His mind started racing. He knew instinctively what he was looking at, but he still could not really believe it. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, he felt blood rush to his face, and he managed to stutter something out.

  “Excuse…uh..sorry..uh..bye!”

  The last word came out as he retreated from the room, unwilling to face whatever this would be. As the gloom in the hallway took over his eyes again, he felt a bit braver and started running, turning his back to the ghost. It probably wasn’t brilliant, but bright things were meant for those who didn’t panic.

  He reached the foyer in what felt like record time, only to be faced with the ghost again, this time she was floating in front of the closed door. The door he was sure he had left open to let in more light and air. She still had a quizzical look, her head now slightly bent to the side.

  Bennie, of course, didn’t even wait or stop. Instead he ran straight through the other door, directly opposite the one he had just come through. To his surprise, he heard a slight “oh” come from the ghost, which he assumed could be shock. He didn’t ponder this much, as his feet started slamming on the carpeted floor in this hallway.

  It seemed almost similar to the other hallway he had been in, except somehow shorter. He reached the end and slammed through the closed door. He swore he heard something snap as he slammed his full body weight into it.

  However, what he saw inside made him prefer to get the ghost again.

  This room had no large windows. Instead, it was a rather large office space, with grand bookshelves lining every wall. To one side was a dark wood desk filled with paperwork and what looked like dried inkwells. On the side opposite of that were old couches with a dark green colouring.

  All in all, the place would have looked like the perfect desk of some aristocrat, except for one very important detail that marred the entire scene. In between the desk and the couches, which with some thought he realised had to have been pushed back a bit, was what his mind could only recognise as a magical circle.

  As he stammered to stop, nearly tripping over himself, the room lit up with a bright purple light. It blinded him in the gloom of the house, and then he felt a shove in the middle of his back. He fell forward into the middle of the circle, lit up entirely by the magic coursing through him.

  He twisted around and saw the ghost floating behind him, a look of absolute mischief on her face. She no longer had a quizzical look either, just a small one of triumph. He then felt the first pulse.

  Looking at the circle he saw there were words inscribed on the very edges. They were slowly lighting up as well, becoming much easier to see. If he tried, he couldn’t read them, but that was not important right now.

  “What the hell is happening?” he asked, looking towards the only thing that could probably answer him.

  She kept her smile and tilted her head to the side, a look of glee slowly coming over her face as a now white light overtook the purple from earlier. The magic circle sprang up and created a wall of light around him, he crawled to the side and tried touching it, only to feel a slight buzzing in his fingers. He could not press through it.

  The buzzing increased and he realised it wasn’t coming from his fingers. Instead, it was a sensation that was rushing through his entire body. He found his feet again and stood up as tall as he could. Looking around him.

  Whatever the words on the edges were, they started spinning in circles around the magic. Something was happening, and he very quickly realised that he was powerless to do anything. He even bent down to try and erase some of the lines crisscrossing the floor beneath him. The same sensation of being blocked greeted his fingers.

  The buzzing became a roar, rattling every bone in his body.

  He looked where the ghost was, but could no longer see outside of the magical circle.

  Then he felt something pop—he was not sure where—and he passed out, greeted by the sweet bliss of nothingness.

  Thaddeus “Bennie” Poundsworth was having one hell of a day so far.

  The first thing he realised when he woke up, was that he wasn’t dead. Which all things considered to be a good thing.

  The second was that he somehow knew exactly where in the mansion he was. No longer in the study, instead he was on the second floor in the master bedroom. It smelled vaguely of musty dust but a fine scent of flowers was mixed in.

  He groaned.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then he removed, with some shock, the bedding on top of him. The blanket felt rich and soft, and to his surprise he wasn’t too hot underneath.

  He kept his eyes closed, refusing to open them in case something or rather a specific someone was still there.

  But as he tried creeping to the edge of the bed he gave in and opened them.

  He was greeted by the ghost sitting on a chair next to him. She smiled in what he hoped was a warm way and waited for him to sit on the edge of the bed. Thankfully, he still wore all of his clothes.

  “What are you?” He asked, before he even sat up entirely.

  She looked pleased with herself and then answered, his voice soft on his ears, with a slight accent, what he would call an English accent. “I am a ghost”

  He nodded and then stopped, “sorry, but ghosts are those things that haunt people or appear in the corners of pictures.”

  She feigned a thinking face and pouted, “What is a picture?”

  He didn’t quite know how to answer that, instead he just asked his next question, “What the hell did you do to me?”

  At this time, she seemed a bit more conducive to answering. She breathed deeply, before “I needed someone to own the house”

  “What does that have to do with me? All I wanted was to explore, then leave.” He said, studying her. He swore she looked less incandescent than before.

  At this, she looked away from him, almost as if she felt guilty. “Well, you were my only choice, and my energy was starting to fail.”

  Groaning deeply, he felt like this wouldn’t be simple to understand. “What exactly does that mean? You need to explain things adequately.

  And she took a deep breath, “Fine, it’s not like anything can be undone.”

  She looked at the man as he woke from his slumber. He had been asleep for an entire day after the contract had been made. She was actually just as shocked as he looked when it happened. Hundreds of others had tried to do the same, but all of them had been rejected.

  The last person to try was more than 800 years ago, and that person was much stronger than the man on the bed.

  He asked a few random questions until he finally asked the right one. So she began to explain exactly what the contract is.

  Put, the house, or the mansion, as he called it, needed an owner to function correctly. But, no one had succeeded in the thousand or more years that she had lived in it. She remembered a time when people lived in it, without the contract, but that was always a struggle according to those she listened to.

  She herself didn’t know how she became part of the house, but she knew that she could only travel as far as its borders, which, to the man’s shock, did not end at the giant walls. She also had no idea what he meant when he said levels. She had always been a ghost, as stated by the screen that refused to go away.

  After all the normal humans had left, she stayed in the house, trying to keep it clean and protected. But even that could not help forever since things naturally started getting out of hand. Sure, it took hundreds of years, but at one point, the paving outside did not have broken stones, the trees were not wild, and there were fields of plants that grew healthy foods.

  She told him about the humans who appeared. At first, they were simply lost villagers from around the area, but then that changed to travelling merchants. Soon, though, the only humans who seemed to find the place were men with swords and women with staves. They would stay a night in the gardens, but most refused to enter the mansion.

  The few that did, when she was hopeful, would tear through the doorway and shout about looting any valuables. She had initially just fixed things, but then started driving all who came away. She told him that over 500 years ago was the last time she saw any humans, even at the very edges of the property, she could access.

  The only things that roamed the area were wild animals and magical beasts. At this, his face went blank, a look of worry overcoming him. She described how she kept the place as clean as possible, but she could feel some of the energy that kept her and the house alive was starting to fade.

  So she slept most of the time, ensuring no water got into the house. Even when the roof beams cracked and the things started to fail, she was able to make small changes to stop water from getting in. He looked at her with some worry, and she had to admit it was nice to see someone else worry about her and the house.

  She had given up and was ready to fade away with the house when he appeared. At first, she was prepared to chase him away, but then, to her shock, he asked permission to enter the house. Which she duly gave.

  She ensured the chimney let out the smoke, and that the fire stayed warm throughout the night. The following day, when he asked to explore the mansion she was even more shocked. She was sure he knew about her, so she decided to show herself.

  His shocked reaction and then immediate fleeing made her sad, for a reason she was still trying to figure out. She knew, however, that he should not just leave, he may have been able to help her. All she wanted was to ask his help to maybe clean the place up, which was how the house used to receive energy from the humans living in it.

  Instead, he ran down the other hallway, into the study, where the contract magical circle had first appeared. She expected him to see it and run away, as either recognition of it or just the inertness of it overtook him.

  What happened after that was a complete shock and she felt compelled to force him into the circle. She had never seen it lit up before and was even more pleased and surprised when it shone white, creating a contract with him. One of complete ownership.

  The mansion and all of its property now belonged to him.

  To her great amusement, and pleasure, the only thing he said at the end of it all was:“Listen, lady, I don’t mind owning the mansion or the property, but you can do whatever you want now.”

  She didn’t mention that she could feel her tether had fallen, but she was free to go.

  But she wanted to stay. This man clearly was not expected.

  The lady left him after explaining most of what was happening because he could not just call her a ghost and had forgotten to ask her name. He had only really understood two things: He now owned the mansion, which apparently had a property line that stretched far and away from the wood wall.

  The other was that this place was well over a thousand years old. She had been with it for most of that time, but even then, it had existed before she was a human.

  He pondered this as he sat on the edge of the bed. His bed, he could say. Despite her saying she tried her best, the room was massive, with only low energy. It looked like it was only abandoned a few months ago, not nearly an entire millennium ago.

  He had not asked her about the sign he saw outside. Indeed, that line of thinking had given him a near heart attack. From what he could figure out, there weren’t any humans nearby. The slow change in the humans who used to visit seemed to tell the story of a place that had grown entirely wild.

  If the only humans you see are adventurers with swords and magical staves, you are probably nowhere near any normal villages.

  Thaddeus “Bennie” Poundsworth fell back onto his new bed. His feet were dangling off the side, and his head did not even reach halfway across the span of the bed. It was indeed the kind of bed you would only find in mansions.

  He took a deep breath, and with a click, went off somewhere else in the mansion, where only Alice, the now free ghost of the house, could hear, accepted his fate.

  Bennie had always wanted a place of his own. Now it seemed he would be living alone, in a place he wholeheartedly owned, not just with a piece of paper, but with a magical contract made in a different world.

  The responsibilities of that and what it all meant could be discussed later. Right now, all he wanted to do was take another nap.

  And no one was going to stop him from doing that.

  A BIG, MASSIVE, CHONKING THANKS TO ALL MY PATREONS!

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