They took up the next hour trying to set up equipment all around the place. It was silence, Aiden didn’t attempt to sense info about his ability again. This time aunt Hellen was working together with him, and it took time for the unique sensation to come about. If he lost focus while doing work again, she was sure to notice and he was pretty sure he didn’t want to lose more brownie points in aunt Hellen’s book.
Towards the end there were only three rooms left, the one where he encountered the ghost and the two adjacent to it. Hellen stood beside Aiden while glancing at the three doors and wondered aloud,
“We didn’t encounter the ghost in any of the rooms we were setting up equipment in. It should only be here right?”
She checked the feed of all the cameras they had set up all over her bungalow. There was not a single blindspot left, even the bathrooms had been covered. Obviously, she would turn off the cameras if someone were to use the bathroom or wanted some private space for themselves in some other room. In those cases, the person themselves can work better than the camera and immediately know if a ghost had entered, so turning off the camera for the said room wouldn’t be a problem either.
There was silence for 2 minutes as Hellen thoroughly checked the feed. There was no ghost. She quipped with a smile, “We’ll probably be battling the ghost again. Feeling good?”
Aiden looked worse. He didn’t offer her a reply as he tightly gripped a golf club in his hand and gazed at the doors, as if the ghost would suddenly smash out of it. Lightly tapping on his shoulder, Hellen urged, “C’mon, let’s go. No use standing in the hallway and looking at the doors. We ultimately gotta deal with it right?”
A firm expression crossed across his face as he nodded and followed her into the room. They first spent a few minutes searching through every nook and cranny of the room and found no ghost. With a relieved sigh but increased anxiety about future rooms, he continued helping aunt Hellen to set up all the things.
Hellen glanced back at Aiden, who had his emotions written all over the face and consoled, “Look, you’re thinking too deep into this. See it like this, you have to face off against someone who has no powers, just a normal human body which is simply disgusting to face off against. It even has reduced damage, so you’ll basically be confronting a nerfed human. What are you afraid of?”
Aiden passed her the next thing which she would need why he went deep into thought about what she said. It was true when he thought about it. What was he being afraid of? It was the folklore and myths about ghosts which had occupied his mind and scared him up until now. If he isolated those things and just looked at actual facts related to the ghost which had happened, it could be concluded that the ghost could really be dealt with by a normal human.
Hellen knew her words had worked when she saw the look in Aiden’s eye change. He was a smart lad, she realized she didn’t need to keep babysitting him like some of the newcomers the Bureau had tasked her to guide while in her old days of being a field agent. He only needed to be explained once to make him understand, was quick with his reasoning and derivation of information, and was also sensitive to what was happening in the surroundings. Well, maybe not so much for the last one since he could even get lost in his thoughts while dealing with a ghost he oh-so-feared.
The room was done. It was time for the next room. There were only two left. They once again didn’t opt for the original room where Aiden encountered the ghost but entered the one adjacent to it. Both of them were much more tense than before. According to their hypothesis, hiding was a vital part of its ability, be it a condition or a way of avoiding side effects.
Before opening the door, Hellen looked at Aiden and said, “It’s going to be quite literally your battle okay? Just listen to what I say. If the ghost happens to be there, and considering how it didn’t attack until you went too close to it, it won’t attack at first sight. But, if it does, I’ll engage with it, don’t worry. But still, you’ll have to join in on the fight too.
“Why? Because first it is going to be an experience for you of course. You don’t get such easy ghosts often. Second, I thought of something just now. If the side effect of its ability is reduced physical damage, why does it need to hide? I mean, it doesn’t specifically need to hide in this case. Just not hitting you would also be able to hide the fact that it has less damage as a side effect.”
Aiden’s eyebrows shot up, the gears in his head turning as aunt Hellen continued to explain him,
“If we try to be a bit bold in our approach of derivation, can we assume that physical damage against it is increased? We’ll also approach this safely. It is currently targeting you, so I can’t rashly assume that the side effect it is going through will apply to me too. We’ll move with the assumption that it only has to hide from you, has reduced physical damage only against you and has weakened physical resistance only against you.
“So while I dodge around, because obviously taking a direct hit from a physique above that of the peak mortal limit is deadly, you need to try and get some hits in. I’ll do the same if given a chance. Then we’ll know for sure if the side effect we thought of is true, and whether it only applies against you or everyone.
“Last thing. The third help hasn’t arrived yet, right? Well, chuck it. I’ll say that later.”
Saying so, she cautiously and slowly opened the door, giving Aiden enough time to recollect himself and follow her. The wooden door smoothly opened without a creak as Hellen quickly turned on the lights. A quick scan revealed nothing. Both of them stepped inside cautiously, Hellen with her Beretta M9 and Aiden with his golf club.
Deriving from previous known information, the ghost hides from Aiden and since it had already been found in the original room and wasn’t found in the first adjacent room, it had the highest chances of arriving in this second room to hide itself as a result of leaving the original room since it had already been exposed there.
They both took very careful and measured steps. Not even leaving each other’s side as they began checking the corners and hiding places one by one. Hellen held the Beretta by her two hands, always pointing at the places as Aiden opened them for her, the trigger lock had long since been unlocked, as it was obviously idiotic to keep it otherwise in such a situation.
Aiden didn’t so much as let out a sound as he walked in a way which would allow him to spring backwards in a moment’s notice. His hands shook in the beginning, gradually turning firm as Hellen’s demeanor influenced him.
They neared another closet. Hellen commented after taking a few seconds of glance at it, “If I remember correctly, this one is empty. The ghost could possibly be hiding there.”
Aiden’s firm hands shook a little as he grasped the handle of the closet. Nothing happened. If Hellen and his guess was true, the ghost should’ve already attacked since this was the range in which he got attacked last time. An edge of wariness disappeared from his eyes as he opened the closet door with a soft tug and quickly moved backwards.
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Empty.
Hellen had a perfect shooting posture as she aimed at the empty closet, in contrast to Aiden who had a comical one as he was in the process of jumping behind Hellen and raising his golf club all at the same time.
A sigh escaped their mouth as the same once they realized the closet was empty. The upcoming search went even slower as the number of places the ghost could have hidden itself lowered. It kept getting worse for Aiden as time went on, his nerves were completely taut, every small movement elicited a reaction from him, making him drained by the end. It took 10 minutes to completely search the room, far far longer than it took for any other room.
“How?”
A frown painted across Hellen’s visage as Aiden followed her wordlessly and extremely tired. Sweating all over the body, he was only short of laying flat with the amount of time he put his body under high alert. He offered her no reply, he didn’t have the energy to reply, or rather even think of one.
Hellen took a few minutes to carefully scan through the feed of all the cameras across her bungalow while keeping an eye out on her room. She was standing in the middle of the room with all the compartments open, there wasn’t a place where her sight couldn’t reach.
The ghost wasn’t here. Nor was it anywhere else in her house.
“It’s still in that room?”
Aiden softly muttered while looking at the feed himself. They had already set up equipment in the second room and were taking a rest in the living room. Aiden especially needed it.
“If hiding isn’t a necessity doesn’t that debunk a lot of our theories?”
He took out an apple from the fruit basket nearby, intending to eat a part of it. A knife lay just beside the holder, not too far away from the fruit basket. He was about to reach for it when Hellen’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Don’t!”
She walked over and looked at the knife while explaining, “We ate dinner at your house. We didn’t eat anything except a few dry fruits when we were here. How did the knife leave its holder? I don’t have a habit of leaving objects where they don’t belong.”
Aiden had a look of realization on his face as he softly muttered, “Understood. I was careless.”
“That makes it three attempts for the day. It’s 11:30 now, we’ll know in 30 minutes if it is a condition, a way to avoid the side effects, or both.”
Aiden remembered her words from earlier and asked, “You were going to say something before we entered that room but since the third help hadn’t arrived you chose not. You said that you’ll talk about it later. The ghost already did its third attempt, can you say it now?”
She thought over her words carefully before saying, “let’s wait for a couple minutes.”
Nothing noteworthy took place in those minutes as Aiden glanced at aunt Hellen, who chewed over her words carefully before explaining.
“Look, we don’t know if its target on you has been reset or not, so it’s kind of useless to think about it. But hear it anyway, it will be useful. There is an activation period of abilities, some take too long, some are instant. It varies. Since I am talking about abilities, it also includes supers of course. For example the helping ghost, starting from 1st march, it is still trying to fulfill the conditions of its ability, this is called its activation period. What I thought of earlier relates to this.
What if its activation period was 6 days? That’s right, today is the 6th day. Assuming it is 6 days and if its target on you hasn’t been reset. The ghost would have come to attack you after completing its 3rd attempt. That’s why I asked you to wait. Since it hasn’t, at least one, or both the statements are false.”
“Didn’t you say it can’t open the door or window?”
“It can break them though. It could’ve broken through the door to attack you, or we would have at least heard the banging sounds. Not to mention it has the phaseless ability, it could’ve used that too.
“We went off track. What was I talking about? Yea, so we don’t have to worry about the ghost attacking us when we enter the room. It will likely be the same situation, once you enter a certain range, it will choose to attack proactively rather than hide. But when you are armed, it won’t chase after you to finish you off through brute force either, since it's afraid of enhanced physical damage.”
“It can feel fear?”
“No, it’s more like wanting to avoid the side effects. If the side effects were something like enhanced fire damage against it, it wouldn’t be afraid if you were armed. That is, it wouldn’t avoid getting physically harmed. Fear was just a term I used since it’s easy to explain that way, but you need to get to the bottom of everything don’t you?”
Aiden softly chuckled as he replied, “Makes it easier to analyze.”
She continued, “There was this thing related to it too. The power of an ability can sometimes be related to its condition or side effects. The Bureau doesn’t have any reliable stats or theory related to it, nor do I have any observations from my behalf. It’s completely random without even a shred of explanation. Sometimes the power would be related to the condition, or the side effects, or both, or none. Taking the helping ghost as an example, I can’t think of any power related to its condition of use: helping, but if I think about its side effect, I can derive its power.”
“Enhance physical damage against me.”
“Smart. We don’t know yet if that’s its ability or not. But if there was one, this could possibly be it. That’s all.
She thought for a bit and said, “Although it’s confounding indeed that it chose not to change its location of hiding after being found out. We can try to deal with it now.”
Hellen glanced at him, still biting through the apple, “Are you done resting?”
Aiden looked at his apple but quickly nodded his head. He glanced back at her, only to see she had gotten up.
“C’mon, we are entering that room. Just keep in mind what I said earlier about how to combat it.”
He looked at his half eaten apple for a whole three seconds before he put it on a plate as he followed Hellen, tightly gripping the golf club in his hand. He was considerably less stressed than before.
When they reached the door of the original room. Hellen removed the seal like device she had placed the door and also opened the lock. Aiden took over from there as he held the knob and turned it slowly, Hellen covering from close behind him, ready with her pistol.
The light of the room was still on as Aiden hadn’t gotten the chance to shut them off while running out last time, quite obviously. After the initial turning of the knob to open the door, he pushed it lightly instead of holding the knob and following the door to the inside of the room. The extraordinarily putrid smell of decay immediately began wafting over, making Aiden hold his breath. Hellen didn’t do anything as she was more than familiar with the smell. She could easily bear it.
Seeing how he hadn’t entered with the door, Hellen looked at his back and inwardly thought, “For how smart he is, he is equally as cowardly. Scaredy cat. If it wasn’t for his sister and himself, he might’ve already packed up and left. And honestly, it would’ve worked, since the majority of the ghosts don’t have a large range. Anyway, it’s good that he chose to deal with it, I can oversee the process. It works that it is a weak ghost, a good fighting experience. A few broken bones here and there at most.”
Both of them looked inside the well lit room, only to see a portion of decayed arm behind the pillar in the corner.
The ghost was in the room.