strangely familiar, melody continued to thrum in the back of his feeble consciousness.
Unsteadily, Ghost loped more than walked toward the structure, the memories of that horrible, fateful day coming back more fully with each stride.
Ghost had used the Gkearufu, a powerful device with magical energies directed toward the spirit world, to steal the body of the firbolg Vander, an unwilling associate. Disguised as Vander, with the strength of a giant, Ghost had then crushed his own body and had thrown it across the barn.
And then Cadderly had burned it The malignant monster looked down to his bone-skinny arms and prominent ribs, the hollow shell that somehow lived.
Cadderly had burned his body, this body! A single-minded hatred consumed the wretched creature. Ghost wanted to kill Cadderly, to kill anybody dear to the young priest, to kill anybody at all.
Ghost was at the barn then. Thoughts of Cadderly had flitted away into nothingness, replaced by an unfocused anger. The door was over to the side, but the creature understood that he did not need the door, that he had become something more than the simple material wooden planking now blocking his way. The shriveled form wavered, became insubstantial, and Ghost walked through the wall.
He heard the horse whinnying before he came fully back to the material plane, saw the poor beast standing wild-eyed, lathered in sweat. The sight pleased thellndead thing; waves of a new sensation of joy washed over Ghost as he smelled the beast's terror. The undead monster ambled over to stand before the horse, let his tongue drop out of his mouth hungrily. With all the skin burned away from the sides of the tongue, its pointy tip hung far below Ghost's blackened chin. The horse made not a sound, was too frightened to move or even to draw breath.
With a wheeze of evil anticipation, Ghost put deathly cold hands against the sides of the beast's face.
The horse fell dead.
The undead creature hissed with delight, but while Ghost felt thrilled by the kill, he did not feel sated. His hunger demanded more, could not be defeated by the death of a simple animal. Ghost moved across the barn and again walked through the wall, coming into view of the lights within the farmhouse. A shadowy shape, a human shape, moved across one of the rooms.
Ghost was at the front door, undecided as to whether to walk through the wood, tear the door apart, or simply knock and let the sheep come to the wolf. The decision was taken from the creature, though, when he looked to the side of the door, to a small pane of glass, and saw, for the first time, his own reflection.
A red glow emanated from empty eye sockets. Ghost's nose was completely gone, replaced by a blacker hole edged by ragged flaps of charred skin.
That tiny part of Ghost's consciousness that remembered the vitality of life lost all control at the sight of that hideous reflection. The monster's unearthly wail sent the barnyard animals into a frenzy and shattered the stillness of the quiet autumn night more than any violent storm ever could. There came a shuffling from inside the house, just behind the door, but the outraged monster didn't even hear it With strength far beyond that of any mortal, he drove his bony hands through the center of the door and pulled out to the sides, splintering and tearing the wood as though it were no more than a thin sheet of parchment
A man stood there, wearing the uniform of a Carradoon city guardsman and an expression of sheer horror, his mouth frozen wide in a silent scream, his eyes bugged out so far that they seemed as if they would fall from his face.
Ghost burst through the broken door and fell over him. The man's skin transformed, aged, under the creature's ghostly touch; his hair turned from raven black to white and fell out in large clumps. Finally the guardsman's voice returned, and he screamed and wailed, flailing his arms
helplessly.
Ghost ripped at him, tore at his throat until that revealing scream was no more than the gurgle of blood-filled lungs,
The creature heard a shuffle of feet, looked up from the kill to see a second man standing beyond the foyer, in a doorway at the other side of the house's small kitchen.
"By the gods," this man whispered, and he dove back into the far room and slammed the door.
With one hand, Ghost lifted the dead man and hurled him out the