The moon was especially bright tonight. Its fluorescence crept through the hollow windows of his stone hut, chasing away the shadows that crept within. The occasional bog noise could be picked up, be it the croak of an exceptionally boisterous frog, or an acute gust of swampy air blowing past - though all was relatively quiet. Perfect sleeping conditions, they were.

One could say that tonight was perhaps even too quiet.

Turbulent snores erupted within the back of the slumbering guardsman’s throat, forcing themselves out in rank-smelling breaths. The cool room was infused with the faint aroma of canned peaches, in addition to the putrid breaths Leroy expelled in his stupor. His eyelids had collapsed hours ago, meaning that the current hour was likely one of the early morning. His conscious sat in a deep state of dormancy.

Click.

A bulb flicked on somewheres within environment, its radiance gingerly invading the relaxing backdrop. A low electronic hum became the latest addition to the list of white noises that made up the setting. Following a time period of a modest amount of seconds, neon lights of red, green, and yellow abruptly bathed the once-torpid hut with their illumination.

Amber hues gradually revealed themselves amidst the whole ordeal, suddenly languishing into a wince whilst the lights first turned on. Once the realization of what was happening hit him with the force of a barreling semi-truck, Leroy’s tired eyes darted open as he quickly sat upwards.

"Fuck."

The commotion’s source was the spectre that made a home out of his jukebox, and any second now, it would-

”♪ WHOA! I FEEL GOOD!”

”Not again.”

At a volume that was amplified louder than usual, the musical piece of hardware spontaneously began playing James Brown’s ‘I Got You’. Last time this had happened, it was early November, just after the ghosts ended their month-long invasion on Tanglewood. The male thought that he’d seen the last of this spirit. Evidently, and unfortunately, that was not the case.

”♩I KNEW THAT I WOULD, NOW.”

Augmenting the present issue to a higher degree, the spectre must have manipulated the machine’s lights, as they were appearing way brighter than they should be.

”This is not good,” he declared, before bolting out the building’s door and chanting, ”It ain’t my fault! It ain’t my fault! It ain’t my fault!”

It was not his fault.

"I said it ain’t my fault, and I mean it!" a frantic Leroy retorted to the doecat. The voice of another rang quietly in the raucous jukebox’s midst, its words scarcely palpable. Leroy caught the captain’s accusing gaze as she came into view, watching hectically as his superior implicated that he was somehow behind this. To that absurd claim, Leroy riposted, ”The only thing I’m guilty of is not being guilty!”

The wolfhound’s feelings were quite hurt by the ladies’ immediate jump to placing the blame on him. Yeah, this was something he would totally do, and it was his jambox that lived inside of his home, thus their assuming was perfectly justifiable. But still, it hurt.

Leroy’s large rump sat itself atop the moist morning mud, drab furs collecting dirt and grime. His head wearing an expression of unease, which was infested with traces of puzzlement. Thoughts and theories around solving the present dilemma began sprouting within his skull, though the bulk of them ended in a  busted jukebox.

”Think my house is haunted”, he let them know through a half-shouting tone and a somber stare, ”’cause it wasn’t me who did this.”

Amber headlights switched their focus on the individuals to the stone hut. They visualized the poltergeist dancing wildly on the inside of the neon-adorned hardware, fucking up the wires and blowing fuses. They squinted angrily at the fact that there was a mischievous phantom ruining one of Leroy’s most prized possessions.

”Anyone here know how to deal with a ghost like that?”, the unusually-mild guardsman asked asudden, ”’cause I’m outta ideas. And, if we don’t think of something fast, I’m gonna have an angry mob at my doorstep.”