He only kills other ghosts!
The world had endured some pretty grim stories that arise from the evil that men do. Serial killers have acted as judge, jury, and executioner, taking the lives of others into their own hands.
But what happens when a serial killer takes the afterlives of others into his own hands?
That’s the cast with Curtis Howard Perkins. Perkins, who died seven years ago at the age of 39, wasn’t much of anything during his life: a drifter, a car thief, a drinker who started off on beer when he was eleven and ended up on Sterno just weeks before his death. “Sterno’s not so bad,” said Perkins.
Perkins passed away in a tragic train-and-motorbike accident, at which point he was converted into a ghost, and condemned to forever haunt a large Victorian mansion located near the train tracks. “It was run-down,” said Perkins.
The house, at the time occupied by an old woman who was half-deaf and more than half-blind and as a result was immune to being scared, was then sold to an attractive couple from the city who seemed to notice Perkins when he wailed mournfully or made the sound of rattling chains. And he noticed them as well. “I watched them doing it,” said Perkins.
But after two years, they got a divorce and moved out. Perkins was devastated. A sane ghost might just have cried tears of invisible vapor and moved on. But Perkins, it seems, did something far more sinister. He began to kill other ghosts.
NEDRA!
“Now, listen,” said Alice Glennings, a parapsychologist who was also the female half of the attractive couple who briefly lived in the mansion. “First let me say that I didn’t move there by accident. I was investigating paranormal activity. Spooky stuff. But then Marvin and I started to fight, and he cheated on me with Nedra Taboroso from the restaurant where he eats lunch every day, and I messed around with Jim from the bank, not that this is stuff you guys need to know, it’s rather private, though I will say that I referred to Jim as ‘Jimi’ because he could really play, and I don’t mean the guitar, but mostly it’s private, and really all I wanted to say was that Curtis Howard Perkins is a murderer.
“Rather than kill living people, he has been killing ghosts. Since I have been monitoring the house, he has stabbed four ghosts, shot two ghosts, slit the throats of seven ghosts, and killed fourteen using his preferred method, which is poisoning. Let me anticipate your next question. Yes, it’s true that ghosts are already dead and so cannot technically be killed again. But they move from their living state to their ghostly state and begin to feel stable and comfortable, so re-killing them in this way creates a whole second level of psychic pain that is an injury roughly akin to what a living person feels when killed.”
POLICE ARE BAFFLED
“And,” said Marv Glennings, a police officer, “when I heard about this killer ghost, I kind of remembered him from our house, partly because of the wailing and the chains, but mostly because when Alice and I were in the altogether I would see him standing there in the corner, watching us. I’m not much to look at, to be honest. Maybe when I was twenty. But now I’m just your basic middle-aged cop. Donut hips, Alice likes to say. She is really something. Sense of humor, smart, and she is something to look at. Just ask the ghost. Anyway, I completely regret what happened between me and Nedra Taboroso. I think Nedra’s sorry, too.
“She really loved Juan, her husband, and I’m sure that she wishes she could just turn back time and fix things with him. And I don’t even begrudge Alice for the month she spent with Jim, though I could have done without hearing about that Jimi nickname. I used to like ‘Little Wing.’ But here’s my dilemma. When a ghost kills a ghost, what are we supposed to do? We can’t charge him with murder. We can’t lock him up. The best I can think of, and I’ve said this to the entire PD, is that we can shun him. Shame, I say. Shame.”
Perkins will not confess to the killings, but he will not deny them either. “Maybe,” he said.
The Glennings have recently discussed a reconciliation, and have started to set aside money for an honest-to-goodness exorcism.
Neither Nedra Taboroso nor Jimi could be reached for comment.
