FICTION | URBAN FANTASY | HORROR

Skeletons in the Closet, Chapter 5— Angry Spirits

A man visits an abandoned town in search of a long-forgotten secret.

This is a serial fiction. You can find the table of contents here.

The driver had told him to walk about an hour along the old overgrown road to find the town. If the said road hadn’t left a scar on the geography, he wouldn’t have believed this area once was part of civilisation or even of economic significance.

While dwelling in thoughts, the man saw houses rise between the trees — some functional, some little more than piled-up rubble. In the distance, crumbling chimneys reminded him of the factories that had brought prosperity decades ago.

The man walked toward the old town hall, an imposing, solidly built stone house. It was the least likely place to collapse on him, so he set up camp in an old study with a fireplace.

Besides the safety offered by a functioning door and boarded windows, the desks and chairs would come in handy. But first, two rotten wooden chairs and a few discarded books served as the basis of a fire. Not knowing how long his investigation would take, he wanted everything prepared before nightfall.

The man recognised a moving shadow and jumped out of the way when a book fell out of a shelf without recognisable cause. He was about to throw the book into the fire when he recognised its good condition and read the heading where the book had fallen open.

Netherbrook’s Decline during the Great Depression

“Odd,” he said, “what a happenstance.”

He had come here, after all, to learn about the town’s history and secrets. There must have been a reason for the necromancer’s interest in this place.

Boom!

Startled, he turned around to see that the study’s door had fallen shut behind him.

“Is somebody there?”

But silence had returned immediately. He couldn’t hear anything except the wind outside, which might have been responsible for the chilly draught that had probably moved the door. After the draught had snuffed his matchstick five times, the man managed to light the fire, hoping it would quickly dispel the cold.

With a few remaining hours of daylight, he started his investigation with the old land surveys. There had to be markings of what he searched for—structures long forgotten even before this town was abandoned. He found maps from the town’s early days that seemed promising.

Unexpectedly, the floor started to tremble softly, and a file cabinet’s drawers flew open, barely missing him. He looked around suspiciously, believing he heard footsteps coming from the hallway. He realised then that it had started to turn dark.

“Time to barricade in the study for the night,” he whispered.

A cold shiver ran down his spine like a cold dead hand caressed him. He jumped away from the file cabinets and hurried to the study, where he barricaded the door with an old desk and laid the map down on another.

More books went into the fire to keep the room warm, except for the one that had dropped from the shelf. He placed it on the desk next to the map and lightened the candles he had packed. The sun’s last light shone through a slit in a boarded-up window.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” a hush incorporeal voice whispered, “This is no place for the living.”

“Who … who is there?”

The room started to tremble while the man hurriedly lit more candles. This was no soft vibration but more potent like a quake. Books dropped from the shelves, and an old rusty chandelier shook threateningly above. Lucid, transparent figures appeared around him.

“We are the doomed, waiting a long time for a new companion to ease the boredom of eternity.”

The man stumbled backwards into the table while more and more of the ghosts filled the room. He crouched down next to the table and covered his face.

“A fire representing the warmth they have lost,” the man whispered.

“No living thing ….”

The angry spirits whirled around him, followed by a cold breeze tugging at his clothes and chilling him to the bone.

“A map of old depicting the boundaries of their lifetime.”

“… is allowed ….”

The chandelier fell from the ceiling and crashed to the floor not far away.

“A history of their grief that binds them to the earth.”

“… to leave ….”

The breeze grew to a mighty wind that picked up loose objects but never extinguished the fires in the room.

“A sigil drawn with fire to imprison them.”

“… this town.”

The ghosts answered with angry howling, unable to close in on the man.

“Sorry, I’m not into dead ends,” the man said, suddenly standing up with a smug smile.

And just like that, the wind was gone, and calm returned to the abandoned town hall. Motionless, even confused, the ghosts hovered around the man.

“We do not understand.”

“Let me explain,” Killjoy said, “After all these years, I discovered my late master had one last secret hidden from me. I am here to collect ….”

He picked the book up from the desk and tapped on the open page.

“… and you made it so much easier for me. You see, ghosts in large numbers are hard to find. It is uncompleted tasks, grief or soured ambitions that bind them to the world of the living.”

“What do you want of us?”

“I need an army. Where better to find that than in a town that perished due to radical changes? You died after losing that battle, but with me, you’ll become a force for radical change yourself.”

Killjoy looked at the ghosts around him, staring at him and nodding reluctantly. They were bound by his magic, unable to resist, but he could feel their wrath and desire to join.

“Now, show me the way to that Necropolis.”

Here’s your way to the reader’s guide to Skeletons in the Closet:

The abandoned town Netherbrook was inspired by my dystopian writing prompt “Unseen”.

💯 Story Challenge (78/100)

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