Those who were familiar with Malthorn City and all its open and hidden corners, and had even the slightest interest in physical activity during their leisure time had a saying: "The rich folks go to exercise in the country club, the Average Joe goes to Average Joe's, the poor people go to 'The Collosseum', and the weird ones go to Central Gym."

And there was some truth to that. The entire area, known to the public "Malthorn Central", although it was three miles away from the actual downtown area, was rundown, almost entirely covered in graffiti - actually almost to the very last square inch of building wall - and dirty. Windows were locked and barred on the ground level and had similar precautions on the upper floors. Shop windows were either barred or completely nailed over with wooden planks. From all the shops that had been on the main street of this district, three quarters had been abandoned, and the few that were left were either tattoo studios, pawn shops or establishments with questionable business models.

But the same couldn't be said for the inhabitants here. After a long period in which only poor people and drifters would decide to live her, in the past few years a community of "alternative" people had arisen. Artists, poets, foremost young people of all color, religion and sexual orientation had come together and tried their best to make this part of the city a happy, colorful and remarkable place. Most graffitis from local gangs had been replaced by real pieces of art, painted or sprayed over by people with huge talent. Flowers were growing at every possible site. And the Central Gym, one of the few remaining relics of way better times, catered to this exact kind of clientel.

The multi-storey car park behind that gym however was a big, dark and nasty place. When David and Stella arrived there, with Simon waiting in the car - he wasn't allowed on the crime scene - he instantly noticed the strong smell of urine and other unpleasant things. It made him cringe. The lights in here were even darker and faultier than in the basement Stella had her office in, and the elevator had apparently been stuck on the ground floor for ages without anyone bothering to repair it. Or clean it up from all the filth that bums and lowlifes had left in it. The car park was still in use, despite its shabby and disgusting condition - and that was the reason they had to come here in the first place.

The victim was on level 2, next to a car that assumingly was his. The old and rusty, but still affectionally cared for VW beetle matched the appearance of the dead body on the floor like a sexy young cowboy doing a jeans commercial on TV. The long brown hair in dreadlocks, the trousers greybrown and patched up many times, the handcrafted pullover showing all colors of the rainbow... The left arm of the victim was pointing away from the body, the hand had dropped a small item that had landed in a pool of blood. David almost expected it to be a joint, but his prejudices got the best of him once more. Stella had put on some gloves and carefully picked it up. It was a pencil.

"Hey Bloom!" she greeted the coroner on the scene. "How's it going?"

The coroner, an elder woman with long grey hair in a ponytail, wearing a protective bodysuit over what looked like a white lab coat, looked up from her work. "Ortega," she replied to the greeting in rather unhappy fashion. Which probably hadn't to do with Stella as a person, but with the situation here. "Glad that you came. Here's another one for your collection." She pointed at the dead body. "He's a local. Warren Gatwick, sociology student and part-time poet, as it seems. We found a small notebook in which he had been writing."

So that's what the pencil was for, David thought to himself. He stepped forward as Stella introduced him: "This is Seargeant Miller, the detective on this case."

"I think we've met," David said with a nod to the other coroner. "Doctor Bloomington, right? From that narcotics case two years ago."

Doctor Bloomington remembered. "Ah yes, you are Wilks' boy. What's this old fool up to now? He's not your partner anymore?"

"I wish I knew." David really wished that. But he needed to focus. "Actually, I'd like to know more about this victim. Why did you call us, and why do you think this has to do with our case?"

As he looked down at the dead man, he had doubts. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to know what killed him. The amount of blood reminded him of Lawrence Keller, and the way the body lay on the floor suggested that something had killed him with brutal force and lots of pain. Bloomington nodded to somewhere behind the car. It was parked at a grey concrete wall, and right next to it was a trash can. "The police officer on the scene had to dig for a while until he found it," Bloomington explained. "When I saw that, I knew this was one for you."

It lay on the floor right next to the trash can. It was marked with one of those little yellow plastic signs that identified it as a piece of evidence. David walked a few steps closer, ignored the stench that came from the floor and the walls and basically everywhere around him, and took a closer look. He had been right. He would have been better off not knowing. Stella joined him and examined the murder weapon with a more professional eye, and she didn't seem to be that shocked about it. Guess she has seen worse, David thought.

The crescent-shaped blade that was still dripping in blood made him shiver.

This however fit the theory that the murder weapons themselves were somehow connected to the victims. "Guess he had some hand into gardening then," he assumed loudly and got the attention of Stella who held the bloodstained sickle up into the scarce light.

"More likely gardening got into him there," she replied without beating an eye. But then she saw David's less than pleased reaction to it. David felt how his stomach tried to turn upside down and his breakfast eggs forced their way back upwards. "Sorry," Stella apologized. "Coroner's joke."

David did his best to get his stomach back under control. It wasn't like he couldn't stand looking at a dead body. Then he would have never taken the transfer to the homicide department. It also wasn't the exact method the victim had been killed, although it was gruesome. Bloomington and Stella were sharing their observations and examinations, and even with all that coroner's babble and special terms, most of them in Latin, he understood the basics. "Forced entry between the...", then shortly followed by "...cut the artery above the stomach..." and then concluding in "...bled to death within minutes." He had been on such cases with Wilks, some with methods of killing as creative as they were brutal. It had phased him in the beginning, but over the course of time he had spent as Wilks' partner, he had gotten used to it.

But what bothered him the most was the senselessness. If he and Simon were right with their theory, and if the killer was after the wrong people, then this poor fellow had died for nothing. The sickle had cut his life short just because he had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. And the killer didn't appear to stop. He could hit anywhere again, kill anyone. It might be David himself who would be at the receiving end of some odd weapon. It could be Lauren. It could be...

His stomach won the fight. And punished him severely. Those damn eggs...

Simon had taken the time waiting in the car to look further through the old book. He barely looked up as David returned to him, still a bit shaken. David opened the car to the driver's seat and got in. Thankfully he still had some chewing gum in the glove compartment. Simon wasn't bothered by this, didn't even say a word. This book seemed to be very interesting for him. It took a long time until Simon finally put it aside and really looked at David. "That bad?"

David nodded. He couldn't imagine what his own face was looking like, but judging by Simon's reaction, it didn't look too well. "We need to do something." His voice sounded raspy even in his own ears. "He won't stop unless we stop him."

"It was him then?" Simon inquired. "You sure about that?"

Again David nodded. "There was a symbol on that handle. One that looked similar to the others. Here." He pulled out his phone and showed Simon the latest picture. Stella had photographed the handle and the symbol in all its glory and had sent the picture to David for further investigation.

Simon stared at it gloomily. "Damn!" That's all he said.

"You found anything interesting in there?" David pointed at the book. Anything distracting him from this murder victim was welcome to him.

"Ehm..." Simon took a moment to gather his thoughts. "Well, he confirmed a few theories of mine. And there were some things that I really didn't know, but they make sense to me. And in other parts I really wonder who gave this man the information." He opened the book, browsed in it, looking for a specific page until he found it. "Here. 'And they hail from the Eternal Abyss, the origin of their existence, and yet their greatest fear. For all demons that leave the human bodies must return to the Abyss until they are called upon again."

"What's that supposed to mean?" David asked. "Hell?"

"If I know." Simon shrugged the pun off like nothing. "Possibly. I found a reference to this Abyss he is talking about, and he calls it 'an endless hole in the world, the truest form of nothing'. If you ask me, it must be pretty boring there." He pondered for a moment. "Huh! Guess it really does make sense then."

David didn't understand a word. "What? How?"

Simon was quick to answer him: "Let's see here: Demons have to inhabit human bodies. But they hate us humans, to a point where all they want to do is bring misery upon us. But their biggest fear, or second biggest after being confronted with their own name, is to leave the human world and return to this abyss. So... if their human dies, the demons will do anything to prevent being thrown into this abyss again. Because living inside a human body, with no power except for trying to corrupt him, is still better than going to the embodiment of nothingness for... the eternity it takes until the next human body can be inhabited by a demon."

"So..." David tried to make some sense out of that, putting it in the context of this murder case. He tried hard... but he didn't succeed. "What... I mean how... No. What exactly can they do?"

But this time there was no answer. David looked at the man next to him and found Simon staring into nothing. His face looked haunted. His eyes were blank. Something was eating on him, that much was certain. "Simon?" he then asked cautiously, breaking the trance of the other.

Simon shook his head, blinked and looked back at David. "Sorry? Oh... I don't really know."

David didn't buy that for a second. The scared, frantic look that he had for one fracture of the second told him everything. He knew something - but he was too scared to talk about it. David resisted the urge to grab him by the collar, shake him and make him talk about this. It wouldn't do any good right now. But maybe Lauren could help? Simon seemed to have some psychological issues that a professional psychologist could take a look at.

It was a dead end here anyway. They decided to wait for Stella to complete her work here, so they could drive back to the safety and comfort of her office, even if it offered little of both. While they waited, Simon got back to the book - it had to be a fascinating read, David figured. He had little to do in the meantime. So he started to speak. "Ehm... about this morning. I wanted to apologize for barging in like this. I... well, I didn't mean to startle you."

Simon looked up from the book, and the smile on his face was both warming and a bit triumphant. "You didn't startle me at all. Maybe you should know that I already knew you were coming like that."

"What? You knew?" David was shocked. "How?"

Simon raised an eyebrow. "My dad," he reminded the other with a hint of impatience.

Of course. David scolded himself for forgetting that. Maybe he forgot about it because he still didn't really believe it. After all, what did he know about Simon here? For all he knew, this man could be crazy. All sorts of crazy. And his calm demeanor and politeness could just be a facade, hiding the instability of his mind and the evil that it was trying to surpress. At one point in his life at least it hadn't worked. When he had committed cold-blooded murder. And was sentenced for it.

And yet, he knew something. And he had strange abilities. It explained a lot of things, but also raised so many questions. Like the one David thought of all of a sudden, and he asked it right away: "So your dad watches me in my sleep?"

He could see that this was not the question Simon had expected. "Uhm... you were putting up quite the show, you know? At least that's what he told me. And when you woke up and spoke to your kid, he could see that you were a bit... overagitated. He just warned me that you could be a bit irrational until you fully come to your senses."

That predicted the actual events pretty well. Still, the idea of some ghostly presents watching him unseen and just telling on him to that man wasn't the least bit pleasant. "Could you tell your dad to stop spying on me and my family?" It sounded a bit harsher than he had intended, but he wanted to get his point across.

Simon raised an eyebrow. "You just told him. He can hear you."

David flinched. Damn it! He was right here with Simon then. "Tell me... how does this work? With you and your dad?"

It took a moment for Simon to think about it. "I guess it works a bit like wi-fi. When he is with me, he can be around me in some distance, but the further he gets away, he starts to fade. Until he... well... loses the connection. And goes back."

Strangely enough this gave David some comfort. Not the fact that this "ability" of Simon had a limited range, that this dad of his wasn't able to go wherever he pleased. But the fact that there actually was a "back" to go to. That even in death there was something on the other side. What did Lauren say? Simon claimed his dad to be a good man. So he had gone to a place where good men go when they die.

Which was more than what could be said for demons - banished to the nothing for eternity. No wonder they hate us, David thought.