Phasmophobia:
A Spectre’s Cry
CHAPTER 2: NUMBER OF THE BEAST
Around ten days later, Agnes was slowly going insane with boredom, there was nothing she could do about her situation. She tried leaving her house but found herself unable to do so. It always seemed like she ran into an invisible wall. She didn’t dare to interact with her parents, too scared of what might happen. Maybe it could scare her parents so much they’d leave the house. If Agnes could, she’d die again out of sheer boredom.
Every now and then the bell rang, most of the time it would be family visiting to check on her parents, to keep them company and leave them some encouraging words. But this time it was different.
It was late in the evening, way too late, when the doorbell rang once again. Her father opened the door for two young men, they looked to be in their twenties. Agnes did not recognize them. They looked fairly normal and she could see their blank, white van on the driveway. One of the guys was tall and had long brown hair in an old 80’s hairstyle. The other was shorter and had short-cut black hair.
‘Good evening sir’, spoke the guy with black hair, ‘my name is Sami and this is my colleague, David.’
‘Evenin’, said the tall guy.
‘We received a call of paranormal activity at this address’, explained Sami.
‘Oh… you must be those ghost investigator guys my wife called, good evening’, said Agnes’ father. ‘I told them it’s a waste of time’, he mumbled to himself.
‘Have you not noticed any paranormal events?’, asked Sami. He seemed to be the one taking the lead.
‘No, not at all. I told the kids it must have been their imagination, you know how they are. My wife bought into the story and wanted some of you guys to check’, said mr. Tedworth.
‘Not a big believer are you? You should never underestimate a kid’s senses, sir’, said Sami.
‘Ok, well anyways, you can come inside.’
‘I’m sorry sir, but, could we ask you to leave the premises for the evening? It’s needed for our work’, asked Sami.
‘Yes, of course’, said Agnes’ mother, who just entered the hallway too.
‘Hold on honey, you trust these fellows?’, asked mr. Tedworth.
‘I can assure you, we have licences for this line of work, nothing will happen to your home whilst we are busy’, said Sami, trying to gain the man’s trust by showing a flimsy card.
Agnes couldn’t read what was on it from the top of the staircase, but she was sure they made that licence card themselves.
‘They have a good reputation’, added ms. Tedworth, to win over her husband.
Agnes knew it was her mother that desperately hung on to that last thread of possibility of her still being around. She wanted an answer, no matter the cost.
Finally her father gave in, and her parents left the house in the hands of the investigators. They drove off somewhere, Agnes didn’t know where, but she had a feeling it would take a while for them to return.
About an hour later, 11PM came around and the investigators stepped inside the house. They had flashlights, camera’s and a bunch of weird tools that Agnes had never seen before with them.
Inside the hallway, they called out to her.
‘Agnes…’, said David.
‘Agnes, where are you?’, asked Sami.
‘Hey Agnes, give us a sign or something.’
Agnes, still watching from upstairs, felt weird being called out like that.
The two men started wandering about the house, with their weird apparatuses in hand. Agnes followed them from a distance, making sure to never be too close. Even though she knew they wouldn’t spot her, she instinctively stayed away from them.
Repeating the same questions over and over, they checked the living room, kitchen, garage and even the bathrooms. Now and again one of the two would go out to their van, to fetch more materials. As far as Agnes could tell, they had set up various cameras and sensors, all over the first floor, and were about to move to the second floor.
Agnes followed both of the investigators upstairs as they went from bedroom to bedroom until They finally came to a halt in front of Agnes’ bedroom.
‘Man, somehow this house is even less active than one without ghost activity… it’s creeping me out’, said David.
‘Well, if there is any place for activity, it’s gotta be this room here’, Sami replied.
They entered the room, wielding readers and flashlights like weapons, and started calling out to her again.
‘Come on, little one, you’re here somewhere right? Do something, you boring ghost’, called David out, getting agitated.
‘Chill, David, even if we don’t find anything, it’s easy money’, said Sami to try and calm him down.
‘I guess you’re right’, he said, ‘We can also just make something up, the mother seemed to take to it well enough’, he continued with a wide grin.
To David’s disappointment, Sami ignored his suggestion and continued looking around.
Agnes overheard it all. These people were scamming people for money, promising to find the ghosts of loved ones. Trying to reach through the barrier of life and death. It angered Agnes. She would not allow her parents to be insulted like that, they have had it hard enough.
In a fit of anger, she grabbed the nearest investigator by his arm and pulled him out of her room towards the stairs. With all the force she could gather, Agnes pulled David along. Coming to a halt at the top of the staircase.
Agnes realised this was the first time she was able to interact with the world of the living. But something felt off. David was giving little to no resistance at all in being pulled along by her. When she heard the hollow thud coming from behind her, she realised why.
The David she was pulling along was transparent and had an absent stare to him. Back in Agnes’ room, his body had fallen limp to the floor.
The thud alerted his partner as well, Sami turned around and saw his friend lying still on the floor.
‘David!?’, he shouted out, as he crouched down beside him.
Sami slapped David a few times in his face, saying his name, trying to wake him up. After a few hopeless tries, he put a finger to David’s neck to check for a pulse.
Agnes froze in fear as she saw the dread taking over Sami’s face. What had she done? Why did this happen? Would this have happened to her friends too if she had tried to touch them?
‘No, it can’t be, no, no no no…’, realising the weight of the situation he found himself in, Sami dashed out of the room, jumped down the stairs three steps at a time and sprinted back to his van.
Agnes was left alone with the body of one of the investigators, lying in the middle of her bedroom, and his unresponsive soul in her hands.
Agnes didn’t know how much time had passed since then. Everything around her dissolved into a haze and even David’s ghost had disappeared somewhere. She felt like she had cried for weeks on end, but no tear had left her eye sockets.
While Agnes sat still on her bed, trying to hide away from this twisted reality, a lot of events went by.
Her parents came home not too long after the other investigator vacated the city. They soon discovered the body lying lifeless and soulless in Agnes’ room. Agnes only heard her mother scream as if from miles away, dampened by the veil that surrounded her and her ears covered by her hands.
A different kind of investigation was set afoot, as the police arrived. Her father had called them. More intruders to her room, Agnes shivered in fear as she remembered what she did once more, over and over. The investigation must have lasted for weeks and when the police couldn’t turn up with any reliable evidence, they must have dropped the case. Agnes heard and felt activity cease in the house.
After another week or so, she came to the realisation that her parents had moved out the house they had always lived in since their marriage, and put it up for sale. The last thing Anges would hear of them was the soft creak of them shutting the door to her bedroom.
The house clearly wasn’t popular on the market. In an eternity, not a single buyer had shown up. Whatever happened in this house must have been all over the news and media. Stories were probably already being told about it. Children scaring each other around campfire’s, passing the house on Halloween, daring each other to go inside.
Agnes had lost all sense of time, as if she already couldn’t move around much, now she was locked up entirely in her room. She stopped trying to get out long ago.
A creak of the front door woke her up from her slumber. It was such an unusual noise, she immediately heard it. The creak was followed by the door slamming shut. Then came the footsteps slowly climbing the stairs. A soft knock on Agnes’ door completely threw her off. She shuffled into the corner of the room, scared. Was it just some kids? A buyer? No, this was not just someone, anyone. They were deliberately searching for her. The investigator? Was he back? Why?
‘Agnes, dear, are you here?’, asked a deep, rumbling voice. Even stranger was that the voice was crystal clear. Agnes had gotten used to the muffled sounds of limbo, so this stranger’s voice sounded almost angelic to her. This was not at all the investigator… it was someone, or something, else.
‘God?’, she asked the being on the other end of the door, before she knew it.
The door to her room opened slowly. ‘Not quite so, my dear. As you’ll soon come to learn… there is no God who cares to save us.’
A tall, slender man stepped inside. If his voice wasn’t as magically soothing as it was, Agnes would have screamed her lungs out at the creature standing before her.
He had elongated arms and legs, with long claw-like fingers. His head reached the ceiling, causing him to have to tilt his whole body to fit inside. Making that even more difficult were the two jet black horns sprouting from his bald head. He was grinning at Agnes with a way too wide mouth filled with sharp teeth and his two black eyes pierced through whatever was left of Agnes’ soul. Even more uncanny was the fact that he was wearing a neat black suit, contrasting with his pale white skin. A logo was visible on the blazer, it kind of resembled three sixes spinning around one another.
‘Agnes… Don’t be scared’, he spoke with his soothing voice. ‘My name is Xeno, I’ve come to set you free.’
Agnes shielded herself with her arms, now scared of the thing before her. He seemed to make the air heavy and drain all energy from the building.
‘I’m not here to hurt you’, he spoke. ‘I want to give you the answers you seek.’
Agnes lowered her arms slowly. ‘What are you?’, she asked. ‘What am I?’
‘We are what people call ghosts. And we are not alone. There are many of us out there, and many very different ones’, Xeno rumbled. ‘Come, child, let’s talk in a place where it’s easier for me to… stand’, he said while gesturing to the hallway outside Agnes’ room.
Agnes followed him as he stepped down the stairs, six steps at a time.
‘Come, sit down’, Xeno said as he entered the living room. He took a high seated chair for himself and placed it in the middle of the room. The roof in the living room was slightly higher than her own room, but even sitting down, Xeno’s horns still scratched the ceiling.
‘How can you move those?’, Agnes asked. Since her becoming a lingering ghost, she has not been able to manipulate any physical objects. She wondered how Xeno was able to with such ease.
‘Frankly speaking… that’s because you are a weak spirit. Short life, unaware of the world as it was, and your own passing…’, Xeno seemed to pause and inspect Agnes from head to toe with those jet black beady eyes. ‘It resulted in your lost soul manifesting as a Spectre.’
‘A… what?’, Agnes reacted. She wasn’t too keen on all these paranormal voodoo beliefs. Most of her knowledge of folklore came from a few horror movies she dared to watch without her parents’ approval.
‘A Spectre’, he repeated as his smile widened even further. It almost looked like the smile could rip his head open any second. ‘The weakest of spirits. Usually holding on to their shape… for give or take five years, before fading away’, Xeno said as he started counting traits on his spiny fingers. ‘Can’t interact with the physical world, neither through touch, nor through sound. Only through the smallest amount of electrical interference.’
‘Weak? But I… I…’, Agnes needed to hold her head as she reminded herself of what she had done.
‘You liberated a soul’, Xeno said, his smile fading for the smallest moment. ‘Very, very rarely… a Spectre such as yourself is blessed with an ominous power. A power that I seek to utilise.’
‘What power? The power to kill the living?’, Agnes asked, getting fed up by the thing’s riddles.
‘The power to move the soul from one world to the next’, Xeno clarified with a sparkle in his eyes. ‘There is the world of the living, and the world of the dead, where souls rest eternally, Oblivion. And then there is this realm of ours, the in between, a paradise for those not living nor dead. The Afterlife.’ Xeno moved his hand to caress Agnes’ cheek.
Agnes swatted his hand away. Xeno was clearly surprised by her rebellious move.
‘What do you want from me?!’, Agnes shrieked.
‘I want you to learn to use this gift of yours. I have waited aeons for a Spectre like you to enter the Afterlife’, Xeno rumbled. ‘I’m here to grant you a position in the “Ninth Circle”!’
In one rigid motion, Xeno scratched a nearby wall, and within seconds an disgusting portal opened inside that wall. Writhing tentacles surrounding an evil sort of light. It was unlike anything Agnes had ever seen before, she couldn’t tell whether it was dark or bright, let alone what colour it was.
Xeno had his other arm stretched out to Agnes. ‘Come, child, I’ll teach you how to be free’, he said, letting the word “free” echo on.
October 11th, 2022
Everyone agreed on 10 PM as the meetup time. It was already dark outside at this hour, since Winter was soon to come. Brad always insisted on going late at night, so they could find more “activity”, and because the exact time of their friends passing must have been around the change from the eleventh day and the twelfth of October.
Mary had to use a flashlight to find the keyhole on the front door. After finding it, she unlocked the door to Agnes’ old home. She was the only one of her old friend group that Agnes entrusted with a spare key.
‘Well, here we are’, Mary sighed as she kicked the door open. She was joined by Bradley, of course, who entered first, with a strange mix of excitement and worry on his face. Fanny and William followed him in. Lastly Mary entered as well, closing the door behind her.
Mary was thankful Fanny and William were here too. Over the years she had feared their relationships would dwindle, but their bond created by Agnes was too strong for that to ever happen, even now.
Inside, Bradley dropped off his overloaded backpack on the kitchen table, and began rummaging inside of it.
‘Did you bring all those things agáin, Brad?’, asked Fanny. Since Agnes passed, Fanny had grown up to be a nonchalant, but pretty girl. Mary could barely recognize the nerdy and shy dark skinned girl that used to sit in the front of class with her. She had also styled her hair, instead of her natural incredibly curly hair. Talk about a glow-up.
‘I’ve got new stuff since last year! These are sure to work!’, Bradley celebrated, holding up a red cylindrical aluminium box.
‘And how much did these new devices cost you now? Your soul?’, William asked.
‘Man… not funny’, replied Bradley, placing the red thing down.
William was ever the joker of the group. He kept vibes going, for sure, but in places like this, he still didn’t know to stop the habit. Sometimes Mary wished he was able to read the atmosphere a little bit better, but still she was glad big William was here.
‘So what’s your plan tonight, Brad? Same as other years?’, Mary asked while placing down a Chrysanthemum on the table. She always brought one and put it in a can filled with water, though the flower would die a few weeks after anyways. It had become a sort of ritual, not that she believed anything would happen because of it.
‘Well first, we have to invite her’, Bradley said.
‘Bro, we are in her house’, answered William.
‘Point taken, but still it’s said that inviting a spirit can increase its activity.’
Bradley signalled for everyone to hold hands and form a circle.
He closed his eyes and started speaking. ‘Agnes, if you are present, we invite you to communicate with us. We brought several kinds of equipment through which you can do so. Please talk to us.’
He sounded slightly desperate, more so than other years, to Mary. She was always afraid this would turn into an obsession and ruin his life.
‘Ok, I’ll set up the stuff now’, Bradley said, and everyone let go of each other’s hands.
‘Man, it feels weirder every time’, said William.
Bradley lit a few candles and put them on the table. He took his usual gear from his backpack, an EMF reader and spirit box he found online. He also switched on the new cylindrical device, after extending a sort of antenna from it.
‘This is a REM Pod’, Bradley said.
‘What even is that name’, said Fanny.
‘I don’t know, to be honest, but here’s how it works.’ He brought his hand towards the antenna, and the thing started beeping like crazy. ‘It reacts to movement close to the antenna, by reading electromagnetic fields!’
‘Since when is your hand electromagnetic?’, asked William.
‘Everything emits a field like that, you know, this one is super sensitive compared to the EMF’, Bradley explained.
He set the pod on the floor in the middle of the living room. He gave everyone a flashlight and switched off the lights.
‘Ok, let’s start’, Bradley said. He took the spirit box and switched it on.
The harsh sounds of the device scratching through radio-channels filled the space. Mary found the sounds very annoying. If she were a ghost she’d not talk through something so peace-disturbing.
‘Agnes? Are you here?’, he asked.
Everyone waited for a few seconds, but no reply came.
‘Are you happy to see us?’, asked Mary. She sat across the table from Bradley, and she could see his eyes light up at Mary’s participation. The last couple of years, Fanny and William had lost interest in participating in this ghost hunting hobby of Bradley. Mary felt herself losing faith in it too. But she couldn’t bear leaving Bradley alone.
She saw Bradley give her the slightest of smiles, but the device’s blank noise persisted.
Bradley continued asking questions sporadically, but the spirit box gave no answers.
‘You wanna try something else?’, asked Marie.
‘I could go around with the EMF… the REM Pod hasn’t gone off yet either… I still got the Ouija Board’, sulked Bradley.
‘What did we agree on about the board, Brad?’, asked William, alarmed.
‘I know…’
‘I may not believe in the supernatural, I still want to stay away from that thing. You know… just in case’, William added.
Then suddenly a short beep jumpscared everyone from behind Mary. She looked over her shoulder and saw only the REM Pod, quiet and undisturbed.
‘That was the pod! Something came near it!’, exclaimed Bradley. Ecstatic at the slightest hint of evidence.
‘Let’s be honest, it was probably dust falling by the antenna’, reasoned Fanny. ‘This house hasn’t been cleaned in years.’
‘No, it… it…’, stuttered Bradley.
‘It’s okay, Bradley, let’s say goodbye and leave’, said Mary. She felt bad for him, but she also didn’t want to support this growing obsession of his. Mary figured it would be best to pull him out of it while she still could.
‘But I got more…’
Before Bradley could finish his plea, Mary felt an extremely cold touch on her shoulder. Like an ice-pack was laid over her neck.
‘… equipment’, finished Bradley. ‘Mary are you… okay? Is that a hand?’
Mary looked at the spot that suddenly felt cold and saw a small white hand holding her, but before she could scream, her mouth was covered by another hand.
Mary struggled, trying to force herself free. She looked and grasped towards her childhood friends, but she couldn’t find them anymore.
‘Shh, stop it, you are only making this more dangerous!’, a voice said. It sounded vaguely familiar, nostalgic. But it did not stop Mary’s attempts to escape.
‘Mary!’, the high pitched voice shouted, like it had done so many times in the past.
Mary stopped struggling now, and she was released from the things grasp. She looked around her. She saw bits of the room she was in, encased in shadows and grime.
‘Agnes?’, Mary asked into the void. She felt stupid for jumping to that conclusion, but she couldn’t think straight right now.
White light gathered in the middle of the room, and from it, Agnes appeared before her. Mary felt like fainting but something was stopping her. This couldn’t be real. She was dreaming this for sure.
The Agnes that stood before her looked like she hadn’t aged a day beyond when Mary last saw her. Yet she had this older, wiser and elegant aura about her. Her hair was perfectly kept and she wore a beautiful and intricate white dress. At first the dress looked decorated with all kinds of flowers, but, looking closer… those weren’t normal flowers… but blooming skulls and what looked to be screaming faces of the damned.
‘Hello again, Mary. It has been a while…’, she said calmly.
