It was a dark and silent summer night in August. The full moon was the only thing that lit up the night sky from which it cast long streaks of pale moonlight over Eterna Forest below. It was almost midnight and not many wild Pokémon were normally to be seen around this time.
The only creatures which apparently appreciated the stillness of the night were mostly nocturnal Pokémon such as Noctowl, Noibat and Crobat which now left their nests and dens and, without making any sound, flew out into the dead of night in search for prey.
Accompanied by total silence, the fog laid as an insulating blanket over the forest.
This silence was suddenly broken, however, by the soft rustle of light footsteps walking through the semi-high grass under the dense canopy…
The footsteps belonged to a young woman wandering completely alone through the woods.
And as she at that time had no Pokémon of her own yet, and therefore instead had many friends among the creatures of the forest, this woman knew that they would never try hurting her. Therefore the woman felt very safe even at her right now lonely way through the deep and dark woods…
She was tall and pretty to the body shape.
Her narrow and cute face was framed by long, blonde hair, and under the clear oblique bangs glimpsed a pair of beautiful, twinkling green eyes.
She was wearing a white, sleeveless long dress and white silk gloves. On her head she wore a small tiara of gold, and on her feet she was wearing a pair of shiny black Mary Jane shoes.
The young woman had just been at a masquerade ball which was annually held in Eterna City where she had heard rumors about a haunted mansion located somewhere deep in the woods on the outskirts west of the city.
The mansion was known as the Old Chateau and she had also heard further rumors that ghosts might have been seen around the apparently abandoned house.
Her name was Astrid Sirenssen; a young and lonely woman who was devoting herself to composing music and writing novels.
Astrid came from a family there she had been the only child.
Her father had passed away when Astrid was a little girl and her mother had after that left her to an orphanage as the mother felt that she could not take care of Astrid anymore due to her depression as a consequence of her husband's, also Astrid's father's, demise.
Astrid therefore spent her first years in life at the orphanage and left it the same day as she celebrated her eighteenth birthday. This was no problem as Astrid from now on was counted as an adult.
As she had been raised at an orphanage, Astrid only had been having one companion in her life.
Her companion had been a female Gardevoir which at some point had acted like a mother to her during her entire childhood.
This Pokémon unfortunately had passed away due to an accident three days before Astrid's eighteenth birthday.
As this Gardevoir literally had raised Astrid during almost all her first years, teaching for example Astrid how to both speak and understand the Pokémon language (which had appeared to be useful as Astrid grew older), she mourned the death of her beloved Pokémon deeply…
As Astrid from now on could both speak and understand the Pokémon language fluently, Astrid also got many new friends among Pokémon as the years went by, to a degree that she mostly preferred associating herself with Pokémon instead of with humans, albeit including some exceptions...
The only few people she really had got to know during her entire life were Professor Oak, Cynthia, Gardenia and a man in her own age named Robin Morrisson, whence the latter of the four nowadays worked as a Gym Leader somewhere in the Unova region.
As Astrid nowadays lived in the Sinnoh region and thus no longer in the Kanto region, where she once had grown up and where also Professor Oak besides still worked, she rarely heard anything of her only two human friends from the Kanto region anymore.
Astrid's only human friends in the Sinnoh region, Gardenia and Cynthia, paid her a visit sometimes, though not very often due to their positions as Gym Leader and Sinnoh League Champion, respectively.
Seen through human eyes, Astrid appeared to live a quite lonely life, in other words…
Astrid had always been looked on as that kind of person who often was considered as strange not only for the fact that she mostly preferred associating herself with Pokémon instead of humans, but also in the way that she always had been showing interest for the supernatural and therefore loved exploring abandoned places such as castle ruins and old lighthouses, hoping for seeing some ghosts or even finding some kind of treasure.
Astrid loved collecting old things and objects that could even seem like pure garbage to others. It could be anything from old jewelry and beautiful seashells to small gold nuggets and mirror shards.
Soon the forest became increasingly sparse, and before she knew it Astrid found herself standing right in front of the rusty and wide open gates which led to the Old Chateau…
The old mansion was built of brick and towered high above the trees, which cast long shadows in the pale moonlight that lit up the open glade where the dilapidated building stood.
It was evident that no man had ever set a foot inside the mansion for years.
All the windows were smashed and several of the tiles of the roof had crashed to the ground around the house where they were around strewn here and there. The color of the exterior walls had long since begun to flake off and the outer gates had long since fallen off their rusty hinges.
Astrid glanced at the broken building, stepped up on the worm-eaten porch and walked with great determination into the house...
Inside, the mansion appeared to be in a somewhat better condition compared to the outside, despite the many mounds of soil on the floor and the slightly moldy wallpaper on the walls.
On the walls also hung some old paintings on which the paint had long since flaked away.
Besides soil, the floors, and also some of the furniture that was inside the house, were covered with a thick layer of dust mixed with cobwebs and bird feathers.
The first room of the mansion was a lobby housing two staircases to both the right and the left of the entrance, both of which led to the first floor. Below the foyer staircases was a door, accompanied by a hideous statue of a Rhydon in half natural size.
The strange thing about this statue was that it almost seemed alive; so alive to the point that Astrid could even sense the ominous aura that the statue eradiated.
At some point, it actually looked like this statue even glared at her with its huge, carved eyes...
Astrid decided to take a first look inside the room on the lower floor below the staircases.
She passed the carved statue next to the door that led into the room, and discovered that she had found what appeared to be the dining room.
The room was dominated by a massive long table, decorated with three empty candlesticks made of silver and surrounded by fourteen chairs of mahogany. Three large and dusty chandeliers hung from the ceiling above the long table.
Interestingly yet spooky, one of the chandeliers appeared to radiate some strange and visible aura, as if all the candles attached to the chandelier were still burning…
To the left of the dining room Astrid found a door with a loose handle that led into the kitchen.
The only thing she found in the way of food there was a jar of honey well hidden in a box inside the pantry.
Astrid returned to the foyer and took the stairs up to the first floor. Once up there Astrid saw three doors of which each led to different rooms in the building.
The first room appeared to be a library, housing bookshelves filled to the brim with old books.
Even if the books were just as dusty as almost all other objects inside the house, Astrid could still read most of the titles on their spines.
Some of the books had titles; such as: The Deoxys Chronicles, The Chronicles of Professor Kolorado, The Secrets of Africon, The Mystery of Aliens: 1954 and Raikou, Entei & Suicune - Legend of the Legendary Beasts, and on the floor in the second room laid another book with unknown title, which indicated that it was an old notebook.
Curious as she was, Astrid picked up the book from the floor and began to flip through it.
Even if almost every page appeared to be long since torn away from the notebook she found a pair of hand-written, barely readable lines written in black ink saying: "Som...hing so pecu...r shou... make off ...ith the mot...".
Curious and at the same time puzzled, Astrid for a good while asked herself what those words could possibly mean…
The third room led to another staircase which led up to a corridor, which in turn led to four bedrooms on the second floor.
In one of the bedrooms was an old television, whose screen occasionally flickered despite the fact that the television apparently was unplugged.
On the wall hung a mirror and a small painting depicting a mysterious dark figure with glowing red eyes, which in a similar way like the statue way down in the foyer almost seemed to follow Astrid with its eyes as she entered the room…
In addition to the television and the bed there even was a small empty desk standing in front of the mirror on the wall.
The only item that stood on the desk was a small and very beautiful box made of wood.
Astrid's curiosity grew and she decided to open the box to see what the box possibly could contain. She took off both of her silk gloves and lifted gently and expectantly on the lid, hoping for finding something that she might possibly keep…
The box appeared to contain a big pearl, a number of old, golden coins and a very beautiful necklace with a thin chain of pure silver and a large shimmering green amulet of unknown origin.
In-shape the amulet resembled the head of a Gardevoir and though it was completely emerald-green in color, it almost looked like it shone in all kinds of shades and colors.
Astrid was amazed by the incredible beauty of the jewelry as it reminded her of her former foster-mother and tears (most likely caused by the sad memory of her foster-mother's demise) emerged from her eyes as she immediately decided to try it on in front of the mirror.
What she did not know that moment was that this amulet in just a few minutes would come to change her life forever...
She had just put the necklace around her neck when she suddenly felt a huge and overwhelming feeling wash over her like a tidal wave.
Astrid threw a glance into the mirror in front of her and discovered that she suddenly had begun to transform!
Her skin began to change color and became whiter for each second while her long blonde hair also began to change until the hair finally had become whiter in color.
Narrow black stripes or markings began to appear on her bare upper arms and neck and also on the sides of the chest while black rings became more and more prominent around the eyes, whose irises also started to change and become more and more bluish in color.
The waist became narrower than before and six horn-like growths that pointed backwards in the direction of the head began to emerge with three horns on each side in front of her ears, of which the upper horn pair became slightly longer than the lower.
Now panic-stricken, Astrid put her hand to the face as she discovered how her narrow nose started to shrink until it was almost completely non-existent.
Upon feeling a small and sudden sting of pain, she then took a look at both of her hands and discovered how they started to become smaller and narrower as the index finger merged with the middle finger and the ring finger merged with the little finger on both hands.
Once the transformation was complete, Astrid looked into the mirror again and discovered to her horror that she had transformed into a pale, Gardevoir-like creature. As Astrid started examining her new appearance, she also noticed that her shadow no longer was visible at all in the small patch of moonlight that shone through the window into the room where she stood.
At that moment, tears once again started to emerge from her eyes as Astrid then realized that she not only wasn't a human being anymore; she had also been transformed into a ghost!
After been crying a bit, calming down after that and then taking another look into the mirror, Astrid realized that she though had started to like her new form after all…
However, as she smiled while studying her new appearance, she soon started realizing the fact that nobody would ever recognize her anymore and therefore she swiftly made the unavoidable decision of settling down at the mansion and spending the rest of her life there…
Upon those thoughts, Astrid then quickly headed through the woods back to her house in Eterna City.
Once upon her arrival at her former home, Astrid brought all of her possessions, packing everything inside a huge trunk on wheels. She then returned instantly back to the abandoned mansion deep in the woods to spend the rest of her now immortal and lonely life as the ghost at the Old Chateau...
THE END