Searching for My Killer

Chapter 1-3

I spent the rest of my first night in the afterlife wandering the entire theater. Stupid, maybe, but I was looking for anything which could cause another presumed accident. It was dark, of course, but I found out I was able to see if there was the slightest amount of light—from the Exit signs, from the streetlamps outside the front windows. Even the auditorium seemed brighter than it would have if I were still alive, thanks to the trouble light on the stage. A perk of being dead? Possible, I guess.

I wasn’t certain what sort of booby traps the killer might be able to set up. My thoughts ran to almost invisible wires at the top of the stairs or stretched between two rows of seats in the auditorium, which would make someone take a hard fall. Or electrical wires scraped bare for an inch or two, to cause a short. Unfortunately, in the latter case, there were hundreds of places to look, some of them in areas too dark for me to check despite my strangely enhanced death vision.

I discovered there was one other advantage to being a ghost. I could go up or down between the bridge, lighting beams in the auditorium, the basement, or wherever else I wanted to be without having to climb stairs. I floated up to the lights which had already been hung with no problem. It made examining their wiring much easier.

The idea my killer might want to involve the public, by doing something in the auditorium or the lobbies, made me wonder if his plan revolved around trying to shut the theater down. If so, why? As far as I knew, it wasn’t running in the red, so Mr. Ingles, the owner, wouldn’t be looking for an underhanded reason to close down and have it covered by insurance. Not by a long shot when it came down to it. He had told us only a month ago, during one of the infrequent meetings he held with all the actors and crew members, he was planning on starting an acting school in connection with the theater. It would be housed in a new addition to be built in what was now a small park which abutted the right side of the theater.

Did the killer have a grudge against someone connected with the theater? If so, why not go after them directly, instead of playing games—if you can call murder and attempted murder games. I didn’t, but then I was the very dead victim of whatever his plot was.

I wondered if, perhaps, he was going for misdirection. Cause so many problems, make my death, and perhaps a couple of others still to come, seem like accidents, and in the process eliminate the person he was after with no one being the wiser that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.

“I’ve read too many mysteries,” I said to myself, again needing to hear the sound of my voice. It helped me try to come to grips with what had happened. I hadn’t been successful so far. I think trying to come up with reasons why it had happened, and everything else I was associating with it, was my way of putting off the inevitable—the stark realization that I am dead, and a ghost.

“Dead as a f*****g doornail,” I said angrily. Then a wave of grief swept over me.

I’ll never see David again. I’ll never be able to tell him one more time how much I loved him. I won’t be able to go out to eat at David’s and my favorite restaurant, or to a club to dance, or take long walks with him. No more making love in front of the fireplace on cold winter evenings, no more…anything.

I dropped to the floor, burying my head in my arms, and cried. A pity party? Sure. But I deserved one. It took me a while to realize I wasn’t actually crying. Not real tears. The emotions were there, but I couldn’t manifest them physically. Hell, I couldn’t do anything physically, other than float around the theater, invisible, silent, not able to open a door, have a cup of coffee, eat one of the doughnuts Tommy brought into work sometimes. I wondered if ghosts slept. With my luck, probably not. Awake twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from now until I find out who killed me. I’ll go bugfuck from boredom, if nothing else.

I finally got to my feet, reminding myself not to sink through the floor as I made my way to lighting booth. I needed the familiarity of being there, where I’d spent so much of my time at the theater. I ran my fingers over the controls on the light board, the sense of all I’d lost intensifying. I wanted to die—but of course I was already dead.

I floated up, going through the ceiling to the theater’s roof. I went to edge, looking out over the city. Off in the distance I could see the apartment house where David and I had spent the last two years together. “I miss you,” I whispered. “I’ll always miss you. Grieve for me, my dear man. Grieve and then move on. Please, for your sake and the love you felt for me, move on.”

I curled up on the roof, looking up at the stars and began to count them, hoping doing so would take my mind off the last few hours and the final few minutes before my life ended.