Page 3 of How I Met Your Murderer

What would ever make anyone look twice at me now that I had lost the one thing that had defined me for so many years? I didn’t know what there was to love about myself lately, so I wasn’t sure how I could expect anyone else to.

I did get a lot of stares and attention in my ExorSquad overalls when I went into my hometown these days, probably because I liked wearing them with a fitted black tee underneath that showed off my biceps. I was lifting again, carefully, with a set of weights I kept in the van.

Had to be ready for whatever ghost or felon this job brought my way next, even if a workout regime

two

Here Lies Lord Raff

Raff

Finally, after being on the job for about six months and picking up cases that took me to different parts of the country, I was heading home to Kerry.

Well, not exactly home, not yet—I wouldn’t have time to stop in for a visit until after this latest assignment, which was taking me to the quaint, bucolic village of Ballycorven deep in the heart of the county. Still, it was the closest I’d been to familiar sights in a while.

Singing loudly with the radio as I drove into the kingdom, the lush greenery and dramatic peaks on the horizon welcoming me in with the grandeur of palace gates thrown wide open, I glanced at the postcards taped to the dash. One for each assignment I had successfully completed over the past several months. A grand total of three.

That’s right, three in all, because I had started this little tradition after zapping that angry bobcat spirit from the taxidermy house. A postcard from the nearest landmark there would have made four, something I reminded myself of on my worst nights, when I found myself wondering what I was doing with my life and if this job was really helping anyone.

I had finally seen my share of ghosts. And I still wasn’t particularly scared, even after facing them one on one. Mostly, I was tired. Tired of eating cheap takeaway. Tired of #vanlife, as people called it online. Tired of cheap fecking equipment that couldn’t hold a charge more than half the time or didn’t work like they had showed us in training. Tired of The Handbook never giving the right advice after winning me over with the rule on exorcisms.

There were pages in there that, even without any experience, I suspected could have gotten me killed if I'd followed them. Like:

Rule #202: How to Deal with Poltergeists.

These pesky ghosts draw energy from electrical appliances. Be sure to turn off all the lights when dealing with them, as this will make them less powerful.

Then there was the properly dangerous:

Rule #325: Consider Making the Entity Angry.

If you piss a powerful spirit off, it’s far more likely to present in its corporeal form. That’s when you zap it with the X5000 Turbo Pro Plasma Accelerator ™. Throwing out insults, damaging their worldly goods, stepping on their murder site (if you can find it) are all great tools in the fight against the undead. And remember, time is money. The sooner you zap, the higher your commission.

The Handbook’s shite advice meant I’d had to get creative with every ghost I’d managed to help move on, and all I had to do was look at those postcards again to be reminded of why I felt like I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in months.

First, I had been sent to the Crooked Harp Pub, the building’s cheerful, flower-decked, yellow-painted exterior giving away nothing about the clusterfuck that awaited me inside. The ghost of a heartbroken fiddler haunted the place, playing sorrowful ballads shrill enough to shatter glass while my breath frosted into clouds. It turned on all the taps in the jacks right when I was desperate to take a piss, and it sobbed so noisily in so many places at once that I wasn’t sure where to aim the PolterPulse V2.1.

Even when the ghost finally manifested as a flicker of mist behind the bar with an eardrum-piercing note from his fiddle strings, and I managed to hit it with the PolterPulse, you guessed it: nothing happened.

Well, nothing good, anyway. The fiddler started to look a touch more solid, though his appearance was never clear enough to pick out the details of his face or clothing. This was, according to The Handbook, a classic Level Two entity. And if this was a Level Two, I really never wanted to meet a Level Five—supposedly the most powerful of all. Because instead of a mournful expression to match the echoes of sobs, it was clear from the plummeting temperature of the room that the spirit was fuming, like it was trying to draw more power from our surroundings to mount an attack.

Then my knee had decided that was an ideal time to start acting up, forcing me to take a seat in one of the booths rather than make a desperate dash for the exit.

I was certain the ghostly fiddler wanted to slash my throat with his ephemeral bow, but before he had the chance to test the limits of his manifestation, I managed to wake my phone with shaking fingers and start some music. Volume on full blast, I hit the ancient fiddler with Sleep Token. All the heavy bass and guitar must have been too much for the ghost, unlike anything they piped in through the pub’s speakers—all trad songs meant to charm tourists—and it disoriented him enough to make him drop his screeching fiddle and bow.

I kept playing horny, genre-bending metal until I couldn’t see even a shimmer in the air where the fiddler had been, until my breath was no longer visible in the air and I couldn’t hear any sobbing beneath the pounding melodies coming from my phone speaker.

The pub switched up their usual soundtrack at my recommendation, favoring upbeat pop and dance hits instead of music the ghost might actually recognize and be drawn to, and limited their live trad sessions to once or twice a month. As far as I’d heard, no one had glimpsed the ghostly fiddler out of the corner of their eye since, and if there was an extra fiddle in the chorus on those rare trad nights, at least no disembodied sobs followed them to the jacks after a couple of pints.

After that, I’d been sent to the Red Bog Inn in County Offaly. I was maybe feeling a little smug about getting rid of a ghost without any help from ExorSquad’s handbook or my training. Maybe feeling like I might be good at this, like I could make something of myself with a career spent removing spirits from haunted places the way I had with hurling. But what happened at the inn was enough to make me look up the salary for ticket-takers at the Cliffs of Moher as I indulged in a brief fantasy about another sudden career shift.

The inn was dealing with a ghostly bride from another century. Her fits and floods as she moaned about her ruined wedding were enough to make me invest my meager wages in earplugs and some sturdy rain boots. I spent several nights observing her—this was no mere mist, no sporadic Level Two entity like the fiddler. This was at least a Level Three spirit, shockingly solid but for the slightest bit of transparency when she manifested. It meant she was able to focus enough of her energy on making life hell for staff and guests alike.

And me.

So I learned her preferred haunts around the property, took notes on all her favorite tricks and what seemed to inspire her to cause a flood before she had spent all her energy, and then made a plan to zap her with the X5000.

Which did leave a big hole right through the middle of her stained, tattered wedding gown, though that was about it. In training, they had emphasized how simple this damn thing was to use—just point and shoot, the sole boss and owner of the company, Gerald, had cheerfully directed like we were in primary school. “Point and shoot, Raff, my lad!” He loved calling me that, like we were old pals or something.