Sora stared up at the looming silhouette of the old house from the backseat of the car. The thought of moving had terrified Sora. It had terrified him the past four times he had had to move. The general air of spookiness that hovered over this house had not done anything to subside his nerves. Sora had just turned nine when his mother told him that they would have to move, and he would have to leave all his old friends behind. Again. She said that his friends could keep in touch with him, just like she had said every time they had moved. But no one ever kept in touch.

"The movers should be here any minute," his mother said, stepping out of the car and scanning the road for any sign of a moving van.

Sora stepped out of the car and onto the gravel driveway to stand next to his mother. He glanced up at the house again. It looked empty and sad, and just a little scary against the grey sky.

"Why don't we go in? It looks like it's going to rain. You can explore while we wait," his mother said as she grabbed his hand and led him to the front door. Sora would have rather waited outside. His mother pulled out her key and unlocked the door. The second she opened it, an eerie feeling washed over Sora and he felt unwelcome. His mother closed the door, and then took up a spot in front of the window to look for the movers. She turned to Sora. "Go on, explore," she coaxed him, shooing him into the house with her hands.

He reluctantly turned from his mother and faced the large oak staircase. He took a deep breath, and then slowly started to ascend. Almost every step creaked under his weight. Once he was at the top, he was faced with a closed door. He opened the door and checked the room. It was empty. Every room he checked was empty, and he had checked all of them, until there was only one room left at the end of the hallway. Sora was about to open the door when he thought he heard music playing. It was so faint that he was not sure it was even really there, and that maybe he was just imagining it.

After a few minutes, he wrote it off as noise from one of the neighbors, or that maybe his mother had found a radio. He pushed open the door to the room and walked inside. Something in the corner caught his eye. As he approached, he realized it was a book. He picked it up and paged through it. There were all sorts of drawing scribbled in ink on the slightly yellowed pages. The drawings were not spectacular, but they were still good. Sora decided he liked them, even though they all seemed a little sad.

He heard his mother call for him, and footsteps on the stairs. He spun around and hid the book behind his back. Sora could not explain why, but he did not want to share the book with anyone. His mother pushed the door open, and smiled.

"Oh, there you are. Did you find anything interesting?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

"Oh well. The movers are here. Come help unload the van."

"Okay, mum," he said with a weak smile.

She smiled and turned to leave. He watched her climb down the stairs before he frantically looked around the room for a place to hide the book. A loose floorboard that stuck out just a little above the rest caught his eye. He was in luck; the floorboard was easily lifted up. He hid the book and then put the board back in place. The book was now his own special little secret.

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Eight Years Later

Ominous storm clouds had begun to roll in over the horizon, looking dark and heavy with the promise of rain. It was almost inevitable that it would rain during Sora's walk home. He had to stop at the bookstore on his way so that he could pick up a book on Russian culture. For History class, of course. It was his least favorite subject. In Sora's mind, the past was irrelevant, whether he knew about it or not made no difference.

School itself was not Sora's favorite place. He was a bit of a loner. Even though he was often very cheerful and kind, he had only two friends, a girl named Kairi and a boy named Roxas. Other than that, he only had a few acquaintances, whom he had mostly met through Roxas and Kairi.

A bell rang softly as he pushed open the door. The bookstore was relatively small in comparison to some of the larger chain stores. The storekeeper looked up over his book and gave Sora a disinterested smile, then returned to his book. There was music playing softly in the shop, drifting dreamily through the air.

Sora made his way to the History section of the shop in the back. He passed two other customers browsing casually through the plethora of books. There was an entire shelf dedicated to History books. Sora skimmed the tags taped onto the shelves, just below the books with corresponding subject matter.

The sound of a clarinet danced through the air, singing a beautifully sweet and sorrowful solo. Sora immediately froze. He recognized the song. He had heard the same terrifyingly beautiful clarinet part playing softly in the dead of night in his house. It spooked Sora, and he knew he needed to leave. He turned and made his way quickly out of the shop and into a barrage of thick raindrops falling like miniature freight trains from the sky.

He did not want to return home, but he had no choice, as all the restaurants and cafés had closed, and he had no intention of remaining in the rain. With a sigh, he turned the corner and began the twenty-minute walk home in the rain.

He lived in an old house that was just on the outskirts of the town. The house was a century old at least. Sora had gotten weird feelings the second he had laid eyes on the house. Within the first week, he was already hearing disembodied footsteps, which were followed by doors and cabinets opening and closing, and miscellaneous items going missing. The worst part was when he would awake in the middle of the night to the faint sound of a clarinet playing its melancholic melodies. Before moving here, he and his mother had moved frequently, and Sora had been certain that they would not stay here long. Eight years had passed, and still his mother had showed no signs of moving.

Lightning lit up the sky with fierce intensity, and Sora could see the outline of his house rising above the line of trees for a split second. Sora quickened his pace, figuring that it would be safer in his house than out in the storm. As if to drive home the point, monstrous thunder shook the ground.

In no time, Sora was at his front door and fumbling with his keys. The raindrops had begun to fall with a newfound anger, and the sting they caused on Sora's back only made him move faster. He got the door open at last, and he rushed in and quickly shut the door. The minute he did, he felt very on-edge. His mother always worked late, and she would most likely not return until after he had gone to bed, leaving him alone in a big empty house that was most likely haunted.

Sora crept over to the bathroom, and peeled off his wet clothes. He hung them to dry over the bath, and then decided to go into the kitchen to look for something to eat.

Sora was crouched down and searching through the fridge for food when he felt the soft tickle of breath on his neck. He spun around, searching for the culprit, but there was no one there. "Who's there?" he called out timidly. There was no reply. He looked over his shoulder as he turned back to rummage through the refrigerator. He was turning on the stove to heat up his dinner when he heard footsteps on the floor above. He turned around once more to see if anyone was there, but once again there was no one. Clearly shaken, Sora tried to convince himself that it was just the rain on the roof. He took his food into the living room and turned on the television. He flicked through the channels, trying to ignore the nervous nagging feeling in the back of his head.

After a while, he turned the TV off. He glanced over at the clock and saw that it was late. Deciding that he best be off to bed, he stretched and got up. After placing his dishes in the sink, he began his climb up the stairs and to his room. A cold draft greeted him as he opened his bedroom door, and he shivered. That eerie feeling he had before was back.

Sora changed and got ready for bed. After finishing his nightly routine, he sat on his bed, suddenly struck with a feeling of loneliness. He got up and walked over to the floorboard that stuck out just a little higher than all the other floorboards and pried it off. He pulled out a black book with slightly yellow pages. Sitting himself on the floor, he began to flip through the pages he had flipped through so many times before. Looking at the crudely drawn pen sketches made him feel not quite so alone, and he liked that. They were perfectly imperfect. Closed eyes and little misshapen hearts were present in most of the pictures. The sketches were just outlines with no color, except for the occasional touch of red or blue.

He stopped at a drawing he particularly liked. It was of a boy with closed eyes and a content smile holding a heart in his arms. Sora ran his fingers over the boy's face and smiled to himself. With a sigh, he put the sketchbook back and replaced the floorboard and went to bed as the thunder and rain drummed on outside.

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A particularly loud thunderclap jolted Sora awake with a gasp. He looked over to the clock on his bedside table, which read 1:12. Sora sighed again as he lay back down. His room was illuminated by another flash of lightning, and that was when he saw the outline of someone in his room. He sat upright and backed himself up against his headboard.

"Shh, calm down," whispered the figure angrily, "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Wh…who are you?" Sora stammered back. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that it was a boy with long silver hair and green eyes. He smiled at Sora's failed attempt at communication.

"Riku," he said simply.

"…Why?" was the only thing Sora could manage to force out.

"Why? Because I used to live here," he replied. "C'mon, I have something to show you." He opened Sora's bedroom door and looked back at Sora. "I'm not gonna hurt you or anything. Just humor me." Reluctantly, Sora got out of bed to follow his intruder. Riku smiled at him, and then led him down the hall, down the stairs, and to the basement door. He flicked the light on and started down the stairs. Sora was still at the top of the stairs when Riku was halfway down. Riku turned around to look back at him.

"Come on, I'm not gonna hurt you," he coaxed. Hesitantly, Sora started descending slowly and cautiously. Riku led him to the back of the basement and the a large wood door with a padlock on it. He felt around the wall until he found the loose brick and pulled it out. He reached into the gap and retrieved a key, which he used to remove the padlock. The lock fell to the ground with a clang as Riku opened the door to reveal a hidden room.

"I thought…" Sora attempted to stammer

"It never occurred to you to get the lock removed?" Riku laughed. Sora shook his head, dumbfounded.

Riku made a motion for Sora to enter. Inside the room were a couple of shelves filled with various books, a good number of which seemed to be about music. Tacked up on the wall were various photographs and drawing that looked suspiciously like the ones in the sketchbook he had found when he first moved in. On one of the shelves there was an old record player, along with a pile of records. The back corner was littered with sheet music spread all over the floor, along with a music stand and a clarinet.

Sora turned to Riku. "What is all this?"

"It was my studio," he answered, "I think it used to be a bomb shelter or a pantry or something. I found the key when my family first moved in, and I kept it my secret." He ran his hand over one of the shelves, brushing away the thick layer of dust that coated everything. "I used it as my studio because it was out of the way, and no one else ever managed to find it, which meant I could work in peace."

Sora walked over to the shelves, skimming the book titles. He turned his attention to the pile of records, and looked through them. They were primarily jazz, although there were a lot of other artists that Sora had never heard of mixed in. He looked over to the record on the record player, which read 'Duke Ellington'. He found a shoebox tucked away in the corner and pulled the lid off. Inside were numerous pictures. Sora picked one up for closer inspection. The pictures looked technologically unadvanced, and they had lots of blurring around the edges, along with odd colors. They looked absolutely magical and dreamy anyway. They were all pictures of people, and on the bottom of each one was a name scribbled in pen.

"Who are these people?" Sora asked in wonder.

"They were my friends," Riku answered softly. Sora turned around to see him leaning on a wall casually, watching Sora poke around his studio.

Sora only nodded weakly and placed the pictures back. As he stood up the pictures on the wall caught his eye. The pen strokes and style was exactly like the pictures in the sketchbook. "I found a book…" Sora started.

"My sketchbook? I know. The room you're living in used to be my bedroom," Riku finished for him. He sighed, and stood strait. "Come on, I have something else to show you." He turned to leave, but then turned around suddenly and added, "If you ever need to, you can find me here."

This last statement confused and scared Sora. "Wait… What? You're going to be living in my basement?" he cried.

Riku smiled back in response. "You'll understand later," he laughed. He climbed back up the stairs to the main floor. Sora was a little unnerved. Riku was seeming more and more like some sort of crazed serial killer. He followed anyway, despite his better judgment. Riku was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. Once Sora caught up, he led him to the upper level and down the hall opposite Sora's room. He stopped at a door, a room that Sora recognized as the library. Riku turned the doorknob and opened the door, then walked into the room and waited for Sora to follow.

"What's the point of this?" Sora wondered.

"I just need you to get some perspective," replied Riku. He walked over to the far wall and stared at a small expanse of carpet. Sora could almost detect an air of sadness in Riku's eyes. "This…" Riku said softly, "Is where I died."

Sora froze. What had he just said? Riku turned to look Sora in the eyes. "I need you to solve my murder," he whispered. The room got deathly still.

"…What?" Sora choked out. Fear and confusion began to overwhelm him. The darkness around him seemed to thicken, and Riku's image became blurry and unfocused. Soon, darkness had engulfed the entire room, and Sora passed out.

A/N: Alright, first chapter of my first story. Right on.

So I know that the whole "haunted house with a ghost that needs his/her murder solved" is a little unoriginal and has probably been done before, but how many of those stories have a jazz-clarinet-playing ghost, eh? The title comes from an AIDS benefit album, which you should buy to support people with AIDS. It also has some FANTASTIC musicians on it, like Feist. That woman can SING.

So feedback would be fantastic. I'll hopefully get later chapters up relatively quickly. Especially because my summer break is a little suckish I don't have much to do.

Cheers.