‘I refuse to be worn as a codpiece again’ barked the talking skull, as it was picked up and inspected by Blake, a first time ghost and up until very recently fully alive farmhand.
‘Oi, put me down or I’ll have one of your thumbs,’ snapped the skull in hopeful chomps, ‘I was happy on that shelf, I had almost finished counting the grains of dust, Oi-!’
Gently tossing the skull up and down to test its weight Blake took a moment to consider the developments of the last ten minutes-
A farmhand of little learning and even less common sense, Blake had recently heard that a Dreadlord–whatever that was–had been upsetting his nana, so he had immediately set off to give this dread-fella a good talking too.
Marching straight past the skeletal guardsmen of Dreadcastle and quickly becoming lost somewhere in the lobby area, Blake’s last living memory had been picking up a loudly humming shortsword that had been conspicuously left upon a well lit plinth.
‘I thought ghosts couldn’t hold things,’ said Blake, while considering both the short sword and the talking skull that he held in each of his hands.
‘You’re a poltergeist then; yipee, lucky you! Jingle chains, slam doors, it’s all very haunting I’m sure. I know a few ghosts that would kill to be semi-corporeal and you fluke it first try!? Well that’s death for you, never fair; I suppose next you’ll be asking what should you do next?’
Blake, seconds away from asking that very question, decided to remain quiet.
‘I thought so,’ quipped the skull with a smugness upon its face that only a featureless skull could achieve. ‘Well, in my correct opinion you now have three options; you use your resurgence as a holy revenant to smite the evil baddie that is sleeping in his bedroom up on the floor above this one; you make everyone happier and just smite yourself; or finally, you could stand in the exact spot that you are standing in now and continue to ask vaguely coherent questions for the next millenia,’ satisfied with his tear-down of the dopey looking farmboy the skull then clicked his teeth with a puncatitive clack.
‘Do you do anything other than talk,’ asked Blake, unsure which part of that last sentence was the hurtful part.
‘Well I am a talking skull, what should I do, fetch you a dictionary?’
Blake was a patient man, he was even a man that many would describe as being kind hearted, but in his short time being alive, and in his even shorter time being dead, there was only one thing he truly couldn’t stand.
‘I don’t like quips,’ said Blake with level inflection as he dumped the skull into his travelling bag and hoisted it onto his shoulder. ‘Now you can stay in there until you learn some manners mister.’
‘I’ve spent seven hundred years on that shelf, I’m not going to be learning manners in the next half hour,’ yelled the skull through the muffling canvas.
Giving the bag a shake and whispering something very threatening about the fragility of bone under his breath, Blake headed back out to the castle’s lobby and took a better look around.
A large staircase of stone stretched upward from the centre of the room and then wound its way to the floor beyond. Overhead the ceiling was partly obscured by a sprawling map of webbing, seemingly created by some rather industrious spiders, and dotted occasionally by the placement of some ineffectually burning candelabra. All this posed quite the fire risk when combined in this way and in judging by the ash that was littered about the room there had been a few close calls recently.
Elsewhere in the lobby two of the skeletal guards* that protected the Dreadcastle stalked about the wide room, occasionally bumping into a wall or knee high table. One of them, missing an arm and one of its legs, had become entangled within a wooden chair and was vainly trying to escape.
Finishing his cursory look about the room, Blake noticed a large book by the front door and went to go have a look.
Looking over the book Blake was unsure if he should go find some gloves first.
It was tattered, damp in more places than not, a sizable colony of mould had overtaken the later pages and was beginning to reach their comparative bronze age.
Leafing through the names and dates in the guest book, Blake saw the signature of several adventurers that he knew from the tavern, famous men like Betear the righteous and Maladuke of the runny nose; he also saw the names of some of the more well known tyrants that lived beyond the village, Mortenyuk of Gwent, Benubenu Shialele, The Elderwyrm, all of these figures that would be talked of in in hushed tones and still seemed polite enough to sign in; He also saw the name of his sister a few times, which both concerned him and made a lot of things make much more sense than he currently wanted.
‘Well, it would be rude not to,’ Blake muttered to himself as he scrawled his name underneath someone named Monty the Pest Inspector, and then took a rough guess at the date.
Oddly content to have signed in and sensing no immediate danger, Blake took an empty scabbard from one of the toppled over skeleton guards and tucked his new shortsword away on his belt.
This whole adventuring thing was easy, he thought to himself as he took a step and instantly forgot how to remain corporeal.
Lifting his head back up through the floorboards in embarrassment, Blake awkwardly hoisted himself back to ground level and dusted himself off.
Mostly easy then…
*Skeleton guardsmen, while being archetypal denizens of haunted castles and dungeons alike, notably do not have the eyes nor do they have the eardrums necessary to be effectual guards. As a result they should be avoided by any first time lair buyers and should be included in the decor section of your lair costs and expenses.
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 