Things That Go Bump
System

Time, as it has a tendency to do, passed. Snoddy and Alex began seeing each other on the weekends, then eventually gave into their urges and became an official "couple." Blink came dashing into the office late on more than one occasion after running the newly pregnant Firecracker to and from the doctor's. Bumlets called in sick for a week straight when his eight-year-old son, Nathan, came down with pneumonia, then dragged himself into work the following Monday towing his daughter Maria behind him for 'Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.' All six men attended Katie and Melissa's ballet recital, then served as best men in Mush and Bittah's wedding three weeks later.

In his time working at Things That Go Bump Investigations, Alex had been forced to reconcile himself with the fact that other ghosts besides Spot and Kloppman haunted the office, and that they all thought he was good-looking.

His first run-in with a ghost was when he was walking to the restroom and he heard the sound wood breaking and crashing, followed by a girl's scream. He ran as fast as he could to the location of the screams, only to see a huge hole yawning in the middle of the floor. Alex looked into the hole and saw the crumpled, bloodied body of a blonde girl with shattered glasses, whom he later found out was called Gears, staring blankly up at him. Then, before his eyes, everything vanished.

Other encounters of the ghostly kind included seeing a short girl with long curly hair falling past him, screaming, later named Braces; a bloody, bruised redhead with a broken nose, nicknamed Tunes; a brunette, called Bookie, who tripped over nothing and impaled herself; and a girl referred to as Holiday who jumped off the wall and drowned in the floor.

Alex's most interesting experience, no doubt, was when he ran into the girl who called herself Gambler. Like Spot, she just seemed to pop up at random to harass the investigators. When he asked her how she had died, she blinked, then grinned.

"Um... a factory! Yeah, that's it... I was trying to save a burning baby! That's it exactly! The baby was on fire, better throw her in the water... look at her laughing, like a heifer to the slaughter..." She looked at Alex's skeptical expression. "No? Okay, enough. Um... I was shot because I used to be A BURGLAR! Ha ha! YES!" She winked, blew a kiss, and disappeared.


It was a bright Wednesday morning in May. Alex had been working for the investigation service for six months, four of which had been spent getting used to Kloppman grabbing his wrist daily.

As he reached for the doorknob, Kloppman grabbed his wrist.

"Password, please."

"Stop the world." The door opened and Alex stepped in, grateful for the respite from the sunlight. He'd been up late the night before—Princess had said she would call, and she hadn't, so Alex had called all of their mutual friends to get a lock on her whereabouts. Unfortunately, no one had seen her for the last few days.

Alex greeted Kloppman and began towards the office. An odd thumping interrupted him and he looked around, confused. As he watched, a semi-transparent boy of about fifteen slowly hobbled out of the wall, leaning heavily on a crutch. The boy made his way across, then stopped and stared at Alex. His large soulful eyes glittered with tears on the brink of falling. Alex shivered, chilled by the experience, and went on to the office.

"Cowboy," he said, setting his briefcase down and taking a seat by Snoddy, "who's the ghost with the crutch?"

"Crutchy," Jack replied. "We're pretty sure he was a poor kid, probably died in the early 1900s. No one's certain, though—we haven't had a medium since—since David." Once again, a look of inexpressible sadness flickered across his face at the mention of the dead medium. He shook himself, then opened a desk drawer and tossed Alex a large manila envelope. "Here. These are the instructions for your first solo investigation. It'll be perfect for you."

Alex opened the envelope and removed its contents, a single typed sheet of paper. It outlined the case in terse, impersonal terms. Apparently, there had been a rash of vampire attacks, mainly on the employees who worked at a bar called the Sphinx's Riddle. Alex's job was to find, investigate, and dispose of the vampire.

/The Sphinx's Riddle? Princess and I go there all the time. Wonder if I know any of the victims./

"Here's some other stuff you might need," Jack continued, pulling out a thick folder stuffed with photographs. He flicked through them and pulled one out, then handed it to Alex. It showed a young woman, around eighteen, dressed in a short, tight vinyl dress. Her throat had been ripped out.

"Kirsten Johnson," Jack said. "More popularly known as Vinyl. She was a dancer at the Sphinx's Riddle. Do you know of it?"

Alex nodded numbly, too shocked by the carnage and the fact that he did know the girl to answer aloud. Jack handed him a second picture, this one more awful than the first. It pictured a second girl, this one only sixteen or so, dressed in a leather miniskirt and a low-cut white tank top. Her heart had been torn from her chest.

"Elise Damon, better known as Stage," Jack said. "She was the barmaid at the Sphinx's Riddle." He pulled two more pictures out and set the rest down.

As he looked at the third picture, Alex felt hot tears spring to his eyes. The girl in the picture was in her mid-twenties, dressed in a simple business suit. Her only visible wounds were the punctures in her neck.

"The last one doesn't fit the pattern at all. She was a manager at J.C. Penney's. Name was—"

"Margaret MacEaver, or Princess," Alex finished hoarsely. He covered his mouth with his hand, trying to will back the tears. /Oh, Maggie . . ./ Snoddy wrapped his arms around Alex, pulling him close.

"You know her?" Jack asked gently.

Alex nodded. "We went to the Sphinx's Riddle together all the time." His voice broke on the last word and a few rogue tears slipped down his cheeks.

"I'll pull you off the case, then," Jack said. "Mush or Blink can handle it."

Alex shook his head vehemently. "No! I can . . . I can do it."

"Are you sure?" At Alex's nod, Jack handed him the last picture. It depicted a young man, about nineteen or twenty, with coffee-colored hair and chocolate eyes that sparkled behind circular, wire-framed glasses. He was laughing at something and seemed vibrant and alive.

"This is the suspected vampire. Goes by the name of Specs. Lives in the old Snyder place. That's really all we can find out about him." Jack looked at Alex again, taking the measure of him. "Dutch, are you absolutely sure you can handle this?"

Alex took a deep, shuddering breath, then met Jack's concerned dark gaze. "No. But I need to. For—for Princess." Snoddy squeezed him gently and dropped a comforting kiss on his neck.

He spent the rest of the day in a numb daze. He was uncharacteristically quiet and spent most of his time staring blankly at the carpeted floor of the office, his thoughts spinning far too fast in his head for him to deal with. When he left for the day, he missed Snoddy's lips by a mile and ended up absently kissing his earlobe.


Later that evening, Snoddy parked in front of Alex's apartment building and took a quick glance around. To his immense relief, he saw Alex's navy Corolla in one piece a few spaces down. He went in, bid a quick hello to the landlady, and ran up the five flights of stairs to Alex's apartment.

As Snoddy opened the door, a piece of pottery flew through the air and smashed by his head. Snoddy threw up his hands instinctively to protect his face from the ceramic shrapnel.

"Alex?" he called.

He lowered his hands and looked around in horror. Alex's normally somewhat clean apartment had been torn to shreds. Pottery was on the floor, smashed into thousands of pieces. Chairs were overturned and three of the coffee table's legs had been ripped off. In the midst of the wreckage knelt Alex, objects flying around his head and crashing into walls. He was sobbing hysterically and tearing at his hair, and, as Snoddy watched, the glass of a picture burst, and the picture itself fell to the ground, the frame snapping.

"Alex!"

At Snoddy's cry, Alex looked up. His face was blotchy and tearstained, and blood trickled down his face and hands from where he had been cut by shards of pottery.

"James," he whimpered. "James, it hurts . . . why did she die? Why?" He stretched out his hands to Snoddy, and the objects circling his head fell to the ground with a clatter. Snoddy picked his way through the debris and knelt carefully next to Alex, gathering the blonde man into his arms.

"It's okay, sweetie," he soothed, stroking the fine blonde hair beneath his hands. "Shh . . . it's okay . . ."

Alex trembled for a few seconds, then stiffened. "Oh . . . James, my head . . ."

"It's okay, angel," Snoddy said. "Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up." As if he'd spoken a magic word, Alex slumped against him, unconscious.

Snoddy lifted Alex as he had in their first case and looked down fondly at his face, marred with tears even in sleep, and shook his head. He carried Alex to his bedroom and set him down gently, stroking a hand along his face--

screaming crying why won't you die tearing slicing die already just die bleeding fading die why won't you die just DIE!

Snoddy gasped and clutched his heart. He stared at the sleeping form before him with a growing feeling of impending doom.

/Jack Kelly, if you have any human decency in you, you will pull Alex off of this case right now./

. . . just die . . .

/Before it's too late./

~end part four~

Continue to part 5