More Than a Ghost

We crept through the graveyard, stopping every few feet to listen for the creature’s moans. All was silent save for the spatter of rain drops as we made our way over the dense grass, heading towards the crypt where we’d been told the creature lived.

Kate reached the small stone building first, motioning for me to stay back and keep an eye out for an ambush. I didn’t really like letting her go alone, but she had made a good point. The zombie we hunted was supposed to be pretty clever, and setting up an ambush was just the kind of thing it might do.

She pushed open the crypt door, staying well to one side in case something leapt out. Nothing did. Muttering a string of syllables under her breath, fire sprung into Kate’s open right hand and she stepped forwards into the darkness, revealing a small stone room with stairs leading downwards.

For a moment, Kate’s steps echoed across the cold stone steps as she made her way down, but then faded into silence as she disappeared from sight. Feeling intensely nervous about things, I sent up a silent prayer to the Good Lord, asking him to keep an eye on my friend. Kate might not have believed in God, but I certainly did and would feel a lot happier if I knew Hewas watching out for her.

The downpour outside increased in fury, till it threatened to flood the whole graveyard, so I crouched behind a nearby headstone for what little shelter it offered. Time passed, each minute long and drawn out, and the streams of rainwater that flowed in every direction turned into rivers. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in every direction, anything beyond that tiny radius reduced to a rain-smeared blur.

Then I heard a different sound amidst the drop and clink of the rain, a heavy, deliberate footfall. Straining my ears, I listened as hard as I could for it to sound again, and a moment later it did, louder this time.

Carefully, so as not to be spotted, I raised my head to scan the area and saw a human figure shambling towards the crypt. Behind it was another, and behind that one, yet another. Then three more appeared behind that one, and I knew we were in real trouble. There was a whole line of zombies headed for the crypt, all walking with that strange, dragging step, one of the few things the movies had gotten right about such creatures.

Leaping up from behind my hiding place, I ran towards the entrance, nearly slipping on the wet grass.

“Kate!” I screamed, but I doubt she heard me above the rain.

A few zombies turned to look at me, but most of them continued their single-minded advance, obviously intent on catching her unawares.

Running up the slight incline towards the crypt, even leaping over a short headstone that blocked my path, I made it to within a few yards of the crypt before I found my path blocked by three of the tallest zombies.

They didn’t look much like the zombies you see in movies, who always seemed like patchwork humans, covered in blood and with several interesting bits missing, along with the director’s choice of either glowing eyes or claws. These ones were basically just dead bodies. Slightly decomposed in places, with one or two missing their eyes, but by and large they just looked like second-hand human beings.

The one in the middle turned and spotted me, making a clumsy lunge in my direction, which I easily sidestepped as I took a dive between the two remaining ones and made it to the crypt door.

Hurrying down the stairs, I found myself far beneath the earth and in total darkness, not even the merest glimmer of light to guide my way.

Kate?” I quavered, hoping to find her before the zombies reached us. Only silence replied. A dark, sucking silence, the kind that made it quite clear that my words were the first spoken here in a long, long time.

Slowly, hands feeling along the curving wall to my right, I made my way further downwards, calling out Kate’s name every few steps. I stumbled as I hit the bottom step, nearly falling but catching myself and placing my right hand against the wall for support. Not that it would have mattered much if I had fallen, my circumstances being what they were.

Something hard crunched under my booted feet as I started walking, so I reached down to investigate and my fingers closed upon something smooth that felt like bone. And it wasn’t the only one as I searched along the ground with my hand. They were everywhere.

Slightly unnerved, I continued forwards, calling Kate’s name as I walked and snapping the occasional bone beneath my feet. I soon became aware of a faint light ahead, illuminating the darkness and finally revealing the passage walls around me.

I felt a little sickened as everything became clearer around me, for bones of all kinds littered the floor and, in a few places, were stacked in small, vaugely triangluar piles, with wooden poles sticking out of the middle, a human skull attached to the top of each pole.

At that point I was really starting to get scared and began to run, running towards the source of the light. I came out into a wide, circular room, the walls lined with little niches, a skull flanked by two candles seated in each one. But the light that each candle shed was sickly and pale, casting far too many shadows, especially near a stone pedestal which was the main feature of the room.

Kate lay in front of it, unconscious and pinned to the ground by some kind of dog-like stone gargoyle, a fat, ugly looking thing, which lay with its front paws resting on her chest. In front of the pair stood the master of this room.

A tall, imposing figure, he stood at least six feet high, wearing black robes that were gently billowing as if in a slight breeze, despite the fact that the air was as still and old as the rest of the crypt.

He swiveled his head towards me as if sensing my presence, and I saw the glint of eyes beneath his hood, like fireflies in a skull’s empty sockets.

“What doth thee want?” the figure asked, its voice a hiss of displeasure.

“Uh, I’d like it quite a bit of you let my friend go...”

Those glittering eyes glanced briefly downwards at Kate, then back towards me, as if to make the point that I was interrupting something.

“Leave,” he said flatly, waving a hand towards the passage I had just come through.

I wasn’t too thrilled about disagreeing with this creature, but I couldn’t let him harm Kate.

“As much as I would love to comply with your request, I fear that I can’t leave Kate,” I responded, stepping forwards into the room, the candlelight flickering oddly across my slightly translucent skin.

The robed figure raised a gloved hand towards me, fingers glowing with the beginnings of a spell. As I prepared myself to face whatever magic this creature had in store, holding up my ghostly fists to defend myself, my adversary’s eyes went wide with shock as my true nature became apparent to it.

“Ye art litlte more than a spirit!” it said, pointing an accusing finger at me. “Why doth thee feel loyalty to this?” and it waved a disaparaging hand towards Kate.

“Because she’s my friend.”

“Thy kind have not friends. Thou art servants, to be used and disposed of as necessary.”

I had to agree with the man, if man he was, that he had a point. Most ghosts are just minions of necromancers or lost souls with no purpose or meaning. As ghosts went, I was rather unique.

“I’m Kate’s friend and that’s all there is to it. Now tell that gargoyle to get off her and we will let you go.”

He just laughed at me.

“Ye think thou can defeat me?”

“Easily,” I lied, although I knew it wasn’t a very convincing one.

“I think not,” he replied with a careless wave of his hand, unleashing a wave of force that knocked me backwards against the wall and pinned me there.

And that seemed to be about it as far as saving Kaitlin Blackwood went. I couldn’t move a muscle with his spell pinning me to the wall, and for him to be able to exert that much force against a ghost, meant he was pretty damned strong as a spellcaster.

Calmly, he withdrew a curved dagger from the folds of his robe, turned to the stone pedestal behind him, which I could now see held a thin stone bowl on top of it, and reached down with his free hand, dipping his fingers into it. They came up dripping a black, sticky liquid, which he carefully began to paint onto the dagger.

The blade covered to his satisfaction, he then turned to face Kate, who at some point had regained consciousness and was swearing quite loudly at him.

“I did not expect... interruptions,” the hooded man said quietly, leaning down to slit my best friend’s throat.

But as the dagger drew closer and I struggled uselessly against the spell, Kate lashed out with a foot and caught him in the knee. There was a crack almost as loud as the scream that followed, and he fell to the ground, clutching his broken limb.

Kate was only just getting started though, following up her attack by placing one hand against the gargoyle thing, which seemed a bit slow on the uptake. A highly concentrated inferno erupted from her palm, sending the creature soaring backwards where it hit a wall and exploded into several chunks of molten stone.

Slowly, Kate got to her feet and walked over to the robed man, kicked him onto his side, and then placed one booted foot on the back of his neck.

“I was hired to deal with a solitary zombie, Mr. Necromancer, and yet it seems there’s a bit more than that going on,” she said calmly.

“There’s a bunch of zombies outside, Kate,” I said quickly, bringing her up to date on recent events. “They were all following you, and might be here any moment.”

Kate grinned.

“Well, well, well. Multiple zombies, huh? How curious. Call them off, whoever you might be. Otherwise, I might have to kill you.”

“If thee kill me, then death shall be thine as well. For my brethren shall avenge my death, and tear thee limb from limb.”

With a weary sigh, Kate snatched up the fallen dagger and plunged it into the necromancer’s neck.

“Why must people be so mindless, Alfred? Don’t you wish they would just surrender once in a while...”

I stared in horror at the corpse. Kate could be quite ruthless when she wanted, but even now, after all these years, she still managed to surprise me in the most unpleasant of ways.

“Come on, Alfred. Quite gawping and let’s get out of here. Out into the open before we get cornered by zombies.”

But I still stood, looking down at the corpse in fascination. The wound from the dagger had begun to smoke, an ugly, greasy-looking kind of smoke.

“Um, Kate? What exactly do you think that dagger did to him?”

“Killed him of course. That’s a daggers job, Moron. It wouldn’t be- “ but then Kate stopped as she noticed the same thing that I had.

The corpse itself was smoking, starting to disintegrate like a piece of paper beneath a match. Then a sound echoed through the room, like a thousand iron gates all slamming open at once, and a red sphere of fire appeared where the body had been, growing larger and larger till it was taller than both of us.

“Kate?” I said quietly. “Do you think you just completed whatever dark ritual that man had been preparing?”

She frowned and I knew I had my answer. Of course, I suppose the demonic red man stepping out of the flaming sphere was also a clue...