Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This was his small world, heavy clogging purple mud that smelt like fish and bubbled with trapped pockets of even fouler smelling air. It was a fox hole. A two meter deep, one meter wide sanctuary from the hell of the out side. For the last 12 hours he had worked on this palace in the mud, knowing that soon the reinforcements would arrive and the link up would begin. Again. For now though there was peace and calm and mud, these were the quiet times, the lonely times, his happy times. In the dark, here in the mud, this was what made him happy. The war would come again, would rip and tear at him and if he lucky he might walk out again. Yet for now he would be alone. A simple word, alone. On his home world alone was death. Alone was impossible. Alone was the nightmare of the masses. Alone.
The day flares pumped high into the air and exploded deep over the wasted no mans land. This was routine, that thrice damned cousin to protocol. The half child of duty and the estranged never seen father to honour. This was the Guard.
From across the wasted grounds illuminated by pointless protocol a faint throbbing could be felt, a beat of tattoo that hit the base of the primordial brain. The pools of thick oily water jumped in strange unison, the air breathed thicker and hotter.
Sitting in his own world he knew that the Reaper was coming.
Whispers away from the Watchmasters had been doing the rounds for months, something, possibly the enemy probably something worse was in no mans land. It waited till the night, till the darkness was warped by the star shells and in the grey shadows it moved. It killed any one it came across and left a bloody mess - each time it killed it took a trophy, the skull of the victim. The helm and rebreather were always found nearby, the head never seen again.
What manner of evil this was changed depended on the teller and his audience, for some it was a crazed renegade, others the ghost of a butchered sanctioned psyker yet more said that a ghost of a loyalist Ogryn warped by the foulness of this place stalked this land.
For now even this misbegotten fear was not enough to ruin the feeling that he was alone...for now.

There are not nearly enough proper ghost stories in 40k.

Which is odd because there's tonnes of scope for it.

Although the unknown is always more fun to speculate on than the certain adversary is to write about. Fun to read too. Thanks.