A/N: Hey everyone! This is my very first fic in a very long time ^.^; So I'm sorry ahead of time for any short comings! : P Umm... I'm always open for comments both good and *helpful* bad! So please enjoy and don't forget to R&R! It always helps!
Disclaimer: I don't own the fatal frame franchise : ( I really wish I did though I'd be rollin in the mula! 3 enjoy!
Chapter 0
Sent
The small room fell silent as the projector screen flickered to life onto the plain white wall on the far side of the room. The four onlookers shifted forward as the first slide developed before them.
Himoru Mansion
Scrolled across the screen in dramatic looking black letters, dragging a few fustrated sighs from the four onlookers. A girl stepped in front of the image, squinting slightly at the harsh light.
"So have you guys ever heard of it?"
The girl asked gingerly pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
"No," the only female onlooker replied with a slight bite of sarcasm, "but it sounds like another venture on the account of your painful obsession with anything Asian."
The girl standing in the front of the room sighed.
"Wait," one of the three male onlookers inched forward, "Yeah, yeah!" He stood from his chair and made his way to the front of the room.
"It's this big haunted mansion somewhere on the countryside in Japan, supposedly a few creepy rituals were held there, and one day one of them went wrong."
The anticipation in the room rose.
"But to bad it's F-A-K-E, it's totally just the setting for a video game."
He then sat back down and grinned up at the girl standing, giving her a reassuring thumbs up.
"Well thank you Troy for the introduction," with a small click the slide changed to a photograph. A long hallway, with sliding wooden doors came into view. The very first door had a rather lonely looking crane painted on it.
"This is supposedly a hallway from Himoru mansion, there plenty of alleged pictures," a few slides flew by, and then she stopped on one. It was very dark and difficult to make out. It seemed to be taken in a cross road between a few houses,it was also rather apparent the photographer was at quite a distance. But standing dead center seemed to be a white haze, floating just above the ground.
"And this one was given to my brother by one of the locals, he just forwarded to me in an e-mail, he said the guy seemed genuine enough."
"So why in the hell did he give your brother the picture?"
The second onlooker asked crossing his arms defiantly over his chest.
"I'm not to sure, and neither was my brother. He said the guy seemed really out of it."
She responded reaching for her glasses again.
"I have another question for you Carrie, why are you showing us this potential nonsense?"
The female onlooker said with a slight wave of her hand.
"I think going oversees for something like this will either give us some great credability-"
"If we find anything."
Carried rolled her eyes slightly and continued.
"Will give us some credibility and some good experience, if we are really planning to be a good journalist team, I think this would be a good place to start. We'd be thrown into unfamiliar territory and we'd have to survive."
"So let's say we did somehow find a way to financially support this venture, how long would we stay? What would we need? How would we document? With video? Sound?"
The female onlooker asked, standing from her seat and sitting on the table directly in- front of Carrie.
"Well," Carrie swallowed, pushing a few strands of her auburn hair behind her ear.
"A few weeks, first we'd need to get over the jet lag, then we would have to go to the outskirts of Tokyo and find the place."
"Wait, you don't know where it is?"
Finally the third male onlooker asked.
"I have a slight idea."
Carrie responeded dropping her gaze to the ground.
The entire room sighed and everyone returned to their seats.
"Look, if anyone can find this place it's us Hailey," she turned her attention to the female onlooker, "your one of the smartest people I know, if there is any lore on this place or the rituals that went on in this place I know you'd find them."
The female onlooker shook her head.
"Flattery is-"
"And Hunter if anyone can map this place out it's you, no one is as geographically knowledgeable as you, and Troy and Vince there is limitless data on this place I'm sure you guys can crack down and see what evidence is real and what is fake."
The room fell silent again.
"Come on before you shut it down why not just try it?"
The four onlookers exchanged glances for the next few moments.
"Have it your way Carrie, lets give this project two weeks, if it seems like we'll get some fruits out of our labor we'll continue, but if not we'll go on to the next one."
Hunter said standing from his seat.
Carrie looked over the rims of her glasses.
"Is that agreed everyone?"
Carrie asked taking a step towards the table.
"Me and Troy will get right on the evidence research after we finish up our papers on communications." Vince said grabbing Troy and pulling him into a head lock. Troy made some grunting sounds of approval.
"A large fraction of my professors are away on a convention to Prague, so I have nothing but time to myself for a whole week, if you would just give me a small list of the supposed rituals that took place in this Himoru Mansion, I'll tell you how much of them are fact." Hailey said giving Carrie a reassuring nod.
Then Hunter stood and ran his fingers through his dark brown hair.
"Unfortunatley I have a huge anthropology project due soon, but I'm pretty sure the museum I'm in has a Japanese exhibit, I'd be more then happy to ask around there."
"Good! So we'll have another meeting in three days, on Friday to see how everyone is doing, and please if anyone finds anything extremley important call me!"
She flicked the lights on and the plain looking meeting room came back to life. A whiteboard sat on the opposite side of the room, written across it in rather decorative and childish writing was 'Go journalism club we write about everything other then what your grandma wears under that night gown!... Oh wait we do that to... GO RYE UNIVERSITY!' and beneath that was five terribly drawn heads of the only members of the club.
"Hey," Vince said pulling the brown colored door in the front of the room open, "I totally forgot to ask you, do you think you can get your brother to re-scan the image? It's resolution is terrible, and it's like 1 by 1."
Carrie laughed and nodded her head.
"Yeah I think that was kind of my fault though," she scooped her laptop up in one arm and walked to the door, turning the lights off behind her.
"Oh, well when you get your brother I can come over and make sure he does it right."
Vince pulled the door shut behind her. She nodded and grinned.
"Sounds good! Him and I usually video chat at around midnight so you can come over to my dorm at like eleven thirty."
Vince gave her a thumbs up.
"Ok so in like 3 hours then, i'll see you then!" He turned away from her and ran up to Troy's side. The two stopped walking and Troy said something and the two burst into a sudden fit of laughter. Carrie rolled her eyes and smiled.
Children.
Carrie shuffled through her large bag for the set of keys that would open the brown door separating her from her dorm room. Sighing she dropped her head and lifted her fist to knock on the door. Before her hand made contact the door flew open.
"Carrie! Thank GOD!"
A tall blonde girl shouted pulling Carrie in by her arm.
'Oh god' she thought, 'who let her in?'
"Me and your roommate are going to a party tonight, and I was wondering if you could watch," the blond reached under the brown sofa a lifted a white cat from under it, "Gator for me? I pinky promise I'll be back before classes tomorrow afternoon!" The girl lifted her pinky up.
"How in the hell and why do you have a cat?"
Carrie asked looking at the now aggravated looking feline.
"We snuck it in yesterday! He was running from a big scary dog and we picked him up!"
Carrie shurgged her shoulders.
"I'm assuming by we you mean you and Amy?"
The blonde nodded and headed towards the door.
"Me and Amy are getting ready at my place, so you have the room all to yourself tonight!"
With out another word the blonde disappeared behind the brown door and left Carrie and Gator in the room behind.
"Oh hell."
The cat looked up at her and she looked down at him.
"Looks like it's just you and me tonight."
The cat gave a small meow in response and jumped up on the sofa.
"So what do cats eat?"
Carrie asked leaning over into the fridge. The cat then jumped onto the head of the sofa, staring intently at her.
"Umm... tuna?"
The cat curled up it's nose.
"No tuna? Ok turkey?"
The cat lowered it's head.
"Yeah I don't like that either, ummm...how about... Salami!"
The cats ears perked up and it jumped from the sofa.
"Come on we'll watch TV and eat!"
The cat followed her tentatively and sat next to her. She flipped through the channels, and handed the cat a slice of salami, then put a piece in her mouth. A few people ran across the screen in night vision and she stopped turning. Gator rubbed himself against her arm, and she quickly handed him another piece.
"I thought I heard something over there."
The man on the screen said looking directly at the camera, with a smaller camera in his hands.
"So slowly and quietly we are going to head over there ok Jim?"
The camera slowly shook up and down. The cameraman slowly drifted the camera over and the scene froze. A tall shadow towered over six feet in a dark doorway, and the scene faded.
"And when we saw this in our review of our material, you can only imagine how much it startled us, all of the claims that you told us about happened that night. We caugh 15 amazing EVP's, we had crazy readings on EMF's and every single person on the team had and experience. Mr. Greengier I must admit, this is one of the best places that I've ever investigated."
She felt Gator shake his head against her thigh.
"Oh what you aren't buying it?"
The cat then jumped onto her lap and rubbed its head on her stomach. She handed him another piece of salami and gave herself a piece and laid on her back, with Gator curled up on her stomach. Then sleep pulled her off to a dark dreamless rest.
Three solid knocks rattled the door and pulled her and Gator from their peaceful sleep. Quickly she jumped to her feet, careful to let Gator crawl under the sofa first.
"Who is it?"
She asked.
"It's me! Did you forget? It's already 11:30!"
Vince called from the other side of the door. She quickly pulled it open and shook her head.
"I'm so sorry I fell asleep."
She said rubbing her eyes and closing the door behind them. She quickly lifted her white laptop from her bag and placed it on the coffee table sitting between the sofa and the TV. She handed Vince the plug.
"Would you mind plugging this in for me over there?"
She asked. He took the plug from her hand.
"No problem."
He plopped back down next to her and leaned back in the sofa.
"God I'm so pooped."
He said lifting his hands above his head and yawning. She laughed and shook her head.
"This is what you guys get for waiting until the last second to do your work, we are juniors I would've thought you guys had gotten used to things by now."
They laughed and she typed in her password.
12 unread e-mails
flashed across the screen and she sighed.
"I hope these aren't from professors," she clicked the red 'X' button and clicked the video chat icon, "I'll just check them later."
"Carrie?"
Her brother's voice boomed from the speakers.
"God, Jet you look terrible."
His auburn hair was in curly tendrils around his face. His usual vibrant blue eyes had dimmed and his eyelids were red rimmed.
"When was the last time you slep-"
"Carrie, that picture I sent you, print out a copy and burn it and delete it off of your computer."
"Wait why? I just showed everything to the group, they agreed to start the research."
"Then print out enough for everyone to burn, and forget about researching this place ok?"
She narrowed her eyes.
"Jet, what's wrong?"
"Please Carrie just listen to me."
Gator jumped into Carries lap and lifted his paw onto the screen above her brothers shoulder.
"Gator get dow-"
Her brother immediately looked over his shoulder, and back at the camera. She froze and Vince leaned forward.
"Oh shit."
Vince whispered, quickly hitting two keys on her computer. The screen flashed white for a second.
"Carrie stay out of Japan, and do as I said, the man was telling the truth, it's not safe here please keep you and your friends out of this. Whatever is out here is out to kill."
The screen went fuzzy for a moment and gator pointed his paw again at the screen over her brothers shoulder. Her brother looked over his shoulder again and closed his eyes, facing the camera.
"Carrie tell mom and dad I love them... and I love you to."
The screen went black.
"Shit! Jet! Tell me what's going on!"
Silence.
"Your phone call him!"
Vince shouted quickly grabbing the laptop and pushing various buttons.
"Put it on speaker and on record, we need to know everything that's going on."
Vince said running next to her. She hit the '3' button and then talk.
Ring.
Ring.
Ri-
A loud otherworldly scream burst from the phone and a shouting from what sounded like her brother and another man, tore the room from silence. She dropped the phone and pushed against the wall.
"Oh my-"
Carrie placed her hand over her racing heart. Vince quickly picked up the phone.
"Jet! Jet! Yell out every thing you see if you hear me!"
Vince shouted into the phone.
They -l- ca-we- ru- wo-a-
The screaming grew louder.
"Shit, Jet please talk to me man!"
PLEASE DON'T Oh GOD THEY KILLED SERGE shh shh... just stay quiet
Vince quickly pressed mute on the phone.
"They are hiding, who is with them?"
Carrie choked, her heart was racing, and her held he breath.
"Carrie, Carrie! Please!"
"I-It was him his friend Serge, Anthony, and his girl friend who's from Japan Kim."
shh. shh. shh.
Jet's voice was low and hard to hear. Then footsteps grew near, then stopped, then grew distant. The phone went off.
Will call when safe it's me Ant and Kim Now Burn pics. DONT COME.
Came in a text a second later. Vince and Carrie stood still for a moment both wide eye'd. Then tears began to form in Carrie's eyes.
"Jet.."
A/N: I'm sorry about the slow burner first chapter! I should have the second one up really super soon! Please tell me what you guys thought! I know I'm not the best writer in the world and i'm always open to some pointers! 3 thanks for the read and please R&R!