Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural by Lara Saguisag, April Yap

amazing how generic goons can look. Mean, muscled, and looking like Jimmy Santos. The clothes weren’t standard goon fashion though. They were dressed in SWAT fatigues without any insignias. They were wearing combat boots and also had pendants around their necks. The pendants didn’t look like dog tags. As soon as I stood up, one of them grabbed me and tossed me aside. He was really strong, and he was going for the Professor. I moved to protect the Prof but another goon charged me from behind. He swung a wild right hand. I stepped back and then grabbed and locked his arm with my left. Then I struck his throat with my right elbow, which rocked him backwards. Then I executed a spinning kick to his head that finally dropped him.
    “You think you’re so great?” another goon growled in Filipino. “I know karate too!”
    With that announcement, he leaped towards me and executed a competent jumping front kick that I avoided by stepping to the side and circling behind him. As he turned to face me I delivered three sidekicks. Knee, stomach, and jaw.
    “ Sikaran , pare ,” I told the fallen goon. His funky pendant looked like the number eight.
    I turned to the last goon who was holding the now sedate professor. He was pointing a .45 at Prof. Dizon’s head. I should’ve known they were packing. As I raised my hands, I saw Barbie run towards the goon from behind.
    “Hold it!” she shouted as she aimed her .38 revolver at the goon’s head. “Raise your hands!”
    The goon turned to look at her and when he looked at me again, his nose was pressed against the barrel of my pistol.
    “Now, please let the Professor go,” I said.
    “Yes, let him go,” a cold, eerie Ben David-like voice whispered in my ear. I turned to look at its source and saw a man look out from the van. He was smiling and his eyes were all white.
    I recognized him but then everything else went white.
    IV
    Antiquity and Such
     
    8:35 A . M .
    Things were definitely getting weird. After everything was clear again, the goons, the van and the Prof were gone. Good thing Barbie was there to witness the whiteness. Otherwise, for a second, I’d have thought I was crazy. The bad thing was I didn’t get to do a Fox Moulder and check my watch to see if we had lost time. So I didn’t know if we were hypnotized somehow or if they just vanished. Barbie had found out that Prof. Dizon was researching the legendary civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria. He was recovering his notes when I burst into his office. Barbie heard the commotion and ran up and then out of the Faculty Center in time to see the light show. After quickly informing the Bureau that Dizon was found and lost again minus the weird stuff, I decided to go to a nearby place where we could check the Crusade files out.
    I’ve always been impressed by Barbie’s place. Not that I’ve been there often. She never liked bringing work home or vice versa. But with some reluctance, she made an exception for the Dizon case. She lived with her folks in a big house in Loyola Grand Villas. Her father was in the IT business and her mother was a society person or something. Their daughter choosing to work for the Bureau must be one of their great frustrations. I’ve wondered about that too. Then again, my educator parents weren’t exactly thrilled by my choice of career. But they understood. My decision to stay in the Philippines wasn’t an issue as my father always believed in being in a place where “more work had to be done.” Now they were in East Timor.
    Barbie’s parents weren’t home when we arrived. I waited for a bit in the ornate living room while Barbie went to tidy up her workplace. Some crossword puzzle books were scattered on the couch and I was about to pick one up when Barbie called me. Her workplace was indeed a workplace in more ways than one. One side looked like a workstation with a PC and a bookshelf filled with computer-related books. The other side had a TV, video players in various