Chapter 9: The Ghost in the Hallway.
"Kee kee kee!"
The high-pitched, frantic screech of a startled monster echoed through the narrow confines of the eighth-floor landing as Jacob cleared the final few steps.
When he reached the bottom, he found that his two original goblin skeletons had already managed to pin a lone, scrawny goblin against the cold concrete wall, their bony fingers digging into its green shoulders like iron clamps.
The creature was struggling vigorously, its clawed feet kicking out at the empty air and its yellow eyes bulging with a desperate terror as it realized it was being held by the animated remains of its own kind.
SWISH!
Jacob didn't hesitate for even a single heartbeat, his arm blurring into motion as he launched one of his kitchen knives across the short distance.
The steel whistled through the air, finding its mark with the terrifying accuracy granted by his new passive senses.
The blade buried itself deep into the goblin's left eye socket with a sickening, wet splattering sound.
The goblin's body went instantly limp in the skeletal arms of his servants, its frantic struggling ceasing as the light faded from its remaining eye, leaving nothing but a slumped, green carcass.
As the body hung there, between the two skeletons, Jacob didn't feel the least bit of relief; instead, his heart began to hammer even harder against his ribs.
He knew the layout of these hallways far too well, and the high-pitched ruckus the goblin had managed to kick off before its death was loud enough to alert every living, or unliving thing on this floor.
In the heavy silence that followed, he could almost feel the vibration of movement through the floorboards, a sign that the dinner bell had just been rung for whatever else was prowling the eighth floor.
"Come forth," Jacob ordered, his voice low and steady as he directed his will toward the fresh corpse.
The response from the system was instantaneous, and he watched with a mixture of fascination and grim satisfaction as the goblin's flesh began to blacken and wither at an impossible speed.
The skin sloughed off like wet paper, dissolving into a dark mist until a third set of ivory bones stood upright, its empty sockets igniting with the signature red glow.
With this addition, the number of skeletal soldiers under his direct control had officially risen to three, giving him a slightly better chance of holding a defensive line in the cramped corridors.
Knowing that his current armory was limited, Jacob reached into the makeshift belt at his waist and retrieved three of his remaining blades. He handed them over to the goblin skeletons, who took the handles in their bony grips.
Having armed his vanguard, he stood perfectly still for a second, his head cocked to the side as he strained to listen for the inevitable response to the earlier commotion.
Patter, patter, patter.
The sound of hurried, light footsteps began to drift toward him from the far left end of the hallway, growing louder and more numerous by the second.
Jacob knew he didn't have much time to prepare a proper battlefield in the open, so he gestured frantically for his undead to follow him as he retreated into one of the nearby studio apartments.
He eased the door shut until it was only a tiny sliver open, allowing him to peer out into the hallway while remaining shrouded in the shadows of the room's entryway.
Only a few moments after he had concealed himself, four goblins rounded the corner of the hallway.
They moved hurriedly, their long ears twitching, unlike the others he'd met before, these ones were armed with crude wooden clubs dragging across the carpet as their eyes vigilantly scanned their surroundings for the source of the noise.
They didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary at first upon arriving.
The pack made their way forward, their eyes glancing about as they approached the spot where their comrade had just been slain.
They walked right past the door where Jacob and his small army were hiding, their focus entirely drawn toward the dark, viscous pool of goblin blood that had splattered across the floor during the earlier struggle.
"Kekeke?" one of the goblins muttered, poking at the blood with the tip of its club.
"Keee?" another responded, tilting its head in confusion as it realized there was plenty of blood but no body to be found.
They all glanced at each other, chattering rapidly in their harsh, common tongue as they debated what could have possibly happened to their missing force.
They were so engrossed in their own confusion that none of them noticed the door behind them creak open just a fraction wider.
That was when a silent, gleaming blade pierced through the neck of the goblin at the rear of the pack, entering just below the jawline and severing its vocal cords before it could even let out a whimper.
"Keee?!" The remaining three gasped in unison, their large eyes widening in horror as they watched their comrade collapse to the floor in a heap with blood gushing out of its throat.
Their heads snapped around to see Jacob standing in the middle of the hallway, a smug look etched onto his face as he deliberately caught their gaze.
" Hahaha, I can't believe you fools fell for that. Smelly little shits aren't you?" He openly mocked the three.
Before they could lung forward in a vengeful rage, he turned on his heel and began to sprint back toward the stairwell.
"Kekeke!" The three goblins cursed at him with shrill, piercing shrieks, their faces contorted in a concentration of malice as they gave chase with reckless abandon.
They were so focused on the retreating back of the human that they didn't even consider the possibility of a trap until it was far too late.
The instant the trio of monsters sprinted past the open door of the room he had originally been hiding in, four dark silhouettes leaped out from the shadows directly behind them.
The goblins felt a sudden, freezing wave of dread overwhelm their senses, a primal instinct telling them that death was closing in from their blind spot, but the speed of the attack left them with no time to react.
Two of the skeleton soldiers lunged as one, their stolen kitchen knives plunging simultaneously into the skull of the first goblin.
A third skeleton caught the second goblin by the throat from behind, driving its blade deep into the base of the creature's neck and severing its spine before it could even raise its club.
The fate of the last goblin, however, was the most grisly and absolute of them all.
The lesser ghoul woman had pounced on it with the ferocity of a starving panther, her weight pinning the small creature face-down against the floor before it could even turn around.
Without a moment of hesitation, she leaned down and took a huge, jagged chunk of flesh from the back of its neck in one savage, bone-crunching bite.
In the blink of an eye, the entire floor had fallen silent once again, all three goblins having been extinguished in a matter of seconds.
*******
Jacob had come to a stop and sprinted back the moment he heard the brief, muffled death throes of the monsters, wanting to ensure the area was secure.
However, as he rounded the corner and looked down at the scene of the slaughter, a deeply disturbed look emerged on his face.
He stood there, frozen in place, watching as the brunette woman he had raised as a ghoul began to devour the three goblin corpses, looking quite horrid in the act.
She ate like a beast that had been starved for months in a dark cage, her pale hands tearing at the green flesh with unnatural strength as she fed.
The sight was a brutal reminder that while she might look human and wore the clothes of the living, the thing following him was a monster and not a human. Nevertheless, his features returned to normal soon after.