Magicae Terra - Episode 1 - Part 4

Magicae Terra - Episode 1 - Part 4

I nodded my head in agreement. He turned away from me and began looking around. Something we probably should have been doing as soon as we got here. Thankfully there didn’t seem to be any ghosts on this floor. So of course we made our way up.

Every horror movie I had ever seen began playing in my head. Well, to be honest, I never really watched any horror flicks—life is scary enough without adding to it, so it was more like every horror movie trailer I had ever seen began playing in my head. It turned out to be completely anticlimactic because there wasn’t anything on the second floor, either. I was sure we were going to make it out alive and I could start talking the man into giving me the ring when he opened a door that led up to the attic.

The man wanted to go up into the bloody attic. Notice lack of italics: when doing something that stupid you begin to wonder if he really is the man. Also note the use of the word bloody. I am not British or any variation of, but I do spend a lot of time watching British television. Not only do I learn all kinds of slang nobody in America understands, but I get to feel superior when I use it.

I stood at the foot of the steps watching him go up, and upon further examination of his perfectly rounded arse (the use of italics when referring to him was hereby reinstated), I followed him up.

Every stereotype of an attic that you can think of, this one had in spades: the cobwebs, the old trunks lying around, the thick layer of dust. I immediately regretted my decision when we discovered the ghosts were hiding there. Well, not really hiding—more like examining their loot. And yes, in case you were wondering, they still floated. My mind had not been playing tricks on me; they were, in fact, ghosts.

Well, actually they weren’t really ghosts, they were constructs created by an evil warlock who had endowed them with the ability to glide through walls and other ghostly powers as well as the ability to evidently steal jewelry, but I didn’t find that out until later. At the moment, they were still ghosts in my eyes. Ghosts that I was pretty sure were going to kill me and the man.

I stood there staring at them, waiting, positive they were going to swoop down and kill me at any minute, but nothing happened. They ignored us. It was like they couldn’t see us, just like the other customers hadn’t been able to see them. By that point my whole ghost encounter was seriously losing out to all the things my imagination had come up with and I was extremely disappointed.

“Well, this sucks. They can’t even see us!”

I might be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure the man dropped his head in his hands and groaned when I said that because as soon as I did, the ghosts, whom I thought couldn’t see us, turned and gave us their undivided attention. Evidently they hadn’t paid any attention to us because they were so used to people not being able to see them.

“Crap.”

“You think?”

This was originally published in the book Magicae Terra Episode One. The full story is currently available on Amazon.
The image was created using canva.com