Naturally, I screamed

I awoke feeling terribly sore and not at all refreshed. It didn't help that there was some kind of furry eyeball thing biting into my head.

Naturally, I screamed.

My screaming must've woken up Amparo, because her screaming made it a chorus. While I was struggling to tear the thing off without taking my scalp with it, Amparo was fiddling with the flint lighter on the oil lamp. When it finally lit up, the monster let loose and howled in anguish. I grabbed it and threw it to the ground and started stomping on it. Amparo followed suit, and she too started stomping on the vaguely head sized thing.

It continued to writhe and scream, until eventually I had the sense to take my sword and stab it clean through. That killed it with a croak.

"I think that's a Nighthaunt." Amparo said, panting. "My grandma told stories about how they're these little demons that latch onto your head and eat your soul, one dream at a time."

"I hate it here." I said as I kicked the corpse into the same corner where my old, filth encrusted clothes lay. "How did it get in? The door is shut and barred."

"My grandma said that when no one is looking, and when there's no light, they can turn ethereal and go through solid objects. That's why on starless, moonless nights, you need to sleep by the hearth and make sure the flame never goes out. I thought it was just a scary story she told."

"It feels like a waste of oil, but I guess we sleep with the light on." I sighed, feeling my head for lingering wounds, and found none to my relief.

I was a little concerned with suffocating from the oil lamp burning up all the oxygen, but I could feel a bit of air flowing through the room. The draft seemed to be flowing in from the cracks at the bottom of the door and up into the ceiling. I didn’t see any grooves for ventilation, but there must be some gaps in the masonry allowing the air to escape. It probably wouldn’t be a problem.

—

I awoke to the noise of something huge pounding against the door. It slammed with horrendous force, and uttered inhuman, wailing moans. Adrenaline running hot through my veins, I ran to the splintering barrier and leaned against it in a futile attempt to reinforce it.

I saw Amparo, staring petrified, clutching her blanket "It’s the thing, the thing that chased me when I had the torch!"

The light chasing monster? Why would it be trying to attack us, we have a solid door in the way- Oh. It was the cracks in the door frame, where a little bit of light can come through. "Put out the lamp, or cover it, do something!"

She wordlessly obeyed and blew out the lamp. The monster kept struggling against the door for a little while longer, until it eventually gave up. My ear on the door, I listened closely for its next move, and I heard flesh being torn and bones being broken. I realized that the monster was eating the zombie remains I'd left outside the door, and cursed my carelessness for not having done something, anything about it.

"Hey, before we die, I want to know, do you have two ears, or four?" Amparo whispered to me.

"Stupid, shut up, I'm trying to listen if it's still out there." Please God, don't let this girl be a dumbass hero type. I guess I must’ve been stupid too, because I whispered back, "I only have two ears, up here."

"Oh." She said, letting the stupidity of her question, the answer and the situation sink in. I kept listening for its gorging to stop, and once it had, I heard its footsteps echo away. It had gone right, as far as I could tell. "Is it gone?"

"Yeah." I said, satisfied with the silence. "Let's use some cloth to try and cover up the cracks in the door so light doesn't get out."

We dug through the crates and used a spare blanket, draped it over the door, and used a pair of pinions from a climbing set to nail them on. We arranged it in such a way that air could still come in, but it still blocked the light from our lantern. Satisfied with our efforts, I asked, ‘Is there anything else you could think of that could attack us in our sleep?’

"Maybe the smell of the Nighthaunt decaying could attract something? It reeks." She said, pointing to the corner we had relegated to being the trash pile.

She was right, I hadn’t noticed it because I’d gotten used to the horrid stench outside, but it really did stink. "What should we do with it? Burn it?"

"I think we’ll need to throw it away outside. Maybe if you leave it near where I’ve been emptying my bedpan, it’ll be fine? I would toss out all the filth about twenty paces to the right of the door."

I agreed with a nod. Burning wouldn’t work, it would just suffocate us, but so would the miasma it would produce as it began to rot. There was the danger of the monster still lurking around out there. We decided to wait until the oil lamp had just about burned away all the oil left in it, after which I’d let my eyes get used to the dark again. I’d then rush outside and throw it down the hall as far as I could and let it be someone or something else’s problem.

When time was finally right and my eyes adjusted, I made one last effort to listen for anything outside, and heard nothing. In the worst case scenario, it could turn out that the monster, or something else, was sleeping right outside of our door. Still, the Nighthaunt was growing grosser by the moment, and I feared that the miasma alone might kill us. As Amparo prepared to lift the bar up and out of the way, I took the corpse and noticed something glimmering in its body.

"What’s this?" I asked, reaching into its ichor and pulling out another gem, like in the gremlins I’d killed earlier.

"That must be a magic stone. Monsters in dungeons carry them, and they’re used to power a lot of magic tools. Deneb, the merchant who would visit our village to buy up our wheat and pottery, said that was half the reason why adventurers went into dungeons."

"Better hold onto it then if it’s valuable."I said, storing the stone in my makeshift pouch. The temptation to start asking about magic tools had to be quashed, because we had a real problem to deal with right now.

On her mark she lifted up the bar and I burst out of the room, sword in one hand, corpse rubbish in the other. I saw nothing, looked up and down the hall, saw more nothing, listened closely and heard nothing. The ground before us was littered with pieces of zombie gristle that the monster had failed to account for, and nauseating splatters of blood wherever I looked. I smelt the air for something else, and noticed a vile scent that had been overpowered by all other rot and death happening nearby. It came from the right, as Amparo had explained.

I didn’t think about it, and I didn’t want to think more about it. I sprinted down the right as fast as I could for about twenty five paces to make up for my shorter legs, and found a gremlin sniffing around a spot soiled with piss and shit. Still not thinking about it, I yelled at the beast, dropped the corpse, and kicked it like a soccer ball. It struck the gremlin in the head with a sickening crack, and I knew my work was done when I heard *ding! Level up!*

Part of me wondered how the Nighthaunt and this unexpected murder fit into the escalating experience needed to level up, and that part was immediately squashed and set aside to where I had questions about magic tools. Besides, I couldn’t recall how many of the gremlins I’d killed so far, and how many more I’d reasoned I would need to kill. None of that mattered, I just needed to run.

I sprinted back to the room, where Amparo shut the door behind me, rebarred it and replaced the blanket. "Was there anything out there?" She asked.

"Yeah, there was a gremlin out there. I killed it when I kicked the Nighthaunt at it."I explained, gasping for breath.

"What’s a gremlin?"