“I guess this is the best there is,” Halt said, dropping his travel pack onto the dusty ground.
Will, Halt and Horace had been travelling the last few days to the other side of the country to help deal with some recurring robberies, attacks and even murders. No one knew who the cause of these crimes were, but it had left the ranger of that fief, Jonathan, killed.
The rain had begun to pour down two hours earlier, following the strong wind that had been blowing all day. Shortly after the rain started, the lightning and thunder followed. All three men were soaked, freezing and miserable. They had been dreading having to find a camp for the night, not looking forward to sleeping on the cold, wet ground.
Thankfully, shortly before they were about to accept their fate, Horace had spotted what looked to be an old house on a hill up ahead. It was a bit of an extra walk in the dark, but it was worth it when they discovered the house was abandoned and all theirs for the night.
It was rickety, leaking in multiple corners, and smelt funny, but it was as Halt had said, it was the best they had.
“It's creepy in here,” Horace said as he gazed around the room. He looked at disgust at the spiderwebs in all corners and without realizing took a few steps closer to the centre of the room. He wouldn't say he was afraid of spiders, but he would rather not have one crawl on his face as he slept.
“Kind of random,” Will said. “Small little hill in the middle of nowhere? Aren't hills like these usually man made instead of natural?”
“It could be an ancient burial ground,” Halt said. “Some people and areas use hills to bury their dead. I'd say this kind of hill fits what they would look like after years.”
“So we're sleeping above a bunch of dead people?” Horace asked, the slightest hint of fear creeping into his voice.
“No,” Halt told him. “I'm just saying it's a possibility. Don't be so scared. They're dead, what are they going to do to us?”
“I'm not scared,” Horace insisted.
“You are,” Will teased. “You're scared of the creepy old house on the creepy old hill.”
“Shut up, Will.” A second later the room flashed white as lightning struck the sky, immediately by a loud rumble of thunder that shook the floor. Horace involuntarily flinched at the light and sound, wrapping his arms around himself.
“That was loud,” Will commented. Horace assumed Will didn’t notice his frightened stance. If he did, he would most definitely be teasing him for it.
“That’s going to get annoying,” Halt grumbled. He was unrolling his bedroll onto the ground close to where Horace was standing. “It’ll be so loud we probably won’t be able to sleep.”
“Are we sleeping right here?” Horace asked, pointing to the ground in front of him.
Halt shrugged. “I am. I don’t know if you noticed but those walls aren’t that clean and I don’t want to be covered in spiders and webs.”
“Fair enough,” Horace said, hiding his relief. He shrugged his pack off of his shoulders and copied Halt in laying out his bedroll and blankets next to his friends. Halt raised an eyebrow at him.
“Are you sure you’re not close enough?” he said with sarcasm, looking meaningfully at the small distance Horace put between his bedroll and Halt’s.
“Sorry,” the young knight replied hastily. He inched his set up a few inches away from the ranger, giving him more space. It wasn’t much. Halt continued to look at him, his expression a look of “really?” but he didn’t say anything more. Grumbling under his breath he just lay down on his roll, pulled his blankets around his shoulders for warmth, and turned away from Horace.
“You’re going to sleep now?” Will asked from the other side of the room. He was crouched in front of a rather large spider web, poking at it with a stick. In a second, something small and black jumped out from the web, and Will, startled, jumped a few steps back. Tossing the stick to the side he walked over to his friends and began to set up next to Horace.
“Mmhmm,” Halt replied, keeping his eyes closed. “There’s nothing else to do. We can’t light a fire in here, so no coffee, it’s cold, it’s wet and I’m tired and want this night to be over so shut up.”
“Alright.” Will and Horace collapsed onto the ground, the bedrolls doing little to prevent the cold of the floor seeping into them. They cocconed themselves in their blankets, wrapping nice and tightly, and said good night to each other. There was no need to set a watch in a place like this. No one would be around.
Another bright flash of light and another boom of noise. Horace jolted awake, confused for a second of where he was. Casting bleary eyes to his left and right he could vaguely make out the forms of his two ranger friends sleeping in the darkness. Right, the storm, the hill, the house. He remembered now.
Something else had woken him up. His heart was racing and there was a faint cold sweat on his brow that he knew from experience happened after a nightmare. He couldn’t remember what his dream could have been about, and he was a little glad about that. Whatever it was had been frightening, and it would be a lot easier to fall asleep again if he was ignorant to it.
More lightning and thunder hit. While they had been asleep, the rain had seemed to have gotten worse, and the leaks in the house were now a constant drip. The wind was so loud and furious Horace was surprised the rickety house was still standing. The thunder clapped at the same time as the lightning, the rumbling long and drawn out, and much louder than it had previously been. Horace guessed the storm was right above them now.
He glanced again at his friends, seeing if the weather had bothered them. Halt was still facing away from him so Horace couldn’t make out his face, but his breathing was still deep and even and it didn’t look like the older ranger had stirred. He could see Will’s face faintly in the dark, but just like Halt, he didn’t seem disturbed and was still fast asleep.
Horace began to lie back down again. There was no point in staying awake any longer, he thought. He slid his eyes closed as he lay back, but when he was about halfway to the floor, they shot open again, widening with horror. He rubbed at his eyes, hoping that it was just in his head and what he was seeing wasn’t real. But it was still there. A figure, pitch black, practically a shadow. It wasn’t moving, just standing there a metre away from the foot of his bedroll, staring at him. Horace’s eyes by now had adjusted to the darkness and could make out most of the room, but not this figure. No matter how much he looked, no features could be made out. Just an inky blackness in the shape of a tall human.
Keeping his eyes locked on the shadow, his hand reached towards the hilt of his sword next to him.
“Who are you?” Horace demanded. He was glad none of the fear he was feeling leaked into his voice. The figure didn’t say anything, didn’t move. It just stood. Horace felt a chill go up his spine. He suddenly felt very cold, and it wasn’t just from the storm.
“Will,” he whispered aside to his friend. When Will didn’t respond he took his eyes off the figure briefly to shake his friend’s shoulder. “Will, wake up.”
“Huh?” Will mumbled sleepily, cracking one eye open. He lifted his head from his cloak which he had folded as a pillow, his hair falling in messy strands across his face. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s someone in here with us,” Horace whispered back. “Look!” Horace pointed his sword in the direction of the figure and his heart dropped.
Will looked where Horace was indicating, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “What are you on about? There’s no one there.”
“But, there was-” Horace stammered. He looked frantically around the room, searching for the person. There was no one there. They were completely alone. “I saw someone,” he finished weakly.
“It was probably just your imagination,” Will told him. “Creepy atmosphere can make for creepy thoughts. It was nothing, go back to sleep.”
“But I saw it! I know what I saw. There was a shadow person right there and now they’re gone!”
Will raised an eyebrow. “A shadow person?” he repeated with disbelief.
“Ar mhaithe le Dia, will you two shut up?” they heard Halt say angrily, his Hibernian accent thicker than usual.
“Horace thinks he saw someone,” Will told him, rather stupidly. Obviously Halt had heard their conversation.
“I know I saw someone,” Horace corrected.
“I don’t care what you saw or what you think you saw. There’s no one here but us. Now, both of you shut it! Cé chomh sean agus atá tú, ag fáil scanraithe ag taibhsí.” He muttered to himself in his native language between slightly gritted teeth, and Will and Horace took that as a clear warning. They knew better than to push any further.
“Just try go back to sleep,” Will whispered to Horace. “It was probably nothing. And besides, what can a ghost do to us?”
“I never said it was a ghost,” Horace mumbled, but he followed Will’s directions and lay back down, trying to cast the figure out of his mind. It was all in his head, he told himself as he made himself comfortable. That’s all it was, just all in his head. He made it up, it was in his head, in his mind, it was…
…A loud CRASH sounded from the otherside, making all three men sit up, slipping into their defense modes.
“Ifreann fola!” Halt spat, gripping his saxe knife tightly in his hand. It seemed his brain was still tired and hadn’t fully reverted back to the common tongue.
“What the hell was that?” Will asked. He shrugged his blankets off his shoulders and stood up. He too, had his saxe knife ready in his hand. He looked around the room, trying to find some source of noise.
“That wasn’t thunder,” Horace said. “That sounded like it came from inside.”
“It sounded like someone banging on the walls.”
Halt and Horace also stood now, standing almost back to back as they searched their eyes around the house. Halt, knowing the wind most likely couldn't have made that sound, was looking for some sort of animal that may have seeked shelter in the house just as they did. Horace didn't know what he was looking for.
“What the-” Will suddenly cried out, clasping the back of his neck with his hand. He glanced at his two companions with a confused look on his face. “It felt like someone just blew on the back of my neck.”
“It was probably just the wind,” Halt told him.
“No, I mean it felt exactly like a person blowing on me. It didn’t feel like the wind at all. It was gentle, almost. And I only felt it on my neck.” Will tightened his grip on his saxe knife. There was a cautious look in his eyes now. It wasn’t very often that he was cooped up in an old falling apart house in the middle of a thunderstorm, but he assumed this wasn’t normal.
“I feel like there’s someone watching us,” Horace whispered. “You know that feeling? I have that right now.”
Halt just grunted, but the others took that to mean he felt it too.
There were a few agonising minutes. All three of them stood in silence, waiting for some other sign of another person. There were creaks and groans of wood, a few scratching noises, and at one point, Halt could have sworn he had footsteps approaching from behind. But when he whirled around to face whoever was stalking them, there was no one there. Halt didn’t understand any of this. They all sensed another presence, they heard them, Horace even claimed to see them, but there was nowhere in the one room house for someone to hide. And they all silently agreed that whoever it was was still inside with them.
“Oh my god,” Horace said in a quiet, choked voice. Halt and Will whipped around to see what the knight spotted and were rendered speechless by the sight. A person’s shadow stretched across the floor, darker than the night itself. But no person was attached. As they watched in silent terror, the shadow walked across the room, before disappearing through the far wall. They stared where the shadow had left them all confused and frightened. No one knew what to say.
“Horace,” Halt said lowly after a moment. “Let go of my arm.”
Sure enough, when Halt looked down at his arm, Horace’s hand was not there. The young man looked as if he had not moved from his frozen stance. As soon as Halt glanced down, the feeling of someone touching him left, but was shortly replaced by a slight burning feeling. Something warm was dripping down his arm. Blood. Three decent sized scratches had appeared, each side by side, each dripping fresh blood.
He had no idea where the scratches had come from. Well, he had one idea, but he didn’t want to believe it. Rubbing his arm, he wiped the blood away and didn’t mention the cuts to either of his companions. He walked back over to his bedroll, and sat down again.
“Just mind tricks in the dark,” he said. His voice didn’t sound convincing. “Just go back to sleep. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
I've really wanted to write a spooky paranormal fic with ghosts for a while and I finally did it. I don't really love the ending but whatever. This also ended up being a lot longer and a lot more Hoace focused then I thought it would be. if you haven't noticed by now, all my Ranger Gathering fics will have Halt in them.
Translate:
1. For God's sake
2. How old are you, getting scared by ghosts
3. Bloody Hell
I love having Halt speak Hibernian. I also don't know how good those translations are, I don't speak Irish and I just went onto a website that said it would translate English to Irish, but I don't know how reliable it is.
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