Author's Note: Wow, I can't believe it's been a year and a half since I updated Tales of the Lin Kuei. Well, here's a Halloween story for you all to make up for my absence. I hope you enjoy it. It was inspired by "Ghost Story" by Mark Twain.
It was late one evening in the Lin Kuei, far beyond the children's bedtime, and there was a terrific thunderstorm raging outside. Rather than sleeping like he was supposed to be, Kuai Liang instead balanced precariously on his tiptoes on a crate beneath the tiny window in his quarters, watching through the open shutters the sheets of rain pummel the mountainside as lightning made the forest glow eerie blue in brief flashes. He swallowed a large ball of fear that was lodged in his throat. Bi-han had been missing for a couple of days now, lost on some mission to God only knew where, and the longer he was gone, the more the dread gnawed at his little brother's heart. Each clap of thunder reiterated his fears like a slap in the face.
"Are you still up?" Tomas yawned from the floor behind Kuai Liang, blinking as he sat up and looked at his best friend.
"I'm watching to see if Bi-han comes back," the youngest Cryomancer replied.
"Ugh, just go to sleep!" he grumbled. "Bi-han's a big boy. He can take care of himself. And if not, well, then let's hope his death is quick and painless."
"Shut up, you Czechoslovakian Q-tip," the other snapped, not appreciating the morbid joke. Suddenly, a gust of cool wind blasted water droplets in his face, and he stumbled off his crate, falling hard onto the floor.
"Good one, Grace," Tomas sarcastically muttered as he pulled his rucksack blanket higher around his neck.
Kuai Liang frowned at him but then crawled into his own bedroll, still worried. "It's getting really bad out there," he said immediately after a deafening crack of thunder echoed directly overhead. "The lightning is striking really close."
"It's just a thunderstorm," the other mumbled tiredly. "You're not afraid, are you?"
"No!" the boy indignantly replied. "I'm not afraid of anything."
"Sure, you're not," Tomas said.
And then, the doorknob in their door suddenly rattled and twisted hard, squeaking loudly from rust. Kuai Liang yelped and jumped nearly out of his skin, prompting Tomas to laugh at him. Then both of the boys looked up, curious as to who was entering their quarters at this time of night. To their surprise, Bi-han entered, his blue uniform and hair completely soaked. He looked fairly tired, but was otherwise okay, and before he knew what he was doing, Kuai Liang had leapt to his feet and wrapped his arms around his soggy older brother.
"Ugh, get off me, Loser," the Elite grumbled as he pushed the younger Cryomancer away.
"Where have you been?" Kuai Liang demanded to know. He was too relieved to be offended by his brother's name-calling. "Sifu Halsey said they'd lost contact with you and the others. They were about to send out a search party."
Bi-han peeled off his drenched tunic and undershirt, and threw them in a messy pile in the corner, before he answered. "Yeah, it wasn't safe to check in," he said. "They were onto us."
"Who was onto you?" he eagerly asked, watching as his brother slicked back his wet hair and now kicked off his boots and pants. "What was your mission?"
"None of your business," he replied, pushing his brother out of the way so he could pull on his pajama pants. "And go to bed. It's past your bedtime."
Kuai Liang sighed. "Yes, Bi-han," he softly replied. He sat down in his bedroll, disappointed.
Now Bi-han sighed and rolled his eyes. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, now lighting the lamp in the corner and sitting on his own bedroll. "I can't tell you everything, but something did happen that I can tell you two girls about. Something weird." He paused. "Well, maybe not. It was pretty scary. I don't think you could handle it."
"Yes, we could," Tomas replied indignantly. Then he looked from Kuai Liang to Bi-han. "Okay, maybe I could."
"Shut up, Tomas!" Kuai Liang snapped at him before he angrily snapped his blanket at his head. "I'm not afraid."
"Are you sure?" Bi-han demanded to know. "Because I don't want you to end up sleeping in Sifu Halsey's bed like a little baby. That would be embarrassing for all of us."
"I can take it, Bi-han," the younger Cryomancer earnestly said.
"Okay, well, don't say I didn't warn you," he shrugged. He crossed his legs and leaned in. "So, while we were on our mission, we found shelter in an old, abandoned apartment building," he began. "We found out that nobody had lived in them for years, and they were in sad shape, so no one was likely to bother us while we were on our mission either. There were enough apartments for each of us to have our own, so I took one on the top story of the building. It was full of cobwebs. And dust! Man, you guys wouldn't have believed how much dust there was. It's making me want to sneeze just thinking about it."
"Then why'd you pick it?" Tomas asked skeptically.
"Because they were all like that," Bi-han replied, glowering at him. "They were pretty spooky, though," he admitted. "I don't know. Maybe it was my imagination running away with me or something, but I just had this…feeling."
"What kind of feeling?" Kuai Liang nervously asked.
The Elite frowned. "I don't know, like there was something there."
"Oh, very cute, Bi-han," Tomas said, rolling his eyes. "You're so full of it."
"You know what?" the eldest of the three defensively replied. "Fine. I'm not telling you. Good night."
"No, I believe you, Bi-han!" Kuai Liang cried. "Don't listen to him. He pees in the yard."
"Just that one time," the Czech boy muttered.
"Fine, I'll continue," Bi-han reluctantly agreed. "But only for you, little brother."
"Thank you," he said. He crossed his legs Indian style, rested his elbows on his knees, and cupped his chin in his hands, the very picture of genuine interest.
"I just got a creepy feeling," he confessed, continuing his story. "I've never felt like that before in my life. And it didn't help that when I was walking down the hallway, an invisible cobweb brushed across my face and scared the crap out of me."
"It seems like you were awful jumpy," the younger brother sympathetically replied.
"It was just the way that place was," Bi-han shrugged. "Old. Creaky. Drafty." He looked at Kuai Liang. "The first day was pretty rough. We got into a fight, and I was kind of sore."
"Got in a fight with who?" he asked worriedly.
"None of your business," he repeated. "So I was pretty relieved to get back to my room to rest for the night. We couldn't have fires even though there were stoves because it would've tipped someone off to our presence. But we were allowed to have small oil lamps like that one" – he pointed to the lamp warming their room – "in our rooms.
"I couldn't fall asleep right away, though, so for a couple of hours, I just thought about stuff. You know, like this pretty girl I happened to see on the street below me when I was staking out our target. I thought about Mom. I wondered what she was doing right that moment."
"You think about Mom a lot, huh?" he deduced. The younger Cryomancer didn't really remember her except in an abstract sense, like a Picasso painting at a slant. All he knew, he learned from Bi-han.
His brother solemnly nodded. "Always," he said. "As I was thinking about all that stuff, a storm came up. It was pretty bad, just like this one." He glanced out the window at the still-raging thunderstorm. "It didn't take long for everyone on the street to clear out and go home. It got pretty quiet. I wanted to watch the lightning, so I put out the lamp and stretched out in my bedroll. It didn't take long to fall asleep after that," he chuffed.
"I'm waiting for the weird part," Tomas impatiently said. He was lying on his side and drumming the floor with his fingers.
"I don't know how long I was asleep," Bi-han continued, shooting the Czech boy an evil glare. "But suddenly, I felt scared in my sleep, and I woke up like a shot. I don't know why. Everything was so quiet that I could actually hear my heart beating. But nothing was out of the ordinary, not that I could see. And yet, I was certain something was about to happen. And then, something did happen."
"What?" Kuai Liang asked, his blue eyes wide in fear as he pulled his blanket up to his nose.
"Something grabbed my blanket!" Bi-han told him, making him jump. "It just started pulling my blanket towards my feet. At first, it happened so slow that I wasn't even sure it was actually moving. But it eventually uncovered me to my waist, so I yanked it back up to my chin."
"Nuh-uh," Tomas said.
"I swear it really happened!" Bi-han yelled at him. "I'm not making this up!"
"So what did you do?" Kuai Liang wanted to know.
"I waited," he answered. "And it happened again, only this time it was faster. Like, whatever was pulling it was yanking it even harder. So I yanked it back. And then it yanked harder. And I yanked it harder. And before I knew it, I was in this like, tug-of-war with this thing I couldn't even see!" He shook his head. "I put up a good fight, gentlemen, but my hands got tired and I let go. And so my blanket got dragged into the shadows."
"And then what happened?" Kuai Liang asked. He heard his own heartbeat thundering in his ears, drowning out the sound of the storm outside.
"I kind of groaned," he said. "Like, I said something like, 'oh, man.' And a deep voice said it right back to me!" He looked from Kuai Liang to Tomas. "You can make fun of me if you want, but by that point, I was pretty scared. And I had started sweating bad too. I thought about summoning my powers, but to be honest, I have no idea how well they'd work on a ghost."
"You think it was a ghost?" Tomas raised his eyebrow.
"Well, what could it be?" Bi-han retorted. When the Czech boy shrugged, he continued. "After it groaned back at me, I started to hear footsteps. Heavy footsteps. In my room. They were so loud that I thought an elephant was stomping around in there."
"Could it have been one of the others playing a trick on you?" Kuai Liang suggested.
"I thought about that," he admitted. "But the bolt and the lock were still in place. Nobody had messed with it."
"Yeah, but we're Lin Kuei. It would've been cake to open the door, even still."
"I know, but I didn't hear anything," he argued. "And I would have." Both boys regarded him skeptically, so he said, "Look, do you want to hear the rest of the story or not? Because I'm beat and I could just as easily go to bed right now."
"No, please finish," his little brother said.
"Okay," he replied. "Now, I kept hearing this stomping. I felt it too. I felt the floorboards vibrate and bend beneath me. But it seemed to be walking away, and then it sounded like it passed through the door without opening it. And then it was all quiet again. So I said to myself that it was just a stupid dream. I was just having a nightmare or something, probably a product of my imagination in a place as creepy as that building. So I lit the lamp and looked around. I was relieved to find that, like I'd suspected earlier, no one had tampered with the lock or the slide bolt."
"So maybe it was a dream?" Tomas suggested.
"Except then, I turned around," Bi-han countered. "Right by the fireplace, in the dust next to my own footprints, were footprints so large they made mine look like a baby's. That means that someone was in my room that night, and it wasn't one of my group. I've never seen anyone with a shoe size that big. Its owner had to be huge! A giant!
"Well, by that point, I was thoroughly freaked out. I left the lamp on and sat on my bedroll, but I refused to go to sleep. That's when the sounds started. At first, there was a shuffling noise overhead, like someone was dragging a heavy body across the ceiling. Then, it sounded like someone actually threw the body to the floor, and what made it worse was that the windows rattled in response! After that, I heard doors slamming throughout the apartment building. I can't believe the others didn't wake up. It was an awful racket. Dad would have whupped us if we made noise like that."
Bi-han shook his head in disbelief and then continued. "There were footsteps up and down the hallway and stairs. Sometimes, they came right up to my door, but then they stopped and hesitated to come in. Then they'd go away, and they kept this up all night long. I heard the sounds of people whispering, but their voices were broken, so I couldn't quite hear what they were saying. I even heard chains clanking, if you can believe that. I thought that was just some hokey old nonsense out of a Charles Dickens novel."
"That really is weird," Kuai Liang said. "You must've been so scared, Bi-han."
"Well, I was," he admitted. "But that wasn't even the worst of it. After they bugged me with the noises for a while, I started to see things."
"Like what?" he gasped.
"There were these little…spheres of light that appeared above my head," he said. "They were like fireflies, but not. I don't know. But they dropped – two on my face and one on my pillow. I didn't know what to expect when they touched me. I was kind of surprised that they were warm and wet. Pretty sure it was blood."
"Maybe it was ectoplasm," Tomas offered.
Bi-han shrugged again. "Maybe," he said. "After that, though, I saw these pale faces. They barely looked human to me, like humans that had been rotting for a long time, but not long enough to be full skeletons. You could see through their bodies, and they were floating in the air. They hovered there for a couple of minutes, just whispering and staring at me, but they finally disappeared. I wasn't sure they were completely gone, though, even though the noise had stopped, so I watched every which way, looking at every corner for some sign of them. And then, a clammy hand reached out and grabbed me!" He looked at Kuai Liang, who was now shivering and completely terrified. "I passed out right then and there."
"You fainted?" his little brother said in awe. Bi-han never fainted. Even when he was deathly ill, he never fainted. His father would beat him for being weak.
"Yeah, don't tell Dad," he said, reading the boy's mind. "When I came to, I heard that loud stomping again, this time coming towards me. As he approached, I noticed that the light from my lamp was getting dimmer and dimmer, but this spectral blue light had appeared and was getting brighter and brighter. The door didn't open, but I felt a wind blow in as if it had, and then, I became acutely aware of a presence standing before me. The blue light glowed around this thing, and as it got brighter, I noticed the being's details come into place. An arm appeared, and then legs, and then its body, and finally its face. I could tell it was naked, though, which was pretty weird. Oh, and it was petrified. In fact, it looked just like the Cardiff Giant I had read about in a book one time!"
"The Cardiff Giant?" Kuai Liang and Tomas murmured as one. Neither had any clue what he meant.
"Yes," Bi-han nodded solemnly. "The petrified remains of a giant, from a time when giants roamed around Earth freely."
"That never happened," Tomas objected. "Giants aren't real."
"Oh, so then you've never seen a basketball player?" he countered. "Because that's how tall he was."
"Well, that makes more sense," the other grumbled.
"Obviously, I wasn't afraid anymore," the eldest said. "How can you be afraid of anything that's naked?" When the boys didn't answer, he continued. "He wasn't really scary looking either. He was actually kind of friendly looking.
"So I said to him, 'It's only you? You had me thinking you were a ghost I should really be afraid of.' He started to sit on the old chair in the room, but it couldn't hold up his weight. He crashed to the floor and made an awful ruckus. I said, 'Stop! You'll wake up the others!' but he didn't listen and tried to sit on a different chair, to the same end. So now I was upset, and said, 'What are you, stupid or something? First you come in here and scare the crap out of me with all your cheap parlor tricks, and then you have to wreck all the furniture? And why? You're hurting yourself as much as you're hurting me. Just look at you! You've cracked your tailbone, and chipped so many pieces off your hands and feet that this place looks like a marble quarry. How am I supposed to explain this to my team? God, my brother has better manners than you!"
"You didn't really say that," Kuai Liang muttered doubtfully.
"You're right, I didn't tell him you have better manners," Bi-han agreed. "That would have been an outright lie, and we all know it." He chuckled at his own wit and then tousled his brother's hair before he said, "I shouldn't have yelled at him because I made him cry. He said, 'I'm sorry, I'll try not to break any more furniture. But what do you expect? I haven't sat down for a century!' And then he began to cry. I told him I was sorry, and to make amends I wrapped him in my blanket, then I invited him to sit on the floor with me face to face. We talked for a while about a lot of things, but then I noticed he looked kind of tired. So I asked him about it.
"He said, 'Of course I'm tired! I'm the ghost of the Cardiff Giant that lives in the museum across the street, and I can't rest until they bury my body once more. But a scoundrel is making a lot of money off of me, so he's not terribly inclined to do that one kindness for me. So what better way to make him than to scare him into it? So, I haunted the museum night after night. It didn't work so well, though. Nobody's in the museum at night. So it occurred to me to come over here and haunt this place. I thought that perhaps if I met a person like you who'd listen to me, you could help me solve my problem. So my friends and I have been here, nearly every night, rattling our chains and making noise, trying to get someone's attention. We did our job too well, I think. We scared everyone away a long time ago. And now, I'm pretty tired. But I saw you and the others come in, so I managed to scrape up enough energy to pull off one more haunting. Please, don't let this be for nothing! Tell me you can help me!'
"I felt bad for the guy, I really did, but he was pretty stupid," Bi-han said. "I guess that's what happens when your brain becomes petrified. I jumped up and said to him, 'You poor idiot! You've gone to all this trouble for nothing. You've been haunting a plaster cast of yourself all this time. The real Cardiff Giant is in New York. Don't you know your own remains?'
"As soon as I said it, he looked completely humiliated. He stood up and looked me in the eyes, and said, 'Is this a joke?' I said, 'I wish it was. But I'm telling the truth.'" Bi-han paused. "The Giant frowned and looked at the floor. Finally, he said, 'I feel stupid. The Petrified Man has sold everything else, and now the fraud has ended by selling his own ghost. My son, if there is any charity in your heart, please don't let this get out. How would you have felt if you'd made such an ass out of yourself?'
"And then he left. I heard his heavy footsteps fade away, step by step down the stairs and into the deserted street, sadly walking towards New York. I felt sorry for him. But I felt even sorrier because he took my only blanket."
When Bi-han was finished telling his story, both Tomas and Kuai Liang gazed at him with dull, unimpressed expressions. "Bi-han?" the latter boy asked after he cleared his throat.
"Yes?"
"Tomas is right. You're full of it." He snapped his blanket at his brother, but the older Cryomancer promptly caught it and yanked it away.
"Look at me, I'm the Cardiff Giant!" he joked as he draped himself in the rucksack, and then got up and stomped around the room.
"I agree," the Czech boy muttered. "You are one big fake."
"I had you both scared," he smirked. "Especially Kuai Liang."
"The only thing that scares me, Bi-han, is the possibility that I'm actually related to you," the boy retorted.
The older Cryomancer laughed and then pounced on him, and the two began to wrestle, rolling across the wooden floor and Tomas, who yelped and tried to get out of the way. Finally, though, Bi-han got Kuai Liang in a headlock, and forced the boy to tap out. Panting, he then helped him back into bed, and returned his blanket.
"Now, go to bed, Brat," he said as he climbed back to his own. "I'm home now, so you don't have to be scared anymore."
"I'm not scared of anything!" Kuai Liang indignantly replied.
"Sure, you're not," he said, prompting Tomas to chuckle from his bedroll. "Good night."
The younger Cryomancer smiled as he snuggled down deep in his bedcovers. Bi-han was wrong; he wasn't scared of anything, as long his brother was there. He was home now, though, so in that, he was right. There was nothing to worry about any longer. Outside, the storm was passing by, and the thunderclaps and lightning strikes were fewer and far between. It wasn't long before Kuai Liang was snoring, sleeping peacefully.
Author's Note: I had to look up the Cardiff Giant for Mark Twain's story to make sense.
So, back in Mark Twain's time, this atheist decided to play a joke on a devout Methodist he'd gotten into an argument with (they'd argued about the Bible's mention of giants once walking the earth). Long story short, he spent $2,500 - or roughly $46,000 in today's standards - to commission a secret sculpture of a giant. Then, he had it buried on his land. When the giant was buried, he then paid people to come out and dig a well for him, and shocker, they uncovered the sculpture. They called it the Petrified Man or the Cardiff Giant, and the atheist then charged people money to come out and see it.
Well, P.T. Barnum got wind of it and offered to buy it from the atheist for $50,000 in today's currency. The man declined, so Barnum had someone sneak in and make a mold of the Cardiff Giant, and from that mold he made his own. Funnily enough, the atheist took him to court and tried to sue him for making a fake giant. Apparently, the atheist had no sense of irony. The judge thought that was laughable and dismissed his case since it came out that his giant was a fake too.
But wouldn't you just love to have that much money lying around just to play a stupid prank on someone?