The tension in the Prydwen's storage room was a rising crescendo as the seven squires huddled beneath their blankets, their eyes all fixed upon the last working torch. When they had first entered, avoiding detection by slipping in as the knights swapped shifts, all seven torches had been turned on.
But as each squire had told their own spooky story, they had turned them off, one by one until only Hayley's torch remained illuminated, a cold, lonely light in the sea of darkness.
The girl glanced around the circle with a small smile, one long fingered hand slipping from beneath her blanket to close around the torch and direct the beam into the faces of her fellow squires.
"You all know what this means, don't you?" She asked, her voice trembling with fear and excitement. "When the last story is told and the last torch goes out, an extra light might shine on where a ghost has joined the circle…"
A few of the squires exchanged nervous glances whilst others just watched her with rapt attention, waiting to hear the final story.
Hayley directed the torch beam beneath her chin, causing her warm skin to glow and the hollows of her eyes to darken. Her lips peeled back to display a mouth of pearly teeth that glinted in the light.
"Did you guys know that we're not the only squires in this room?"
Somewhere beyond the Prydwen's steel walls, thunder growled and the sense of unease grew.
"You all felt it when we came in, right?" Hayley whispered, her eyes darting from face to face. "You all felt how cold it is in here? So cold, I told you all to bring blankets?
"What if I told you that I chose this room as our meeting place because it's haunted… by the ghost of Squire Dennis?"
The torchlight flickered and the youngest of their group, a little girl called Lacie, whimpered.
"Dennis was a talented squire," Hayley began, "best in the class. He always wanted to be a paladin. Some say he might have even made sentinel, or elder someday… but that made some of the other squires jealous.
"They hated the way that Dennis was always getting sent out on patrols, or getting praised by Elder Maxson himself, so one day they thought they would play a little trick on poor Squire Dennis.
"They dared him to sneak inside this very storeroom and steal some Nuka-Cola Quantum for them."
The thunder snarled again and Hayley waited for the last echoes to fade before speaking, her voice low and quiet.
"It was on a night awfully like this one that Dennis made his fateful trip to the storeroom. A bad storm was raging outside and he thought that the thunder might cover the sounds of his crimes.
"He entered this storeroom while the other squires distracted the knight on duty. He left the door slightly ajar so he could get back out again, but once he was inside, one of the other squires SLAMMED the door shut behind him!"
She pounded her free fist against the floor, startling the others into gasps and nervous laughter.
"Well, Dennis had made it halfway through the room when the door closed and he panicked. He didn't like small, dark spaces you see. His parents said so at his funeral.
"As he ran back to the door, he tripped and fell into one of the shelves… as a matter of fact, M.J.," she added, turning her dark eyes upon the serious squire sat on her left. "It was those very shelves right behind you and Alistair there…"
M.J. frowned, though he couldn't quite resist glancing over his shoulder and exchanging a nervous look with Alistair, who was sat beside him.
"Are those tins of… Pork 'N' Beans, by any chance?" Hayley enquired sweetly, fighting to restrain a mischievous grin as the other squires tried to subtly inch themselves away from the shelves.
M.J. was the only one to pause and squint through the heavy gloom behind him. After a moments hesitation, he reached out and plucked a tin from the shelf above him, setting it down in the beam of torchlight.
Hayley gasped theatrically.
"It was tins exactly like these tins that fell on top of poor Squire Dennis! They hit him on the head and knocked him to the ground, just on the other side of those shelves! Then the shelves toppled over AND CRUSHED HIM!"
She grabbed the tin and slammed it hard against the floor, just as thunder echoed, even louder than before.
"Ever since that day," Hayley began quietly, "the knights on duty outside the door claim to hear a small voice, crying out for help, and small nails scratching the door from the inside, but whenever they look… there's nobody in here.
"Sometimes, the mess officers find all the Pork 'N' Beans lying across the floor, and small handprints of sauce leading towards the door, like some poor, unfortunate child had tried to crawl away…"
The room turned pitch black as Hayley extinguished her torch… save for a soft blue glow from somewhere beyond the shelves.
The squires gasped and Lacie squealed in fright, squeezing her eyes shut as she wrapped her blanket around her head.
"Shhh!" Moments later, a torch beam flickered to life as M.J. rose to his feet, scowling slightly. "That's just the glow of some Quantums. It's nothing to be scared about."
Hayley's torch beam flared to life beneath her chin, causing some of the others to gasp and recoil, though M.J. simply arched one of his eyebrows and fixed her in an unimpressed stare.
"Quantums like Squire Dennis was sent to fetch on that fateful day!"
"Cut it out, Hayley." M.J. sighed. "We all know you made that story up."
"Oh, you do, do you?" Hayley grinned, rising as she held her blanket about her shoulders like a cloak. "Then you won't have any problem heading over there and completing Squire Dennis' failed mission, will you M.J.? Maybe then his spirit can finally… rest in peace!"
"I don't think you should do it, M.J.!" Jack whispered from the other side of the circle. "What if you trip and end up like Dennis?!"
"Dennis isn't real!" M.J. sighed again, rolling his eyes.
"Mm-hm. Tell yourself that, M.J., but you'll never really know unless you complete his mission and bring us all back a Quantum!" Hayley smirked, meeting his azure gaze with her deep brown. "Unless you're a rad-chicken? Then I suppose you can just sneak off back to bed, maybe ask your dad whether or not Squire Dennis was real when you're nice and safe in your quarters…"
M.J.'s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed.
"I'm not a rad-chicken!"
"Then prove it!" Hayley pressed. "I bet if we were at Sanctuary, Duncan would have done it already!"
M.J. visibly bristled.
"Fine." He snapped, stalking away with only the lonely beam of his torch accompanying him.
He rounded the first set of shelves quickly, his footsteps thumping across the floor as he ignored the cries of protest rising from the other squires.
Stupid Hayley and her stupid ideas… he thought angrily, forcing himself to press onward, towards the distant glow of the Quantums. Why did I even agree to turn up for this stupid Halloween idea? No one even celebrates it anymore!
The whispers of his fellow squires seemed to grow distant as he headed towards the end of the row, before turning and making his way along another couple of aisles without incident. The torchlight glinted off tin cans and bottles stacked in orderly rows along the shelves and he suddenly noted just how dark the spaces between them were.
What if I see a face looking back at me? Or a hand like in Jack's story?
He swallowed, his stride faltering to a complete stop.
Suddenly, he didn't feel quite so brave anymore.
Part of him wanted to turn right around and head back the way he came…
…But what if I turn around and see Squire Dennis? Or Elder Lyons' ghost?
Light footsteps pattered down the next aisle and he froze, his eyes growing wide with fear. He licked his lips, the torchlight wavering slightly as his hands began to shake.
It's just Hayley playing one of her stupid games… It's not a ghost… Ghosts don't exist…
He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, counting to ten as his father had advised him to do when scared or angry.
I am a Maxson. My soul is forged in steel and steel isn't afraid of anything. Dad wouldn't be scared even if there was a stupid ghost.
Releasing a shuddering breath, he opened his eyes and forced himself to walk forwards, though he only managed small, tentative steps.
At the end of the aisle he could see the soft glow of the Quantum bottles, their pale blue light illuminating the path to victory.
Just a little further, then I can go back and prove I'm not a rad-chicken!
Eager to get the 'mission' over and done with, M.J. squared his shoulders and quickened his pace, fixedly staring at the Quantum crate so he wouldn't see anything lurking behind the shelves around him.
As soon as they were within reach, M.J. grasped the edge of one of the crates with his free hand and pulled it out, filling the aisle with a pale blue radiance.
"…How do I even move seven bottles?" He muttered to himself, frowning down at his torch before turning it off, deciding that the bottles would do a good enough job illuminating the way back.
He managed to gather five bottles in his arms and grasped a sixth in one of his hands. They were cold, the chill seeping through his pyjamas. As he kicked the crate back onto the shelf, the remaining bottles clinked noisily and he couldn't help but notice how much emptier the crate was.
I hope we don't get in trouble for this…
Sighing, he turned and began retracing his steps, the glow of the Quantum revealing more of his surroundings than his little torch had.
He had almost made it to the end of the aisle when a strange noise disturbed the quiet.
He froze, the hairs rising along the nape of his neck as the sound drew closer.
A metallic rolling sound…
A small, cylindrical shape rolled into sight at the end of the aisle, and M.J.'s eyes widened as the can of Pork 'N' Beans rolled along, continuing until it was out of sight.
"Th-that's not funny, guys!" He called, coming to an abrupt halt. "Cut it out!"
No one replied.
Somewhere out of sight, the lone can bumped against something and fell silent.
The store room was eerily quiet and still around him.
"Guys! This isn't funny!" He called again, his voice quavering slightly. "Hayley? Alistair?"
Have they bailed on me?
M.J. nervously licked his lips. His mouth suddenly felt as dry as the wasteland and sweat was cooling on his already chilled skin.
His breathing loud in his ears, M.J. slowly advanced towards the end of the aisle, the bottles chiming softly in his arms as he began to tremble.
There's nothing there. He tried to convince himself, sounding uncertain even in his own head. There's no such thing as a ghost squire, no such thing as a ghostly hand and even if there was a ghostly Elder, he'd be nice because dad always said that –
A billowing shadow dashed in front of him.
The bottles shattered at his feet as M.J. released a blood-curdling scream, tripping over his own two feet as he scrambled backwards, one hand flying out towards the shelves and upsetting a pallet of tatos.
Moments later the storeroom door crashed open and the room was flooded with light.
M.J., his pyjamas soaked in Quantum and splattered with crushed tatos, stared at where Hayley was watching him with a sheepish grin from around the corner of the shelves, her blanket pulled over her head like a cloak.
"What are you all doing in here?!" A male voice demanded somewhere across the room and Lacie began to wail.
"Sorry…" Hayley whispered, carefully stepping over the glowing puddles to help M.J. to his feet.
"We will be…" M.J. groaned, watching as the furious knight marched around the corner and took in the mess they had made.
A/N: Hey everyone and welcome to 'Spooky Steel!' This was supposed to have been released yesterday, but apparently I don't know how to write anything less than 5,000 words anymore and it got out of control! (As in it now has chapters and I am somehow still have chapters to write!)
This was written for a little Halloween-a-thon I was having with sunsolace, so I hope you all enjoy it! It's a lot lighter than my usual horror writing to the point I'd class it almost a "fluffy horror", though it does get darker as it goes along!
Also for those of you waiting on Bleeding Steel the next chapter is almost done and will be up soon! 8D
Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a review/PM!