P.I.E.: A Nymphic Faerietale

Chapter 6

Johnny Ghost did not need to be reminded of that terrible experience twice in one day. Trying to shake the thought from his head, he walked towards the kitchen. Carlisle noticed him and made a worried grunt. Sarah turned her head and saw Ghost.

"The only reasons why I showed them this video is, one, they were curious, and two, I didn't think you were coming back down tonight!" Sarah apologized.

"It's alright, Sarah," Ghost responded, shaking his head. "At least one person I don't know is going to die tonight." He walked off, leaving Mereda and Carlisle in shock at both the video and what he had just said.

Ghost squinted his eyes, to limit his vision. If he was reminded of that night twice in a day, weird things happened. He did his best not to think about it, but it was no use. He would have to remember his plan to avoid passing out. He heard a strange sound, like a child crying. Now, he had to find Toast, quickly. This day was turning out to be one of the worst.

Ghost found Toast in the kitchen, minding his own business.

"Toast, I think I'm beginning to hallucinate," Ghost said, spastically. Toast immediately put down the mug of whiskey he was drinking and rushed over to help. The sound of the child crying got louder. Toast placed his fingertips on Ghost's temples and closed his eyes, concentrating hard. It was always a duel effort to get Ghost through this, making it hard to tell if the ordeal was a hallucination, or a ghost that had been haunting him since the Creepypasta Outbreak. It may very well be a ghost, since they knew that animatronic ghosts were possible. Ghost stopped breathing for a moment. It was starting.

Toast stepped aside to let Ghost confront the terror. He had already created a strong enough telepathic signal to see what Ghost was seeing, if indeed it was a hallucination, which took a lot of work.

Then, Ghost saw it, sitting up against the wall, a dirty golden yellow, seemingly empty, shell. Empty eyed, it seemed as if it could steal one's soul. It's gaping maw seemed as if it's jaws were strong enough to break bone. With no endoskeleton, it should have looked harmless, but no, this was a whole new lifeless beast. Ghost was too phased to put his defensive plan into action. With Toast able to see what was going on, but not able to feel the full effect, he could now understand why Ghost was too scared to look away.

In Toast's view, the humanoid, ursine figure disappeared. In Ghost's view, it's face appeared up close, blocking his view of everything else, for about a second. Both of them heard an earsplitting, electronic roar. Toast stood his ground and hunched over with his hands covering his ears, and shutting his eyes. Ghost stood there, unable to breathe, and after the roar echoed off, collapsed. Toast was with him immediately. Unlike every other time, Ghost was not unconscious, instead, he was holding himself up with his forearms, gasping heavy breaths, sweating, and shaking uncontrollably.

"Whoa," Toast exclaimed. "That was far too extreme too be a simple hallucination. And it's been happening for this long? I would call that more like at least a Level 7 paranormal entity! Why haven't you told me that it's not really a hallucination?"

"I couldn't tell, being the victim all the time," Ghost explained, voice and hands shaking as he sat up. "Besides, like a hallucination, it only attacks me after certain conditions have been met. It's not like Aimee, where she goes after me at her own free will."

"Well, Aimee is just something else." Toast remarked. "By the way, where in the bloody world did that roar come from?"

"That was a part of the jumpscare." Ghost explained.

"What level do you think that is?" Toast asked.

"Well, considering, most of the time the jumpscare knocks me out, but is preventable, I'd say it's about... Level 9 or 10," Ghost replied.

Toast's jaw dropped.

"I can recall only one other time we've ever seen a jumpscare that high a level!" Toast said in disbelief.

"That wasn't one that scared me though, even though I was trying to ignore the nuisances that were following us..." Ghost sighed. Having to deal with the Military Morons was like dealing with a couple of two-year-olds. Of course, the jumpscare startled him, but there was no panic leading up to it, so it only surprised him.

Sarah was secretly listening to what was going on in the other room, to make sure that Toast was able to see what was really happening. She wasn't exactly watching the video that Toast had taken when they found a haunted cave in someone's basement just after the Creepypasta Outbreak, the night Ghost discovered Jimmy Casket's presence. Carlisle and Mereda were watching intently, completely oblivious to the conversation in the other room.

As the Johnnys came back into the room, both of them seemingly out of breath, the video had come to the part of the night where one of the tunnels caved-in on Ghost. Sarah immediately paused the video, just so Ghost could have a break from terrible memories.

"I'll show you the rest later," Sarah told Carlisle and Mereda. "Consider it a cliff-hanger."

"I understand," Carlisle said, sadly, but understanding that this was another bad memory for Johnny Ghost. Sarah still thought Ghost blamed himself a bit too much for not noticing some of these things earlier. Other times, he blamed Toast and her for not telling him, but they gave him the same, truthful answer, "We would have died if we told you." But of course, Jimmy Casket had to show that he was being serious about keeping the secret, by killing Ghost's mother. But Sarah couldn't help but wonder if there was more meaning behind what Jimmy did. Maybe Jimmy had more than just plain insanity? Maybe it was out of stress?

The five of them sat in silence for a while, to be broken by Mereda.

"Carlisle," Mereda asked. "Wanna play some 'Nine Men's Morris'?"

"Sure," Carlisle replied. "Do you have any paper and a pencil?"

"Yeah," Toast replied. He tore a piece of paper out of his journal, and gave it to Carlisle, along with a pen that he picked up out of a cup of them on the side table.

Carlisle and Mereda went to the kitchen to play their game, and Ghost sighed.

"Nine Men's Morris?" Ghost asked Toast. He knew what the game was, he'd even played a few times, but he was confused.

"Maybe it's just a game they play?" Toast pondered as he finished the entry he was writing in his private journal, which he wrote in pretty much every other day, or any day that was out of the ordinary, which for them, was a day that was more out of the ordinary than their lives usually were. Ghost had to admit, their lives were pretty screwed up.

Toast put away his reading glasses and closed his journal. "We should get some rest," he recommended, standing up. "Hopefully, tomorrow will be a little less hectic."

"Yeah, really," Ghost replied.

"Good night, you two," Sarah said, not looking up from her computer. She'd gotten bored and begun to surf the web. "I'll tell Carlisle and Mereda that you guys hit the sack and show them to the guest room."

"Thanks, Sarah," Ghost replied. "Good night."