A/N: For the Pokemon Horror Oneshot Challenge on the Pokemon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's on my profile if anyone's interested in Pokemon challenges/competitions). The minimum word count was 1000, so this makes the longest poem I've ever written...even with the breaks.

A Candle for a Company

There were scratches on the wall.

Long.
Raked.
Thin.

They weren't there when she passed,
they weren't there when she awoke

Five times in the night,
passing under the nocturnal light
of the Litwicks on her wall.

Their flames dancing with the shadows –
her path flickered ahead of her
and was gone

And the scratches on the wall
had a reddish glow.

She didn't know where they came from
or when
but suddenly, they had come

And she couldn't have been happier.

If she had known the future to come
she would run after
her Cottone:

At wits end
between the fire,
the darkness,
the captive wind
and his new and desolate home.

She had hoped he loved her enough
but he hadn't –
he'd left her for the wild

And furious,
hurting,
she'd turned her back –
she'd let him go
alone.

He'd return,
she thought,
it was just a little spat.

But no, it wasn't;
he never came back.

They brightened the place –
the Litwicks –
with their little candle flares

Better than the old wiring
ever could

And out came the rag,
and the dust-mop too

And slowly,
she polished her way through
the upper floors

With her path illuminated
by new friends.

She'd found the place
easily enough:
cheap, out of town
and with a high wind nearby.

Her old place
on the treetops
was gone, beyond repair.

It had sounded like a dream,
and maybe her fantasy
was not so far off…

An old, musty mansion
on top of a lonely hill

Could flourish
with shining bright halls
and singing Swablu on the rafters
and Cottone swarming all round

And Bellosom dancing
at the welcome door
and Bellsprouts rising
from lush garden beds
and Woopers slithering
in the mud –

Truth be told,
Litwicks were never on the list
but if they shed some light
on the gloomy hole,
who was she to complain?

The sun never shone.

The wind's whistles
were high-pitched cries of anger,
and pain.

She'd thought that when she fixed the cracks
that would change

But it didn't.

The first sleepless nights
she'd understood
and they'd traversed
with Cottone under the bed
with his little white balls
and her,
trying to pick them out
in the torchlight
and flick them back at him.

Cottone loved the wind
but not when it screamed
like a man possessed

And the sunlight
which endeared him all
to grow
found itself far from reach
and sight

And the lonely hill
only gave birth
to dismal weed.

It shouldn't have been depressing
but it was.

Something was killing the land;
something had already killed it

And it wasn't a heap of wood
she could fashion
into a palace
of a ball of string
into a dream-weaver
that chimed on the gentle breeze –

For there was no gentle breeze,
just the ear-splitting shrieks
that woke the dead.

The Litwicks were ghosts as well.

It frightened her, sometimes,
seeing them glowing on walls
in the dark.

They led her on a rope,
through halls, corridors,
nooks and cracks

Above ground.

Floating candles
on a wind locked out
of room

But it was just the dark at play:
a nature they couldn't hide

And eventually, things started looking up
as the walls finally changed.

She'd pulled down half the place
in the end –

She needed a place to stay
after all:
a roof above her head,
a bed, a kitchen,
and much else aside

– and built it up from scratch
with lighter colours, looser feels

And it was a bell
that chimed in the wind:

An oddity,
but when a world grew around it,
her fantasy land.

The Litwicks burnt the ground
at her command,
and then she scattered the seeds
and sprinkled them
with her Wailmer pail

And they sprouted
little heads of green
and red.

Her heart got louder in the night.

Silence screamed
when the wind gave its ceaseless howl
a brief respite –

The Litwick chanted
when the noise died down,
filling the space

Like a lullaby,
sending her to the land of dreams

But uneasy, fitful
doze

That awoke her
at first not-light.

She fixed the scratches
on the wall.

She knew she did.

They came back.

She fixed them again
and they returned,
carved even deeper.

She fixed them again,
filling, painting over –

They spread.
Moved down.
Got closer.
More sporadic.

Less straight.
Less even.
More…wild.

She pleaded with the Litwick
to guard her door
and they agreed.

The next morning she found them
in the town, dazed and confused,
and her door half-dissolved
with drops of acid
still drying
on her step.

She awoke to a cold sweat
and the stench of nausea
in her nose.

The Litwick sensed her distress
for they set the curtains alight
and she managed to sleep
the rest of the night.

That morning, when she awoke again,
she found nothing, save
the cinders of her curtains.

The Litwick were agate
she knew.

She didn't know why

But it put her on edge too.

Meanwhile, the walls
began to heal
with no new threats

And she moved upwards
once more.

The wind howled louder than ever
at her;
she'd learnt to block it out.

Her room was the last thing to go
but the first to be replaced:

One with large windows
on higher ground,
beckoning to the wind
and facing the moon
and the setting sun

But it was still dark,
and dreary,
and musty
and she couldn't understand.

The sun shown in the village.
The sun shown on the hill
when no-one was around

But the sun refused to shine
for her.

She wondered if she should
leave the place behind,
find a future elsewhere
and construct her dream-home

But the Litwick wailed a storm
that put the wind to shame
and she bent, just a bit.

A Litwick evolved
that night.

She followed them –
the Lampert and Litwick
carefully,
shivering in the cold.

The scrapes and scratches
followed after them

And last, her lagging heart
thumping its wayward tail
far behind.

She turned;
the shadows snuck up
and she screamed:

A loud shrill scream
that scurried the Litwick
to haste.

The hallway burnt
on their tails
as the Lampert led on

To be safe…

She breathed a shallow
sigh of relief
as the wind caressed her nose

Finally…

If only she could quell the shudders
in her frame

Then she could fully enjoy the peace.

The Litwick famly crowed
in triumph as a beaten Haunter
left the scene.