When I used to be human, soul and flesh, I was quite intrepid.

I remember that time I ran into a dark forest seeking for my cat… but I’ve never had a cat. Or maybe those times I used to talk with my friend Lorence when I was eight… but my mom swears I never had any friends.

Okay, those memories were quite weird when I was that young, but nothing like that could caught my attention as much as the tv shows that I definitely weren’t supposed to watch at that age.

Grown ups with big gadgets and a bunch of stuff seeking for something in “haunted houses”, I found it amazing. Awesome. I wanted to be like them.

Anyway, I didn’t have the time to be one of them, I was quite busy studying when I was in high school. But I got some friends in there, those typical weird kids who no one wants to hang out with, but I did. Because they were what I dreamed of being when I was a little kid: Ghost-hunters.

Call me stupid if you want, you wouldn’t be wrong anyway, but I felt so lucky to have such powerful and fearless people around me. I felt like a god or something like that, you know? Pretty eccentric but that was me.

And it was funny, entertaining and it distracted as I studied as well. So my parents forbade me to be friends with them.

That doesn’t mean I stopped, though. Listening to their stories was the most interesting part of my week. Tuesday afternoon at library, some hot chocolates… and something like this:

- / / / /, you’re not gonna believe us! Yesterday we found a ghost this big!- He opened his arms and smiled vigorously, I don’t remember very well his name… uhm, Max?

- Yes! He was hiding but we were even smarter and we caught it - Stacy, messy curls and high-pitched voice.

- Oh, really? And where is it then? - I asked, trying to act disinterested and skeptical.

- Right here… - John, the biggest one and the leader, put on display a black jar covered in talismans. It looked old and dirty.

- Where did you say you found this? - I asked as I pointed at the jar.

- At the Penguin’s abandoned mansion. -

- You mean that fat man who used to own that food company? - I took a sip of my warm chocolate.

- Yeah , that one. And we have him right here now - Max laughed, a loud and proud laugh I’ll never forget… because it was the last I heard.

- He died in that mansion. - Stacy started relating. - He was found at the second floor with a knife in his chest, but the police couldn’t determinate if it was an homicide or a suicide. So he was just reported dead.

We all went quiet after her words, but I was curious about something.

- You know… I’ve heard that Ghost-hunters sometimes go missing after their missions. But you never really get hurt or anything, guys. Why?

They were silent for a whole minute, and then, John sighed.

- Well, we didn’t want to—-

He was interrupted by one window, the wild wind outside opened it, making a loud noise.

Max calmly went to close it up, and then… someone got into the library. The library that we always used because it was always empty.

- I need your help. - it was a girl from my class.

Uhm… let’s call her Miriam.

- Oh my god, Miriam. You’re soaking wet! Come in, come in - Stacy almost fell to the ground when she rushed to Miriam.

- Please. You’re the Ghost-hunters, right? I have a case, a big one.

We all turned to each other and nodded to hear her story.

A missing woman had been found dead at the garden of the last house on Benfield street. The one next to Miriam’s, and also the one where police had found dozens of bodies buried under the rubble and garden over the last decades.

The thing was that Miriam heard all nights the same sound, like a lullaby but with an insufferable high pitched voice and then… a scream. Every day at the same time in the evening, when the sun is totally set, since the day the poor woman was moved to the cementery.

The house was empty, no one lived there and the body was long gone. So nothing was left, what was it?

.

.

.

I won’t make it too long, I told my parents I would study all night in the library and secretly went with John, Stacy and Max to Miriam’s house.

Her house was beautiful and all, we stayed in the backyard to listen for the song.

But something was wrong, the song started earlier than the hour Miriam told us and we had to go to investigate.

An old, creepy house. Maybe it looked nice in the morning but at night it’s like it came straight from hell. The sound didn’t make it any easier and it got louder as we moved deeper into the other backyard. It was full of trees and bushes, not easy to look through.

After some minutes, I don’t remember exactly when. I was the one leading.

The sculpture, I still remember it, it was that typical almost nude woman in white silk posing. I… pointed it out and smiled as I showed it to the others. But I guess I was too caught up in my own world, because when I turned to look at them. They seemed scared, terrified.

I’ve always been the funny one.

- What? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost—-

Those were my last words before something took me away from behind, hitting me in the head strongly enough to kill me.

. . .

- Aaaaand well, that’s how I got to met all of you, guys!- I smiled at the other ghosts, they were from different sizes, shapes and colors. But they were all looking at me with wondering faces… I think, I mean, they don’t have what you would call faces but something like that.

- The sun is setting… - a hoarse voice echoed through the crowd - it’s time to hunt.

I chuckled a bit as I stood with the rest of them in the Benfield street’s haunted house.

Let me tell you what I’ve learned since I died:

Just like some humans hunt ghosts, some ghosts hunt humans.