"Not much today. The police think that there isn't much else they're going to learn from your place so their getting people in to clean the place up soon. Other than that there's not much I can give you beyond what you stole," officer Bailey said as he settled into the trashy cloth seats that he probably couldn't feel as a ghost.

"That's good news. We're pretty close. We think the killer is some Marky Da Deviler Branchbro. Or something. That's his song that plays when there's a murder. I think he found an instrument that lets him access the real world every new moon. Why it's only women I don't know because in the past he would kill anyone," I explained.

"Maybe he's gotten angry and feels that his possibility of love was taken from him? It's entirely possible that he's trying to take away joy from others by killing these women," said the dead officer.

"That would make sense, except I talked to his lover in life just last night. She's been searching for him for centuries."

"I don't know, the reason for these killings is always something we can't understand. Not fully anyways." Officer Bailey shrugged his wide shoulders which trailed mist in their descent.

"Yeah, you're right," I conceded, turning the car off and rolling up the windows, reaching through officer Bailey to do so. "I'm going to keep questioning people for the next few days, see if I can get any new information. I'll keep checking in here, at least until they clear us to move back into my apartment."

"Good luck," officer Bailey said before he walked out of the vehicle in a cloud of mist towards the building. I took a deep breath before opening the door and getting out, pulling the backpack full of food and water from the passenger seat where the dead policeman had sat. I wandered out down one of the two streets I hadn't visited yet and started walking.

It was mostly more of the same, fewer and fewer ghosts that were there the night of the murder were still on these streets. As I wandered down a side street that connected to a street I had already checked I saw a particular ghost, dressed in rags of clearly modern make. I thought it was a homeless person at first from the slumped posture and haggard appearance, but that lasted only as long as it took for me to notice the mist rising from his head and shoulders like smoke from a small match.

"Hello, can you spare a moment?" I asked him.

"There ain't no one around kid. Sorry to be the one to tell ya, even if ya can't hear me," he said.

"You're here, aren't you?" I responded.

"Well I'll be. I heard someone like ya was real but I didn't believe it. Kid, I got all the time in the world, shoot ya shot," he said. He was fairly recently dead then to be using slang terms like "shoot your shot", even if he wasn't quite using it right.

"Were you here on the night of the new moon? It was two days ago. Anywhere close even?" I asked as I sat down on the curb next to the man. It was almost ten so the shops around this street were just starting to open up.

"Nah, I just got here this morning," he said. My heart fell again. Finally someone willing to talk and give useful information and he didn't have any. "But I do have a friend that was. He said he was pretty freaked out and didn't come back. Pretty weird for him, he doesn't get freaked easily."

I was excited again, and it showed on my face. "Do you know where he is?" I asked.

"I think so. He likes to spend time in the mall, just watching. If ya go find him here's a warning: he's completely naked and way to upbeat," he said uncomfortably.

"That's not a problem. Naked is weird, but not too uncommon. Upbeat just means he'll be willing to give me information," I said. I really didn't see either of those things as anything to be warned about, although the naked tip made plenty of sense.

"No, ya don't understand. He's very happy. It has to do with how he died," the hobo elaborated.

"I still don't think that's a problem. How did he die?" I asked.

"Oh, you'll see how it's a problem. He was strangled to death," said the man.

"That's not that unusual-"

"Voluntarily."

"Oh god."

"Yeah. He's one of those people," said the bushy man with wide eyes.

"Thank you for the warning. I have a feeling I know where he hangs out in the mall too," I said with a look of disgust. He just nodded and I got up to continue my questioning.

Nothing else of note happened, no one else had friends that had been there that day and no one had new information. I called it a day at about three, walking back across the street to my car and getting in, rolling the windows down before turning the engine over. I pulled out of the parking lot and drove southward this time, down to the mall. At this time of day it was busy with both the living and the dead, but I knew what my goal was.

I walked in, winding through the halls and bodies looking for a naked boy that looked far too happy to be dead. I mostly just wandered the halls until I happened upon a certain shop that wasn't designed for men, and was supposed to be a secret held tightly by Victoria. "Damned kid's gonna get me labeled as a creep," I muttered as I walked into the store as if I was supposed to be there. It really wasn't anything special, just undergarments and women. Lots of women, some more attractive than others, but almost exclusively women. There was the occasional husband who was dragged in but I was the only man that was there alone.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I didn't pay the looks that were shot my way any heed as I looked around the store for the kid. I searched all over the small shop but I didn't see him. I was just considering leaving without my query when in the back I heard his voice coming from one of the changing stalls.

"I think it's just a bit loose there, you should go down a size. You're plenty big enough, that just doesn't fit you right. Oh, you're just going to deal with that? Okay, I guess I already attended my funeral so it's your turn," said a seemingly overexcited young man from stall number four.

"Fucking hell," I said just loud enough to be heard.

"Can I help you?" one of the workers asked, a short Asian woman with short, dark hair and brown eyes. She was sassily chewing gum and glaring at me, which teenage me wouldn't have minded but modern me was slightly insulted by.

"I'm just looking for someone. If you can see dead people too than you'd be able to understand, or hell, even help me out. You can't though, so leave my business to me please," I said with far more attitude than I intended.

"Sir, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave," she said as she put down what she was holding and put her hands sternly on her cocked hips. The stall I was waiting for swung open to reveal a woman, fully dressed, and a very much so not fully dressed teenage boy.

"Oh come on, you can't be more than nineteen, you've got issues man," I said to the ghost. Of course no one understood that and thought that I was barely nineteen and berating myself for enjoying this.

"Yep, get out. Now!" said the worker as she pointed to the door with her brightly painted finger nail.

"I am, but you are going to follow me," I said as I pointed to the ghost. The woman that had just exited the stall to see me acting like a crazy person pointed to herself. "No, not you, the ghost. Yes I can see you, just meet me outside." I said.

"Alright bro, chill. You could have like, done that with tact you know," said the naked guy who was just way too happy to be there.

"I-uh-hmm! I'll save it for when you're outside!" I yelled over my shoulder as I walked away, my frustration finally boiling over.

I sat on a bench outside and just watched people walk by as my eyes started drifting closed. I did everything I could to force them to stay open through sheer force of will but it was hard. One time I closed my eyes and rubbed the lids, opening them and shaking the sleep off to reveal the very naked young man.

"Sup bro. Wanted to talk to me?"

I contained my frustration at the situation, no, the whole ass week, and tried to focus on my friend who needed my help. At this point, I wasn't even sure it that friend was myself, Jack, or Kaylyn. "Yes. Do you remember the last new moon?" I asked. It probably wasn't the best way to start the conversation, most ghosts never payed attention.

I was proven right to ask this question because his face fell and he suddenly seemed much less happy. "It was just a few days ago. Why did you need to ask me that, I know there's a ghost who chills on fifth that-"

"It's not about the moon specifically," I cut him off. "I had a friend who was murdered and I'm trying to find out who did it. I heard that you were close by my apartment the night it happened, and I need to know if you noticed anything odd that night."

"Shit, your friend was at your apartment? The one just off of main?" he asked.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"And I guess you're doing this investigation because she didn't leave a ghost to tell you?"

"Correct," I affirmed once more. This kid was smarter than he had seemed.

"I don't know who killed her, but I think I saw someone who would take her ghost somewhere. I don't know for sure, it's just a feeling, but there was this lady who walked by, kind of in that direction actually, who seemed. . . hungry. I don't know how else to put it, like she just wanted to destroy to satiate some awful hunger, which is weird because we don't really get hungry. She gave off an aura of danger and rage. She was very pretty though, nice dress, better tits," he explained with a look of begrudging respect. Unfortunately that could describe pretty much any angry woman though, I needed something more.

"I need you to focus on something other than tits for a moment. Did she have a crossed item with you that seemed. . . overtly recognizable?" I asked.

"Sorry bro, hard headspace to function in, you know? Crossed items. . . Is that what you're calling dead objects? I actually don't hate that. It's got a nice ring to it," he said. I snapped my fingers in his face to force him to focus on me. "Oh, sorry. She did have this piece of wood, it was kind of bigish, like two, maybe two and a half feet long, and I could tell the part she had hugged to her chest was glowing. There were all these patterns over it too that seemed to shimmer just a bit too bright, I don't know what to make of it though. It wasn't the things I was focused on most."

"So it was a woman. . ." I trailed off. "Do you know where she went?" I asked.

"No, after she walked past I decided it was high time to get out of there, because she was off-putting and it was harshing by buzz, you know? It was weird though, I was walking, and then suddenly I had the urge to walk in the direction I was already walking. Then I started whistling. It was weird because. . ." the kid trailed off as I puckered my lips and started the tune. "Yeah, that's it! That's what I was whistling! How did you know?"

"Because everyone was whistling that song. I think it's part of how this person did what they did," I said, cutting my whistling off suddenly. "Anything else you can tell me about this person?"

"Dark skin, dark hair, white dress, veil. It looked like she died on her wedding day, poor girl," he said.

My heart dropped. I had run into this ghost multiple times, each only in passing. I hadn't seen the obviously magic piece of wood from my vantagepoints so I had never connected the dots. I jumped to my feet. "FUCK!" I yelled as I kicked the bench I was sitting on. It hurt my toe more than anything else, my disappointment in myself so harsh. She had been right there. I could have reached out and touched the killer of my friend, the person I had been searching for for days. She hadn't really even tried to cover her tracks, she was just so fucking confident in her abilities that she could just walk right up to the people trying to solve the case that she created and we could do nothing.

We could do nothing.

I'd thought the topic over briefly, but I'd never come to a solid conclusion. I'd never actually figured anything out, I just kept pushing it off, and now we had almost a full month to track her down and do something and we don't even know what. There is no spirit prison, no death sentence for the damned. What were we going to do, talk her down? Say that really hurts my feelings please stop?

"Dude, you're in a public place, calm down," said the boy who had just cracked the case without trying.

"You're right, I've got to get out of here, I've got some time before she does it again, I need to find where she is now, or, I need to find where she's going to be. Fuck!" I said.

I walked off, briskly making my way out to my car. I didn't bother rolling down my windows, I just started driving to the gas station while dialing Jack's number. "Pick up you fucking bastard," I muttered impatiently.

"Hey, what's up?" Jack said when he picked up, his voice heavily distorted by the speakers in my phone.

"We found out who did it, and I've seen her twice since the murder. Black woman, maybe twenty two when she died, wearing a wedding dress, veil and everything, and she has a magical piece of wood that may or may not be something else. My informant was looking at something else. I could have said something, Jack, she was right there," I said quickly.

"Fuck," was all Jack said. I thought that summed it up quite nicely.