Chapter 462.<h4><b>Chapter 462. An Exciting Night with Two Girls Outside the City: The Alleged Haunted Castle. (5/10)</b></h4>
<span style="font-weight:400">An hourter, we’d explored every room inside this rundown castle but we never found a torture room let alone any hidden rooms. It seemed the story Rosa read online was, as expected, nothing more than an urban legend. The scariest thing about the castle was just the moss.
<span style="font-weight:400">We didn’t find a basement either and only explored the three floors. There had been watchtowers at the four corners of the castle essible from the third floor, but that was the closest we ever got to finding any hidden rooms.
<span style="font-weight:400">Overall, it was a disappointment.
<span style="font-weight:400">At least... until we heard something.
<span style="font-weight:400">The sound of footsteps echoed out from inside the hall. It wasn’t a single set of footsteps, it sounded like two.
<span style="font-weight:400">The three of us all looked to the exit of the room we were currently in at the same time.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Do you guys also hear that?” Rosa asked.
<span style="font-weight:400">The two of us nodded.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Footsteps, right?” Dawn confirmed.
<span style="font-weight:400">Rosa nodded.
<span style="font-weight:400">It seemed all three of us heard the same thing at the same time. Meaning… it was unlikely it was a hallucination.
<span style="font-weight:400">“You said you heard footsteps earlier, but they weren’t ours though, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">I nodded and asked, “Could it be an animal, maybe a deer or something?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“It doesn’t sound like an animal,” Dawn shook her head.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Then… there’s someone else with nothing better to do with their time lurking around out here in the middle of nowhere at this hour of the night?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Maybe it’s the ghost we’ve been looking for~” Rosa chimed in excitedly. “Come on, let’s go check it out.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Rosa grabbed our hands and dragged us out the door in search of the phantom footsteps. We followed the sound of the footsteps, but not long after the footsteps began, they abruptly stopped without warning and we were, unfortunately, unable to locate the origin in the end.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Ugh, why’d they have to stop?” Rosa grimaced.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Why do yuh want it to be a ghost so badly, Rosa?” Dawn asked curiously.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t you think it’d be pretty cool to befriend a ghost?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“No,” I gave my two cents.
<span style="font-weight:400">“You don’t?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Ghosts don’t exist. I’m not interested in friends let alone imaginary friends.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Ohe on. Surely you can bend your rules a little bit and make some exceptions. After all, you could get a ghost to do all sorts of useful things for you.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Like?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“They could eavesdrop on just about any conversation for you. You could effortlessly cheat any test. You could win big when gambling at a casino. There’s so much a ghost could do for you. Having a ghost around as a friend would be ying life on easy mode.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“But if the ghost is a vengeful spirit that haunts yuh, can yuh even befriend it or get it to cooperate?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hmm… no idea, I’ve never met a ghost before. But there’s no way to know unless I meet one, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, let’s just go now. We’ve already explored everywhere there is to explore in this castle and it doesn’t look like we’re going to find the source of the footsteps we heard. If a ghost wanted to make themselves known they would have done so by now. If they don’t want to appear then there’s no sense in looking for them.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Rosa shut her eyes and ced her index finger on top of her lower lip as she struggled to decide what to do. “Mmmmm… but… you know, we might never get such a great opportunity to encounter a ghost again.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Just give up.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“If there are any ghosts around, I give you my permission to possess and haunt my boyfriend. You can leave this ce that way.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, don’t try selling me out. Let them haunt and possess you. I enjoy my privacy.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Me? No way. No way.” Rosa bent her wrist left and right in front of her chest refusing, “It’d be way funnier if they haunt you, the one who doesn’t believe they exist. I’m sure you’d be in denial about it too.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaah. Can we just leave now?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, Rosa, what if the ghost has a preferred gender like the devil we summoned, and the reason they don’t appear is because of that?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Oh! Dawn, you’re a genius! I never considered that possibility at all. In that case, Ran, you can wait for us outside the castle if you’re too scared to explore alone.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What? I’m really free to go?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, if you’re too scared that is.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I rolled my eyes and responded, “I am soooooo scared, I might even pee my pants.” In truth, I did have to take a leak right now.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Then do your best to not get spirited away.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, sure, sure. I’ll wait for you two outside, I’m dying for some fresh air. Just don’t keep me waiting for too long.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I returned to the first floor and exited the building while the two of them resumed their ghost hunt. I walked around the outskirts to the side of the castle and took the chance while alone to take a leak.
<span style="font-weight:400">Somehow… being out here alone in the dark with only the illumination of the shlight on my phone was more unsettling than when I was inside. I mean… if a bear was wandering around and I was cornered here I’d be a goner, wouldn’t I?
<span style="font-weight:400">While I answered nature’s call, I gulped down a mouthful of saliva and shoulder checked. Thankfully, as far as I could tell, there were no scary bears observing me in secret.
<span style="font-weight:400">When finished, I zipped up my fly in a rush and immediately made a run for it. However, with how dark it was, I couldn’t see my footing very well and my foot snagged on something. I tripped and fell to the ground.
<span style="font-weight:400">I spun around onto my back and shone my shlight behind me. I’d seen enough horror movies to know what happened when you tripped in the dark outside. Some scary monster would appear out of nowhere for sure.
<span style="font-weight:400">However… there was no scary monster.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaaah…” I whispered to myself in a low voice, “Seriously, what the hell am I getting so antsy for all of a sudden? Nothing’s really going to jump scare me out here.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Shining the shlight at what caught my feet I discovered something out of ce I didn’t expect to see here. It looked like… a rubber cable? What was this doing here? I reached out, grabbed it, and tried to pick it up only to realize it was quite long. It seemed to be... a power line for electricity.
<span style="font-weight:400">Electricity? This castle? But... there hadn’t been any sockets for light bulbs in any of the rooms I visited. It seemed candles had been used for lighting inside this castle when it was still upied. How... peculiar.
<span style="font-weight:400">Wouldn’t that mean someone had to set this up? Unless it was a ghost living in this castle. Haha, would ghosts really need electricity though? Well, maybe they wanted some inte ess or something. They could have set up a satellite somewhere. Haha. Yeah right, as if.
<span style="font-weight:400">Well, it’s none of my business. Still though, this unexpected discovery made me want to immediately leave this ce. It smelled fishy and I didn’t want anything to do with it.
<span style="font-weight:400">I rose to my feet, turned around, and took one step forward.
<span style="font-weight:400">Creeeeeeek.
<span style="font-weight:400">My heart sank as my head mechanically turned back. My eyes shrank. I could see lighting out from the ground behind me.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Seriously, Dox definitely just seein and hearin shit. He called us here just cause he thinks he saw a glimpse of ck hair roundin a corner from the corner of his eye when lookin over his shoulder one time and says he heard some voices inside the castle. As if anyone would stumble across this ce. It’s definitely just all the shitty mold in the castle making him hallucinate crap that’s not really there.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Huh? A… human? It’s not a spooky ghost?
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, he’s definitely losin it man. Wants us to patrol the area to find whoever it was. There’s no way anyone’s really here.”
<span style="font-weight:400">It wasn’t just one person, but two people?
<span style="font-weight:400">Out here?
<span style="font-weight:400">At this hour?
<span style="font-weight:400">Why?
<span style="font-weight:400">Wait, they mentioned someone named Dox.
<span style="font-weight:400">Then there are three people in this castle right now?
<span style="font-weight:400">Shit, there’s no time to think about it. My instincts told me it was best to hide and not allow them to discover me.
<span style="font-weight:400">There was no telling why they were at this castle. I would have been a lot less scared if it really had been a ghost that appeared just now. Other humans whom you didn’t know what their intentions were, were far scarier than a little ghost.
<span style="font-weight:400">Quick to react, I shut the shlight on my phone off,id down prone on the ground in some tall grass, and crawled my way over to a tree nearby. Afraid they might hear me should I breathe too loudly, I held my breath and did my best to calm my frantically beating heart.