Who You Gonna Call?
“OH MY GOD!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!! HELP! HEEEEELPPPP!!!! SOMEBODY HELP ME! IT HURTS! IT HURTS SO BAD! HELP ME!!! HE-”
These were the screams Phillips Exeter Academy woke up to on Monday morning. Normally, screaming like that means someone’s roomate woke them up when they had a sleep-in, but it turns out this incident wasn’t quite as harmless.
Prep Andrew Goughs reported that his friend, Larry Labar, “just started floating, like, into the sun.” Goughs continued, “the fear in his eyes was like he already knew this was the last the world was ever going to see of him, like Icarus, but falling upwards.” This report was corroborated by a separate group of students looking out the window from Spanish class on the fifth floor who saw Larry clinging to the window and begging to be let in, tears streaming down his face, snot dribbling out of his nose. “He looked pretty pathetic, to be honest,” said one of the students, “but I’m still never gonna forgive [Labar] for leaving me on read that one time. He’s probably okay anyways so it doesn’t matter.”
Labar hasn’t been seen since. While a few members of campus are beginning to worry (like Mary Mabar, who relies on Labar for the answers to math hand-ins), for the most part nobody cares. Most conversations about Labar have consisted of people wondering why they haven’t seen Larry in a while, but then thinking the Early Decision deadline is Friday and I have like three tests on Monday so he can wait.
Only two parties really seem to be interested. The first is Dean Coole, who revealed his intense spiritual power at the This I Believe assembly. Coole stated that the Labar incident is, “one of the most powerful spiritual occurrences [he’s] ever seen in [his] life,” and that Labar “must have awakened an incredibly evil spirit.” We asked Coole if he believed he could exorcise it, but the look on his face revealed that it was far beyond his psychic powers. Coole added that he could have prevented it with just a few salt circles if he had known Labar was cursed, but now, “the boy’s just gonna have to live with the clouds for a while.”
The second party interested is Ghostbusting Club, led by president Bingo Bango Bongo. When asked on the club's inaction regarding Labar, Bongo answered, "[they] never got a call that something strange was happening in the neighborhood." “Besides,” continued Bingo, “[they've] been pretty useless ever since the school cut [their] funding.” Bongo then recounted the previous feats of the club, highlighting when they exorcised a giant marshmallow man, as well as the invisible man who was sleeping in his bed. After being asked what message he would like to relay to those who called the club “Losers with Lasers,” Bingo warned that the paranormal incident with Labar was not the first, nor would it be the last.