The Spectral Agent is my first full-length novel and an experiment. We are independent creators, publishing chapter by chapter as a podcast and text. It’s designed to be heard. We’d love to receive your feedback so we can tell stories better.
Continue reading for Chapter 4, start at Chapter 1, or find where you left off.
⚠️ Content Warning: This chapter contains scenes with hallucinations, paranormal activity, gunfire, violence, and blood.
Viktor spends the day chasing a lead connected to the case. Guided by a voice only he can hear, he follows a trail of vague memories, dead ends, and a reluctant witness.
Viktor learns about a mysterious boy. The details about him are vague, but they are worth investigating. As the day ends, Viktor is left with a name, but he might not live long enough to make any use of it.
Chapter 4
I woke up to the loud and annoying sounds of birds cawing into the late morning sky. My body ached for seemingly no reason as I hadn’t done anything intensive recently. I sat up with the covers surrounding me.
I looked at my bedroom window, and there it was on the sill, the red crow. It cawed with the other birds that flocked to a sidewalk tree.
My eyes quickly darted to the item on my nightstand. I stared at the pendant. It looked small and unassuming, yet it weighed on me like a lead ball.
I hadn’t touched it since last night. Sleeping on everything the ghost told me didn’t help. But now, avoiding it seemed pointless. I reached for the pendant and raised it to my forehead. The moment my skin touched the cold metal, I heard Chai speak. The silence of my mind was almost louder than his voice.
“Morning, sunshine. How’d you sleep? That is, if you'd still call ten o'clock 'morning'.”
I didn’t answer, I just sighed and slid my feet onto the hardwood floor. I pulled on my boots, then stood up to grab my black trench coat. At first, I didn’t even think to clean myself up, but I decided that it would be best if I at least brushed my hair.
I stopped entirely when I saw my reflection in the mirror of my tiny bathroom. My body, my thoughts, everything came to a halt when I noticed one detail. My once pitch black eyes were now painted with a slight red hue that I couldn’t unsee.
I touched my fingertips to my cheek, still gripping the cross pendant in my palm. I couldn’t tell if it was real or just another figment of my imagination.
“Yep, that’s part of the look.”
Chai spoke, though I didn’t see him anywhere in the room. His voice was coming from inside my head, though he sounded like a real person talking to me from the outside.
“What?” I said under my breath, a half-mumble, half-grumble.
“I have the red eyes, too. Used to be yellow.”
He spoke, invoking confusion in me. Then I remembered when I saw him the night before. His eyes were red, like the crow's body, like Olivia's eyes... when I found her. Now my eyes are red too?
Chai had yellow eyes before he died? That's not a natural color. Did he wear colored contacts?
I didn’t bother thinking about it more. The Chai I had already come to know was chaotic, so I wouldn’t put it past him. My attention turned to the task at hand. My jet black hair was short, shaved on the sides and back, though it wasn’t a bad haircut. It actually looked quite classy when I decided to actually brush it.
I grabbed my comb and started brushing through the mess I call hair, while continuing to look into the mirror. The hollows beneath my eyes looked darker than usual, making me look like I hadn’t slept in years. My skin was pale, almost ghostly, and I had a small mole on the left side of my mouth.
I straightened and stepped back when I was done. At five-foot-five, I was shorter than most people I worked with, but my build was lean, efficient, what you would call functional. My high cheekbones stood out to me today. They made me look like a skeleton. Most of my muscle went to my arms, I suppose. I couldn’t say whether or not it bothered me. Maybe it was just part of me.
I stood there, with the pendant in my right hand, absentmindedly touching it to my lip while I brooded.
“So, what’s the plan? Sit around moping while staring at the mirror, or are we actually gonna do something?”
Chai’s voice interrupted my train of thought.
“I’m going out.”
✹✹✹
The streets were busy despite the cold. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, the pendant cool against my palm. With nowhere to go, I stopped at the cafe for coffee to warm up. I grabbed my drink from the pickup counter and sat down in my favorite corner chair.
Knowing I was in for an earful, I touched the pendant to my ear that was facing away from the cafe's patrons. I hoped I looked more like a man on a phone call than a man going insane.
"Man, you must like coffee. It seems like you come to this place twice a day."
Chai, always ready with a pointless observation.
"Maybe. Coffee helps me think."
"Well, you must need to drink a lot more of it, then."
"You're not helping. What else can you tell me?"
"I dunno, I told you everything I could remember last night. Things are... fuzzy. Being trapped in your head seems to make me dumber."
"How dumb were you to begin with? Listen, I'm not holding a cross to my ear like a preacher to banter with a ghost all day. I need to determine what to investigate." I got strange looks from a couple sitting next to me as I raised my voice.
"We could investigate the kid," Chai casually suggested.
"What kid?"
"The psychic kid that was at my death. C'mon, Viktor, keep up."
"What 'psychic' kid?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you that?"
"No! Why not say that earlier?" I shouted, prompting strange looks from the whole cafe. I calmed down and spoke quietly.
"What's his name? We can take a look at the records office for the case files."
"I...don't remember."
"You can tell me what you do know on the way, but first I need another coffee."
“What? You still haven’t finished that one.”
“It’s not for me.” I said as I finished placing my order. The barista glanced up, but didn’t bother to ask who it was for.
I grabbed both cups in a hurry and ran out the door. I'm sure the people in the cafe continued to discuss the degree of my insanity more intensely.
✹✹✹
I hailed a taxi and told the driver to head to the records office, though I already knew it was a long shot. Still, it gave me somewhere to go, something to focus on besides the constant noise in my head.
In the back seat, I murmured quietly to Chai, drawing looks from the driver in the rear-view mirror. In this city, I'm sure this wasn't the first time he had a customer who talked to himself.
Chai told me more details about his death as I questioned him. He told me about the boy, who was part of the gang.
"You mean like a high school dropout?"
"No, like nine or ten."
"Was it human trafficking... a kidnapping?"
"I don't know, man. Some fucking kid."
Chai had only seen him a few times and didn’t know his name, but he told me that he seemed important. That there were rumors of the kid being a psychic of some kind.
We pulled up to the records office. I walked through the door and spotted the usual clerk behind the counter.
“Well, hello, Mr. Levitsky, what brings you by this fine, wet, freezing day?”
“Hello, Ms. Springfield, I thought you could use a latte,” I replied, skipping past the rhetorical question. I wasn’t one for small talk, but I could appreciate another coffee lover.
“I could always use a latte, but I doubt that’s the only reason you’re here. First, let me ask you a question.”
“Shoot,” I said flatly, seeing the mischievous glint in her eyes.
“Can you see ghosts?”
I froze. “Whut?”
“You see, I was walking to work this morning, crossing the street. This car pulls up to the red light right beside me, real careful-like. I turn and look, my heart stops. No one is driving the car."
Her eyes went wide while her hands played out the story.
"It was a self-driving car—of course it was. But right then, I thought a ghost was driving. I died right there on that crosswalk. I done gave up the ghost.”
She couldn’t contain her laughter, nor could I as I released all my nerves at once. Her face turned solemn, though.
“But, you know what? Later, I looked it up. The city doesn’t allow self-driving cars, yet. So, what was driving that car?”
“It couldn’t have been a ghost. If ghosts are real, I doubt they could touch things much less drive a car.” I couldn’t let her know I knew this as fact, at least for the only ghost I had experience with. “Maybe it was just a short person driving, or they bent down to reach the phone they dropped on the floor.”
“Maybe. Or, maybe a ghost killed me and now I’m a ghost, too. So, if you can see me, you must be able to see ghosts.”
”I don’t think ghosts can drink coffee.”
“Only one way to find out, pass it over.”
She took a sip, closed her eyes, and smiled a smile that warmed me more than the steam rising from her cup.
”Now that we’ve proven you’re corporeal, can you help me with a query?” I handed over my ID—because protocol—and made my request. “I’m looking for anything related to child disappearances near the Lower East Side over the past five years.”
She tapped at her keyboard. “Not much here. You’d need clearance for the closed cases.”
"Ok. What about the open cases?"
"I could tell you the open cases and the lead detectives, and you can ask them for details."
”Okay, anything for what would now be a nine or maybe ten-year-old boy?”
“No results. Let me try… nope, nothing there either.”
"Alright. One more thing, can I get the case files for a robbery involving one Chai Saetang?"
Her fingers paused over the keys. "Mr. Levitsky, I want to help, but the ID check says you're on leave. You’ll have to come back when you're back on duty."
"Of course, sorry for taking up your time." I bit back my frustration. I thanked her and headed towards the door.
"Mr. Levitsky," she called as I walked away, "thanks for the coffee. Tell your sister I said hello".
My hand missed the door handle, and my face planted into the frigid glass. Did she know Kira? I found the handle and pushed, pulling the pendant from my pocket as I stepped into the sharp winter air. The visit was a bust, as expected, but it was worth a try.
✹✹✹
“Why'd you give up so easily?”
Chai said as soon as I touched it to my ear. It seemed like he could only signal through hallucinations while I wasn’t in contact with his pendant. Though when I was touching it, I could hear him speak clearly.
"Allie Springfield plays by the rules."
“You knew that wasn’t going to work.”
“Yeah, well, I had to try,” I said, growing more frustrated.
“Right. Because wasting time is such a fantastic strategy,” he replied, though there was no real malice in his voice. “What’s next, then?”
I ignored him and kept walking aimlessly. “Do you know anyone that knew the psychic kid?”
“Yeah, most of the people in the gang had at least heard of him.”
I continued walking down the crowded streets while listening to Chai speak in my head. Passersby gave me weird looks. “Do you know where any of them would be now? Someone had to have known more than you.”
“Well, there was this one guy…”
Chai told me the address. It was way outside the city. "I guess we're going on a field trip, then."
✹✹✹
The house was tucked away between two sagging trees, its paint peeling, and its rooms obscured by curtains. It was in the kind of quiet neighborhood that was easy to forget. I was still holding onto the pendant.
“Is this it?”
“Yeah, warning though, he’s not the social type—a little grizzled. The 'grizzled gangsta'. Heh.”
I knocked and waited. The door opened a crack, and I found myself staring into tired, bloodshot eyes. The man behind the door looked like he’d aged a decade in the last year. I had learned that the man had just gotten out of prison.
He went in some time before Chai died. I tried to piece together when that was. How long ago was Chai's death? I should have asked that already.
“What do you want?”
His voice was rough, though more defensive than hostile.
“I need to ask you some questions,” I said, trying to keep my tone even. “About the organization you were in.” His expression darkened.
“I don’t talk about those days.”
I pushed a little harder. “And I’m not here to drag you back. I was a friend of Chai. I just need information. About a boy—a psychic?” His eyes opened at the mention of the boy, but he said nothing.
“I know you’ve turned your life around,” I said, trying to appeal to whatever sense of self-preservation he had. “I’m not here to ruin that. I just need your help.”
There was a long pause before he opened the door wider.
“Make it quick.”
We sat across from each other at a small table in his kitchen. The inside of his house was dim and cramped, but it carried a strange warmth, the kind of comfort that comes from rebuilding something broken.
He poured us both a cup of coffee from a pot sitting on a warmer. It had to be a day old and burnt at this point.
He took a sip from his cup.
“There was this kid... Blonde hair, blue eyes. Weird as hell. He knew things. Things he couldn’t have known.”
I pressed further, “Like what?”
“Where we’d find people. Where the cops wouldn’t be. Stuff like that.”
His face twisted as he said the next words.
“He was… useful. But he wasn’t normal. Creeped a lot of us out.”
“Do you know where he is now?” I asked. He shook his head.
“Haven’t seen him. And frankly, I don’t want to.”
His answers were vague, frustratingly so, but it was more than I’d known before. I sipped from my cup. It tasted like bad decisions and regret.
"What's the boy's name?"
"Ben."
He looked thoughtful. I thought he was going to tell me more about this Ben, but he looked at me, realization in his eyes.
"How did you say you knew Chai?"
"I've taken too much of your time. It's late. Thanks for the coffee." I got up.
"Sit down."
His voice was calm, but his elbow rested on the table, a pistol in his hand. This made me think of my service weapon. The one I had to turn back in before I went on leave. The one I didn't have with me right now.
I raised my hands and slowly slid back into the seat. He held my gaze. After a minute, he finally spoke.
"You're with the gang aren't you?"
"What gang?"
"Don't play dumb with me. You're here to see what I'll say. I've already told you too much. You're here to kill me."
"I'm unarmed. How would I do that?"
"There's more than one way to kill a man. The old ways."
"If I were here to kill you, I would have already done it, wouldn't I?"
"I'm not taking any chances. Let's go outside. I don’t want to make a mess in here."
He gestured the gun at me and the back door. I got up again.
"Turn around slowly—open the door."
I did as he said. Though, as I did, I also quickly dipped my hand in and out of my coat pocket. He was much older than me. I should be able to take him in a fight, but he kept his distance and could shoot me before I could make my move.
That's probably what he was also thinking, because he spoke harshly.
"Move."
I put my right hand on the doorknob and turned it. I paused just long enough for him to jiggle his gun again. I yanked the door open and spun behind it. A shot rang out, a bullet splintered the edge of the door, and my ribs screamed with pain.
I pressed the button on the device in my other hand and shot his face with pepper spray. He cried out and fired twice more, bullets going wild.
Before he could hit me with any more of them, I scuttled down the porch and out into the woods behind his house. I ran awkwardly, one arm flailing wildly to keep balance, while I could barely see and was gagging. Overspray must have got into my eyes. I heard more shots behind me, but didn't stop.
The sun was lower, the air colder. I gripped my side, feeling warm liquid soaking my jacket, and kept running into the freezing evening.
Continue to Chapter 5.
