It’s a brisk fall morning.

Halloween is only a week away and you can

certainly tell by the looks of Gene Roddenberry Middle School. It’s
almost a Rockwellian scene, as the buses pull up and the students
march out. Of course, there’s some mild mischief and horseplay
here and there, but all and all it’s a pretty tame scene of suburban
tranquility.

Among the crowd of students is Malcolm. He’s walking along telling

Tommy Sherman about how he saw The Matrix this past weekend
at the multiplex, and why it’s now his favorite movie. Aside from his
enthusiasm over his new favorite film, it’s an average morning for
Malcolm, just like so many mornings before it.

Tommy seems far less enthused. His eyes facing forward, he heads
towards school.

Later on, that morning in history class, Ms. Goldstein is droning on,
her voice becoming a kind of white noise as the large pile of blonde
hair atop her small head bobs up and down. Malcolm has lost all
interest and is staring vacantly out the window. He is looking down
from the second story window of his classroom and notices a stocky
figure in a fedora and a trench coat.

Despite what film noirs would have you believe, dressing like
a detective out of a pulp novel is not inconspicuous. Malcolm
begins to crane his neck to get a better look at the trench coat clad
individual. This broke the most important rule of middle school,
don’t draw attention to yourself.

“Something interesting outside Ms. Chen?” Ms. Goldstein asks the

student sitting behind Malcolm who is also looking out the window.
Malcolm quickly turned from the window to face his cute and
bubbly, but very boring history teacher, relieved that Ms. Goldstein
only yelled at Jenny and not him.

Later on, Malcom is attending gym class. He and his classmates are
engaging in the time honored, Phys-ed tradition of running around
a school track. Of course, calling what Malcolm and his classmates

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were doing as running would necessitate a very loose working
definition of the verb, running. What the students were doing could
more accurately be described as a lumbering jog.

As Malcolm plods along in a crowd of classmates, he prattles on

about his new favorite movie, “The Matrix, it just came out, have
you seen it?” As Malcolm is about to extol the virtues of the early
1999 cyberpunk classic, one of his classmates blurts out, “What a
joke of a movie, the Hulk fights mutant dogs?! That’s just stupid.”

Across town, clad in a trench coat and fedora, Joe Grosso cuts an
imposing figure. He’s walking up the driveway of a large and very
dilapidated Victorian home. When he gets to the front door he
knocks, but not because he needs someone to open the door for
him. When he hears the seductive voice of Baba Yaga saying, “Enter”
coming from within the house, Joe turns intangible and passes
through the door.

There inside the drawing was a large Chesterfield armchair. Floating

above the chair with her legs crossed was Baba Yaga. She was what
many would describe as a witch like her namesake, but she didn’t
look like an old crone. She appeared to be a young, attractive,
Romani woman with long hair, and purple eyes. The now tangible
demon detective grumbled at Baba Yaga as he entered the drawing
room,

“Why do you always gotta be floating like that, it’s creepy.”

“And why must you be chewing on one of those smelly, half smoked,
cigars?” Baba Yaga replied. And of course, being the ever courteous
guest Joe swallows the cigar, “ya happy now tutz?”

In a deadpan voice, she lets Joe know exactly how she feels.

“Positively elated. What brings you to see me, Joe?”

“I have to say, you asking that question gives me doubt if you’ll be

able to do what I’m asking” Joe replied.

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But Baba Yaga did know why Joe was here, she was just being polite.

She sighs and says “Take a seat, Joe, and I’ll tell you the possibilities.”
Possibilities was the accurate noun. Divination is more an art than a
science for even the most adept practitoner of the mystic arts.

“Milk or sugar?” Baba Yaga asked as she was pouring Joe a cup of
tea. Joe was more a coffee than a tea guy, but he’d been an occult
investigator long enough to know a thing or two about a spell or
two.

“I like my tea, like you, light and sweet.”

“Cute,” Baba Yaga replied sarcastically.

Baba Yaga reads the dregs at the bottom of the teacup and tells Joe,
“By continuing to walk the path you’re on, you will help another
complete their journey.”

Joe thought to himself how conveniently vague Baba Yaga was. It’s
hard for one’s predictions to be falsified when they are vague and
nebulous. Regardless, he felt confident that he was on the right trail.
Walking through the door, Joe heads toward Gene Roddenberry
Middle School.

When Joe arrives at the school, he begins to spread salt on the

ground as he walks the perimeter of the school creating a binding
circle.

Once the binding circle is complete Joe arrives at the fence that
encircles the school’s playgrounds and fields. Using his intangibility
powers Joe effortlessly phases through the fence.

Joe walks towards a little girl blissfully whistling as she swings

on a swing set. The little girl looks like she fell out of a Norman
Rockwell painting clad in a pink dress and her hair in pigtails with
bows. Joe sprinkles of holy water from his flask. When the holy
water touches the little girl’s skin she sizzles and howls in pain.

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“Ah, horse feathers, I don’t have time for this” Joe mutters to himself
as he pours the remaining holy water from his flask on the young
girl’s head. The girl hollers out in fits of pain as the demon escapes its
formerly cozy young vessel.

Once the demon is exorcized, the girl is blissful, like gas being
released from a bloated belly after a large BBQ meal.

Joe lets the demon know, “I can see you” and commands it to
disperse.

“How dare you act against your own kind?” the demon hisses back at
Joe.

“I’m not here to debate with you,” Joe tells the demon as he binds
the angry spectral being to a flask.

Once the demon is secularly bound to an Atari Game Cartridge

of Batman: The Caped Crusader, Joe pulls a label maker from his
trench coat. “Safety first,” Joe thinks to himself as he places the ‘do
not play, ancient evil inside’ label on the video game cartridge.

Joe then makes his way inside the middle school. He reaches into
his trench coat, rummages around a bit, and then pulls out a bound
bundle of dried herbs and plants. The smudging will draw out
any spirits or demons and the binding circle will keep them from
escaping. He is moving through the school trying to force his prey
out into the open, so he can confront them, and expel them from the
school.

The spirits that have been roaming the halls of Gene Roddenberry
Middle School these past few years show their displeasure with Joe.
The temperature begins to plummet as the locker door slams open
and shut. Joe flips up the collar of his trench coat to try to keep the
chill off the back of his neck and presses on.

Even the most ardent skeptic couldn’t deny what was transpiring
and this was just the tip of the iceberg, and Joe was the polar

4
bear hanging onto the iceberg as Sarah Mclachlan played in the
background.

“Enough you ghouls, you’ve had your fun, and now it’s time to
leave.”

In reply, a librarian sticks her head into the hallway, puts her finger
to her lips, and gives Joe a hearty, “shush”

“Oh, shush yourself, you old bag.” He replied.

The librarian didn’t take that well. Or rather, the spirit of the
Librarian who hung herself in the library during a tumultuous
winter break in 1972.

The stern librarian’s jaw starts to unhinge and her teeth begin to
grow. Joe is 5’ 10”, broad, barrel chested, and not afraid of a scrap,
but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, so he uses his
power of intangibility to let the disgruntled charging apparition
phase through him.

“Ha, nice try.”

But just as Joe becomes solid again, he’s struck with an eraser making
a puff of chalk dust in his face. As Joe coughed, he said, “You’re
going to have to do better than that.”

The librarian quickly replies with a desk thrown at Joe’s head.

Luckily Joe was able to duck in time.

Despite Joe’s intimidating, demonic appearance, and his aptitude

for violence, fisticuffs are a weapon of last resort. Instead, Joe
becomes intangible and phases through the floor and floats down
to the basement of the school. He walks down a dimly lit pipe lined
hallway. It’s cold, dank, and the howling cries of the damned isn’t too
pleasant either.

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When structures like this one get mired in lost spirits existing
in purgatory it attracts demons, specters, and all manners of
supernatural beings and creatures. Many are relatively benign.
However, even just a few malignant spirits can wreak havoc,
especially when provoked.

Joe has started the exorcism process. An animal is most dangerous

when backed into a corner, and Joe was doing just that to the spirits
haunting the middle school.

Joe continues to move down the hall. Marching through the spider
webs, empty, rusty, soda cans, and cigarette butts. He makes a left
off the main hallway. The cement floor is gone and the floor is now a
mélange of sand and dirt.

Eventually, he comes to a wall. The anger and hate is palpable. It’s

cold and sad in this place. “I’m sorry for what they did to you, but I
have delivered retribution for you.”

Stoicly, Joe places broken glasses and a tooth against the wall to show
them the vengeance he had exacted against the one who harmed
them.

Joe had learned about this particular dark tale by researching old
newspaper articles about the school. Joe didn’t just help this soul
come to be at rest as kindness. Once the spirit’s soul found its peace
Joe noticed the amount of psychic energy haunting the school
diminish. This would make it easier to dispatch all the entities
and assorted supernatural beings that are drawn to malignant and
tortured psychic energies.

Joe now had to plan his next move. He already knew he didn’t want
to implode the building or send it to another plain of existence.

Joe was dusty and tired, leaning against one of the large commercial
ovens in the middle school cafeteria. On the bright side, the oven
was functional. The delicious, crunchy, pizza roll Joe was enjoying

6
was evidence of this. He did a yeoman’s work getting all the various
spirits, poltergeists, and demons from the school. There was just one
task left to wrap up the job.

The following day, Malcolm is playing handball by himself. Joe

phases through the handball wall catching the small rubber ball on
its way to the wall.

“What are you?” Malcolm asks, surprised to see the person he had
caught a glance of yesterday. Even more surprising are the horns that
Malcom hadn’t noticed the previous day.

“Hey Kid, I’m Joe Grosso, demon detective. Here’s my card.”

Malcolm took the card. The longer he looked at the card the more
confused the expression on his face grew.

“What exactly does a demon detective do?”

“Oh, don’t let the demon part of my job title spook ya, I’m a big
teddy bear.” As Joe tossed the handball back to the bewildered tween
he asked, “Spending a lot of time at school lately?”

“Oh, no more than usual. Sometimes, I like to play a little handball

after school.”

This wasn’t Joe’s first rodeo. He’s been a demon detective since the
Reagan administration. Speaking of which, he never liked Reagan or
his movies, even the one with the monkey, and liked him even less
as president. But even Joe could admit that Dukakis looked awfully
strange sitting in that tank with his seemingly Fny head swimming
in that giant helmet.

In addition to a bit of U.S. history, Joe also knew when a lost

spirit was benign, but their presence at the school might not only
disturb the students, faculty, and staff but attract other spirits and
supernatural beings that are not as pleasant.

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“So, what is your deal, Mr. Grosso? I’ve seen you around the school
lately. Are you investigating a case?”

Joe replies to Malcolm in his gruff and gravelly voice, that had the
smallest hint of sadness, “This job has been a bit more about elbow
grease than detective work. And you can call me Joe.”

“Ok. You know you try to come off tough and look a bit scary, but I
get the sense you’re actually a nice guy. Do you like movies, Joe?”

“Yeah kid, I like movies,” Joe says as he puts a quarter smoked cigar
in his mouth. The young man replies, “I just saw a great movie! Have
you seen The Matrix?”

“Sure, it’s a classic, but I never really cared for the sequels.”

“What sequels? It just came out.” Malcolm is shocked and excited to

learn there are sequels to his favorite film, but puzzled as well. How
can there already be sequels to a new film he just saw in the movie
theatre?

“I’m sorry, Malcolm, I don’t want to upset you, but it’s not 1999, it’s
2003”

The boy began to struggle. His face scrunched up and he appeared to

be frustrated and distressed. “I don’t belong here, do I?”

“Don’t feel bad, you didn’t miss much anyway, the Star Wars sequels
sucked too.”

“Ah, rat farts. They made more Star Wars and Matrix movies and I
missed them! Being dead sucks.” Joe replied empathetically, “You
might have a different attitude if you saw those dumpster fires, but I
might be able to help you.”

It’s now a Tuesday evening in 2024, Joe Grosso Demon Detective is

walking up to his local multiplex. On his way from the box office to
the snack counter Joe passes the theatre’s manager. In a friendly tone,

8
the manager remarks, “Good to see ya, Joe. It’s nice to see we still got
a few regular customers.”

“Somebodies gotta pay to keep the lights on in this joint.”

Joe sits down in an empty theatre to watch Aquaman and the

Lost Kingdom. As the lights go down and the film begins to play
Malcolm appears in the seat next to Joe.

Joe turns to Malcolm, “Isn’t this better than hauntig a school? Now
you can watch all the bad sequels you want.”

END