Haunted House Challenge: "Thrash Ghost" -- by Benjamin Leskey

Thrash Ghost

The ghost knows no future. The ghost is severed from the past. The ghost knows only two things: the final imprint before its birth, and the memory-less present.

The ghost felt the right Ur blade pull out of his heart and saw his body fall away beneath him. The ornate white sword, once white as the purest moon, dripped red in the hand of the murderer as they stood in the graying dusk under the great glass dome of the mansion.

“Linger here,” said the murderer behind the horned mask of a ram. “Regret making an enemy of me. You are nothing. You will haunt this place forever, powerless. Thrash, ghost, against the inexorable meaninglessness of your sub-conscious existence.”

The murderer sheathed the bloody weapon, and the ghost stopped making memories, left with only the terribly hazed impression of what exists in his eternal haunt.

Years pass.

A door in the mansion opens and the woman enters, followed by a girl and a boy, both carrying trunks. The woman carries no ordinary trunk, but rather a trombone case embossed in red with the name Ellen Carrier, along with her walking cane.

The ghost stands near. The boy swings his arm through the ghost and draws it back with a shiver.

“It is very dusty,” says the girl. “How long has it been since people lived here?”

The ghost can only regard this statement for an instant, then it leaves him.

“Six years,” says the woman. “The previous occupant was murdered.”

The ghost hears mention of himself, and reaches forward, but at the speed of thought the idea is gone and he knows no more of it than he does of the one who spoke it.

“Ooh, you didn’t mention that before we came here,” the boy says. “Think we’ll be murdered too? Or maybe it’s haunted!”

“Yes!” screams the ghost as this idea finds him momentarily, then vanishes. He again notices three  people with trunks and follows them.

The woman glares down at the boy. “Do not be absurd, Roland. I have read the stars, and you are both perfectly safe. As for haunted, do you see any ghosts?”

The ghost strikes the wall in frustration. A little dust falls, but any noise is drowned by the creak of walking feet on boards. In the next moment, he does not know why he feels so frustrated.

“Well, no,” says the boy, looking somewhat disappointed. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there!” the woman frowns at him. He pauses and grins sheepishly. “Sorry, Madam Carrier, you’re right.”

The girl throws back her heard to look above. “What a wonderful dome!”

The ghost writhes; he knows this glass dome. He stumbles away from the place he died.

“It is very wonderful,” says the woman. “Tell me, children, what are we here for?”

“To be tested!” cries the boy.

“Be specific,” the woman says. “Let me know exactly what you have deduced. Observe your surroundings.”

The girl still stares up at the glass dome. “This is an observatory. We are here for an astrological test, at least.”

The woman nods. “Carefully said, Nora; that was an acceptable answer at this time.”

The boy shakes his head. “I was technically right.”

Air whistles as the woman’s cane comes skillfully cracking down on the boy’s shoulder. “Do not defy me, child. Let me establish: you are both under my power here. I am training you as a favor to the Lugals under their parameters. I did not choose this specific location for what I must do, but it is necessary to continue your initiation here and you must obey me absolutely while we are in this place. Do you understand me, Roland?”

“Yes, Madam Carrier,” says the boy, wincing and grasping his shoulder.

“Excellent. Now, settle yourselves. We will meet under this dome tonight, once the evening star is visible.”

The children depart, leaving the woman and the ghost alone. The ghost twists and contorts, and in his throes knocks a dusty old vase off a nearby table to the ground with a crash. The woman stares at it for a long moment, then sits slowly in one of the observation chairs, pulling her trombone case closer.

“HEAR ME!” the ghost screams into the woman’s face. She looks through him to the sky above and quietly hums a venerable lilt. The ghost knows the tune, but can not remember what comes before each note and so the music falls over him as a constant string of single sounds and dispersed anticipation: it is torture. He flinches at each tone and by scores of individual flinches and puppet-like jerks stumbles out of the wide room and into a passage where he shrieks and rolls in the darkness hidden from any light.

Later the children come back into the room, and the ghost emerges under the glass-covered sky. The woman looks and smiles as the girl comes in with the boy following.

“This,” says the woman, rising tall from her chair, “Is an initiation. Look well, children. Read the ageless stars; see what has been laid bare in the beginning for you to understand now. Tell me what you see. Tell the unfettered truth, for what you read will be the truth; there is no forgiveness for those who work fraud when relaying such a terrible and mighty truth.”

“Okay,” says the boy. “I’ll really try.” He strides up to under the glass dome and stares at the stars.

“Read well, my child,” says the woman as the girl passes her. The girl hesitates as she stands under the dome, but the light of curiosity in her eyes pulls up to meet the most ancient traveler, a million beams of the light from on high.

The ghost stumbles onto the pale shining floor with them, and he looks up into a sky he once knew. This is barred from him now: though the signs are as clear as they ever were, he cannot interpret them before they are gone again, mere meaningless patterns.

“I see something!” cries the boy. “I see the sign of my own—er—ascension? Or maybe it’s bravery. Or initiation, I guess it could be.”

“Give me one answer, Roland,” says the woman. She steps gracefully over the floor to the girl, who frowns as the boy continues to read further. “Tell me what you see, Nora.”

The girl delays, staring upward.

“Nora?” says the woman. “What do you see?”

“I see the… the…” the girl begins, but stops. “No, I don’t read anything, yet.”

“Keep trying,” says the woman. She looks straight at the ghost and almost focuses on him, but he is ephemeral. He stumbles colliding into a chair, and it scrapes across the ground under the force of his unconscious will.

“What’s that?” The girl turns from the sky to the chair.

The woman only commands, “Focus,” but the girl cannot.

“I read violent uncertain initiation ending in ascension,” says the boy at length, unperturbed by the unnatural chair. “That is the best way to describe it.”

“That is sufficient,” says the woman. “You may retire.”

The boy departs and the ghost follows him aimlessly, leaving the woman and girl alone.

“Time for sleep,” says the boy to the air, sinking down into his bed. He slips from the realm of wakeful reality to the realm of dream that borders spirit. The ghost sees it all, and latches on as a twisted jockey pinned to the back of the dream-horse. The boy falls through the darkness into the one scene the ghost remembers, the one terrible crescendo ending his story. The ghost shows him the murder.

And, living within the dream of the boy, leeching off his memory and thought, the ghost speaks to him. “Witness this. Look at the blade! This is my end!”

“Yep,” says the boy, watching impassively as only a dreamer or psychopath can.

The dream ends when the boy’s body wrenches his mind away from the world of dreams, and the ghost spirals wailing through the wall into the starlight room.

“There is another way,” says the woman to the girl. The girl has not read the stars, and they shine frowning upon her failure. “I myself was not initiated through the stellar method. There is also the path of the spirit.”

“But I don’t understand,” says the girl. “Why can’t I do it? Why is Roland better than me?”

“You must not let him be better than you. Do not accept your failure, Nora. The Lugals do not look kindly upon self-deprecation.”

“Madam Carrier, what shall I do then? Can I change my path and try again later?”

Now the woman looks sorrowful, for a moment. “No. I will tell you a secret, Nora: only one of you children are allowed to pass this initiation. The other is cast out of our number forever.”

“Only one!?” cries the girl, then she hushes herself and glances toward the door leading to the boy’s room. “I can’t do it, Madam Carrier!”

“Yes you can, girl. Listen to me. Your performance today has confirmed it: you are worthless at astrological observation. It will take years of training to reach an acceptable level.”

“Oh.”

“As your instructor, I want you to succeed. I will show you how to walk the path of the spirit. It will require nerves, and searing of conscience, and focused hate.” The woman lifts her trombone case and opens it. The ghost howls with immortal fear at the sight of what is inside and the house rings with his cry as he vanishes into the darkness.

Another evening comes, and the boy and girl meet once more under the dome under the stars under the watchful eye of the woman, who sits nearby on her trombone case. The ghost crawls and stumbles around the perimeter of the room, and walks lost through their midst. His footsteps sometimes resound quietly.

The children look into the stars. The girl sees nothing but distant white light. The boy sees a distant star that died a million years away and its last flame touches him. It is an omen of monumental significance. He reads the flame of his own life flickering out at the hands of another.

The boy sees clearly three truths beneath the stretching starlight: the lie of the woman, the astral fear, and the mad ghost towering over him, a weeping specter.

“Roland?” asks the woman, “What do you see?”

“UM!” the boy bellows, quite overwhelmed. “UH!”

The woman studies him closely. “If you cannot express yourself,” she says, “You may leave us.”

The boy makes his way silently back to his room.

“What did he see?” asks the girl, watching him leave.

The woman smiles, even as the ghost stands cold over her. “He saw what you must do. Worry not, my child, he does not know it is you yet. The stars were not specific.”

“I’m not worried,” says the girl, but she shivers.

In the night the ghost stretches and warps among all three dreamers, seizing and clinging on their passage into the nocturnal realm. To the boy, the ghost appears as a begging form, begging for only one touch of the deadly white blade from the ancient city of the moon and endlessly recounting the story of his death. To the girl, the ghost hisses and splutters in the rising darkness. To the woman, the ghost comes in the form a crawling wretch, incapable of words.

The girl wakes first, and finds the ghost standing beside her bed with the nearly-full moon shining through his absent stare. But the sun comes over the horizon as she screams, and the ghost falls away under the cleansing light.

When the three living ones meet that evening, the girl relates her story of the ghost.

“Ignore the apparition,” says the woman. “It is of little consequence to one such as yourself.”

“But it seemed to require something from me,” the girl says. “And it was such a terrible dream. What does it want? How can I stop it?”

“It is mindless. I will give you something to prevent it from clouding your own mind.” The woman opens her trombone case. Inside are two horned ram masks painted as if to bleed, and a long ornate pure white blade. She takes one mask and gives it to the girl. “Take this for tonight, a ghost cannot remain near such a visage. You will not need it long. Tomorrow will be our last day here.”

“Can I get a mask?” asks the boy.

“No. Leave us, Roland, you have already proved your worth.”

The boy retires, but the woman tells the girl what must occur at dusk the following day.

In his room, the boy stares at the wall and whispers to the air, “I’m going to be murdered just like you.”

“YES!” cries the ghost, cowering in the corner. The moon shines in his dreadful body, and the boy starts as he sees and hears him.

“What must I do, spirit!?”

But the ghost does not understand, for he cannot know what has been said before. “Help me!” he cries, and wanders horribly away again into the darkness.

The boy does not sleep, nor does he weep, but he keeps silent watch over himself through the night. Evening comes, and he rises from his stupor and comes out to the domed room where full moonlight pours down from above. The girl and the woman are wearing horned masks.

“Yep,” says the boy, and runs out of the room.

The woman commands, “Return to my presence,” and the boy must obey. The woman clicks open her trombone case and takes the white sword, the right Ur blade, and gives it to the girl. It is heavy in her hand, and she flinches at the weight. “Now, Nora. Do it.”

The girl walks forward and raises the pale blade. She lunges, but stops with the blade just before the boy. She shakes.

“Nora!” the woman says sharply, “Commit.”

But the boy punches the girl in the mask, and it splits down the middle. The girl trips and drops the blade. “Spirit!” the boy cries, “Where are you!?”

The ghost steps into the moonlight, and walks past them to stand in the center of the room, staring blankly upward, floating slowly away from the woman’s intact mask.

The boy seizes the blade and charges at the woman. She laughs behind her ram’s head and reaches deftly to grab the weapon from him, but he suddenly changes course and does not strike with the blade but throws it at the ghost while ramming his face into the woman’s mask. The mask shatters and the blade pierces the spectral flesh of the ghost.

The ghost remembers. The blade falls through his chest into his hand, and he grips it. His hand grows white as the moonlight as he turns with understanding in his eyes.

The woman throws the boy to the floor, where he lies still. She backs away from the ghost as he steps forward, the blade flashing lightly at his side.

“Ellen Carrier,” snarls the ghost, “You are the author of an evil fate. Woe unto you.”

“You can’t hurt me,” she says, seizing her walking cane in one hand and holding the shattered mask to her face with the other. “You are nothing. You are dead!”

“Ellen Carrier,” declares the ghost, “I am your judgment. Woe unto you, murderer.” The right Ur blade flickers in his hand, and a smile grows on his glowing mouth.

“Don’t!” she shouts, standing directly under the dome, the moonlight pouring down upon her anger and hate.

“I am not a killer like you, Ellen,” whispers the ghost. “May the Lugals declare your fate.” He draws himself up, sneers, and spite drips from his decrepit frame. He takes the right Ur blade in both hands and snaps it with a vile strength, shattering that cold relic of the ancient world.

Ellen Carrier stares numbly at the fallen pieces of the priceless weapon, bestowed on her by unbreakable trust now broken.

The ghost turns to the rising boy. “Child, you have delivered many spirits from the chains of Ur. There is no reward for you. Flee from the Lugals, flee from this place. I cannot help you.”

“You’re welcome,” says the boy. “I suppose you’ll be on your way now?”

For the first time in six years, the ghost is happy. The light is no longer a curse but a blessing. He looks at the broken hilt of the right Ur blade in his hand. “When I drop this, I will leave forever,” he says. “Before I go, tell me your name.”

“Roland Fern.”

“I will make mention of you in the great halls.” The ghost lets the shard fall from his hand, and it clatters against the ground. “You are worthy.” He is gone, striding tall and focused into the light that surrounds them.

“Roland,” the girl whispers. “Roland, forgive me. ”

“Sure,” Roland says. “I know you didn’t mean it, Nora. Here, get up. I’ll let you come with me when we escape.”

“Escape?” Ellen Carrier laughs with a crack. “You cannot escape. You are too far in, and the blade was broken. You will be punished with me, as faithless traitors! You are our downfalls.”

The boy bends and grabs the broken white hilt of the right Ur blade. “I have gone on the stellar path this evening,” he says, and surveys the shattered fragments of masks and metal. “And all has been in my favor, except a damaged nose.” He raises the hilt, and it still catches the moonlight. “I will force them to accept me, for they will see what I am worth, even if you do not. I also shall walk the path of the spirit tonight.”