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Neopia's Fill in the Blank News Source | 28th day of Running, Yr 26
The Neopian Times Week 63 > Short Stories > Living Haunts

Living Haunts

by scriptfox

Hi. My name is blchocobo. Some of you may know me, and know that I'm a desert Blumaroo who has a golden Uni named MonoKeras as my older brother. You may even know his wife (my sister) Kallisari, or our little sister Heilley. Our owner always maintains that he has four distinct pets, and he's certainly right. There is no way anyone could confuse any of us with one of the others. Now whether they might always be able to recognise us as who we are... that's another story. No, not really. Actually, it's this story.

      It all started on the thirtieth day of Collecting. I was reading a book in the living room. Heilley was sitting in front of the fireplace playing solitaire with a deck of cards. Kallisari had settled for her usual spot on the couch with her head tucked into MonoKeras' lap. It was MonoKeras who decided to break the relative silence.

      "Arrr..." he said, stretching his legs and spreading his wings out before snapping them back into place. "I do believe it's going to be an interesting night tomorrow night. Are you ready for it, Heilley?"

      "Huh?" Heilley looked up and blinked.

      "I said, think you can handle tomorrow night?"

      Heilley rolled her eyes. "Of course. What, I'm supposed to be scared of the dark? I'm not that much of a baby, MK."

      "Oh, but there's going to be so much more than that. You've never seen out a month of Collecting before. Things get very... interesting... on that night."

      Heilley's eyes narrowed as MonoKeras' insinuating tone began to hit home. "Oh yeah? Okay, smarty-pants, what's going to be out there tomorrow night?"

      "Well, let's see. There's always the traditional threats, of course. Count Von Roo, with his habit of draining the life out of you. The Ghost Lupe, scaring any unwary pet out of their mind. But there's oh so many more ghosts, vampires, and other spooks that come out then. It's a special night where the separation between the normal world and the supernatural world becomes very weak. All sorts of things can cross from one to the other... never to be heard from again, sometimes."

      "Big deal," Heilley shrugged. I grimaced to myself because anyone could tell she was seriously bothered by all of the ghost talk. "You lived through it last year, I notice. I can too."

      "Ah, but I had special training and experience during the Tyrannian war. When you face the horrors of all those monsters and fight them as I did, then the supernatural horrors unleashed at Collecting's end aren't all that scary."

      Heilley deliberately yawned and put a paw over her mouth. "Uh-huh. Right. Well if I see any monsters, I'll be sure to tell them they want you."

      MonoKeras nodded. "They might. You can't do the things I did during the war without leaving restless spirits of your victims behind. This is the night they get to come back and haunt you for what you did to them while they were alive. Last year, for instance, there was this scratching on the glass at my bedroom window. I looked out to see a ghostly green shape. Just as I thought I was losing it, it moaned something about the lab ray and disappeared. That's when I realised it was the ghost of one of Sloth's minions that I defeated in the Lost Desert war."

      "Hah! Tall tales!"

      "Nope, it's true. Seems it was warning me. Was about a month too late, though. Now in the Tyrannian war, if they called you late, it meant you weren't coming back- ever. Why I remember..."

      I sighed to myself as MonoKeras told grisly war stories. I knew he was exaggerating them. It was particularly obvious when it came to the severed heads. Instead of just "splatting into the mud" like they always had before, they now "bounded away like bouncy balls." I could practically see Heilley's hairdo getting even more curls in it. She finally quit her fake laughter and mumbled a good night before sliding upstairs.

      It was almost midnight by that time. MonoKeras had a good laugh at Heilley's expense after she left, and we all turned in. I felt rather sorry for her myself. Kallisari had MonoKeras to cling to, and I really wasn't affected that badly. But Heilley? Ah well. I got to sleep without much effort, although the moonlight outside made my back twitch with a reflexive fear of its own.

      It must've been a short nap, because I woke up around two to use the bathroom. I stepped into the hall and saw Heilley tiptoeing towards our owner's bedroom. I took another step forward and started to say something, but my foot hit a loose board. Heilley's squeak wasn't quite as loud as the board's, and she flew into our owner's bedroom so fast that I didn't have a chance to say anything. I settled for completing my errand and pausing by the bedroom door on the way back to my own room. I could hear our owner talking in his low, soothing tones. Heilley's own voice sounded almost plaintive, even questioning, but I relaxed when I finally heard her giggle. I went back to bed and didn't think any more about it.

      The next morning at the breakfast table, we had the usual conversation about "what are you going to do today."

      "I think I'll take off early from the office today," MonoKeras remarked. "There are a lot of magical experiments that I can only do tonight, and I need some time to set them up."

      Kallisari's eyes rounded. "Isn't that dangerous?"

      "Nah, not when you're an expert like me."

      Heilley sniffed disdainfully. "Well you can have the whole house for all I care. I'm going over to Kootmufin's this evening and then I'm staying with her all night."

      MonoKeras raised an eyebrow. "Oh hoh, okay. I assume you have permission to run away from home for the night?"

      Our owner interrupted before Heilley could reply. "Yes, she does. She asked me earlier. Kallisari, pass me one of those peaches, would you? Thanks."

      Both Heilley and MonoKeras were true to their words, and I didn't have quite as many supper dishes to wash that night. Kallisari, though, decided to take the night off from dishes. She reminded me that MonoKeras' workshop was immediately above the kitchen. Although she tried to pretend it was just out of consideration for MonoKeras, I suspected that Heilley wasn't the only one getting nervous.

      It was pitch dark outside, and I couldn't see a thing through the window in front of me as I scrubbed the plates. My first clue that something was going on was a few strange sounds. They seemed to be coming from outside, so I turned off the light to peer out into the night. There were vague shapes in the tree in the back yard, but...

      The next minute or so was pretty confusing, although exhilarating. It's probably best understood from MonoKeras' viewpoint. He was working in his lab and had just set up a particularly complicated web of magic. As he was finally relaxing, he heard an echoing moan from outside, followed by a shriek.

      "Help! MonoKeras! Help!"

      MonoKeras snapped upright so fast that his chair skidded away into an unnoticed corner of the room. "Heilley!"

      The only response was a wordless cry that ended in a choking moan. MonoKeras raced over to the window and flung it open. He looked outside and into the glazed eyes of Heilley as she hung by her neck from the tree branch ten feet in front of him. A few last bubbles of saliva formed on her open lips as the final breath sighed past her swollen tongue.

      "NOOOOO! Heilley!" A crash of glass caused MonoKeras to spin around to look at his worktable again. A large green figure was swelling up out of it.

      "They got me..." Heilley moaned as she drifted into the air.

      MonoKeras gave a wordless shriek of denial and fear. This is where things got very interesting for me in the kitchen below. The magic in his workshop responded powerfully to his mental distress, and what happened next can only be described as a series of explosions. They shook the whole house, tore out the door to the room, buckled the walls, tore holes in the roof, and finally let loose in a shattering roar which collapsed the floor.

      By this time, I was at the door to the living room. This was a good thing, since the ceiling collapsed into a huge pile of rubble. The contents of MonoKeras' workroom were mixed into the wreckage, and I heard him coughing as the dust billowed into the air. He crawled out and onto a relatively clear area of the dining room floor.

      The light from the living room shone into the dining area and straight onto MonoKeras' haunted face. I could only stare at him with my mouth open. "MonoKeras! What happened to you?"

      His eyes were wild. "Never mind what happened to me! Heilley's the one we need to worry about! Something terrible's happened..." He gulped and suddenly ran for the back door. I didn't even bother trying to keep up with him as he raced through the door and out into the back yard screaming for Heilley. I satisfied myself with stepping over the broken pieces of back door and reaching back inside to flip on the outside light.

      MonoKeras was revealed as a shining gold figure, pacing back and forth while he stared up into the limbs of the tree behind the house. He reminded me of a Lupe that had treed a Kougra.

      "She's up there! She has to be! But..."

      I came up to join him. "Who is?"

      "Heilley," he groaned. "One of the spirits must have caught her and they hung her up there. I saw it! It was..." he gulped and shivered.

      I shivered, too. "Heilley? But she's at Kootmufin's house! She can't be here. I mean, she just can't!"

      "I saw her!" he insisted.

      I looked for myself. "She's not there now."

      "They took the body I guess." MonoKeras' shoulders slumped in defeat as he walked back to the house.

      I followed him inside and we picked our way through the darkened wreckage and into the living room. I gave into my desire to needle MonoKeras a bit. "Oh well, if Heilley is gone it really doesn't matter. After all, that's just one less thing to irritate you."

      MonoKeras shot me a bitter look as he dropped into a chair. The bitterness changed to self-recrimination as he moaned, "it's my fault! I shouldn't have told her all that stuff, I should've just made sure she stayed inside instead of wandering around out there."

      "But I still can't believe it. Are you positive you saw her?"

      MonoKeras shuddered. "Positive! She's done for, blchocobo. Might as well admit it. All my fault, too..."

      I stared at him in disbelief as I realised that he was on the verge of actually crying. I searched desperately for something to say to break the awkward silence, and it was then that I heard the sound of talking and laughter outside the front door. "Hey, who's that outside?"

      MonoKeras looked up dully as the front door opened to reveal Heilley and Kallisari.

      "Hi, MonoKeras!" Heilley chirped as she sauntered in. "Miss me while I was gone?"

      MonoKeras' eyes bulged and his lip trembled. "B-b-but..."

      Kallisari and Heilley snickered, but didn't say anything. Since they seemed unwilling to put MonoKeras out of his misery, I stepped in. "Something tells me that you two set a trap to fool MK here."

      Heilley put her paws behind her back and gave me her most innocent look. "Me? Set a trap?" She brought her paws out from behind her hair, and we all saw the coils of rope that she held. "Oh! That trap. Just a little something to amuse ourselves with. Amazing what you can do with a rope harness and some help."

      MonoKeras looked sick. "And that green ghost floating out of my workbench was...?"

      Kallisari giggled. "Your image-caster charm from a long time ago. Remember?"

      Momentary puzzlement gave way to that sick look again and it was obvious that MonoKeras knew exactly which charm they meant. "So I ruined the house for nothing," he sighed. Suddenly he sat bolt upright. "Hey! I just thought of something. What is our owner going to say when he finds out what you've been up to?"

      "Considering that he's the one who thought it up originally, I doubt he'll be surprised," a very familiar voice replied. MonoKeras and I stared at our owner as he walked in while Heilley and Kallisari broke into a fresh round of giggles. "I must admit," he continued ruefully, "I didn't expect you to trash the place quite so thoroughly."

      "Yeah, well, never scare a magician. Success is very messy."

      Our owner nodded slightly at MonoKeras' reply, conceding his point. "So it would seem. I might also add never scare one of my pets so bad that she winds up spending the night in bed with me. You never know what mischief we'll cook up in return."

      MonoKeras rolled his eyes as everyone laughed. "Okay, you win. I... hey, what's that?"

      We all stopped laughing abruptly as a green fog drifted in from the darkened kitchen and began forming into a vague shape. I gulped as I saw the wild outlines of some sort of robotic type of mutant. One arm--if it could be called that--seemed to be hanging from just a few cables.

      "Far out," Heilley breathed. "That's some trick, MK."

      MonoKeras shook his head. "Not me. That's the ghost of the Lost Desert warrior I told you about last night."

      MonoKeras' matter-of-fact tone made instant believers out of all of us. I was rooted to the spot, but Kallisari and Heilley both fled through the front door screaming. I winced at the resulting crash.

      "Whoooo..." came a moaning sound. I looked back to see the ghost struggling to say something. "Beeewaarrree... beware ghossstlyy trickeryyy..."

      MonoKeras nodded. "Yeah, thanks, I hear ya." The tension in the room caused by the ghost's presence vanished in a wave of relief, and it disappeared like a popped bubble. "A nice warning," MonoKeras sighed. "But late, as usual."

      Our owner was leaning against the broken doorframe, looking out into the night. "I do wish you'd set a better example for Kallisari, MonoKeras. She's picked up your habit of crashing through doors without opening them first."

      MonoKeras just groaned in resignation and sank further into his chair. I exerted every bit of self-control and did all I could for him--I didn't laugh.

The End

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