Nymph Oinoi # 16 — The Haunted House
Evening had crept up on us before I knew it.
The weather was biting cold. With darkness settling in—and with this place having a reputation as a haunted house, no doubt—everything felt eerier by the minute.
“Ugh, there are bugs everywhere. Brr, bugs.”
The truly terrifying part was that, true to its long abandonment, the house was absolutely crawling with them. Centipedes, house centipedes, cockroaches and worse—the place was so infested I could easily believe the previous owners had fled because of the insects alone.
━Keong-keong…!
Thankfully, Keongkeongi the dog-squirrel was hopping this way and that around the haunted house, busily patrolling every corner. And just like that, every last bug fled the premises, driven out by the sheer absurdity of existence that was a barking squirrel.
“That's genuinely amazing. I've never seen anything like it.”
━Keong-keong…!
How on earth could they all scatter like that?
When I wondered aloud, Oinoi answered.
“The fur of the dog-squirrel is said to carry a special mana…! That special mana is said to be remarkably effective at driving insects away…!”
“Really?”
“Moreover, Keongkeongi is, even by this Oinoi's estimation, a large and nimble Prime Dog-Squirrel…! It is only natural that lesser bugs should fear Keongkeongi…!”
I couldn't speak to the science of it, but it was probably something like how insects flee from smoke. And that was when a stray thought crossed my mind.
“What about Angangi? He's an ant. Wouldn't it be a bad idea to keep him around Keongkeongi?”
“Mwehehe…. Angangi is no mere ant—he is an Emperor Ant, the mightiest among the honey ants…! The two of them are, in this Oinoi's judgment, equals in standing…! So there is nothing to worry about…!”
Well, if she said so.
And sure enough, the dog-squirrel and the emperor ant got along wonderfully.
Keongkeongi would unilaterally bounce around and clamber onto Angangi's back or tug at his legs, but the two of them clearly enjoyed each other's company.
━Zeze-!
The emperor ant Angangi began snipping through the overgrown weeds of the old garden with his sturdy front teeth, or digging his horn into the soil here and there. Was he tidying up the garden?
“Hey, this isn't our house yet. Save the cleaning for later.”
I was in the middle of saying this when it happened.
Someone abruptly poked their face out over the courtyard gate. The sudden appearance startled me so badly I nearly shrieked—but before I could, the face spoke first.
“Hey there, student. Are you by any chance filming one of them MeTube things?”
Looking closer, it was an old man.
Early-to-mid seventies, maybe? He wore a baseball cap and a vest, and looked every bit an ordinary elderly gentleman.
“Who are you, sir?”
“Hmm? I'm the village chief around here. I've been in a few MeTube videos myself, y'know—never seen 'em? You come here for one of those haunted house experiences, did ya? Just dropped by to have a look.”
So that was it.
The chief pulled out his phone and showed me several videos he'd appeared in.
There were quite a lot of them, which told me this haunted house was even more famous than I'd assumed.
“This place, see. It sits on a whole tangle of water veins, and the land's rich with it. The orchard widow who lived here from way back—well, she ended up having nightmares near every single night, and…”
“…Was she in some kind of accident?”
“No, no, she moved to America and she's doing just fine. The trouble is the house simply won't sell. Strange place, this. If you ask me, I reckon it's that well that's to blame.”
As he said it, the chief cast a sidelong glance at the well.
But he couldn't bring himself to look at it directly. He had the look of a man peering at something he found deeply, viscerally frightening.
“About twenty years back, was it? The orchard widow's father up and started digging a well one day, all of a sudden. Said he'd seen something in a dream, or some such. Twenty years ago every house already had running water and a purifier—what in the world did he need a well for?”
The chief shivered as he spoke, yet he was clearly having the time of his life. From the sound of it, he'd told this story more than once or twice.
“There he was, digging all by himself. And lord, the earth just peeled away like he was a walking excavator. That old man had strength to spare, I'll tell you.”
No children were being born here, and no young people ever came—just another aging, fading country village.
Maybe talking to a newcomer was simply fun for him, because one rambling anecdote after another came pouring out.
“Anyway, he dug like a madman for days on end, night after night—and would you believe it, water actually came up. Amazing, right? And here's the stranger part: the water itself was a very odd sort…”
Strange water had come out of the well?
Just as I felt my curiosity stir, the chief doubled over with a hacking cough.
It was still winter despite the new year, so the cold was probably to blame.
“Whew, it's chilly, it's chilly. I'd best be heading in. Anyway—be careful around that well. People have fallen into it before. Us old folks shouldn't have to be cleaning up young people's bodies, y'hear?”
With that, the chief turned to go.
Then he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Say, this's been bugging me for a while now. That thing on your shoulder—it a live squirrel?”
“Pardon? It is a squirrel, but…”
━Keong-keong…!
“Well I'll be—a squirrel that barks like a dog. It's a big one too, and tame as can be. And I saw it chasing off bugs earlier. Any chance you could bring it by my place for a bit?”
Just like that.
As an active-duty awakener, I'd met all kinds of people over the years, and I knew how to read a room. This chief's real business had never been the haunted house at all.
There was a decent chance I'd end up living in this village, after all, so it seemed wise to score some points with the locals ahead of time.
“Of course. Where to?”
“Right this way, right this way. Five minutes on foot.”
“This Oinoi shall come along as well…!”
Pababat-!
Oinoi scampered after us too.
The chief gave Oinoi a subtle once-over, then asked, almost casually, “Reminds me of my granddaughter. A nymph, you say?”
He seemed far less awed by nymphs than I'd expected.
I'd figured he'd gape and cry, “A nymph?! Elves were strange enough, but this is even stranger…!”
But then, plenty of old folks have lived through so many strange things in their time that nothing much surprises them anymore. So I let it pass without much thought.
Anyway.
And so we followed the chief into his house.
It was a very solidly built home. There was a TV bigger than my outstretched arms, and no fewer than two refrigerators.
━Keong-keong…!
Sasasak-.
The moment Keongkeongi stepped inside and let out a great bark, something black that had been hiding under the refrigerator shot out and bolted straight out of the house.
It was a genuinely chilling sight.
“My goodness, would you look at that. Honey, did you see? The roaches cleared out in a heartbeat.”
“I saw. I finally feel like I can breathe in my own home. Good grief, the bugs have been getting worse for years…”
“Mwehehe, but this is only a temporary effect…! In this Oinoi's considered opinion, if you wish to keep the bugs from returning, a warding charm must be made…!”
Oinoi snipped a little of the fur from Keongkeongi's tail with a pair of scissors, wrapped it in a handkerchief, tied it to a string, and hung it at the entrance.
Apparently that would keep the insects out from now on.
“Marvelous, just marvelous. We shouldn't be the only ones, though—I'd better get one for the house next door, and the one across the street too.”
The chief marveled and marveled, effusive with admiration.
Frankly, I was being astonished by Keongkeongi's potential myself.
Wait a second—couldn't we make a fortune doing nothing but pest control, without even bothering with awakener work?
Of course, having clawed my way up to C-Rank through blood and sweat, I had no intention of giving up on hunter work—I wanted to see my career through to the end. But still.
“Oinoi, was it? The nymph. You like honey water? Have some before you go.”
An elderly woman who appeared to be the chief's wife held out a cup of honey water to Oinoi. "Madam of the house" suited her better than "grandmother," somehow.
“Aah…! It is exceedingly good…!” Oinoi declared, and drank it down.
Soon the madam was packing fruit and candy into a bag and pressing it into our hands.
We went from house to house driving out bugs, and came away loaded down with fruit, jerky, and every other kind of food the neighbors pressed on us. Oinoi, in visibly high spirits, declared, “This is a nymph-friendly village…!”
Keongkeongi, meanwhile, was furious.
━Krrr…!
Because we'd had to make charm after charm, the fur on his tail had been shorn down to a stub.
To appease the royally offended squirrel, I had no choice but to make him a promise.
“I'll buy you a nut assortment tomorrow. The kind with macadamia peanuts in it.”
━Keong-keong…!
Keongkeongi loved nuts, and being a creature of refined palate, he was especially fond of expensive peanuts. In any case, I made a full circuit of the neighborhood and came away with a mountain of food.
At least tonight won't be boring, I thought—and along with the thought came a faint flicker of doubt.
“They're awfully kind to outsiders.”
They say country folk are suspicious of strangers—and in my experience, it was true.
Every rural area I'd visited as an awakener had been wary of outsiders, and of awakeners in particular. But this village showed no such wariness.
No—that wasn't quite right. I was still being watched warily, but Oinoi wasn't. And once people set eyes on Oinoi, even the wariness aimed at me seemed to soften, if that made any sense.
Had her childlike appearance rubbed off on me somehow? Given me borrowed credit?
“Or maybe… the people of this village already knew about nymphs beforehand…”
I was turning half-baked hypotheses over in my head when, before I knew it, we'd arrived at the haunted house where we'd be staying.
I froze in surprise. The courtyard, which had been a jungle of weeds strung with cobwebs, was now immaculately tidy.
━Zeze!
“Aren't you working a little too hard?”
The emperor ant Angangi had even gone so far as to plug the hole in the courtyard wall with a large stone.
Maybe ants just love a hard day's work.
“Take a break now and then.”
I split an apple in two and offered him half, and the ant bobbed his head up and down vigorously.
Probably meant yes.
And so the hours slipped by.
“Aah, the stars are exceedingly beautiful tonight…! This Oinoi had assumed this strange world had no stars at all…!”
Oinoi was shouting up at the sky from the courtyard. And she was right—the heavens were ablaze with stars. The village wasn't as bright as downtown, I supposed, so the whole sky was on display.
So when exactly are the ghosts supposed to show up?
I waited around with that idle thought, and the hours passed, until it was getting on toward eleven at night.
Jiririt-.
Something strange prickled at the nape of my neck.
━Krrr…!
Keongkeongi, curled up asleep on a cushion nearby, bristled all over and reacted to something too.
This reaction.
Had a ghost actually appeared?
Anyone else might have thought exactly that.
But I, a tenth-year veteran awakener, felt something different.
“…No. This is a mana response. Faint, but unmistakable.”
Steadying my breath, I circulated mana through my body, from fingertips to crown. Along with the prickle of rising hairs, a vague mana presence began to sharpen and thicken, like a scent on the wind.
Tracing that mana to its source, I made my way to the edge of the old well standing in the wide courtyard.
I peered down into the dried-up well—and found myself stunned in more ways than one.
“This is…!?”