"I know we're not crazy, and so do you. Why should it matter who else does?"

"But we actually have proof, Herb. We need to show it around."

Did something just vibrate on that shelf?

"Randall, just because we got something on tape doesn't mean people will believe. h.e.l.l, someone could say that was Boo we caught on the imager."

Yep, something was definitely vibrating over there.

"That was not Boo," Randall said a bit louder, and I wouldn't have been too shocked to see him stomp his foot. "I know what I saw."

A book sailed across the room. I ducked, and it slammed into the two-person sofa.

"Randall, we both saw it, and we heard it too. There's something in this house."

"Then why are you ashamed of it?"

Another book flew across the room, followed by a trophy. I ducked both of them and then looked at the two SPRITE members. Uh, h.e.l.lo? Moving objects?

"I am not ashamed of it, Randall. Geez." Herb put his hands in the air. "We just didn't need that circus outside."

This time the television actually lifted in the air and sailed at the door.

Right at them.

"Move, you idiots!" Okay, so I think my outburst then was justified, right?

Randall and Herb both looked in time to see the television hurtling at them. A few girlie screams, but the two ducked out of the way.

That's when the giant squid sort of appeared. It didn't take a rocket scientist, or even a Wall Street tyc.o.o.n, to realize what I did at that moment. The poltergeist activity from last night wasn't fed from the Smiths, but from SPRITE. Point of sale: Randall.

Some unresolved issues there. A little frustration and anger?

"Christ! Get the cameras rolling! We have activity in the den!"

I moved to the side, behind what looked like the eye of the squid. It continued to grab up random objects with its tentacles and toss them at the doorway. Keeping quiet while it was busy, I looked for the fetter. Anything that might work.

A fetter was a leash of sorts. So, it'd have to be somehow connected to old Squidward here, right? Not around his neck because he didn't seem to have one. So-where?

Randall and Herb arrived then, as well as Ron, who sported a nasty bruise on his right cheek. Randall had the thermal imager in hand and was getting it geared up to point in the room. I moved to the side, out of the way and hopefully still out of sight of the poltergeist.

"Anything?" Herb said.

"No... wait. What the h.e.l.l is that?"

I moved up behind them, slipping in between the two so I could look at the imager's screen. Had they seen the squid?

"I-that's weird," Randall looked at the monitor and then up into the room. "What's so hot?"

Ah ha! There was a hot thing in there. The fetter? I moved in a little bit closer and saw it. Some orange and red spot in the far corner of the room.

Wait... wasn't that- "Is that the camera?" Herb asked as he squinted into the room.

"Yeah," Ron said. "What camera is that? I don't recognize it."

"It's one the Smiths found when they moved in," Randall said.

Everyone looked at him. He shrugged. "It's a cla.s.sic Polaroid, and Mr. Smith said I could have it."

"Why is it hot?" Herb said.

Old camera... I moved away from the trio and eased to the left of the room around the squid. It'd been busy extending its tentacles through the house again, and it hadn't seen me.

Yet.

So the fetter was a camera. I guess cameras could be a source of frustration. Especially if they'd been used in some oogy way. Like for p.o.r.no? For taking pictures that shouldn't be taken?

Somehow I needed to convince them to destroy it-and from the sound of admiration in Randall's voice, that wasn't going to be easy.

"There she is," Randall said. "Just to the left in the room. See her?"

"Wow... you weren't kidding," Ron said.

I turned and glared at them. They needed to stop focusing on me and focus on the squid. Why couldn't they see the squid? Didn't make any sense to me-not that I understood any of this.

"Why'd she throw the television at us?" Herb said.

"Because she's a poltergeist." Randall said. He faced the room, with no idea he was less than two feet from a giant glowing squid. "We mean you no harm-why are you trying to kill us? Are you angry? Did something really bad happen to you here?" He held something in his hand, and I realized it was an MP3 recorder.

Wow... I'd never been interviewed before.

Something rumbled under my feet. I turned and saw the squid had turned as well and was looking at me with its one good eye. Yikes!

Tentacles whipped out of every nook and cranny of the room and threw themselves at me. It looked like thousands of white ropes uncoiling my way-and I had nowhere to run!

Within seconds I was encased in them. They moved slowly through me as they had my ankles the night before, but as some fell away, they were quickly replaced by others.

I was trapped... and cold. Antarctica cold. My teeth rattled in my head, and I felt myself drop to my knees. I tried to concentrate on my cord, but I couldn't find it in all the tentacles encircling me.

"What's-" Randall said. "What's happening? She looks like she's sick."

"Randall... what are those snakelike things?"

I tried to concentrate on their voices to keep from disappearing into the ice surrounding my body. "Destroy... camera," I managed to say. But could they hear me through the sound of the wind in my ears?

Wind? There was wind?

"Ron, did you hear that too?"

"Yeah, yeah. Let me rewind." I heard my voice replayed again and again.

"Does it mean the new camera?" Herb said. Then he said louder. "Can you tell us why?"

"Killing... me," I managed to get out. "You... geek."

Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have said that last part. But I was cold.

"Killing her," Ron muttered and even I could hear the incredulousness in his voice. "How can it kill her if she's a ghost?"

"Randall." Herb's voice sounded a little high. I pushed and pressed on the tentacles encasing me, but they continued to pa.s.s through me and then replaced themselves. "Look at the monitor closer. There and there... what the h.e.l.l are those?"

"Holy-" Randall said and his voice cracked. "They're strangling her!"

Finally! h.e.l.lo? Geeks are sloooooowwww.

I saw Herb move past me, skirting the edge of the poltergeist's position, and grab for the camera. Two tentacles that oozed through me whipped out toward him-no-they whipped out ahead of him as if to grab the camera.

"Herb!" Randall called out before I could. "It's going for-"

It grabbed the camera before Herb could get to it and slammed it against the side of his face. I felt a slight warming around me and did my best to move away from the tentacles. My mind was racing ahead to my physical body-thinking of the bruises on my ankles from a single brush with its tentacles and terrified of what I'd find left in my bed after this little travel.

Herb went down, and Randall moved into action. He dropped the thermal imager on the floor and dove for the camera. It whipped about in the air. I screamed for him to watch his left, then his right, and then it moved through me- And I was free.

Wha-?

I wasted no time in moving out of the way. I was free, and warm, and not rooted to the spot as I'd been the night before. I didn't know why that'd happened and in that instant I didn't care. I just knew I needed to somehow get that frackin' camera away from the poltergiesty squid.

Randall was still doing his jump and duck dance about the den, Herb lay on the floor clutching his head but making a solid attempt to get up, and Ron-well, he was struck dumb at the door, probably freaked out by the levitating camera. I moved to the back, able to see what Randall couldn't.

If I looked carefully, the thing's tentacle arms moved as well as looked like a squid, so the lower parts attached to the body led the movement. I watched it for a few seconds to test my theory, and after two near misses at Randall's skull, I knew right where it would be next.

Yelling at Randall to go right and up, I gave a good ole Georgia Bulldog woof when he caught the thing like a football, intercepting a supernatural pa.s.s.

"Smash it!" Herb yelled.

"No," Randall said, scrambling to get out of the den and shoving Ron to the side. "It's an antique."

"It's a d.a.m.ned fetter!" I shouted and ran around the poltergeist, jumping over the tentacles and doing a limbo. "Destroy it."

"I-can't," Randall said.

And just when I thought I was going to have to do some serious tongue-lashing (d.a.m.n, I wish I could move solid things!), Ron unfroze and grabbed the camera out of Randall's hand. He moved with it down the hall.

A tentacle followed, and so did I. As did Randall and a stumbling Herb.

I got there in time to see Ron set the camera on the counter. He grabbed a hammer from the junk drawer (isn't it interesting how every kitchen has one of those drawers, and they have hammers in them?), and opened a can of whup-a.s.s on that piece of electronic equipment.

It was broken in two whacks, pulverized in four, and by the ninth hit, he was denting the white and gold-flecked formica counter.

Ohhh... Ron gets busy.

Randall grabbed Ron's raised hammer hand and put a finger to his own lips. Everyone stopped. The hum in the house was gone (not that I'd realized there was one till it was missing). Was it...?

That's when h.e.l.l broke loose.

Every thingie that carried a current of any kind sparked in the house at the same instant. I ducked, even though my hair wouldn't actually catch fire from the exploding microwave behind Herb. In fact, everyone was on the floor.

Once the fireworks stopped, I stood first and moved quickly back to the den. The poltergeist was gone. But was it really gone? As in dissolved into the abysmal plane?

I didn't know. Nor did I care. I just really didn't want anyone else hurt by it.

SPRITE's electronic equipment lay on the orange and turquoise blue rug in smoking heaps. Ooh, they were not going to be happy about that.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," Randall said as he saw the mess. "Look what that ghost did."

"This is going to cost us a fortune." Herb still clutched at his head as he knelt down beside the sparking remains of the thermal imager. "And to think we helped her-and she does this to our equipment?"

Me? They thought I did this?

That's it.

I went home.

SPRITE did blame me, as I thought they would. All their equipment was destroyed, and in an odd twist of circ.u.mstance, the video they'd captured of me went missing. Even the copy Randall had kept was wiped clean.

I didn't know how, and I didn't care. The Smiths arranged for the house to be bulldozed and sold the property for more money than they paid. Bully for them. Woohoo.

It took me a week to get back on my feet, and I did come back to my body with a series of bruises over every inch of skin and muscle.

Ow, ow, and ow. Rest and plenty of Mom's cooking and I'd be okay. Maybe a few pounds heavier. A new job came in-a small case involving a dot com company-involving snooping on the owners while they watched Chicago.

Two weeks away, mid-November. Tuesday.

With Rhonda in tow, I tracked down the Brentwood daughter and learned the camera had been her father's. And it'd been used to do exactly what I was afraid of-to take pictures of her naked and prostrate.

But it hadn't been her father that did it. It'd been her uncle.

We were sitting in a Starbucks in Augusta, Georgia. The crisp turn of cold bit at my nose as we sat outside, enjoying the break from the south's cruel and soupy heat. It was nice now, but we all knew it'd be hot again in a day or so.

Pumpkins and corn stalks propped on hay bails still decorated the corner.

Rhonda sat forward. "Did your dad know?"

The daughter nodded. She was still a pretty woman at forty-five. Slim. Delicate. Careful. "I hid the camera, and my uncle accused my dad of taking it and keeping the pictures for himself. Dad found out what he'd been doing." She gave a half smile. "And I never saw my uncle again. Even to this day I don't know where he is. No one's seen him."

Rhonda and I looked at each other then, and I felt icy fingers move up along my spine to the base of my skull. I didn't want to think about it or even consider it. But it'd be interesting to see what sort of things happened in whatever building rose on Web Ginn House Road.