The next day, I stood in front of a house that was apparently haunted.

That was the quest that the two had accepted. And for whatever reason, it required three people to finish.

Auria had been pleasant this morning, unlike what she had presented last night. It was almost like I had talked to two different people. I hadn’t seen Klaus last night, so I didn’t know if he had the same effect, but he did seem fairly cheery too. He was, in his own words, ‘mighty excited to punch this ghost to oblivion.’

It was honestly creepy.

The house had apparently been abandoned pretty recently after the owner was found out to be a serial killer who had been bringing in people almost every day to kill. Then, he proceeded to use magic to drain all the blood from their body and use that blood to paint the walls of this house. Even now, once we stepped inside, we would see those red walls.

Anyways, once he had been caught and the property had been locked, people had claimed to hear and see things going on inside through the windows. Now, it was back on the market, but no one wanted to buy it. Our job was to go inside and exorcise the ghost, if any, and report back. During this mission, somehow, Auria planned on telling me the truth about what had happened yesterday.

She had the door key, so she went forward and started unlocking it.

I had tried to keep any conversation with these two at a minimum. I did not want to talk to them at all. They probably had the same thing in their mind, so we were fairly coordinated. All they were here for was to explain themselves, and all I was here for was to hear them out. Then, home.

The door opened and we all went inside one by one. I went last.

The walls, surprisingly, weren’t red. It was just the plain color of wood that should have been there.

“The red walls apparently start from the attic.” Auria turned to Klaus and spoke. He grunted while nodding.

They started walking all around the house, and I followed them.

Klaus kept punching and hitting things with his sword, and all that led to was more dust being released from them. Auria eventually asked him to stop, and he obliged. He seemed quite obedient, now that I noticed. That had not been the case at all yesterday. Looked like he had gone through a shift in personality too.

The entire house seemed to be empty. There were quite a lot of rooms in there, but all of them were bare. Some of the rooms’ purpose seemed fairly obvious based on their shape and size, but the lack of furniture still threw me off. Then, they went up the stairs and started looking at the three rooms on the first floor.

They split up, and I went behind Auria.

“So, when are you going to speak up?” I asked her, a bit more confident than yesterday.

She turned around with a clueless look, “What are you talking about? We don’t have time to fool around. Go and check the remaining room, quick.”

Without any hesitation, she turned and started looking around the room once more.

I got out of the room with a sigh and stopped in the corridor. Klaus had gone into the second room, and the one at the end was open for me to check. I didn’t really want to, but I guess I had no option. She had said yesterday that if I helped her clear this mission, she would tell me everything. Maybe she really did mean after the quest ended.

I went to the third room and opened the door.

I didn’t even want to look, considering it would all be empty, but I still glanced over the entire thing as quickly as possible. And sure enough, it was the same as the others. Nothing special. I took a step back and was turning my head, when the side of my eye shone for a second.

I turned back and took a look at the edges of the floor. One of the corners of the room, wasn’t completely void of furniture. Well, it wasn’t exactly furniture, but buckets. Five wooden buckets, just lying in the corner.

I went to them and bent down, trying to take a look inside all of them. Number one, spick and span. Number two, the same. Number three, just an empty bucket. Number four, something different. The bottom edge of the bucket was a bit differently colored. No, it wasn’t colored. It had some pigmentation on it. I put my head closer to it, trying to get a better look.

The pigment was dark, but still fairly visible. Red. Blood.

I threw the bucket away in a panic and yelped. The other two ran into the room and looked at the buckets. Klaus snickered and gave me a pat on the back. Auria went and picked up bucket number 4. She put her face just as close as me and looked at it.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“These are the ones he used as containers.” She threw the bucket to Klaus, who had a good look before throwing it back on the floor.

“Still no ghost.” He scowled and left the room.

“Let’s go the attic then.” She went after him and looked at the roof of the corridor.

I, still inside the room, looked up too, and saw a small entrance with a rope hanging down. Auria jumped and pulled it. The entrance opened, but there was no ladder.

“Guess we’re finding a ladder.” Auria said and started to do down the stairs. Klaus followed.

I got out of the room and looked up at the open attic. I could make out the roof, due to the little bit of light, but not much other than that. The color of the walls definitely wasn’t visible. Maybe it had been scrubbed clean by the people who wanted to sell the house. I was the tallest of the group, and the attic did not seem that high, so I decided to try.

I jumped a bit to check how much further it was, and once I got an idea, I jumped even higher. I was able to grab onto the edge of the opening. I took a long breath and pulled myself up.

The floor had a lot of dust, which made it difficult to maintain a grip. I slipped once or twice, but ultimately managed to get into the attic. I sighed once inside and took a look around me.

Once more, it was empty. The walls did not actually seem to be red, which confirmed my idea of the seller having scrubbed it clean. I was about to jump back down and tell those two, when one of the shadows moved. Literally moved.

From one corner to another, it jumped closer to me. And then, from within the shadow, came a black, withered hand. It was as if it grew from the darkness itself. It shook and cracked as it moved forward without interruption. There were no joints in sight. It was infinitely growing out of the darkness. One of its fingers was pointed towards me, with its long and rotten nails.

I took deep breaths and slowly moved towards the exit. It meant that I was moving closer to the finger, but that was the only escape I had. I tried not to make any noise as I bent down and held the edges of the exit. The hand accordingly changed directions to come towards me.

Even then, it did not twist or turn in any way. The hand, very naturally, adapted a shape that made it curve from top to bottom. I put my legs through the exit and jumped down with my eyes closed.

A massive noise.

My legs hurt a bit, but more than that, something was falling on my head. I ran forward and looked back. The roof had a massive hole blasted into it. Nine hands, just like the one before, made their way through the hole and gripped the surrounding planks as support. Something was right in the middle of the hole, through which the hands came. And wherever they touched, a shadow formed, into which they disappeared.

I kept stumbling backwards, panicked. Then, something cold touched my leg. I looked down. There was a shadow formed right under my legs, and through it, one of the cold withered hands had found its way to my ankle. I shouted and jumped back, tumbling down the stairs.

But I did not hit my head. Every time I felt like I would, a hand appeared on the stairs and broke my fall. And then, in front of my eyes, on the roof of the stairs, more hands appeared. Ten, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-five. Never-ending. Every single one of them was dark as the night, and rotten to the bone. And all of them, were coming towards me.

Once they reached my body, they moved all over it. The face, the chest, the stomach. I tried to breathe, but it was nearly impossible to do so through the flesh. I felt myself rising. The hands below me were pushing me up, and then turning me, over and over. I felt my head spin. My throat felt sore.

Eventually, I was hanging upside down, in the middle of the stairs, with the hands all over my body. The only part of my body which was open were the eyes. I tried to scream, but the palms muffled it. They caressed my hair and massaged my shoulders. I wasn’t sure what they were trying to do, but they were everywhere.

I could see even more coming out of the walls of the house. They soon covered the entrance, and then all the windows, overlapping over one another until there was no light in the house. Somehow, that was how long it took Auria and Klaus to notice that something was up. They came running to the stairs and shouted with shock when they look at me.

“It’s a wardlebeast!” Klaus shouted. He hadn’t put his hands on his sword yet, which disturbed me.

“He was right. We’ve got this. Get the book out, I’ll get an opening.” Auria said. Klaus nodded and pulled a small book out of his pocket.

Auria ran to me with an arrow in her hand and started stabbing the hands all over the place. Sometimes, they accidently stabbed me too, which pained, but it did not matter. I needed the hands off my body.

Once my mouth was free, I took quick breaths, trying to catch up with my lungs. My entire body was shaking. And it was cold, very cold. The hands had done nothing but hold me, and yet, it was uncomfortable. It felt like death.

“They don’t kill. Don’t worry.” Auria assured me with a smile.

She was still going at the hands, when Klaus shouted behind her, “Get aside, it’s ready!”

“Just a second!” She shouted and stabbed the last few hands, which caused them to rescind back into the shadows. She pulled me away from the stairs and on to the floor.

I turned in a panic to see what was going on. The hands had combined once more and formed a pitch-black wall on the stairs. I looked at Klaus, who was holding the book open and towards the wall.

“Ready?” He shouted and looked at Auria, who nodded with determination.

“Well, it was nice knowing ya!” He said as a golden light rushed forward from the book and hit the wall.

As soon as it did, one of Klaus’ arms disappeared.

It did not get chopped off, because there was no blood. One of them just…vanished, as if it had never been there. He groaned with pain, but then a fire shone in his eyes. He shouted and pushed the book forward with one hand.

The light kept pushing against the black wall, until it filled the entire room. I closed my eyes due to the brightness and kept them closed, until there was no sound anymore. Until it was unusually quiet.

“You can open them.” Auria was crying.

Klaus was too.

I looked around, but there was nothing to look at. We were surrounded by darkness. Around us, above us, below us. The house was no more. All around us…was an abyss.

I looked at them for answers. Auria calmed herself and nodded, looking straight into my eyes.

“Listen carefully.”