The phone eventually woke him up, but as he groped for it he was dimly aware this was ring five or six. Using all that psychokinetic energy really wiped him out. “ ‘lo?” he mumbled into the receiver, eyes still firmly closed.

“Wow Gryphon, you’re still sleeping?” Varner said. “Late night last night?”

He rolled over and opened his eyes, looking at the clock. Was it really one in the afternoon? Well, it wasn’t one in the morning. “Sort of. Didn’t really sleep well.”

“Ah.” Varner said it in a strangely suspicious way. Amazing how much suspicion you could pack in one syllable. “We found our guy.”

“The killer? Who is it?”

“His name was Harold Cook. He was a real estate agent, which explains his access to the building. Also he used to work in his Uncle’s butcher shop as a teenager, which would explain his proficiency at cutting up bodies.”

“You keep using the word was. Has he skipped town or something?”

There was a long silence, during which Mr. Aronofsky said, You’ve gotten way too adept at lying.

Varner sighed before saying, “He’s dead. Apparently he killed himself at the crime scene.”

“Wow. That’s weird. I didn’t think serial killers were the type who committed suicide.”

“Generally they’re not. They have no qualms about hurting others but want to preserve themselves at all costs. There’s another oddity as well.”

“Oh?”

“We only found his prints at the scene, on the gun, but there was no powder residue on his hands.”

Damn, he forgot about that. “Huh. That is weird.”

“Isn’t it?” he paused again, as if waiting for Gryphon to fill the void. But he didn’t, so he was forced to pick up the slack. “Look, Gryph, you had nothing to do with this, right? You or your … passengers.”

He snorted in disbelief. “My passengers aren’t known for using guns, and neither am I.” It wasn’t a lie – they weren’t known for it. Didn’t mean they hadn’t done it in this instance, though.

You’re more like a lawyer every day, Mr. Aronofsky complained.

Ouch, Hugh said. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?

Varner seemed to concede that with a noise that was half-grunt, half-sigh. “Don’t blame me for grasping at straws. This case just wrapped up really neatly, and cases never wrap up neatly, not when they involve so many deaths.”

“I can imagine.”

“Speaking of which, I guess you’re responsible for my interesting visitor this morning.”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes, wondering if he could put him on hold and go pee. Did this phone even have a hold function? “Oh? You’re not seeing dead people, are you?”

“Only in a manner of speaking. O’Leary came into my office this morning and told me what really happened during the raid. I should reopen the case, but I don’t know if I will. It will be ugly, and nothing will be achieved. It was an accident, and Cal’s already retired out of the force. But goddamn it, all those men on the task force deliberately lied and obstructed the investigation.”

“Jeff just wanted the truth known. What you do with it is ultimately up to you.”

“Not all the angry dead want revenge, huh?”

“Not really. It depends on the person.” Was he fishing, trying to pick up a hint, a clue to his involvement with Cook? Gryphon wasn’t about to give it to him.

After a moment, he heard the creak of a chair, and the sound of papers being shuffled on a desk. “I should say I got an okay for you to work as a consultant for us on a provisional basis.”

“Great. I guess I can get started after we get back from California.”

“Oh, you doing that murder house thing?”

“Yeah. It’s a good chunk of change, and it’ll get the guys some publicity, which ultimately pays the bills.” He figured he’d massively dose himself with Nyquil before getting on the plane. It would damp down the electrical activity and his passengers, although he told Clay to wake him if the plane got in serious trouble or a drunken businessman started to go Al Qaeda on everyone. Maybe he couldn’t help, but he sure couldn’t hurt at that point.

“But you don’t want it for yourself?”

“Fuck no. I deal with enough fucknuts already.”

Gee, thanks, Hugh said.

“Good luck with that.”

“Thanks. You too.” He hung up and shuffled off to the bathroom, still yawning.

He really didn’t like anyone talking to him when he peed, but since when did Ruby give a damn about propriety? It wasn’t her forte. Kid, he’s suspicious. You know he is.

“Yeah, well, suspicion and a quarter leaves him with a quarter. He can’t prove shit.”

Not this time. But if you work with the cops he’s gonna be constantly hangin’ over your shoulder, whether you realize it or not. We won’t be able to do what we usually do what we do.

He washed his hands in the sink, and didn’t risk a look at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t sure he wanted to look at himself right now. “That depends on what we tell him, doesn’t it?”

This is all so very disturbing, Mr. Aronofsky complained.

Maybe it was, but Gryphon figured if he was going to do this, he was going to do this his way. And having the cops in his line of sight was preferable to looking over his shoulder for them.

He dried his hands and went downstairs to find the house empty. Clay was probably back at work today, putting in some time before they had to take off for Los Angeles. Gryphon was too tired to throw something together, so he found a microwavable dinner in the freezer and nuked it, nursing a soda instead of making coffee. It was all caffeine.

He ate mechanically while rain pattered against the kitchen window like skeletal fingers tapping to be let in, and in the near perfect quiet, he realized he felt perfectly hollow, a Trojan horse of a human being. What was going to happen when he died? He assumed at some point the would have to die, but when? And what happened then? Although he occasionally tried, he still didn’t believe in an afterlife. Maybe, in his case, that was better.

He’d finished eating the frozen dinner that was somewhat bizarrely almost unidentifiable by taste, and found himself fighting back heavy yawns. He’d decided to go back to bed and just sleep until he was forced to get up for fear of bed sores when the phone in the front room rang. He wasn’t going to answer it, as he’d felt he’d talked to enough people today, but he had a nagging feeling he should pick it up. So he did, bracing for the worst.

“Oh, hey Gryphon, I didn’t realize you were there.” It was Kevin Holloway, one half of the lawyer couple that had owned the property where most of the Stanhope family was buried. The pair had actually kept in touch, why he wasn’t sure, except they knew something inexplicable when they saw it, and decided to keep it in reserve, in case they ever needed it again. Kevin was the one who hired Spirit Guides in the first place, as he believed their house was haunted more than his wife, who thought he was an idiot. He turned out to be right, but Gryphon wasn’t under the impression that the hard charging Rachel Davies ever conceded the point.

“Yeah. Clay isn’t, though. Can I take a message?”

“Actually, you’re the one I wanted to talk to. Do you remember that I was having one of the P.I.s contracted by the firm looking into finding Beatrice Broslowski Aronofsky for you?”

“Oh right.” Beatrice was Mr. Aronofsky’s wife, who seemed to slip off the edge of the world after her unmarried sister Edith won the lottery and moved to Florida. Bea was presumably with her, but they’d been unable to find either. “They found her?”

“Yes, she did.” Kevin paused awkwardly, cleared his throat. “There’s no good way to say this, so I‘m just going to say it. I’m sorry, but she died two years ago. She passed away in a care center in Ocala, heart failure. She’s buried in a Jewish cemetery outside Miami. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh shit.” He sat down heavily on the arm of the couch, as it was closest.

Poor Bea, Mr. Aronofsky said sadly. I was afraid of that, you know.

“Would you like the name and address of the cemetery?”

He rubbed his eyes, which felt like they were filled with sand. “Can you email me?”

“Sure. You gonna be okay?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. It’s Mr. Aronofsky I’m worried about.”

I’m fine, he protested weakly.

As soon as he got off the phone with Kevin, he sunk down on the sofa and asked, “What do you want to do?” Gryphon was basically asking if he wanted to leave or not. After all, all Mr. Aronofsky wanted was to find his wife. Now he had.

Gryphon didn’t want him to go. He was like the grandfather he never had, and was a rare voice of moderation, although his was the path very rarely taken. Yet it wasn’t fair to ask him to stay if he was done and wanted to go.

I don’t know, he admitted.

So Gryphon just sat there, watching the rain sluice down the window, and waited for him to make up his mind.

They were so energetic now that there was no way Gryphon could even get near a car, not to mention get in one. The wiring wouldn’t so much melt as totally vaporize, and he’d probably cause the windshield to explode. But he’d been hoping to take Harold back to the river, to where he’d dumped his victims, but it was too far to walk. Was it too far to walk to the store? He didn’t think so.

So he ended up walking the street with the stiff, seething Harold, who wanted to break away but hadn’t a hope in hell. Ruby had a death grip on him – no pun intended – but Gryphon hadn’t totally ceded control of his own body to her. Gryphon wanted a say in this, although he wasn’t completely sure why. For Anna, perhaps. Or maybe just because he wanted the nightmares to stop.

Luckily they were in a neighborhood where somebody walking somewhat zombie like didn’t attract attention, and by the time they reached the block where the closed down store was, no one seemed to be out on the street save for those passed out in shuttered doorways. As they walked across the parking lot, past and through yellow crime scene tape, he asked, “Getting déjà vu, Harry? You left a partial print, you know, as well as bits of victims. You just can’t get rid of all the evidence no matter how hard you try … at least not when you chop your victims up like cows in a slaughterhouse.”

“Who the fuck are you?” he grated through gritted teeth, barely able to talk. His voice was like a far away rumble, a garbage truck with a bad engine on the next block.

Gryphon sighed dramatically. “We’ve been over that. Consider me the agent of all your victims, because I am. And they won’t rest until you’ve joined them. You never did tell me how you thought you were gonna die.”

Harold was silent, deliberately this time, grinding his teeth like he was preparing to bite his throat out. He didn’t believe it, or at least refused to believe that something else was controlling him, and that he was completely fucking doomed. People’s powers of denial was astonishing. They honestly refused to believe this was somehow supernatural and beyond belief, yet very much happening. Gryphon supposed he used to be the same way, before the supernatural barged its way into his life and gave him no choice at all.

They marched across the lot in silence, the sound of sirens and car engines and stereos so distant it was like eavesdropping on another world. They were as grim as a funeral procession, but that was only correct. No, it wasn’t – execution was probably the correct term.

They didn’t have to, but they led him around to the back, even though they could have went in the front. It seemed to speak to symmetry. There was a new padlock on the door, but Ruby snapped it like it was made of balsa wood, and flung the door open, even though it was so warped in the frame it scraped on the floor with a noise so loud it was almost a screech.

But if they didn’t hear gunshots and bone saws out here, no one was going to hear that either.

Once inside the dark, empty store, it seemed wrong somehow. The forensic teams had cleared out a lot of stuff and moved other things around, and now there was a strange chemical scent lost amongst the old blood, the dust, and the mouse shit. Was that lumisol, the stuff they sprayed for bloodstains? Probably. Might have been something else too.

They weren’t alone, although Harold probably didn’t know that. The ghosts of his victims were all waiting here, fanned around him like they’d capture him if he tried to escape. Conspicuously missing was confused Rita, and Anna remained standing off to one side, as if still refusing to join the group she was tragically apart of anyways.

“So do you want to tell me what your major malfunction is?” Gryphon wondered. “What made you such a monster? Was it a bugfuck ultra-religious mother, like Ted Bundy? Or did you have a normal upbringing with two parents who never seemed to notice you were bringing strangers home and burying them in the backyard, like Jeffrey Dahmer? Please tell me you have a new story – you were abducted by circus people and fired out of a cannon against your will for the first ten years of your life? You saw your mother eaten by crocodiles? You’re your own Uncle? Give me something here.”

Ruby eased up her control on Harold, only so he could talk, not move. But he was still glaring at him hatefully, and seemed like he was trying to make his head go Scanners and explode. Sadly for Harold, only Gryphon’s passengers seemed to have that kind of power. “You don’t scare me.”

“Which proves you’re a moron. As well as impotent. Actually I was wondering about that, since you have kids. Did you fantasize about killing someone while having sex with your wife? ‘Cause you guys usually can’t get it up unless you’re hurting someone else -”

That did it; Gryphon and Ruby knew attacking his ability to get it up would get under his skin. It was true, though, that most serial killers were impotent, and couldn’t get a hard on unless they were hurting or dominating someone. It was a sensitive issue for these guys. “Don’t you talk to me like that! You don’t know me!”

“I do. I know all about you and all other men like you. I’ve stood with you in dark rooms one thousand times, you have killed me one thousand times, and only the faces and the weapons change. Most serials use intimate weapons – knives, bare hands, ropes – as a continuation of the sexual nature of their crimes. Death is the only true intimacy they experience with another person, because they can’t feel much of anything otherwise. But you use a gun, which tells me a couple of things about you. It’s phallic of course – that’s a given – and suggests you feel impotent in your daily life too. Constrained. You’re a powerful man, or at least you feel you should be, and you want everyone to know it. You’re no pussy, you’re no fag, you’re no peon – you’re a man, goddamn it, and you prove it by putting a gun to a woman’s head while she’s giving you a blow job and pulling the trigger. Damn, you’re such a man you‘re just oozing testosterone. Precisely who are you trying to convince?”

He was so angry, Gryphon expected to see cartoon fume lines coming off the top of his head. His face was berry red, and veins were throbbing in both temples. He looked like a boil about to burst. “Fuck you!”

“Is your wife a shrew? Was your mother? Why do you hate women so much?”

“I take out the trash!” he spat back. “They were parasites on society! I did the world a fucking favor!”

“Oh, you’re an altruist! I’m sorry I didn’t recognize that. You must be the next Mother Theresa.”

“I don’t give a shit what a fucking freak like you thinks. I know I’m right.”

“Of course you do. Much like crazy people never think they are, desperately wrong people never think they’re wrong. It’s like deliberate self-blindness.”

“You’re dead, freak,” he snarled, spittle flying from his bloody lips.

Gryphon gave him an icy smile so devoid of warmth it seemed to suck the air straight out of the room. “You first.”

Let me take over, kid, Ruby insisted.

“No, he’s mine,” Gryphon told her.

Confusion frosted the rage in his eyes. “Who the fuck are you talking to?”

“The dead. Keep up, Harry – we’ve been over this already.”

“You’re insane.”

He shrugged. “At least I’m not quite as batshit as you. But then again, who is?”

Make this fucker suffer, Sheila, still spokeswoman for the river victims, said.

Gryphon scrubbed a hand through his hair, wondering if they’d understand why he had to do what he had to do. Maybe he’d just get the explaining out of the way first. “Harry, I’m sure you’re a narcissist, like just about every other serial on record. They can’t love anything but themselves, because you’re perfect. Hell, you’re god, aren’t you? What I’m gonna do is make you act Human for once in your fucking miserable life. You’re gonna do the decent thing and kill yourself.”

Harold glared at him under lowered brows, his eyes as hot as lava. “What?”

Gryphon sighed, as Ruby had said the same thing inside his own head. Hugh, for his part, chuckled, apparently enjoying the show. “You said you take out the trash, Harry. You’re the biggest piece of trash I’ve ever met. Time to do your job, Jesus of Sunshine Realty. Take you out.”

Harold snorted disdainfully. “Now who’s the moron?”

“Oh, you’re doing it.” To make that point, he asked, “Ruby, would you do me a favor and take his legs out? I want him kneeling.”

Although the crackling electricity in the air let him know she was currently pissed off at him, she did as he asked, and just as Harold opened his mouth to accuse him of being crazy again, his legs buckled and he fell heavily to his knees with a painful thud. But Harold was too shocked to complain. “This isn’t for you, Harry. You’re a piece of shit who should be drawn and quartered and then minced while still alive. But while you were pretending to be Human, you somehow acquired a wife and kids, and you’re going to spare them the agony of a trial, of newscasters who ask her how she could not know what a fucking monster you are, or your kids getting picked on at school and people audibly wondering if your illness has been passed on to them, if they’re gonna be a psycho prick like you in ten years. I think you’ve had enough victims over the years; no need to add to the list.”

Now something like fear started to creep into his eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would. In fact, I have, several times. Haven’t you listened to a damn thing I’ve said? You’re neither my first or my last. This must be doubly horrible for you; you’ve just learned you’re nothing special after all. Since you were out hunting, you’re probably carrying your gun, aren’t you? Ruby, do you know where it is?”

“Who the fuck is -” he began, but stopped as the gun he’d been hiding beneath his shirt suddenly floated up into the air in front of him, the barrel aiming straight at his face. It looked like he wanted to lunge for it, but of course he couldn’t, as he was totally paralyzed. All he could do was stare down the barrel of his own .38 and wonder how the fuck things had come to this.

“Would you put the gun in your mouth,” Gryphon wondered. “Or under your chin?”

His mouth opened soundlessly, and then closed with a dry click. He swallowed hard, and tried again. “No one will believe I committed suicide.”

“Yes they will. The police are closing in on you. Your crimes are about to be splashed all over the internet in lurid detail; you’re jail bound and we all know it. And while it would be fun to see how long you could last in Oz amongst men who may be related to the women you killed – oh boy, wouldn’t that be fun? – I just don’t have the patience for that. Nobody wants to see your smug face on the nightly news, least of all me. Center of the forehead? A clumsy shot, but that mimics the placement of some of the bullet wounds in your victims. Perfect.”

The gun shifted slightly, moving up so the barrel was at the same level as his big, broad forehead. Harold’s eyes followed it with an almost incomprehensible blankness. He still had shark eyes, but the empty rage had been subsumed by a sort of cautious fear. He was finally beginning to grok that he was fucked. “You won’t get away with this.”

“Yes, I will. I always have.” He crouched down, so Harold didn’t have to look past the gun to look at him. “If you believe in reincarnation, hope that you come back a Human next time. If you believe in heaven and hell, pack some sunscreen. And if you believe in nothing at all, good, because you won’t be disappointed. Oh, and just for the record, you’re an incredible pussy, and you’ll always be remembered as such. Do it, Ruby.”

She pulled the trigger, and the sharp, loud blast seemed to fill the entirety of the empty store as the bullet slammed into his forehead and blew out the back of his head in a small fountain of crimson gore as his body jerked back and hit the floor, legs still bent under him at an awkward angle. It would have been painful if he’d still been alive.

I was kinda hopin’ for somethin’ more brutal, Sheila said.

“I’m sure the rats will gnaw at him a bit before the cops find him,” he told her, as Ruby let the gun drop to the floor. “Maybe they’ll take off something important.”

Well, formerly important. When you were a corpse, your body ceased to be important. Which was a good thing for Harold, because considering the condition of his skull, he was never going to look presentable again.

But Gryphon was allowed one of those moments that he’d come to cherish, a moment when his Greek chorus of the damned fell mercifully silent. He got to hear the white noise hum inside his head, the emptiness where thoughts should be. Of course he had none; he felt hollowed out, flushed, wiped clean. The crowds of people who had shared space inside him had carved away pieces of himself until he had nothing stored up anymore. But again, that was okay. He found he preferred the silent nothingness, as he so very rarely had it.

Once he got home, he went straight to his room for a nap, and promptly had a dream.

He was sitting in a chair outside a changing room in a small clothing boutique that looked kind of familiar, although he couldn’t remember the last time he shopped for couture dresses. Soft music played in the background, and the air smelled vaguely of vanilla and linen. As he sat, waiting to see what happened, a kind of dowdy salesclerk walked by, hanging up dresses and slacks that women had decided not to purchase. He recognized her as Julie, and realized what was going on. “Something bothering you, Julie?” he wondered.

Again, this was not like her. She didn’t talk much; she kept to herself. She was the perfect backseat driver in that you often forgot she was there. She paused by the racks and seemed to look at him reluctantly, as if he was invading her sanctuary. “Why do people do this?” she asked.

What the hell ..? “Do what?”

She made vague gestures that meant absolutely nothing, then gave up with a sigh and let her arms collapse to her sides. “Hurt each other. All we seem to do is find people that hurt each other.” She paused briefly. “Men. Men who hurt women.”

“Sometimes they hurt other men too. And kids. And sometimes pets.” Her facial expression grew increasingly stark, suggesting this was the wrong tack to take. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. Except occasionally we run into a woman who’s done something awful. They just have a tendency not to be serial killers – that’s more of a man hobby.”

Her eyes flashed briefly with pent up aggression. “Why?” This is what bothered him about Julie: he always got the sense she was a time bomb, an accident waiting to happen. And who would blame her? Beaten to death by a husband she had grown to hate. She was one of those people you could describe as “She was always so quiet” when the news crews came around to ask you if you knew your neighbor was going to go off and shoot up a mall. She was the perfect picture of a person pre psychotic break.

“I don’t know. One almost killed me too, you know. It’s just … there’s a lot of sick people in this world. I don’t need to tell you that.”

Julie turned away in disgust, fussing pointlessly with a rack of dresses. “But why?”

“I don’t know. If I knew, maybe I could prevent it somehow. As it is, all I can do is clean up the mess that they are. And, you know, if given a choice, I wouldn’t even do that. I always wanted to be a slacker.”

She didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor (or was it honesty? Being a slacker sounded great) as she turned away even more and went off to find something else to do. “I just want it to stop,” she said so quietly he could barely hear her. “I don’t know why I’m still here.”

Before he could answer her – well, no, before he could think of an answer for her – a phone rang, drawing his attention away. As soon as he realized there was no obvious phone within the boutique, the dream tore around him, fractioning like a pane of glass, and he woke up blinking into his pillow. The phone kept ringing, and cursing at it didn’t make it stop.

Finally he crawled out of bed and found the phone, and made a gravelly noise that could have been interpreted as “Hello”. “Are you okay?” Varner asked.

“Fine. I’m just tired,” he muttered, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“I bet.” He said it in such a way that he implied he wasn’t sure how he ever got up. Or maybe he was reading too much into it.

“Look, I only called to let you know that you’re off the hook for today; I don’t think I’m going to need you. We’re still running the partial print, and we’re getting stick from the real estate place in charge of the store’s lot.”

“Stick? Why?” Gryphon remembered he went to sleep damp, which might explain why the sheets were clinging to him like cellophane. It felt like they were trying to hold him down, and he could barely move.

“Supposedly the boss of Sunshine Realty is away on vacation, and the sycophant who’s filling in for him isn’t sure he can release the records of everyone who might have had access to the property without his blessing. Can you believe that? People have been killed and chopped up on the property, and this fuck’s worried his boss’ll be mad if he gives us the information.” Varner snorted derisively, and he heard a faint thunk, like he’d just slammed something down on his desk. He imagined it was a coffee mug. “I told him this guy could kill in the meantime, he could flee the state, and this moron tells me it’s all “hypothetical”, and his job isn’t. I’m runnin’ this guy’s record – he’s gotta have a parking ticket or something I can harass him about.”

“Death is an abstract thing when it happens to strangers.”

Varner paused for a moment. “I don’t know if that’s philosophical or monstrously depressing.”

“Probably both.”

Varner grunted. “Probably.”

There wasn’t much else to their conversation, although Gryphon offered to pay him a visit and scare the shit out of him. Jason thanked him and turned him down … for the moment. He said he’d get back to him.

Gryphon didn’t feel like sleeping anymore, so he peeled himself out of the blankets and went to take a hot bath. He sat in the tub until he could feel the warmth in his bones, and then he dried off and found some warm clothes to wear. Since his chorus remained blissfully silent – maybe they were tired too – he decided to go downstairs and try the computer.

He didn’t do it a lot for obvious reasons, but when he got to, it was a fun time waster. Thanks to his passengers he knew of a lot of porn sites, but there was no way he could visit them with a crowd looking over his shoulder and commenting. It was just too weird.

Spirit Guides did have an email address accessible to them all, but Gryphon never liked to check it. After all, now that they were starting to get well known, people were starting to email him, wanting him to make contact with their dead son or grandmother, not understanding that wasn’t how his abilities worked at all, and he was not some comforting con man who asked a handful of leading questions and then told them what they wanted to hear. He was rarely the harbinger of good news. How could an angel of death ever be good news?

Tad dramatic there, sport, Hugh said.

Perhaps. But if he wasn’t an angel of death, what was he?

Out of curiosity, he entered Sunshine Realty into a search engine, and finally narrowed down the categories to Oregon (he hadn’t expected so many Sunshine Realties). He checked out the website of two that were closest in the area to the store, and they were very basic, unimpressive things. There were small pictures and descriptions of homes and apartments and other properties available in the area, from run down trailers to million dollar condos. (The latter of which always baffled him. If you had a million bucks to drop on a home, why the fuck would you do it on a condo?)

Eventually he skipped over to the realtors page, and saw that the Sunshine people wore ugly mustard yellow jackets and similar empty smiles, making them look like Stepford real estate agents. You might by a home from them, but only out of fear that they’d lay an egg in your chest if you didn’t.

His eyes glided over the eerie, insincere smiles (although the vaguely sincere smiles were honestly creepier), and then something made him stop scrolling down the page. It was a thumbnail sized photo of an agent named Harold Cook, who had an almost perfectly capsule shaped head, highlighted by the fact that he was one of those bald guys who shaved their wispy strands off in the hopes that people would think they were trying to be cool, not trying to hide a lack of follicles. He had a long chin, pointed, which added to the capsule look, and his eyes were almost lost beneath beetled brows that suggested his hair, when it existed, was a sort of blondish-brown.

He looked so bland, so ordinary, he blended in well with the page. Gryphon wasn’t sure why he’d stopped here, and then he realized it was the eyes. He’d seen those eyes looking at him through a visor worn over his face to protect him from the blood splatter. This was him; this was the river killer.

The screen fuzzed and jumped like a t.v. with poor reception, and Gryphon pushed himself away from Clay’s desk, the wheeled chair carrying him across the room until he slammed into the far wall. The computer looked okay, but who knew for how long?

Call Varner, Mr. Aronofsky insisted. Let him bring him in.

“That isn’t what they want,” Gryphon told him, returning to his room to grab his coat and car keys, and put some dry shoes on. “Besides, I found him first.”

He was in the phone book, and why not? It wasn’t like serial killers would get special private numbers. They were psychopaths with some concept of normalcy – they didn’t like it, but they knew they had to pretend to be like everyone else, to be anonymous, to hide their fixations to get away with it. If they blatantly flaunted their preoccupations, they’d be caught quickly. To keep killing, they had to pretend they were so average you’d never notice them. How awful that must have been for them, to hide in the closet like boogeymen, and pretend to feel things like everyone else. They probably would have made fabulous actors if killing people didn’t give them such a hard on.

He almost called his number, but when he picked up the handset, he heard static crackle like tin foil, and knew his power was building up. It was mainly Ruby, of course, seething just below the surface, but no one was too thrilled with the idea of a serial killer. They and the pedophiles just didn’t have a huge fan club.

Gryphon drove out to the address listed with his phone number in the book, as it was only a few miles away. He lived in a leafy suburb known as Deer Point, in a two story pre-fab house painted a delicate blue-grey, with a neatly trimmed lawn and sparkling clean driveway. Children’s toys were scattered about the lawn, and Gryphon stood in the driveway before becoming aware of the voices of children and a woman inside the house, along with the sound of a television.

He didn’t need to go up and knock on the door to know Harold wasn’t here. Somehow he sensed his target, the man he wanted, wasn’t within his range. He didn’t know how he knew this, except death recognized death; his ghosts would let him know where there were others. And Harold probably didn’t know it, but he was leading a ghost parade.

Gryphon drove out to the Sunshine Realty office that employed Harold, but he wasn’t there either. He sat in his car, frustrated, wondering where this fuck could be, when Ruby said, He’s hunting. You know where he likes to hunt. Go meet him there.

Of course. In retrospect, it was totally obvious.

He drove back to the bad side of town, where the store was, and even though the parking lot was still cordoned off with crime scene tape, he idled in the lot for a moment, until Anna appeared in the passenger seat, blood still running down the center of her face, dripping off her chin. “What’s up, chico?”

“Show me where he picked you up.”

She shrugged, looking out the passenger window before pointing down the street. “Go that way.”

He did. He followed her instructions, driving deeper into the sad part of town, the place where nobody came unless they absolutely had to, or was a psychopath hunting for an easy kill. Just beyond the corner where he picked up Anna was a very seedy looking bar, small and dark, set squat in a building that used to be a hotel and was now … well, who the hell knew, the signs were contradictory and unilluminating. The windows were dirty, beer bottle brown, and a lower pane in the chocolate bar shaped window had been smashed and “replaced” with plastic wrap taped in a thick layer on the inside.

Gryphon felt drawn to it, and knew what was waiting for him inside. “I see somethin’ funny,” Anna told him as he got out of the car. He never saw her get in, and he never saw her get out either; she was simply there once he was outside the car.

“What?”

“It’s … I dunno. Like a dark line.”

“It’s him,” he said, although he wasn’t sure how he knew that. “You can almost always find your killer. In a strange way, you’re bonded.”

“Ick.”

That summed it up pretty well.

Smoking had been banned from all bars, and yet as soon as he walked in, he was greeted by a smoky room, a layer of grey smoke curling around the dim yellowed lights like flocks of moths. Country music played somewhere, and the wood was so dark Gryphon felt like he was walking into a void.

Harold was easy to spot. He sat in the darkest corner, an untouched glass of beer in front of him, studying the hookers who were attempting to ply their trade with the sad sacks at the bar. As soon as Gryphon approached his table, he saw all the river ghosts – save for the deeply confused Rita – standing behind Harold. Anna remained beside him, though, as if afraid to join the entourage.

He pulled out an empty chair and sat down, staring across the cigarette burned table at Harold. “Hello. Remember me?”

Harold stared at him blankly, as if he was a hallucination from eating bad clams. “Who the fuck are you?”

“The end. Are you aware that the police are right now trying to get a list of people who have access to the store property? You must be on the list, Harry.”

He had a dead eyed stare, like a shark. “My name isn’t Harry.”

“It is whatever I say it is,” he told him. “I’m the last living person you’re ever going to talk to.”

He scowled at him, brow furrowing as his thick eyebrows dipped down towards his eyes. He was probably in his forties, a bit older than your usual serial killers. “You don’t wanna fuck with me, kid.”

“Oh, I know, you’re the big bad river killer. But I’m not a hooker or a junkie or a runaway, so I kinda fall outside the bounds of your usual victims.”

Now Harold had stopped looking through him and just glared at him hatefully. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. But you better get up and leave me the fuck alone, or you will end up dead.”

Gryphon smirked, as Anna said, “He really is a dick, isn’t he?”

“You can’t kill me, Harry. You can’t even touch me. You have no control here.” To prove his point, Ruby went to work. Harold’s hand raised of its own volition, and he looked at it, startled, before he slapped himself hard across the face, the noise of flesh striking flesh filling the bar. He did it so hard he almost knocked himself off his chair.

“What the fuck -” he began, but then he slapped himself again, his wedding ring catching on his bottom lip and ripping it open. The beer in his glass was sloshing, and the lights overhead were flickering.

“You really should stop hitting yourself. You’re causing a scene.” Anna and the other ghosts were laughing themselves sick over this. But people were starting to look over at the crazy man hitting himself with such violence.

Harold now stared at him in open disbelief, all attempts at his tough guy façade – which was probably real, a hint of the true monster peeking through his thin veneer of normalcy -disappeared in the face of his complete shock. “What the fuck are you doing to me?” he demanded, although his voice had lowered to a hiss.

“Introducing you to victimhood. Not fun, is it?” Ruby slid his beer glass across the table, and let it crash to the floor, splattering more cheap beer on a surface that was pretty much warped from the constant spills.

He was trying to move his hands, his body, get up from the table, but Ruby held him where he was. Beads of sweat popped on his forehead, and veins started to bulge at his temples. He was fighting it, but it didn’t matter. Hugh had already proven that the dead could pretty much be as strong as they wanted to be, and against the indignant hatred of Ruby, he wouldn’t have had a chance even if he was strapped to a Sidewinder missile in the midst of launching.

The bartender came over. Here, he had to double as the bouncer, a thankless job, and he was a large dark skinned man with the build of a high school linebacker who was about four years past his glory days. His head was shaved bald too, but it looked better on him, and when he crossed his arms over his broad chest, his biceps bulged like rising dough. “What’s goin’ on here?” he asked. He had the faintest hint of a Southern accent.

“This … asshole’s … crazy,” Harold said, spitting out each word through clenched teeth, like he could barely speak the language. His throat muscles were starting to cord; it looked painful.

Gryphon looked up at the bartender and shrugged, twirling his finger beside his head in the universal gesture for “bugfuck”. “Harry didn’t take his medication today. I’m supposed to bring him home.”

“Bull … shit,” Harold hissed.

The bartender’s almond eyes darted over to Harold, appraised him, and instantly dismissed him, looking back at Gryphon with the smallest wince of sympathy. “You need help getting him outta here?”

“No,” Harold gasped. He was ignored, like most of the genuinely mentally ill were.

“No, I got it. He’s usually a good boy for me.” Gryphon looked across the table at the straining, failing, battling Harold, and said, with truly irritating condescension, “Aren’t you, Harry?”

“Fuck you!” Harold snapped, a single pearl of blood tinged spit flying from his lip to the center of the table.

The bartender dropped a big, meaty hand on Harold’s shoulder, and said, “Let’s get you home, buddy.”

He was trying to be kind, and Gryphon was honestly touched to find someone who wasn’t completely burned out by people in such a place. He supposed he should have left him a big tip, but he hadn’t brought any cash with him; he’d have to come back and give him some another time.

The bartender hauled Harold to his feet, and he seemed stiff, like his joints had frozen. He probably thought that Harold really was suffering some side effect from forgotten medication, that he was a deeply fucked up individual, when really he was just trying to escape from an invisible straight jacket. When Gryphon moved beside Harold and grabbed his arm, Harold seemed to shiver, an attempt to pull his arm away from him that had no hope of working. But he was trapped and he knew it. Harold was trying to send a request for help with his eyes, but it honestly just made him look crazier, and the way the bartender gave Gryphon a pat on the back, he knew that no one saw anything but a crazy man being helped out of a bar before he started hurting himself even worse. It was probably driving Harold apeshit.

Good.

Gryphon “helped” Harold outside, really just hauling him out, while Harold’s struggle to escape remained mainly internal. As soon as they were outside in the cold, damp air, which smelled of mildew and exhaust, Gryphon sighed, and said, “You ready to have some fun, Harry?”

“What the fuck are you?” Harold demanded, his voice still strained.

Gryphon eyed him coldly, and gave him a smile that felt like a snarl, and probably looked like it too. “I already told you – the last living person you’ll ever talk to. So tell me, Harry, how did you think you were gonna die?”

He glared at him sidelong, his eyes white and wild. “You don’t scare me.”