Phantom Trigger chapter 3

Zach carefully crept through the door, leaving the cellar behind him and entering a long hallway. To his left was the front door, to his right what looked like a kitchen, and above him was the staircase leading up to the second floor. Aside from the staircase, he could also make out a whole bunch of little holes letting the moonlight in, his only source of light in the dark cabin.

Wanting to get a closer look, Zach took out his phone and used the light to get a quick look at the hallway around him. The house’s outsides looked a lot like its insides. The wooden walls were old and rotting, and the only form of decoration were a small handful of hanging photos. They looked like they may have once been in black and white, but age had left them an unsightly yellow color instead.

He turned away from the photos and kept going towards the stairs. As he did, he passed by an open door to another room. It must have been some sort of armory, because Zach could just make out the shape of a rusty old gun hanging off the wall above the rotted remains of a bow.

Interesting for some people, but not what Zach was here for. He ignored the weapons in favor of making careful steps towards the stairs. The less dust he kicked up in the process, the better.

The only other thing of note he noticed was that there was a small empty space underneath the staircase. Interesting, but again, not what he was here for.

He reached the top of the stairs and immediately felt the hairs on the back of neck rise up as a cold feeling went down his back. He figured it must have just been nerves when he saw his goal.

The staircase had led to a single long hallway with three doors on one side. And coming from under the very last room was the blue glow Zach had seen from outside.

This was it. Zach walked towards the last door, mentally creating a path back to the entrance in case he needed to make a break for it. He touched the door and almost flinched back. The wood was cool to the touch despite the summer night heat. He took a deep breath and braced himself before placing his ear to the door.

From the other side of the door, he could hear something. Like a low hum, but wrong. It was garbled, like static on an old TV or something. The sound went right through him as he felt the hairs on his neck stick up like frozen needles. He took a breath and half expected to be able to see it with how cold he felt.

And throughout it all, the only thing he could think about was that he was about to see a real life ghost. All he had to do now was open the door, and he’d see it.

“So why am I hesitating now?” He whispered to himself before hearing the static intensify for a second before going back to normal. He ignored it to look at his hand gripping the doorknob.

What was he thinking? This was no time for hesitation. Fortune favored the bold, and was there anything bolder than walking right up to a ghost and saying hi?

No, there wasn’t. Zach narrowed his eyes and opened the door.

On the other side of the door was a plain bedroom. There was a single bed to the left, a single dresser to the right, and a window on the far wall. In the center of the floor was some sort of old carpet.

And floating in the air above the carpet was something impossible.

He had heard about ghosts, but none of the stories could have prepared him for what was waiting for him. Most people would have been expecting a typical bed sheet ghost or see-through person. But Zach had read enough to know real ghost didn’t look like that.

And now that he’d seen one with his own eyes, he knew those stories were true. Above the carpet was a vague outline of a person, filled in with blue and black TV static. It was hard to look at directly, but the more it moved the more he could make out several features, such as the tail the ghost had in place of legs, or its small size.

If he had to guess, he was pretty sure he wasn’t dealing with the twenty-one year old Thomas Pickerpepper.

The ghost shifted again as Zach realized he was looking at its back. It was facing away from him and towards the window. And now that’d he’d open the door, the ghost was oh so slowly turning around. After a few seconds, he found himself looking at a face of pure blue light.

Zach gulped as he found himself speechless. What was he supposed to say? All the stories usually ended with the teller panicking and running away, but the ghost hadn’t done anything yet, so he had no reason to run.

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“Uhm… hi?” He slowly waved his hand as the ghost shifted a bit and he heard a strange whisper. It was garbled, like he was listening to it through the same static the ghost was covered in. The ghost must have been trying to speak to him back.

“Are you trying to talk to me?” he asked as the ghost started swaying back and forth. He kept a careful eye on the ghost’s movement as he heard the whispers again. Of course, this meant he had to keep looking at the ghost, with all the eye pain that implied. The longer he kept watching the ghost and trying to talk to it, the stronger the pain got.

Zach clutched his head as the pain suddenly flared up. The ghost flinched back as he leaned forward, his hands on his forehead. From the low angle, he could just make out the ghost floating closer to him until it was almost on top of him.

He looked up as his vision started to blur and the static veering the ghost started to fade.

“Are… you… down…?”

He looked back up as he started to hear real words instead of the strange whispers from before. The static on both the ghost’s words and form faded more and more. He shut his eyes and opened them to something new.

“You better now?”

He blinked as the pain faded and he stood up straight again. The static was gone, and in its place was a pale see-through girl. Her skin, clothes and hair were all blue, like she was a photo seen under a blue filter. As for the clothes themselves, she was wearing a long gown which turned into a narrow ghost tail. Her blue hair was long, unkempt, and freely floating. The few features he could see under her hair seemed to imply some sort of Asian heritage.

“I can understand you now,” he mumbled as the ghost flew back.

“You can?” She broke out in a huge smile. When Zach nodded back, the ghost let out cheer and started flying around the room. “I can finally talk to someone!”

Zach shook his head and waited a second for the pain to fade away. By the time it was gone, the ghost had stopped flying around and was floating in front of him again.

“You have no idea how long it’s been since I’d been able to talk to someone. The last two people who were here just screamed as soon as they saw me and ran away.”

Zach could only stare, feeling completely lost. This… was nothing like he had read. The ghost wasn’t supposed to be this… human. They were supposed to be these echoes of the past, never changing and stuck in their ways.

And with how human she sounded, all of the questions he had for a ghost suddenly felt so inappropriate. He couldn’t just ask her how she died or what it was like to be dead or…

“You alright?” He jumped back as he suddenly realized that the ghost was now floating right in front of his face. She giggled at his reaction which caused Zach to narrow his eyes at her. “Sorry it’s just… you looked like you were thinking about something just now.”

“Oh. Well it’s just… I had some question I always wanted to ask a ghost and now that I’m talking to one, they feel kind of…”

He trailed off as the ghost tilted her head at him.

“Oh,” She suddenly said before giving him a wide grin and bringing her arm in so that her jaw was resting in her hand. “You want to know how I died and stuff?”

“I mean, it sounded less rude in my head?” He tried to argue only for the ghost to break out in a laugh. Getting laughed at didn’t feel great, but it was better than having the ghost be angry. He still had no idea just what she was capable of.

“No it’s fine. It’s probably what I would have asked if I was in your shoes… I think,” She chuckled nervously as he raised an eyebrow. She must have taken it as a sign to keep going, because she kept explaining. “You see, I don’t really remember anything from when I was alive. As far as my memories go… I just woke up here one day and it’s been like this ever since,”

Well that got rid of a lot of his questions. But not all of them.

“Okay, but do you mind if I ask you some other stuff then?” The ghost gave him a quick nod as he found himself wishing he’d brought some sort of journal to write this all down in. “Okay, so can you touch things?”

“A little bit, but it’s kind of tricky and I need to concentrate if I want to get it right.”

“Are you stuck here or can you leave?”

“I’ve been stuck here since I woke up. I can go as far as the clearing, but once I reach the trees, it feels like I’m pushing up against a wall.”

“So you said you didn’t remember anything? Then how are you able to speak English?”

“Well that’s the weird thing. I can remember stuff like who the president is or what the last movie I saw was, but not learning about him or watching the movie. All personal details are gone, but everything else is still there.”

“And can you remember the name of this president? Maybe I can help you figure out when you died.”

“Sure thing his name was…” The ghost said a name which caught Zach by surprise. He kind of knew about that president, but only from other people, he was too young to remember them really. The ghost must have been older than he thought.

“Wow, it’s been a while since he’s been around,” An idea came to him as a mischievous grin came over his face. He reached into his pocket and took out his cellphone. “So did you have phones back in the day, figured you might want to get a look at a new one,”

The ghost leaned forward and floated in front of the little device. “Wow, tech’s gone a long way in… however long I’ve been dead,"

“Probably more than ten years if we’re going off the last president you remember. Speaking of presidents, you would not believe whose president now…”

Before he could say anything else, he heard the sound of a door slamming open from downstairs. The ghost froze in place before quickly turning to him. At the same time, the hairs on the back of Zach’s neck, which had gone back to normal again, pointed back up again.

“You have to get out of here,” she said in a panicked whisper. “I’m not the only ghost around here. There’s this other guy with an arrow sticking out of his chest and he’s crazy. If he catches you, who knows what he’ll do.”

“Thomas Pickerpepper’s here?” Zach hissed as the ghost blinked.

“That’s his name?” She stared at him in silence until the sound of boots hitting the cabin’s wooden floors reached their ears.