Welcome back to another October Frights Blog Hop, where writers of dark fiction gather together and spend a week celebrating the spooky season. From October 10th-15th we will regale you with creepy stories, terrifying books, and other horrors. We also have a book fair and a free book giveaway, plus I have a Halloween Horrors giveaway. Sit back, relax, and keep the lights on…
Today’s entry for the Hop is a ghost story with a twist.
A Spirit That Lingers
The men came again, they always come. Sometimes a king sends them, sometimes they are scholars from an academy. So eager and full of excitement, ready to learn the secrets of the temple. It’s been so long, no one alive remembers why it was built.
So they come to study. Such fools. You should hear some of their ridiculous notions.
They are no better than the superstitious villagers who built this edifice long ago. Then, it served as a shrine, now nothing but a ruin, but still men bustle through the corridors, poke into the nooks and make far too much noise. I can’t rest in peace.
These days at least, the stream of people is not constant. I take comfort in my small respites whenever these expeditions end badly. For inevitably, they find my tomb.
Such surprise when they meet me. Of course, that never lasts long. It turns to screaming and running, and then another pile of corpses. I have quite the collection of bones now. I’ve laid them out around my skeleton; my macabre assembly of worshipers.
It seems fitting; that was the original purpose for the temple after all. A grand edifice constructed around my corpse to worship the spirit of a dragon. Why they wanted to conjure my ghost I’ll never know, but they discovered their mistake in due course. The folly of trapping the spectre of a dragon in this forsaken building.
For spirits are powerful things, and while the dragon spirits don’t breathe fire, we do breathe death…
Thanks for joining in today for October Frights, be sure to keep hopping for the other participants’ posts and remember to check out our mini book fair and our giveaway (which runs all month). Check them out below.
October Frights Giveaway
Book Fair
And to keep on Hopping, check out all the participants.
Blog Hop Participants
Camilla Voiez, British Horror Author
Angela Yuriko Smith: Exercising My Writes
C.L. Cannon’s Halloween Horrors Fan Giveaway!
Enter for a chance to win print copies of All Hallows by Christopher Golden, Till We Become Monsters by Amanda Headlee, It by Stephen King, The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland, plus 4 horror baddie bookmarks, Horror Story candle, No Brains Before Coffee mug, The Shining Overlook Hotel keychain, Scream Ghostface sticker, and Hannibal Eat The Rude button pin.
Be Afraid of the Dark 
That is such an intriguing story. I’d love to hear more.
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That last line is chilling. I love the whole piece but that last line… chef’s kiss.
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Thanks.
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