#ectoberweek2022

25. Forest He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried

26. Six Feet Maddie had to face the facts: one of her kids was dead, now—a ghost, a monster—and it was her duty to destroy it before it killed the rest of her family. But first, she needed to figure out which one of the kids was dead.

27. Soul Shredder He looked human. But then, most monsters do.

28. Scream “Pssst, you’re dead. Pass it on.”

29. Lobotomy Amorpho really liked her face. So he took it.

30. Shiver She traced her fingers along the forgotten metal table. Despite the revelations that had come to light, she’d do it all again.

31. Folk Tales They say there's no such thing as the monster under the bed, but are you sure? ...Did you check?

---

Be sure to check out the @ectoberhaunt Month Long Calendar if you want more spooky prompts this month!

-

Fright Knight, if he’s being honest, does not understand his new ward in the slightest. 

As the Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms, the boy is absurdly powerful. He had to be, to have defeated Pariah Dark- a ghost so fearsome it took an entire gathering of the Ancient Ghosts to seal him the first time- and to have beaten him with only his determination and a suit far too large for him, built by his human father. He’d heard of the boy’s abilities in extent amongst his allies in the Zone: his ice, his ectoblasts, his wail. Unbreakable, unstoppable, dimension-shaking. Yes, Prince Phantom was powerful indeed.

But it’s so hard to connect the image of him to this reputation that precedes him so. Because Phantom wears a too-big crown and a too-big cape and a ring that slips off his fingers, and if he looks anything it’s this: small, and skittish. 

And scared. 

Fright Knight knows a lot about that. 

Fear is his domain, after all; it calls to him like a siren song calls to sailors on the open ocean. The taste of it is all allure- dread like a sweet wine, terror strong and honeying- he lives beyond living for it, just as he lives beyond living to serve the Realms’ Keeper, sacred and gratifying as such a duty is. Fear is his greatest delight- but this fear is his liege’s, and it is… sour. Sour to be exposed to, sour against the reach of his senses, the boy’s extending aura. Sour, perhaps, because the boy is royalty won in combat and powerful beyond belief, but he is still a boy. Younger still as a ghost than he is as a human. 

Impossibly large shoes to fill, and an overflowing well of mistakes to rectify that he hasn’t even existed long enough to have witnessed in the first place. 

Fourteen. His core isn’t even a year old, he’s a child. 

Fright Knight may relish in the terror of his opposition, but this boy is not his enemy, and this fear should not have to exist. And if there’s something he can do to abate it- well, that’s only his duty, as the Crown Prince’s most loyal knight. 

-

It’s not often that he finds himself in the human world, but the King’s Keep is thrumming with anxiety, and lairs are bound to their keepers in a way few things are, an indicator of the state of their hosts. The moment he takes stock of the shift, Fright Knight is making his way towards the artificial portal the Prince’s human parents created, looking for the disturbance in the Zone’s atmosphere and finding it soon enough. 

From there, all it takes is a few seconds of intangibility upwards, and he finds himself in the room of the Prince. The Crown Prince of the Infinite Realms, in his human form, hunched over in bed with a blanket curled around him, expression exhausted but equally sleepless. 

“I sensed trouble within your Keep, Prince Phantom.” He says simply. 

The boy startles slightly, as if he hadn’t even noticed Fright Knight was there. “Ah- I, uh, hey- hi? Wait, did you say trouble?”

“The Keep reflects its Keeper,” Fright Knight explains, not unkindly. “Your Keep is not in trouble; it seemed as if you were, my liege.”

“Oh,” Phantom breathes, shoulders unwinding from where they’d begun to climb towards his ears, less from a total relief and more from a weariness. As if to prove it, his shoulders do not stop once they’ve receded, drawing further and further into himself as if intending to disappear. “Oh, sorry. I’m not- I’m not in any trouble, or anything. Sorry if you thought something was going on.”

Fright Knight has not had a ward beyond Pariah for a long, long time, but even then, they were never so young- either when alive or dead. They tended to be well beyond childhood before their death (if they were ever alive at all), and their cores fully formed for decades, centuries prior to taking the mantle. Not for the first time, he wonders how it can possibly be seen reasonable, fair to push a responsibility meant for immortals who have tasted that immortality on a child who hasn’t even had his first death day. 

But Fright Knight doesn’t control what’s fair, and he doesn’t control how the Keep chooses its holder. He can only control what he does in this moment. “But there is something going on. You’re afraid.” 

Whatever thoughts had been turning over behind Phantom’s expression pause at the statement, face all at once becoming bewildered, overwhelmed with the unexpected. He looks like someone with a weapon pointed between their eyes; a realisation, and a cautiousness trying not to reveal a dread. 

“Right, yeah, you sense that stuff- you’re the Fright Knight- how did I forget? I’m sorry, I didn’t even think about that; I’ll be better about it! I swear you won’t have to deal with this or anything, it was just…”

Oh. He looks like someone with a weapon pointed between their eyes because he thinks Fright Knight is going to draw his. He acted wildly and without a thought when he was freed by the boy some months ago, seeking his Soul Shredder, and likely cemented no assuring reputation when fighting under Pariah. He is not a spirit that tends to dwell on his regrets, but privately, he winces at the reminder. There are very few ways to apologise for such a dismal first encounter in any meaningful fashion; there may be very little point in apologising at all, at least not in this moment.

Instead, he simply lowers himself to the ground, feet meeting carpet from where they’d previously been floating. “I am a spirit who thrives upon fear, and upon summoning it within my enemies, but I am also a spirit who thrives upon the prosperity of my ward. You are in a place of rest, in your own domain, and you have the power to fell any who may cross you, and yet, it is not prosperous. This requires intervention, but it is not punishable.”

Phantom’s eyes turn downwards to avoid his gaze. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Fear is fear; it cannot be stupid.”

A moment passes before the boy’s reservations draw back, and he attempts to explain. 

“I keep getting these nightmares. I think it’s just ‘cause I’ve been stressed recently; I always used to get nightmares when I was stressed as a kid. But I keep getting these nightmares of just- I dunno, everything. Some ghost beating me into the ground and hurting the people in Amity; some ghost beating me into the ground and hurting the people in the Zone; being a monster, being a bad ruler, being a bad son. I wanna tell my parents about being half ghosts but they still hate ghosts- and they love me so much, but I can’t really be sure if it’s safe, can I? It feels like everything’s just wrong lately and- and I’m scared!” 

It had started subdued enough, but as he carried on speaking, the boy’s voice progresses from a mumble to a cry, ending with tears reflecting off the glow from Fright Knight’s figure. 

And Fright Knight is intimately familiar with fear, but he’s far too used to being the cause; he doesn’t know how to soothe it, is unused to wanting to. Slowly, making sure to leave enough time between steps that the Prince has the opportunity to tell him to recede, he makes his way towards the boy’s bed, and sits down at the edge. Slower, slower still, a cold hand makes its way to the boy’s back, motionless but steady once it’s taken its place. 

He waits until Phantom has calmed enough that the trembling abates even if the tears haven’t quite finished, and then speaks. “I am a spirit of fear,” He starts quietly. “And I have seen every manner of being afraid, regardless of how strong. Most much older than you, many more imposing- none of them, none of these beings, have I seen able to face the nightmares of your reality unshaken. You are afraid; I believe every time I have met you, you have been afraid- but you have never faltered for it. You are young, and you may be terrified, but there is something about that that perhaps makes you braver.”

“And you have friends. You have your human loved ones here, and your allies within the Realms- and if being a good knight to you means being a friend, then I am your friend as well. You are not alone, Prince Phantom, and I don’t believe you ever will be.”

There is a moment of silence thicker than the blizzards of the Far Frozen, and eventually, Phantom leans to his side, looks him in the face. The fear is not gone (Fright Knight wonders idly if it ever will be, and figures not), but it’s calmer, now. More willing to settle in lieu of raging against any other emotion. 

“Thanks, Fright Knight.”

“It is my duty, Prince Phantom.”

His eyes flicker with some kind of amusement. “Can you call me Danny, though? Prince Phantom’s still kind of weird.”

“…Very well, Prince Danny.”

Was this all a dream after all? Or was it just a simple prank of one mischievous ghost of the many ghost who visits Amity Park? Or is it a completely different entity behind all this who is planning something more sinister…?

------------------------------------------------

He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.

It's October now. It's getting colder. The leaves are falling. They must be covering it by now.

They crunch under his steps as he walks. Something CRUSHES under his foot. His mind pictures bones. Ribs breaking in two.

It's just a branch.

He continues his walk.

The sky is bright, but the mood is gloom. The air is moist. 

It's been a while. It must have decomposed by now, with how much rain they get. Sometimes, he thinks he can feel the dirt on his bones.

He puts a finger on his pulse. Thump. A pause. A painfully long, long, pause. It shouldn't be this long. Thump. He is alive. But his skin is cold.

His hoodie is thick. It was always enough to keep him warm. Now, he is always cold.

The ice of his core. Slowly freezing him from the inside out. 

It's shallowly buried. His corpse. Barely a few centimetres underground. A lump in the dirt hastily covered with soil. Six feet, that's how it's supposed to be.

He strays from the path. Disappeares through the trees. Like a ghost.

There's a few hiker trails in the forests surrounding Amity, but he disregards them all.

He moves through the thick foliage. There are broken branches, broken saplings. He tries to not further disturb it all.

He crushes a flower about halfway through. The stem is mangled, his shoe sole imprinted in the bud.He picks it. He rolls it between his fingers the rest of the way.

He reaches a clearing. There's a big rock in the middle. 

His soul aches. A corpse with no grave, a ghost without rest. What a pity.

He goes up to the rock. The ground underneath it is uneven, disturbed from digging.

Is it still wrong to stand on a grave if it's yours?

He kneels on the forest floor and sets a candle down. Lights it. He lays the mangled flower beside it.

A single broken flower for a lonely corpse.

He feels sorry for it. It must be sad. All alone. In a dark, cold forest. With nobody to know you died, with nobody to mourn you.