Ghosts of Averoigne

Lurch!

The realization was chilling. Lurch was seated upright in a high-backed chair at the opposite end of the hallway. The window behind him cast the rest of his face into shadow, but his eyes were still open. The irises seemed to glow with a dull, translucent silver…

The thumping sound came again, from somewhere behind her. Melody whipped her head around, checked the other end of the hallway, then whirled back again.

Lurch still faced her, but those eyes registered nothing. They were dull and lifeless. Almost like…

Like a golem.

The word had somehow jumped into her mind. It described the man perfectly. His skin was a mottled grey in the filtered moonlight. His face, sunken. His cheeks—

THUMP…

Melody turned again, and this time something was there. A hunched figure stood silhouetted against the other end of the hallway. It shifted forward, dragging something behind it. She saw hair, hanging down like straw, grey and unkempt. A terrible smell washed over her all at once. A familiar, musky smell…

“OH!”

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Something in her hand moved, and Melody jumped. It was the knob. The door opened abruptly and Eric was standing there, shirtless, rubbing his eyes…

She flung himself into his arms and kicked the door closed behind her.

Nine

It took a long time for Melody to calm down, for her thundering heart to finally return to its normal rhythm. The adrenaline coursing through her veins was just too much.

“I’m telling you there’s nothing there,” Eric declared again from the doorway. Still gripping the knob he leaned out and checked in both directions. “I swear, Melody. Come look for yourself.”

Melody had no intention of looking for herself. She was already huddled in the back corner of his bed, knees pulled into her chest, on the other side of the room. She sat watching him. Expecting at any moment for him to be yanked through the doorway, as in the penultimate scene of some bad horror movie.

“You don’t even see Lurch out there?” she asked him. “In the chair?”

Eric squinted into the darkness for a moment. He turned back with a skeptical look. “What chair?”

Now she was pissed. Forcing herself to stand, Melody crossed the room and pressed herself against him. His body was warm. His chest firm against her own. She clung to him tightly as she mustered just enough courage to peer out into the hallway…

Nothing.

“But… But there was…”

The hallway was inexplicably empty. There was no trace of the thing that had come shambling after her, up the stairs. On the corridor’s other side, Lurch was nowhere to be found either. Even the chair was gone.

“I swear,” she said. “I was downstairs, and I saw—”

“You were downstairs?”

She shrugged off the admission. “Yes,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep. It was too hot, and—” she paused, confused. “Hey? Why isn’t it all that hot in here?”

“Because I opened the window,” Eric said, pointing.

Melody took a long, deep, shuddering breath. She pulled him inside, closed the door, and tested the knob to make sure it was locked.

“I’m sleeping here tonight,” she said firmly. “With you.”

Eric smirked back at her. “Alllllright.”

She pouted at him. He didn’t believe her.