Chapter 51: Haunt in the House

Jimbo-no was still upset over his room. I made it up to him by having Spinemess divvy out his first paycheck of genuine gold. He got over it quickly. Especially after I bribed him and Spinemess with a little bit of extra cash to distract the cats upstairs. I wanted absolutely no interruptions from any of the fuzzy troublemakers.

For over an hour we took every precaution we could. I reset my rockfall trap and instructed Jellybee to grow a carpet of mushroom landmines upon the stairs leading down to B2.

Bonny lit candles and placed them around the room, then cast another complicated spell ritual by writing on the ground with chalk and placing a whole lot of lines everywhere. She called this one a ‘Security Firewall.’

By the time we were ready, it looked like we were about to join a satanic ritual. A circle of green Witchpyre flames blazed before us. Jellybee stood ready with a primed brick.

We could afford no mistakes when dealing with unknown monsters.

“This should do,” Bonny said. “Alright, Ethel. Do your thing.”

“My thing?” I asked.

“Yeah, whatever Dungeons do to summon new Minions. Let’s see it.”

“All that ceremony and preparation and our send-off is ‘Do your thing?’”

She shrugged, “It’s a starter monster, Ethel. Like a goblin or a slime. There’s no need for fanfare.

Just remember to not do anything special. Do not give it a name.”

“Like Henry,” Jellybee said. “That name is taken.”

“What kind of name is Henry?” Bonny asked incredulously.

“We’re not calling the cat Henry,” I said. I opened up my System menu screens. “New Minion with no name, coming right up.”

A minute or two passed with nothing happening.

“Huh, guess he’s not home,” Jellybee said.

Bonny raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me, you-”

“Of course I didn’t forget,” I interjected. “I’ve done it before, haven't I? I’ve just … misplaced the right screen…”

“Ethel!”

“It should be around here somewhere…”

“What’s your screen say?” Jellybee asked.

I ignored the question. “Aha! Found it!”

Mana flooded into the designated summoning circle from every which way–the threads twisting and twirling–Knitting themselves into a shape that grew with every passing moment.

We watched in anticipation. The Connection Affinity worked its magic alone, without my hand to guide it.

Finally, the threads of Mana had woven so precisely together that it began to congeal into solid matter.

A bipedal shape rose in the circle of flames. There was no System notification alerting me that a Minion had joined my Dungeon.

It looked like …an old homeless man?

The domovoy was short and balding, and very, very hairy.

Crazed, wild eyes met mine. Glowing and orange, with cat-like pupils.

The domovoy spoke. So quiet only I could hear it. “Calamity comes,” the creature whispered. “Death approaches this home.”

I received a new message from the system. One I didn’t understand. One that filled me with dread.

The domovoy's eyes grew even wider. It let out a feral yell that sent chills up my spine. The outcry of a distraught man that was lost and confused. “THIS IS NOT MY HOME!”

Then the creature disappeared.

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"Where did it go?" Bonny asked. “Did it teleport?”

The creature’s words and the notification echoed through my mind. A warning? A threat?

Before I could respond, a section of the Firewall parted like a curtain, revealing a shadowy shape between the flickering flames.

“It’s escaping the circle,” I muttered in disbelief. “It turned invisible.”

Jellybee cast brick.

The brick passed through the creature’s form–as if it was only made of air–landing on the other side of the circle.

“More than invisible,” Jellybee confirmed. "Unbrickable!"

Two heartbeats later the brick exploded into fungal spores, which was followed by another explosion as the spore cloud was ignited by the Security Firewall.

We stood far enough away that the detonation wouldn’t hurt us, but we weren’t completely immune to the larger secondary explosion. A caustic cloud of smoke, spores, and ash filled the air.

Jellybee spun about, searching. “It’s not dead yet!” He called out. “There’s no corpse!”

“Ethel, where is-” Bonny coughed violently. Soot coated her cheeks and watery eyes carved rivulets down them. “Where is it?”

I closed my avatar’s eyes. They wouldn’t do me much good in this fungal fog. As a Dungeon, I could be everywhere all at once, yet I struggled to immediately locate the creature amidst all the falling spores and ash.

Eventually I spotted faint footprints.

I jumped backwards. “It’s behind us!” I shouted.

Jellybee stood before Bonny, shielding her.

No attack came. Instead, the mushrooms carpeting the stairs leading to the bedroom hallway exploded. More spores, coming from above, rained down upon us.

“Now it’s in the hallway!”

“Trap it, Ethel!”

“Crush it, Granny!”

I moved to activate the rockfall trap, but I was too late. “I can't! It’s in the cellar now!”

How fast was this creature moving? I could barely keep a visual on it!

The creature somehow disappeared from my view again. It had to be teleporting? But it kept shrugging off all attacks.

I caught a glimpse of it in passing when it bumped against the Bone Spur Gramophone.

A classic, chipper R&B song, “Sh-Boom,” by the Chords, began to play.

I groaned. Not that song!

Mushrooms continued to explode in the background, still detonating from earlier.

It slipped once more from my vision during the chaos, leaving no trace. No hide nor hair nor footprint. Not a peep. Just a doo-wop merrily scratching along.

“Life could be a dream, life could be a dream. Do do do do, sh-boom…”

I searched everywhere I could in the cellar. It was just… gone.

“I lost it,” I said. And then a book tumbled off a shelf. “...Or not?”

Odd. There was nowhere on the bookshelf the domovoy could fit.

I took a closer look.

“That’s… impossible,” I muttered.

“What’s it doing? What’s happening?” Bonny asked.

The domovoy screamed and banged against the bookshelf loudly. Its voice coming from behind the bookshelf. “THIS IS NOT MY HOME! THIS IS NOT MY HOME!”

Then the domovoy skirted around the wall, slipped through the wine racks, and was somehow inside the food bunker, knocking jars off shelves and kicking up dust in its wake, like some sort of cracked up haunted house ghost.

Crashes echoed from the cellar above our heads. “What kind of creature is this?” Bonny asked. “A fae?”

“How should I know!”

“It broke through my Firewall like it was nothing!”

“I don’t like it,” Jellybee said.

I had been certain the domovoy was teleporting. But no, I could still feel it passing through the Dungeon. It was moving fast, quickly jumping between enclosed spaces, pausing just long enough to make a racket before moving onto the next place. Each time it would bang on the walls or knock something over in the process, like a cat looking for attention. As soon as I caught a glimpse of it, it was gone.

Whatever it was doing, I could tell it was upset about something.

Really upset.

There was a creak as it slipped into the ceiling. Then through the floorboards.

My eyes widened. "It's going upstairs," I said. "Stay here, Bonny. This could be dangerous. Jellybee, guard her!"

I ended my Soul Stroll. Then reactivated it, placing my avatar in the living room.

“Oh, hey, Ethel.” Spinemess waved. They were sitting in my rocking chair, the new copycat was draped around their neck like a scarf. “Everything alright? How’s the new Minion?”

“We heard a lot of noises,” Jimbo-no said. "Nice song, though."

“Uhh… Not great. It, uh, escaped. It could be dangerous.”

At those words Spinemess gently set aside the long cat and took point before my Core. Jimbo-no rushed into the kitchen, returning with a frying pan as an improvised weapon.

I turned about, trying to get a visual with my own two eyes. It was moving too fast under the floorboards for me to track using my Dungeon sight.

“Is that ugly thing it?” Jimbo-no asked. He pointed with one hand and held a frying pan in the other.

I turned just in time to see a shadow move in the corner of my eye.

A hairy, bipedal humanoid pulled itself from a crack in the floorboard and clambered to a standing position. It was only a few feet tall–-not even as tall as I was–but that was far larger than the crack it used as a doorway.

How is it doing that?

The creature gazed about with wild eyes that completely passed over all of us.

Then it looked at my Core.

My avatar’s heart skipped a beat.

We should have stuck to the plushies...

The creature hunched over, placing its knuckles upon the ground, then charged forward like a crazy homeless gorilla.