Private Haunting Murderer

"5 years ago, Somewhere in Central Visayas, Philippines" For a long time, as with many places where the belief in the supernatural is held in the majority of people, the Philippines has an abundance of ghost stories, urban legends and folk tales spanning through all generations. Its not uncommon to hear a story of a ghost girl crying in a dorm room of a boarding house, or groups of people seeing a shadowy figure without a head walking down the halls in the middle of the night in hospitals or even inside churches. The Filipinos are spiritual people, mixing Catholicism with superstition that dated back to before the Spanish colonization, so when a new ghost story or urban legend start a spark, the flames of belief quickly lights up and spreads among the population. Though few in recent times caused as much of a stir as the latest of urban legends, the Red Raincoat Lady. The story was as follows: The apparition started appearing in a specific alley a few days after a brutal murder of a 28 year old girl by a gang of thugs who happened to be present when the local watch was swapping. At first the locals started hearing some kind of crying and groaning then screams of pain. A lot of people reported seeing a figure in a red raincoat, with glowing eyes and a cracked smile. When amateur ghost hunters and casual urban adventures got wind of this, they began flocking to the alley in hopes of capturing the apparition's image. Few were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of her and blurry pictures of the spirit was shared all over the sites dedicated to the supernatural. It wasn't the most popular of urban legends since there were many like her. But she proved to be something a lot more when a CCTV camera caught her in the act of murdering a lone individual who dared to walk the alley during a particularly rainy night. Many people dismissed it as a drug addict getting desperate or perhaps it was a sign of a turf war. But the ghost hunting community managed to get their hands on a copy of the full recording, and it showed the figure in the red raincoat apparently just walking out of a wall. Various more murders happened over the course of a few months and police were on the lookout for a serial killer. They didn't get a lot of evidence to help them track down a suspect as most people who were on the scene just said a couple of variations of "I heard some fighting and screaming but when I got there, it was only just one person who was either stabbed or beaten to death." One person noticed that she didn't go after girls, with reports that she simply scared a lot of them into fleeing and she'd let them go. However, for Red, things became a little harder for her. At the time, she had no control over herself. She knew she was hurting, but she didn't know why. She just felt like she wanted to hurt someone back. Take some form of revenge for something she couldn't remember. But she grew accustomed to the feeling of power, to feel so invincible and being able to take life away so easily. She enjoyed it. But then, one of her would-be victims fought back, and nearly ended her. She escaped into the shadows, laughing. But then more and more people were after her. These weren't regular people either. They could do things no human could ever do. They weren't like the ghosts and spirits she had seen roaming in abandoned buildings and large acacia trees. Her killing spree had been effectively halted. But those people kept finding her no matter where she hid, and no matter how many she manage to hurt, they only got better at cornering her.

Red's urge to kill was becoming unbearable. She had to punish somebody or she'll lose her mind. With people becoming more cautious, she had enough trouble finding someone who was alone. She couldn't kill anymore than one at a time because that was all she could handle. She couldn't really savor the kill when she had to make sure the others didn't get away. She liked to see the light fade from their eyes. There was something satisfying about how their pupils slowly widened as their pulse slowed to a full stop. She had understood now why those people killed her so slowly and why they took such delight in her struggling. It was fun to look at. She saw the shock, the fear, the desperation. How their eyes twinkled as they begged. Clutching a stainless steel knife from the local eatery, she couldn't help but imagine how it would look as fresh blood dripped from the edge to the tip, watching it slowly coagulate from the air. As the night fell she watched from within the branches of an acacia tree. They said spirits lived on these trees. If that were true, they must have left a long time ago because of the club underneath. This part of the city was heavily populated. It felt familiar to her, but blurry like a dream she just woke up from. She felt a pair of eyes on her and from the corner of her eye she saw a drunk college girl frozen in place. Slowly Red looked over. Her glowing eyes and jagged smile becoming clearer as she turned her head. The girl screamed and ran to a group of friends. They all looked up to where the scared girl was pointing. But they saw nothing. She was seeing things, they said. She had too much to drink, they said. But the girl was inconsolable. Red herself had been enjoying that look of fear in the girls eyes. However it wasn't as pretty as the one she saw reflected back at her from the eyes of a man she despised since she came into being. He was one of the people she had to seek out, but he had eluded her so far. Him and his friends. If only she knew more about them. If only she had gotten a better look. But that meant little now to her now. If she could kill again, the pool of targets will only get smaller. She dropped down from the tree and landed at the back exit of the club where they took the trash. There was an alley she could walk through with no lights at all except for the few rays that beamed down from the sky in between the clouds. She hummed a tune as she dragged the tip of the knife against the concrete fence to her right. The sound of stone and metal was a little song for her. A soundtrack perhaps. She just liked the grating sound. It made her remember times when she sharpened knives before cutting up the pork for dinner. Red stopped when she heard footsteps ahead of her. She was 5 meters away from where the alley opened up to a side road only really wide enough to be used by motorcycles. She hadn't killed here before. And as far as she could tell, this late into the night, the owner of the footsteps was by themself. She couldn't hear anyone talking. She couldn't hear any other footsteps. And the buildings around her were all morning businesses. She curled down and heaved, choking on something. She coughed and heaved again until a black mass was expelled from her mouth. The mass took off, chirping on two feet. It was a black baby chick, and it slowly waddled off to the entrance. The bait has been set. The sound of someone vomiting around these parts was commonplace, but the people were no strangers to helping others. The chick was simply to catch this person's attention if that wasn't enough.

'Another foreigner,' she thought to herself as she heard the accented voice call out. This got her to hesitate for a split second, as those people who she was hunted by were no locals. Which only meant she had to leave quickly. In the shadow of the alley, blackened tendrils flowed out from her form as she sank half-way into the shadows charging at the foreigner at a sprint. It was her intent to slide the knife just under the rib cage at an angle to pierce a lung, and have the tendrils constrict around him and slowly pull him into the darkness so she can take him somewhere else before anyone can interfere.

While Red hadn't indeed noticed another creature in the vicinity, she did notice something grabbing a hold of a batch of tiny tendrils that pretty much made up her hair. The instinctual reaction from the sudden tug made her body flare up with bigger tendrils that whipped out towards the direction of the tug. She'd let go of the man in her way and attempt to sink fully into the shadow, dropping the knife right there. Feeling the need to flee, the tendrils began to wrap around her.

An ungodly screech escaped Red as she felt fangs dig into her skin. The tendrils would wrap themselves at the giant spider's upper half, with diminishing strength, but not entirely unable to keep hold of something that was trying to hold onto her. Those that found their way around the arms and the neck would squeeze down as much as they were able even as Red could slowly feel her strength somehow leaving her body. Then she had an idea. While she could still feel her lungs, she shouted for help in the local language, and that she was going to get violated by drunks. The voice that came out was that of a distressed young girl. While the area was fairly barren, she gambled on the fact that people could still hear her cries for help and hurry to her aid.