The Forgotten Spirit
By: Laura Loney
Deep within the cellar of the ancient, moss-chilled walls, lives the spirit. To most, it is nothing. A whisper of water trickling in a dry room, easily ignored. Creaking footsteps on the worn wood floors, probably only from the unpredictable mist. It brings a chill even on the warmest of summer nights.
To most its home is a ruin, a marker of time, no more. The spirit doesn’t exist. The unusual markings scratched in the dirt must be from an animal and the prickling on the tourists’ arms is nonsense. Their indifference only maddens it further.
Through hundreds of years of anguish, of solitary confinement, it’s been forgotten. When finally a woman’s soft, grey eyes widen in its direction.
“There’s a dark presence here,” she says in a hushed voice to the oblivious man beside her. “It’s old, primal.” She hesitates, on guard. Shivering, she adds, “it’s angry.”
The woman gasps with knowing and the spirit reacts like the cornered, feral beast it has become.
Published April 22, 2022
Disclaimer
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.