The harvest pyres were still burning brightly as the small cart with its load of tired, happy hobbits set off up the road to Brandybuck Hall. The celebrations would go on long into the late morning hours, but those families with young ones were already beginning to head home to hot tea and warm beds.
The road outside the broad circle of illumination from the bonfires was dark, the few twinkling stars providing little light, and the pony picked his way gingerly along the track with only the swinging lantern to guide him. The air was cool, a bare hint of frost ghosting warm breath, and the younglings in the cart bed snuggled deeper into their thick wrappings as they sang harvest songs and chattered breathlessly amongst themselves about whom they had seen and what they had done. It would be many hours before the gossip finally wore thin and they succumbed, one by one, to sleep in their warm beds.
Merry and Pippin were huddled tightly together near the backboard of the cart, their hands clenched tightly together beneath the quilts. They and several other hobbit boys had gathered closer around Berilac Brandybuck, Merry's older cousin, and were listening to him quietly recount a bit of gossip he had heard the adults talking about earlier in the evening.
"...and they say that his mother, Mirabella, told him not to try the stairs, as sick as he was, but the notion of a late tidbit came upon him after everyone had retired for the night and so he tried to go down-cellar anyway. And they found him in the morning, poor thing, in a heap on the cellar floor!"
Berilac took a breath and a quick glance around to gauge how his mates were taking the story. Seeing the pale circle of childish faces frozen in expressions of horror at this last, he grinned and plowed on to the end. "They say that he still wanders about the cellars, at late-night, when the moon is setting and his mother's bed is occupied, as it was the night he died. Ever heard him wailing for the morsel he never got?" Someone, one of the older hobbit boys who was closer to Berilac's age, made a soft keening noise in the flickering dark of the lantern-light and everyone jumped, the girls at the opposite end of the cart letting out little shrieks of shock. Nervous giggles erupted from the boys' end, and the voice of Pippin's eldest sister, Pearl, could be heard clearly, scolding the older boys for frightening the younger ones with silly tales.
After that, the remainder of the ride was made in relative quiet, only soft snatches of song and the occasional snort from the pony breaking the serenity of velvety black sky and shuddering lamplight.
Brandy Hall was snug and cozy, lamps blazing in every window and crackling fires in every hearth to welcome the revelers home. The hallways were quickly filled with bustling activity as guests and family alike attempted to find their assigned bedrooms while children, still filled with the excitement of the night, scampered underfoot. Nightgowns and nightshirts were donned, children were hushed, and goodnights were said as weary hobbits climbed beneath thick coverlets and drifted off to sleep.
But it would take more than physical weariness to get two little hobbit boys to give in to dreams after hearing such a story. Merry and Pippin were sitting on their bed, the blankets pulled up like tents over their heads to muffle the sounds of their voices, and discussing the story Berilac had told earlier. Merry scoffed at the whole thing with the air of a seasoned greybeard-he had lived at Brandy Hall all of his life, and had never once seen the ghost!-but Pippin pointed out rather uneasily that he, Merry, had never had much reason to go into the cellar of a late-night, either.
The discussion wore on and on, neither willing to give in to rest, which would mean dousing the lamp and leaving the room in the half-shadow of the banked fire. The sky outside grew darker and darker in preparation for moonset, and still the two argued in heated whispers with the intensity of little boys who are afraid and don't want to admit it. Finally, cranky and unreasonable from lack of sleep and the stress of fear, Pippin lost his temper.
"Fine, then! If you're sure there isn't a ghost in there, why don't you go see for yourself?"
Merry, caught on the verge of a biting retort, jerked around to face his cousin, the lip of his quilt falling over his face as he did so. He brushed it back impatiently and stared at Pippin as though he had gone crazy. "What? It's the middle of the night, Pip! What if Mum and Dad hear us wandering about?"
But Pippin was in no mood to listen. "Who said anything about 'us' going anywhere? And since when did you care about your Mum catching us out of bed late? You weren't worrying about getting caught last night when you wanted a snack-"
"Yeah, but that was before..." Merry halted abruptly, the look of half-conscious triumph of Pip's face enough to prevent the remark going any further.
"Before what, Merry?" Pippin asked sweetly, his eyes big and innocent.
This was too much! Merry growled in exasperation and slid off the mattress, leaving the coverlet on the bed as he made his way to the door. "Fine then yourself! But you have to come with me-I can't prove that there's no ghost if you're not there to see."
Pippin began to argue, (having confessed to a healthy fear of wandering spirits from the beginning, he didn't see much reason for acting brave when he wasn't), but had to admit the logic of the statement in the end. How exactly would Merry prove that there was no ghost, if he weren't there? And besides, the room would be lonely and shadowy without Merry there to protect him-what if the ghost left its cellar and snuck under the bed while Merry was gone? Pip gave a longsuffering sigh and hopped off the bed, grabbing the lamp on the way to the door to stand beside Merry.
Merry shook his head as something occurred to him. "Can't take the lamp-we have to go past Mum and Dad's bedroom to get to the cellars."
"But it'll be dark!"
"Well, then, we'll just have to hold hands! It's your idea, remember?"
Pippin nodded, biting his lip worriedly, and followed his larger cousin out the door, shutting it tightly behind them so that the dim light from the fire didn't wake anyone else.
The cellars were really just ordinary tunnels like the rest of the corridors and rooms that made up Brandy Hall, but placed farthest back and slightly lower so that they stayed cool and dark all year long. A short flight of stairs, not too steep since hobbits hate heights, led down to the series of passageways where the salted bacon and hams as well as the beer and wine were kept. Merry and Pippin tiptoed past Merry's parent's room and felt their way down the hall to the cellar door, careful not to let the hinges squeal as they cracked it open and slipped past.
~*~*~*~*~
"Merry, it's too dark!" Pippin hissed in frustration fifteen minutes later, as he bumped into the older hobbit boy from behind for the third time. "I can't see where I'm going! Where are we?"
"In the cellars," Merry grunted, as he ran his hands along the passageway wall to guide himself. "But I don't see a ghost, Pip. Can we go back now?"
"I didn't want to come down here in the first place!" Pippin retorted sharply. The two performed an awkward about-face and began sliding their hands along the opposite wall, making their way back to the cellar door.
"You suggested we come down here!" Merry's voice was eerie, floating back through blackness so intense that purple spots seemed to dance before Pippin's eyes.
"No, I suggested YOU come down here! I wanted to stay," Pippin corrected irritably. They walked a bit further, stumbling over rough spots in the floor and blindly tripping into one another, until, finally, something began to dawn upon them both. Pippin halted abruptly, his voice high and doubtful as he strained to make out the shape of his elder cousin ahead of him in the gloom. "Merry? Merry, shouldn't we have reached the door by now?" From the black came the sound of Merry's feet shuffling, then stopping. Silence reigned in the tunnel for a long moment. "Merry?"
"I don't remember," Merry whispered, the sound just unexpected enough to make Pippin jump and scream in shock. "Pippin? Pip, are you alright?" He stepped back towards where the cry had come from, hands outstretched to feel for the younger boy. One step, two steps...and his hand brushed something in the pitch-black, something soft and cold.
Every muscle in his body locked, an odd numbness settling in the pit of his stomach as the panic rose over him in a wave. Then the cold thing was snatched back and something screamed near-mindlessly close by, the panicky piercingness of it so terrible that Merry couldn't hold back a shriek of his own. The numbness rose to his head, overwhelming the instinct that cried out to save Pippin, and Merry found himself turning in hysterical circles, trying to decide which way to run.
Pippin had frozen after screaming the first time, recognizing that it had only been Merry ahead of him answering his question. One hand pressed to his thundering heart, he had reached out with the other to grope for the wall again, trying to steady himself against it. His fingers, cold from being in the chilly cellars for too long, brushed the smooth paneling, began to move along it, and brushed something else. Something cold and suspiciously handlike. For one awful second he couldn't breathe, the painful pounding of his over stressed heart the only thing audible, and then the air rushed back into his lungs and he screamed, surprising himself with the insane quality of the sound. Terrified at this seeming proof of the ghost's presence, he turned and ran, not stopping to care that he had no idea in which direction the door lay.
Merry was beginning to hyperventilate, his terror overwhelming him, when something rushed past him with a whisper of loose cloth. That did it. What little sanity had been left to him was gone, and he whirled in another circle, uncaring as to which direction he ran in so long as he simply moved. His feet seemed to run of themselves, carrying him wherever they would, and he obeyed blindly, his hands reaching out automatically to catch himself when he tripped in his haste.
Pippin could hear the clumsy, running footsteps behind him and sped up, legs pumping so fast they seemed disconnected from the rest of him. His nightshirt flapped about his churning knees, reminding him of the cold hand that had touched his. He wondered vaguely if he would feel that hand reaching out for him before it grabbed his ankles and pulled him down, but decided that he didn't care. His weary legs sent him around one bend in the passage, then another, only stopping when he tripped suddenly over a step that he hadn't expected. His hands groped in the dark, finding another step beyond the one he had tripped over, and he forced himself back onto his feet, his legs propelling him up the short stairway and through the cellar door heedlessly.
Merry was frantic, the sounds of pursuit all around him but echoing so badly that he couldn't tell what direction they were coming from. He ran desperately, keeping his hands tucked safely against his chest, not caring if he fell so long as he was spared the ordeal of feeling that cold skin on his once more. He tripped over his own flying feet several times, small, almost soundless yelps of fear breaking from him each time, but managed to stay upright and turned the first bend several seconds behind Pippin without realizing it. The protrusion of the bottommost step was a shock and he fell painfully, but he ignored the scrapes on his knees and kept going, feeling his way up the remaining few steps, through the door...and right into the arms of something large and warm.
"Meriadoc Brandybuck!" The familiar voice of his father bellowed above him. "What do you think you are doing in the cellars at this time of night!?"
~*~*~~*~*~
The fire was crackling and warm, radiating welcomed heat over the hobbit boys as they snuggled together beneath the coverlets in their bed. Merry's mother, Esmeralda, had tucked them in a few moments before, the lecture from Merry's father still ringing in their ears; Berilac would get one of his own later in the morning, they knew from the looks the two grownups had exchanged when told of the ghost story in the cart.
The 'ghost' and the cold hand in the cellars had been explained easily, much to the boys' chagrin. When Merry had come to that part in the tale, Esmeralda had reached out and taken Pippin's hand, placing it in Merry's. "Did it feel something like that, dear?"
Merry and Pippin had exchanged embarrassed glances, cheeks flushing with more than returning warmth. "Umm...yeah, something like that," Merry had murmured, flushing yet deeper. Pippin sheepishly nodded his agreement. Somehow, the feel of the chilled flesh didn't seem so terror-inspiring in the sunny, flickering glow of the fireplace, with two capable grownups standing close by. Both boys had expected to receive another lecture, this one delivered from a mother's point of view, but Esmeralda had only shaken her head in a mixture of maternal care and mild annoyance and directed them to finish their mugs of spiced cider so they could go to bed. It was nearly daybreak, and they hadn't gotten any sleep at all, as yet.
Now, tucked securely beneath the thick quilt in their room and listening to his cousin's breath growing slower and steadier, Merry wriggled around to whisper into Pippin's ear, " 'm sorry, Pip."
Pip smiled slightly in the dark, his eyelids already heavy to closing with sleep. "Me, too, Merry. Wha' d'you suppose we should do to get back at Ber' ?"
Merry chuckled, the sound a mere whisper of breath against Pippin's neck. "Le's worry about that t'morrow, when we can plan better." Both curled a bit closer, wrapping arms about one another, and let themselves drift off to sleep.
DAS ENDE