[SPOOKY CAMPFIRE TALES] Burned Out

Title: Spooky Campfire Tales-- A Burned Night​

Author: The Fifth Whisper​

Word Count: 1065​

Rating: K+​

Universe: Pokémon (Gameverse)​

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Don't go in the Burned Tower at night, they said.​

It's haunted. It's dangerous.​

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Mortimer Matsuba stood at the base of the Burned Tower, neck craned as he stared up at the peak. Behind him, crowds of goblins and ghouls dressed up in celebratory Halloween costumes roamed the streets, knocking on doors in search of a trick or a treat.

He was not among them. Certainly, he could have joined Eusine and his friends and wandered the streets late into the night, but instead he found himself struck by a strange sense of melancholy. Hanging up the Ghostbusters costume he had planned on wearing, he tucked his hands in his pockets to protect them from Ecruteak's chilly late-night air and wandered through the town for the better part of an hour. He ignored the odd stares from the people he passed, not bothering to climb the steps to knock on the doors on both sides of the street, and eventually wandered up to the Burned Tower.

He knew it was haunted; he knew entering the Burned Tower alone, nevertheless at night, was a foolhardy choice. He had multiple tests tomorrow (why school why?), a post-Halloween sleepover at Eusine's house, and yet he found himself staring at the ominous building before him, almost exuding an aura of blackness.

"Nothing to it," Morty murmured as he pushed in the door with an ominous creak, letting in a paltry beam of moonlight before quietly closing the door behind him. Though certainly the "locals" were already aware of his presence, anything he could do it not anger them further would be wise. For a moment he considered his foolhardiness–he hadn't even thought to bring Eusine's gastly, loaned to him to help complete his planned costume.

The ghosts of the Tower weren't malevolent, really. On a trip to the Burned Tower last year at Halloween, he and several friends had spent the whole night in the Tower, and while the ghosts played a few pranks at the beginning, they were left alone for the majority of the night.

The rickety staircase on the eastern side was more stable than that on the west, so he wound his way through the darkness to the staircase and climbed down. Feeling his way down the deformed stairs with his foot, he was caught completely off-guard when the step he stood on collapsed under him and he fell an indeterminable distance to the stone below.

"...Damn," he swore, groping about in the darkness for a moment before getting his hands under himself to stand. Instantly he felt a flare of pain in his left leg, and he gingerly raised it off the ground again. "...Alright, that's sprained. How'm I gonna get out of here..?"

He felt a chill pass over his shoulders. "Hey? Who's there?" he called, twisting his back to peer into the gloom behind him. He squinted his eyes in vain to try to see further into the dense murk that filled the basement. "" help me out?"

A faint laughing noise cut through the gloom around him, seemingly from every direction and none of them, at the same time. "Where are you?" he called, still stretching to look all around himself. "C'mon!" he growled, closing his eyes and rubbing at them as though he could clear the mists from his eyes.

Opening them, he found himself staring into a very large pair of eyes. "Whoa!" Morty yelped, falling backwards in surprise. The very large pair of eyes slowly resolved themselves into an irregularly-shaped purple blob with a mouth and wraithlike hands floating beside it. "A-A haunter? L-Look, it was an accident, I swear! But I can't get out of here now, I hurt my leg when I fell, and... uh... can you help me?"

More ghosts–gastly this time, no haunter–also appeared out of the murk around him, all of them quietly chuckling. One of them peered around his face, staring into his eyes, before bobbing down to look at his left leg. It nudged it a few times, though all Morty felt was a deep chilling sensation in his bones. "Hey! What are you–"

The gastly floated up and babbled something unintelligible to the haunter, who nodded back. All of the ghosts retreated into the darkness, and Morty dropped his head to the ground, closing his eyes, cursing under his breath. "Dumb ghosts," he sighed. "How am I supposed to–"

What was that skittering noise? Almost like a scratching noise, like... claws? A lot of them, no less. All of a sudden, the gastly that poked his leg earlier popped up in front of him phased into existence, turning around and calling once again. "Hey, you're back! What–"

A quartet of krabby skittered into his view behind the gastly, peering at him curiously. After a slight chittering exchange, they approached him and, using their claws, picked him up and hoisted him in the air. "Hey! What are you doing?" Morty yelped, but the gastly from earlier was staring into his eyes and suddenly he felt like objecting just... wasn't... necessary...

He opened his eyes a short time later out in front of the Burned Tower. "...Huh. Dumb gastly must have hypnotized me..."

"Gas gastly!" the ghost objected, floating up out of the ground next to him. "Gas!" it smiled, bobbing up and down and indicating towards the path leading down to Ecruteak. A pair of flashlights were winding their way up the steps.

"Gastly? You did this for me?" Morty inquired.

"Gas gastly!" the ghost saluted, smiling broadly, spinning circles in the air next to him. For a moment, Morty joined it in laughter, but the crunching of footsteps on the gravel path cut him off. "Mom? Dad? Is that you?" Morty called down to the people.

"Mortimer Matsuba!" his mother's voice thundered up to him. "You are in so much trouble!"

All Morty could do was laugh as he grabbed the gastly and held it close to him. "Hey, you'll come find me sometime, yeah? This won't be the last I see of you?" he smiled. "'Sides, being grounded is boring."

The gastly gave him one final laugh before it disappeared back into the gloom around the tower. "...And now, to deal with the parents," Morty sighed, still grinning, laying his head back on his arms. "This'll be fun."