"Harry, wait!" Gabriella screamed as she ran after him.

  Whatever was haunting the house would most likely realize that only he was a threat to its existence, but he would still have to get her out before the house went up in flames. It really was a good thing that he could attack the problem from multiple directions simultaneously.

  "Split!" he shouted as he invoked his spell.

  The house was big so he would need to circle back multiple times to get maximum gasoline coverage. While he took a right and started running through the winding corridors of the right wing of the house, another Harry took a left while a third Harry ran up the stairs and charged bravely into darkness.

  Every Harry was truly him and each of them would make different choices as they all simultaneously pursued a different line of probability until they found the one that would result in success. Plenty of him would die pursuing doomed timelines, but only the branch where he succeded would become reality so that hardly mattered.

  He could feel the presence within the house reacting to him as he ran leaving a trail of gasoline behind him as he went. The presence had taken notice and the shadows were growing heavier with every passing moment. As he reached the stairs at the end of the right wing and ascended to the second floor he heard panting coming from the hallway ahead of him.

  "Tag!" he called out as the Harry that had gone to the second floor first came into view.

  "No!" the other Harry screamed as he jumped branches causing them to run headfirst into the shadowy presence.

  The screams of the other Harry echoed throughout the house as the haunting presence dragged them kicking and screaming into one of the nearby rooms. If he hadn't hopped branches and sacrificed that Harry to the presence it would have caught up to him on that line of probability. One sacrificial Harry was a small price to pay for success and they all knew it.

  "I've covered the left wing in gas, but it's getting faster!" another Harry called out as their paths crossed on the stairs in the hall.

  "I've already covered most of the right wing so just tag me and find Gabriella!" he shouted in reply as they high fived while running past each other.

  "Tag, you're dead!" he called out to the Harry that he had once been.

  "That's not funny!" they exclaimed as the presence at the bottom of the stairs got a hold of their leg and dragged them towards a gruesome fate waiting for them within one of the darkened rooms.

  "It was a little funny," he chuckled as he kept running with all his might.

  He could hear Gabriella's terrified screams somewhere in the left wing of the second floor, but if he was lucky another Harry had already found her and would be making their way towards him. Explaining the countless other Harry's she would have met during the last few minutes would probably end up being a handful, so he would have to really think through what he was going to say to her if she ever decided to bring it up.

  "Harry what the hell is going on and what the hell is that thing following us?!"

  The other Harry in the midst of dragging Gabriella through the house came into view just as he reached the stairs at the end of the left wing. He hopped onto the railing and slid down towards the first floor grabbing her by the hand as he passed them.

  "Tag, and please try to keep it busy for a bit!" he called out to the Harry running up the stairs as he hoisted Gabriella over his shoulder.

  "My time to shine then!" the other Harry screamed as they reached the top of stairs and charged the entity waiting for them within the darkness.

  Carrying Gabriella meant losing a significant amount of speed and her constant struggling certainly didn't help. After a few moments he reached the front door while panting heavily. A firm kick was all it took to force it open and with all of his might he hurled her out into the yard outside the house.

  "Harry, run!" she screamed with tears in her eyes as he felt the darkness inching closer and closer.

  There wasn't any time left. He had met a dead end and would need to tag out as fast as possible. The presence was going to strike at any moment now, but he needed to make sure she didn't do something as stupid as running in to save him. All her training meant nothing against a malicious spirit like the one haunting the home.

  "It's fine, Gabriella, I'll be with you shortly!" he declared as something came flying towards his neck, "Tag!"

  "Harry, no!" she screamed as the head of the Harry that had gotten her out of there was torn from their shoulders.

  "Well at least it was quick," he muttered to himself.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Watching yourself die never got any easier, and experiencing death firsthand was incredibly traumatic. He finished dousing all the furniture in the living room on the second floor and threw the jerrycan down the stairs. There was no longer a path to the doors so he would have to improvise a bit when it came to making an exit.

  "It's just the second story and there are bushes down there, so how bad can it be really?" he asked himself before taking a deep breath.

  "Here goes nothing!" he screamed as he covered his face and threw himself out the window.

  With a quick motion he flicked the lighter open and threw it in through the broken window behind him. Flames consumed the dark interior in an instant as the air rushed through his hair. His body slammed into something soft as he hit the ground, but his relief was shortlived as hot painful jolts shot through his legs and back. Of all the soft things he could've landed on it just had to be the large rosebush on the property that broken his fall.

  "Ow," he said slowly as he tried his best to ignore the pain.

  It took him over a minute to escape the thorns and crawl out of the rosebush that he had gotten stuck in. His jeans were ripped, but they didn't look all too bad. Maybe he could even pass it of as fashionable. Torn jeans were all the rage as of late anyways.

  "Harry?!" Gabriella exclaimed as he walked up to her.

  "Told you I'd be with you shortly!" he chuckled.

  She rushed up to him and ended up almost tackling him as she threw her arms around him. It was alright in the end, but he probably should've told her not to follow him before he ran in earlier. Even though she was a trained combatant and doctor, running through a haunted house was probably well outside her field of expertise. That was his expertise after all and it would probably be for the best if he was more clear about things like that in the future.

  "I thought you died!" she screamed while staring daggers at him.

  "Actually I probably died five or eight times, but it worked out in the end!"

  Her entire body tensed up as the thing hiding inside the house shrieked in agony as the flames around it consumed its very home. It would probably cease to be alongside the building unless it decided that haunting a smoldering pile of rubble was a worthwhile endeavor.

  "It's not real right? It's just some animal making those noises right?!"

  "Well I did tell you that the house was haunted..."

  "Harry, ghosts aren't real!"

  "But they are, can't you see?" he said as he watched the fires consuming the building from within.

  The thing howled as it struggled to snuff out the all consuming inferno devouring its entire world, but it was already too late for it. There was just no way it would be able to put out all the fires in time. Some part of him felt bad about taking its home from it even if its existence was a danger to anyone that entered its domain.

  It just wanted to live its life even if that meant others would come to harm. An understandable predicament as far as he was concerned. He wouldn't like it if someone tried to take his home from him either and would do everything in his power to stop them if they did, which made him all the more sympathetic towards its plight.

  "Gabriella, it's more afraid of us than we are of it..."

  "Of course, the howling shadow monster stalking the corridors of an abandoned house is obviously the one that's afraid in this scenario," she said in a strange tone that came of as almost mocking in his ears.

  "All it had was its home and now it's no more," he said somberly, "We all just want to live our lives at the end of the day."

  She breathed out heavily and looked at him directly, "Harry, I just thought you were lonely and possibly had some type of special needs, but you just burned down an actual haunted house with a fucking monster inside it!"

  "Look on the bright side! I don't know any other haunted houses so we won't have to deal with one of those in a long time."

  They walked back to his apartment in silence. While he enjoyed the quiet in general, the fact she wasn't talking was most likely a very bad sign. If she decided to end their contract there was just no way he would ever manage to finish his future investigation. The mystery would go unsolved and he would be a laughingstock once more.

  "I understand they probably never trained you for things like this, but with your skills you'll be able to deal with all kinds of strangeness in no time!" he said with complete certainty in his voice as he opened the door to his apartment.

  "I'm going home, Harry," she muttered, "And don't even thinkg of trying to call me!"

  His heart sank as he watched her walk away. All he could do now was hope she would come back tomorrow like she had promised. There was always a chance that she just needed some time to cool off and that she was actually handling it better than he thought. He had never been good at reading people so all he could really do was keep his hopes up that she would come back.

  "Associate...return...will...one...day," the radio screamed through the waves of static as it jumped frequencies.

  "Well that's reassuring at least!" he said as a big smile creeped its way onto his features.

  The hours passed him by as he relaxed in front of the computer screen. Most would have probably gotten bored if every game they played resulted in their victory, but in his case he enjoyed the journey of working towards the goal more than winning itself. Working his way through a challenging scenario while considering all the possible roadbumps he would have to avoid on his path to victory had become his favorite pastime. It was really about the journey and not the destination.

  "It looks like you're planning to investigate a mysterious killer," the paperclip oracle on the screen said to him, "Would you like some assistance?"

  Once more it had found a way to escape the supposedly inescapable purgatory within the recycling bin. Every time he condemned it to that fate it would eventually find its way back, but he still had no idea how it did it. At first he had assumed it was a virus of some sort, but it had yet to display any true ability to control the systems of his computer. It was anomalous and possibly dangerous, yet there was little he could do when he had found no way to truly contain it.

  "No thank you," he said as he prepared to throw the executable file in the recycling bin.

  "They will claim another victim tonight," it said just before the waiting purgatory claimed it once more.

  "Oh no..."

  It had been too late. Someone had been around to observe its prophecy and now he was caught up in its web of predestination. There was no use in fighting it now. He had already heard it and now it was fated to come true. Any attempt to prevent it would only accelerate the prophecy. He had always disliked predestination, and the fact it stripped him of his agency was the reason why.

  "Guess I've got no choice but to go out looking for the soon to be body," he sighed as he struggled to button his shirt.

  "If I'm lucky I might even end up discover some important clues!"