Silence of the Shard

The Wi-Fi Exorcism

The Uninvited Loudmouths:

Gloom was a traditionalist. He was a ghost who believed in the old-school values of haunting: a well-timed floorboard creak, a flickering candle, and a dramatic, soul-chilling moan. He had lived in the attic of the derelict "Blackwood Manor" for over eighty years, and in that time, he had enjoyed a peaceful, dusty existence. His biggest excitement was watching spiders build webs or practicing his "scary face" in a cracked mirror that no longer reflected his translucent, pale features. Gloom was shy, introverted, and quite frankly, he suffered from a mild case of social anxiety—which is a difficult trait for a professional haunter.

"Tonight is the night," Gloom whispered to a moth. He adjusted his tattered Victorian vest and practiced his translucent scowl. "I shall do a moderate moan. Not too loud, just enough to keep the neighborhood children away."

But Gloom’s plans for a quiet evening of light haunting were shattered by the sound of a screeching van pulling up the gravel driveway. A group of five university students—Ronnie, Sam, Jojo, Pinky, and the perpetually-clueless Jack—burst out of the vehicle like a pack of hyperactive squirrels. They weren't carrying crosses or holy water; they were carrying giant Bluetooth speakers, bags of spicy chips, and a karaoke machine.

"Yo! This place is epic!" Ronnie shouted, his voice echoing through the hollow halls of the manor. "Perfect for our 'Spooky Night' vlog! I bet there are at least ten demons in here."

Gloom, hiding behind a dusty curtain in the foyer, felt his translucent heart sink. Demons? He could barely handle a stray cat. He watched in horror as the group began to set up their equipment. Within minutes, the once-silent manor was blasting high-bass EDM music that made the ancient chandeliers rattle in their sockets.

"I have to do something," Gloom muttered, his knees shaking. "This is a violation of my haunting rights."

He decided to start small. He used his spectral energy to dim the lights. Usually, this sent people screaming into the night. Instead, Sam clapped his hands. "Whoa! Smart lighting! This house is tech-savvy. Pinky, did you set the mood on the app?"

"Not me!" Pinky shouted over the music, dancing with a glow-stick. "Maybe it's the 'vibe' of the house. It's so retro-chic!"

Gloom felt a headache forming—something he didn't even know ghosts could have. He tried his signature move: The Bleeding Walls. He used his energy to make a dark, red liquid seep from the wallpaper. It was supposed to look like blood.

"Guys, look!" Jojo pointed at the wall. "The walls are sweating! This humidity is crazy. Jack, stop complaining about the AC, even the house is melting."

"Wait," Jack said, dipping a chip into the 'blood' on the wall. He tasted it. "Guys, this isn't sweat. It’s strawberry jam! The previous owners must have been really into food fights. It’s actually pretty good. Needs more sugar though."

Gloom was horrified. Strawberry jam? That was his highest quality ectoplasmic manifestation! He felt insulted. His artistic integrity as a ghost was being shredded by a group of humans who thought a haunted house was a themed party venue.

Determined to reclaim his territory, Gloom decided to go for the big guns: The Full Body Apparition. He floated into the middle of the living room, surrounded himself with a green, sickly mist, and let out a long, agonizing wail: "LEAAAAAAVE THIIIIIIS HOOOOOOOUSE!"

The music stopped. The students froze. Gloom felt a surge of triumph. Finally, fear! He prepared his most terrifying expression, eyes wide and jaw unhinged.

"Oh... my... god," Ronnie whispered, his eyes wide as he looked at Gloom.

"YES!" Gloom thought. "Run, you fools! Run before I—"

"IS THAT A HOLOGRAM?!" Ronnie screamed in excitement, lunging forward with his smartphone. "Look at the 4K resolution on this guy! The 3D modeling is insane! Is this a projector? Where’s the projector hidden?"

Before Gloom could react, Sam was poking him in the stomach. "It feels like cold air! Yo, they used dry ice and fans to make it tactile! This is some high-budget stuff. Jack, get the camera! We’re gonna be famous on t****k!"

Gloom tried to back away, but he was surrounded.

"Wait, look at his clothes," Pinky said, examining Gloom’s vest. "The 'distressed' look is so last season. And he looks so sad. Hey, little hologram guy, why the long face? Are you part of an AI emotional support program?"

"I AM A SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE!" Gloom yelled, but it came out as a squeak because he was being crowded by five smartphones.

"He talks! The voice recognition is a bit glitchy, sounds a bit like a squeaky toy, but the haptics are great," Sam said, trying to put a pair of oversized neon sunglasses on Gloom’s face. Because Gloom was semi-solid when he put effort into it, the sunglasses actually stayed on his translucent nose.

"Slay, hologram king!" Jojo cheered, taking a selfie with Gloom. "Post it with #GothGhosty. We’re gonna trend by midnight."

Gloom stood there, draped in neon sunglasses, surrounded by flashing camera lights and the smell of spicy chips. He realized with a sinking feeling that these humans weren't just unafraid—they were far more dangerous than any exorcist. They wanted to turn him into content.

He vanished into the floorboards, retreating to the basement, his dignity in tatters. But as he sat in the dark, he heard the muffled sound of the karaoke machine starting up. Someone was singing a very off-key version of a pop song.

"This is not over," Gloom whimpered, hugging his knees. "I will get my house back. I just need to find something humans are actually afraid of. Spiders? No, they probably keep them as pets. Tax audits? What's a tax audit?"

Little did Gloom know, the night was just beginning, and the students were already planning to give the "hologram" a makeover.

The Spectral Makeover:

Gloom sat in the darkest corner of the basement, leaning against a rusted boiler. He was still wearing the neon sunglasses Jojo had stuck on his face. He tried to take them off, but his translucent fingers kept slipping through the plastic. Every time he managed to become solid enough to touch them, the sheer embarrassment made him lose his concentration and turn back into mist.

"It’s an outrage," Gloom hissed to a family of spiders who were watching him with judgmental eyes. "I am a Blackwood ghost! My great-uncle once scared a stable boy into a three-day coma just by clearing his throat! And I... I am a #GothGhosty."

Upstairs, the house was literally vibrating. The students had discovered the manor’s old grand piano and were trying to play 'Baby Shark' on it. The sound was enough to make any spirit want to move to the afterlife permanently.

"If they won't fear the dead, they will fear the gross," Gloom decided, a wicked (but mostly desperate) idea forming in his mind. "I shall summon the 'Ooze of a Thousand Sorrows.' No human can withstand the smell of ancient, rotting spectral slime."

Gloom focused all his energy. He pulled from the dampness of the basement walls and the mold of the old pipes. He manifested a thick, green, bubbling slime that began to drip from the ceiling of the living room. It smelled like a mix of old gym socks and a trash can in the middle of July. It was his masterpiece of disgust.

He floated up through the floorboards, ready to witness the chaos. He expected screams of "Eww!" and a frantic rush for the exit.

Instead, he found Pinky and Jojo standing directly under the dripping green goo with small containers.

"Oh my god, Jojo! Look at this organic exfoliant!" Pinky squealed, catching a glob of the spectral slime on her finger. "It’s cold, it’s tingly, and look at the glow! Is this that new Korean snail-mucin mask people are talking about?"

"It smells like... 'Vintage Forest After Rain,'" Jojo added, sniffing the air with a look of pure bliss. "It’s so 'earthy.' Ronnie, come here! This house has a built-in spa! The 'hologram' must be part of some immersive luxury retreat experience."

Before Gloom could protest, Pinky had smeared a handful of his 'Ooze of Sorrow' onto his own translucent face. "Here you go, Ghosty-poo! You look a bit dehydrated. Let’s get you a glow-up."

Gloom froze. He was a ghost being given a facial by a group of college students using his own terrifying slime. "I... I am... melting," he whimpered.

"No, you’re just 'glass-skinning'!" Sam shouted, coming over with a ring-light. "Now, stay still. We’re doing a 'Before and After' transition for the vlog. Jack, hit the music!"

Jack started a high-energy pop song. Ronnie grabbed an old feather duster and started 'contouring' Gloom’s spectral cheekbones.

"Wait, his hair is so 1890s," Jojo critiqued, looking at Gloom’s messy, wispy hair. "We need to give him the 'E-boy' look. Someone find some scissors! Oh wait, scissors won't work. Ronnie, use the hair dryer!"

For the next hour, Gloom was subjected to the most terrifying ordeal of his eighty-year afterlife. They used the hair dryer (which blew his mist-body into a thousand different directions), they tried to 'tie-dye' his burial shroud with some leftover fruit punch, and they even put a backwards baseball cap on his head.

"You look fire, bro!" Ronnie high-fived the air where Gloom’s hand was. "You’re the first ghost with drip."

Gloom wanted to cry, but ghosts don't have tear ducts; they just leak more ectoplasm. He felt like a disgraced soldier. He looked in the mirror and saw a ghost wearing neon sunglasses, a baseball cap, and a face covered in green slime that now smelled like strawberry fruit punch.

"I have to find their weakness," Gloom thought frantically. "What do humans hate? What makes them run?"

Then, he saw it. Jack was sitting in a corner, staring at his phone with a look of absolute horror. "Guys..." Jack whispered, his voice trembling. "The Wi-Fi... the hotspot... it’s at one bar. And it’s flickering."

The room went silent. The music died. The laughter stopped. Ronnie, Sam, Jojo, and Pinky all whipped out their phones, their faces pale with a fear that Gloom had never seen before—not even in his best haunting days.

"No way," Ronnie gasped. "I haven't uploaded the t****k yet!"

"My i********: story is only 40% loaded!" Jojo cried.

"If the signal dies, we’re... we’re disconnected!" Pinky screamed.

Gloom blinked. He didn't know what 'Wi-Fi' was, but he understood the power of those invisible waves. He felt the 'energy' of the house—a faint, electronic hum coming from a small black box they had plugged into the wall.

"So," Gloom whispered, a genuinely scary smile finally appearing on his face. "The invisible string that keeps them happy. If I cut the string, I cut their soul."

Gloom didn't need to moan. He didn't need to bleed. He simply floated toward the router and began to 'phase' his cold, spectral body through it, creating a massive electromagnetic interference.

"NOOOOOOOO!" the students screamed in unison.

The Digital Apocalypse:

Gloom had finally found it—the Achilles' heel of the modern human. As he sat inside the router, vibrating his spectral essence to create a "Dead Zone," he felt a sense of power he hadn't felt since the Great Dust Storm of 1942. Upstairs, the manor had transformed from a party house into a scene of pure, unadulterated tragedy.

"It’s gone!" Ronnie wailed, holding his phone up toward the ceiling as if offering a sacrifice to the gods. "Zero bars! No 5G, no LTE, not even Edge! We’re back in the Stone Age, guys!"

"I can't refresh my feed!" Pinky sobbed, collapsed on a dusty sofa. "How will I know if my ex liked my photo? How will I know what's trending? I feel... I feel invisible!"

Gloom chuckled, a dry, raspy sound. This was better than any moan. He watched through the floorboards as the five students wandered around the room like zombies, their faces illuminated only by the "No Connection" icons on their screens. For the first time that night, they looked truly terrified.

"Maybe we should... talk?" Jack suggested tentatively.

The room went dead silent. The other four stared at him as if he had suggested they eat dirt.

"Talk?" Sam whispered. "Without emojis? Without stickers? Just... with our mouths? That’s disgusting, Jack."

Gloom decided to turn up the heat. He didn't just want them bored; he wanted them gone. He began to whisper into the silence—not scary whispers, but the most annoying sounds he could think of. He mimicked the sound of a low-battery alert. Bloop. Bloop.

"Is that my phone?" Ronnie jumped. "No, it’s at 80%. Where is that sound coming from?"

Gloom then mimicked the sound of a dial-up modem from the 90s. Screee-chk-rrr-ding!

"The house is making weird noises," Jojo said, her voice trembling. "Is it... is it the ghost? Is he mad because we gave him a makeover?"

Gloom seized the moment. He floated up, still wearing the backwards cap and neon sunglasses, but he channeled his darkest energy into his voice. "THE CLOUD... IS... FULL!" he boomed. "YOUR SUBSCRIPTION... HAS... EXPIRED!"

Pinky let out a blood-curdling scream. "No! Not the subscription! I just renewed my premium account!"

But instead of running away, the students did something Gloom hadn't anticipated. They didn't flee in fear; they entered "Survival Mode."

"If we can't get a signal, we have to find the source of the interference," Ronnie said, his eyes narrowing with a dark, desperate determination. "It started when that hologram guy went into the floor. He’s a 'Smart Ghost.' He’s glitching our tech!"

"Let’s get him!" Sam shouted.

Gloom’s eyes went wide. Wait, what?

Suddenly, the five students weren't partying anymore. They were hunting. They grabbed flashlights and broomsticks. Ronnie even grabbed a vacuum cleaner, probably thinking it worked like a Ghostbusters pack.

"Come out, Ghosty-poo!" Pinky yelled. "Give us back our bandwidth or we’ll factory-reset your soul!"

Gloom retreated further into the basement, but they were right behind him. They were surprisingly fast for people who spent most of their time sitting down. He tried to phase through a wall, but Jojo threw a bag of flour at him. The flour coated his spectral form, making him solid and visible.

"There he is! The Flour-Ghost!"

They cornered him near the old boiler. Gloom was trapped. He was covered in white flour, wearing a neon cap, sunglasses, and smelling like strawberry-scented "Ooze of Sorrow." He looked less like a spirit of vengeance and more like a baker who had lost a fight with a disco ball.

"Look, we don't want to hurt you," Ronnie said, holding the vacuum nozzle toward Gloom’s face. "Just stop the interference. Let us upload the video, and we’ll leave you in peace. We’ll even give you a shout-out in the credits."

"I... I don't know how to stop it!" Gloom squeaked, his social anxiety peaking. "I'm just a ghost! I don't even know what a 'video' is! I just want to sleep!"

"He’s lying!" Jack shouted. "He’s a gatekeeper! He’s hoarding the bits and bytes!"

Just as Ronnie was about to turn on the vacuum cleaner, the manor’s old copper pipes began to vibrate. A deep, tectonic rumble shook the floorboards. This wasn't Gloom. This was something else. Something much older and much, much angrier.

A cold, black wind blew through the basement, extinguishing their flashlights. The temperature dropped until their breath turned into mist. From the shadows behind the boiler, a massive, towering figure emerged. It was ten feet tall, draped in heavy iron chains, with eyes that burned like dying stars.

"WHO... DISTURBS... THE... ANCIENT... SILENCE?" the entity roared.

Gloom fainted (or the spectral equivalent of it, which is basically turning into a puddle of fog). It was the Master of the Manor, the original owner who had been dormant for centuries.

The five students stood frozen. Ronnie looked at the ten-foot-tall demon, then at his phone, then back at the demon.

"Whoa," Ronnie whispered. "Is this the Boss Fight? Pinky, tell me the camera is still recording!"

The Ancient Master of the Manor stared at the group of humans. He prepared his most world-shaking, soul-crushing curse. But before he could speak, Jojo stepped forward.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ancient Demon Guy," Jojo said, holding up her phone. "You're blocking the light. Can you move a bit to the left? The 'haunted' aesthetic is great, but your shadow is ruining my lighting."

The Demon’s jaw literally dropped. He had been a terror for three hundred years, and he had just been asked to move for "better lighting."

The Grand Finale of Cringe:

The Master of the Manor, a towering entity of shadows and rusted iron, was having a serious existential crisis. For three centuries, his name had been whispered in terror. He had cursed bloodlines and haunted the dreams of kings. But now, he was standing in his own basement, being shushed by a girl in a crop top because his "negative aura" was "clashing with her aesthetic."

"I AM THE CONSUMER OF SOULS!" the Master roared, his voice shaking the foundations of the house.

"And I’m a Gemini, we all have bad days," Jojo replied nonchalantly, adjusting her ring light. "But seriously, can we talk about your skin routine? That 'undead grey' is so matte. Is it charcoal-based?"

The Master looked at Gloom, who was still a puddle of fog on the floor. "GLOOM... WHAT IS THIS? WHAT MANNER OF SORCERY IS THIS?"

Gloom reformed into his flour-covered, neon-sunglass-wearing self. "Master, I tried to tell you! They don't fear the dark! They don't fear the cold! They only fear... the 'Low Battery'!"

Ronnie, meanwhile, had walked up to the Master and was inspecting the heavy iron chains draped over his spectral shoulders. "Yo, these chains are heavy duty. Are they real iron or just high-quality spray-painted plastic? If we could get a sponsorship with a hardware brand, we could totally sell these as 'Haunted Gym Equipment'."

The Master of the Manor let out a sound that was half-scream, half-sob. He realized that his ancient powers were useless against a generation that viewed everything through a five-inch screen. He tried to vanish into a cloud of black smoke, but Sam chased him with a vacuum cleaner.

"Wait! Don't go! We need a reaction shot for the 'Epic Prank' finale!" Sam yelled.

At that moment, the Wi-Fi router flickered. The interference Gloom had caused finally subsided as his energy drained from the stress.

"THE SIGNAL IS BACK!" Pinky screamed, her voice reaching a pitch that even the ghosts found painful. "Five bars! 5G is live! UPLOADING NOW!"

The basement transformed. The five students immediately lost all interest in the ten-foot-tall demon and the flour-covered ghost. They huddled around their phones, their thumbs moving at lightning speed.

"Done! It’s live!" Ronnie cheered. "In five minutes, the whole world is gonna see the 'Hologram Makeover' and the 'Ancient Chain-Guy'."

The Master of the Manor looked at Gloom. For the first time in centuries, the two ghosts felt a bond—the bond of two introverts whose home had been invaded by the loudest people on Earth.

"Gloom," the Master whispered, his voice now small and defeated. "We cannot stay here. If they post that 'video,' more will come. They will bring 'vloggers.' They will bring 'influencers.' They will bring... 'Tourists'."

Gloom shuddered. The thought of a thousand Ronnies and Jojos walking through the manor with selfie sticks was more terrifying than any exorcism. "What do we do, Master?"

"We do the only thing a sensible ghost can do in the twenty-first century," the Master said, grabbing Gloom’s translucent hand. "We move to the countryside where there is no fiber-optic cable."

With a final, dramatic (and slightly pathetic) puff of smoke, the two ghosts vanished. They didn't just hide; they left the Blackwood Manor forever, seeking a quiet cave in the mountains where the only 'waves' were from the wind, not the Wi-Fi.

Upstairs, the students were celebrating. Their video was already getting thousands of likes.

"Wait," Jack said, looking at the screen. "People in the comments are saying the CGI on the big guy looks 'too realistic' and it's 'definitely a deepfake'."

"Let them talk," Ronnie grinned, packing up his gear. "The engagement is through the roof. Let's go get some burgers. This place is starting to feel... empty. Like it's lost its 'soul' or something."

As the van pulled away from the gravel driveway, Blackwood Manor stood silent once again. But it wasn't the peaceful silence Gloom had loved. It was the silence of a house that had been thoroughly "vlogged."

In a distant, remote cave miles away, Gloom sat by a small, non-spectral campfire. He took off the neon sunglasses and sighed.

"Master?" he asked.

"Yes, Gloom?"

"Do you think... do you think they'll find us here?"

The Master looked at his own translucent hands. "Only if we're in the background of someone's 'Hiking Reel,' Gloom. Only if we're in the background."

Gloom huddled closer to the fire, realizing that in the modern world, the only way to be truly "dead" was to stay "offline."

The Power of Perspective

The story of Gloom and the students shows us that fear is often a matter of what we value. For the ghosts, fear was about tradition and silence; for the students, fear was about disconnection.

"The world is changing, and what used to be 'scary' might just be 'content' to someone else. Don't be a 'Gloom'—don't let the noise of the world change who you are, but also, don't be so caught up in your 'screen' that you miss the magic (or the ghosts) right in front of you."

The End

Akifa,

The Author.