Who is Michael?

Michael, year 2022

Every story has a beginning and an end, right? Or so they say. Well, I'm sorry to tell you this one doesn't. My apologies. It's a bit... how shall I put it... different? It does have a beginning, like everything in this life or, in my tragic case, "my death".

Oops! My bad... I've just spoiled the whole story for you (personally, it always pissed me right off when people did that to me). Only kidding, this is just getting started.

Yes, since you're interested, I'm dead. But not one of those movie dead guys who shuffle their feet along, body full of maggots and jaw hanging loose going "braaaaains", leaving their intestines behind them with half their head blown open... ermmm, sorry, that last bit is accurate, but I'll tell you about that later. Be patient.

So you get the context: I was born in 1980 in Salzburg (Austria) and I croaked, kicked the bucket, call it whatever you like, in 1998, at the tender age of 18. It must have been about half past midnight when I was leaving my mate Jaime's house, after playing the most legendary game of Dungeons & Dragons in history… What's D&D, you ask? Google it, pal.

Like I said, I was on my way back from playing with Jaime, Noelia, Adrián, Bárbara and Alex. They stayed over, which I couldn't do: I had to look after my three-year-old little sister. My mother worked the night shift at the Krankenhaus hospital and my father was always away with the truck, so it fell to me to play big brother, babysitter and cook. But that fateful day I never made it home.

Back then, playing role-playing games, reading comics or talking about UFOs were things for "geeks", and I ticked every single box to be the biggest geek in town. Which brings me to the stretch of my sad existence where Tomy and Daniel, two bullies from school, spotted me from their Ford Mustang GT and called me over. And off I went like a complete dickhead. They talked me round by saying they'd give me a lift home, but they had something else in mind. Long story short: they drugged me. They made me swallow such a quantity of pills that, according to the coroner, it would have taken down an elephant. Imagine what it did to me: fifty kilos soaking wet, asthmatic and with a heart murmur. It wrecked me from the inside. The police found my body three kilometres from home with my skull burst open and my brain turned to purée after a twenty-metre drop. In this part I really do look like one of George A. Romero's zombies.

It took them two hours to find me. I spent that whole time standing still, staring at my own corpse with its flattened head and a pool of blood that wouldn't stop spreading. How naive of me to think I'd suddenly gasp for air and my heart would start pumping again. I came out of the shock when I saw the blue and orange lights and heard the sirens. That was when I said to myself: "Mate, you're a stiff. This world is for the strong and you were weak."

I felt light. I decided to go home. How? On foot, obviously. That teleporting business only happens in the movies. When I got there I saw the police talking to my mother. From her crying and the way she covered her face before collapsing, I could feel her pain. I knelt down on the tarmac crying invisible tears. That's where I found out that the dead can feel sadness.

Then came something worse: my funeral. The priest was giving the sermon:

"We celebrate this holy Mass for the soul of the departed Michael Bauer... In the face of death, the heart is shaken and the mind is clouded... God has the right to call whomever He wishes..."

"Yeah, fine, very nice. Amen and please shut up already," I was thinking, sarcastic as ever.

My parents were destroyed. My little sister, Sara, was tugging at my mother's skirt asking: "Where's Michi? Is Michi asleep?" That broke my soul. On the left-hand side were my neighbours and friends, but Jaime, Alex and Noelia weren't there. Didn't they want to see me like that? No. Those geeky bastards screwed me over alive — sorry, "dead" — but I'll tell you about that later. No spoilers!

Then I saw them. Right at the back, in the last pews, sat Tomy and Daniel. What the hell were those sons of bitches doing at my funeral? Not content with taking my life, they'd turned up to laugh at the people who loved me. They even carved into the wood of the pew with a Swiss army knife: "Fuck you, geek". That's how I found out that the dead also feel hatred and a thirst for revenge.

I nearly missed my own burial because I got stuck working out how to kill them. By the time I reached the cemetery they were already lowering the coffin. Once it was covered over, I felt an immense calm. A sweet sound wrapped itself around me and I saw an intoxicating white light. It was my time to go. I headed towards the light — turns out God does exist after all — but just before I crossed through it, I heard their voices:

"Michael, Michael... are you there?" It was my friends' voices. They were summoning me.

Everything went dark. My sight came back and I saw them sitting in a triangle, surrounded by candles, their hands on a glass in the middle of a Ouija board. I could see something new: an aura around each of them and a very thin thread coming out of their heads — their pineal gland. A silver cord that trailed off into the immensity of the universe.

I went over to Noelia. I touched her silver thread. I could feel her anxiety and her essence. All I had to do was think "I'm here" for her hands to slide the glass across to YES.

"I swear on my life I'm not the one moving it," Jaime whispered.

"Is it really you, Michael?" Noelia asked.

All of a sudden the candles went out. A cutting draught filled the room. It wasn't me. Other beings, desperate and with no trace of humanity left in them, swarmed around my friends, trying to grab their silver threads. I screamed at them to run, spelling it out on the board, weakening myself with every letter. Then I felt presences behind me: shadows black as tar with empty eyes.

"Kill her!" they whispered. "Tear out her silver cord and end her life!"

The terror I felt, I passed straight on to Noelia. The glass flew off against the wall and they ran for it. Once they were gone, the spectres vanished. I went out into the street and saw that everything was different, like something out of a Tim Burton film. I could see the living with their cords connected to "something", but we weren't connected to anything.

Rage took me to Daniel's house. I remembered how they'd forced me to swallow the pills with cheap rum while they held me down so I couldn't throw up, and how they'd abandoned me in that attic. Daniel was in his room rolling a joint when I grabbed his life thread. His body froze; I worked him like a puppet. I made him dial 112. The voices came back: "Kill him, he's a murderer, do it."

"Police?" a woman answered.

"My name is Daniel Steiner... I live at 122 Calle Funesta. I want to confess to the murder of Michael Bauer... we drugged him and we left him to die..."

"What the hell are you doing, you idiot!" his mother screamed, coming into the room and cutting off the call. "You've given yourself away! Call Tomy, the two of you have to run."

I couldn't believe it. That bitch knew everything and she was covering for them. I lost control. I grabbed hold of Daniel's threads and his mother's.

"KILL THEM!" the spectres screamed.

Without hesitating, I pulled with all my strength and ripped out their connections to life. I felt a hit of adrenaline, a divine strength. Their eyes rolled back white. Dozens of spectres threw themselves on their freshly disconnected souls and carried them off, screaming. I fell unconscious.

I woke up to see them carrying out two silver body bags. The neighbour women were gossiping: "They say the boy confessed to the crime and then the pair of them dropped stiff as boards." Tomy had done a runner. The spectres were watching me from the shadows. "He got away from you, coward," they whispered.

I got out of there. I felt hungry for silver cords. Was I turning into one of them? I swore never to kill again, to keep the spectres at a distance, but I would find Tomy by other means.

The years went by. I learned to build my own urban legend. "Say Michael three times in front of the mirror at midnight...". It kept me entertained. I passed myself off as demons at exorcisms and as celebrities at séances. There's only one thing I'm not proud of. I died a virgin, and one night instinct led me to try to touch a girl who was asleep while I held her life thread. She woke up paralysed with terror, surrounded by spectres I had drawn to her. It was my fault that she went through what you lot now call "sleep paralysis". I never did it again.

My search ended up at my best weapon: the Internet. Now the world is full of filaments: an invisible neural network. Everything is rotten: drug trafficking, paedophiles, fake lives on Instagram... You humans have disappointed me. All you ever cause is destruction. To me you're just data connected to a technological cloud, and I feel no pity.

My one and only goal is to find Tomy Holzer Konrad. And you're going to help me. If you're reading this, you've just gone on my list. You have six days to forward the email with his photofit to every one of your contacts.

The countdown starts now. You have six days. If you don't do it... my next question will be:

Where's Tomy?