(Aleksander’s POV)

I look at my new creation with satisfaction. A zombie crow is perching on my bony fingers as I stand on the dead gardens of my mansion. This is the sixth one that I made today. I look down to the corpse lying on the ground, a bit damaged by the crows that I killed and turned into zombies.

I nod to myself and order the corpse with greenish skin to get up. It twitches, the foul stench of rotten flesh not bothering me at all. Since I turned into an undead, I have some kind of affinity with these types of things. The graves, dark places and corpses make me feel at home. This corpse, freshly dug out from the cemetery by my skeletons, was turned by me into a zombie.

My first zombie! Imagine that! It was recently dead, so it wasn’t stinking yet, but when I rose it, it immediately started to rot, with the skin turning into a disgusting green. The ironical thing is that this male zombie is dressed in a neat suit. A staggering corpse, ready to court the ladies in the office and eat their brains, haha.

I order the zombie to go inside the mansion to hide in the basement. After all, there are still people that come here, so I can’t have him with his stench meandering around. It’s just the start of the night, but I can see everything clearly, even though the sky is completely covered by dark clouds. It seems that it will rain soon.

I look at the forest beyond the garden of dead flowers and overgrown weeds and bushes. The forest rests on the dark, the eerie wind creating moans from the cracking of the wood and the rustling of leaves.

No animal or insect makes noise this night, turning the place eerily quiet. The perfect mood to terrify someone. I already made some precautions to prevent anyone from running from this place in the case anybody tries to run away from the mansion. One thing that I must admit, skeletons really know how to bury themselves.

The crow on my fingers fly off, perching on the roof of the mansion, looking around with sharp eyes. The other five are also perched around, working as security cameras. I walk back to the doors of the mansion. They open by themselves as I use my newfound powers.

Although I didn’t get stronger, now that I’m on a different ambiance, I discovered that I can make these little things, make doors open and shut, and even lock themselves. I can also produce cold winds that are quite strong, and cause creaking by forcing the wood in the floor to move.

It isn’t that I have powers to haunt a house, it’s actually some simple telekinesis that I managed to grasp with some practice in controlling my dark powers. I also can use magic to make the surroundings get darker just by manifesting my magic power. A normal skeleton mage might not be able to do this, but I’m not a common monster, I have the intelligence of a human after all.

As I enter the mansion, my dark senses detect life approaching from behind. I spin on my heels, looking to the trees, where the annoying light of lanterns cross the forest. Four signs of life. It seems that food came to me after all. Time to enjoy myself.

(3° person POV)

Four adolescents walk through the forest, their lanterns illuminating the dark. The four of them are breathing roughly, sweating profusely as they get out of the forest. The one that’s ahead of the group, a boy, points the lantern forward, spotting the mansion. Smiling, he turns back to his friends.

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(boy): “See? I said that I knew the way to the mansion!”

The group is composed by two boys and two girls, all of them carrying backpacks with bedrolls to spend the night. One of the girls frowns and says:

(girl): “Shut up, Boris. I’m fucking tired of walking. I know that we ran away from our homes, but we had to come all the way to this place? It has been almost a two days journey!”

(Boris): “Shush it Lisa! If w ran away from our hommes there’s no turning back!”

(girl): “Yeah, Lisa. Just calm down, alright? It sucked to get here, but now we can do our drugs in peace.”

(Lisa): “Alright, Freya. Yuri, did you bring the stuff?”

The other boy, Yuri, answered:

(Yuri): “Of course. Cocaine, marijuana, heroin, you chose it. I spent almost three thousand pounds in drugs.”

(Freya): “Steal from that church really gave us some money.”

As they talked, they approached the decaying mansion, going through the dead garden. As they walk carefully, they also explore a bit while talking among themselves.

(Lisa): “Nobody comes to this place anymore, right, Boris? Are you sure about that?”

(Boris): “Yeah, I’m sure. Most people that come here are just really curious people, and they barely even look around the mansion, since it’s a chore to get here they go back early.”

Lisa nodded, satisfied. This place would be good to set up camp. They have some supplies and a lot of money that they stole during these last moths to live for quite some time. She scratches her neck nervously, the signs of abstinence from chemicals already showing on her.

They don’t notice the crows on the roofs, quietly watching their every movement. After a few minutes wandering around, they gather in front of the main door while talking:

(Yuri): “Dude, this place is creepy!”

(Freya): “Yeah, this place has been abandoned for ages. Whys is it still standing? Shouldn’t the government take it down already?”

(Boris): “For what I know, some wealthy people lived here, but they passed because of some strange disease. After that, they said the place was haunted.”

Freya sighed.

(Freya): “Knowing how people of this city are superstitious, I bet they didn’t want even to come close to this place.”

Boris nodded.

(Lisa): “So, we go in know or take a look around the place before it gets dark for real? Or we go in and set up camp?”

They looked at each other for a few seconds before Yuri said:

(Yuri): “We should at least see if there is something lying around here on the garden. After that we enter and set up camp.”

They nodded and started wandering. Freya walks around, her lantern helping her in the dim light. As she walks, she scratches her neck, where a few marks on the unhealthily pale skin show that the scratching is a habit.

She looks at the withering plants of the garden. There are several dead flowers, that seem that died recently, even though the mansion is ancient. Certainly, someone came here to plant them, but they eventually died due lack of being tended to.

Among the flowers, she recognizes withered belladonna, or deadly nightshade, her mother’s favorite flowers. According to her, where she grew up, a rural area where she lived with her parents, these flowers grew near her home.

When she met her father, and kissed for the first time, it was under a cherry tree. However, this only brought Freya bad memories. Her father abandoned her mother when she was young, and her mother turned ill, struggling to sustain a child in a new city.

Eventually, she passed away and Freya turned into a trouble child, jumping from adoptive family to adoptive family. Eventually, she met these three, and fell into the drug world. And now, she is running away together with them.

She frowns looking at the dead flowers. Her mother, the only person that she ever liked. A cold window goes through her, as if piercing her clothes like daggers made out of ice. She shivers, hugging herself and the dirty leather jacket, a bit oversized for her petite build.

Her long blonde and wavy hair waves in the wind, also dirty and with some sticks from the trees sticking out. The light of the day dies down slowly, giving space to the night. The only sound is that of the wind and the noise of the shaking trees.

The cold air comes from the tress, and one of the crows above the mansion caws, making her jump lightly. She looks back at the mansion. Suddenly, it seems much scarier than before. She hugs herself, rubbing her arms.

(Freya): “I hate this place.”

She walks back, going back to her friends. Unnoticed by her, a shadow moves in one of the unbarred windows of the higher floors, hiding back inside the mansion. The gather in front of the closed doors, preparing to go inside.