AN: I recommend you listen to the "Spooky, Scary, Skeleton" song, preferably the ten hour version, while you read this chapter. Also after you finish it. just listen to the entire thing. Seriously. You won't regret it.

I scared myself writing this chapter. True embellished story.

Finally, remember to like, comment, and subscribe for more content.

Finally, Finally, I have new coverart now for this story. I'm so proud of it.

The Chief was a bit annoyed. It was that annoying time of the year when every mammal and their grandmother thought it was their given right to commit petty crimes. It was his least favorite holiday of the year: Halloween. Every mammal in the city always seemed to go crazy around this time of year, thinking that the "Trick" in "Trick'or'Treat" applied to actual crimes.

There had already been forty-six separate arrests for various Halloween pranks. Twenty-six of those had been benign activities, such as toilet papering and egging houses and apartments, fifteen more had been due to mammals scaring each other in stupid ways, such as the otter who had thought it was a good idea to leap onto a lion friend from a second story window, and four other arrests had been due to what the force affectionately called, "Spooky Arson."

However the final arrest, which was actually more like a set of arrests, was the one that truly baffled the Chief. Officer Hopps and Wilde had responded to a simple noise complaint in the Rainforest District. Usually those ended up being minor non-physical domestic disputes between a couple arguing far too loudly or some other minor violation that wasn't worth an arrest. This time had been different. The two officers had come back with four collared perpetrators, including an enforcer for the Markhor Mafia.

That wasn't the most interesting part. For some reason all the perpetrators had been dressed as monsters. the enforcer herself was dressed as a skeleton. They had actually been found in an abandoned house where the enforcer and her cohorts had been hiding out. The Chief knew he was in for a headache as he pulled two case reports from the large stack of similar reports on his desk.

For some reason, many of his officers always felt a compulsion to let people off with a pass this time of year, despite the breach of protocol. The normal excuse was, "It's just kids being kids, Chief. Kids love their pranks." While that was all well and good for his officers and the children committing literal crimes, it made for quite a bit of homework on the Chief's part in the form of dozens of case reports.

The two he held right now were the two reports regarding the arrest of the Markhor Mafia's enforcer, Sheer Goatsie, and her goons. The Markhor Mafia had only recently become a problem in Zootopia, with most of their business originally being done in the eastern hemisphere. Their expansions into the Zootopia drug trade had not been taken to kindly by either the ZPD, or the resident crime syndicates.

Chief Bogo sighed, opening Officer Wilde's report first. He had learned from past experiences that it was better to read his reports first. He could then fall back on Officer Hopps' report, which were usually more tame. That's not to say this prevented Wilde's report from giving him a splitting migraine and causing him to contemplate his own pathetic mortality, but it did keep him from collapsing in on himself in a fit of rage and disappointment which could create a black hole, destroying the entire planet.

The Chief quietly read the first line, expecting nothing but the absolute worst from his officer on this occasion.

…

From the desk of Nick Wilde: Ghost Hunter, October 31st, Arrest of Sheer Goatsie and cohorts Ling Dawn, Zhang Yong, and Bobbert "I really don't fit into this group" Dillard

Prepare yourself for a tale of wonder and mystery. A tale of many scares and great imagination. Truly, the horror knew no bounds. The wildest nightmares of a the most frightened and disturbed individual could not compare to such a tale as this. No mammal could comprehend the absolute astounding nature of the events I have transcribed here.

This story is not for the weak or faint of heart. You have been warned, reader.

It started off as a normal day, with Carrots and myself being given an assignment by our angry, overly tense taskmaster. We were given an assignment to be out on patrol in District 1. During our patrol we received information about a domestic dispute in the nearby Rainforest District.

We, being nearby the scene, responded to the call even though it took us outside of our assigned district. I protested as I normally did when doing anything outside of the rules, but my partner, whose sense of justice sometimes outmatched her sense of duty, insisted we respond to the problem ourselves. My partner has always lived by the motto, "audentis Fortuna iuvat."

If we had only taken a different route that day. We could've been on the other side of District 1 and nowhere close enough to respond to the call. Someone else could've taken it. Alas, Lady Fortune did not favor. A fickle and petty mistress she is, and altogether unwilling to come to our aid.

And so, Officer Hopps and myself continued on the journey. It took only minutes for us to arrive at the scene of the complaint. Had I known what was to come, I would've savored those precious moments spent in our patrol car, letting her know how much she meant to me. If only.

It was a decrepit place. Tendrils of vines and kudzu wrapped their way around the faded walls, warping the paint and cracking in several places as the collective pressure of the vegetation became to much for the aged structure to bear. The windows, of which there were six, were all broken or splotched to the point where the glass was no longer transparent. The air hung heavy around it and there was a faint acridity tangible in the wind.

To say it was an unimpressive place would be to taste a lie. At some point it had been magnificent. Even worn and withered as it was, I could picture the darkened red it once was, the vibrancy of it against the surrounding rainforest which now consumed it. Any light that had once casted down upon it had long since been extinguished; the untrimmed and growing canopy of leaves above it ensured that.

It was quite a sight still, however, and so very, very imposing. In truth, I jested with my bunny companion about the intimidating place. I commented on how it seemed like a great place to run a haunted house novelty show. I wonder now if my jokes and warbling contributed in some way to this event, if perhaps the spirits were angered by my attitude.

My partner and I entered the building through the front door. It, like the rest of the home, was old, withered, and looked to be on the edge of utter destruction. Disregarding the growing sense of dread I felt, I continued on into the chateau with my companion.

As soon as we entered, a groaning moan rattled through the hallways, seemingly echoing off every surface at once. The ghastly noise reverberated in my skull like a whisper, as if something were trying to seduce me further inside. It was not a noise of warning. Whatever was here wanted to take us.

Whatever effects I may have felt at the sound were nothing compared to what my partner experienced with her heightened auditory senses. Her face contorted in a manner indicating the purest form of terror. She had become a caricature of her normal self.

Actually, never mind. I can't write a whole ghost story. I wanted to, but I wanted to not write this report even more.

…

Chief Bogo sent a silent prayer of thanks towards the gods.

…

Anyways. Carrots and I responded to some call up in the Rainforest District today and ended up arresting some real colorful characters. It was great.

Some lady filed a noise complaint about strange noises from the quote, "Spooky, Haunted House of Old Man Happy." Gotta say, as far as scary names go, this place is number one. How anyone took her seriously after that, I don't know.

Yeah, so we were close and got called there. We get there, and let me say, the place is actually just lovely, in an old "this is historical" kind of way. It was this really deep red and the windows were all done up. It was kind of wreck, since no one has owned it for the last twenty years (Maybe. I didn't check or anything).

I kid you not, as soon we arrive at the scene, Whiskers is frightened. Like legitimately frightened. Her! At a house. Apparently she had a bad experience with a haunted house when she was a kid. I'll spare you the details, Big Guy, but here's a teaser: it involved fourteen glass bottles filled with gasoline, fourteen kerosene soaked rags, one hundred scared Hopps kids jacked up on sugar, and a siege attempting to root out the evil spirits. It was a very harrowing experience for her.

Isn't that great? So, of course I just walk into the place, because it's a building. Carrots meanwhile, is coming in directly behind me, using me as a meat shield. We have a real healthy relationship.

Honestly, I would've been more worried about the architectural integrity of the building than ghosts eating our souls. The whole place was creaking every time we moved, and those support columns were looking really unstable. I'm pretty sure had you gone through the place, Chief, the whole placed would've come down.

…

The Chief's mouth twitched. That was a low blow by the fox. He knows I'm trying to lose weight.

…

Then we hear this big crash from somewhere deeper in the house. Carrots grabs onto my back like something's going to pop out at her. Unfortunately, she has a serious death grip. Painfully so sometimes. My tail still aches.

I offered to let her wait out front, both for her sake and the sake of blood flow to my tail, but she was "determined to not leave me alone in a possibly dangerous situation."

It sounds sweet, but she was still using me as a meat shield. Anyways, we traced the noise to the basement of the house, or the "Evil Pit" as my partner called it.

What we found down there was even better than Officer Scaredy Cat. There were four people trying to break up the concrete ground. They all had pickaxes and they were all doing it in unison like it was some kind of musical.

One of the guys was on the ground, clutching his toe in both hands and just groaning. He stubbed his toe on some upturned concrete after taking his shoes off to get more comfortable. I can't blame him. I hate doing dangerous manual labor with shoes on. It makes me feel much too safe.

You can't make this stuff up, Chief. You just can't.

It gets better though. When they see us, the first thing the one clutching his foot does is scream, "Everyone stop! Police are here to stop us from searching!"

That was Bobbert. Bobbert was the Markhor Mafia's progressive hire, I'm thinking.

So immediately, Carrots is on high alert, her tranquilizer at the ready and telling everyone to stop what they're doing. The leader of the group is staring at her and trying to figure out a plan of action. I don't think Sheer Goatsie planned on being caught. I also don't think her parents planned on her being a success in life when they named her.

I was kind of worried something bad was going to go down. Goatsie was about as hard a criminal as you were going to find. The other two goats by her, Doofy and Doofer, were waiting on her order. It was a bit worrying being up against a professional, but I'm sure Carrots and I could've handled it.

Good ole' Bobbert had a different idea though. He raised his pickaxe over his head and threw it at us. Unfortunately for Bobbert, pickaxes are not meant to be thrown, and his landed several miles away from us. The best part was what he said to himself after that. "Dammit Dillard. You have to think. How are you going to get out of this one with the treasure?"

Now, I'm sure Goatsie was angry at having two cops drop in on her illegal activities. But that was nothing compared to the anger I'm sure she felt at Bobbert Dillard. I'm pretty sure the only reason Carrots and I were able to arrest Goatsie and her stooges, was because she was too busy trying to strangle Bobbert.

Goatsie, Ling, and Zhong, stayed tight lipped, but Bobbert was real talkative. He didn't implicate anyone else in the Markhor Mafia, but he did tell us what four members of a gang where doing digging up concrete in the basement of a crumbling house.

That's not the best part.

Sheer Goatsie has a rap sheet taller than Francine, and is one of the top enforcers in the Markhor Mafia's Zootopia branch. They sent her to look for buried treasure in a house in the Rainforest District, based on a tip from a "reliable source."

Again, this is one of the highest ranking members in Zootopia of a criminal syndicate. They sent her to search for buried treasure.

That's still not the best part.

As a part of the disguise to keep people from getting suspicious, they had her dress up as a skeleton and all her cohorts dress up as ghosts. Not even like, scary ghosts. They were wearing white bed sheets.

This is real. This was a command she actually got. Someone higher up than her ordered this. They wanted them to spook people away so they could keep digging for the "treasure."

As we all know, the most intimidating thing about ghosts and skeletons are their exorbitant use of pickaxes and lust for treasure. Like Dark Souls.

Chief, I know you were worried about the Markhor Mafia rolling into town and causing trouble. I'm pretty sure we're going to be okay, though. After today, I just have a strange feeling they aren't going to be too hard to deal with.

With Love,

Nicholas Piberius Wilde (And Bobbert Dillard)

P.S. - Why is there a random abandoned chateau type house in the middle of the Rainforest District? We live in the city right? How is there any real estate that hasn't been bought up? Especially real estate right next to the causeway. How does this house even exist?

P.S.S. - Can we let Bobbert go? I love this guy. We brought him some water during his interrogation, and he tried to escape with it. He thought he could slip out of his handcuffs if he wet his wrists a little. Also he sprained his wrist and wants to sue the ZPD.

…

The Chief groaned. "Of course it was some completely inane and ridiculous event. He can't be involved with a normal arrest, that damn fox."

Occasionally, when there was a suspect that Officer Wilde found particularly entertaining, he added a request of the Chief in his reports. The requests ranged from asking for the suspect's freedom to requesting the suspect be given a reward to "putting him in a locked room with thirty people, a pen, a clipboard, paper, and a tape recorder just to see what he does."

The Chief leaned forward, his head falling into his hooves as he looked at Officer Hopps report. He didn't really want to read it, assuming that her description of the event would be both enlightening, but also assuming that if even half of what Wilde wrote was true, that it would be completely idiotic.

The Chief flipped open Hopps' report, putting aside Wilde's report.

…

From the desk of Officer Hopps, October 31st, Arrest of suspects Sheer Goatsie, Ling Dawn, Zhang Yong, and Bobbert Dillard

Officer Wilde and myself were patrolling District 1 as was assigned by our ranking officer, Precinct Chief Bogo. It was while near the tunnel leading into the Rainforest district when we heard from dispatch about a noise complaint. Though it originated from outside our sector, I felt our proximity to the point of interest warranted our response.

Upon arriving at the scene we discovered the building. It appeared quite decrepit and appeared to have been out of use for quite some time. Officer Wilde ridiculed me for both my beliefs and what he assumed to be fear. I was not afraid of the home, for the record. Officer Wilde is a liar.

Using my training, I decided it was best to take up a tactical position covering Officer Wilde while entering the home, as is standard procedure when entering a potentially hostile environment.

It was quite obvious to me that the best tactical position to cover Officer Wilde's blind side was from behind him, so I followed him into the abandoned home standing at his back. It was not definitely not what Officer Wilde claimed I was doing. I was not being "A timid rabbit." Officer Wilde is a lying [REDACTED: EXPLETIVE].

As we set foot into the home, several of the support beams creaked and dustings of plaster rained down on us. I assumed, with my highly developed and well managed senses, that it could be more than just an old colonial home creaking with age. I took a defensive position in case there were intruders in the building. Officer Wilde made the comment that, "I'm more scared of us being crushed than I am of your silly ghosts, bunny."

I was not afraid of ghosts. I knew it wasn't a ghost. Ghosts don't creak when they attack.

…

"Just let this end already, please." Bogo said to himself. He felt his migraine intensify as he read. He could not care less about what Officer Hopps or Wilde believed in. He let out a sigh as he began reading again, one hoof resting rubbing circles above his right eye.

…

It was then that a particularly loud noise sounded from the lower bowels of the house. It was loud enough that Officer Wilde was able to hear it as well. I was startled by the noise, but not scared.

For the record, he looked scared.

Despite Officer Wilde insisting that we leave the premises and not return because he's dumb, whiny, and scared, we continued on. My partner and I found the area from which we assumed the noise had come.

When in the general area of the noise, we began to hear more consistent clanging sounds. I was unable to identify what the noises were, even with my advanced hearing. Officer Wilde was equally stumped and suggested that "the metal ghosts are probably just playing tag, Carrots."

The sound had originated from the basement level of the large house. We found the door to the basement quickly. Officer Wilde proceeded first and I once again took a tactical position covering his back. It was not dark, but there was a cement wall between the stairs down and the rest of the basement, preventing us from seeing what was going on inside.

I preemptively unlatched my tranquilizer in preparation for a dangerous situation. Officer Wilde commented that ghosts were immune to tranquilizers. Officer Wilde would do well to remember that while ghosts are immune to tranquilizers, he is not.

There were four figures in the basement, later identified as our suspects, all of whom were dressed in costumes of sorts. Sheer Goatsie was dressed as a skeleton, and the other three suspects were portraying themselves as white ghosts. The costumes were somewhat realistic at first glance, but upon closer scrutiny were quite obviously fake.

Whatever Officer Wilde says, I did not yelp.

All four mammals had pickaxes, though only three of them were using them to dig. One of the suspects was on the ground gripping his right foot's large toe. The suspect, one Bobbert Dillard, was injured when we arrived. He saw and quickly made our presence known to the rest of the group.

The other three members of the group, identified as Sheer Goatsie, Ling Dawn, and Zhang Yong, quickly turned to face us. At this point both myself and Officer Wilde had our tranquilizers at the ready in case we needed to quickly take down any of the four offenders.

They proved unnecessary, however, as we were able to restrain all four members of the group without any resistance. This was made possible by Sheer Goatsie's attempted strangling of Bobbert Dillard, which allowed us the opening necessary to cuff each member of the group. We brought them to the front of the home and called for back up, as our patrol car was not equipped to handle so many suspects at one time.

At the station we learned of Sheer Goatsie's position in the Markhor Mafia. She has yet to give up any details as to their operation here in Zootopia, nor has she, or Ling Dawn and Zhang Yong, given up details as to what they were searching for in the abandoned home when digging at the ground. Mr. Dillard indicating they were searching for "buried treasure." He was resolutely vague on what constituted treasure.

- Officer Judy Hopps

…

The Chief leaned back, signing off on both reports. As far as those two were concerned, this was relatively tame. No one had been sent to the hospital and Officer Wilde had not anyone file a harassment suit against him today. All in all, the Chief was not as irritated as he normally was at the pair.

He would've still have liked to put Officer Wilde in a small box and ship him somewhere far away, but now he was considering poking air holes in the box. Unfortunately, Chief Bogo could be too happy about the situation. He looked over at the large stack of reports still remaining on his desks.

Just because those two were behaving somewhat, did not mean the rest of the department was this holiday season.

He groaned quietly, opening his desk and pulling out a small book titled, "Twilight of the Idols." He flipped open to a bookmarked page and repeated a mantra found within the text.

What does not kill me, makes me stronger. What does not kill me, makes me stronger. The Chief's hooves shook slightly as he thought about the horrid night he was about to have reading over two dozen different reports from various officers.

Truly, this was the most frightening time of the year.

...

"Are you almost done in there, Nick?" Judy asked her boyfriend, knocking on the bathroom door of their apartment.

"Calm down, Carrots," Replied the smooth voice of Nick Wilde, slightly muffled by the door. "You can't rush perfection."

Judy rolled her eyes. "I was done ten minutes ago and my costume is way more in depth."

There was a pregnant pause. "Wait," Judy said. "Are you just tying your tie?"

"I don't have to answer that question."

Judy groaned. "Nick, seriously? You wear ties all the time!"

"Yeah, but I don't try to tie them in an Eldredge Knot. Do you know how hard it is to get an Eldredge Knot right!?" Nick shouted through the door.

"You're the one who wanted to be fancy. Jack Savage wears his tie in a simple knot, anyways. So tying it differently isn't accurate." Judy said, amused at her boyfriend's annoyance.

The signature snark of her partner sounded through the door. "Well, Jack Savage is also a bunny in his movies. So, I made some aesthetic changes to fit the much more charismatic and ruggedly handsome fox version."

"Is Mr. Ruggedly Handsome And Charismatic almost done?" Judy asked with a hint of sarcasm.

"Is Miss Critical done being...critical?" Nick asked back.

Judy sighed audibly. "Just open the door. I'll tie it for you."

"You know how to tie an Eldredge Knot?" He asked incredulously. "Fine." The lock of the door clicked and it was pulled open to reveal the vulpine.

He wore a black suit, imitating the spy thriller character 'Jack Savage.' He looked Judy up and down. Her costume was apparently a slasher victim, as she wore a ripped white dress and had fake blood splattered all over her fur and clothes. "You look pretty good in that, Carrots. Now can you tie my tie in an Eldredge Knot, please?"

"Yeah, I don't know how to do that." Judy said frankly.

"Then why did you ask to come in?" Nick asked, annoyed again.

"I just wanted to see the fox who conned a billionaire into lending him his helicopter struggle with a simple tie." Judy said, smirking deviously at the fox.

"I'm beginning to think I'm having a negative effect on you." Nick said, returning her smile. He looked down to struggle with his tie some more.

"Who says I'm not having a negative effect on you, fox?" Judy asked. Her eyes glanced down his frame. She thought he looked good in a suit. "Is that my slasher knife in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

Nick looked at her, disappointment clear on his features. "Are you that unoriginal with your jokes, or are you just trying to hurt me?"