Charlotte Gaspel: Demons and Ghosts

XV: Resentment

Life is full of surprises, one day your parents are murdered and the next you have to free a ghost from its eternal suffering.

"Do you have any money left?" asked Charlotte.

"No. What's left is in the chest," answered Danny.

"Then we must exterminate the ghost."

"How do we do that?"

"It's very simple, you just have to stay here and collect all the interesting objects you find."

"Great!"

Charlotte walked away from Danny, walking towards the bowels of the city while he was running from one side to the other in search of something he doesn't know.

What was our protagonist's goal? Not very complicated; she was heading to the library in search of information about otherworldly beings, whatever clues pop culture had left was going to work. First of all, the most important thing was to recognize the city. Unlike her birthplace, Spoirtown had many sprawling, urbanized locations, so it's no surprise that it's somewhat confusing to locate.

Between apartments and restaurants, a map would be helpful, but since such things are not common in the middle of the 20th century, Charlotte decided to ask for directions.

Long story short, she managed to find the library. It was early, so she had plenty of time on her hands to go through all the encyclopedias she could find on paranormal topics. The results were not very satisfactory. Most of the books he found were pure romantic fiction, and the horror novels were going to take a long time to barely give a shred of useful information. The only thing left for her to do was to search through those infamous children's books.

Charlotte made her way to the small shelf of short little books and luckily, they were arranged alphabetically. She searched from Andy, The Little Mouse! to Ztinky Zoos. By surprise, she was able to get two books with the theme of beings from other dimensions, namely, My Grandfather Visits Me and My Friend Ghostward. They didn't look like professional sources but they were the best choice. As Charlotte studied the sentences and drawings in the two copies, the feeling of a mysterious gaze lurking on the back of her neck. She looked sideways warily; there weren't many people there, and that made it all the more frightening, even knowing that privacy was more than welcome in her life. Suddenly footsteps were heard, slow, sharp footsteps. There was no other choice, Charlotte had to turn around and use what she had in her hands as a weapon. Finally, she gets into her battle pose, with her eyes wide open and her feet anchored to the ground. All to spot the presence of her new enemy: A blonde-haired girl.

"Identify yourself," Charlotte said without moving from her position.

The mysterious figure didn't say a word, as she stood still for a few seconds and scurried off to another section.

Charlotte could follow her to find out more about her, but she literally had no reason to do so, so she returned to the abandoned house.

In other news, Detectives Quickley and Allard are lying at their desks full of papers and files. At that, the chief wakes them up.

"Have you solved the case yet?" he asked with a noticeably sarcastic accent.

"Almost there, Captain!" Quickley exclaimed after raising his head, "We've already distributed posters to find little Charlie. They'll be fully installed this afternoon if we're lucky."

"Is that all?" asked the captain.

"It's not," added Detective Allard. We made a list of towns and cities where the killer might be. You may wonder why, and I answer that, if the killer is staying in a place in Spoirtown, we would have already had a record of some madman dragging suspicious bundles. It may be a wild theory, but it's the most reasonable thing we have, and we haven't slept since yesterday, so I assure you we've come a long way.