When you open the gates of hell, don't bother just peeping in for a look. The second the door creaks open, all the creatures inside break loose.

A voice came from somewhere unknown. "Hey...hey..."

She woke up to his face. Detached, cool, not an inch of concern to be found on his kid-like face. "You dead yet?"

Filia took a look inside the darkened glass window of the store. No one noteworthy yet. It wasn't the usual time people came for dinner. Not that it mattered. The Time Keeper was more interested in what her wristwatch said than attempting to lip read the latest gossip from inside.
The repeated muttering, like a machine gun-kylekylekylekylekylekyle- joined the howling wind in an afternoon refrain.

She saw someone holding up the school paper. Cafes just love these areas, acculturating kids into their Cult of Caffeine and loud music for after hours delight and teeny debauchery like this mild-mannered town has ever seen (which incidentally wasn't much). Gazing into the open paper, staring into the slightly buck tooth grin of a certain Filia Mackenzie in full black and white glory underneath the giant headline of her column: "Spooky Times" (oh -shudder-)

Filia-of-the-reflection wasn't smiling though. Too cold. Smiling is not something you do when faced with a full autumn breeze, bravado be damned. She hugged her green coat closer to herself, resisting the urge to sneeze as strands of hair tickled her face. Her eyes tried to see beyond her own reflection and unto the inside of the store, subtly, lest that guy things she's checking him out. It was a good way to relieve boredom. And engage in a bit of narcissism, but at the same time a sort of masochistic despair at the cheesiness of her paper-picture that was staring back at her from the open newspaper.

So, OK, lone girl sitting outside the store on a cloudy October afternoon, peering inside the restaurant to look, and cringe ,at herself. Hardly as post modernist at it first sounds. Just because she was responsible for the quaint little article known as the 'Spooky Times' (again, shudder), didn't mean she had to like it.

Why? Cause while most people read those tales between sips of coffee to snicker for some five second cheap amusement, Filia was a complete and hopeless supernatural junkie. Junkie, exactly by those words. If she didn't get a piece of thread which led to the Other Side, she'd suffer from withdrawal. Difference between poltergeist activity and normal haunting? No problems. Camio was the bird brained president- hey, he got her vote!- for the infernal regions of hell. Sure, bring it on. Just her thing.

Nothing so grand ever came to her though. Her greatest challenge, week after week afterweekafterweekafterweek, was to find a way to whip up some prose magic to turn the dry variation of the 'spooky noises upstairs' theme into something remotely readable. It seemed to amuse people enough. But the junkie needed the bigger stuff.

And this Kyle person who invaded her vocal cords might just prove to be her perfect dealer.

It started, as these things usually do, with a silent whisper. The winds slowly gathered into a centralized force, and a tornado of rumors and wondrous tales of the weird and unknown blasted through. What did they tell her? That he could make them see things. Her natural reaction, as it were, is to think this kid was some sort of whiz with the acid. That's when they started to tell her things which pretty much coincided with the encyclopedia of the supernatural which was her brain.

So it might've been a pointless chase after pretty colors. This guy she hardly knew, aside from the few half-nebulous glances she caught at school (no one actually notices faces when walking down the hallway, do they?) was supposed to be this big metaphysical tour guide. Deep Throat of the Occult, that's what they call him.

Half points for originality.

A score of kids made their way inside. Her attention caught the distinctly recognizable black haired boy. The only one of the group to have completely lost his mind. Wearing nothing but a long sleeved t-shirt at this weather was simple lunacy, no two ways about it. Something eccentrically befitting one certain Deep Throat of all Things Occult. They were all loons, weren't they?

"H...ey..." escaped her shivering lips. No answer, not even a flinch. Couldn't be blamed, even Filia had troubles hearing that.

A stream of warmth filled her as she opened the door. She gained up behind him with a tap tap on his shoulder. He turned around to her, the waitress who was about to seat him stamped her feet impatiently. Filia managed to come up with, "you're late."

He said nothing. Kyle was slightly taller than her, but they were both eye to eye. His long sleeved half-blue half-orange cut by a diagonal line contrasted sharply to her own attire, as she started removing no less than two layers of clothing and a scarf. "No, I'm not," he said matter of factly. "Look, it's five thirty now."

She be damned, so it was. "That's not exactly what I meant...oh, never mind."

He smiled. "Filia, I assume."

"Why," she said, struggling with the scarf. "How many girls come up to you to talk about the time?"

"Much less than I'd like there to be. Well, then, formal introductions. Hey, I'm Kyle, nice to meet ya."

Formal, hmm? Note to self, Filia, never take him to the Opera. Aside from the clothing, which she would never let go, he seemed perfectly normal. No resonant voice from the netherworlds- heck, whoever came up with the 'deep throat' nickname was seriously idiotic- or glowing aura which spoke of incarnations as ancient High Priests. Instead of the walking avatar of Dionysus, there was Kyle. Messy black hair, boyish smile, pale rounded face and fuzzy cheeks, nothing out of the average. The sublime need be subtle? She'll see.

A tilt of the head. "Likewise."

The waitress seated them. She left, but not before giving them a stare that looked like a thousand-fold evil eye curses. They found a seat by the window, not a second wasted before Filia caught glances from beyond. The tree just lost it's last leaf to the wind.

"Mind if we order first," he said. "Going to haunted places is so...drab during the day."

"Oh, that's right," she stared at the clouds. "It's still day. Could never tell. Anyway, you might know I'm doing this as a report..."

"Yeah," he said while gazing the menu. "Spooky Times, I know. I read it all the time."

"Oh?"

"It's...cute."

She slumped her shoulders. "That is so not the desired effect, but I understand what you mean."

"Good." His head popped out of the menu with the boy-band smirk. "I hope you don't expect to be seeing more of that tonight. Actually, you're gonna see the anti-Spooky Times."

This was starting to sound good. Almost too good. The infomercial kind of good, really.

"I'm hoping for that."

"Excellent" he said. The nasty waitress came in with their drinks and food. He remained silent and downcast the entire time she was there (was he checking her out?). Opaque glasses with more ice than water splashed a bit on the table cloth. He ordered something, she just politely declined through the seething stare of she-who-must-take-your-order.

"What do you think of rumors?" Kyle mused.

"I'm a journalist...sorta. Rumors give me nightmares like nothing else. Nothing worst than chasing a story all over town just to hear those dreaded words 'it's just a rumor'. Wham,
everything down the drain." She managed to say all that between bites.

He sat quiet again. Nodding, smiling, rocking, as if digesting what she just said along with the food in his mouth. The kid took a gulp of water, and said as soon as the glass was put down, "I love rumors. They're awesome.

"They're like the prima materia. You know, from alchemy? The prima materia, that which can be changed into the philosopher's stone, is something which is everywhere, but people generally ignore it. Rumors are everywhere, but how many people profess to really liking them? In a sense, rumor-reality is more powerful than normal-reality. Imagine a girl who had a rumor spread about her. So everything thinks- she's a slut, OK? She might be pure and virginal and poster girl for Virgin Mary 2005, but people will now start to think "oh, it's just an act". The rumors may be refuted a thousand times, but to people, she's still a slut. Nothing can change that, especially not truth."

So he was thoughtful about those things. It somehow made sense, yet at the same time she really didn't have the patience to deal with these technicalities. " I suppose that's one way of looking at it...I hope you're not going to yank my chain by saying 'oh, this was all a rumor...but according to my philosophy, that's a good thing, so nyah', are you?"

He snickered. It was almost a set up, she could feel it. Just the sort of taunting you'd expect from an old friend or rival. But from a complete strangers? She knew one thing, he was far from being shy, despite evidences to the contrary.

"No, no, it's quite real."

Change of subject. "You know I have to ask. It's not everyday you have someone who claims to be the gatekeeper of the underworld. Where do you get this stuff?"

"I never said I was the gatekeeper." No grand replies, no musings about things? She was finding it hard to see exactly what he was all about. He seemed to keep to himself gesture-wise. His hands were under the table, and he rarely looked straight into her eyes. From his voice and his body language, it seemed like there were two completely different people trapped in one.

Filia sighed, "You really should stop with the riddles. Right now, I'm having a hard time believing all of this, no matter how much I'd like to."

"There's no riddles. It's just one of those things that can't really be explained by clear cut answers. Spooky Times, you should know what I mean."

"Actually, no." She stated. "I do believe that these things can be commonly understood, it's just a way to keep things under wraps that all this crap about symbols and beyond rational."

He smirked again. "Is that so?"

"Yes. What should be so mysterious about seeing it is beyond me. It happens, it happens, it's just that we haven't studied it enough and haven't given it a name, never mind all those subjectiveness and relativity. Right?"

"We'll see." He shrugged. Taking another glass of water, his reply was somewhat of a letdown. She expected some sort of verbal spat. Instead he just flat out ignored the statements. "Where do I get this stuff? I dunno. It just happens. Like something that happens for so long it's no big deal anymore. Could you tell me where all the Greek restaurants in this city are? For some people, it's no big deal, they could, even if they haven't eaten in every one of them. No mysteries behind it, simple enough? And, again, completely randomly, like a dream maybe, someone asked about these things. And wham bam, the wonders of rumors began."

"And things went on from there?"

"It got pretty wacky. Some of them said I sacrificed cats in my backyard and tried to give birth to the antichrist last week." Both remained silent at that point. "...I did not."

"But it's a rumor, I have to believe it!" She said sardonically.

A laugh. "You catch on quick. Excellent."

"But it was just like that? People came around for a visit? I had no idea there was so much interest in the supernatural."

"There is," he said. "and there isn't at the same time. People who look into the mirror and say bloody Mary at night, or go into the woods at night with friends. Cheap thrills, adrenaline rushes."

Yeah, those. It hurt Filia's geek pride that her precious little sanctuary was invaded by such...gawd she didn't like the word, but 'teenybopper' was the only why she could think that'd fit. So her instinctual reply, "But I'm not like that."

"No, you're not. Hmmm," for the first time his inky eyes looked directly at her. Filia flinched a bit, but he soon sat back and did a mock philosophical chin rubbing ."Lemme guess. Without the affirmation that the unknown does exist, you're afraid the world will fall into a dull, lifeless place without imagination. You don't want to live in fantasy, you want to experience something beyond yet concrete at the same time. Aaaand- don't tell me- you've probably also had a childhood experience involving something supernatural, which fuels you to this day."

She said nothing. That was her alright. Right down to the childhood experience. She still remembered it like it was the day before yesterday. Their family home out of town by the shore, the strange ethereal light that little baby Filia innocently stumbled unto while breaking bed time curfew to see the dog. The barking of the dog, the strange buzz of the glow, and her happy 'haaaa' when she saw the angelic light being flicker in and out of existence. That was the day which formed a mark. OK, doors of perception may not have been cleansed, but at least she started knocking- and got a reply.

All she could come up with was, "Well, you seem to know my type well."

"'Types' are for scientists who cut up dead things." He said matter-of-factly. "I'd rather stay in the world of the living. There are no "types"."

"Sooo." Change of topic.

"Uh huh?"

"Where -are- we going?"

"I think you know the place already. The Aberdon's House." He replied.

Filia said, "oh..."

That was not a name she liked to hear. She'd been there before, lots of times. Bored teenagers go there to invent crazy stories of disembodied voices and walking shadows, but Filia has been there way too many times, and each time she kicked herself for falling for that prank again. So much for her wonderful informant and personal tour guide of the underworld.

"You've been there before, right? Last month?"

As if he didn't know.

"And the month before, and the month before that, and the week before the month before that." She sighed. "And all the time I barely had enough material to write one paragraph, and it was mostly lies."

His reply was quite ominous, as to be expected. "That's cause you go there at the wrong time, wrong place."

"Will it?" Skeptical, skeptical, skeptical.

He shrugged. "you'll see."

"Yes, I'm quite expecting that."

"What are you expecting, exactly?" He cocked his head to the side.

"Hmmm." She tried to banish all preconceived notions. "I'd rather stay objective and-"

"But you can't, right?"

"What?"

"Stay objective." Kyle accented. "Can you?"

She shook her head. "No, I s'pose not. I do have a bit of an idea of what to expect. Well, two scenarios actually, and I'm hoping that the obvious one will be false."

"That's cause there's no such thing as objectivity," He crossed his arms and nodded, like a philosopher giving out a discourse.

"Again with the pseudo-philosophical let down." She said, more casually than it would be expected. "I really would rather do other things."

"Like...?"

Damn.

"...point." She pouted.

"You know the house's history?" Kyle's chair scrapped to the floor. He placed a few coins to the bill.

"Vaguely." Filia got up too.

"Well, it's the same old for the most part. The house was in construction fifteen years ago. A series of strange things happened. People say it was on an old burial ground, or that a secret society was doing their rituals on that ground and it consequently got cursed. Who knows?

"Anyway, there's some sort of spiritual activities going on there. Good or evil, malevolent or nice, I have no idea."

He continued talking about it as they went out of the cafe and a short three street hop down to the edge of town. The area was a junkyard, no grass grew on that dry cracked sand and old tired and drum barrels were littered everywhere, a place that was cleared for construction that never reached off ground. So different from the pastures of the rest of the place.

The Aberdon house had an impressive background indeed. The house itself wasn't so bad...had Filia not been forced to see it for so many times. The two windows looked like hollow eyes. The door yawned open, it's brick-laying incomplete and jagged like teeth. Everything inside was of gray and cobalt blue chalk.

Yawn.

"...but you're here to find out, aren't ya?"

"Pretty much." Filia said unconvinced.

"Great. Second floor, to the right of the stairs." He pointed to the window. At the same time he placed his hand on hers. She felt a cold metal object pass from him to her. She looked at the strange talisman he had given her. He winked. "There's a door that seems to be closed, but it's practically falling off it's hinges. The room, or two rooms in fact, is where the activity is said to take place. Look at the west wall."

She stopped. "You're not coming?"

"Nah." He shook his head. "Ghosts don't like me. I'm here so often they probably think, 'oh great, it's him again!'. Better to go there alone, being fresh blood and all."

Well, that was strange. He was gonna wait for her outside while she just walked around in a vacant house? She stopped and tried to think of something to drag the conversation a bit.

"It's still day. I thought you said it'd be better if we went at night." The sun rays which found some opening from the clouds shone in a bright orange.

"It's said that twilight is the gateway between the two worlds," he walked around. Small scritch-scratch noises came from under his feet. Hard, cracked earth. "just like it's the mixture of day and night. Sounds like the perfect time for supernatural activities, don't you think?"

"I heard about that." The ground scratched under her too. The wind started acting up periodically, blinking him in and out of full focus. She squinted and after a battle with her hair, pulled it back. "Is it really true?"

"It makes for a great atmosphere though, don't you think?"

No more arguments. No more whatever stalling. She wanted into the mouth-like door of the abandoned house. At entrance she was assailed with cobwebs, a putrid smell, and the sound of the wind which sounded like mad shrieks.

Again.

The wall he described was just in front of her. True enough, there were two rooms. She only briefly came into this room, so she never paid attention to the fact the wall had an opening on the other side. It was unpainted, and cracks started to show from the bottom. The window was just opposite which gave it the impression of glowing.

Fair enough, this was the place. Nothing yet, but she'd give the benefit of the doubt for now, if only because the eerily glow did seem to scream supernatural activity, please come here! She clutched the cold metal of the talisman to her chest.

So she stared at the wall. And stared. And stared. She started feeling something, and it certainly wasn't zen enlightenment. She followed the shadow of the wall expanding, the last of the sun completely gone below the horizon. The cobalt blue stone lost it's shine until the pebbles on the ground were completely invisible. It was night now, confirmed, and still nothing had happened.

Oh, great. "Doors between this world and the other world" my ass. She was gonna kick his ass and wipe the smirk out of his face.

She was mad.

She was a floating ballerina in a sea of clouds and tea.

"W...what?"

Filia wondered, why the hell did she just think that? And why the hell was she thinking about two and twenty who opened the gate of tears and fell into the ocean of creation. Of rockets so azure that the sky looks like a fleck of dust. Queens, Kings, Princes and Princesses. Where did they all fit so humbly?

The girl shook her head. What the hell? She spun around and headed for the door, but it didn't matter that her body stopped because her head was spinning. Faster, fasterfasterfasterfasterfaster.

Points.

No, circles.

No.

It was points, definitely points.

The more she tried to get hold of her thoughts, the more they fled. It was harder, and got increasingly harder, to regain control of her own mind. It was like they swam away into an infinite ocean, and they didn't even give her a postcard. Her senses starting floating away too.

The spinning got worse, and she could see colors and shapes now.

If only she didn't have the overwhelming urge to throw up. The spinning, the confused thinking, the shapes were just...too much. Way too much. Overwhelming.

She knew she tried to escape. That much was still retained in the small part of her mind which was still conscious. But after the colors started getting more intense, they all gathered into an all encompassing blank.

"Hey...hey...you dead yet?"

The next thing she knew, she felt the moistness of the grass under her. The black was filled with the stars, and Kyle's smirking face was looming just above her.

Huh, so she was back outside. She tried to recollect her feelings about what happened, but all she found was a giant wall of pure sickness. Oh yeah, there was something there, and much more than just a bad acid trip and brain fart.

"Has that ever happened?" She asked.

He thought for a while. "No." He shrugged. "But I always wanted to say that."

Kyle offered her a hand. She didn't kick his ass, though, he'd be forgiven for this day. He asked, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I...don't know." She said honestly. Too honestly.

Not surprised in the least, his expression. Damn. She continued, "something definitely did happen. I won't deny that, it's just...ugh...I don't know. I can't describe it. Everything was so familiar, but not. Like, there were concrete, definite things, but not in a coherent order. That things familiar were re-arranged to make something completely new. Augh, I don't know how to say it."

All he could tell her was, quite expansively and pompously:
"Welcome to the weird and wacky world of the supernatural."

Filia sighed. Great. Wonderful. Her hopes of an interesting article was down to drain. For now,

Spooky Times readers will have to be amused with embellished stories of George the shopkeeper's tales from the crypt, a shining testament to Filia's fiction narrative than any actual happenings.

But at the same time, she damn well knew she'd be coming back for more.