It's Not for Everyone

Sent October 31st, 20XX  to: FThorburn@ACS.org

To Supervisor Thorburn of the Physical Hauntings and Manifestations Department, 

Investigation #7389 Status Report: Upon arriving, I made a connection-board of all extant information and, with the amount of data, it grew to three walls of my motel room. Please see the attached files. To seek out new leads, I made and distributed posters at the town center for information surrounding the last known victim, a Mister Ichabod Crane. 

After an hour several residents approached, one I later learned was the off-duty Sheriff of Westchester county, and they expressed confusion at the investigation. When I explained, in the simplest of terms, the goals of the Aspen Chalice Society and the mission of René Fabron, its eminent founder, their demurral subsided, and they all took a flyer, securing them in their pockets folded into the smallest possible lump for safekeeping. With this victory in community outreach, I returned to my motel room for more flyers but found all my luggage, equipment, and the information web in the dumpster. My Negotiation and Mediation skills came in handy as I questioned the front desk. I am happy to report the incident was just a miscommunication with the cleaning staff, and I rebooked my room after its abrupt cancellation. If IT could renew my GhostWeb access, I will send my expense report to the Accounting Department on Thursday. See Information Web Ver.2 Photos in the attached files. 

Despite this setback in my investigation, I utilized the tools from your excellent seminar on the Reassessment of Evidence from the Society’s 2013 convention and started investigating the oldest parts of the Pocantico Forest to the north of the Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown area. I’ve unearthed some very promising leads. Please see the attached evidence report entitled “Ethereal Equestrian Evidence.” I will fill out the storage reports on my new desk when I return. I have questioned all the farmers in the surrounding countryside confirmed to have grown pumpkins and gourds these last few months. Several individuals could not accurately account for the whereabouts of their cucurbita crops for hours at a time almost every day this growing season. The specimens sold were neither itemized nor barcoded, conveniently precluding any chance to track down the purchasers. While I could not set up surveillance equipment in their fields, there being too great a risk from pigs and tractors rambling around, I did obtain several camouflaged game cameras which I set up by the four fields that had held the most promising pumpkins. My expense spreadsheet is already formatted for the Accounting Department, so I’m sure the reimbursement will be expedient. I’ll make sure to start all paperwork early, as I need to learn the new office after our “department-wide reorganization” while I was wrapping up the Moore case. 

Signing off,
Junior Agent Hollis Fabron  

p.s. Did you receive my email from the 13th? It has my transfer application specifying my official request to move from administration to fieldwork. Also attached is Mrs. Moore’s personal testimony of my field capability. I think you’ll remember her; she was very grateful after I rid her of the possessed-spinach incident in her store. While I understand my knowledge of vegetables and hauntings, combined with aforesaid experience with haunted vegetables, is an invaluable asset to this investigation, I conclude that this case needs a fresh set of eyes, and possibly an Agent more comfortable around horses. 

***

Hollis sends the email with the last two bars of service in this godforsaken forest. His standard issue rubber boots, soaked with rain, bite into his heels. The icy moisture hangs around the back of his neck. A broad avenue surrounds him; the distance dissolving into the early night’s darkness before and behind him. The small walking path from his rental car is invisible, lost in the murky trees that stretched up and over the lane. The nature reserve map is in one of my pockets, I think. He realizes too late, It’s not in my cargo pants pocket, as the Velcro makes a hideous sound in the dull mist that surrounds him. There’s a rustle to the right. He sees the collapsed side of the pumpkin first, staring from between the bars of the trees. 

Two triangle eyes stare at him, their desiccated edges curling in towards the sputtering flame they hold, and the smile hangs lopsided into a smirk, brown glop hanging out. The wet compost heap smell curls Hollis’ toes, and he almost stumbles away, but he can only watch. Its horse continues to walk forward onto the avenue, until the ghost yanks the reins back. The dark stallion balks listlessly, letting out a harsh cry between a frustrated horse and splintering bones striking together. Hollis blinks and grabs his standard issue pepper spray out of his jacket pocket. The steed dances in place on the forest floor, barely held by a creaking grip on the reins, when the taut leather snaps with a loud, earthly bang. The beast’s head thrashes uncontrolled. Its eyes rove wildly but see nothing. Rocking from its place, the pumpkin head lurches forward. The rider drops the ruined reins to catch it, its gloves slipping on the squishy vegetable skin. Brown pumpkin seed guts fall onto the horse’s mane, startling it and sending it charging past Hollis, who dives out of the way, and towards the trees behind him. Its saddle falls off in two lifeless pieces like a second skin and the “ghost” falls to the dank forest floor with what sounded like a blast of air. The horse disappears into the trees beyond. Its flight is silent. But that’s probably from the cushion of the forest floor, Hollis concludes. 

He glances away from the fleeing horse to the figure on the ground. I must have blinked when he hit the ground. The rider is laying there, “headless” and dazed. If he concentrates, staring through the rider’s chest, Hollis can see the watery image of the rocks and mud that make up the ground of the avenue. But that’s easily a reflective optical illusion with this vapour surrounding us, Hollis thinks. In the grey light of fog, dark splatter stains radiate from the collar of its ragged cavalry uniform, the horizontal gold trimming a dull bronze or torn away entirely, and two bandoliers lay disheveled and brown across it. Beyond the body, the mushy pumpkin disintegrates into a soup of viscous ash that blows away in a sudden wind, leaving a small nub of tallow with a dull fleck of light left neglected in the rotting leaves. Hollis frowns. 

“Alright, where’s the camera?” He scans both lines of trees and considers breaking out his night vision binoculars. He raises his voice towards the forest,“I’m gonna start swearing and mess up your algorithm placement if you don’t come out.” 

The forest does not answer, and neither does the body on the ground.  

Hollis can’t see anything in the fog, not even the horse, which should be hanging around. “I am a representative of an official paranormal society and we do not appreciate interference in our investigations.” Hollis approaches and looks down at the body as one looks at red carpet crashers. “This is a public park, don’t make me perform a citizen’s arrest.” 

“This is no place for civilians sir—” wind, like a passing train, sears through his windbreaker and camera vest, and throws his hat into the bushes. The dot of flame on the ground blinks and the body shutters. Overhead a branch cracks. Hollis throws himself back as a reflex. He slips on the frosty mud but stays on his feet, looking up at the canopy. Several other, smaller limbs fall but far enough to ignore. He finally looks at the prone body of the “prankster,” thinking about calling 911. 

A huge antique tree limb, hairy with dark moss, is splayed on the ground, perpendicular to the “prankster.” It’s literally right in the middle of the body, where the legs join the torso, and there is no blood. Hollis quickly jumpstarts his eyes again. There are no organs, no cries of confused agony. Where the branch interrupts the horseman, there is no solidity at all, but wisps that rise like silent smoke. 

Hollis whips around on his heel, making to run, and finds himself on the ground.

His fingers swiftly find his standard issue banisher’s set in his camera bag, but just as suddenly, his digits feel like gummy worms, unable to struggle against even the smallest plastic buckles. He slides back, his legs pushing away more and more until a shoulder hits a sharp tree trunk, and he screams in his mouth a little. The figure laying there does not move aside from letting its heels, clad in dark riding boots, slide out from under its bent knees until they splay out like a dead snow angel with ugly branch wings. 

The dampness of the ground seeps into Hollis’ skin through his clothes. When he raises a hand to rub his eyes, there is a bit of moss stuck to it, which stings. The pain brings his thoughts to the surface, and his pocket-size edition of banisher’s incantations finds its way into his hand faster than previously possible. Hollis slowly, silently, stands up against the tree. The figure on the ground stays still. One foot, two foot, three, closer to the ghost. Hollis trips on a root, sending his pocket edition page-first into the frozen mud. As he scrambles to dust it off, some corner in the back of his mind laughs a little deliriously at how he’ll ever consider the soiled book desk reference-worthy again, but maybe with a new desk come new references.

In the loud declarative voice cultivated by people staring into bathroom mirrors or panicking at aggressive spelling-bees, Hollis stands proudly and begins reciting the Latin. “Mi audi verbum—”

Flashes of the report’s manifestation-profile burst into his mind’s eye, “...massive and powerful, and consistently appearing at intervals every eight and a half months for the last two hundred years, it has reached an unprecedented age for a fully embodied physical manifestation. Manifestation Twenty-three has eluded banishment since before the inception of the ACS. It has caused countless (see spreadsheet on page 17 below) works of property damage, crises of emotional trauma, and incidents of general mischief; it has been implicated in at least one unsolved missing persons case (see page 37, “Mr. Ichabod Crane”).” 

Hollis’ voice breaks, and he looks down. “No way... You’re not...” 

The gloved hand closest to Hollis slowly curls up and waves him over in invitation as the universal sign of “Get it over with or I’ll do it myself.” 

Hollis turns back to his booklet, “—exspiravit; ab hoc mundo—” he loses it again. “You’re not the…” Hollis sputters, his tongue floundering. 

The bedraggled creature on the ground slouches upwards, with wide arms and open palms in a question, “Oh I’m sorry, are there any other ghosts on horseback here?” 

Hollis’s eyes go entirely unseeing for a long five minutes. He sees Supervisor Thorburn’s face as she explains how incredibly dangerous this spirit is. He is to use all of his expert skills to chase it down and banish it from this mortal plane. He’ll be out in the field for the good of the Society and all it protects, and they’ll restructure until he gets back. And Hollis is, in fact, an expert…. he was. 

He was

Hollis Helmut Fabron was the grandchild of the great René Fabron, that immortal oil portrait on the wall of every childhood home, his likeness watching over every new town, on the way to every new school, as the family left for every investigation, and later as Hollis’ parents and sister left, and later still as the expert teams left Aspen’s headquarters. He saw me out of the grand doors of the Society for this investigation. The picture’s oily eyes always had a yellow twinkle, and this time it had been for Hollis as he walked out those double doors, just not in the way Hollis had thought, apparently. 

The ghost lets its shoulders fall back to the ground. It disturbs no air, nestling down into the dirt like a sigh. 

Hollis had helped the crew of the informational lunch he attended three weeks ago by supplying plenty of additional data. He remembered the last simulation he had signed up for. He arrived early and armed with a plan as always, and although his plan proved ineffective for the plastic banshee they faced, he had been instrumental in making sure the team’s flashlight batteries stayed charged, a request from the team’s leader themself. 

The Board knows best, oh yes, and it seems they were correct again. Hollis’ voice crawls up his throat, sinking claws into his chest the whole way up, and sounding small in the tall cavern of trees. “Horseman, Ghost Rider, whatever you call yourself,”

Hollis nudges through its intangible leg with his boot. It swirls and reforms in a moment.

“I have a proposal.”