Shul - (working title) Chapter One

This is the first chapter of my sci-fi fantasy novel.

Chapter One

“There is a ghost haunting my inn,” the innkeeper, whose name was Forg, said. I looked at him, and then back at Gordon, who looked as confused as I was, although that was his typical expression.

“A ghost?” I replied. I had encountered many things before, those including: demons, graunts, giants, litiks, sprites, elgis, and yippers, but never ghosts. I had never encountered anything that had died and then returned to life at a later time. However, I refrained from telling the innkeeper this for fear of Gordon and me losing our contract.

“Yes! A ghost…” Forg was obviously nervous, as he was continuously ringing his hands. “I thought you said you could handle anything?”

“Absolutely! However, it’s been a little while since we have last handled a ghost. It might take some time for us to refresh our minds.”

“Time?! I have no time! It steals my food and drink, puts out the fire at random times of the day, frightens any horses in the stable, and drives my tenants away! Gilb stopped coming in last week, and he’s normally so drunk he can’t even see his own feet! Ever since this haunting, I haven’t been able to keep him drunk, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen the man sober! Hell, even my wife is staying at her mother’s for ‘as long as it takes to get rid of the damn thing,’ according to her. I must say, it’s not that bad having some time to myself, but…”

“The ghost?” I was stunned at how long this man could go on for. I wasn’t sure he would have shut up had I not interrupted.

“Right…the ghost.” Forg pointed upstairs. “She stays up there, mostly. I can hear the steps creaking at times when I know for a fact that there’s nobody up there.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, how can you tell it’s a woman?”

“Because she told me so!” Forg was rather irritated.

“She told you so?” This was the oddest job that I have ever had.

“Yes, well, she’s up there screaming all the time, complaining about the poor conditions of my inn! I tell you, the whole thing is a mess!”

At this point I took a good look around Forg’s inn. There was a fireplace with no fire, although he said that was because of the she-ghost (would you call a male ghost a ‘he-ghost?’). There were dirty pots and pans scattered about the kitchen, and the tables looked as though they hadn’t been dusted in quite a while. There was sawdust on the floor, which I assumed (not so much assumed as knew) that this was to soak up the blood in the case of any fights that might break out. Khrist isn’t the type of town you trek alone, lest you are well-armed and well-built. I turned to whisper in Gordon’s ear, “By the looks of it, this place hasn’t been cleaned in quite the while…”

“I heard that! How dare you insult my inn! Do you know how hard it is to get good help in a town near overrun with outlaws and a ghost residing in the upstairs of your inn?! My wife normally cleans the place, but as you clearly know…”

“She’s at her mother’s, yes,” I interrupted once more. “I apologize for my rudeness. I understand that it must be hard to clean.” Forg gave me a mean look at this point. For a short fat man with no single hair on his head, he pulled it off fairly well. “Now, there is one thing we must discuss before we start…” I waited…

“Yes?”

“The cost,” Gordon said. If there’s two things Gordon is good at, it’s fighting and ‘negotiating’ the prices of our jobs with our customers. He’s as intimidating as I am intelligent (I don’t mean to brag, but…well, maybe I do mean it).

Forg looked up at Gordon with huge eyes. It took him a few seconds to push the words, “Of course,” through his breath.

“Fifty draenii.” The two words, so simple, came out of Gordon’s mouth with such force as a fifty ton boulder rolling down a steep mountainside.

Forg took a few steps back, then managed to return his nerve to its standard status,
“WHAT?! How can I afford fifty draenii when I haven’t had my normal flow of business through here in months?!” Gordon closed the distance between them and stared with forceful eyes.

I stepped between them, speaking to the innkeeper, “Now, please listen, good sir.”

“Don’t flatter me!”

“I’m merely attempting to give you the respect you deserve.” Forg only grumbled, looking discontent. I motioned for Gordon to step back and gave the innkeeper some room myself. “Now, although our prices may be a bit high, you must consider the costs of our travel here, food, drink, lodging, and the fact that ghosts are among the greatest of demons. Therefore, this is the hardest job we have had in a while.”

Forg thought for a bit, staring at a few flies that were buzzing over a pile of rotten meat. We were standing between the kitchen and the dining area. “I’ll let you stay here for three days with free lodging if you lower the cost to thirty draenii.”

“Give us free food and drink as well, and we’ll lower the price to forty.”

“Thirty-five.”

“NO!” Gordon yelled, slamming his fist against a wall. A few pans that had previously been hanging from a rack on the ceiling crashed to the ground.

“Forty is good,” Forg said. His voice seemed to have shrank from that of an elephant to that of an ant.

After discussion of the price, payment methods, and which room we would stay in after we got rid of the ghost (the best one in the inn, of course), Gordon and I ventured upstairs to see the problem firsthand.

The stairs themselves looked as if they hadn’t been climbed in months and creaked with every footstep. Gordon took the lead, and I followed behind. On the third stair, Gordon’s foot fell through causing a mess of wood splinters and dust, revealing termites below. “I strongly doubt if this man has had any business whatsoever in years,” I said to Gordon. He merely grunted in reply, and continued the climb upward.

When we reached the second (and top) floor of the inn, I looked back down the stairs. Forg was standing at the bottom; apparently he had been watching us. I turned to see Gordon already searching through the rooms, and I followed, shutting the door behind me.

None of the beds in any of the rooms were made, and the mattresses seemed to be made of hay (after closer inspection, I found this to be a fact). There was blood on the floor (once again, Khrist is a very tough town. Gordon and I would never have gone there had it none been for the promise of a rich reward and more jobs to come). All told, it was one of the dirtiest inns that I had ever seen, if not the dirtiest. I wasn’t even surprised when I found a skeleton in one of the closets.

“Have you found anything yet?” I asked Gordon. He shook his head in reply. We hadn’t even heard anything that could be considered suspicious. Having searched each room thoroughly for any sign of the she-who-has-risen-from-the-dead and found nothing, I decided to go downstairs and tell Forg that he is, indeed, insane.
However, I found the door leading to the stairs locked. “Hmmm…Gordon, the door is locked,” I said. I looked behind me, but saw Gordon nowhere. Thinking perhaps something was amiss, I began to search each room for my burly friend.

Entering the second room of my search, I felt a tingling on my skin. Looking around the room, I saw Gordon lying on the bed, looking scared. There beside him was what looked like a person who had faded out of reality and into mere thought. It was a figure of a women who seemed to have starved to the point where she looked like a skeleton. Her skin was pale and her dark hair flowed behind her, although there was no wind. She was wearing only a faded green cloak. She turned to look at me, revealing a sword and a half-torn face. I nearly vomited at the sight.

Immediately, I left Gordon, and went to check the door again. It was still locked. I went back to the room where I left my partner, walked through the apparition and saw Forg walking back on the street toward the inn with two thugs. Whether they were hired or were partners of Forg’s, I did not know. “What is it?” Gordon asked me in a frighten voice.

“It’s an apparition,” I replied. “It’s magic, Gordon, it’s not real.” I looked around for another exit, but found none. The jump to the ground from the top floor of the inn would, at the least, break our legs and perhaps a few other bones as well. “We were set up. Take a look around, how could I have been fooled? No one has stayed at this inn in years. It’s a scam. He probably does this to every other adventurer or knight or whoever stops by.” Gordon could only stare at the ghostly figure of the women. “Look, it’s not real.” I walked up to the she-ghost and waved my hand through it. “See?” Gordon stood up, grasping his sword and stepping nowhere near the apparition.

“We need to get out of here before Forg gets back with those thugs.” I said.
Gordon looked outside the window, and then said, “Thugs?”

“Yes. He hired help. Now, we need to leave before they get back. I believe the only way out is through the door. I can crack it open, but it may be a few moments. I need you to stand behind me while I work the door.” We both walked out of the room and to the door leading to the stairs. I stood before the door and put my hand on the lock, learning it’s every curve and motion. I held the doorknob with my other hand, and formed the image of a key in my hand. I let my mind focus on the lock, only the lock, and turned the doorknob. Nothing happened. “It’s enchanted. I don’t have time to remove the magic. We need to fight.”

“Good…” Gordon grumbled. He always seemed to enjoy a fight, but would never fight without cause. He was an honorable man who would stop at nothing to defend justice and truth. A true knight at heart.

I concealed Gordon behind me, so that it would look like there was nothing in the hallway behind me to anyone who came up. I stood a few feet from the door.
After a couple of minutes, we heard pots banging around downstairs, and heard voices. Apparently, Forg wasn’t too happy that we might suspect more people were in the inn. Soon, we heard steps climbing the stairs. The lock turned, the doorknob turned, the door cracked open, and Forg’s head popped through. “Everything alright up here?” he asked.

“Yes,” I smiled. “Quite alright, except that you forgot to mention that you would be looking the door.”

“Yes, ha, well, the door locks on its own sometimes. I think it’s that damn ghost! She’s always causing trouble around here.”

“Right…”

“Where’s your partner?”

“He’s searching through the attic.”

“Ah, right.” Forg looked at me, confused after saying this. “So, you’ve found nothing yet?”

“Nothing at all.” Forg left down the stairs letting me know, in his own way, that I should report any findings to him immediately. The fact that he didn’t mention that there is no attic led me to the belief that this wasn’t his inn at all. It was probably some abandoned building that he used to rob people. In a town such as Khrist, an uninhabited building could go years without finding an occupant or being demolished.

On his way down, Forg tried to shut the door, and even believed he did. However, it popped open a few seconds later thanks to me. Gordon came from behind me, and we both silently made our way down the stairs. I listened for Forg or the thugs, but heard nothing. We searched the entire inn, finding nothing. Walking back to the dining area, I peaked out one of the dusty windows and saw one of the thugs standing outside, smoking.

I called Gordon over and told him that we should try to surprise them while surrounding them at the same time. I would exit through the back door in the kitchen, and he would jump through the front door (not bothering to open it, of course), effectively scaring the crap out of the thugs who waited outside.

I started to walk toward the kitchen while Gordon waited a few feet back from the front door. The plan went well (which was surprising) until I passed the front door, which suddenly opened, knocking me back into a chair. Although the chair broke on my back, it felt as though it were the other way around.

One of the thugs charged toward me from outside the inn, but Gordon stepped in his path. One sweep of Gordon’s sword dropped the thug’s head to the floor, spilling more blood onto the already red sawdust covered floor. I stood up an immediately nocked an arrow, ready for another enemy. Gordon stood with his sword in front of him, ready to fight. However, no one entered.

We waited a few moments, and then carefully made our way outside. Looking around, I saw neither Forg nor the other thug. Gordon stepped out after me, still holding his sword as though he were defying the vile essence of the town. We searched the outside of the inn, and saw no threat to us. Putting our weapons away, we walked far away from Forg’s inn.