When someone thinks they already know what they've got, babbling about little green ghouls or poltergeists or maybe some mysterious "bugs" in their skin, that's a common sign of a prank, a misidentified barn owl, or most often (and unfortunately) of all, a mental health crisis, which of course we also pass on to a more appropriate department. But when someone calls what they think are basically the Ghostbusters and they're still afraid of sounding like the weird one, still not sure we're for real, struggling to describe the issue in terms that they feel do it justice, that's often more promising. That's when we're already gearing up and out the door.
But god, there are days I'd kill for it to just be a really big cockroach. If you think The Asscheese sounded bad, it was hardly unusual for this job, maybe even on the tamer side. A disgusting film of goo that violates the natural law in some way is even so common we just call that a "spongejob," or we did until some of us started calling it a spongejob squarepants, and then just singing a spongejob squarepants theme song we invented, and then we got sick of that and just started saying "who lives in a pineapple?" every time it turns out to be another dripping ooze kind of day. When that got old, we cut it back down to calling those Pineapples, and that stuck so hard I have to repeat that entire explanation at some point to every new hire. I told you, we get bored bored.
So, if Mister Asscheese, the Sir Ass of Cheese was just a lower-tier case, most people want to know what's the "weirdest" thing I've ever had to deal with, or maybe the most dangerous, or maybe just the creepiest and most disturbing thing I've ever seen. Unfortunately, those categories all kind of blend together after a while, and nobody's ever really happy to hear the kinds of freakish, disgusting, confusing things actually lurking around out there, but if you're really, truly curious, or god forbid you're the next trainee I'm stuck with, there are quite a few that haunt me for various reasons, and I do feel like getting a few more of them off my chest.
One that comes to mind as the most "dangerous" in my opinion was what they called a Class Six Umbral Teletroph. I should mention that we aren't even let in on the full logic of the classification system; we're told it's a measurement of danger level, but danger takes a lot of forms, and for sheer killing power I'd have ranked this one a little higher.
It was a call about an "ugly looking tree" at a golf course, which sounds like nothing, but they'd called our Cryptid line and were ADAMANT they we had to be the appropriate people. They were downright pissed when we suggested an arborist or maybe just a chainsaw, so at the very least this had to have been one impressively ugly tree, right? Even if nothing proved unnatural about it, we were all in agreement that we had to see how ugly of a tree we might be talking before anybody chopped it down, because it certainly wasn't like we had a packed schedule or anything. So, the whole crew headed out that day, whether or not they were actually scheduled that day, because of course we texted them and asked if they wanted to come see a tree so ugly it made someone mad, and of course the typical response to that is a resounding "ON MY WAY."
We suspected something more than just an aesthetically offensive oak as soon as we arrived to find the whole place deserted. There was no sign of our grouchy caller, or anybody else for that matter, but we certainly found what had to be the "ugly tree" easy enough. You couldn't possibly have missed this thing; a dark purple object a couple of meters in height, shaped a little like a thick, upright palm frond or a giant feather, but up close you could tell it had kind of a foamy, marshmallowy texture. A bunch of little tiny ones were sprouting up around its warty base, and they swayed a little on a windless day. A casual observer would have easily mistaken it for some kind of abstract art installation, and even if they figured out it was an organic growth, they might have just assumed it was an exceptionally ugly exotic plant they've never heard of.
We immediately knew something was up by the pile of clothing on the ground nearby. And the second pile of clothing a few feet from the first one, and the fourth, and the fifth, so now we had a rough guess that something happened to the entire two golfers and three staff who'd had the whole wasteful business to themselves all day, but we didn't know what happened, or how, so we kept our distance while we watched the thing. We didn't want to just torch it, in case it was explosive or it gave off toxic fumes or heat-activated spores or something, but none of us wanted to be the one to poke it with a stick or throw anything at it either, not knowing what if anything it might do. What, did you think we had cool sci-fi scanners and weapons? Most of us were exterminators, repairmen or janitors before we fell into this line of work, and the big bosses don't care how we tackle these things as long as we keep it as discreet as we can.
We decided to go back for some extra supplies (longer sticks) and regroup about an hour later, but we hadn't been back five minutes before the newbie (there's ALWAYS a newbie) let out a scream and crumpled to the grass. He kept screaming about his foot until we held him down and one of us got his boot off, only to immediately lose their lunch. There was nothing left of the kid's foot but bone and some dangling, half-melted looking strings of flesh. We all looked at each other in a panic, having no idea what the hell just happened but fairly certain it could just as suddenly, just as mysteriously happen to any one of us as long as we were anywhere near the tree-thing.
This was when the same tech who just hurled, I never caught the name, backed up a few feet only to start screaming their head off as well, until he toppled backwards and his scream abruptly gurgled to a stop. What hit the ground was already mostly bone and slush, the living tissues giving off a pinkish mist as they continued to evaporate and disappear into thin air...at least from the knees on up. His lower legs were left intact, and were now the only parts of him that hadn't passed within the "tree's" unusually dark shadow.
There hadn't been a shadow when we'd originally arrived, at just about high noon. I still get chills realizing I was actually the first to walk a circle around the thing as I snapped photos for the boss. If we had gotten there virtually any other hour, I'd have blundered straight through that flesh-dissolving darkness and never known what hit me.
We took our chances with fire, and there wasn't any explosion or poison gas or anything else to worry about, but as it curled up and blackened, the thing we dubbed "Hellfern" inexplicably emitted the sound of an ambulance siren. Not like an eerily similar sound, but like an actual recording.
It was a nasty, nasty case, the first one that year to have multiple casualties and the closest some of us had come to death ourselves. I probably shouldn't have been in any mood to laugh by the end of it, but...after we made sure there wasn't anything left of Hellfern, after we'd finished calling in body retrieval and making our official statements to the coverup crew (yeah, that's yet another different crew), something caught my eye on the way back to the truck that brought me almost to hysterics, and now I'll never, ever stop wondering what the original call was really about.
...Just inside the entry gate, easily missed and completely invisible from the outide, was what remains to this day the lumpiest, gnarliest, most blighted and malformed little birch tree I have ever seen in my life.
