"Wight chapter one" by James ´Jimbo Fett ´ Inwood

“Hurry up you gutter rat! This tomb is bound to contain something” snarled the older man. He was a paunchy gentleman with expensive clothing, that was uncommon wear for tomb robbers.

“Ack! Tha ground’s tighter then yer purse Mister Hodge.” Responded the younger man, as he dug dipper into the small hillside. He wore a scruffy jacket along with a ripped shirt that reeked of tobacco and his frame was considerably thinner than his master.

“Just remember Hitchner the riches I-we, will be wallowing in after we plunder this tomb.” Mister Hodge responded to his tiring servant.

“Neverthaless, I’m hungry. Can we stop fer somthin tae eat?” whined Hitchner.

“Nay! Keep digging, we cannot afford to waste time.” Hodge said, looking around in case anybody was watching this shifty duo in the middle of the night. Nothing was to be seen except the remains of the nearby forgotten ruins: coiled within bracken and thorn bushes.

It was hard to believe that only a few days ago he would never of thought of the possibility of another undiscovered burial mound. Yet as he was browsing the local market place he came across a battered, withered old book.

The book was almost in the early stages of decay and had reeked of ancient paper and dust; yet the writing was mostly legible, if not slightly confusing. Hodge received the impression, while reading it, that the author was slightly unstable. The book appeared to be a journal of some sorts: it contained references to people, places from the past and contained strange recipes of all things.

Not that any of this interested Hodge. He was a collector that was only interested in collectables that could be sold for money that would make his life more comfortable. Needless to say the only thing that stopped him from selling the book was this map he had found.

Crudely drawn on the inside of the books back, with what appeared to be charcoal, it showed the location of a strange burial mound a couple of miles from the city, just inside a heavily wooded area. What had sparked Hodges interest was the fact that this was an undiscovered mound; he could easily retire on the looted gold and riches probably found within - should he get there before others do. The things he could spend it on flew around his avaricious mind, distracting him from the dig, until Hitchner called him from his greedy thoughts. Hitchner had finally penetrated the tomb.

Both the tomb robbers instinctively walked into the mound following the gently descending path that Hitchner had excavated, while ignoring the strangely forbidding feeling raiding tombs often gave people. They came into a small chamber: it was slightly cramped, so Hitchner had to bend his neck slightly, while Mister Hodge plodded around him like a small blob of jelly.

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“Look at all these riches Hitchner!” It was true. There was a large pile of gold surrounding what appeared to be a thin rectangular bed of stone - a slab, which lay a skeleton. The skeleton was also aged and broken in odd places.

Mr Hodge, was more interested in the gold detritus surrounding the bed, which (,Hitchner reasoned to himself,) was too much to go through straight away. Perhaps it would be better to study the corpse encase something was on it that was worth taking.

He made a move for the ruby. He stepped forward, onto the shinning mound towards the skeleton.

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It took a while for his vision to come back, but when it did it was not what he expected it to be. He was lying face upwards in what felt like an incredibly frail suit of armour, which in horror, he realised was his body - a rotting skeleton. That however was the least of his worries, as he sensed two people nearby.

One was rooting through the treasure laid around his stone bed like a pig looking for scraps. The second unnerved him the most: he was slowly stumbling towards his bed with his right hand outstretched, his other attempting to steady himself as his feet tried to find stable ground amongst the quagmire of riches.

Fear gripped him, like a freezing vice as the strange, thin man began to grope around his neck.

Through some sort of instinct that seemed foreign to him, his mind wandered out of his skeletal frame and viewed the tomb from a aerial perspective, he saw the man shuffling towards him with his hand on his necklace. “How dare he?!” He thought in his spirit-mind.

It was this burst of dulled emotion that caused two things to happen.

He suddenly found himself back in his body and somehow his hands had shot up and were grasped the man’s thin neck.

He had somehow summoned random bits of armour that were discarded around the pile of riches onto his age-shattered body. He had suddenly created a crude protective suit, that couldn’t be called a suit of armour for he was missing a breastplate; but it was nonetheless comforting to him.

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Hodge meanwhile was almost out of his wits with fright.

To one side of him was Hitchner. He had been lifted off the ground by the corpse who had somehow came to life and had quickly reconstructed itself out of bits of armour; and was standing on the pile of gold busy throttling his servant.

But as he got to the foot of the stone staircase, he noticed the small necklace that Hitchner had dropped. He snatched it up without a second thought and left Hitchner to his fate.

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The Wight was staring at his unfortunate victim, staring out of the empty sockets in his skull - pure white light was blazing out of the sockets.

Bizarrely, time appeared to slow down, sound was muted and he could no longer hear him gasp for breath. Was he dead?

Looking deep into his gaunt face he noticed he was still alive - only just. Yet the Wight noticed something odd - he was more aware of the human: he could see his lungs pulsating, his heart beating it’s last few beats as the blood pumped sluggishly around his veins.

Now he was just staring at his flesh and clothes again. He finished the job and gave one last final squeeze crushing the thief’s neck. As he crumpled to the floor gurgling blood, the Wight felt woozy, his vision blurred. He found it much harder to think.

Stumbling around the small chamber he tried to steady himself, until his vision cleared and sharpened. Yet for some reason he was compelled to look one last time at the man he had killed.

He felt a tug between his eyes as he fell forwards over the corpse and everything faded to black…