1.3 Four Circles

Some ghosts are jerks!

Jerk ghosts make good candidates for the upgraded Banshee Banisher Masterson invented. 

The containment unit is strong enough now to contain ghosts, not just minor spirits, and he's been impatient for Mab to test it out. She hasn't wanted to, since she's had good luck convincing ghosts to move on with only some kind words, but Masterson grows more irritated by her reluctance every day.

The Banshee Banisher isn't what he calls his masterpiece, of course. That's the name Mab's neighbors have come up with for her "weapon". They can't get enough of the over-glorified vacuum cleaner. Mab's fame grows with every night she's on the job.

Some nights, there are just lots and lots of hauntings. And then on other nights, there's only one, leaving Mab with free time to spend riding her bike in the moonlight.

 Tonight, it's destination Redwood Peak Viewing Area.

One of the best views in town.

Complete with telescopes to spy on neighbors watch the stars.

Without warning, Mab's view of the mountains is blocked by a view of blond hair. 

"Are you stalking me, Masterson?"

"I come up here to think a lot," he says, indignant.

"I've never been stalked before..."

"I will leave if you'd prefer!"

She giggles. Masterson is never more cute than when he's flustered. "You don't have to leave. Stay and keep me company."

He turns to observe the sleeping town below. Running into Mab up here was an accident, but the timing feels right. "I look for signs of a certain spirit. One I'd hoped to warn you about. But speaking of it is difficult for me."

Masterson is toneless, but his words give Mab pause. "Is it the thing that's caused you 'a great deal of pain'?"

"It is. And I'd know the orange glow of it anywhere. If I had to describe the monster, I'd say he could be recognized by the four circles, appearing on a chain around his neck."

"Can't say I've seen anything like that..."

"I would not think this ghost appears often. Only when he needs..." Masterson considers his words carefully. "To feed. I imagine."

Mab peeks over the telescope at him. "Are we talking about, like, a vampire ghost?"

Masterson clears his throat, preparing to recite something he has rehearsed for a while now. "I'm not sure. I was a child when this happened, but, I remember it clearly. The specter solidified itself enough to attack my younger brother. It pushed him off of the balcony, which I think he might have survived, if not for the nasty business of all those rocks splitting his skull open. The specter leapt after him, and... it seemed to be feeding off of the energy release that occurs when people die. When I made it downstairs, it was gone, and there was nothing I could do for Aric." Masterson pauses, satisfied with his story. "That was my brother's name."

The words were said with all the emotional depth of a bottle of window cleaner, but, it's Masterson after all. Mab startles him by grabbing him into a hug. "That's so tragic..."

He returns the hug stiffly, seeming to forget how to bend his arms. Warm embraces aren't in this man's body language vocabulary. "Your kindness is appreciated. If you happen to draw this spirit out... I'd specifically like it contained. Would you keep an eye out?"

"Yes... of course."

Mab keeps her promise, and is always on the lookout for the four circles.

Blake Grayson was screaming her head off for nothing. This kindly old ghost has a good sense of humor, and only wanted someone to hear out the jokes he died before getting the chance to tell.

"Why was the archaeologist so depressed? .... Because his life was in ruins!"

Mab is finally able to replace her cabin's bathtub with a shower.

Not everyone appreciates her work. Bruce Chesterfield points and laughs at Mab and her Banshee Banisher when she responds to a call from his distraught teenage son about bumps in the night.

Mab asked to borrow tools from Masterson to repair her broken washing machine.

"At least let me help you with that," he grumbles.

"I got it!" she insists. "I'm not too bad with machinery."

When repairs are complete, Mab kicks the machine a few times for good measure, and joins Masterson on the couch. "Thanks a bunch, again."

He blinks at her. "A friend in need, or what-ever they say."

She snuggles up to him, maneuvering under his arm. "I want you to know... I'm really happy to have a friend. I'm glad we met."

Masterson allows this. He needs to keep her happy. She's essential to his plans. But part of him actually likes her; she is intelligent, a researcher like himself. "I don't know if you should waste such affection on a man like me," he says carefully.

Mab leans closer, and turns his head towards her. Their lips touch for the shortest second. "I'll decide what I'm wasting."

He's not used to this, but she's new at this, so for her it's more exciting than it is awkward.

For Masterson, it's just another fresh hell. He's found he can't even enjoy the touch of a woman. More pressing matters consume his mind.

Mab only lets him go when her growling stomach reminds her how late it is.

She offers food to her guest, but he declines.

When the first phonecall of the night comes in, asking for the ghost catcher, they both leave the cabin and go their separate ways.

__________

A little money earned here, a little money spent there.

New paints, a new dress...

And then one day...

...this happens.

Ouch! Right on the new telescope! That was expensive!

Why couldn't a meteor have fallen on the washing machine instead?

As the sun vanishes behind the mountains, Mab battles the flames, desperate to keep the fire from reaching her little house and everything inside it.

Looks like someone should have left this to the professionals.

Masterson arrives with some firefighters.

He could see the meteor barrel down into the woods near Mab's place from the crazy height of that... castle-looking thing he calls a home. And making sure the medium is OK was high on his priority list.

Masterson is more helpful than the firefighters.

Kelly Randall more or less just stands there, chewing gum, surveying the damage.

"Well, ma'am, I'm going to tentatively put the cause of fire down as 'Meteor'."

Hours after Mab is cleaned up, she's still twitching, as if on fire, and generally looking pale and nervous. "You're safe now," Masterson reminds her.

"Just stay with me tonight," she pleads. "I don't want to be here alone."

Keeping Mab happy is turning out to be a very involved task.

But for the moment, at least, she is happy.

Once Mab is snoozing, Masterson disentangles himself from her and tidies up the blankets. He doesn't intend to just leave the house, but a shower would be nice.

He can't get his clothes back on fast enough. He's cold all the time, too cold. His bare skin against the air feels nothing but unpleasant.

This ghost has the decency to time its appearance for sometime after Masterson is re-dressed.

"Up to our old tricks again?" it mocks him.

"New tricks," Masterson defends, in a hushed tone.

"You are trying not to wake her? I thought you would want her to speak to me."

"New tricks," Masterson repeats.

"It doesn't matter what you do. I will never tell her what you want to know. Never!"

"Even if she promises not to tell me?"

"Can't trust you. Could never trust you. Look what you did to me."

"I need the box, Aric."

"Too bad! It's mine."

"It hurts me to see you this way. But I've long since lost my patience."

The ghost's blurred face glares at him, then fades away. "I'm protecting it from you."

Masterson wanders out onto the porch, and stands there staring angrily at the mountainside, shivering in the cold night air. But Aric doesn't appear again.

He stays with Mab for breakfast the next morning (though again he refuses to eat), and since she seems OK now, he leaves afterwards, to attend to his work. Building the better mousetrap.

Charles owns a truck, so Mab enlists his help in moving the meteor out of her yard and into the local science center. Landgraab Sciences pays her a decent sum to get their hands on the meteor.

Mab's first job tonight is poltergeists. As soon as she parks her bike outside Pierce and Cassidy Shawkti's house, a minor spirit leaps into it, rattling it against the house. 

The second housecall of the night is quite different.

"You're... green!" A momentary lapse of manners. There were blue people in Mab's hometown, but they'd been explained to her. Green is new.

"You'll find that's not so strange, in this town. They call me Granny Shue. And you're Masterson's new medium?"

"Mab Archer."

Shue frowns. Harcourt Archer is one of her favorite authors; she could have sworn he was said to have a missing daughter. But was it Mab? Or Melissa? Or Macey?

"Come inside, please."

"How many mediums has he employed, anyway?" Mab finds herself asking aloud.

"This is what I want to speak to you about. There is no doubt in my mind, one of Masterson's experiments upset the ethereal balance in this area, and caused these hauntings."

"This isn't the first spike of hauntings in Hidden Springs, though. The Daily Springs has records of kind of stuff having been reported for centuries," Mab points out.

"At some point, he will ask you to find a certain spirit. Someone called Aric. You mustn't do what Masterson wants."

"And that is...?"

"Masterson is a dangerous sorcerer-"

Mab covers her mouth, stifling laughter. "A what?"

"He needs something from this ghost for a terrible spell. I know this because I, too, am a medium. Masterson asked me to search for this ghost when I was only a young girl. Long ago. And when I found this one... it told me a great deal."

"No offense, but I don't see how he was around when you were a young girl."

"He-"

"And if you're a medium, why don't you chase these ghosts out of your house yourself?"

Two of Granny Shue's adopted children play in the background, not alarmed by the talk of magic. Shue is known around for being the most kindly old lady one might ever meet, even if she's odd. She never found the right mate to start her own family, but she always wanted children to love and raise; in recent years, she's adopted her brood of four.

"It is a young person's job, to exert so much energy," she replies.

Mab doesn't need to risk expending any energy. She has this device from Masterson.

She just hopes the ghosts aren't haunting the kids' room; that'd be creepy.

Gary Shue is trying to do his homework, if you please.

"New dress?"

"Hey, you noticed."

"I see you've gotten sick of scraggly hair."

"You think it looks better this way?" she frowns. "I thought it looked kind of dopey."

"I am not this village's resident fashion designer!" Masterson complains.

"That's true, you're not wearing enough pink to be Anna Menon..."

Masterson makes a disapproving noise. He had the displeasure of meeting Anna Menon once; she did her best to harass him into allowing her to give him a makeover.

"Are you a sorcerer?" Mab asks.

"I'm a scientist," he says.

Mab pulls him from his work. "Why does Ms Shue claim you're a sorcerer who wants to use your kid brother's spirit for evil? Or something like that?"

Masterson stares blankly.

Mab stares back. "Well?"

"I asked for Isolde Shue's help some short time ago. But even then, she was too old and frail to do what you're doing. I fear, too, her mind may be a little... gone."

Mab flushes. "Oh. Um. Sorry to talk about your brother that way. It's just... she seemed so convinced. I had to ask. Uh. I... I'm so bad in these situations!" She looks like she's going to cry.

So he kisses her, deliberately tender. "I'm upset that you would think such things about me, based on the words of a senile old woman..."

He wasn't intending to get anything out of her other than an apology, but she suggests they take this to the bedroom. 

He says he doesn't quite use the bedroom; it's not been dusted in years. He sleeps on the couch, he says. And that's all very irrelevant, Mab replies, because what she wants to do can be done on the couch just as well.





_____________________________________
Etc.: Poor telescope. I haven't gotten around to replacing it, but I ought to, since skilling logic is a big part of the ghost hunter career.

Cassidy Shawkti (nee Earthsong) is also green. I figure Mab didn't get a good look at the woman, and ghosts are known to mess with lighting...

All of the green people in Hidden Springs have big eyes, big ears, and the same green skintone. My first thought was they were supposed to be flora people, but then, I don't know. Maybe they are supposed to be aliens. I'm kind of disappointed flora people won't be in the Supernatural expansion. Then again, in Sims 2, the flora people were apparently made by using pesticides, and that's just weird. I thought they were some type of "one with nature" life state, until I actually looked them up.

...Dude. Having the new expansion pack would have been VERY useful for this story.