Sleepwalking

 The man, almost still a boy at 19, stretched, and yawned. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs and wake his mind up, calling it back from whence his dreams carried him.

Now, there are certain peculiarities about this land that are worth mentioning, as they are some of the most important aspects of this story. His dreams only ever took him to the same land, he only ever saw the same people, and he only ever heard the same sounds. In spite of this last fact, he still knew exactly what was going on at all times. While one may usually be thus informed when in a dream, dreams do, as a rule, carry at least the illusion of voices, as the characters we see speak to one another, and even to us.

Secondly, the fact that he never went anywhere besides the school he saw in every dream for as far back as he could remember was odd. Especially when we realize that the boy he most often saw in these dreams looked entirely like him, without a detail left out. This is even stranger when we know that this boy was not himself. He saw his own person as a ghost watching the life of this boy.

Suffice it to say, the man's mind was not ordinary. And now I shall take you back to where we left off. The man, Nevio, made himself a bagel, and spread cream cheese over it liberally. Once this was done, and his coffee was poured, (honey, no cream) he sat back to watch the news before he went to work.

He saw some of his handy work scrolling along the bottom of the screen, and sighed. He would have to move again soon. But he had a few more loose ends to take care of so he took out his notebook and began to meticulously fill in his list.

12/2- the Willards 12:30 PM

Needle

Thread

Ice

Sheets

Rotting wood

Knife

Manure

Ice cream

After taking care of this, he proceeded to walk through his house, gathering the supplies, and polishing off the bagel. He poured the rest of the coffee into a travel mug, and headed to the Willard's home.

….

"This is just sick, I mean, who takes the time to do this to a person in their own home?" The photographer was obviously having a hard time keeping his lunch down.

"Some would argue that it did not have to take much time at all. They would say this had been building up for a long time," Rae Brown told him, she filled her notebook with well-organized information written in sloppy handwriting.

"What do they mean?" The photographer inquired, hoping it would take his mind off of the gruesome scene before him.

"Some people would speculate that it was a ghost. Look at the bloating in the bodies. I won't tell you to feel it, but I bet if you did, you would find that there is way too much liquid inside the bodies. And that they are way too cold. My prediction is that the bodies were filled with ice, and then stitched back together, all after death of course. That's because I've seen this kind of handy work before. However, the unsuspecting friend from work who came to check on the couple felt for a pulse. He was convinced that they had been cursed, and that they had frozen from the inside out. He was too terrified to come back in the house when he was asked to show the responding officers where the bodies were. Apparently, the house has been doing strange things lately," Rae explained. "Then there is the fact that the faces are contorted, there could be any number of reasons that they are like that, but when partnered with the bloating..."

"I'm guessing the rot didn't help?" The photographer replied.

"No. Whoever did this was incredibly clever with it. The rot is placed in such a way that it looks almost like it is growing there normally," Rae replied. She made a note of where the rot was placed, as well as the other oddities. Most of the rot was under the bed and leaking out onto the surrounding floor, but there was some in just about every closet in the house. The tub and all the sinks were filled with some sort of sticky brown sludge that smelled horrid. And the curtains on all the showers were ripped up and splattered with blood. Finally, there were shredded sheets hanging from the ceiling that were dripping with blood. The officers who had arrived first were easily distinguishable by the smears of it that coated their heads. Interestingly, there seemed to be no blood on the floor from the victims.

"Why would someone do this? Wouldn't they worry they would be caught?" The photographer queried, he was relatively new, so he hadn't been there when Rae requested to be at the scene.

"Not this guy," Rae said shortly. She was trying to link this to the last one in her mind, but again, there was nothing obviously the same. She just couldn't bring herself to admit that there was more than one person in the world who could be this vile. But then, why not? If there was one person who would do this, why couldn't there be more? Maybe they didn't commit crimes exactly the same way, but they could be out there.

"Why aren't they worried? And why do you know so much about this? Have you seen this guy before?" The photographer gazed at Rae intently as he waited for her response.

"I think this was a person who had gained the confidence of this couple, or at least, had been around long enough for them to pay no mind to him or her. As to the second question, I don't have any concrete evidence, but I think I have seen the work of this killer before," Rae responded, making a few more notes as she followed the photographer around the scene. There was so much to photograph that he had gotten fresh camera, and there was another investigator videoing the scene.

"What makes you think that?"

"Just the oddness of the whole set up. I track these 'ghostly murders' so I've gotten quite good at determining what is causing the effect that incites such panic from people. And in all of the murders that I have investigated, any dead children were tucked up in bed like they had simply fallen asleep there and not woken up,"

"So he kills kids too?"

"Yep, and from what we can tell, he doesn't spare them from the same kind of horror he inflicts upon the adults,"

"Oh my,"

"Yeah,"

"Why do people listen to your hunches. Even without any concrete evidence?

"I'm a psychologist, I have a way with people. They tend to do what I say... with the right methods,"

"That's actually a little creepy sounding,"

"Sorry, I'm pretty well-known,"

"Will you be briefing the investigators later?"

"Yes,"

"Do you have a suspect?"

"No. Whoever it is, they're too good for that,"

"I see,"

"But, I'll find one, eventually,"

"Good luck, I hope to see whoever this is behind bars, or worse, very, very, soon,"