Title: Who You Gonna Call?
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds/Supernatural
Characters/Pairing: Morgan, Prentiss, Reid, Ed Zeddmore, Harry Spangler - gen
Genre: Humor/Horror
Summary: Reid takes Morgan and Prentiss to a haunted house, where they find more than they expect
Prompt: From jujuberry136 – "Criminal Minds/Supernatural. Reid loves ghosts houses and drags Prentiss and Morgan with him. They run into the Ghostfacers... and a ghost."

Who You Gonna Call?

The door opened with a soft creak, the light of a single flashlight piercing the darkness.

'Seems quiet,' Emily commented, fiddling with her own light. Reid shrugged.

'Why are we here?' asked Morgan, trying not to sound too impatient. 'It's just an old house in the middle of nowhere.' It'd taken them an hour and a half to drive there from D.C – an hour and a half that was in short supply after a recent upsurge of cases.

'It also happens to be one of the most haunted buildings on the East Coast,' Reid replied matter-of-factly.

'And we're stopping here on the way to a really bitchin' club, right?' He let the question hang in the air, already knowing that they had reached their final destination. Spencer Reid didn't do "bitchin' clubs."

'So why are we here?' he pressed.

'Because it's Reid's turn to pick,' Emily stated. 'And considering the place you took us to last week, I'd say his revenge is pretty mild. Morgan grimaced. Last week, the flashing lights and loud, repetitive music had almost sent Reid into an epileptic seizure, nevermind that a fairly attractive girl had found his unconsciousness "totally hot" and slipped her number into his pocket while an off-duty paramedic checked over him.

It did explain why Garcia had decided to bow out. In addition to her fear of clowns, she'd oft lamented to him her fear of ghosts, a concept that he found utterly ludicrous. Fearing ghosts was like fearing leprechauns – nothing existed to be afraid of.

Still.

'We drove an hour and a half to check out a haunted house?' he asked incredulously. Reid put a finger to his lips, and stepped inside.

'You'll wake up the ghosts,' Emily grinned, and stepped in after him.

With some hesitation – not because he was scared, but because he was skeptical – Morgan ducked under the yellow "caution" tape and followed them. The first thing he heard was voices.

Not particularly ethereal voices, either.

'…come on, give me the camera!' His hand went to his hip where his gun usually rested, before he remembered that it wasn't there. If he'd known they'd be visiting a haunted house, he might have dressed otherwise. He did have his badge though; that he rarely left behind.

Neither Reid nor Emily had their weapons either, though Reid did have a bag of salt, which Morgan frowned at. Did he think they were going to be facing some kind of ghostly slug?

'Who's there?' Reid said loudly, and the sound echoed in the apparently not so empty house.

'What was that?!' the voice came again, followed by a short crash. 'Oh great, now you've gone and dropped it.'

Morgan and Emily shared a glance, which Emily broke with an exaggerated eye roll. Definitely not a ghost. A couple of guys that hoped they might be able to catch a ghost on camera, but no actual ghosts. Just what he'd expected.

A chill passed through the hallway, and he tugged his coat around himself a little bit tighter.

'This is our haunted house,' the voice came back. 'We're filming the pilot – the new pilot episode of Ghostfacers. Go find your own.'

Two men stepped into the path of Reid's flashlight. Men. Not even teenagers, looking for a good time. But then, he reasoned, the three of them weren't exactly kids either. For some reason, one of them was holding a crowbar.

'Ghostfacers?' Emily asked, incredulous.

'We face ghosts,' the taller of the two said, hand blocking the light that shined off his glasses.

'You're trespassing,' Morgan said bluntly.

'So are you,' the other "ghostfacer" retorted.

'The difference is,' Reid pulled out his badge. 'We're federal agents.'

Technically speaking, not even being federal agents gave them permission to be there, but it was evident that these guys were pretty ignorant about a lot of things.

'Your badge doesn't give you jurisdiction in the realm of the supernatural.'

'Would you like to test that theory?' Emily asked testily.

The shorter one balked, and nudged his companion. 'I don't want to spend the night in a holding cell again, Ed – what if I need to pee?' he whispered softly. Before his friend could answer though, the door slammed loudly, and everybody froze.

'It was just the wind,' Morgan said.

'Um…' Emily started, and there was a hesitance in her voice that Morgan had never heard before. In some ways, it terrified him. 'I don't think that's wind.' He followed her gaze to the corner of the room, where he saw the little girl.

She looked so white, so unearthly.

But she couldn't be a ghost.

No such thing as ghosts.

'Oh shit!' the as yet unnamed Ghostfacer cried out. 'Where's the camera, Ed?'

'I don't have it – I thought you had it.'

'You know, this is why Spruce and Maggie decided they didn't want to work with us anymore.'

Reid evidently had no time for the bickering of civilians, and stepped forward, clutching the bag of salt. Tearing a hole in the bag, he poured out a circle around them. When the ghost – not the ghost, the girl tried to step through, she was repelled.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

Either this chick had a serious fear of salt, or there was something really fucked up going on.

'Reid?'

'Tradition tells us that ghosts and demons can't cross a line of salt. This may be related to the idea of salt as a symbol of purity. Folklore also describes its use in slowing down vampires, as they're forced to count each grain…'

'Reid!' Morgan said sharply, causing the younger man to stop talking. 'How do we get rid of it?'

The ghost stared at them with psychotic eyes. Every single bit of Morgan's profiling experience was telling him that if any of them stepped out of the circle, then they'd be dead in seconds.

'The salt is only good for repelling them…I don't know if they can be killed, as such…'

'Wait,' Ed said. 'Wait, Harry, FBI guys. We know how to kill ghosts. All you have to do is salt and burn the corpse.'

'"All you have to do"?' Morgan asked. 'In case you hadn't noticed, we're standing in a salt ring at the mercy of a pretty angry looking dead girl.'

'Salt repels them? Emily asked, eying the bag.

'Salt and iron,' provided Harry, gesturing towards the crowbar in his grip.

'Give me the crowbar,' Morgan ordered, and was the slightest bit surprised when it was given to him without much argument.

'Local legend says that a little girl was murdered here, her body buried underneath a tree on the property,' Reid provided. 'The reports weren't substantiated, though, and police never investigated. Evidently, her ghost remained long enough to become a vengeful spirit. Do you have shovels?'

Ed and Harry both pointed towards the room, where presumably, the rest of their equipment was. Unfortunately, the door was blocked off by this "vengeful spirit."

'We need to distract it.' Morgan said, not liking the prospect of facing off against something he couldn't touch. 'Maybe trap it. Reid, you and the Ghostfacers go deal with the corpse. Prentiss, you stay with me.'

He wasn't quite sure if her face had paled, or whether it was just a trick of the light.

A Ghost.

Seriously.

'Are we ready?' Morgan asked, gripping the crowbar tightly. Emily had the bag of salt in her hands, the small hole widened so that she could pull out handfuls of the substance at will.

'We're ready,' Reid affirmed.

Morgan stepped out of the line of salt, hoping like hell the ghost would be paying attention to the threat right in front of her, rather than the three people sneaking out the back of the circle. He was never in his life so glad to be thrown across the room by an incorporeal force then at that moment.

Ouch.

'Morgan!'

Make sure her attention's focused, and then fight back.

He didn't know how long it would take to dig up a corpse and then burn it, but for the sake of his bones, he was hoping that Reid and the Ghostfacers were digging extra fast tonight.

The ghost made to attack him again, but was distracted by a noise from Emily on the other side of the room. An intentional noise, apparently – as soon as the ghost moved towards her, she tossed a handful of salt.

The young girl seemed to dissolve into smoke – that, more than anything else seemed to lay to rest any doubts he had about the situation. This was no trick of the light. The problem was…

'Where'd she go?' Emily called out, eyes darting around the room. Morgan got to his feet, his body screaming at him.

Next week, he'd choose where they went.

He barely noticed the flash of white behind Emily, yelling, 'Behind you!' Emily turned, hand in the bag of salt, but not before the ghost tossed her, too, across the room. She gave a loud grunt as she fell against a set of old bookshelves, knocking them to the ground.

'You alright?' he asked, as she stood, dazed, and with her hair mussed across her face, but without serious injury.

She shook her head, not at the question, but at the whole situation. 'Ghosts, Morgan. What the fuck?'

He grinned, in spite of himself, and swung the crowbar at the flash of white that appeared in front of him.

Fool me once…

'You think we could trap it?' She didn't sound particularly confident, which was understandable – they caught unsubs for a living, not ghosts.

'Can you trick ghosts?'

'She seems kind of…primal. I don't know if there's much capacity for high level thinking.' He paused. 'Anyway. This thing used to be a six-year-old girl. I doubt she was a rocket scientist before she died.'

'I doubt she was a body-builder either, and yet she threw both of us across the room like we weighed nothing,' she pointed out, and Morgan couldn't find fault with that argument. Still – there wasn't time to test what ghosts could do, and what they couldn't do. All they had was the facts: iron and salt.

Emily moved back towards the circle of salt, brushing a section of it to the side. 'You want to be bait, or will I?' The question was answered for them, when the ghost appeared in front of Emily, who took a step back, her eyes wide.

As quietly as possible, Morgan moved around behind them to close the circle, using the bag of salt that Emily had left on the ground. 'Done.' Emily stepped out of the circle, out of the way of the ghostly hand that tried to grab her.

'Now all we have to do is wait.' Morgan didn't want to leave a ghost alone in the salt circle. He trusted folklore about as far as he could throw it.

Within ten minutes though, the girl started to burn up, and in her last few seconds of life (Unlife? Undeath?), her expression went from psychotic to haunted, as though there was still something of that little girl left inside. There was no time to dwell on the matter, and even less time to react. What was apparently one of the most haunted buildings on the East Coast became significantly less haunted in the space of seconds.

Another minute, and Reid and the Ghostfacers returned, looking wearing and covered in dirt, but they hadn't had to fight a ghost, so they still had one up.

Without another word, Morgan walked straight out the front door. They'd barely spent half an hour inside the house, but it was enough that he didn't even want to hear the word ghost for the rest of his life.