Strange Murder

"What makes you think so?"

Alice questioned, her fingers clenched tightly around the mug she held, causing her knuckles to turn white. Her brother has always been a sensitive topic for herself.

Aaron is her beloved twin brother. Kind, brave and charismatic. He's a hero in her eyes and she respects him deeply.

Although he is only four minutes younger than herself, that didn't change anything at all. Their companionship is the tightest as both know and understand each other like ABC.

Her brother liked mysteries and was always adventurous. So from a very young age, he had always wanted to be a member of the Ghost Hunter Association.

He joined eventually, becoming a fully-fledged Ghost Hunter at the age of eighteen. But right after that, Aaron was assigned his first mission at Dozar town square.

This was where things took a really bad downturn.

Alice winced remembering this incident because it left a bitter aftertaste. The way she saw it, Aaron wouldn't be in this predicament if he was never involved with the GHA, which was no better than a shady organization in her eyes.

At first, what she had was a hunch, but it later developed to a bad premonition.

When Aaron contacted their family and informed everybody that he would be away on a mission, for some reason Alice had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right, that the association were keeping tabs on her brother to ensure that he wouldn't let their secrets out.

So when Aaron said that he wasn't able to give details of the upcoming assignment at Dozar Town. Alice wasn't surprised and she knew at that moment, that her suspicions were coming true.

As much as she tried reaching out to warn her brother, she couldn't. Her hands were tied and she had limited information. Even if she had the capacity to prevent Aaron from taking up such a task, Alice felt she wouldn't be able to.

It was Aaron's dream to be a Ghost Hunter and she didn't have the heart to crush his chances.

Still, Alice blamed herself. If only she had a heart of stone, if only she wasn't so soft.

Aaron would have still been alive and not missing.

Her brother would have been safe by her side and not amongst the victims of Dozar's strange ghost tide.

So when she heard Karen voice her suspicions on Aaron's case, Alice couldn't stop her emotions from surfacing.

She thought she would be able to atone for her wrongdoings by finding her brother and possibly rescuing him, but how could she be hopeful if he had already died per Karen's claims. Or if the worst thing really happened to Aaron...

No!

She didn't want to think that far. Alice couldn't bear the thought, she has to find a way, if it's the last thing she'll ever do.

"Is it ok if I speak? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring up a painful memory."

Karen tried to be emphatic to the purple haired teenager sitted across her. She was not a psychologist, yet she was able to keenly observe that Alice's emotions were fluctuating. She didn't want to bring up the past, but it was something they couldn't avoid no matter what.

"Don't mind my tears, I need to hear this. Go on." Alice gestured.

Her eyes were moist and she was currently sniffing, but she insisted on hearing what Karen had to say.

Karen sighed. "Take a look at this."

She turned open the folder and flipped a few pages, stopping at a random leaflet, she then pointed at a taped photo with her index finger.

"Here." Karen indicated, positioning the folder so that Alice could see what she was pointing at.

Alice's gaze landed on the file in front of her, before moving to an image on the center of the page. The picture was a bit blurry, but what it illustrated was very obvious.

"Do you know what that is?"

"A corpse."

Karen nodded. "That body is three days old, the locals said the victim was a Ghost Hunter before he got killed. Wanna know how?"

Alice didn't reply, so Karen took that as a cue to explain.

"He wasn't attacked by a ghost, neither an undead, but someone much more... menacing."

Alice arched a brow. "Someone? Karen are you sur-"

"I know what you want to say, and yes, I have proof." Karen interrupted before taking out another photo and handing it to Alice.

Alice grabs the picture and takes a look at it. A frown etches on her face.

"Is this another victim?"

"The same, when he was alive." Karen corrected her.

Alice held the photograph of a young man, he looked to be in his late twenties and wore Hunting gear. The man in the frame was in a walking motion. If one were to take a closer look, his eyes were hollow and seemed to have a darker tint than normal.

Alice placed the two photos beside each other and compared their features.

"Notice anything... Irregular?"

Alice squinted her eyes to spot anything that looked out of place. Aside from the fact that the victim's body in the first photo was decorated with bruises and gaping wounds, nothing else was unusual.

"When was this picture taken?"

Alice wanted to confirm something, so she asked, pointing at the photo of the man walking.

Karen gave a smirk as she answered, "A few hours before the time he kicked the bucket."

She then interlocked her fingers

and leaned forward before adding;

"My cells were able to spot him patrolling city hall, just like the rest of his teammates protecting Void City. At first, we thought he was just an ordinary Hunter, but that wasn't the case. You see, this man always hurt himself physically... on purpose."

Alice wasn't able to stop her jaw from twitching. "I'm sorry, are you saying he was a masochist?"

Karen snickered. "Something like that, but there's more to it."

"After we discovered this strange habit, we allocated drones and put him under a twenty-four hour surveillance."

"Guess what we found?"

Alice groaned, she was getting impatient again, "Just tell me Karen, you're making this suspenseful."

"Calm down, I'm getting there."

Karen took a deep breath before continuing, "We discovered that the victim would hide all sorts of blades around the encampment where he stayed. His eyes looked strange, he would mutter curses, talk and laugh at no one in particular. Infact, the thing that baffled me the most was the sudden way he began stabbing himself repeatedly, almost as if... he was happy doing it."

Alice knotted her brows as she thought about this. Naturally, no one would intentionally begin impaling themselves for no reason. Unless that person is deranged, or an extreme masochist, no sane individual would think of doing such a thing.

It sounded disturbing, ghoulish rather and the more Alice pondered on the issue, the more troubled she became.

"This person... Karen, if what you said is factual, then it's possible that he was a vessel."

"Probably." Karen shrugged "Our devices also detected subtle traces of ectoplasm in the victim's body, they were very faint, but we were able to deduce that he was possessed."

"*Sigh*, this is troubling." Alice rubbed her forehead.

"Hmm." Karen hummed in agreement.