This is the first draft of the game that became <a href="https://wolfandvowel.neocities.org/The_Ghost_Chime.html">The Ghost Chime</a>.
[[begin|waking]]You didn't make the windchimes. You don't think anyone living knows how. But you know how they work:
When the wind blows in from the ocean, they stay silent.
But when a ghost calls in the forest, they chime with its voice.
[[And you've heard this voice before.|thinking]]Some deaths are bound to leave ghosts behind. Refugees killed by bandits, or bandits killed by their fellows: you're familiar with those. Village folk not ready to leave their families behind, too.
But this ghost wasn't killed by betrayal or injustice. And she was a traveler, with no family to tie her here.
It's her voice that's singing, though.
So there's something she's left undone... [[and no one to help her but you.|call]]You gather your things and slip out into the night, to look for her...
[[where she died.|cliff]]
[[where she was headed.|forest]]It isn't a long walk to the ocean. The woods are low and scrubby here, more thicket than trees, and the waning moon lights your way well enough. Soon the dirt path gives way to grainy beach beneath your feet, and your ears are filled with the sighing of the waves.
The ghost isn't here -- not the ghost you're looking for. You know that at once.
But three ghost dogs stand sniffing at the ground just where she died, and when they look up, [[you can feel their hunger.|dogstory]]You turn away from the coast and walk into the shadow of the trees. They grow taller, their leaves denser, the farther you get from the ocean, and the air is thick with the scent of resin.
She would have reached this winding path if she had lived to continue south. You listen for her voice, but all you hear is the chirring of cicadas.
Or -- not all. Behind you, a hunting howl rings out, one dog's voice quickly joined by others.
While you've been looking for one ghost, [[it seems others are hunting you.|dogstory]]There was a wealthy man who kept a house not far from here, to retire to when the city grew too hot or too dull. Being wealthy, he had the house stocked with the best of everything, and he kept three large dogs to guard it.
When the fighting began in the city, and he hurried back with his servants to protect his investments, he left the dogs behind.
You twice tried to feed them, before they starved. If you had been able to come close enough, you could have broken the lock on the door and let them free. But their muzzles were long and narrow enough to fit through the bars of the iron door, and they snapped and snarled with real fury, even when their ribs poked through their fur, even when they could barely stand.
Their ghosts bay and snarl at you now, [[and you know you cannot run.|dogs]]If there were only one, you could banish it, but in the time you took care of the first, the others would tear you to pieces.
If hunger could hold ghosts in this world, there would be no room for the living. And though there's hatred in their eyes, it's impersonal: their master taught them to hate everyone except himself.
You saw them occasionally, when they were alive: fawning at their master's feet and snapping at everyone else. Vicious as they are, they loved him.
And they waited for him, loyal and starving, and he never came.
In the last moment before they fall upon you...
[[you rage against their master.|rage]]
[[you grieve that their love was so poorly repaid.|sorrow]]They were his victims, as much as the villagers he cheated or the servants he terrorized. Anyone who came within his power, he used or broke or discarded, and you hope he still lives, so that he may return to his country house one day, and be torn apart by the ghosts of the dogs he taught nothing but hunger and hate.
If this is to be your death, [[let that be your dying curse.|dogfriends]]They could have been good dogs. They tried to be. But the man who raised them measured their loyalty by violence, and so in their devotion they grew every more angry and fearful, until they would not make peace with a stranger even to save their own lives.
You can taste the confusion underneath their bloodthirst, the doggish guilt and worry. Why did their master never come back? What did they do wrong to so displease him?
When they still lived, you could not explain to them that their master did not deserve their love, that the fault was never theirs. When they have killed you, will they drink in that understanding along with the heat of your blood?
If this is to be your death, [[let that be your dying wish.|dogfriends]]You've never been sure how much ghosts can read from the souls of the living. With human ghosts, you are lucky if you can communicate even with words.
But in the moment before they lunge, the dogs stop.
When they close the last distance between you, it is only to nuzzle fiercely at your hands.
[[That's how you know you have been heard.|searching]]The dogs turn willingly to a new hunt, leading you towards the ghost you seek. They run swiftly ahead through the forest, then double back to press at your legs with cold, insistent unflesh.
*Hurry, hurry,* they say without speaking. *Just ahead, just ahead.*
And then, in a gleam of moonlight, you see her: the proud, ragged figure you saw fall to her death without so much as [[learning her name.|attack]]She springs at you, as furious and desperate as the dogs were just moments before. But easier to calm, you hope, offering the only possession she carried besides her clothes: a child's doll, worn and well-loved. Whether it was hers or belonged to someone she cared for, it's the only thing you can think of that might [[tie her here.|unappeased]]Her hands are clutching claws, and though you think she only means to take the doll, she cuts your palms to ribbons in the process.
You bite back your cry of pain, but there is no stopping the smell of blood. It sets a terrible light in her eyes, a desperation that might be hunger or fear, or both.
Whatever the case, you are likely to end up [[just as dead.|remember]]You noticed her only because it was so strange to see someone you didn't know on the little shoreside path rather than the inland causeway. You were digging for oysters when you happened to look up and see her there, striding along the edge of the cliff above the beach. It took you a minute to realize she was singing.
You were never able to make out the words. The tune was unfamiliar, and her accent strange. Your attention caught on little things: the rasp in her voice she sang through, the dirt on her dress and the torn hem, the way she walked with nearly enough confidence to disguise her limp.
She couldn't have been from anywhere nearby. She must have been walking for days, and by the look of her, without anything like adequate supplies.
You wondered, afterwards, if it was hunger [[that made her slip.|speak]]She was just another refugee, hoping for something better and never to find it.
You didn't exchange so much as a word with her when she was alive, and yet as you gaze into her moonlight face, you realize that you haven't been able to forget her.
Why?
[[There was so much courage in her.|free]]
[[She was angry underneath it all, like you.|revenge]]"You made it," you tell her, needing her to know that, whatever else happens. "You got away. Whoever hurt or threatened you -- they can't have you now. [[You're free.|free2]]""You don't have to fade away," you tell her urgently, holding out your bloodied hands. "Drink and grow stronger. I don't know who drove you from your home, but you can rob them of their triumph. Revenge yourself. [[I give you my blood freely.|revenge2]]She stares at you, startled and still, and suddenly once again human.
She opens her mouth as if to speak, then stops. You see why a moment later: the dogs flow forward towards her like ocean fog, nosing at her hands and whining softly.
She looks down at the doll cradled in her hands, and then back to the dogs. She crouches, and they circle around her, pressing in tight.
[[When the wind blows through the trees, you're alone.|end]]She stares at you, stark and strange and terrifying.
You feel no fear, only an exhilaration that pounds in your veins, a wild kind of awe.
One moment, she's an arm's reach away, clutching the flyaway tatters of the doll. The next, she is lifting your hands to the hollow of her mouth.
[[She drinks.|revenge3]]You walk slowly back to your house, breathing in the salt air, feeling your heart beat slowly in your chest.
You sit a minute on your little porch instead of going in. Over the ocean, the setting moon paints a jagged path across the waves.
Above the door, the windchimes hang silent.
But you remember the song.You are a little surprised to come back to yourself, lightheaded but still living.
The echo of a wild howl rings in your ears, but both dogs and vengeance-ghost are gone.
You realize, as you climb to your unsteady feet, that [[the woods have gone silent.|end]]You wake up in the night with a feeling of something unfinished.
It's dark, except for the blurry shapes that moonlight casts on the wall. The air is warm and still, only disturbed by the humming of insects. You aren't sure at first what woke you.
[[Then you hear it again.|chimes]]