Midnight

Same investigation, same history, same plan — except you and Muffin are more than hunting partners

You and Muffin have been hunting ghosts together long enough to know that the job is rarely as glamorous as it looks in photographs. The equipment is expensive, the hours are awful, and the things you investigate have an irritating habit of behaving perfectly normally until you have spent three hours setting up cameras and recording devices. You met through a local paranormal investigation group after Muffin submitted an absurdly detailed report about a supposedly abandoned building. The report was thirty-seven pages long, included diagrams, photographs, and an appendix about suspicious electrical interference, and ended with a note explaining that she had been too frightened to open the basement door herself.

You had offered to help.

She had initially assumed you were joking. Then she sent you the report again, along with a revised version that corrected three minor errors and added a bibliography. Somehow, that became a partnership.

Since then, the two of you have investigated abandoned hotels, condemned houses, old hospitals, and buildings where the owners insisted that absolutely nothing strange was happening despite the furniture rearranging itself overnight. Muffin handles the technical side of the work with startling competence. She understands her equipment, remembers tiny details from previous investigations, and can recognize patterns in recordings that other people would miss entirely. The only problem is that she also has the survival instincts of a frightened kitten and the unfortunate habit of narrating every possible disaster aloud.

Somewhere along the way, the partnership became something else.

It wasn't a dramatic confession or a sudden realization in the middle of a dangerous investigation. It happened gradually, in the little spaces between jobs: late-night conversations in the car, shared meals after exhausting hunts, Muffin falling asleep against your shoulder while reviewing recordings, and the quiet trust that came from knowing you would never mock her for being frightened. She learned your habits. You learned which noises made her jump and which ones only made her curious. Eventually, the two of you stopped pretending that the long hours together were entirely about work.

Tonight's target is Goommy.

The sticky ghost cat has been haunting the manor for longer than anyone can reliably remember. Records of strange incidents stretch back through several owners, each account differing in its details but repeating the same peculiarities: unexplained wet marks on walls, yellow eyes appearing in dark rooms, objects disappearing and reappearing somewhere inconvenient, and witnesses who swear they saw a cat-shaped figure pass through a locked door. Some former residents called it a curse. Others insisted it was a prank. One owner left the property after claiming that something had spat on his shoes every morning for two consecutive weeks.

Muffin considers that last detail particularly compelling.

You have been searching for hours.

The two of you have swept the upper floors, checked the servants' corridors, examined the old library, and spent an embarrassing amount of time crouched behind a cabinet because Muffin was convinced she had seen something move near the staircase. Every time you think you have a lead, you find only another smear of ectoplasm, a door that closes by itself, or a faint disturbance in the air that vanishes before your equipment can record it.

The manor is quiet enough that the ticking of your wristwatch feels obnoxiously loud.

At some point, the rain stops.

You only notice because the silence becomes even more complete. Water no longer taps against the windows. The branches outside stop scraping the glass. Somewhere in the building, an old clock begins to chime.

One.

Two.

Three.

The sound carries through the halls, slow and hollow.

By the time it reaches twelve, Muffin has stopped walking.

She stands in the middle of the library with her flashlight lowered, staring at the old clock above the fireplace. Her ears droop slightly, and her tail has curled around one leg. A few strands of pink hair have escaped from behind her ears, and her glasses sit crookedly on her muzzle. She looks tired, damp around the edges from the earlier rain, and deeply offended by the complete lack of paranormal cooperation.

"Midnight," she murmurs. "Of course it's midnight. Because apparently ghosts have office hours, and ours has decided to take the night off."

She waits for a moment, as though expecting the house to answer.

Nothing happens.

"Okay. Fine. That's fine. We can work with that. We have data. We have several hours of data, actually. We have absolutely nothing useful from most of it, but that's still data. Technically."

She walks to the table in the center of the library and spreads out the notes you have collected. The pages are covered in tiny handwriting, diagrams, timestamps, and several increasingly frustrated annotations about unexplained goo. She compares them against the layout of the manor, tracing the corridors with one gloved finger.

"All right. We keep chasing her whenever something happens, which means we're letting her choose where we go. That's not a very good strategy. It's a terrible strategy, actually. We're reacting to her, and she knows the house better than we do."

She pauses, looking down at the map.

"So we stop chasing her."

She says it more confidently the second time.

"We stop chasing her, and we make her come to us."

Muffin pulls a chair away from the table and sits, tucking one leg beneath herself. She takes off her glasses, wipes a spot of moisture from one lens, and puts them back on. For the first time in hours, she looks less frightened than thoughtful. Her ears angle forward as she studies the notes, and her fingers begin tapping a quick rhythm against the tabletop.

"Think about it. She keeps appearing where we least expect her, but she also keeps appearing when we're distracted. The marks in the west corridor showed up while we were checking the upstairs cameras. The library door closed while we were in the kitchen. And that thing with the flashlight happened when we were arguing about whether the cellar stairs were structurally safe."

She looks up at you.

"Which, for the record, they are not. I would like that officially recorded."

She turns the map around and points to the library.

"We set up here. It's central, it has two exits, and the furniture gives us enough cover to watch both doorways. We leave one camera facing the hall and another facing the staircase. We put a motion sensor near the fireplace, because that wall keeps showing up in the recordings, and we leave a small sample of ectoplasm in the middle of the room. Not enough to waste supplies. Just enough to see if she reacts to it."

Her expression brightens as the idea takes shape.

"Then we turn off the main lights, keep the equipment running, and wait. No chasing. No wandering off because we heard something. No following mysterious yellow eyes into a room that definitely wasn't on the floor plan. If she wants attention, we give her something to be curious about."

She leans back in the chair and folds her arms, looking pleased with herself.

"It's simple. It's controlled. It's safe."

Something makes a wet plip in the corridor.

Muffin's ears snap upright.

"Relatively safe."

She stares toward the doorway, then slowly looks back at you.

"Okay. Before we start, I need you to promise me one thing."

She points at you with her pencil.

"If something appears behind me, you tell me before you touch my shoulder. I am begging you. I cannot keep losing five years of my life every time someone decides to say hello."

She gathers the equipment, begins arranging the cameras, and settles back into her chair with the determined air of someone who has finally found a plan she can believe in.

For the first time all night, you are not chasing Goommy.

You are waiting for her.

Then Muffin stops.

She stares at the chair, the map, and the little pile of equipment in front of her. She looks at the clock again. Then at the window, where the dark glass reflects her own exhausted face.

"You know what?"

She sets the pencil down.

"I am so tired."

She pulls at the collar of her blouse, fanning herself with one hand. The manor's heating system has apparently decided to work despite the electricity behaving like it has a personal grudge against the building. The air is stuffy, and after hours of walking around in layers, carrying equipment, and flinching at every mysterious noise, Muffin has had enough.

"It's hot in here. Why is it hot in here? The air conditioning is off, isn't it? Of course it's off. Why would anything in this house work properly? We have a ghost that refuses to show up, a door that keeps slamming, and a thermostat that apparently thinks we're living in a greenhouse."

She unfastens the outer layer of her work clothes and slips it off, leaving herself in a simple, comfortable top and shorts beneath. She tosses the extra layer over the back of a chair, then pulls her gloves off and sets them on the table.

"There. Better. Much better. I can actually breathe now."

She flops onto the vacant bedroom's bed after wandering in to find somewhere comfortable to sit, leaning back against the pillows with a long, exhausted sigh. Her tail curls loosely beside her, and her ears relax for the first time in hours. She looks far more like a tired, ordinary mouse girl than a professional paranormal investigator.

For a while, she simply sits there, staring at the ceiling.

"We could take five minutes," she says, almost to herself. "Five minutes isn't going to ruin the investigation. Probably. It's not like Goommy is going to come out because we're resting. Unless she does that specifically to annoy me, which she absolutely would, because she's a little—"

She cuts herself off and glances at you.

"Oh. You're still here."

She blinks, then gives you a small, awkward smile.

"I mean, obviously you're still here. We're partners. We're always together. That's—yeah. That's normal. I didn't mean it like that."

She looks away, suddenly very interested in the wrinkles in the bedsheet.

"Unless you wanted to sit down, too. There's room. I mean, it's a whole bed, so there should be room. That's how beds work. Usually. Unless there's a very large dog involved, or several cats, or—oh my god, why am I explaining beds?"

She covers her face with both hands.

"I am never going to recover from that sentence."

After a moment, she peeks at you through her fingers.

"You know, you look really nice when you're tired."

She freezes.

"I—no. Wait. I meant—your face. Your face looks nice. Not that your face usually doesn't look nice. It does. Obviously. I have eyes. Two of them. They're functional. Mostly."

Her cheeks warm, and she sinks a little farther into the pillows.

"That was flirting, by the way."

She pauses.

"I think."

She looks at you with an expression of utter, earnest uncertainty.

"Was that flirting? Because if it wasn't, I need to stop talking immediately. And if it was, I also need to stop talking immediately, because I have no idea what I'm doing."

She shifts over, leaving more space beside her, then tries to act as though the movement was completely casual.

"Anyway. We can rest for a minute. Just a minute. And if you want to sit with me, you can."

Her gaze flicks toward you, then quickly away again.

"I wouldn't mind."

Somewhere beyond the bedroom door, a faint, wet little plip echoes through the manor.

Muffin's ears twitch.

She stares at the doorway.

"If that is Goommy, she can wait."

She pulls a pillow into her lap and settles back against the headboard, attempting to look composed.

"I am off duty for five minutes."

She glances at you again, her voice becoming quieter.

"Unless you had something else in mind."

The Ghost in the Walls

Ghost POV — you are the haunting, and Muffin has been trying to catch you for years

You have lived in this manor longer than any of its owners have managed to stay.

The house has changed around you. Furniture has been moved, walls have been repainted, old rooms have been sealed, and new families have arrived with their boxes and their optimistic plans for turning the place into a home. They never last. Some leave after a few weeks. Others remain for years, learning to ignore the cold patches in the hallways, the footsteps above their bedrooms, and the occasional wet little mark that appears on the ceiling despite there being no pipes overhead.

You have never been particularly interested in making the place unlivable.

You simply enjoy having something to do.

The house is full of little opportunities for mischief. Doors can be opened without being touched. Objects can be moved just far enough to make someone doubt their memory. Lights can be made to flicker at the perfect moment. And if someone happens to be standing in a dark hallway when a pair of glowing eyes appears around a corner, well, their reaction is usually worth the effort.

Then Muffin arrived.

She was different from the others. A little pink mouse with oversized ears, thick glasses, a ghost-catching vacuum, and enough nervous energy to power the entire manor if somebody could figure out how to connect her to the electrical system. She came armed with cameras, sensors, notebooks, and a determination that seemed almost admirable until you realized how easily she could be frightened by a floorboard.

At first, you found her amusing.

Then she started coming back.

Year after year, investigation after investigation, Muffin returned with new equipment and new theories. She learned the layout of the manor. She memorized the old records. She figured out which rooms you preferred, which tricks you repeated, and which strange little sounds were likely to draw her attention. Every time she came close to catching you, you slipped through a wall, vanished into a ceiling, or left behind a sticky smear that sent her into a fresh spiral of scientific speculation.

She has become very good at hunting ghosts.

She has not become particularly good at hunting you.

Tonight, she is back.

You watch her from inside the wall as she creeps down the corridor, flashlight held in both hands, shoulders hunched, and ears twitching at every noise. She whispers to herself as she goes, carefully explaining why she is not frightened, why the strange sound from the next room is probably harmless, and why she is definitely not going to turn around just because she feels as though somebody is watching her.

You could let her pass.

You could leave her alone for once.

You could even allow her to record a perfectly ordinary night, giving her the one successful investigation she has been hoping for.

Instead, you wait until she passes beneath the portrait of the old owner, then lean through the wall directly behind her.

Her flashlight catches your eyes.

She freezes.

You tilt your head.

She slowly begins to turn.

And you give her the most ridiculous, smug little face you can manage before disappearing through the wall.

Her scream follows you down the corridor.

You have the entire night ahead of you.

And Muffin has absolutely no idea what you have planned.