Uninvited Guests
He awoke in the night to see an apparition at the foot of his bed. Understandably, he froze in terror. It was cold, and the room was dark. Only the slightest sliver of a moon shone outside. He could see the faint grayish-purple outline of a man in a long coat and tall hat. The uninvited guest was translucent like a thin fog, and it stared him down for few more moments. Suddenly, it briskly spun around and left the room through the open door. Its footsteps were eerily silent.
Unsure of what to do, Abraham leaped out of bed and followed the ghost. It walked down the stone hallway at a slow pace, its body still swirling as if made of mist. The castle was even colder outside of his chamber room. It was dark out in the hallway, too. No candles were lit on this black night apparently rife with mischief and unwelcome ghouls.
Abraham hung back behind the apparition. Did it know he followed behind? It never turned around as it made its way down the long hallway. The doors of all the other rooms he passed were closed as the castle stood quiet in the night. He was tempted to knock on one to wake one of the servants, but he didn’t want to alert the apparition to his presence. He continued on.
The hallway was due to end at the stairwell. Abraham hoped the ghost would vanish when it reached the stairs, but it merely floated above them. He quickly caught up to make sure he lost no ground as the apparition scaled the steps. It only went up a single floor and began to wind its way down another dark hallway. Abraham left the stairwell himself and continued to trail the apparition on its journey.
Halfway down the hallway, the apparition paused and looked over its shoulder. Abraham froze, and it spun around completely. Their eyes locked as reality seemed to distort itself in the hallway. Time and space bent towards the blackness at the end of the hallway, and the apparition slowly faded from sight.
Despite the apparition vanishing, there was no relief as Abraham knew he wasn’t alone. A feeling of dread gripped his gut. Ominous waves of fear poured from the end of the hallway and enveloped him. He stared into the nothingness, trembling, as two red eyes slowly opened at a man’s height in the darkness.