If I can start over: A new world

X. Ghost stories. Part 2

I walked away from the booth and headed to the lobby. The office was closed, despite it being noon. There was a notice on the bulletin board in the small living room that connected the bathrooms, the waiting room, the storage rooms, and the laundry room.

"Closed for Trial," the ad dictated.

"Did a Weltlich kill himself here?" Vuk asked me.

"Yes, I heard that as soon as I got to the residence, and a guard told us the story. About the videotapes, and that the guy who supposedly murdered him was never found, so the trial was ruled a suicide and the residence went unpunished."

"How did the kid die?" Asked Vuk.

"Hanged, according to the guard."

"Should we take a look at it?" Francesca said.

"Okay, just let me find out when the boy died, exactly."

"I thought you knew, boy," Vuk scolded.

"Yes, but I only remember the month..." I confessed. "I didn't even remember the year, but it was worth watching this, right?"

"It's a lie," Francesca laughed. "He was going to use this excuse to verify what he had investigated."

"Puff... maybe yes, maybe no," I stuttered. "The important thing is that I got it right, right?"

I pulled out my phone and did a little research on suicides in Hiawatha, Dells. There were no immediate results, so I kept turning the pages of the search engine.

Obviously, I wasn't going to find the one I saw in five years. I was getting frustrated and about to give up, when on the eleventh page, I finally found something related: "Dead student in the dorm room." The page was current, from a few days ago, but apparently, it was well hidden so it's not so easily accessible, after all, the residence wasn't to blame for the mental disorders that can be found in its guests.

The note was highly branched. They spoke from the boy's childhood, until his current time at the University of Argentina. Miguel Ángel Nicolete, from a privileged childhood, son of the doctor of law Juan Francisco Nicolete and the professor of social sciences, Margaret Elissa Fermosel. Of European descent, and a prosperous future in the medical sciences.

Banalities about his life, which highlighted the good family he came from, but not how he died, why, or who was the main suspect. They touched on the subject of the guard, they wanted to blame him in the note, but the police were tied by the hands due to lack of evidence since the cameras reflected him doing his work in the rest of the buildings. At least I managed to get what I was looking for: the exact date of his death, February 24.

"I think I'm fading..." I commented, suddenly dizzy.

"Stick your finger in those holes," Vuk told me, pointing to the plug in the lobby waiting room.

"What?" I laughed nervously, hoping he was joking.

"Stick your fingers in," he repeated. "Cub, you need to recharge your Geist with energy. Before it was much more difficult, the astral had to return to the present and sleep for days, to be able to travel for months or carry magic stones with them. Now it is effortless. These compact heat generators are very useful."

"Don't be afraid," Francesca encouraged me. "Remember that your geist cannot perish."

I approached the socket, still anxious about what might happen. I stretched out my arm with my middle and index fingers apart and erect. I pushed them into the plastic until I touched the conductive metal. I felt a sting, like when I had a blood sample taken for my university medical exams. A small cramp went up against me until it was a shock that paralyzed my spine. I walked away from the plug, slowly. I shook my head slowly, my eyes closed and my expression wrinkled. I felt whole again. Like just woke up from the best dream of my life.

"It's been so long that I didn't even realize I haven't eaten in... I don't know how much time ago," I commented.

"It's because you don't need it," Francesca told me.

"You can do it to build up energy, but this." Vuk pointed back to the socket. "It's much faster."

I walked to the bathroom door and went back a couple of days to the day Nicolete took his own life. It was night. The climate was similar to what Hiawatha now feels. The cold that seeps into your bones and sleet that gets any hole in your clothes when it falls from the sky. It was already one fifty-eight in the morning. In a couple of minutes, the taxis would start arriving from the different local nightclubs, bringing with them sextets or quartets of mostly dizzy fellows.

We waited, and we were well rewarded for it. Getting out of a white cab, a young man with a slim build and spiky black hair got out and headed for Building One. It was Nicolete, without a doubt. I remembered it from the video I had just seen a moment ago.

We followed him closely as he entered and proceeded down the stairs. I was going incognito, like Vuk, so no one could notice our presence, at least if I didn't bump into someone out of carelessness. The gift allowed me to camouflage myself, but not to make myself diaphanous so that anyone could walk through me.

We went up to the third floor, where I saw the drunken young fellows on the side of the stairs. We followed him until he entered his room. For some reason, I remembered that moment. It was as if I had already lived it. The closer I got, the more familiar it all became. The door to his bedroom was open, and darkness reigned within. I could feel how something swayed in the air, how some sneakers bounced back and forth from the dark to the low light that managed to enter the room. I reached the door, and I saw it.

Nicolete was already hanged on the bedroom plinth. He was pale, with wet pants and excrement on his stockings. Fear had got the better of him, and his sphincter hadn't been able to withstand the sharp blow that broke his neck. Then I remembered. It was that dream I had a while ago. That nightmare took my breath away.

"This isn't right..." I looked at Vuk, right next to me. "We should get out of here... soon."

"What?" Before the Vucari could react or make any gesture, a gust of wind pushed us into the bedroom violently. I slipped and lost concentration, rebelling my presence.

"What the f**k?!" I yelled.

I hovered on the ground for a moment. Vuk fell on top of me, hitting my face with his paws. The lights came on and I could see it clearer to the corpse spinning on the ceiling. The same fellow from the first time I traveled. The one with the scar on the neck. I hadn't recognized him as clean and handsome. Now he looked more like him, all pale and with bruises on his face and arms. But if Nicolete was there, who was it that we had been chasing for a long time.

"So..." Nicolete's doppelganger spoke from the bathroom door at the end of the room. I was startled by the untimely appearance and walked away to the door. "Delyth, please close it. We need privacy here."

"Who are you?" I asked as the door closed itself.

"As I said, so you are Benjamin, the Erbe of Garpur." I sat down and rested my arms on my upturned knees, partially spreading my legs.

"In the flesh..." I replied. "To whom I have the pleasure?"

"With the one who comes to settle accounts," he said. "I am Bastian, son of Varick."