I ran down the street, darkened by night, and could hear the growling and barking noises behind me. Growling and barking that sounded just like hellhounds.
I turned a corner and ran straight into a shopping trolley, falling over and taking it with me.
On the floor, I looked up to see a homeless man rummaging through a garbage bin.
"Run! It'll kill you!" I warned, pointing at the growling and barking.
The homeless man looked in the direction of my finger and saw a little Yorkshire terrier with a pink ribbon.
I got up and started running while shouting and screaming as I went.

In the morgue, the coroner opened the body bag on the gurney in front of us.
"Inspector Tyler, Inspector Perry, meet Frank O'Brian."
"He died of a heart attack right?" Sam asked.
"Three days ago," the coroner confirmed.
"But O'Brian was 44 years old and, according to this, a marathon runner," Sam held up the file he had.
"Everybody drops dead sooner or later, it's why I got job security."
"Yeah, but Franked kicked it here. Now, just yesterday, two healthy men bit it in Maumee. All heart attacks. don't you think that's strange?" I asked him.
"Sounds like Maumee's problem to me. Why's the FBI give a damn, anyway?" The coroner looked at me and Sam in our suits.
"We just want to see the results of Frank's autopsy," I said, ignoring the question.
"What autopsy?"
"The one you're going to do," I commanded.
After getting prepared, the coroner started the autopsy by cutting the body open.
"First dead body?" He asked us.
"Far from it," I answered.
"Oh good, because these suckers can get pretty ripe. Hey, hand me those rib cutters, would you?"
Sam took a fortifying breath and I handed the coroner the cutters; he cut the ribs and, out of the corner of my eye, I could Sam trying to keep himself from squirming.
"Is that from a wedding ring?" I moved Frank's hand toward me, looking at the white mark of a ring round his finger. "I didn't think Frank was married."
"Ain't my department kid," the coroner told me.
"Any idea how he got these?" Sam picked up Frank's arm that had scratches down it.
"You know what? When you drop dead, you actually tend to drop. Body probably got scraped up when it hit the ground. Huh!"
"What?" Sam asked, looking at the coroner's confused face.
"I-I can't find any blockages in any of the major arteries."
The coroner broke the heart out and I tried not to vomit.
"Heart looks pretty damn healthy," he said and handed the heart to me. "Hold that a second, would you?"
Standing next to me, Sam had a smirk on his face and the coroner cut something else inside the body.
Something that looked like blood squirted out and hit Sam in the face.
"Oh sorry, spleen juice," the coroner apologised, not seeming sorry at all.
Now it was my turn to smirk.

Later that day, me and Sam headed to see Frank O'Brian's neighbour, ask him a few questions.
"Tyler and Perry. Just like Aerosmith," the neighbour, Mark Hutchins, said.
I looked around the room while Sam questioned, "yeah, small world. So, the last time you saw Frank O' Brian?"
I saw a big lizard in a tank to the side of me and I faced forward.
"Monday. He was watching me from his window. I waved at him but he just closed his curtains," Mark answered.
"Hmmm, did you speak to him recently? Did he seem different? Uh, scared?" Sam asked.
"Oh, he was totally freaking out."
Sam looked at me and saw the freaked out look on my face.
"Do you know, uh, do you know what scared him?" I asked Mark.
"Well, yeah. Witches."
"Witches?" Sam raised his eyebrows and we looked at each other. "Like . . .?"
"Well, 'Wizard of Oz' was on TV the other night, right? And he said that green bitch was totally out to get him," Mark explained.
"Anything else scare him?"
"Everything else scared him. Al Qaeda, ferrets, artificial sweetener. The pez dispensers with their dead little eyes. Lots of stuff."
I looked around again at the animals in the aquariums.
"So, tell me, what was Frank like?" Sam carried on.
"I mean, he's dead, you know? I-I don't want to hammer him but, he got better."
"He got better?"
"Well, in high school, he was a dick."
"A dick?" Sam asked, confused.
"Like a bully. I mean, he probably taped half the town's butt cheeks together."
When Mark said this, I couldn't help but laugh; he didn't seem to like it as he frowned at me.
"Mine included," he carried on.
"So, he pissed a lot of people off. You think anyone would have wanted to get revenge?" I asked him.
"Well, I don't . . .Frank died of a heart attack right?"
"Just answer the question, sir," Sam demanded.
"No, I don't think so. Like I said, he got better. And after what happened to his wife."
"His wife? So he was married," I said, remember the white mark where his wedding ring should have been.
"She died about 20 years ago, Frank was really broken up about it," Mark told us.
I started staring at the snake that Mark had around his neck and he noticed.
"Don't be scared of Donny," he laughed. "He's a sweetheart. It's Marie you gotta look out for."
He nodded toward the couch I was sat on and added, "she smells fear."
As an albino snake started to slide over the back top of the couch and seeing it, I gasped.
Staying very still, in fear, the snake started crawling into my lap. Boy, I had to get out of there.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x -x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x -x-x-x-x
Later that night, I was sat in Baby, waiting for Sam and man, the inside of my left forearm was really itching but scratching seemed to do nothing.
The passenger door opened and Sam climbed in. "Hey, any luck at the clerk's office?"
"I'm not sure I'd call it luck," I answered and started to explain. "Frank's wife, Jessie, was a manic-depressive. She went off her meds back in '88 and vanished. They found her two weeks later, three towns over. Strung up in her hotel room, suicide."
"Any chance Frank helped her along to the other side?" Sam suggested.
"No, Frank was working the swing shift when she disappeared, Airtight alibi," I said and started up the car and started driving through town. "How was Frank's pad?"
"Clean, searched it from top to bottom. No EMF, no hex bags, no sulphur."
"So probably no ghosts, no witches, no demons," I stated the obvious.
"Pft," was all Sam replied with.
"3 down and 97 to go."
"Yeah," Sam said and, after looking at my speedometer, said "dude, you're going 20."
"And?" I asked.
"That's the speed limit."
"What? Safety's a crime now?"
I wasn't going to risk going over the speed limit and get injured; our hotel was on my left but for some reason I just carried on driving past it.
"Dude, where are you going? That was our hotel," Sam said.
"Sam, I'm not gonna make a left-hand turn into oncoming traffic. I'm not suicidal," I said without thinking and then paused.
Sam frowned at me confused, and I could understand why.
"Did I just say that? That was kind of weird."
Not even 20 seconds after I'd just spoke, the EMF meter started going off.
"Do you hear something?" Sam asked me and got out the EMF.
The closer he moved it to me, the louder it got. It only ever sounded for one reason and I knew what that reason was.
"Am I haunted? Am I haunted?"
Things were starting to get weird and I wasn't handling them as well as I normally did.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x -x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x -x-x-x-x
The next day, while Sam was on the phone to Bobby, I turned the radio on in the car and laid down across the front seat. Eye of the Tiger. I loved this song.
Forget air guitar, I am a drummer and drumming away to the song, I didn't see Sam come back so when he banged on the roof of the car, I nearly crapped myself.
"Look at this," I showed Sam my arm.
The itching hadn't got any easier, in fact it had got worse and now there were long, red scratches down my arm.
"I just talked to Bobby," Sam said and handed me a box of donuts.
"And?" I asked, taking the donuts, sniffing them and throwing them into the car.
Sam looked at me strangely and then answered, "um, well, you're not going to like it."
"What?" I was starting to get nervous about what Sam knew.
"It's ghost sickness."
"Ghost sickness?" I repeated.
"Yeah," Sam confirmed and I sighed, letting out a "god no."
"Yeah," he said again.
"I don't even know what that is."
Sam took a deep breath and started to explain. "Okay, some cultures believe that certain spirits can infect the living with a disease, which is why they stopped displaying bodies in houses and started taking them off to funeral homes."
"Okay, get to the good stuff," I waved him on.
"Symptoms are you get anxious."
"Yeah."
"Then scared, then really scared, then your heart gives out. Sound familiar?" Sam asked.
"Yeah, but Sam, we haven't seem a ghost in weeks," I pointed out.
"Well, I doubt you caught it from a ghost. Look, once a spirit infects that person, ghost sickness can spread like any sickness; through a cough, a handshake, whatever. It's like the flu. Now, Frank O'Brien was the first to die, which means he was probably the first to die, which means he was probably the first infected. Patient zero."
"Our very own outbreak monkey," I said.
"Right, get this. Frank was in Maumee over the weekend. Softball tournament. Which is where he must have infected the other two victims," Sam told me.
"Were they gamecocks?" I asked.
"Cornjerkers," Sam answered me.
"So, ghost infects Frank, he passed it on to the other guys and I get it from his corpse?"
"Right."
"So what now? I have 48 hours before I go insane and my heart stops?" My eyes widened.
"More like 24," Sam corrected me.
"Super," I said sarcastically, to which my loving brother agreed.
"Well, why me? Why not you? I mean, you got hit with the spleen juice," I asked him.
"Yeah, um, you see, Bobby and I have a theory about that too. Turns out all three victims shared a certain, uh . . .personality type. Frank was a bully. The other two victims, one was a vice principal and the other was a bouncer," Sam said.
"Okay," I replied, confused.
"Basically, they were all dicks."
"You're saying I'm a dick?" I straightened up and raised my eyebrows.
"No, no, no," Sam tired to backtrack. "It's not just that. All three victims used fear as a weapon, and now this disease is just returning the favour."
"I don't scare people," I said.
"Dean, all we do is scare people."
"Well then, you're a dick too."
"Apparently I'm not," Sam looked at me with a smug look on his face.
"Whatever, how do we stop it?" I asked.
"We gank the ghost that started all this. We do that, the disease should clear up."
"You're thinking Frank's wife?"
"Who knows why she killed herself, you know. Hey, what are you doing waiting out here anyway?" Sam asked me.
I looked past Sam to the hotel. "Our room's on the fourth floor."
Sam looked at me and just shook his head.
"It's high," I said, trying to make him understand.
I'd never been afraid of heights but the fourth floor? Anything could happen. I could fall out the window or something.
"I'll see if I can move us down to the first," Sam said and headed to the hotel.
"Thanks."
"Sure."
I got back into the car and grabbed the box of donuts, opening and looking at them.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x -x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x -x-x-x-x
A few hours later, I was sat in the hotel room with a book in front of me and staring at the clock. It was ticking loud. Really loud but the tickling in my throat pulled my attention away, making me cough.
Looking back at the book I was reading, a page about ghost sickness, certain words catching my eye. Ghost sickness. Delirium. Hallucinations. Horrible death.
I only started freaking out when the words started leaping out at me, words aimed at me.
You're dying . . . Again. Loser.
I rubbed my eyes. There was no way this was happening. It wasn't possible.
You gonna cry? Baby gonna cry?
I gritted my teeth and clenched my jaw. I was gonna beat this, it wan't gonna win, this stupid ghost sickness.
I looked up at the clock again. It was louder. Tick. Tick. Tick. Reminding me that I only had so many hours left before my heart gave out, taunting me.
When Sam came into the room, I was resting on the couch drinking a beer; he looked down at the smashed clock on the floor and looked back at me.
"Everything okay?"
"Oh yeah, just peachy. Find anything?" I acted like nothing was wrong.
"Yeah. Jesse O'Brien's body was cremated, so I'm pretty sure she's not our ghost. Hey, quit picking at that. How you feeling?" Sam asked after digging at me for picking the scratched on my arm.
Awesome. It's nice to have my head on the chopping block again. I almost forgot what that feels like."
"Yeah."
Damn, Sam said that way too much.
"It's freaking delightful," I said, sarcastically.
"We'll keep looking," Sam reassured me and I started coughing. "You okay? Hey!"
Something was stuck in my throat, blocking my airway. 'Breath Dean, breath,' I told myself.
I ran to the sink and started gagging, being sick until a woodchip fell out of my throat, clearing my throat and allowing me to breath.
"We've been completely ignoring the biggest clue we have; you," Sam said and smiled.
"I don't want to be a clue," I pouted and sulked.
"The abrasions, this . . ." he pointed at the woodchip. "This disease, it's trying to tell us something."
"Tell us what, wood chips?"
"Exactly," Sam confirmed, nodding.
In the afternoon, Sam dragged me to the lumber mill and I looked at it, apprehensive.
"I'm not going in there."
"I need backup and you're all I've got. You're going in, Dean," Sam told me, leaving no room for argument.
I got out the hipflask I had and took a long swig of whiskey. "Let's do this. It is a little spooky isn't it?"
I couldn't believe I was getting spooked over this, of all the places me and Sam had broken into, but I couldn't help it; it was like a compulsion.
Sam handed me a gun and I shook my head, furiously.
"Oh, I'm not carrying that, it could go off," I refused and grabbed a large torch from the boot of the car. "I'll man the flashlight."
"You do that."
Sam started walking to the mill, shaking his head.
Inside, the EMF meter started going off and my brother pulled it out.
"EMF's not gonna work with me around is it?" I asked.
"You don't say. Come on," Sam turned it off and carried on walking. "Wait."
It startled me, Sam saying that and I watched him bend down and pick up a ring.
"'To Frank. Love Jessie.' Frank O'Brien's ring."
"What the hell was Frank doing here?" I asked, confused.
"No idea."
I followed Sam into a room full of lockers where we heard rustling; he crept up the noisy locker and looked at me, mouthing "on three."
My heart started racing, almost scared of what was waiting inside and as my fear built and built, when Sam pulled open the door, I let out a stupid scream before realising that all was inside was a cat.
"That was scary," I said, feeling embarrassed and the way Sam was looking at me didn't help. He just walked away, leaving me to call "wait," after him.
When I caught up with him, he was leaning over a desk, looking at an ID card.
"Luther Garland."
On another table, I saw a drawing of a woman that I recognised.
"Hey, this is uh . . .this is Frank's wife."
"Plot thickens," Sam said, almost under his breath.
"But into what? I asked.
I pulled the drawing and as it ripped, the machines around us kicked into life.
I looked around, my hackles rising and I saw something in the corner. A man. A big bald man.
Sam noticed me looking, my eyes widening and he turned around to see what I was looking at.
"Hey!"
It was a ghost. A dead man that haunted the mill. This man wasn't real. The only thing I wanted to do was run away and run away I did.
When Sam turned around, all he saw was the doors swinging and me running for my life out of the mill.
He aimed the gun at the apparition and shot, the ghost dissolving into smoke.
When he came out, he found me hiding behind Baby, gulping at the whiskey inside my flask.
"Guess we got the right place," Sam said to me.