Okay, first thing. This fic is rated M for a reason! If you are not over eighteen, please, don't read any farther. I know I can't stop anyone, but I can hope that everyone exercises their maturity and common sense.

I am giving in. This chapter has been done for over a month and I have been waiting patiently, but my other fics don't seem to want to end, so I'm starting this one anyway!

Gairo Erumu, roughly translated means Elm Street. That's right boy and girls; Freddy Kruger is going to pay a visit to the YnM universe. This is still basically a YnM fic, I just want to try a new villain on for size!

I have been making some corrections, hopefully now I've got Wakaba's name right!

Disclaimer: Standard, I own neither Yami, the characters nor Freddy Kruger. Please don't sue me!

And of course, any responses are welcome and appreciated. Flamers will receive raspberries.

GAIRO ERUMU

Chapter 1

Tatsumi looked at the four Shinigami who faced him across his desk. Terazuma and Tsuzuki kept shooting each other nasty sidelong glances while their respective partners sat quietly.

Tatsumi sighed and picked up a very thick folder. "Tsuzuki, Terazuma, Kurosaki and Kannuki." He nodded to each in turn. The four of you are being assigned to a case together."

"I have to work with him?" Tsuzuki asked incredulously, looking at Terazuma as if the man were something he found on the bottom of his shoe.

Terazuma looked even less enthused, growling low in his throat but he refrained from commenting.

Hisoka passed a look with Wakaba. "Looks like this case is going to be a lot of fun." He said mildly.

"If I could have your attention." Tatsumi set the file down on his desk. "A malevolent ghost has entered Japan, it came from the United States, and while we don't know how it managed to get here, it is imperative that we deal with it right away."

"Why?" Asked Terazuma. "If it's just a ghost…"

"This ghost is extremely powerful and very dangerous. The foreign offices sent us quite a lot of information on him."

"If they have so much information on this ghost, then why haven't they done something about it already?" Hisoka asked.

"Apparently they've tried." Tatsumi adjusted his glasses. "But for decades they have been unsuccessful. Most of their operatives are unable to locate him, and the people they've sent who could find him were killed. This ghost gains power by absorbing the souls of his victims and according to this file, he's had a lot of victims."

Tsuzuki blanched. "And they haven't found a way to stop it?"

"No." Tatsumi told him. "It seems that adults, for the most part cannot see or sense this ghost, although there are records of this ghost killing adults on occasion, for the most part his victims are teenagers."

For a moment Tsuzuki and Terazuma shared a look of complete understanding in their concern for their partners.

"Kurosaki-kun, Wakaba-san," Tatsumi gave each of them a pointed look, "You two are the ones who are going to have to find this ghost, Your partners will mainly be there for back-up."

They both nodded. "So where is it?" Hisoka asked.

Tatsumi sighed. "We don't know, but according to the foreign office finding it won't be too difficult. All we have to do is wait for the deaths to start."

XXX

Hontura Kya was dreaming.

She knew she was dreaming because she would never have gone outside in her nightgown if she was awake, but here she was standing in the middle of her street, bare feet on the cold concrete. The familiar surroundings seemed odd to her, as if the ground itself was admitting a faint light causing all the shadows to stretch upwards, distorted.

Like when you hold a flashlight under your face to scare your friends…

The effect was unnerving, and Kya wrapped her arms around herself trying to ward off a chill, she was shivering.

Suddenly she thought she heard someone chuckle behind her. She whipped around but there was no one there, only a bank of fog that rolled down the street towards her. The fog swirled around and over her, the moisture making her skin cold and clammy.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention and she turned towards it. As she watched a dark silhouette formed in the fog.

The figure slowly advanced towards her and she began to back away in response.

Kya was afraid.

"Who are you?" She called out, trying to put more distance between her and the menacing figure, never taking her eyes off it.

"jeiuif akldsjfi a;lksej ;ixias!"

Kya stopped dead, confusion replacing some of the fear. "What?"

The figure held up its right hand, showing long blades that extended from each of its fingers.

THAT she understood. Kya turned and ran.

A quick glance over her shoulder told her that the figure was not giving chase and she slowed slightly. Looking back again she saw the figure draw back his arm and fling it forward. Suddenly she found herself surrounded by thin wires that wrapped around her body. Following them with her eyes, she saw that they traveled back to the dark figure.

He pulled his hand back she felt the wires around her tighten.

Kya whimpered.

He drew his hand back even farther and she felt the wires digging into her skin, drawing blood. "Please! Don't!" Franticly Kya shook her head.

The figure nodded and pulled hard on the wires.

Kya screamed as the wire sliced through her.

The figure sighed with twisted pleasure and a demented grin spread across a scarred and burned face as he absorbed the terrified girl's soul into himself.

Looking down at the remains of the body, he pulled small English to Japanese dictionary out of a back pocket and began to fan through the pages, eyes paging back and forth with inhuman speed. After a few moments he reached the end of the book and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Well, that takes care of that" He said to himself in a grating voice, "It'll be much easier to scare them if they understand what I'm saying!"

XXX

Tsuzuki looked through the pictures that were in the thick file, tight lipped. The pictures were graphic and bloody to a one, and Tsuzuki was beginning to feel decidedly ill going through them.

"Don't look at them if they disturb you that much." Hisoka told him without looking up from the papers that he was reading through.

Terazuma reached over and snatched the pictures out of Tsuzuki's hands. "Let me see."

Tsuzuki frowned at the possessed Shinigami, but made no attempt to reclaim the pictures.

"Hajime, be nice." His partner scolded him, looking up from her own pile of papers.

Terazuma paled paging through the photographs "I think I did him a favour!" He muttered, putting the pictures down and pushing them away.

"So is there anything there that might help us find him?" Tsuzuki asked Hisoka who was frowning, looking almost as ill as Tsuzuki had felt, without the benefit of the gory pictures.

Hisoka looked up from the papers in front of him. "Not really, this is a life history, and this guy was seriously disturbed. He could give Muraki a run for his money."

"I doubt that."

"Oh yeah, just listen." Hisoka paged through the papers until he found the one he wanted. "It says here that his mother was a nun who suffered repeated rapes by the residents of an insane asylum after she was accidentally locked in over a weekend. She died in childbirth, and the child, a boy, was sent to an orphanage. He spent some time in various foster homes but was always returned for violent behaviour. There are reports here of him torturing small animals, threatening and attacking people for no reason, there's even one report here of him maiming a younger child at one of the foster homes he stayed at, it says here that he cut off all her fingers. There are a few reports here of him being abused as well, but for some reason, those seemed to be the homes he stayed in longest."

Hisoka paused, flipping through the pages and pulling out another. "He dropped out of high school, got married, and he and his wife had a daughter. Everything seemed fine for several years, then in an altercation with his wife he killed her, and it was when the police were investigating his wife's death they discovered that he was guilty for a string of child disappearances and brutal murders. His daughter was taken to protective services and he was arrested and put on trial, but because someone wasn't paying attention somewhere along the line he got released on a technicality."

By now Hisoka had everyone's full attention

"The parents in the neighbourhood were furious that he was let go, so they all got together and tracked him to an abandoned factory. They trapped him inside and set the place on fire, killing him."

Wakaba picked up where Hisoka left off. "After he died, his soul didn't arrive for judgement, and the foreign offices immediately investigated, by they could find no trace of him, until a few years later when teenagers started dying mysterious and violent deaths on the street where he had lived, but before they could find him, he disappeared again."

Wakaba fanned through the stack of papers she held. "Every time has been like that. His presence would be announced by a string of gruesome deaths, but he would either be defeated by the teenagers he was trying to kill, or he would simply disappear. And even when they got close to catching him they could see him anyway." She looked at Hisoka. "I get the impression that they don't have too may teenage shinigami in the American offices."

Hisoka held out a paper to her. "Not anymore."

Wakaba took the paper and her eyes widened as she skimmed it over "Ohhhh!"

"What?" Tsuzuki and Terazuma asked in unison, stopping for a moment to glare at each other.

"There were three Shinigami in the American offices who managed to get close enough to this ghost to have contact with it. One was seventeen, the other two were eighteen. All three were killed. Before he died, one of them told his superior that the ghost was attacking him in his dreams." Wakaba turned to Hisoka. "I guess it's the physical age that matters to this ghost, 'cause one of those three had been a shinigami for…" She looked at the paper in her hand. "Close to forty years."

Hisoka nodded. "Not very reassuring is it?"

"So does this asshole have a name?" Terazuma growled.

Hisoka nodded again and shuffled through the papers. "Right here…his name is Fred Kruger."