. One being a Ouija board, and the other being a prescription for sleeping meds. BOOM!

That leads me to now, where I’ve decided I’m going to kill two birds with one stone. First of all, I’m finally going to get some actual sleep, and secondly, I’m going to contact the little shit haunting my tree-house and give him a piece of my mind. I’ll be updating this in real time with my experiences. If something goes sideways, just know that I was murdered by the ghost kid, and somebody salt and burn that turd’s bones.

Thanks. Here goes.

I pop a sleeping pill, whip out my Ouija board, and make a collect-call to the afterlife. It only takes a minute for the kid to answer, and when he does it’s with the typical teenage snark. “What do u want” he says.

Ugh.

I roll my eyes and roll up my sleeves. Time to get down to business. I move the planchette across the board, spelling out the words “I want u out of my treehouse u fukin shit.”

He doesn’t take kindly to that. After a bit more back-and-forth trash talking, I tell him to vamoose before I go up there with a chainsaw and tear the whole thing down. That’s when he tells me exactly what he’s doing up there — and just how fucked I truly am.

You see, this ghost, and I congratulate my suspicions on being correct here, actually is a thirteen year old kid. The reason that he’s been pelting my window with ghost-eggs, however, has not been to drive me to an early grave via stress, but rather to save my life. I know, weird right?

Let me explain.

Turns out, Crowley and Raven had actually been onto something with their whole ‘melancholy energy’ and ‘unfinished business’ thing. According to the ghost in the tree-house (who I’ll henceforth be referring to as ‘Ghost Lad’) he once lived in my house as a joyous, breathing boy until a demonic Entity rolled up and devoured him in the middle of the night.

I tell him that’s super shitty, but also a pretty rad way to die. Plus, it explains the weird stain on the bedroom wall, and why it’s the only room that’s hardwood and not carpet.

He goes on to say that his family fled for their lives, but first they hired an exorcist and chained the Entity to the house. Nobody wants a demon moving with them, right? I make a point to politely apologize for their cowardice, but he tells me it’s cool, they were just being pragmatic.

We talk a bit more and I learn he doesn’t even really like the treehouse, but his soul can’t pass onto the afterlife so he’s stuck. Apparently when the Entiry devoured him it also scarred his soul pretty bad, and I guess the gates of heaven told him to get lost. Bummer.

I ask why he’s haunting my treehouse though, if he died inside the upstairs bedroom. I always figured ghosts haunt the same place they bit the dust. He then asks me, with a lot of teenage sass, “oh im sorry would u like 2 roommate with da demonic entity that devoured ur soul???”

I tell him to chill, and at this point my sleeping meds are kicking in, so I let loose a big yawn.

Ghost Lad becomes mildly offended. “Is my story borin u??” he Ouija’s. “Sorry that a demon scarrin my soul n murderin me dont exite u”

I explain that it isn’t boring me, I just haven’t slept in two days thanks to his incessant interruptions. Ghost Lad then explains that his interruptions are the only reason we’re even having this discussion in the first place. I tell him, “No shit. i didnt buy a ouija board 4 the fukin fun of it.”

He claps back, “no i mean, if i didnt u wud be dead right now.”

I pause and stare at the Ouija board in stunned silence. Did Ghost Lad just fucking threaten me? I stifle another yawn (to avoid offending the kid), grab the planchette and message back, “what do u mean.”

Ghost Lad explains that this Entity, whatever it is, prefers to strike its victims while they sleep. That’s how it got him when he was just a boy. One moment he was snoozing, the next moment his leg was getting chewed on by a creature from the pits of hell.

He says the eggs he’s been whipping at my window (along with the shitty Linkin Park karaoke and stupid strobe-lights) have all been for the sole purpose of keeping me alive. I guess the kid’s been creeping on me since I got here, and every so often he’d notice the demonic Entity slink on up, lick its lips and get ready to snack. That’s when Ghost Lad would spring into action.

A feeling of regret washes over me. My eyes are beginning to feel very heavy, and I’m beginning to realize I’ve made a fairly large blunder.

“sorry,” I message. “gtg”

“y?”

“i took sleepin meds. feel drowsy.”

“WTF”

I get up from the Ouija board and figure at this point I really can’t trust myself to stay awake. To be safe, I should probably just leave the house entirely. I can always come back tomorrow with Raven and Crowley and try and deal with this demonic Entity then. Actually, scratch that. I’ll call up Bud Light Guy. He clued into the body count almost immediately, which as far as I’m concerned is some high-tier psychic shit.

I cross the living room and try to leave through the back door, but the back door isn’t budging. I check the lock and the deadbolt, but neither are engaged. What the fuck? I rub my eyes, wondering if I’m just so tired that I’m imagining things, before deciding I don’t have time to write this shit out any longer. Instead, I fire up my phone’s speech-to-text app, and start dictating.

Okay. I’m trying the front door now.

No luck. Thing is wedged like a boulder. I’m wondering why I’m continuing to update this, but I think it’s because at this point it might end up being my last will and testament. Plus, if I do get ganked by a demon then you know I’m getting my own Netflix special.

Wait. Fuck! The windows. I’ll try those.

Damn, those aren’t budging either. I’m contacting Ghost Lad again via Ouija.

He says, “RUN!”

Yikes. Not god. I’m yawning every thirty seconds now, and my vision is getting blurry. I’m running out of time and options, and as much as I hate to make a ruckus in the neighborhood — especially when I’ve just moved in, I’m desperate enough to no longer give a crap. I’m gonna grab a chair from the kitchen and whip that shit through the living room window.

Before I do though, I’m gonna post this. It might be the last thing I ever write, and the next people who move into this house deserve to know what lives here — and god willing, get a better price than I did.

I’ll give you an update if I manage to survive. If I don’t, then uh, just remember that next time something wakes you up in the middle of the night, it might not be a nuisance. It might actually just be a friendly neighborhood ghost trying to save your goddamn life.

Which reminds me, I need to save mine.

Toodles.