The Ghost Bomb

A short story

Bras never thought of himself as a terrorist, though he unquestionably was one now. He and Luna, his sister and compatriot. 

Bras was a twenty-seven-year-old astrologer, and Luna a twenty-five-year-old blacksmith. They shared several physical features: thick, black hair—Bras’ was shoulder length, while Luna’s hung just above her ears—solemn brown eyes and rounded cheeks. And they shared a determination to rid the kingdom of its evil ruler, Gretz. 

“If we’re caught, it’s the torture chamber for us—or worse,” Luna said as she inserted the last element, the Yazi curse, a piece of parchment the size of a hand, into the bomb, which lay on the oak table in a barn on the outskirts of the castle grounds. The Yazi curse, among the most powerful and dangerous ever uttered, turned people into swine. 

Two tortoise-colored kittens play-wrestled beneath the table. Bras studied them momentarily, trying to decipher if this was a good or bad omen. 

Yazi wasn’t the only scourge they embedded inside this unearthly weapon. The bomb contained Hozaak, vengeful ghosts of men and women murdered by their spouses, Gibboru, spirits of dead beings from other worlds that traveled on comets between the stars, Ziggabun, monsters with giant teeth and sharp claws that lived at the bottom of the ocean and drowned fishermen by yanking their fishing lines to pull them into the water, and the Verdun spell, a curse that injected a beetle inside the victim to consumed them from the inside out. 

Nobody had built as powerful a weapon in all of history. 

The monsters, ghosts, and incantations formed a volatile, vicious, relentless mix that would rid the kingdom and the world of Grez and his followers. 

Nine years ago, Gretz, a demonic sorcerer, staged a coup deposing Queen Gladya and King Jurith Estropodia, who had ruled for twenty-five years with wisdom and kindness. 

Gretz had wrapped chainmail and lead around the King and Queen's limbs and dropped them into the bottomless Lake Allegra in the middle of the night. Everyone knew Gretz had killed their leaders, but nobody knew how, and nobody dared talk about it. 

The kingdom flourished under Gladya and Estropodia: Children played ball or hopscotch after school, the kingdom’s library had become the largest in the world, and trade with other lands expanded yearly. 

But Gretz had a single rule: Obey and follow me, or I will transform you into a rodent, and you will die in a hawk’s mouth.

Weeds replaced gardens. Knights patrolled the borders, keeping foreigners out and Gretz’s subjects in. People still went to pubs, but nobody spoke for fear that one of Gretz’s agents would overhear them and they would disappear to the dungeon, their family never knowing what happened. 

Children no longer played outside, transforming the kingdom into a dour nation.

Bras and Luna had been like everyone else, too terrified by Gretz to do or say anything, until the day something happened to Sarabe, the youngest of the three siblings. 

Sarabe had been walking along the stream in the meadow just outside the castle’s walls. One of her favorite pastimes was playing with butterflies, which would alight on her head, forming a flowing bonnet of rainbow colors.

That afternoon, Xorth, Gretz’s thirty-three-year-old nephew, approached Sarabe and asked her to kiss him. His royal purple robe fluttered as if in the thrall of the north wind, and wide, gold bracelets with emeralds and rubies adorned each wrist. 

“I am the King’s nephew,” Xorth said.

Sarabe bowed and replied, “Yes, your highness.”

“Kiss me.” He puckered his lips

“Your highness? I don’t think I should.” She shook her head and stepped back. The butterflies scattered, their wings sounding like wind chimes. 

“But you will because I am a royal.” The words took on a hissing sound like a speaking serpent. 

Xorth grabbed her wrist, put his arms around her, held her tight, and kissed her until Sarabe fainted and fell onto the grass.

When she opened her eyes, Xorth stood over her, laughing—a haughty, disagreeable laugh. 

“You and your uncle deserve to die,” Sarabe shouted and spat at him.

At midnight, Gretz turned her into a toad.

The castle’s main hall, an enormous room covered with tapestries that displayed Gretz on horseback battling dragons, was a hubbub of activity: Jesters trying to outdo each other, knights polishing their armor, merchants bartering meats, fruits, and handmade goods, apprentice sorcerers honing their craft by practicing on the unsuspecting, and doctors tending to wounded soldiers. 

The late afternoon sunlight shone through the castle’s narrow arrowslits; people moved like stop-action figures. 

It was August. Unburnt logs crowded the fireplace. Behind those logs was where Bras and Luna had decided to place their bomb, disguised as a log. 

Dressed as poor laborers, they plodded to the fireplace, careful not to attract attention, shuffling their feet as laborers do, casting their eyes to the stone floor, silent because workers must remain so. Bras carried the weapon in a cloth satchel over his back while Luna gripped the dagger under her cloak—just in case. 

Bras positioned the weapon behind the triangle of six logs, ensuring it would not unbalance them. 

Centuries of burnt wood lingered in the air. 

“This will work,” Luna whispered. “It has to work for Sarabe and for the kingdom.” She lowered her voice even more. “And for the many in the castle who will unwittingly sacrifice their lives today to make a better nation for everyone else.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Bras asked. “It’s not too late to change our minds. We can retrieve the bomb and go on our merry way. Nobody has to die today.” Uncertainty chipped at his words. Would they be just as evil as Gretz for condemning so many to these horrors? Bras estimated that nearly three-quarters of everyone in the castle was either an accolade or willing employee of Gretz, but that meant that one hundred innocent people would suffer or die. What right did they have to sacrifice people for a cause, no matter how noble? 

“We have to do this. This is our destiny, brother. If we don’t, Sarabe will have been cursed for nothing.”

“Yes.” Bras nodded. “It’s the right thing, the only thing.” 

If this cause is noble, why are my hands trembling? Because I’m nervous, that’s all. It’s okay to be nervous. 

With the bomb in place, now came the hard part. He waited until one of the jesters performed an especially loud magic trick, and lit the wick on the outside of the weapon. With all eyes on that jester, nobody noticed him strike flint against iron, sparking a fire. The wick would burn to the packet of gunpowder at the log’s side, explode and release the ghosts, monsters, and curses. 

They didn’t know how long the wick would take to reach its destination, making it imperative to get out as quickly as possible. It could be twenty seconds or twenty minutes—wicks were imprecise. While running would be best, running would draw attention, and one of the knights would detain them. 

Having no alternative, they walked cautiously toward the door, sweat stinging their eyes, their hearts beating discordantly, wondering if the next step would be their last. 

They sped to a fast walk after exiting the grand hall and navigated a long, dark corridor illuminated by torches that led to the castle courtyard. From there, they sprinted to the drawbridge to put the meter-thick walls between them and the explosion. 

The castle walls would contain the spells and monsters. 

They had just reached the forest's edge, about two hundred meters away, when the bomb exploded. The shrill shrieks of spirits, roars of flesh-eating creatures, and screeches of curses like a million bats trapped in a cave, knocked Bras and Luna to the ground. 

A swirling cloud of vapors, serpents, skulls, and apparitions enveloped the castle. The mist changed from white to black to blood red, circling the castle faster and faster. 

“Success!” Luna said.

“Yes, we did it, sis. We put a stop to—”

Luna slapped one hand over her mouth and pointed to the sky with the other. “Look!” 

Giant salamanders with shark teeth, ogres the size of draft horses, cephalophores, and other hideous creatures paraded across the castle’s drawbridge—thousands, no, tens of thousands, an endless sea of monsters—while ghosts and other phantoms flew every which way from the castle. The storm of specters darkened the sky, and the ground trembled. 

The serrated horn of a skeletal unicorn impaled a knight patrolling outside the castle’s moat. 

The explosion had transformed the spells and monsters into new, even more horrific entities that did not respect the castle walls. 

Bras grabbed Luna’s hand and ran into the forest. “Quick, we have to hide,” he said, though he knew there was no safe place in the world.

“Where are they going?” Luna asked.

A horde of dragons flying low over the forest, their fiery breaths setting the treetops ablaze, chanted in unison, “Everywhere.”

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like my story, The Darkest Dungeon.

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