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‘No idea. Thanks, Hot Face!’
‘What?’ I duck out of the corner store with my fifty-two bottles of salt and leg it down the road. I have no idea when Walker will be back from his ‘job’. Huh. Job. What do ghosts even do? How do ghosts even get paid? I don’t care. I just gotta make it back home before he does.
I’m on a winning streak with this one. I can feel it.
I finish circling the entire building with salt and then stand to peruse my handiwork, dusting my hands on the back of my pants. Good. I smile and go to head inside, before I hear a high-pitched whistling sound. I turn to see a large dark plume of smoke pressing against the salt barrier, as if it were a glass-pane window.
It worked. I stare in wonder. It actually worked! I could cry. I could laugh. I could—
‘What a waste of condiments. What’s next? The Worcestershire?’
Walker takes an unbothered step over the threshold.
His smile is sharp and vicious. I wonder, not for the first time, if he had vampire blood somewhere in his lineage. He bends to meet me eye to eye.
‘If you want to be rid of me, you’ll have to try a bit harder than some spilled salt.’ He pulls at the stray lock of hair like it’s a train whistle, before he straightens.
I shudder when he walks through me.
Step Four: Say please.
Sometimes ghosts are just misunderstood. They were once people, but now they’re dead and stuck in purgatory. Show some compassion and kindness. You might be surprised how fruitful this tactic can be.
‘Walker?’
‘Fuck off.’
Step Five: Banishment.
As a last resort, you can consider performing a banishing ritual, but it will need to be done with a professional overseeing the ritual. The steps are as follows…
‘So, all we have to do is banish this guy and you’ll give us fifty bucks?’
Okay, so poaching emotionally unstable youths from the haunted forest probably isn’t what the book had in mind when it referred to a ‘professional’ to oversee the ritual, but beggars can’t be whatever, so here we are.
‘Yep.’
Said youths scrutinize me for all of five seconds before huffing and pulling out their respective ghost hunting instruments. Which turns out to just be a bowl, some white chalk and a few candles.
‘There’s meant to be four candles, but my mum had to use one for one of her clients last week.’
I don’t even want to investigate what that sentence implies.
‘I’m sure it’ll work just as well with three.’
‘Like you’d know,’ a girl with coal lining her eyes snarks.
I mimic her behind her back and feel much better for it.
‘Do you have an altar we can use?’
‘Will an ottoman do?’
The one I’ve dubbed ‘Beanie Boy’ nods his approval.
‘Enter the circle and grasp the bowl.’
Beanie Boy pours a plastic bottle of water out into the bowl and blows into a kazoo before humming the same note. What does that do—
