Knowledge Rotten (Reworking)

[FennWenn]

At no point since he had stepped onto the premises had any ghost made itself known to him. Even so, there were all these little things that sent his skin crawling when he found them. The boy combed through the crooks and corners of the house, piece by piece. He ventured into rooms with ominous fungal growths on the ceiling, clambered up into unsteady wardrobes, and stuck his head under more spider-infested furniture.

That mysterious dripping sound was indeed a faucet, an old-fashioned pipework in the kitchen that leaked scummy brown water. Ick. Fenn grimaced and hastily plugged it up with a crumbling washcloth. It was starting to grate his nerves. Once that was taken care of, the fae took it upon himself to clamber onto the kitchen counters and inspect the cupboards. One cabinet was host to a jar of salt and a jar of noisome black mushrooms. The mushrooms had grown out of the jar to fill the whole of the cabinet, except for a wide circle around the salt. When he poked them with a finger, spreading a dapple of frost, they shrank away from that too. Wrinkling his nose, Fenn closed the drawer again, leaning away from the bitter smell that seeped from the mushroom jar. Ugh. He stuck his tongue out and pulled open the next cabinet.

A rotting skeleton greeted his sight. It sat curled up in an awkward position, stale bones leaned away in a manner suggestive of someone hiding, the neck snapped at an unnatural angle. Fenn blankly stared at the tattered clothing, which gave one the impression that the bones belonged to a woman. A very, very dead one. Darcy Clemonts? Or someone else? More black fungus festered from within the skull. Misshapen stalks bugged out of the eye sockets.

Holy mother of FUCK.

Fenn slammed the cabinet shut and bounded out of the room, his arms flailing in terror. Daugi bumped into him as he made his panicked exit. He bounced off of her bulk, landing smack-dab on his ass in the middle of the floor.

“Wuff?” The direwolf huffed and cocked her head down at her little charge, her ears flattening in an almost motherly concern, questioning this hasty retreat. With a sheepish trembling building up in the pit of his stomach, the boy reached up to hug her. It briefly smothered his heebie-jeebies under a facade of consolation, though not the rapid thudthudthud of his heart. Daugi made a deep grumble in the back of her throat and leaned gratefully into the embrace. She was being pretty well-behaved today, doing nothing more than sniffing uneasily at the grime and sitting down whenever Fenn stopped to look at something. Something about the atmosphere subdued her. Something about it unnerved her. Staggering back to his jelly-kneed legs, Fenn sighed and promised himself that she’d be rewarded for her patience later. He had just the thing to give to her.
But right now, it was about time to check the second floor. If only to leave that skeleton far behind...