Night at the House of Slyspore was dark and cold.

This was mainly because it hadn’t had electricity for years. And when the world switched over completely to solar power, nobody bothered upgrading the abandoned ebony building at the edge of the forest cemetery. Both house and forest were allegedly haunted.

Ace didn’t have candles. She dug in the numerous kitchen drawers for anything she could light. Anything to temporarily disperse the darkness. Her teeth chattered despite wearing a hoodie and a jersey underneath. The wind was stagnant, but occasionally she felt a cold draft wash over her, followed by the floorboards on the staircase creaking.

She didn’t think much of it. There was a lot yet to discover about this House. Ever since arriving here the previous day, she’d only traversed the kitchen and the courtyard. Admittedly, she was intimidated by the many closed doors, behind which lay empty bedrooms.

The House appeared desolate on the surface, like a patch of grass. But further investigation would reveal the patch to be an ecosystem of various isopods, ants, spiders, crickets, worms, and wood lice. Ace wondered about the ecosystem seething behind this coal black architecture.

She picked a random room to spend the night – one directly across the entrance on the ground floor. It seemed central to the House somehow. And her family’s crest was embedded above the door. The moment she saw the familiar symbol, she knew this was where she belonged. Yet she still felt like an intruder.

In good time, she told herself. This house would feel like home in good time.

Not tonight, though.

The kitchens were bare of candles. With reluctance, Ace eyed the above floors silhouetted by the night sky.

She was not well acquainted with helplessness. Any problem she had could be counteracted with a solution in fungal form. A mushroom that glowed or caught fire easily would have been handy right about now. But she did not have stock in her jars. And the garden was far from harvest ready.

Another cold draft from nowhere made her shudder. No; it did not come from entirely nowhere. It was definitely flowing from the shadowed staircase, as if beckoning her. We are three floors of quiet things, it seemed to say. You can join the clutter.

Ace turned her hood over her head, shoved her fists into her pockets, and trod up the stairs. It complained at each step, making sounds that pierced the silence.

The first floor was a narrow balcony stretching the perimeter of the courtyard. The ambient light of the night wasn’t much, but it was a saving grace. Ace made out shadows of objects – door handles, vases, a ladder. The first door did not budge when she tried to open it. Locked. She’d have to try the collection of keys she had received with the inheritance papers. That was a task for the following day.

The second door was ajar. Cobwebs filled the gap between the door’s edge and the frame. The room itself was simple: a single bed fit for one person, a small square window, and cupboards fitted into the walls. She couldn’t make out many details of the decorum, but she was sure the wallpaper was peeling off.

Someone lived here once. A Necromancer. A relative. A fellow clan member, a fungus faery.

“Don’t suppose you’d have any GLOWING FUNGUS GENUS NAME AND SPECIES here,” she said to the room, imagining that somewhere the spirit of her relative could hear her.

She lingered a little longer with no real intention, before deciding to continue her search. The next four rooms were clones of the first, almost designed like a hotel building. Variation came when she turned the corner to see a larger door than the others, the entrance to the room above her own.

Her hands were pushing against the wood when she heard it: a distinct creak of the floor nearby. An ice cold breeze settled on her skin afterwards. Like a breath, but not quite.

She didn’t know what to say, but she felt obliged to respond somehow. She cleared her throat. “Is it you, Great Aunt Slyspore?”

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Ace didn’t really know a Great Aunt. But she had heard stories of ancestors returning to the living world for unfinished work.

The darkness stared back at her. What could there have been? Many birds must have made nests here. Bats. Creepy-crawlies. Baby shadow-loving dragons.

But none would have flown at such close proximity to her that she’d feel the wind of its wings flap.

She finally decided that staring at shadows were no use. Whatever the cause of the cold drafts were would make itself known soon enough. She pushed her weight against the door. Surprisingly, it swung forward with ease, unlike the previous ones whose hinges creaked as if in agony. No cobwebs caught her by the face this time.

Stepping inside with piqued interest now, she surveyed the room. It was more spacious than the others, but identical in layout to her own chosen room. This cemented the suspicion that Ace had: some rooms were central to the House. Had they belonged to some sort of authority figures among the Slyspores?

The idea of a Necromancer hierarchy was foreign to her. Textbooks didn’t mention a family tree, or any actual names of authors for that matter. As far as Ace knew, she was the last Slyspore left. But how true was her knowledge?

She drifted towards the window seat as she thought about what her family could have lived like here. Anxiety rose within her. A family as large as this would have as many mouths to feed. Bodies to clothe. Education to pay for. Hobbies to sustain. The bills must have been endless.

Suddenly she was grateful that she lived alone.

This train of thought just passed through her mind when another freezing breeze pricked her nostrils – the coldest one yet. As if something stood right behind her. As if she was not alone after all.

The feeling vanished as suddenly as it came. She turned to observe the dark room, blanketed in shadows – just in time to see someone run out the door.

She didn’t think. She chased after them.

The intruder was a speeding silhouette zipping across the corridor, footsteps heavy but determined as if their life was on the line. She heard a great deal of noise when they reached the staircase – something large fell with a boom – and she was sure she heard a growl, almost feral –

“Stop!” She called out in the night. It was a futile command – the person accelerated instead as she chased them across the courtyard. “Stop! I just want to –”

Her words evaporated mid-sentence, for she had caught a glimpse of the person’s head – a man’s – but oddly shaped as if bearing a horrific injury to the cranium. This did not seem to affect him the slightest. His two feet carried him forward and out of the front door with unnatural speed.

“I can help you if you’re injured!” Ace shouted, her lungs threatening to explode from all the running. “Will you please just stop?”

He did not stop. They were running outside now, the House a good distance behind them, when she realized where exactly the man was heading.

The forest was a mass of tall and dense trees, casting a thick shadow over them. It loomed over the residential area, almost alive and breathing. Ironic, because it was also burial grounds. Ace and the man she pursued were shadows within shadows, and soon they would be inside the heart of the cemetery.

The man’s form disappeared amid the trees before Ace could call out again. She wasn’t particularly afraid of places of the dead, but she also didn’t think it was a good idea to disrupt whatever plant life slept there. On top of this, she wasn’t too fond of the plant kingdom. And she long figured out that the feeling was mutual.

It was adrenaline that carried her under the thick canopy, twigs stinging her face. A multitude of sounds filled her ears – chirps, snores, growls, even low hums. She focused on the man’s footsteps – a heavy thud after another thud after a frustrated growl.

Her eyes strained to see anything beyond her arms, but she knew there was rotting bark nearby. She could feel it, the sharp tang of the pheromones dead things released. Her senses were built for this.

The man’s pace evidently slowed down as a result of the many obstacles the forest brought. Ace seized the opportunity. Her veins filled with intention, her focus homed in on the decaying matter only a few paces ahead of the man, directly in his path unbeknownst to him.

Her abilities worked in companion with nature. It was less the act of creation, and more like a lens flare; she only summoned the saprophytes, alerting them to the dead organic matter. In a forest as alive as this, her kin weren’t far off. For beneath their very feet were not only tree roots, but also a world wide web of mycelium.

A sudden jerk within her muscles alerted her that the trap was set – a network of rhizomorph as high as the trees, thickly intertwined like a rope netting, sprung from the bark.

The man collided face first into it. More incoherent growling.

Ace could only guess that the trap had been successful. She stopped to catch her breath and was reminded of why exercise wasn’t part of her daily routine. It was awfully uncomfortable to have your heart beating so fast.

When she settled down her breathing a little, she began a brisk walk towards the struggling noises. Hi, she rehearsed, I’m Ace. Apologies for chasing you like a criminal. But what were you doing in my house?

She expected the conversation to be awkward. She was prepared for it even. They were two strangers in strange circumstances, and a brief exchange of nervous explanations was understandable.

She did not expect to find herself looking down at a corpse.