The Ghost Profiler

by George S. Karagiannis

part 5

One day, I stood on a pile of makazaya-sized rocks fixed together in a spherical formation on top of a green hill, resting my knee tendons and gazing at the goats with half an eye. I had begun a profiling session with the “Axe Sisters” early in the morning.

The Axe Sisters were two twins raised in a high-class society with all comforts at their disposal. They had both attended the School of Forensics at the University, and after graduating they mutually came to the decision to chop up their parents with axes, put their dismembered limbs, body parts and heads in plastic nylon bags, tape them all around to seal them tight and throw them to the bottom of the sea in the dead of night.

As soon as the two sisters realized the police had found enough clues to arrest them, they first made love together and then immediately committed suicide by simultaneously striking each other with their axes. The repulsive view of their semi-exposed brain helices from their crushed skulls was something I had to live with each time I talked to them.

That was the day I came in first contact with the Udloob creature.

Initially, I had failed to notice a strange creature was sitting across and watching me in my fever of profiling. Its body composition offered perfect camouflage to hide in any possible landscape. It seemed both solid and liquid at the same time. It was a fleshy hydro-mass, flexible and colorless; its shap gave the impression of a dwarf figure, but without any special details or characteristics in its face. The creature was skinless and hairless, as if it was a child made of water and nothing else.

I tried hard not to pay much attention to it. It had kneeled down on the grass and kept its distance from me. But I was so distracted that I soon lost contact with the Axe Sisters. The creature stood still, but I could hardly discern any possible reaction or motivation in it, as it lacked a face and all I could notice was a gel mass, loosely configured around a small boy’s frame.

It could theoretically be one of my many ghosts, but I knew for sure it was an unknown external force and not a byproduct of my imagination. With difficulty I realized it had started moving towards my direction, as if it were a fish passing very flexibly through sea rocks. Somehow, it managed to always be one step ahead in time and space, so I could hardly catch its presence with my bare eyes. The glassy creature was not moving very fast but for sure, it was extremely hard to follow.

I remember trying to decide on my next move. I was under enormous stress, having the feeling that my head had suffered a stroke from a high-voltage electrical fence. All I managed to do was stand up and slightly bend my knees as if I were trapped on a shoreline where I observed an incoming catastrophic tsunami. As soon as the creature came right in front of me, I felt as though my legs had been vacuumed from the sand below my feet; I was totally powerless to react or attack.

I simply cried out a funny, meaningless sentence consisting mostly of vowels, something like “Aay eee aaa ye rrrra eee.” The alien creature stood motionless for some seconds and projected some curiosity about my nature, as if it had never seen a human being before. At least this is what I surmised about its motives. Suddenly, I perceived the blur formation of an elliptical mouth in its face, exactly where mouths are supposed to be. Astounded, I realized the creature had initiated a stepwise process of shape-shifting, by mirroring my appearance in real-time fashion.

“No worry. Because, me your friend. Because me, Udloob,” the creature stated icily, ignoring the grammar.

The first notion that came to my mind was that this creature was damned intelligent. It had learned to talk my language in minutes, or perhaps seconds. The second notion was funnier since it was a genre-depiction dilemma I had. The creature’s voice echoed like whispering, retaining both male and female tones in it, and I was very confused about that.

“I have no friends,” I retorted in a hostile response.

“What are you writing there?” Udloob asked, pointing with his watery fingers at my notebook. His voice was mesmerizing, almost putting me into forced sleep.

“I am writing a book; but please do not allow father to become aware of it.”

“I won’t tell him! Now tell me what are you writing about?”

I realized Udoob had perfected his grammar, syntax and style, and very quickly! Udloob’s voice sounded so cozy, friendly and polite that it managed to relieve the stress that had stiffened my muscles throughout my body.

“It’s basically all my encounters with past-lived ghosts. They have much to tell! I am profiling them.” I sensed that I was not controlling myself and actually was spitting out all this information unwillingly, as if Udloob had deployed some sort of mind control on me and my speech.

“I have created a huge list with their detailed descriptions, history and memories. I am doing this in secrecy. Father should never know about this!” I realized I was confessing everything like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

‘Oh! I perfectly understand this! I am your friend! Don’t worry! This is an interesting thing you are writing there! We are your friends... Don’t worry! This is an interesting thing you are writing there! We are your friends. Keep writing your ghost stories. We are your friends! Keep writing all these frightening stories! We are your friends!’ Udloob had kept saying in a loop, without changing his voice tempo.

All I remember from that moment is a vivid dream in which my body made pirouettes in orbit around many and different types of “friends.” We are your friends, he had been saying. What type of friends? Who are “we”?

The next thing I could clearly remember was opening my eyes and realizing I had taken a siesta in the Emerald Fields. I immediately panicked and got ready to rush back home and finish all my assigned tasks. It was already getting dark and I had to leave my spot before it was too late and the wormolytes came out on the loose.

I never met Udloob in my childhood since then. Numerous times I reflected on conspiracy theories and came to the conclusion it was an Oracle agent was spying on me. However, the most reasonable assumption would be to consider him as a byproduct of my sick mind. I mean, I had already witnessed so many perverted ghosts that a glass creature was like a needle in a haystack, right?

* * *

Proceed to part 6...