Being home alone can be fun... except when you're me, Amy Cahill. And you're sure that there's something weird is going on in your house.

For starters, we've got the perfect spooky atmosphere. It's raining, lightning strikes every second, and the lights keep flickering on and off. To top it off, weird things have been going on: I feel as if someone's breathing down my neck, or a random chill now and then.

It was probably all part of my imagination, of course.

(Right?)

And to convince myself of that, we've got our best friend, the TV. I made sure that all my lights were on before positioning myself comfortably on the sofa. The only way to forget that creepy feeling that's someone's behind you, is to distract yourself watching TV. I continued shuffling through the channels, but nothing seemed to grab my attention. I settled on a Suite Life of Zach and Cody rerun.

Suddenly, everything went dark.

When the lights were on again, I wasn't staring at the TV screen. I was staring at a rain-soaked boy, shivering and gazing at me with pleading eyes.

I dropped the TV remote.

The boy smiled wearily. "Good ev-"

I screamed.

"Calm down, calm down," he begged, holding up his hands.

I kept on screaming, jumping on top of my sofa. I'm not sure what was running through my mind that night, but I quickly grabbed a cushion and threatened the intruder with it. "D-d-d-don't take a step closer! Don't y-you dare!"

"Please, as if that's going to scare me," the guy said, frowning in an amused way.

"Don't you even speak!" I ordered.

"Look-"

"Freeze!" I ordered, pointing accusingly at him. "Don't you move."

The boy was too stunned to speak. "Wow..."

I grabbed the phone on the table next to me, not taking my eyes off the guy.

"How long has it been since I've been missing?" the boy mused. "It can't possibly be more than a day... how come your stutter is gone?"

I came to a halt from dialing the second 1 in 9-1-1. I stared at him blankly. "Stutter?"

Amber eyes gazed back at me.

Familiar ones.

My mouth parted open in shock. I quickly placed the phone back on the table shakily, not believing my eyes. "Ian..."

"The one and only," he replied, smirking.

I looked at him up and down, taking in his soaked figure, and somewhat surreal appearance. It was as if you could see he was there, but he wasn't.

"Anyways, you don't know how hard it was to get here," Ian continued, taking a seat on the sofa. "That guy kept chasing me around, and I-"

"Ian," I repeated, not believing that the Ian Kabra was in front of me.

"Yes?" he asked. His polite smile disappeared. "Though, I don't appreciate you cutting in when I was in the middle of an important narration."

I gulped. "How come... how... Ian, you've been missing for a year now."

Ian's mouth dropped open. "What?"

I could only stare at him in shock.

"No way," he replied. "It's just been a day since then... I know it..."

I could not process the scene that was unfolding in front of me.

"Was that what that lady meant about time not being the same when you're about to cross to the other side?" Ian mused. "So that's why it didn't come as much of a shock... maybe, somehow, that year really did pass, but I didn't..."

As Ian continued with his incoherent and senseless speech, I could only stare. And stare.

I knew what had happened to him.

I knew what I was really seeing.

But I simply couldn't let my brain process it.

"Ian," I cut in once again, holding my breath. "What in the world happened to you?"

Ian looked down, breathing out. He shook his head, staring at his muddy loafers. "I honestly don't know... all I have clear in my mind is that I'm... somehow, the great Ian Kabra has died."

I shut my eyes, falling back on the chair. I massaged my temples, not believing what I was hearing.

"I know this might've come as a huge shock... but I chose to appear in front of you because I know you wouldn't have fainted, or lock yourself up in a looney ward. I can come to that conclusion after seating next to you in nearly every single class," Ian explained, finishing with a chuckle.

"Chose to appear in front of me?" I asked. Everything around me felt as if it was a dream.

"Let me start from the beginning. I guess that I'm too excited from actually getting to see a person whom I've known throughout my entire life, so I'm speaking jibberish," he apologized. He took in a deep breath. As if nothing, the disheveled Ian regained his composure and returned to his usual British-rich-transfer-student self that he was three years ago, when we both were just fourteen-year-old kids.

I nodded, understandingly. Even though I didn't even know what was going on.

"You know I went missing yes-, I mean, a year ago," he begun. "Well, in that span of a time, the angel of death came to pick me up. On the way he explained that I had been murdered. Somehow, someway, it didn't come off as a shock to me. It didn't until I was about to enter the tunn... well, that's another thing you probably won't understand now. Everything came crushing down to me at once. I decided to push back the hurtful consequences of my death, and focus on one thing: my murder. I asked the angel if there was a chance... if there was a way I could return back to Earth and find out who had killed me. The angel agreed. I was immediately sent to an office, where more like me were waiting. When it was finally my turn, I got explained the situation: I only had a limited time. It's all measured in here-" He held up a rose gold wristwatch. "When the arrow rotates twenty-four hours in this, I'm to be sent to the afterlife. It doesn't mean I only have one day... but this clock measures my time like that. Well, they explained that a ghost could solve his or her murder by itself. But it would be more effective with a helper that was... well, alive. I immediately thought of you, Amy. And the road to get here wasn't easy, trust me. There's a group out there. They don't have a name, but they work as ghost hunters, you could say. They trap spirits that are still on Earth to experiment on them, or to study them. I was chased by one... one close to our age. Jake, I think? Well, the idiot's name doesn't matter. What matters is that I only have limited time to solve my murder, and on top of that, I have to escape from an imbecile who can't do anything better with his life than chase around gho-"

My eyes rolled back, and as soon as they closed, I fainted.

Ian could only stare at my unconscious body. "Well."

Just wanted to drop by to tell you this is AU. Other than that, thanks for reading!