Unexplained Phenomena Unit, Session 7: The Phantom of the Jones family barbecue

Played 18/2/23.

The Player Characters:

Mike Jones sits down with his tarot cards, and asks them how his family’s barbecue event tomorrow is going to turn out.

He draws the Reversed Magician - at its best, a sign of unused potential. At its worst, a sign of greed, trickery, and cunning.

He draws the Knight of Swords - a sign of a force of aggression, a fast approaching, violent change.

He draws… Death. While drawing the Death card rarely represents a literal death, it cannot be discounted.

With each card he draws, he hears something, an auditory hallucination, that feels like it’s coming from somewhere far, far away. A banging at a door, something malicious trying to get in. Shaken by his premonitions, he calls John Moore.

“Hey! Mike Jones here. Listen, how would you - and the team - like to come to the annual Jones family barbecue tomorrow?"

John and Ghost pick Mike up the next day. As Mike clambers into the back of the van opposite Ghost, he says;

“Okay, what the hell did I miss? Alexander’s dead?”

“Yeah. Died saving our asses from hitmen, employed by a demon that wanted to manifest itself into the world through technology. Also the demon leaked footage of a bunch of collateral damage we and other teams have caused… so now we’re being audited. Salem hasn't been cleared yet. We're using vacation time to be here.”

“Wow. A tech demon? Really? Wish I could have seen that.”

“No, you don’t. It was a bad time for everybody.”

“My problems feel kind of small by comparison.”

“Speaking of… what’s the brief here? You’ve just got a bad vibe about today? You know the only reason we’re here is because your ‘vibes’ have a track record of being freakishly accurate.”

“*sigh* Okay. Every year, my family has a barbecue at Nana Helga’s countryside cottage. She never lets anyone inside her house, so it’s more of a caravans and tents in the garden kind of affair. I’ve already called ahead to say that I’m bringing some work friends-“

“Why doesn’t she let anyone into the house?”

“She says it’ll spook the ghosts.”

“…Oh. Oh god, it’s just now occurring to me that we’re walking into a whole family of Mike Joneses.”

Mike laughs. “Oh you have no idea. The ‘vibes’ I get about today are that someone is going to be hiding something, an aggressive confrontation is going to happen, and something is going to radically change. Or somebody is going to die. That last one is up in the air.”

“Well, we’ve worked on vaguer briefs.”

“Oh, and if anyone asks - they shouldn’t, because they know I’m not allowed to say much - but if they do ask about work, they think I work a desk job. So try not to let on that we get up to anything dangerous.”

Driving up, they see a long 50 yards of garden, nestled between forest and vegetable patches, long before they see the tiny cottage at the end of it. Organised in a circle around a fire pit at the centre of the garden, they see several cars and caravans, and they join them.

“Hey Mike!” Mark Fassett, Mike's cousin, runs up to say hello as they exit the van. He recognises Ghost and John and says;

“Oh hey guys. Again, I can’t thank you enough for all the trouble you saved me from.”

(Referencing the events of session 4: The Fingers of Devi)

“That’s alright man. How’s your boyfriend?”

“David healed up fine. He was going to be here today, but he forgot he’d booked a job interview.”

“Oh cool, what’s he applying for?”

“He’s always wanted to get into game design.”

Mike looks pleasantly surprised at Ghost getting along with his family, being more open and talkative than usual. He then notices a teenage goth girl absentmindedly following Mark, paying more attention to a games console in her hands. Mark gestures for her to pause the game for a moment and say hi.

“You remember my sister Kylie, don’t you?”

Mike did not recognise Kylie - the Fassett side of the family had always somewhat distanced themselves from the Joneses, rarely showing up to family events, and the last time he had seen Kylie was before she had transitioned from male to female.

“Kyle! …ee? Kyl-ee. Kylie! It’s been a while!”

Her demeanour, when forced to engage in conversation, is like that of a deer caught in the headlights.

“…yeah.”

“How’ve you been?”

“good.”

“What game are you playing?”

“…animal crossing.”

“Cool!”

“…”

“Well… it was good talking to you!”

Defeated in the arena of awkward small talk, Mike is relieved by the appearance of his mother, Sarah, as she exits her caravan and comes running over to give him a hug.

“Mike, it’s so good to see you! How have you been?”

“Doing just fine, mum. How are you?”

“I’ve been very well. My reiki business is picking up.”

“Ooh, well done.”

“Who are your work friends?”

“Ah, this is John, and this is Gh-“

He stops short.

“I’m Alex.” Ghost says, reaching for a handshake.

“Hi Alex, I’m Sarah. I’m seeing a lot of red in your aura, you must be quite stressed out.”

“Uh… well, working with your son does tend to have that effect.”

She chuckles.

“Oh I’m sure it does. At least you’re in the right place to relax and unwind.”

Mark and Kylie scoff in unison.

“At least until my mum shows up.”

Mike's heart sinks a little.

“Wait, Aunt Brenda’s coming?”

As if on cue, an old, beaten up car screeches onto the scene. A short, angry woman gets out and immediately starts making passive-aggressive remarks.

“Oh, we’re just inviting work friends on a day's notice now, are we?! Why not stop there? Why not just invite random strangers, the more the merrier I say!”

She pops open the boot of her car, starts dragging out a half-built tent, and before anyone can even offer to help she sarcastically shouts;

“Oh nobody help me, that would be a little too much!”

As everyone else rolls their eyes and starts to pitch in, Brenda steps back and starts project managing, while endlessly complaining about her nursing job, her Uber job, her catering job, etc.

As Brenda’s tent is successfully put up, a booming voice catches Mike's attention.

“Mike, my boy! Get in here, and bring your friends! I need some fresh eyes on some things.”

Mike, Ghost and John walk over to the largest caravan, a monstrous vehicle that looks like it was constructed out of scrap. Mike waves a quick hello to another woman putting burger patties on a similarly scrap-based barbecue setup.

“Looks good, Aunt Helen!”

The group narrowly weave past two hyperactive ten-year-olds with wooden swords and a golden retriever.

“Whoa! Careful with that, Max! Don’t aim for the face, Tillie!”

As they get to the door of the caravan, the interior looks incredibly cluttered with bits of technology, and yet somehow larger on the inside, like a mad scientist's lab. A big, broad, ginger, bearded fellow ushers them inside and shakes their hands.

“Good to meet you all! I’m sure Mike has already told you all about his Uncle Omar, the inventor!”

Uncle Omar points to himself, grinning maniacally.

“Well, mostly I work at a scrapyard. Get to take bits home to tinker with in my free time. But I have a plan to take the inventor gig full-time soon enough!”

He hands out markers and gathers the group around a whiteboard full of ideas.

“Anyway, this is what I need some new perspectives on. These are all things I want to build, but I’m drawing a blank on how to start. If you’ve got any expertise to share, start diagramming! No idea is a bad one! At least during the brainstorming phase.”

The whiteboard has ideas like ‘exoskeleton for fixing posture’, ‘Pokédex animal identification device for the kids’, ‘ghost detector’, and ‘massage machine for dogs’.

“Why do you want to detect ghosts?” John pipes up.

“I think a blueprint for that one came to me in a dream - but you know how dreams are, I forgot it immediately when I woke up. All I had was a feeling that I was onto something. What’s that you’re drawing, Mike?”

Mike had already started doodling some kind of chamber with windows, and a fan in the bottom.

“Have you ever heard of the Chinese concept of the I Ching? By taking a random sampling, you can get a broad flow of the material universe. The tarot works like that too. So if you took a sampling with something like a contained sandstorm and learned to interpret the gaps between the sand particles, you could probably work out when otherworldly beings cross the path of the storm.”

Uncle Omar’s eyes light up.

“I see! Giant snow-globe, except sand instead of snow, and if a ghost happens to be even partially inside, we can pick up on the negative space where the ghost's presence is affecting the normal flow of the sand currents!”

“Or you could just use a Ouija board.” John mutters.

Both Mike and Omar shoot him a disappointed glare.

“You want to make a ghost angry? A Ouija board is how you make a ghost angry. Non-corporeal beings need to communicate in abstraction and metaphor, forcing a ghost to write is like forcing a person to speak on an in-breath. It's uncomfortable for them. God, it’s like you’ve never even read the works of the occultist author Rudolf Steiner.”

Feeling like it's the most interesting thing going on, and a chance to test his own tinkering abilities, John gets to work helping Omar build a prototype of the ghost detection chamber. Meanwhile, Ghost and Mike approach Nana Helga’s cottage to see if she’s about. As Mike is about to knock on the door, he notices small scratches and dents in it. As if something tried to get in, and then punched the door in frustration. As his hand moves over the dent, he hears that same sound in his head again - the banging on the door from his premonition.

“Ghost? You seeing this?”

“I am. Those dents are new?”

“Yeah, they are - and it's something to do with what I foresaw.”

It is at this moment that the door opens, and Nana Helga comes shuffling out in a green shawl and purple dress, her hair wild and unkempt.

“Nana! How are you doing? Are you keeping well?”

She speaks with a faint German accent, her words soft and slow, like her mind is far away.

“Michael, my dear. Yes… I feel good. Who is your friend? There is… something of the ghosts about him.”

Taken aback a little, Ghost introduces himself as Alex again.

“Alex… this is the real name, I can tell. Yes. I can see red in you… but also blue. The anger… it masks a profound sadness.”

Doubly taken aback to feel so accurately deconstructed, Ghost is momentarily lost for words.

“Michael… this is a good day. I was hoping to see you.”

“You were?”

“Yeess… I wanted to give you something.”

She slowly pulls something out of a pocket and hands it over - a small leatherbound book with a keyhole.

“This. This is your grandpa Jonathon’s… journal. I have one of my own. This is a new one we made… for you.”

She taps her temple with a bony finger.

“The key to open it. It doesn’t exist yet. Needs to be unlocked in… in the mind. He likes to give us puzzles.”

Mike takes it, examines it in awe, and immediately tries to put an imaginary key in the lock. It has no effect. Helga catches Ghost smiling to himself, remembering a mentor who also liked to give him puzzles.

“I’m sorry I did not have a gift for you, Alex.”

“Oh, it’s fine, I wasn’t expecting anything. Actually, we were just talking about these dents in your door, like something was trying to-”

“I heard it. I have heard it every night this week. Something… banging, and scratching. Trying to get in. But my wards are too strong.”

She points out a series of runes carved into the doorframe, barely visible.

“Impressive.” Ghost mutters.

“This thing that comes to see me. It feels like… feels like a Knight of Swords.”

Mike flinches.

“You got it too? The Reversed Magician, the Knight of Swords, and Death? You know something big is going down today?”

“Yeess. That’s why it is time to give you the journal. In case something will happen to me.”

“What do you think is going to happen to you, Nana?”

“I don’t know. Change. Good or bad, either way I am excited. I am smelling the food now and I am getting hungry.”

Nana Helga starts shuffling off towards the barbecue, absentmindedly leaving the door slightly open behind her. Mike keeps pace to ask more questions. Ghost notices the door suddenly shutting, as if with a mind of its own. He stays behind to have a look around the cottage, for any other signs of ghostly activity.

Meanwhile, Omar is welding together several bathtubs to create the ghost detection chamber. John comes out of his van with several bags of different kinds of sand.

“I didn’t know which kind of sand would be better for seeing a ghost in a sandstorm, whether different sands have different ghost attracting properties or whatever, so I brought, I dunno, like five different kinds.”

Nana Helga is watching with a paper plate full of food.

“I… do not know whether this is good idea. The ghosts… they do not like to be detected. But the red sand is better.”

Mike comes back with a plate of food and more questions.

“Nana, have you ever met any inhumans?”

“You have seen the birdfolk, haven’t you Mike?”

“I- uh yeah. Satyrs, and Elves, and Lizard people as well. Living peacefully in a town called Whistlepine.”

(Referencing the events of session 3: The Secrets of Whistlepine)

“They come from a world called Asmiel. There was danger there, many years ago. They find gaps in the world and they flee here. Some come to me - for protection. They go under my house.”

“You’ve harboured inhumans? Here? Are they still here?”

“No. I figured out how to make new portal. I sent them back when their world was safe again.”

Perimeter check of the cottage complete, Ghost finds the same evidence of attempted entry on the windows, but no tracks on the ground. And then - he catches the front door open and close again. He saw nothing go in or out. Still no tracks.

Ghost catches up to Mike and Nana Helga.

“Okay, so… some invisible force just slipped into the cottage while the door was open and then slipped out again. We need to get in there and find out what it was looking for.”

“But the ghosts…”

“-I know. The ghosts will get spooked. But this is kind of our thing. Investigating dangerous entities and making sure they don’t hurt anyone. One of us needs to take a look. Please.”

Nana Helga looks grim. Mike pleads with her.

“Please Nana. We just want to help.”

“Hmmm… Okay. Michael will look. Three minutes.”

Nana Helga lets Mike into the cottage. It’s a cozy open-plan space - obviously doesn’t get maintenance very often, but there’s a charm to the old wooden beams and white plaster walls, decorated with all manner of flora. As soon as Helga walks in, her sixth sense seems to pick up on a change in the environment like a bloodhound, and she makes a beeline for the kitchen drawers and cupboards. Mike can feel it too, almost like there are hands on his shoulders, guiding him. Searching through books, trinkets, secret compartments, they eventually find - Nana Helga’s will. The envelope is open.

“Do you mind if I read it?”

“Read.”

The will states that Sarah, Dan (Mike's dad), and Mike; Omar, Helen, and two trustee accounts for Max and Tillie; Brenda, Mark and Kylie, will all receive an equal stake in Helga’s wealth and assets upon her death.

“Nothing is changed.” Nana remarks.

“No tampering? So this invisible force just wanted to… check the will?”

The feeling of guiding hands on Mike's shoulders grip tighter. And more and more hands start piling on.

“It is time to leave.” Nana states ominously, putting the will back in the drawer and pushing Mike out of the house.

The sky is starting to turn a beautiful pink-ish red as the sun sets. Observing the family, Ghost notices that the kids, Max, Tillie, and their dog, are missing. He finds Omar and Helen.

“Hey, do you know where your kids are?”

“Of course! They went to play at the treehouse in the forest.”

“Is that safe?”

“Sure! Me and Sarah used to play there all the time. It’s the tallest tree - you can see the whole valley from up there.”

He points to a tree in the distance that does indeed tower at least ten feet over most of the rest.

Helen says;

“It might be worth getting them to come back. It’s going to get dark soon.”

“I can fetch them.” Ghost says, trying to hide that he’s on high alert.

“Oh would you? That’s very kind of you.”

It takes a little while for Ghost to make it to the treehouse, but he knows it when he sees it because it has multiple wooden platforms all the way up, a spiral staircase up to those platforms, and a wooden lift that works on a system of weights and pulleys.

“You kids up there?”

He hears a bark from one of the higher platforms.

“Shush Borkers! You’ll give away our position!”

“Your parents sent me to tell you to come on back. It’s gonna get dark soon.”

“What’s the password?”

“I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t know the password! He’s an imposter! Get him!”

The faces of Max and Tillie appear over the side of a platform, brandishing toy crossbows with suction cup arrows. As they fire on Ghost, he decides to show off a little, effortlessly dodging the toy bolts with some fancy acrobatics and snatching one out of the air. The kids are stunned.

“Woah! How did you do that?”

“Did I pass a test?”

“Hmm… Okay. You passed. We’ll come back with you. But first we’ve gotta show you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Come up here!”

“...Okay.”

As Ghost gets to the top platform of the treehouse, he’s amazed by how far he can see. Then Max says something creepy.

“Do you feel you feel like you’re being watched today?”

“Uh - yeah. I’ve gotten that feeling.”

Tillie points to a spot on the forest floor, a ways away.

“Do you see that?”

Ghost squints to try and see anything other than foliage. And then he does. Some kind of long vehicle, painted in camo.

“How did you spot that?”

“There were these black rectangles sticking out of it earlier, but they folded into it.”

“You mean solar panels?”

“Yeah! You wanna go check it out?”

“You kids think someone is spying on us, and you want to go check it out?”

“Heck yeah! We’re mystery solvers! This is the kind of puzzle that daddy builds us at LARP camp!”

“Okay, but we’re not at LARP camp, so this could be dangerous. Come on, let’s head back-”

He’s cut off by the sound of screaming from the garden.

As the fire pit is lit, everyone is taking a break from their various roles to sit around it with paper plates full of burgers, chicken skewers, vegan no-meat fillets, vegetable hot pot, etc. Nana Helga stands up to make a speech.

“Today… is a good day. I feel new spirits joining us here, watching and guiding. And I am so proud to…“

The colour drains from her face. Her drink slips from her grasp, shattering on the ground. She begins to levitate off the ground, twitching violently. People start screaming and running to her. They hesitate as the ground seems to rumble, and an ethereal voice echoes from all directions:

“…LEEEEAAVE… NONE ARE WELCOME HEEEERE…”

Seeing the event in bullet time, Mike sees something no one else can see - a flicker of a vague shape. A tall, spindly silhouette, lifting Nana Helga by the throat, choking her. He whips out his wand, it thrums to life as he slots a vial of Alchemium into it, and he unleashes a blast of lightning at the figure. For a split-second, everybody can see the shape of the figure lit up as it's knocked away. Nana Helga hits the ground, gasping for air.

“What’s going on?” Ghost shouts as he runs onto the scene with the kids, readying his gun.

Sarah and Mark are helping Nana Helga to her feet. Mike, seeing flashes of the figure flip back onto its feet, makes a dash to get between it and Nana.

“Invisible thing! Very hostile! We need to – AGH!”

Something spears Mike through the collarbone, and throws him aside like a ragdoll. Ghost and John lay down suppressing fire between where Mike was and where Nana, Mark and Sarah are. Some of the bullets bounce harmlessly off the invisible form, zig-zagging ever closer. Mike notices the way that it’s running, is like a ninja – heels and toes barely skimming the ground, so it doesn’t leave footprints to give it away.

“Everyone, into the cottage!” Ghost shouts, and starts ushering everyone in that direction.

Brenda starts running in the opposite direction.

“What good is the cottage going to do?! The cars are right here! We need to leave!”

John grabs her by the wrist.

“You want to be picked off, scattering in different directions? We stick together. Cottage. Now!”

Brenda curses him out and struggles against him, until he has to knock her out with a swift punch and carry her on his shoulder.

Everyone races for the cottage. Ghost gets hit with some kind of invisible shard-like darts, but he continues laying down suppressing fire until everyone’s inside and safe. He slams the door behind him. A few seconds later, something rams into the outside of the door, but the door holds firm. Everyone takes a minute to discuss what’s going on and their options going forward. Uncle Omar applies first aid to Mike's shoulder, and Sarah takes care of Nana Helga, who seems to have lost her voice and is having trouble breathing.

Ghost peels the invisible shards out of his chest and leg, and John takes a look at them. Prying them open reveals an intricate, microscopic network of cameras and screens that form panels that appear invisible.

“Goddamn it. We’re dealing with someone very technologically advanced, who wants us to think they’re a supernatural entity. We’re being fucking scooby-dooed.”

Ghost then notices the near-imperceptible scent of a poisonous gas coming from the chimney and air conditioning unit. People start coughing violently.

“Nana Helga, is there a way out of here other than the front door?”

Nana Helga nods and taps the floor. People start ripping up floorboards to reveal a crawlspace that goes down into a tunnel. Ghost starts leading the crawl down the tunnel. Not wanting to drag an unconscious Brenda through a crawlspace, Mike and Mark throw some water on her face to wake her up. She sits bolt upright.

“HOW DARE- where am I?”

“No time to explain - you need to come with us.”

“Wha- but- we should be-”

“Now.”

As the family crawls down the long, long way into the dark, with only flashlights and phone lights to see the way ahead, they eventually find themselves in a cavernous space they can stand up in. After consoling a sobbing Max and Tillie, Ghost scouts ahead, and shines a light on a chamber with a stone archway, and two tunnels splitting off into opposite directions. Mike catches up next, and makes the connection that this stone portal must have been how Nana sent the inhumans back to their own world.

As everyone else catches up, Helga urges them towards the left tunnel, miming trees with her hands. Sure enough, as they get to the end of the left tunnel, they find a ladder up to a trapdoor that leads them out to the patch of forest near the treehouse. Ghost, Mike and John head up and out, and urge the family to stay put in the tunnel until further notice. From above ground, the closed trapdoor seems hidden amongst the leaves and dirt.

Ghost tells the others about the lead that Max and Tillie found - the camouflaged vehicle, and he remembers where to find it from the treehouse. It would have been a five minute walk, but trying to move extra stealthily and observantly doubles that time. Eventually they find it - what appears to be a long, sleek motorhome, painted in camo. They spot two gun turrets on the back corners of the roof, which Ghost is able to disable by approaching from their blindspot in the front, crawling underneath the vehicle and cutting their wiring from below.

As they approach the doors of the motorhome, something clicks into place in Mike's mind.

“I’m sorry, you check this out - I need to get back to my family, see if they’re alright.”

He takes off running. Ghost shouts after him;

“Hey, what are you doing? John, you keep investigating, I’m going after him.”

Ghost catches up to Mike, and gets him to slow down and explain what he’s realised.

“Look, checking the will, the assassination attempt, the play to make it look like a ghost - the way it adds up, it can only mean one thing. Someone in the family wants to get their inheritance now, and they want to take the lion's share of it by scaring the family out of claiming the ‘haunted’ land.”

“You got a suspect in mind?”

“I really like Uncle Omar, so I hope I’m wrong about this - but he needs money to take his inventor business full-time, and he’s clever enough to invent this type of invisibility tech himself.”

“But he’s been with us the whole time?”

“Everybody’s been with us the whole time. This is one of them and an assassin they’ve hired working together.”

As Ghost and Mike find their way back to the treehouse, they stop in their tracks at an ominous sight. The trapdoor ripped out of the ground and tossed aside. Shining torchlight down into the tunnel, they don’t hear or see anything. Cautiously, they come down the ladder and search. They see signs of a scuffle. Blood on the floor. As they trace their way to the crawlspace that leads back up to the cottage, they see that it’s been collapsed. Mike is able to see faint lines of magical energy emanating from the rubble. Almost as if…

“They escaped. Nana Helga closed the way behind them with a spell. God, she’s brilliant.”

Ghost knocks something with his foot. Shining his torch on the ground, he finds a burner phone. Picking it up, he flips it open to see the words ‘GPS tracking signal active’.

As John picks the lock on the motorhome, he opens it up to see a futuristic, tidy and ordered space. A mini-greenhouse for growing one's own food, tables and beds that can be pulled out of the wall, racks full of surveillance drones and various bladed weapons, and a charging stand, presumably for an invisibility suit. It has the logo for one ‘Jadelight Electronics Company’ on it. That sounds familiar. Taking a closer look at the charging stand, he can see a timer on it, ticking down. Ten minutes left out of an hour. Is that how long they can stay invisible for?

Curiously, John finds a machine for forging ID badges and official looking documents. He finds Mike’s UPU keycard, as well as a forged copy in the machine. He pockets both.

He sits down at a desk and hacks the laptop. It opens up to a text chain.

Sent two weeks ago:

Anon: “Hello? Luc Mcstarr referred me to you, said you can get rid of problems without being seen and that you take blackmail material as payment.”

P: “What have you got to offer me?”

Anon: “My nephew works for the government, a department called UPU. I can steal you something of his?”

P: “Just what I’ve been looking for. Get me a keycard or something, something I can use to access his work building. What would you have me do in return?”

Anon: “I need to know if I’m in my mothers will. And then I need her killed in a way that’ll make my stupid, superstitious, crackpot family leave all of her ‘cursed’ assets to me.”

P: “Sounds like fun.”

The texts go on to hash out the brief in greater detail, and then argue about the assassins' failed attempts to get into the cottage and check the will over the course of this last week.

Meanwhile, Mike is reading this same text chain on the burner phone in the tunnel.

“*sigh* It’s Brenda. She hired the assassin.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. She’s working several jobs to pay for Kylie’s transition, she desperately needs the money. She distanced herself and her kids from the rest of us because she doesn’t believe in the supernatural. The texts refer to having waited for me to leave the house this morning, before breaking in for my keycard and giving it to the assassin on the way - and she was the only person to arrive after us.”

As Mike and Ghost come back above ground, they see John driving the motorhome over to meet them.

“He’s driving quite fast, isn’t he? Is he waving at us? What’s he trying to tell us? Is there something behind us - OH GOD-”

Mike barely dodges another spearing from above, as the assassin leaps down from the treetops - their invisibility worn off. The suit is black and rubbery, comprised of thousands of tiny hexagonal panels. Retractable blades protrude from the wrists, shard-like darts are held around the waist. A faceless mask stares Mike down, as the killer goes to strike again with uncanny acrobatics and speed. It pins his coat to the ground, tearing it to shreds as he rolls away. Ghost goes to tackle the legs. He only needs to keep the assassin grounded for a moment.

“NOW, JOHN!”

The motorhome rams into the figure at top speed, smashing them through one tree and embedding their body into another. John is concussed by the crash, and Ghost's back is sliced up being dragged along underneath. They both crawl out from in and under the vehicle to see the top half of the figure pinned against a tree, spasming like a puppet with cut strings, silently clawing at the crumpled hood of the motorhome, and then falling still. John limps over to them, and unclasps the mask of the suit, revealing an angular woman's face with short hair, blood running from her nose. Ghost, gasping for air, gets to his feet and looks the broken woman over.

“Huh, I think I recognise that face. Definitely an assassin. Yeah, she got herself the name the Phantom because of her self-sustaining, off-the-grid lifestyle, never leaving a paper trail because she only takes payment in things like drugs and blackmail material, never money. I heard she had it out for me over which of us deserved the ghost-themed moniker more.”

As the group drive the motorhome back into the garden, they notice that all the cars and caravans have left except for Omar’s. Omar is standing on lookout with some kind of scrap-gun, and Brenda is slumped beside him in scrap-handcuffs. He lowers his weapon as he sees Mike and the others exiting the vehicle.

Mike rushes up in a fury.

“Uncle Omar, it was Brenda-“

“We know, she freaked out in the tunnels and basically confessed.”

“God! Dammit, Brenda! You couldn’t even let me have my Columbo moment where I get to point out all the flaws in your story! You suck!”

“The others have already left to get somewhere safe and call for help, but we need to move now before the killer comes back.”

“Oh we don’t need to worry about them anymore. They stopped being invisible, and we ran them over with their own car. They are well and truly dead.”

Omar doesn’t quite know whether to be shocked or relax.

“Oh. Well. Goody. …You don’t have a desk job, do you Mike?”

“Sorry you had to find out this way.”

Mike crouches down, side by side with Brenda who is just staring at the ground in resignation.

“So, the million dollar question… why? If you were in that much financial trouble, why hurt your family to fix it? Instead of, y’know - asking your family for help?”

Brenda doesn’t look at him, but he can feel the hatred radiating off of her. If only she could feel his.

“Ask for help? And give you self-righteous bastards another way to think you’re better than me? Just because I don’t believe in any of that hippie shit? I don’t need your charity.”

Omar chimes in.

“You still don’t believe in any ‘hippie shit’? Even after you saw our mother, the moment she got her voice back, command the roots and earth to collapse that crawl space, saving our lives?”

“It was an old underground tunnel! Just because she was speaking gibberish when it collapsed, doesn’t mean anything!”

“God, you are the worst.”

Ghost stares Brenda down, a fire burning in his eyes too.

“I never had a family. You don’t know what a good thing you threw away today. All because you were too fucking proud.”

The aftermath; John and Ghost took the Phantom’s motorhome back to UPU, for the MOTHMAN technology department to take apart and study. John put in a request to add one of the drones and a few of the invisible darts to his arsenal. Ghost put in a request to take the motorhome once it was stripped of all its tech, to use as his own mobile base.

Omar and Mike stayed with Brenda until the police arrived. Searching the grounds, the police found several hidden speakers that had been planted to cause the vibrations in the ground and the ghostly voices, and a canister of the poison gas that was used on the cottage.

Mike checked in on the family one by one in the days after the ordeal. Mark and Kylie, seeing their mother for who she really was, and having both seen evidence of the supernatural firsthand now, resolved to spend more time with the family and learn their ways.

With everyone testifying against her, Brenda was put behind bars for a long time.

The next time Mike saw Ghost at work, he had an offer for him.

“I get the feeling you had some family trouble.”

Ghost scoffs.

“Can’t have family trouble, if you don’t have a family.”

“Well… you could have one, y’know. We meet every year for these barbecues.”

“…Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Alright. I’ll think about it.”