Callie grinned. “He likes money and enjoys free publicity. I told him we’d mention him in the episode.”
“And there it is,” I chuckled. “Yeah, we chuck him a few soundbites. I assume your identity played a role as well.”
“Yup, I signed a few bits and took some selfies. Sunny was growling the whole time. Seems he’s a big fan. He’s also watching you guys, so I said some of you would pop in and autograph a few things. He’ll make money, and we got what we wanted.”
I shook my head. “How does Sunny refuse you anything?”
“He doesn’t,” Callie crowed. “Anyway,” she gasped as I moved her out of the way, as Coffee nearly rammed into her.
“Watch where you’re going!” I bellowed.
Coffee blinked and shrugged before continuing. “Christ, come with me,” I said, and Callie followed behind. We entered the snug and our eyes flew to the wall. My eyes narrowed as I saw the writing had gone.
“Hmm,” Callie muttered.
“We thought it might dissipate,” I pointed out.
“Yeah.” I wondered what she was thinking because she clearly was considering something.
Callie shook herself. “So, tell me how you guys fell into this.”
“Investigating?”
“Yes.”
“Easy. We met a ghost when we were younger. Ghoul is a medium, and all of us attended a school together. Dive, Coffee, Suga, and Ghoul were my year, and Reaver, Lich, Trunk, Gizmo, and Lucky were below us. We were typical kids, getting into shit we shouldn’t, riding our bikes, hanging out over video games.
“There was a teacher we all hated. Mr Hatton, the man was vile and mean and shouldn’t have been in any profession dealing with kids. He handed out detentions like candy. One day all ten of us were together, which wasn’t unusual. Hatton had earmarked us. The school dated from the eighteen-eighties and had a history. Kids had often claimed to see ghosts and so on, but we took it with a pinch of salt.
“Hatton had a classroom in the oldest part of the school and was proud of its history. Boys got caned there and were forced to stand wearing a dunce’s cap on. If Hatton could have done the same, he would have, but he could only dish out a clip around the ear. This detention was the same: writing the lines, ‘I will not misbehave in class,’ repeatedly when Ghoul made a noise. When we looked up, we saw a boy, about eleven, standing in the corner, staring at us.
“He wore a dirty beige shirt with trousers and braces. If I had to guess, I’d say he lived in the late nineteen hundreds, judging by his clothing. He stared directly at us as we watched him. Hatton had left us, and we all got scared, mainly because we could see through him. The kid was ghastly white with black circles around his eyes.”
“What did he do?” Callie asked accidentally.
“Just stared, but it was chilling. It was like he was trying to figure out why we were alive, and he wasn’t. Then he vanished as Hatton came back and shouted at us. We encountered him several times after that, and he seemed weird. Ghoul thought he was trying to figure out a way to come back to life by using one of us. It was frightening.”
“Jeez!” Callie exclaimed.
“But it got us hooked. We began watching all paranormal programmes, checking out websites and so on. Have to admit we went down the wrong path, believing that agitating was the right way, but we soon learned. Then we heard of people who needed help, and we turned towards them. Some were at their wits’ end with nowhere to go. I couldn’t let them struggle like that, not if we were able to help.”
“How long have you been at this?”
“We started properly when we were sixteen; hell, we were investigators before we even formed the club. The club’s existed ten years, but we’ve been investigating for fifteen,” I said.
Callie nodded. “Would you do this full-time?”
“In a heartbeat. There’s so many needing help and suffering; we can’t reach a lot because of our day jobs and money. The TV programme is raising our profile, but that’s also getting us more requests for help.”
“That sucks when you have to say no. Can’t you get funding or a benefactor?”
“Nah. The UK operates differently from the US. People don’t fund it over here,” I replied.
“That is bad,” Callie said thoughtfully.
“Yup, but no point dwelling on it. We can’t change it, so we do what we can,” I stated, refusing to get morbid over this.
“You got a plan in place for dealing with this?” Callie asked.
