Uncanny

Borgatti

The eerie castle looked creepy. The town people refused to go inside; ghosts, they said. But Mr. Pips didn’t fear ghosts. He even liked them. When he trod the path up the hill for the first time, he thought he would become rich, as a matter of fact, he was absolutely certain he would become rich. He had no other concern but to find the chest. A nice man had sold him a map dated back to the 16th century where a castle and a treasure chest were clearly marked, with an X of all marks. How difficult could it be? So, he was bound to find it. There was only one, let’s say, iffy problem; the ghosts had their hearts set on making his life as miserable as they could. Time and time again, they would move the chest from room to room, from floor to floor. They tried to scare him with wailing, screaming, sighing. They dragged chains, rattled bones. Mr. Pips was immune to all that. He was on a mission and he was stubborner than the ghosts. So, one day, they decided to simply drop the chest in the living-room right by the fireplace. When Mr. Pips saw the chest, he was beside himself. With the enthusiasm, he dropped the candle he was holding on the overflow of curtain artistically arranged to look like the tail of a dress. For some reason, the excess of dust or the castle’s grudge, the curtain caught on fire immediately. He struggled to put it out, hopelessly. The next morning, all burnt down but its outer walls, the castle was destroyed, and still Mr. Pips wanted to find the gold. The chest would be gone for sure, but not the gold. He looked for it throughout the whole castle, or what remained of it. Nothing. No gold. Back in the living-room, there was a chuckle. He turned around, but saw no one. The sound of a chain clanking through the floor moved towards what remained of the fireplace. An X slowly took shape on the ground and another and yet another; an uncanny laughter followed the Xs out of the room. It was only then that Mr. Pips considered the possibility of having been fooled. There was no treasure, there was no chest, and there was no gold. There was only a handful of ghosts he didn’t even like anymore. And that was the last the castle saw of Mr. Pips. At nightfall, the ghosts moved back in with the chest. They hid it in the catacombs where no one would look. But they would have to be vigilant. Every other century, a Mr. Pips type showed up to ruin their peace. Besides, the treasure was theirs since 1548. No way were they going to give it up without a fight, even if that meant a bit of a spark.

Writer's Dash