October had arrived and with it, the seasonal carnival - already full of dazzling lights and the sounds of funfair organs as workers hurried to set up all the rides and attractions. The haunted house had always been my favourite, the way they could turn a few prefabricated sections and a dilapidated wooden facade into an eerie (if a little gaudy) mansion. Add some actors in costume and a few smoke machines, and the illusion was complete. Maybe it was tacky, but I loved it.
This year my funfair experience was going to be a little different. For the first time, I’d managed to get hired as one of the actors: a ghost to wander the halls, chain rattling behind me, terrifying everyone who let their guard down. The only catch was that I had to provide my own costume, though I knew a little place to get a costume that could outshine everyone else’s…
The Rosewood Emporium was a magic shop few knew how to find, usually appearing spontaneously to those who needed it. But duck down a few side streets, take some turns in the right order, and it would appear before you: the quaint wooden shopfront impossibly squashed between more modern stores, the bay window filled with strange artefacts and vibrant potions, glowing with the light of a dozen floating lanterns. Ducking under the sign of a broomstick-riding witch, I pushed open the door, a bell ringing softly above me. Immediately I could feel the warmth of the place, smell the subtle aroma of floral potion ingredients, and hear the purring of a cat and the footsteps of a witch making her way through stacks of scrolls and parchment.
“Hello, welcome!” her voice rang out, quickly followed by a head peering around a stack of old spell books. A warm face greeted me, soon breaking into a smile of recognition, framed by large curls of ebony hair and crowned by a picture-perfect witch’s hat of sapphire fabric with golden trim, “Chris! Welcome back! Have fun being a teddy bear?”
I couldn’t help but blush a little at the comment, remembering the time I had become my own Christmas present for a friend. “Yes,” I started to reply, blushing redder, “I think Mari squeezed me half to death.”
“You were exceptionally cuddly,” Sophia grinned slightly, “though I think this time you’re after something a little less cuddly.” The witches had always seemed to have an eerie way of telling what was on my mind. “Something a little more spooky?”
“It’s the new fair in town, I’ve got a job at the haunted house,” I launched into my explanation, speaking a little quickly from excitement, soon getting to the reason I was there: “so the catch is I need to get my own ghost costume, and where better to come?”
Sophia stood a while in thought, “a ghost costume… we don’t get asked for those very often, though I think I have an idea, follow me!”
She quickly disappeared back into the stacks, dress swishing behind her, and I hurried to follow as she headed into one of the workrooms. All around me were solid timber workbenches, every inch of the walls above them covered in shelves bending under the weight of glass jars of every kind of ingredient: strange-looking flowers and leaves, colourful powders and liquids, even what might have been newt eyes. Already she was beginning to gather ingredients together, hands flying from jar to jar.
“Evie’s usually the one making potions, but then, this isn’t a normal potion… Could you do me a favour?” she asked, pausing a moment between grabbing jars, pointing to a sturdy wooden door “in the cupboard, you’ll find a bunch of, er, manacles. Grab one you like the look of, just... don’t ask where it came from.”
“Right,” after a moment’s hesitation I walked over to the cupboard, opening the heavy door to find it packed with all sorts of strange items. Squeezing myself between a suit of armour and a cauldron packed with odds and ends, I found a set of chains hanging from a wall. One caught my eye: a short length of gleaming silver chain, with a shackle on one end and a solid ball on the other. I took it from the wall, chains rattling faintly, finding it surprisingly light for the size of it.
“Perfect!” Sophia called out from the other room, already busy pouring ingredients into a small cauldron when I returned, the mixture bubbling away, “when it starts to turn clear, drop the chain into the cauldron.”
I stepped closer, peering into the strange mixture, watching it shift colours from lurid pink to pallid green, gradually clearing until I could see the etching of some magic circle in the bottom of it. I carefully dropped the chain into the cauldron, the metal somehow floating on the surface, the potion flaring into green light that seemed to suffuse the chain.
“Beautiful…” Sophia whispered, admiring her handiwork. As the glow started to subside, she pulled on a pair of heavy gloves, carefully pulling the chain from the potion. “Maybe not the kind of costume you were thinking, but I’m sure you’ll love the result… now, this way!” She hurried off again, pushing aside another door that led out into a walled garden I never knew was there, neatly kept rows of all manner of strange plants.
“Is this…” I started to say, trying to read one of the paper labels written in a spidery hand.
“Where we grow our ingredients? Yup!” Sophia beat me to it, making her way into the middle of the garden, a relatively open patch of pebbled ground. “At least, the ones that don’t only grow on some Tibetan mountain slope… still not sure who thought that was a good idea.” Cradling the chain in one arm, she spun her other in a wide circle, a patch of ground glowing brightly for an instant before the pebbles merged into a solid circle of stone.
“So why are we here? Something else you need?”
“Not quite,” Sophia replied, grinning a little, “most spells, we can cheat preservation of mass a little. Make you into a teddy that doesn’t weigh as much as you used to. If you want to become a ghost, we’re going to have to… get creative. Store your body for a while,” she paused, sensing my confusion, “don’t worry, it’ll make sense in a moment. Step into the circle, and strike a pose. Something heroic.”
“Erm, okay,” was about all I could say, stepping onto the stone, trying to put myself into a suitably dramatic pose, and feeling pretty silly.
“Perfect, perfect, now hold still,” Sophia reached down, clasping the shackle around my left leg, the chill of the cool metal spreading into my leg.
“Oh, wow, that’s chilly…” I almost reached down to feel my leg, trying to hold my pose instead. I tried to focus on the chill, feeling the way it seemed to reach into my body, a strangely numbing feeling.
“Okay, here goes!” Sophia firmly grasped the chain in her gloved hands, quickly pulling the chain away from my body, and I expected to have my leg whisked out from under me.
Instead, I felt the strangest sensation as the cold metal seemed to pull through my leg. For an instant, I could feel the tightness of it gripping my ankle, cold metal against my bare flesh despite my trousers. A second later, and the metal was inside my ankle, the chill deep into my bones, and yet… it wasn’t. I felt the tug against my body, the force that should have pulled my leg out from under me, the feeling of my foot slipping forward yet staying planted firmly on the stone below.
Another second later, and I could feel the shackle pull out of my body, the paradoxical feeling of it tugging on my ankle while my body seemed to remain perfectly still. Looking down, I got some sense of what I was feeling: I could see the chain in front of me, shackle around a ghostly image of a leg shifting away from my body. It shimmered slightly in the evening’s light, blurring like a bad TV, soft and faint but unmistakably mine. The ghostly leg emerged from the rest of my body at my knee, my physical leg still there, still firmly planted on the stone but now as pale white as the stone beneath me. I tried to move my left foot, to wiggle it from side to side: the ghostly image moved, chain clanking slightly as it did, the physical leg staying frozen still.
“Woah, is that… my soul?” I gasped, trying to put things together, watching as more of the ghostly leg drifted away from my body. As it did, the creeping white of the pale stone spread upwards, locking more of my body in place.
“Something like that,” Sophia replied, still gently pulling on the chain, drawing the ghost-like part of me with it, “you might call it your spirit or animus, but for now it’s the world’s best ghost costume.”
“Oh, oh wow…” I grinned a little, watching as more of my spirit form pulled out of my body, feeling the tug on my torso and right leg as the hazy form of my waist drifted out of me. The chill was spreading quickly, my body feeling sluggish compared to how free and light the ghostly parts of me were, despite the chain. As it progressed, a strange euphoria came over me, the sensation oddly freeing and calming.
“Look at you, you little spirit! Let’s see if you can pull the rest of yourself out,” Sophia set the chain down, stepping back a little as if she was admiring how my ‘costume’ was turning out.
“Okay, here goes…” I concentrated, trying to plant my feet against the ground, a weird sensation as pebbles and dirt pushed through my insubstantial body, a sinking feeling like I might fall into the earth forever, only the chain grinding against the stones catching me.
“Careful, careful… don’t think too hard about standing on the ground. Gravity isn’t a thing for your body anymore, and you can pass through things easily,” Sophia carefully lifted my chain up, pulling my ghostly feet from the ground, “just trust that the ground will stop you, and it will.”
“Okay, okay…” I breathed out to calm myself, not noticing at first that I wasn’t really breathing anymore. I relaxed a little, letting my feet drift down, picturing them stopping on the pebbles. A moment later, and I could feel the stones beneath my feet. The sensation was odd, not quite solid, sort of… muted, almost fuzzy, or like a distant memory.
I grinned a little, starting to get a hang of my spirit’s form, imagining myself pulling away from the rest of my body, trying to hold my arms steady as I did. Another wave of euphoria washed over me, and I could see the ghostly form of my torso pulling away, as hazy and insubstantial as the rest of me, drifting a little as if covered in floating cloth.
“Yes, perfect!”
“Alright, last parts of me left, I guess,” my voice sounded strange, distant like I was underwater. Is that what ghosts sounded like, I wondered? I figured time would tell, willing the last of me forward, the chill reaching into my head and down my arms as my spirit pulled free from my body. The feeling of my head pulling out was strange, though what happened to my senses was stranger still. Taste and smell seemed to blur into one, every scent and aroma of the garden around me a little more intense yet a little more indistinct. Sounds became muffled, Sophia’s voice was as clear as leaves rustling on a distant tree. Then came my vision, blurring slightly like a soft focus, the colours of everything shifting slightly.
I drifted forward, the sensation of my feet just brushing against the ground still a little unsettling. The chain dragging behind my rattled against the ground, digging into the ground though I hardly seemed to notice its weight now. I held my hands up in front of me, a slight motion blur as I moved my fingers about, seeing the garden through them as if I was made of mist.
“How do you feel?” Sophia asked, taking a moment to step around me, noticing for the first time was glowing in brilliant gold - a glimpse of her own soul? “I took the liberty of giving your new self a few ghostly touches, all the better to spook people with” she added with a wink.
“This… feels… amazing!” I said, whisking my new body around, legs blurring into a trail of smoke behind me, the chain rattling around at the end. As I spun around I caught a glimpse of my body. Well, the statue of the body, now perfectly frozen in marble, “oh…”
Sophia moved beside me, resting a hand carefully on my spectral shoulder, the warmth of her body feeling so intense now, “don’t worry, it’ll be here waiting for you, and all you need to do is, sort of, pass into it. For now, though, I think you’ve got a house to haunt…”
When I returned to the haunted house on opening night, I wasn’t sure who got the biggest scare: the customers, or my fellow staff. After a few actors in rubber werewolf masks, a ‘real’ ghost emerging through the chipboard walls was enough to scare even the bravest guest. Over time, I got better and better at my haunting act: learning to phase my chain through things, make lights flicker by passing my hands through them, or chill the room around me.
Halloween might be over for this year, but I think I’ll be haunting a derelict mansion or two for years to come...