Next day, Kayden set out to perform a proper investigation. He hadn’t realized how much one of the ghost’s questions had rankled him. Are you some sort of amateur sleuth?
He might have been imagining things, but his memory of the chat kept telling him there had been a note of hope in her voice.
Well, there were others who would be batter judge of his amateurishness and professionalism, but what Kayden could ensure was how much effort he put into things. Which was why, once morning had come on and he had broken his fast with the best fare the village could provide, Kayden Feronil began his hunt for the truth.
“PLease, young master,” the old village elder was saying as he trailed in Kayden’s footsteps. “You ought to rest before you aggravate your…” He seemed to struggle for a word that wasn’t illness, for whatever reason. “Please rest. I will personally find out anything that you require.”
“That’s right.” The boy from yesterday was accompanying them too. Kayden had specifically requested his presence. It was good to have a face he knew to guide him. The old man was too busy, and a little annoying to boot. “Once you’re back in bed, master, the old man’s goin’ to have me run around the whole village to find everything you might want.”
The elder harrumphed a sigh that had probably ruffled his beard. “Don’t put it like that!”
“It’s fine,” Kayden said, trying to reassert his confidence and reassure the old man. “As I said, I won’t be extending myself too much. And I came here for the fresh rural air, after all. I could have stay cooped up at home if I wanted to.”
“A trek through the whole village and beyond isn’t the same as getting some fresh air, young master. One of the maids saw you return last night. She said you looked like you were about to die.”
Drats. He had told the girl not to say anything to the old man. More fool Kayden for thinking her loyalties would be bought by just a smile from him.
Don’t start failing me now, charm.
“Then we should really hurry up and get this over with, shouldn’t we?” Kayden said.
The old man sighed again, finally accepting defeat. “I will have lunch prepared for when you return. Vasco, run to me if anything happens.”
“Aye, aye,” the boy said.
“Am I glad to be rid of him,” Kayden muttered once they had left the elder behind. He sent a sidelong glance at Vasco. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
“I figure he already knows, master.”
“Ha. Good point.”
They walked through the village for a while. As much as this was about the investigation, Kayden wasn’t lying about everything else. He did appreciate the air here. Alright, it was a little spooky. The chill had a haunting quality to it. But still, it had just the right kind of nibbling bite to feel refreshing.
The villagers were out and about just as he was. When they reached the main thoroughfare running through Alderhelm’s centre, they found men and women going this way and that as they hurried to finish up their business before dusk, even though the day had just begun.
“Alright, let’s settle on some things,” Kayden said, leaning against a building that was a little out-of-the-way. “To carry out my investigation, I need concrete information.”
Vasco pulled his hat into his hands. “I got no clue if what I know is concrete or not, but… it’s what I got.”
“It’s fine. You let me worry about the concreteness. I just need you to answer my questions as best as you can.”
Vasco nodded.
“Alright, first question—the hauntings haven’t been happening all over the village, right? Only specific locations? What are those specific locations?”
“Well, are the streets part of the entire village? Cause the ghost’s been seen all over the streets.”
“Let’s forget the streets for a second. Tell me the exact locations the ghost’s been seen.”
Vasco began counting off his fingers. “Well, we got the granary. I’m pretty sure they saw the ghost there. Then there’s been the noises at the well, and you saw the ghost at the farms too, right master?”
Kayden nodded. “Farms, granary, and well. That’s it, right?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Now that we’ve got our targets, we just need to find the people we’re going to interrogate. You’re going to have to perform a favour for me.”
Vasco offered him a grubby salute.
Kayden smiled. He did his best to explain the requirements. Essentially, the next step in the investigation was gathering information via interrogation. To that end, Kayden would need to speak with anyone and everyone who’d had some sort of interaction with any of the hauntings at their narrowed-down locations.
It would be a little hard for him to track down everyone all by himself. Thankfully, that was where Vasco came in. He could employ the boy to bring him as many of the hauntings’ victims who were willing to talk with him. All Kayden would need to do was perform the actual interrogation.
The plan was… somewhat successful, at best. Of course, using Vasco to send out the invitations would provide limited results. The villagers would feel much easier to reject one boy who was no different from the rest of them than a powerful visiting cultivator.
But even for those who Kayden did end up talking to, his discoveries were sparse and not very informative.
“You… never got to the actual granary to see what was going on?” he asked one short, middle-aged man who had apparently experienced a ghostly incident at the granary.
Kayden was carrying out the interviews in what passed for a local tavern. There weren’t many customers at this time of the day, so he went unbothered by any random onlookers.
His current interviewee scratched his balding pate with obvious embarrassment. “No, master. The noises coming from that place weren’t of this world, I can tell you that much.” The man’s face paled. “Wild howls and shrieks. Like someone was slaughtering some poor soul in there.”
Kayden tried not to roll his eyes. “If there really was someone or something being slaughtered, you’d think there would be some trace of blood, right?”
“I’m only saying what I heard.”
“Yes, yes. And you said you saw some lights as well, correct?”
“Right, maser. I saw these glowing lights like you see in the sky sometimes.”
“What colour were they?”
“Lots of colours. Green, I think. And blue, and some others. Maybe gold too.”
Kayden noted it all down. There wasn’t a lot more the man could add, and he eventually thanked the villager before moving onto his next target of questioning.
“Noises?” Kayden asked the thickset, matronly woman. “Can you describe the noises you heard?”
“Scary ones.” The woman shuddered. “Haunting moans, creepy whispers, that sorta stuff. I don’t know how long I can get my water there anymore. I’m just try’n not to go there at night no more.”
“Any other kinds of noises? Or do you just hear the ghostly ones?”
The woman thought for a second, the new question making her forget her fear for the moment. “I did hear something strange a couple o’ times.”
“Strange? Like what?”
“Like someone bouncing stuff on the walls. You ever dropped a coin in the street, master? It sounds like that, but inside an empty room, if that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t.” Kayden raised his face to look up at the woman. “Isn’t the well full of water? How can anything make a hollow dropping sound in water?”
She shrugged. “That’s what I heard a few times, and I know I ain’t hallucinating that stuff.”
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Kayden was too lost thinking about that to really pay attention to the next person who was telling him his account of the haunting at the farm.
“Lights.” The fieldhand said gruffly. “I’m smart enough not to get anywhere close to those shining lights. No way.”
Kayden snapped himself back to his current circumstance. “Couldn’t it have been someone travelling in the distance with a lantern?”
“Have you seen the lights, master?”
Kayden paused. He had, and he knew those had been no lanterns. None he had seen in Alderhelm, at least.
The rest of the interrogation didn’t grant him any further insights. Most people avoided all the haunted locations at night now, and everyone had similar accounts. Wild noises and bright flashes coming from the granary. Spooky lights trailing the farm’s edge. A possessed well. The tales were mostly the same no matter who Kaden interviewed.
“I think that will be enough for today,” he said after the last person—a farmer complaining about the ghost driving away his workers—left.
“Did you find anything, master?” Vasco asked.
Kayden rose and paid the tab to the tavern owner. He hadn’t exactly drunk anything, but he had been occupying space and that deserved some remuneration. “I need some time to think on things. I’ve got some clues, but more than that, there’s one more interview I need to do.”
“You gonna do it tomorrow?” Vasco asked, failing to keep his excitement contained. “Who do I got to haul in?”
“Nobody.” Kayden flashed his assistant a wicked little smile. “I’m going to interview the ghost.”
----------------------------------------
The ghost in question kept him waiting. Kayden had decided that he would check out the farms again, perhaps this time approach the distant lights that had everyone so scared. That was, of course, if he never met up with his guest from the previous evening.
Problem was, it wasn’t like he could let her know that he would like to meet and talk. He had no way of contacting her.
Why am I hoping that simply standing out here in the dark will bring her to me?
To be fair, it wasn’t appropriate for a bachelor such as himself to go calling up a lady without prior discussions about the arrangement of their meetings. There was a certain etiquette one had to follow about such matters.
Wait, that sort of thinking was utter idiocy. This was a ghost he was talking about.
He started. The power, the presence—
“Have you made it your mission to save the villagers by drawing my attention and wasting my time?” the ghost asked.
She had appeared to his left all of a sudden. Too quickly for him to prepare, the bloom of her overwhelming presence appearing almost instantaneously. Or maybe it was just because he had been distracted by his own wandering thoughts.
Get a grip on yourself.
Kayden offered his guest a smile. “How is it my fault you’re drawn to my unbelievable charm and…” He pulled out his Witherbloom with a flourish to add to the effect. “My beautiful flower?
“Charm? Or manipulation? “She crossed her arms. “I sense a purpose to this meeting. A purpose set by you.”
“Correct! Though, it’s nothing as nefarious as you make it sound. I just wanted to ask a few questions and then you can be on your haunting way.” He paused for a second. “I should add that I am glad you decided to stop by. Makes my investigation so much easier.”
“Well, I have no guarantees that I can provide an answer but ask away.”
“Excellent.” Kayden pulled out his note and his pen. He scowled. “Alright—”
“What have you gotten written down there?”
The ghost had moved in close without him noticing. Too fast. More importantly, too close. She was right next to him in an instant, leaning in front of his chest to peer at the paper in his hand.
It took a strong amount of mental effort not to move back. The impulse to retreat didn’t come from fear or anything like that. He wasn’t afraid of her. At least, not in the way the villagers were. The longer Kayden had spent in the presence of the ghost, the more he had come to realize that there was an entirely different kind of fear at play for him.
He was afraid of getting pulled into the overwhelming presence that was part and parcel of the ghost. Vasco had been spot on in his description.
Standing this close was like standing right against a tidal wave about to wash an entire town away.
“Are you alright?”
She was staring up at him. Her face glowed like a full moon. Shining and brilliant and worth staring at until it could be memorized and dedicated to a painting,
Kayden coughed and finally took a step back. “It’s quite impolite to invade someone’s personal space in that manner, you know.”
“I simply wanted to see your handwriting.”
“My… handwriting?”
“You can tell a lot about a person from their handwriting.”
He looked down at his squiggles that looked like a dying crane had run over the page with inky talons. “What… does mine say?”
“Yours say that I’m being framed.”
“What?”
He looked up to see the ghost had stepped away too, standing straight with an indignant expression on her face. She wasn’t looking at him, though. Her glance was fixed on the village in the distance.
“I’m not possessing their silly little well,” she said like someone had accused her of stealing an infant’s rattle. “Nor have I yelled boo from within the granary. That’s so boorish.”
“I… guess that is technically what my handwriting says,” Kayden muttered.
“My good name has been tarnished!”
Good name?
Kayden sighed, then brought his mind back onto matters of actual import. “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, actually. I suspected foul play at work, but now I’m certain there are others taking advantage of your presence to…”
He wasn’t actually sure for what. There had to be some reason others were playacting a facsimile of a haunting, but to what end?
“Amateurs.” The ghost raised a hand and shook her fist. “These mooks don’t know the first thing about a proper haunting. It’s not just displaying strange lights and making weird noises like a cheap escort. There’s an art to making someone suffer a heart attack through sheer fright.”
If haunting was an art form, then is she supposed to be a starving artist?
She appeared actually angry. Her dark, star-studded hair whipped about her like it was caught in stormy winds, her robes rippled, and her whole form glowed several degrees brighter. Kayden didn’t even bother glimpsing at the spiritual energy around him. It had to be boiling over with her ongoing fury.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of work goes into a proper haunting.”
“Yes! You don’t know the half of it.” The ghost seemed to realize she had gotten a little too enraged and made an effort to collect herself. Her hair and robes returned to normal, and Kayden was no longer partially blinding himself by facing her. “Apologies, I got a little incensed there.”
He waved a hand like it was nothing. “On the contrary, I like seeing… people being so lively.”
Just for a second, he’d been about to say that he enjoyed seeing her be lively, but that probably would have given an impression he had no idea how to deal with. Seriously, he needed to stop thinking over every word in her presence. It was getting maddening.
And it wasn’t helping that she was looking at him way too intently.
“You appear much better than last night,” she said. “Are you actually feeling better, or are you keeping up an act again?”
Kayden was tempted to tug on his collar. It felt too stuffy all of a sudden. “You… noticed?”
“Yes. It’s why I left abruptly. So you could feel comfortable enough to drop your I’m dying and I’m perfectly fine act.” She had pantomimed his voice at the end there. It was a good mimicry too. He almost didn’t feel insulted. “So please drop the theatrics in my presence.”
Kayden wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to feel at that. He had thought her departure had been quite sudden, but he had never figured it was because of him. There was the argument that she had indeed left to perform her oh-so-important hauntings, but the fact that she had actually noticed and deduced he had been faking went against that.
The stuffy feeling from earlier had increased. For a chilly night, Kayden was beginning to feel far too warm.
“You actually cared enough to not only notice,” he said. His words wavered, unsure of their intent. Why was he even saying whatever his mouth was pelting out? “You also left because of it?”
The ghost looked away. Either her face had grown a little brighter, or she was blushing. “I just didn’t want competition from another ghost. This is my territory, understand?”
Kayden laughed. “I promise.”
She turned back to face him again, bathing him with her radiance. “What?”
“I promise I’ll get to the bottom of whatever’s going on here and clear your name. They have no right using your presence to carry out their misdeeds, and insulting the art of terrifying, bone-chilling hauntings.”
“I can’t tell if you’re serious or if you’re mocking me.”
He placed a hand on his heart and bowed a little. “I will find the truth. This I swear on my flowering heart.”
She observed him for long moments. “And what if that leads you to finding the truth about me as well? What if that truth severs me from this ghostly existence of mine?”
“I’d never do anything to curtail your happiness. If anything I find seems that it would jeopardize you, then I’ll server it from my mind before it can sever anything of yours.”
“Even if I want to find out?”
Kayden paused. “Change of heart?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Her moonlit face observed him, and he did his best not to turn away from her, no matter how brilliantly her regard shone. There was something irresistibly compelling about that look of hers. Her eyes were starlight, the canvas of her dark hair glittered like it was studded with diamonds, the swish of her robes borne on ethereal winds, and—
And Kayden mentally slapped himself.
“No, no, don’t mar your expression so,” the ghost said. “I admire you admiring me.”
Kayden needed a moment too long to bring about the right answer. “You’re evading my question.”
“I was simply pondering how best to ask my own question in response to your inquiry—wouldn’t you like to know the source of your affliction? Why and how you came to be with the Weeping Shadows?”
Her eyes twinkled. She was genuinely curious. For the first time though, Kayden averted his gaze.
“It isn’t worth it,” he said.
She didn’t look satisfied with that answer. “That’s what I used to think about my death. But you’ve changed my mind.”
He stared at her. “I did? How?”
“I used to think you were compensating for the inability to discover the reasoning behind your illness by uncovering the mystery shrouding this village.” She looked around, taking in Alderhelm, though what she saw in the darkness was beyond Kayden. “But your determination stretches beyond that. Bored though you might say you are, you’re still earnest.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
She turned back to him. “It is emotion that drives you, not the lack of it.” She smiled knowingly, her eyes glinting with minute mischief. “Some shallow.” Then her smile turned captivating. “But some clearly deeper. And these emotions are what drives actions that will change the fate of this whole village at this rate.”
“Oh? And here I thought you said immortality was a myth.”
She looked at him nonplussed for a moment, before her eyes widened a little in understanding. “Ah. Immortalizing yourself in the history of this village you seek to help. That’s… certainly one way to go about it. I, however, remain correct in my initial assessment.”
Kayden shook his head with a little smile. “You know, for a ghost who only cared about the haunting the living daylights out of innocent village folk just moments ago, you’re really articulate.”
The ghost laughed. “Just another tool in my haunting repertoire. You’d be surprised how many people are scared of big words.”
Kayden couldn’t hold back a snort at that. It cut off quickly, though. His attention was instead diverted to the distant village, where one by one the lights were coming on. Dozens upon dozens of lanterns had descended out into the open, banishing away the umbral blanket, like a gaggle of fireflies fighting the night.
And then, despite the distance, the twilight echoed with a tragic wail.