Spooked

by Spruceton Spook

Part 5

Ash, Misty, and Brock were tired. Dead tired. It was blatantly evident in the way they slumped down the stairs, their heads hanging and their feet dragging pathetically. The only thing that was somewhat stimulating was the presence of a fresh, new, beautiful day ahead of them.

But the thought of training was merely pushed aside in Ash's head. He pondered his shattered photo upstairs and Misty's terror-stricken account of the ghostly tapping behind his wall. Both mystical events had returned, but why then? How come the picture hadn't fallen during all those other hours that had passed? Why wasn't the tapping consistent? Benumbed, he shook his head clear of it, not wanting to plague himself with the constant torture of trying to figure something enigmatic out. Ash hated that.

Misty was frighteningly pale, as white as a sheet. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot, and they drooped sickly. She was a mess, and was feeling every bit of the sleep she had lost. Normally, she would have remained in bed, but her phobia of the room kept her from doing so. She just wanted to be out of there and in the presence of everyone, where she felt at least moderately comfortable.

Brock was not happy. He had been perfectly satisfied in his peaceful sleep, dreaming on and off of pretty girls and getting their phone numbers. He would have liked to have continued dreaming, but out of all things to interrupt, Misty grappling onto him wide-eyed in fear over some ridiculous tapping was unacceptable. He silently cursed his bad luck as they hauled themselves to the kitchen.

As soon as Delia caught sight of the exhausted kids, her jaw dropped to the ground in shock.

"Wow, you kids certainly look freshened up," she announced sarcastically.

"We didn't sleep good," Ash told her weakly, plopping down soundly into one of the kitchen table chairs.

"Not at all," added Brock, rubbing his tired eyes.

Brock and Misty crashed into chairs, as well. Misty set Togepi in front of her, then proceeded to dump her tired head into her folded arms.

Delia sauntered over to them quietly, slightly amused and slightly concerned at their sluggishness, and stopped in back of Ash. Taking on good, sad look at the wiped-out kids, she bent down and kissed Ash's head, then rubbed it briskly. Her weary son looked up and found her smiling lovingly at him.

"What's the matter, sleepy-head?" she gibbered, delicately brushing the loose hair from his eyes. The motherly touch made Ash's stomach flutter pleasantly, but he was too troubled by the current events to indulge in it.

Closing his eyes, he moaned softly. "Oh, Mom…it happened again."

"What happened?" Delia asked worriedly.

Misty looked up at her. "The tapping, Mrs. Ketchum. It came back."

"Tapping?" For a moment, Delia looked utterly puzzled, but that look was soon replaced as recollection set in, and her shoulders slumped. She sighed in annoyance, and brought her hands to rest on her hips.

"Oh, are you starting this again?" she inquired, sounding more than a little exasperated.

Ash rolled his eyes, getting quite fed up that she refused to believe any of their unusual accounts. "Mom, I swear to God it happened again!"

"Don't swear to God, Ash."

"But how else am I gonna get you to believe me?" Ash demanded almost in a whine, flipping around in his chair.

Delia narrowed her eyes and was about to reply, but Misty interrupted quickly with a grim testimony of her own.

"It's true, Mrs. Ketchum. It woke up me at, like, four in the morning. There was this weird tapping behind the wall," she calmly but pointedly explained. "And then that picture fell off the wall again—"

Delia regarded Brock, who was silently listening to the whole thing with his head resting on his hand. Due to his age, and fact that she observed him as being a very honest and mature young man, she always relied on him to confirm what the other two were saying, to decipher the truth from the mumbo-jumbo. She was giving him that knowing look now, a small, amused grin gracing her lips.

"Is this true?" she asked Brock flat-out.

Brock shut his eyes and shrugged. "Well, when I woke up, the picture was broken on the floor, and Misty was pretty scared," he said.

"But what about the tapping?" Delia asked.

"Hello?! Are we even here?" Ash asked in frustration. He waved his hand in front of his mom's eyes, but she whacked it away without even throwing him a glance.

"I didn't hear any tapping," Brock sighed. He paused, evoking the chilling memory of the typewriter incident, then continued. "But if Ash and Misty said they heard it, then…I believe them."

Ash and Misty smiled with surprised happiness as Brock said this, thankful that he was supportive and on their side. Delia drew away from his statement, and all actually seemed settled for a brief moment…that was until Ash had to once again voice his opinion on the situation.

"Mom, I think our house's haunted," he declared, gripping onto his chair tightly as he said it. The words coming out of his mouth were even reluctantly frightening to him.

Without a doubt, what Ash had said did not strike Delia the right way. She looked at him so outrageously that it made Ash swiftly rethink his announcement.

"Ash," she grumbled. "I don't want to hear that!"

"But what if it is?!" Ash protested, getting up out of his chair in a sort of face-off against his mother.

"Because there are no such things as ghosts," Delia insisted firmly. "You shouldn't be scared of such nonsense!"

Ash's face fell. He turned to Misty and Brock, who were sitting silently. Neither one of them felt like adding something after what Delia had just said. She had certainly voiced what she thought, and the humorless look she was following up with conveyed that clearly.

Saddened by the way the event was unfolding, Ash's shoulders sagged as his attention returned to his mother. "Then what did we hear, Ma?" he asked her softly. "If you're so certain that it wasn't…" He hesitated for a moment just to build up enough courage to utter the word in front of her. "…a ghost, then…what was it?"

Delia surveyed her son's expression. He definitely didn't seem to be making up what he and the others were telling her, but she was not ready to accept such baloney. They were undoubtedly anxious, but she was determined to prove to them that there was nothing to worry about. Her arms folded in front of her, she sighed calmly, trying to summon composure.

"It was simply an excuse for you to get out of cleaning your room," she tapped Ash lightly on the nose, which he flinched indignantly from. "The product of your wild imaginations after being caught in the dark during a storm, and…" She smiled at Misty. "A bad dream. That's all it was. And you all have this going straight to your heads."

Ash gaped at her. He recoiled, the urge to contradict her eating so strongly at his forced resistance. It immediately rekindled his resentment as she once again claimed he had started the whole thing. Ash hardly ever lied to her. Sure, he had gotten away with a couple fibs here and there, and any time he had ever attempted a major lie he had always cracked after a while under the pressure of guilt. He was never so serious and so dead-set about something as he was now.

"Mom—" he started, blinking slowly once.

"Uh-uh, no more!" Delia told him stiffly, her voice rising. "This house is not haunted. Ash, look at me!" She pointed to herself. "I've woken up in this house and I've gone to bed in this house for eleven years. I've been in numerous blackouts in the house. I lived in this house alone ever since you left, and not once have I heard anything that sounded remotely out of the ordinary. So, if this house was haunted, like I told you, I would know. Okay? I would know."

Misty and Brock nodded, but Ash didn't. He simply stood there, stroking Pikachu's head to calm himself down. There was some sense to what she was saying. He never felt unsafe in his home, and the few times he had felt scared of ghosts or the occasional monster under his bed were when he was quite little.

"You're right, Mrs. Ketchum," Brock suddenly said, wrenching Ash from his own tiny world of temporary brooding. "You're absolutely right. I don't know what we were thinking."

Ash and Misty were undoubtedly shocked at what he had just said, sending them into a state of confusion. Brock looked at each of them shortly, catching their baffled glances. He nodded his head lightly at Delia, and returned his attention to her.

"You won't hear any more from us." Brock's eyes flipped to Ash. "Will she, Ash?"

Ash looked at him with a puzzled expression, but when he saw Brock glare at him momentarily, he begrudgingly nodded. Delia nodded, also, giving her son and friends a harmless grin, and turned away to pour her coffee, which had been ready for a while. With her back turned, Ash and Misty shot Brock sneers across the table, which the older teen simply waved away.

"Just wait," he mouthed to them, smiling slyly.

"What the hell was that?!" Misty demanded of Brock, stomping noisily up the boy and getting right to his face. The three were making their way out into the open fields of Pallet Town. The sun was high in the sky, and the smoldering, early afternoon humidity encompassed the spunky kids. Ash was a good of couple feet ahead of them, his hat already turned backwards in preparation for a full day of training.

"That," Brock replied calmly, "was the plug to a very ugly situation that could have happened."

Misty gave him a face. "Ugly?"

Brock nodded. "Couldn't you tell how annoyed Mrs. Ketchum looked?" he asked her. "She didn't like what we were telling her one bit."

"That's because my mom doesn't believe in ghosts," Ash said suddenly. He turned his head slightly and looked over his shoulder at his two friends walking behind him. Brock and Misty didn't expect him to join in the conversation because his head seemed to be elsewhere, most likely already in the field where they were planning to battle.

Misty smiled incredulously. "How can anyone not believe in ghosts? They're so real."

Ash shrugged, looking straight ahead again. "Well, she doesn't think so."

Misty found this conversation difficult to continue with them so separated, so she sprinted to catch up to Ash. Brock followed suit.

"Do you think so, Ash?" she asked, her voice coming to a sweet squeak.

"Think what?"

Misty rolled her eyes. "That ghosts are real."

"Ghost Pokémon are real."

"That's not what I mean," she grinned, giving him a friendly shove. Togepi giggled in her arms.

Ash was silent for a moment, his eyes looking up at the white, puffy clouds above. They floated so peacefully, casting pleasant, non-threatening shadows on the green mountains. He felt peaceful, as well, and closed his eyes to bask in the warm sunshine that beat down on his face.

Ash moved his glance to Misty, and smiled at her. "Course I do. Heh, I'm kinda scared of them, too."

Misty flashed her bright smile again. "Oh, Mr. Pokémon Master is scared of ghosties?" she teased. "I would've never known!"

Ash chuckled and blushed embarrassingly. "Well, not that scared," he replied in modest defense.

"But you are scared of them!" she said.

Ash shrugged. "Yeah. What's so wrong with that?"

"Nothing, it's funny!" she replied, breaking into sudden laughter.

Her laughter eating slightly at his pride, Ash found himself becoming annoyed and embarrassed. Gritting his teeth, he shot her a snarl. "Wait a second! Excuse me, but weren't you the one who was suffocating Brock this morning?" he inquired of her, folding his arms in front of him when she suddenly stopped laughing. "You seemed pretty scared to me."

"Who knows if that was a ghost?" she questioned in reply. "It could have been anything."

Ash gave her an absurd face. "So you're telling me that if you had seen a ghost, you wouldn't have been scared?"

"No," she said. "I was scared 'cause I thought…I mean—I, uh, see…"

"What are talking about?" Ash demanded, the marbles in her mouth rendering him impatient.

Misty grumbled. "Nothing! I, uh…Brock, help me out!"

Ash and Misty glared at each other as they awaited Brock's reply. But Brock didn't say a word. The two, befuddled, quickly looked behind them.

Brock was standing about a hundred yards away from them, leaning casually on a tree. He had an easily distinguishable smirk on his face.

"You guys finally realize I wasn't there?" he laughed. "I thought you wanted to battle here today, Ash."

Ash and Misty looked around, and sure enough, they were standing in the middle of field they had been heading to. Absorbed in their argument, they had been unintentionally walking right through it.

Ash chuckled awkwardly and scratched the back of his head. "Hehe, oh yeah. Thanks, Brock."

Brock nodded. "Anytime. What do you say we stop bickering and start training?"

Ash and Misty shot each other one last glare, though it couldn't have been more harmless, and headed over to Brock. Brock shook his head humorously, thinking of the amazingly strange things his two younger friends fought over.

They spent the rest of the picturesque day battling and preparing for the highly-anticipated, swiftly-approaching Pokémon League.

The kids returned later that evening, their clothes plastered with dirt and their hair sticky with sweat. Ash wiped his glistening brow as he entered the house and yawned. The house held a comforting aroma of dinner in the oven.

"Hi, sweetie," his mom welcomed him softly, glancing up from the newspaper. She was curled up on the sofa. "How was your day?"

Ash responded by collapsing exhaustingly in the entranceway.

Delia nodded. "Yeah, I certainly hear you."

Misty smiled and gave Ash a gentle kick. "Come on, Ash, let's get cleaned up."

Ash just groaned. "Too tired," he moaned. "Just leave me here." Every bone and muscle in his body ached. He felt that he hadn't trained so much in his life. Even when they weren't battling, he was a barrel of unstoppable energy, barely giving himself one minute of rest. Brock and Misty had warned him earlier to slow it down, but he insisted that he needed the workout after spending too many lazy hours at home in the recent weeks. Ash realized now, in hindsight, that he should have taken their advice.

Delia lifted her head up to look at her fallen son. "Ash, you're filthy! Misty's right, dear. Go get cleaned up. Dinner's going to be ready soon."

Ash kept his head down. He honestly could have fallen asleep right then and there. "Carry me, Mama," he mumbled softly.

Delia rolled her eyes. "Oh, give me a break ,Ash!" she laughed.

Brock chuckled and bent down to grab Ash. Ash just draped lifelessly as Brock lifted him slightly off the ground.

"Ash!" Brock grumbled, huffing from his weight. "C'mon!"

When Ash proved unresponsive, Brock simply dropped him back down. Pikachu nudged his trainer lightly. The other three shook their heads, grinning at the wearied boy on the ground. It was going to be one of those nights.

Two hours later, Ash's room was pitch black. He and his other two friends were snuggled deeply under their blankets, the eyes clasped shut in hopes of falling asleep. Misty held Togepi close to her, who was awake only because he could feel Misty's uneasy heartbeat.

Brock lay on his back, his hands rested casually behind his head. He was far from relaxed, however. Smirking slightly, he turned to Ash, who was facing him. Ash's one hand was jammed under his head, the other lying limply across the floor.

"Is anyone asleep yet?" he asked apathetically, slurring his words.

Ash blinked his eyes once slowly, as if shrugging. "I can't," he replied.

"Well, no one's sleeping up here, either," Misty announced from the dark. Despite how tired she felt, her voice was sharp and alert.

Ash groaned, and propped himself up on his elbows. "This is ridiculous," he grumbled.

Misty sat up and switched the light on beside the bunk. They had been lying in the dark for an hour or so—a good hour of quiet and patience.

Brock reached up and ran his hands through his thick, brown hair. "Are we gonna be like this all night?"

Misty just replied by huffing in exasperation and throwing herself down flat on the bed again. "I hope not! I want to sleep so bad!"

Ash arched an eyebrow at her. "Is your heart beating really fast like mine?"

Misty flipped around and draped over the bed, glancing down at her friend disappointedly. "Yeah, it is."

"Every time I close my eyes I hear the typewriter in my head," admitted Brock, who was resting his face in his hand, stretching it a bit. He let out a small chuckle. "Man, it's so sick."

"I think we're all sick," Ash deduced. "I mean, this is crazy! We've slept in such creepy forests and stuff, and we were never scared of those!"

Brock and Misty were silent, not quite sure what to say. True, they had been in more frightening surroundings than Ash's secure bedroom, that was for sure. But as much as they hated to acknowledge it, they couldn't help their minds wandering off in contemplation of the circumstances.

"You're right, Ash," Misty told him, sounding ashamed. "This is crazy. We should be asleep. And that's exactly what I'm gonna do…sleep."

"Har har. Real easy, Misty," Ash retorted. "I've been trying to do that for an hour."

"Me too," Brock put in. "And I'm not getting anywhere, either."

"Well, neither am I," Misty responded, bringing the covers close to her chin. She was starting to become agitated with the whole situation, and there was only one solution. "But if I close my eyes and lie down, sooner or later I'll fall asleep."

With that, she covered herself up and shut the light off, leaving Brock and Ash in the darkness. Ash shuddered at it slightly, but took a deep breath and lay down. He wished he had his old night light from when he was little. But his mom had put it away somewhere, and looking for it now was definitely not something he was enthused to do. When he noted the silence overtaking the room, he closed his eyes and settled in. He tried to concentrate on something soothing, something pleasant to ease his nerves.

How long he remained that way, he wasn't sure. Every time Ash felt like he was falling asleep, he would snap awake again, grumbling at his misfortune. This was no good. He figured he'd been doing this for a good half-hour or so, at least. Pikachu was apparently asleep, since he could hear soft snoring from the warm body beside his stomach.

Biting his lip, he turned over on his other side and attempted to fall asleep once again. It didn't matter which way he slept; he had tried them all.

What's wrong with me? he questioned himself pathetically. Why can't I sleep? This is so stupid. Why is this happening to me again?

Unfortunately, it was the truth—it was happening to him again. As a young child, Ash was always easily frightened. He never liked the strange noises the house made or the scary arms the tree branches made on his ceiling. Thunderstorms were a guaranteed sleepless night. And undoubtedly, any time he had felt the least bit uneasy, he always ran to his parents' room and straight into Delia's arms. Each and every time she assured him that there was nothing to be worried about. She'd told him not to be scared, and to go back to bed with the renewed confidence of how safe he really was.

"Your mommy and daddy are right here, Ash," she would tell him gently, rocking the shivering boy on her lap. "You don't have to be afraid. Nothing's going to bother you."

So Ash would return to his room, perhaps not as scared as he was when he left but not entirely confident. Sometimes, he felt as though they just couldn't see what he saw, couldn't hear what he heard. After a while, he acknowledged that there was no use going to his mother. His father was no more of a help. Eventually, he had learned to deal with his fear in his own way, and though a prolonged struggle, he had become quite acceptable at it. For some reason now, though, his old fear was resurfacing. Where it had come from, he didn't know. And he wasn't sure how to deal with it, either. He couldn't certainly run to his mom's room—he was too old for that. Deep down, part of him wanted to, but he dismissed the thought roughly.

Act your age, Ash, he scolded himself, wincing. There's nothing here, and you know that! His mother was right. Nothing ever did bother him, after all. He was here to attest to that. So why would anything bother him now?

Suddenly, just as Ash had concluded verifying to himself that his house was just as safe as it had been when he was young, his eyes shot open.

What was that?! Ash clamored in his mind, terrified. At that moment, he could have sworn that he had heard something downstairs. It was just the slightest creaking of the floorboards, but he knew exactly which floorboard it was. Only when you walked over the threshold of the door between the kitchen and living room did the house make that particular noise. It was as easily distinguishable to Ash as was the sound of wind.

He would have tried to convince himself it was only his imagination before the sound occurred again. His heart seemed to stop. Oh God! No, please not again! he pleaded, recoiling his face even more. He quickly threw a glance at his door. It was shut, and no light protruded from underneath it.

It's not Mom. Mom always turns the hallway light on!

At the realization that it couldn't possibly have been Delia, Ash tensed greatly. The house didn't make that sound on its own. Someone had to physically step on that spot. And he had heard someone step on it not once, but twice.

Ash waited for a while and listened to see if he could hear it again. His breathing was rather intense, but he remained gathered enough to keep his senses in line.

I know I didn't make that up! he assured himself. I heard it, I know I did!

And then he heard it again. Ash bit his tongue at the sound of it, making him cringe in sudden pain and fear. Panic swept through him.

"Misty? Brock?" he choked out in a fearful whisper. "You guys awake?" There was no reply. They had fallen asleep an hour ago.

Realizing that his friends were out cold, Ash began to lose his nerve even more. He was alone in this, paralyzed with fear in his sleeping bag. And worse yet, he didn't know where to begin to think. His mind was a bunch of twisted, confused swirls, doing nothing more than throwing him into the most intense state of apprehension he'd felt in a long time.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .