Ghoulish Water and the Haunted Mansion

      “It’s about ghosts, you are one, you’ll know what to do,” he said shamelessly. That moustachioed Lupe couldn’t even care to brief me much more about it, saying it was an old house that real estate agents wanted to sell as soon as possible, and some sort of thing was scaring them away. He didn’t want to call on the Ghoul Catchers, saying they would require compensation and I didn’t, since I was a Defender and thus Neopia Central’s issue.

      I only accepted it because I couldn’t defend myself in my refusal to take up the task, and Alice and Marcos were out of town, solving some issues of their own. On my birthday of all days too, and, although I had never mentioned it to them previously, I still felt a little abandoned by them. Also, I only headed down to where this mansion was situated because I didn’t want to explain myself yet again to Lightning Lenny as to why I had accepted a job and then didn’t show. With those things in mind, I looked at a distance towards the place I had been sent to, and decided if there were any place to be haunted, that was a likely candidate.

      The tall mansion was darkened with age and rot, leaning heavy sideways at the top of its hill, surrounded by bramble that had already overgrown and shrivelled away, blanketing the entire region downhill and over the faded path that led to its tumbled down rock wall. Surely it was long abandoned, perhaps from before Neovia had gotten cursed by the Spirit of Slumber, so why was it being sold only now? And was it worth whatever it was written down on paper as its value?

      At least my noncorporeal form meant I had no issue traversing the property towards the house, looking around and finding the place worse at every passing second. I already hated all of this, but, given that I was already there, I pushed on. Eventually, I crossed the front threshold of the mansion and found myself in complete darkness, where my own coldly cast glow was the only source of illumination. I looked around, trying to see if anything would give me any hint as to what I was meant to do.

      “Well, this is fantastic.”

      There was nothing to be seen but dust and decay, rusted metal and rotten wood, and forgotten glass and stone. The atrium of this mansion had its ceiling partly caved in and there was debris everywhere, and whatever furnishings were originally laid strewn all over, long past pillaged, broken, and vandalised. The end had already come for this place, and I wondered if there was anything or anyone left after it. The absolute silence and darkness told me no, but I figured I had to at least put a little more effort before leaving this place.

      I floated towards the foremost left door of the atrium and headed down an equally abandoned hallway. In my mind, I thought of the best path for me to search over this place, given the layout of a Neovian mansion. Also, I wondered, where was the welcoming committee, if there was any? Shouldn’t there be a ghost, and wouldn’t my presence already have summoned them? Or did I not count as a presence for also not being alive? But no, I could certainly tell when others were nearby, even if they were undead. Then what, did they not want to interact?

      Or perhaps there was no ghost altogether, and that Lupe had sent me on a wild Mallard chase to pull my tail. I thought that was the most likely explanation, that Lupe thought of me as yet another unsightly nuisance to be dealt with in town. I crossed the threshold of the furthest door down the left hall, its rotten wooden door dark as shadow.

      “By Fyora’s throne, the ghost!” A shrill voice broke my concentration, and I jolted at the same time as the one who had shouted. In the abandoned decay of what was once a dining room, a pink Lenny in a black two-piece dress looked appalled at me, scrambling away as she shouted. “Please leave me be, ghost, I already have abandoned this place for you!”

      Taken aback for a moment, I tried to speak up. “No- I’m not your ghost, ma’am- I just got here, I was sent to deal with your situation?”

      She scowled in confusion. “They sent a ghost to deal with a ghost? But that doesn’t even make sense?”

      “I’m a Defender… Of Neopia, you know of them?” I mumbled, but she shook her head. “They are situated in Neopia Central…” Nevermind, that would take way too long to explain. “The Deputy Chief told me to come here, you were having trouble with a ghost?”

      “The Deputy Chief sent a ghost?” The Lenny, who grasped a rotten chair’s torn down backside for support. “I guess that’s what happens when their funds are not enough.” Yowch. “And what are you supposed to do in this case, Koi? Talk to this other ghost? At least if they had sent some sort of specialist who could capture this-”

      “I’ll figure it out.” I cut her off. That’s true, was I meant to fight this other ghost? “What are you doing here, though? Isn’t it too late for you to be out here surveying this place for this sale?”

      “What?” The Lenny, who had turned her attention towards a window halfway through my sentence, watching the outside darkness with sorrow and concern. She then looked back at me with that same concern, and said. “I’m looking for my son. He went missing in this property a while back, you see, we found his room empty with his window open, and we searched all over the surrounding woods for any sign of him…” She trailed off as she looked through the window once more, the sky glow the only source of illumination out there.

      “Oh.” I said quietly. “But isn’t it too late-”

      “But also, something awful happened here!” The Pink Lenny cut me off with a newfound manic energy. “This- All of this, this whole place, our home, it has fallen into some sort of curse, I think, because it was not like that not even two weeks ago! We have been searching around the larger region of this part of the Haunted Woods for my son, since he hadn’t been found anywhere in town, and then, I come back here and-” She flailed her wings in desperation and disbelief. “It’s all like this! It must be a curse, but why would someone do this to us, we’ve never bothered anyone!”

      Something was off in this property, I knew that, but a curse? I didn’t want to interrupt her, though.

      “And then, to add to it, I’ve been haunted by a ghost ever since!” The Lenny continued ranting. “Every time I come around, trying to start my search over, hoping that perhaps we had just missed out on something, I am haunted by something that has taken over my own home! I am chased out of my own property, and I can’t ever do anything, nor get any search done properly, and now it’s only me who’s searching, and-”

      “Who else was searching with you?” I thought it was a good idea to cut her off, the Lenny was only making herself more and more distraught.

      “It was my husband, and-” She paused for a second, struggling to respond to me in her state, but then something distracted her and threw her into a panic. “That’s it! That’s it!!” The Lenny screamed in her shrill voice once more, pointing frantically at the window, and I looked at it, not seeing anything, but that didn’t matter to her, she was already hysterical. “Dear Fyora, it’s here! Aaahh!!” She rushed off through the other door of the dining room before I could stop her, screaming at the top of her lungs.

      I was going to follow her, but first I needed to see what was going on, and who was out there. I crossed the outside wall of the dining room to the side yard overlooked by that window the Lenny had been terrorised by, ready to fight whoever it was. But out there nothing moved, not in the yard, nor at a distance, going down the hill or into the woods proper. The place was dreadfully still, as if even the breeze itself refused to come around, and that absolute silence made me rush back into that mansion as fast as possible. Perhaps she had seen a leaf blow at a distance, I told myself before crossing back through the wall into the house.

      The brightness of the light caught me by surprise, as I apparently had come into the parlour, not the dining room, and it was, shockingly, in perfect condition and as if it were in current use, with candles lit everywhere and the fireplace crackling lively. How had I not seen that out there? There were windows in this room, draped in perfectly well kept heavy curtains of velvet of good quality, like the chairs and cushions as well. The parlour’s front door creaked open to reveal a grey Pteri in Neovian clothes who screamed at my sight.

      “Ten thousand evil Meepits, it’s the ghost! What do you want, ghost, why have you come to haunt me??” Here we went again.

      “I’m not here to haunt you!” I exclaimed hoarsely at the limits of my low voice. “I’m trying to figure out what is going on here!”

      “You are intruding in my family’s home, and terrifying me, that’s what’s going on here!” He accused me.

      “I’m not- Ugh, there is a ghost here, isn’t there?” I tried to not start discussing. “I was talking to this Lenny just now, before she ran off screaming, I was sent to deal with this haunting you have here.”

      “A Lenny? Was she a Pink Lenny?” He asked me with a certain desperation.

      “Yes?” I responded.

      “So you have seen my mother around??” The Pteri asked, frenzied. “I have been searching for her and my father for weeks now, but I can’t find either of them, and the authorities have not listened to me at all!”

      “Your… Mother…?” I mumbled, trying to understand what was going on.

      “And then, whenever I search around our home, a horrible ghost has been terrifying me, sounding like a banshee, slamming doors, it’s making me wish I could just leave this place!” The Pteri was as frantic as that Lenny was previously. “But I can’t seem to leave this place, not before I found my parents-”

      “What happened to them that you lost them?” I cut him off, trying to get some semblance of logic into this chaos, and trying to get the Pteri back on his rails.

      “Oh-” His demeanour calmed down immediately, but he had a shifty look of guilt in his eyes. “I- Um, I was- I had gone to do something late one night, you see, things that were not necessarily… allowed, let’s say.”

      “Uh-huh.” I responded with an automatic flatness, imagining what sorts of activities he had been involved in.

      “And, well, I don’t know what happened, but all I knew is that when I came back the next day, my parents were gone, and my neighbours told me they had gone searching for me.” He continued explaining. “So I had to go after them, but I couldn’t find them- But you say you talked to my mother, where was she?”

      “In this mansion?” I responded, unsure.

      “It can’t be, that makes no sense!” The Pteri exclaimed. “My parents were last seen in the greater Haunted Woods region, from what I was told. Are you trying to fool me, ghost?”

      “No!” I responded, annoyed. “I literally just talked to your mother - Well probably over ten minutes ago at this point - But I was talking to her in another room in this place that looked worse than this!” I was struggling to make sense of what was happening. “Then she ran off screaming, and I went out there, and when I came back here I found this room.”

      “Worse? Worse, how?” He asked with a familiar manic energy. “Where was it??”

      “Well, it looked like a dining room, but it was in abso-” The Pteri didn’t even let me finish my sentence before he rushed out of the parlour. “Hey! Wait up!” I floated towards the door, but was stopped before I could cross its threshold, as a pink wing pushed the door open inwards.

      “Hey, I was looking for you-”

      “Aahhhh!!!” The pink Lenny screamed as she rushed across the room to get away from me. “A ghost!!”

      “Ma’am! We’ve talked before!” I exclaimed, annoyed.

      “No, we have not!” She yelled back, frantically trying to grasp for the fireplace’s poker, hoping that would somehow do something against me. “I know nothing about your sort and I want nothing to do with it!” Okay, that was hurtful.

      “Didn’t you just tell me about your lost son, and how you were looking for him?” I asked, and that made her look shocked and disconcerted.

      “I-” The Lenny hesitated. “Yes, he is- How did you- I don’t remember speaking to you-” Perhaps there was something about this place that was cursed, because everyone acted strange here.

      “I think I have talked to him just about now, he’s a Grey Pteri, he’s wearing a grey coat and black trousers-” I said, and she nodded.

      “That is my son, indeed, did he come back?” She asked.

      “I… Think so?” I answered.

      “Where did he go??”

      I pointed towards the door she had just come from. “Right there, I have no idea how did you two not meet-”

      “I need to see him now!” The pink Lenny rushed out of the door she had come from.

      “Hey, wait up!” I followed after her, but the door shut behind her before I crossed its threshold, and when I did, I was taken aback once more.

      The hallway was dark and decayed once more, the curtains that lined the windows of the hall were ripped and moth-eaten beyond use. Every single thing in this hallway was at the very least chipped, even every single individual tile. I was very lost at this point, also because this was not the left corridor, it seemed like I had exited on the right wing of the house. I tried to puzzle out the layout of the mansion, and how the corridors would connect, because I could swear I did not go around the house when I was outside.

      Also, the Lenny was once more gone out of sight, and I couldn’t even hear her footsteps. All I could do was wander down the hallway, peeking into the wreckage of the rooms that connected to it, their doorframes long vacant with time, and there was no sign of life, movement, nothing. Also, I had not found a single sign of this said haunting that was terrifying the two of them; this whole place was dead quiet… and felt dead quiet. Why couldn’t I sense where either of them were? It was like they had vanished from existence all of a sudden.

      Reaching back to the atrium, I thought perhaps to head upstairs, but caught a glimpse of something moving out in the yard, so I rushed once more outside, ready to attack. “Hey! You stop right there!”

      It was the Grey Pteri once more, who doubled over as he folded his wings over him for protection. “Please don’t attack me, ghost! I have nothing for you to take, but my family’s home with no family anymore!”

      “I-” I was reaching some sort of breaking point. “Can either of you stop running off and give me one single coherent explanation as to what’s going on here??” I exclaimed, frustrated.

      “I was just searching for my parents! I swear I didn’t mean to anger any of your undead kind, if I have offended you in any way-”

      “No- I-” I needed to think for a moment. Something was really wrong about this place, things were not clicking into place. “Sorry.” I mumbled as I floated away, back into the mansion.

      The atrium was brightly lit from its crystal chandelier’s many candles, the entire room was beautifully decorated with silver and gold and polished stone, with a fine carpet rolling down its stairs and towards the front door I had just crossed through. There were shelves on its back end, behind the stairs, that were lined with all sorts of imported memorabilia from other lands, from Shenkuuvian porcelain to Terror Mountain snow globes, Faerie-winged trinkets and Meridellian weapons. There were other porcelain pieces, life-sized vases and decorative Neggs, that were in other stands or propped up by themselves along the walls of the atrium, alternate with brass candle-stands and standing in front of tapestry that were meant to tastefully match the decor. The stairs and doorframes were of carved dark wood, and the doors leading to the hallways on the sides were ornate.

      This was not the same place I was a few moments prior, this was a proper mansion for a lord or some sort of honorary title, which made sense, now thinking, the land I had traversed to get here was quite large. But yet, the issue was, I knew this place made no sense to look like this, I had seen this atrium before as a destroyed place… No… After… Was this all before or after? I had a headache, if that was even possible in my intangible state of being, this was too much for me to try to piece together.

      In my inner confusion, I didn’t notice the lady of the house appear, now coming down the polished stairs and grasping the handrail in fear as she kept her eyes on me. “Can I help?” The Lenny’s words made me jolt, and I looked at her and asked her.

      “Do you know… What year are we in?” For whatever reason that wasn’t fully clear to me as of yet, but I thought that was the most proper question to ask at that moment.

      “What? What a strange thing to barge into someone’s home so late at night and just ask. Are you lost, ghost? Why, it’s-” The Pink Lenny in her dark dress came over to me, trying to think of the date. “It’s- Oh, why can’t I think of it? I just saw it in the newspaper earlier today-”

      “What was in the news??” I cut her off. “Do you remember the headlines?”

      “Why, it was- Well, there was the mayoral election, something about a heinously ugly Xweetok that looked like a monster, and um-” She stalled once more.

      “Do you know where your son is?” I asked, knowing that was what I needed to check.

      “Why, it’s late at night, he’s dead asleep in his room-” The Pink Lenny started responding, but then realised something was off. “Wait, how do you know about my son? Did something happen to him? Is that why you’re here??”

      Her questions were beginning to get frantic once more, and, as a precaution, I eyed the ways she could attempt to escape before she thought of it. “I just… I need to ask those things. It’s important to get a hold of the situation here.”

      “I don’t understand how any of those things- I don’t think I like your presence in my house, Koi, you seem to come as an omen, and I do not like omens!” She started yelling once more, and she ran once more, towards the left hallway. “Go away, I don’t like you, you’re scaring me!”

      “I’m sorry, but I need you to stay with me.” I summoned vines from the ground to block the door she wanted to exit from, and then did the same for the other doors before she decided to run off anywhere else. The only door I left unblocked was the front, hoping he would come through it. Instead, the Pink Lenny rushed through it, screaming, and I kicked myself for not thinking that would happen. Floating through the front double door before they both shut, I was once more outside, but the place had already changed once more.

      The yard now was a well kept garden with bushes and patches of flowers, all very beautiful even under the dim sky, and there were even well-manicured gravel paths leading down to a little gazebo downhill I had not seen before. On one of those paths I saw the Grey Pteri, and the Pink Lenny came rushing after him, wailing from longing.

      “Ronny!!!! Where were you, my child? I was so worried we had lost you forever!”

      The Pteri also responded with the same energy, rushing towards her as well. “Mother?? Is that you, mother?? I thought I had lost you!”

      The two embraced in the courtyard as I watched from a distance, still near the house, and a clapping sound coming from behind me made me turn suddenly. At the doorsteps of the mansion’s front door, which once more was rotten and darkened from age, a pale skeletal Zafara with large white wings and glowing sockets for eyes watched over us.

      “Well done, I couldn't have done it any better myself.” The Zafara said in a haunting voice.

      “Who- are you the one haunting this place?” I asked, irritated at this strange visitor. “Why were you tormenting them?? I’ll-”

      “Well, aren’t you eager?” The Zafara cut me off in annoyance, and I stammered, once more lost. “I just got here, and I’m far too busy to deal in these sorts of pettiness.” He added, which did not help clear up anything. “At least you saved me from doing my work with them, they’re finally at rest.”

      His bony finger directed my view back downhill, but the gazebo, the paths, the gardens and all were once more gone, all the landscape was a mess of dead brambles and the woods that once were distant were encroaching in the property’s borders further in than what I had noticed previously. The mother and son, who had just been there, were also nowhere to be seen, and that last part concerned me the most.

      “Where have you taken them??” I snapped at the Zafara while clenching my fins to attack, but he did not even wince.

      “I’ve told you, they’re finally at rest, ghost.” He spoke. “You, above anyone else, should know what that means. Your work is done here, the hauntings of this place have been rested.”

      “I-” Something clicked in my mind. “How long has this place been vacant? Of living Neopets?”

      “At least over half a century,” the skeletal Zafara pondered.

      “Then who is selling this place?” I asked.

      “Don’t know, don’t care, but some independent party, wouldn’t you think?” He said. “After all, none of this family was left to claim this place.”

      “... Not even… The father?” I asked.

      “Nope. They all were claimed by these Woods in their search for each other.”

      “Oh.”

      “So… There you go, we can now leave this place to rest.” The Zafara said. “That is, until it is sold and filled once more with life. Oh, also, happy birthday, so I’ve heard.”

      And with that, he flew away before I could even protest, and disappeared into the dim sky glow of the moonless night. I guessed I had left only to report back to the Deputy Chief.

     The End.