The Phantom Couple
The sickly skeletal trees scraped the whistling air. Each step he took drew him in. Closer he stood to the rotting, scorched door. The billowing clouds blocked the sky with an awful dull bluish hue. He didn't know where it came from. The two-story house stood cold and desolate; a skeleton with hollowed windows and a door barely standing.
And yet smoke kept going out the chimney. Each and every night.
He stepped closer and closer. The fur on his back stood up, bristling against the wind. He walked closer. The wind slowly dying down the closer he got to the door.
Dying being the keyword.
He slowly reached the door. His lungs drew breath, hoping it wouldn't be his last. Slowly the knob turned. He pushed it inside. Walking in, he dare not close the door behind him.
The wind had other plans. It slammed shut with a sickening thud.
"YAAAAAHHH!" He screamed. "Oooohhhkay. Calm down, Po. It's just... It's just an old house. With... no one here. And... definitely no... ghosts... or other creepy... stuff." Po gulped down what hopefully wasn't his last.
The air was still. Nothing moved in the house. In front was a set of stairs to the right and a fireplace somehow on fire on the right. There wasn't any other furniture save for a small chair.
Waahhh! Waaahhh!
"What was that?!" Po gulped. The cry of a little babe echoed through the house. It came from upstairs. Po shivered with his arms clutching his entire body. "It's okay, Po. Viper and Tigress are just outside. You'll be fine. You'll be fine." He crept up the stairs. Each step creaked as loudly as the first. Fifteen steps in all. His heart thumped against his chest, knocking the ribs out of place. "ShHHH! Stop being so noisy!"
Clank!
"Wah! Argh! Why did I have to be the one to check out this place for ghosts? Why can't the others do this? Yeah, sure I'm the Dragon Warrior and master of Chi now, but I'm pretty sure this is out of my jurisdiction!"
WAAAHHH!
"AHH!" A door slowly opened. Po walked towards it. "Please don't be a ghost. Please don't be a ghost." He walked up further, coming to the last step. He stepped into the room.
Empty.
A single crib was all that stood, rocking back and forth in the wind from the open window. "Oookay. So that explains the baby sounds. Wait, no it doesn't."
Suddenly, the room turned cold. Po braced his shoulders. "BRRRRR! What just happened?" The curtains suddenly flew shut. "What the-" Po stood in complete darkness. He backed towards the door. The room grew colder with each step. "There's no such thing as ghosts. There's no such thing as ghosts. There's-"
"Can you find my baby!"
Po spun around and turned whiter than pearls. There before him stood two specters with ripped and tattered clothes in a bluish transparent color.
The woman shrieked up to his face. "Can you find my baby!?"
"YAAAAAAHHHH!"
Po shot for the door. It shut in front of him. He spun around, looking for any other way of escape. "I got to get out of here!"
"Can you find my baby!?" The woman cried out.
"Nope! And I'm not gonna become your baby!" Po kicked the door down and thundered down the stairs. "Come on, come on! Almost there! AH HA!" Po's freedom came. The door was still open. He rushed right to the door when-
Slam!
"NO NO!"
Po spun around. The two specters hovered in front of him. The panda's bones left him as he dropped to the floor, trying to claw his way out. "Can you find my baby?!"
"What baby! I don't know any baby?!"
"My little tiger!"
"Ti... tiger?" Po stopped. He looked back at the two ghosts.
They were tigers. One male and one female. It was the female that had been asking about the baby. The male had a brooding vengeful glare, but that glare seemed vaguely familiar. "Your... baby? Who... who are you?"
"We're... we're not trying to harm you," The lady ghost said.
"THEN WHY SCARE ME!" Po shouted. "Why have you been haunting this place? The villagers north of here say that you've been haunting here for ages!"
"This was our home," said the male tiger in a voice that shook the house. "Our lives ended here. And we swore we would do our best to find our child that we gave away."
Po tilted his head and crossed his arms. "Then why would I help you?"
"Because you can't get out of a simple door?" snarked the male tiger.
"Bao, don't be rude," said the female tiger.
Po snickered, "Wait, Bao? You're named after dumplings?"
"And what's your name!" Roared the male tiger, casting a skeletal frown.
"Ahh! I'm Po! I'm Po!"
"Hmm," Bao grumbled.
"Please excuse my husband. He has... anger problems."
"Sounds like a familiar tiger I know," Po murmured. "How did you two die?"
The wife tiger sighed, hovering over to the chair while her specter husband rested his hand on her shoulder. Po sat down near the fire in front of her. "We were in debt to the official. We needed money. So we tried to work with some of the local bandits to pay off our bills."
"Wait, wait. Why would you work with bandits?"
"We... we didn't know at the time," Said the female tiger. "We thought they were just people helping us. We were desperate. They were going to take away our house, our home. And then... the worst thing in our life happened... I got... pregnant." The tiger cried into her hands that seemed to phase through her head a bit.
Po frowned, trying to reach out and rest his hand on hers. He found it useless when it phased right through, but the female tiger gave a small tearful smile. Her voice shivered like her form in the dim light. Only the fire place illuminated her. "They... We tried to make ends meet. We tried working other jobs, but... the tax collector never stopped. He just wanted more and more."
"That's not right. Why would they... wait, this whole thing sounds familiar," Po murmured. "What was the name of the tax collector?"
"Some kind of squirrel named Bangfei," Bao said.
"I knew it!" Po shouted. "He and his gang ran a con business where they posed as official guards and stole people's money."
The female tiger's head shot up. Her blue spectral form suddenly changed to red. She shot up from the chair and fire engulfed her every fur. "So we died at the hands of that squirrel for nothing!"
"Yipe!"
"We were killed by his thugs for nothing! We gave up our little daughter for nothing!?"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Po quivered on his knees.
Suddenly, a hand rested on the wife's shoulder. Bao shook his head. The wife cried and changed back into her calming blue form, crying into her husband's fur. "She's gone. She's gone. There's no way we can find her. We don't even know which orphanage she-"
"Wait... orphanage?" Po perked up. "You left your daughter, who is a tiger, at an orphanage? Where?"
"We don't know. Somewhere to the east of here?"
"Bao-Goo?"
"That... that sounds familiar."
"Tigress!" Po exclaimed, scaring the ghosts. "Your child is Tigress! I know her! She's an awesome friend of mine."
"You... You know her?" Bao asked. Po excitedly nodded.
"This is awesome! She's at the village near here! I can get her inside and-"
"NO!" the two tigers shouted.
"But... But you two haven't seen her."
"And we don't want to see her. Not like this," Bao explained.
"What would she think?" The wife tiger said. "My little tiger. She probably thinks that we gave up on her. That we didn't want her. And what... what would she think about us as ghosts?"
Po thought for a fraction of a second. "Yeah, maybe that wouldn't be okay. I'm... I'm sorry."
"But she's alive?" Asked the wife tiger. "What is she like?"
"Keai," called Bao, "Are you sure you want to know about that?"
"No, no, she's not a bad person," Po chuckled. "She's just... intense."
"Hmm, sounds like Keai," Bao grinned.
"Please, please," Keai hovered back into her chair. "Tell us all about her. We've missed so much."
"Where do you want me to start?" Po asked.
"Start at the very beginning."
"Hehe, well... I guess it all started at the Bao-Goo orphanage," Po began.
Time dragged on. The night slowly took over and about half a mile to the north, people were beginning to worry. The small village on the hill that looked down into the depression where the haunted house stood shivered the villagers' shoes as the smoke rose from it. "Is the Dragon Warrior going to be okay?" Asked a small bunny to his comrades. Tigress and Viper looked at each other. Viper's face held more worry than Tigress's, but the tiger simply sighed and started on her way down towards the house.
"Tigress, wait. It might be a trap."
"Either way, we have to make sure that Po is okay," Tigress replied.
"It could be-"
"Viper, it's okay. Don't be afraid. There's no such thing as ghosts."
"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
A scream echoed from the house.
"That sounded like Po. Come on!"
Tigress and Viper rushed across the sickly trees and windy leaves. They got to the door of the house in top time. Tigress banged on the door. "Po! Po! Are you there?"
Po's head shot to the door. "Tigress, what is she doing here?"
"Maybe because you screamed loud enough to wake up the dead?" Bao grunted, annoyed.
"Oh no! She can't see us like this!" Keai exclaimed.
"Why not? You didn't do anything wrong."
"We did everything wrong! We left her at an orphanage that did nothing but hurt her! All because we-"
"You're animals. It's okay. We all are. We do what we think is best and we still mess up," Po said.
"I'm... I'm scared," Keai shivered, holding Bao tightly.
"Hehe, a ghost being scared of someone living. That's something you don't see every day."
"Po."
"Sorry, sorry," Po smiled. "It's going to be okay."
Tigress knocked louder. "Po! Are you there?"
"It's okay, Tigress. I'm here."
"Why did you scream?"
"Uhhhh... dramatic effect?"
Viper and Tigress looked at each other. Po only did that if he was trying to entertain or amaze people with his stories or feats of Kung Fu.
But that would mean that someone or something was inside. "Po?" Viper spoke up. "Who's there with you?"
"Ummm... why don't you uhhh... come in?"
The door slowly opened. Keai clutched Bao tightly, shivering. "It's alright. They're not going to hurt you."
"I'm not worried about that. It's just... Look at me!" Keai exclaimed.
"Well look at me."
"The panda has a point," Bao mentioned.
"Hey."
"Po, what's... going... on?" Tigress's eyes widened as Viper's jaw shut tightly. "G-G-Ghosts?"
"No, no, no. They're not bad ghosts. Please don't be afraid. They're nice. Well... except Bao, he has a temper."
"Po!"
"What it's true?"
Bao crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. Tigress tilted her head. Something familiar about the ghosts struck her as odd. It wasn't long before Keai flew up to the warrior's face. Tigress froze, gulping loudly.
"Oh wow. You're... you're so big. I mean, I thought you would be. I knew you would be but... look at you. You're so beautiful," The spirit smiled widely yet Tigress could feel cold shivers down her spine.
"Uhhh thank you?" Tigress slowly made for the door.
"Please, don't go! We don't mean you harm!"
"That's what all ghosts say," Tigress said.
"I thought you said ghosts don't exist?"
"Well, I was obviously wrong, Po!" Tigress growled.
"See I told you," Po said to Bao.
"She doesn't have my growl. That's just a tiger thing. If anything, her anger comes from Keai."
"ME!?" Keai exclaimed and flew right up to the panda and Bao. "Are you implying that her reaction to Po was my fault?"
"I didn't say that, dear."
"But you two implied it!"
"Hehehe," Po chuckled nervously.
Viper sighed, shaking her head with a smile. "Leave it to Po to befriend supernatural beings."
"But... why do they sound like they know me?" Tigress asked. Keai and Bao looked at each other and then at Po. The panda smiled as he slowly walked over to Tigress, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and stepped closer to the bluish ghosts.
"Tigress... this is Bao and Keai. They were victims of Bangfei's scam and died trying to make a better life for their daughter. But they couldn't. So they had to give their daughter up to the orphanage in hopes that once everything cleared over they could come back... but they never did."
"Bangfei's bandits killed them?" Tigress guessed. Po nodded. "Figures. Makes it more satisfying that he's finally dead. But whatever happened to their daughter?"
Po smiled. "She got adopted by the great Master Shifu and became the unofficial leader of the Furious Five."
Viper gasped.
Tigress's eyes widened. She walked closer to the specters. Their chilling presence suddenly felt warm and inviting. "Mother? Father?"
Keai couldn't control her tears. "Hello, Tigress. Oh, is it Master Tigress? I don't know how... Oh, I feel like an utter mess. We've waited so long to see you, never knowing if we would ever... I'm so sorry, little one." She tried to control the bluish tears that spilled onto the ground and fizzled into nothingness, but her smile was too wide and her heart too full.
Tigress stared at the two, caught between saying something and turning around and leaving.
But suddenly, she laughed. "Of course, Po found you. Of course, he found you." Tigress smiled wider and reached out to them.
She felt their hold. It felt solid. Their bluish forms disappeared. A bright shining light from above blinded Viper and Po, but Tigress wrapped her arms around Keai and Bao, hugging them tightly. "I've always wanted to meet you. I just-"
"We know." Bao teared up. "We're so proud of you, Tigress."
"And we love you so much. I'm sorry we weren't there for-"
"It's okay," Tigress said. Tears ran down her face. "It's finally okay." Bao wiped his daughter's tears away for the first time in years. "I wish I knew you."
"But Po has told us so much about you," Keai smiled as tears ran down her increasingly orangeish face. "And we're so proud of you."
Tigress smiled wider and chuckled as she hugged them again. Slowly, she felt the ground get lighter. She knew what was happening. "I'm going to miss you. I feel like I've barely gotten to know you."
"Search under the house. We left our journals there," Bao replied.
"We love you, Tigress. We always have. We always will," Keai said.
"I... I love you too." The bright light burned brighter as the ghostly tigers ascended into the light.
"Punch Shifu for giving you so much grief, okay?" Bao shouted from a growing distance.
"Brush your teeth, be kind, be sure to find a nice man that loves you for all of you. Oh am I forgetting anything?" Keai wondered.
"I'll be fine... Mother. I'll be fine," Tigress replied. Slowly, the two tigers disappeared into the light.
And then the light faded. The house turned back to a dark lonely tomb.
But now, the tomb was empty.
"Where did they go?" Viper asked.
"I don't know," Po said.
"Their spirits are at peace now. They've gone on into the spirit realm," Tigress said, wiping her face as she rose from the ground. Po placed a hand on her shoulder. His eyebrows furrowed up.
"Are you okay?" Po asked, frowning.
"Better than okay," Tigress sniffled. Po and Viper never heard her sniffle. "Better than okay."
"Come on, let's get those journals from the basement and get out of here." Tigress nodded and followed Po down into deeper darkness where two single scrolls stayed in a box in the corner. Po quickly grabbed the box and walked out of the basement and out of the house with his friends; it was the only thing in the basement. "Well, I guess the mystery of the ghostly couple is real. Hold on," Po snapped his neck to Tigress. "How did you know about their spirits? I thought you said there was no such thing as ghosts."
"Even if I don't believe something, it doesn't mean that I shouldn't know everything about it."
Po stared and narrowed his eyes, "But... that just means that you do believe it."
"Not really. I studied a lot when you were first chosen as Dragon Warrior."
"Why?"
"Because I really didn't believe that a panda like you could be Dragon Warrior."
"Hey!"
Viper laughed as the two bickered, though Tigress held her smirk over Po's pout. The snake turned and looked at the chimney.
No more smoke came out.
A brisk smile came to the snake's face as she kept up with the other two warriors.
The End
