Disclaimer: I do not own the "blonde boy", Only the strangers who find him.

Chapter 1: Gravedigger

Dilapidated house. Winter storm brewing. A lost soul all alone. Shivering, laying on a small mattress with no blanket and barely a solid roof over his head, the blonde boy closed his eyes and curled up into a tight ball; ready fall into a peaceful slumber and never awaken again. The wind whistled outside as the storm grew stronger. The temperature continued to drop as the night carried on; freezing the young boy's body to its core. He lost feeling in his fingers and toes, then his arms and legs. He soon found himself too cold to stay awake and fell into a deep sleep. The last thoughts that circled in his mind were thoughts of his fellow band mates; the very people who abandoned him a week before. He thought they were a family, but apparently he was mistaken. A lone tear fell from his eye as he closed them for the last time. The boy never woke up again.

A female figure approaches the dilapidated house, clad in a black trench coat and wearing a top hat. She quietly enters the house, being careful to push the door open without it falling off the rusted hinges. Stepping lightly, she walks to the room where the boy is laying, now lifeless. She approaches his side, reaches out with a gloved hand and caresses the side of his face gently.

"It's too late for this one." She speaks to herself. She retracts her hand from his face, reaches into her coat and pulls out a notebook. A man, dressed the same as she, appears from the shadows behind her.

"What do you want to do with him?" he asks casually. He leans against the wall, waiting for his friend's response. She reads from her notebook and marks something down before returning it to its resting place in her coat.

"…He wasn't supposed to be here. No one has lived in this house for years, and according to protocol, we should take him somewhere else so he'll be found, identified and buried by the proper authorities. But…" she trails off leaving her statement unfinished.

"What's wrong?"

"He has this mark. Come take a look." She carefully brushes the boy's long hair back, exposing part of his neck and revealing a small symbol. A pointed cross above an "X". When her friend sees the mark, his eyes widen for a moment before he turns to look her in the face.

"You can't be serious…"

"This isn't a coincidence. That is a legit No-Life tattoo, which means he has technically been dead for ten years."

"That can't be right he just popped up on our radar as we were passing by! He couldn't have been dead for ten years and we're just now finding him. His body isn't even decaying yet." He pokes the boy's chest as he speaks. The girl slaps his hand hard.

"Have you no respect for the dead! Anyway, I think I know what happened to him. And if I'm right, we need to get him out of here now." She checks her watch and pulls out her small notebook again. She opens to a fresh page, writes something down and tears the page out of the book. She says a prayer quietly and places the paper on the boy's head. It glows for a moment, and then disappears. She opens her notebook again, finding the page she tore out. "Okay we have approval to move the body. Pick him up, we're taking him home."

"Home? We're not burying him?" he asks as he bends over to scoop up the body into his arms.

"No. We don't have authorization to burying someone in his case. He was supposed to already be dead, remember? We're going to take him home with us and figure out what exactly went on with him."

"And we're going to do that how?"

"Well…we're going to call his spirit back. It shouldn't be too hard. I'm willing to bet it's in purgatory." She looks out the window at the half moon in the sky. "Come on, let's go." The girl walks out the same way she entered; her guy friend simply disappears into the same shadowy corner which he appeared with the boy's body in his arms.

A/N: Okay, not my first fanfic (or second, or third) but the first I am willing to upload to this site. Critics are welcome, please review!