Call of the Haunted

Vexshipping AU for the first round of the Yu-gi-oh! Fanfiction Contest Season 9 ¾.

Hope you enjoy the macabre-ness. :)

Bakura reeked like something dead and rotten. It made her want to vomit despite being a good few feet away, akin to how Anzu imagined the air would smell if someone overturned the entirety of the graveyard she had the misfortune of being a keeper of.

He was also sick, if the rattling, wheezing sounds that accompanied the puffs of steam from his breath meeting the winter air were good to judge by. Anzu felt awkward. She stood shifting from foot to foot partially inside house on the edge of the cemetery wondering how long it had been since the albino had been clean.

The usual gravekeepers were away for the week, but Anzu kept the place in relatively good condition, removing any weeds that dared to spring up from the sides of the paths and tending to the plants that were moredesired in and around the burial plots. She remembered to lock the gates during afterhours- though Bakura managed to sneak onto the grounds as per usual. Shining Hill was in a cheerful condition—as cheerful as a cemetery at gloomy dusk in winter could be. So what if some of the grave plots were scattered and some of the markers aged beyond legibility? Well, then you had the creepy teenage boy who always hung out there, too.

As wisps of snow began to drift down from the washed out gray sky Bakura curled his arms further around himself and hunched over at an angle that couldn't have possibly been comfortable for his spine or his diaphragm. He sat on top of the headstone that marked where a young couples' charred bodies had been laid to rest. Anzu had reprimanded him for the action a few times before, attempting to explain to him that using a monument dedicated to the dead as a chair was incredibly disrespectful. Bakura had only glared and hissed that if he made anyone uncomfortable they would tell him. Whatever that meant. After awhile she simply gave up and hoped that the deceased wouldn't hold any grudges.

The weather was starting to get awfully cold... Anzu could feel the temperature dropping and she wasn't even completely outside. She stared at Bakura's threadbare coat for a long moment before exhaling softly.

"Hey, Bakura," Anzu smiled a little when he lifted his head even as she internally balked at looking straight into his unnerving scarlet eyes. "Would you like to come inside?"

Bakura grimaced as though she had just said something revolting, causing her smile to falter a bit.

"No," he said curtly. She didn't miss the sickly rasp hidden underneath his accent.

"Why not? You'll catch your death out here." Probably not the best idiom she could have chosen, given the circumstances…

Bakura let out a hacking cough before glowering as if his condition could be blamed on her. "I'd rather be in the company of the people out here than with you in there."

Anzu shook her head and sighed, leaning against the doorframe. "You do seem to get along better with the departed."

"They don't talk as much," Bakura responded, tapping the headstone he sat on with the heel of one of his scuffed, worn out sneakers. "It makes them infinitely more likeable."

Then it became Anzu's turn to grimace and Bakura's to smile. Why did he always have to say disturbing sentiments like that..?

"Fine, you win. You can stay out here and freeze to death." She turned around, but then hesitated. In spite of her brisk words, she really didn't feel right just leaving him. "Bakura? I'm keeping the door unlocked. In case you change your mind or something."

Anzu was met with silence for a few seconds, then Bakura let out a grunt that she assumed was the only form of acknowledgement she would get.

She closed the door behind her and cut off the steady trickle of cold air that had been sneaking into the otherwise toasty little house. Lately the residence had become quieter than usual as a result of the other gravekeepers, the Ishtar family, being out. The three had taken a sort of impromptu vacation at the urging of Marik, who claimed that there was more to life than taking care of dead people. His siblings tagged along to make sure that he didn't get into any trouble, as he was prone to do most of the time, leaving Anzu to hold down the fort. They would be back the next day.

Her job happened to include either kicking out intruders or, as a rare exception for Bakura's case, inviting them into the house. She wasn't sure how she could go with the first option, really, since she wasn't exactly intimidating.

Anzu glanced out the window to see that Bakura still hadn't abandoned his post. She was about to mutter that he probably deserved it, but what came out was, "Poor guy..."

Wait, what? Anzu shook her head. He was the only one atfault. He wantedto be out there being miserable in the snow after she had offered him a ticket inside.

Of course, usually Rishid was the person that offered food and shelter to Bakura. He'd accepted the first without complaint and occasionally taken advantage of the second, but Anzu swore there was always an item missing from the house after he left. Ishizu's precious jewelry, and sometimes Marik's, which was even more precious if the teen's incessant whining about the loss was anything to judge by. Unless you counted his collection of gaudy purple robes or the rubber bands used to tie up the small amount of hair he had, Rishid didn't have much to steal, so he was left unscathed. Anzu also hadn't had anything taken from her yet, but she did occasionally find a white snake under her bedcovers the day after Bakura left. Cute.

Speaking of which, Anzu found that she stared out the window the entire time that she had been reminiscing and maintained steady eye contact with the object of her thoughts, who was giving her a reproachful look. She flushed before she found herself giving an awkward wave. Bakura shook his head before hopping off of the headstone and beginning to swagger towards the gate, though the dramatic effect was somewhat spoiled when he coughed a couple of times.

Oh, good. He was going home. Wherever that was.

Anzu felt a small stab of pity.

She watched him for a moment before it appeared that he misstepped and took a fall. Anzu winced when he hit the snow but expected him to recover right away and get back up.

She watched. A minute passed... then a few more. He didn't move.

It took less than that time for Anzu to dash out into the snow to kneel beside him.

Bakura managed to get on his hands and knees, pale fingers sinking into the snow as he wheezed, spitting up a thick glob of mucus. His hair covered most of his face but Anzu could still make out the saliva and phlegm sliding in streams from his blue-tinged lips.

"Bakura?" she reached for his shuddering shoulder tentatively only to have him cringe at her touch. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm just peachy, thanks for aski—" The acrid snarl was interrupted by another cough and a bubbly glob of red splattering onto what remained of the snow around his face.

"Oh my god," Anzu gaped. "Here, let me help you up."

A brief bit of struggling on Bakura's end ensued before he surrendered in a hacking, shaky mess. Anzu wrapped one arm around his waist and used the other to put one of his lanky arms around her shoulder, surprised that he weighed little to nothing. He leaned against her (involuntarily if his sour expression was anything to go by), trembling and wobbling on his feet. In addition to the saliva and phlegm, blood threaded into the mix as Bakura wheezed for air.

"Can you walk?" Anzu asked after a moment of having him stay in a rigid, hunched over position.

Bakura didn't answer except to spit out a mouthful of blood, than hiss under his breath, "Would you all just shut up?"

Anzu blinked. Bakura was directing his gaze somewhere over his shoulder, eyes hazy.
She decided he was just delusional when he muttered, "I'm fine, you blithering idiots, now leave me alone—" cough, cough "—no, I don'twant you to gut the girl—" cough.

"Bakura, stop trying to talk, you're just hurting yourself." Not to mention
creeping her out. "Come on, let's go inside."

Even after he consented with what Anzu decided was a sort of lopsided nod she had to drag him along for most of the way, stumbling at some points when he was overcome with coughing fits and nearly fell over. It took time and some pleading on Anzu's part for them to finally arrive at the house.

Bakura practically collapsed onto the bathroom floor once she had guided him to it. Anzu had to grab a hold of him by the shoulders before he face-planted into the tiles. It wouldn't do for him to break his nose on top of everything else… She maneuvered him into a relatively comfortable position on his side, wincing when he coughed up more blood.

…Now what?

"Symptoms, symptoms…" Anzu muttered to herself. Coughing, wheezing, shaking, spitting up phlegm and blood… "Do you have any chest pain?"

Bakura made a guttural noise that sounded a bit like a cross between a wheeze and a snarl.

"I'll take that as a yes," Anzu said after a moment.

She remembered something her mother did when she had colds as a child; put a humidifier in her bedroom to help her breathe more easily. The house didn't come equipped with a humidifier, but it had the next best thing.

Anzu went to the shower and turned it on maximum heat after making sure that the scalding water wasn't directed towards herself or her 'patient'. After a few seconds, steam began to billow in the room.

Bakura appeared to be calming down, even with Anzu pacing around him like a worried grandmother. The incessant coughing stopped when five minutes or so had passed to be replaced with faint, shuddering wheezing with every breath he took. His scarlet eyes were half-lidded for a time, then they slowly drifted completely closed.

Anzu stopped her pacing to consider what to do next. Well... he was in dire need of a good cleaning to both help with his illness and to get clean. Being unconscious, however, he wouldn't be able to administer this to himself. Anzu sighed. There was nothing else for it.

The coat came off surprisingly easily, and something fell out of each of the pockets. First came a lighter, then a pack of cigarettes.

Anzu gawked at them for a moment before lecturing the sleeping Bakura. "Well, it's no wonder you're so sick, you've been smoking for who knows how long. Idiot."

When examined she found that there were no cigarettes left in the package. It didn't come as a surprise that he had been especially irritable, since he was cut off. Come to think of it, she'd seen him smoke a couple of times before but never thought anything of it, and even now any scent of smoke on his body was mixed with the overpowering rankness of grime and dirt.

The grungy t-shirt wasn't as willing to be removed as his coat. Anzu practically had to peel it from his skin to the point that she was afraid she would tear one of them.

Halfway through this process something bony locked around her wrist. Anzu froze, fully prepared to let out a shriek before realizing it was just Bakura's hand and not a skeleton's (same thing, really).

"What are you doing?" he croaked. All of that coughing really did a number on his voice.

"Stripping you," Anzu said crisply despite the fact that she couldn't hide the dark red that colored her face at the implications. She followed it up by adding, "You need a shower. In case you haven't noticed, you smell. Really bad."

"No thanks."

"What do you mean, 'no thanks'? I'm taking off your clothes and you're getting clean whether you like it or not."

"No, you aren't," Bakura said more incessantly, fixing her with a weaker version of the glower he had directed at her earlier and tightening his grip on her wrist.

"What is your problem?" Anzu huffed before tugging his shirt up a bit more with her free hand.

...Oh.

"What is this?" she asked before grabbing ahold of the garish gold pendant around his neck that had been hidden underneath the shirt. It looked suspiciously like something Marik would wear. Sharp pendulums hanging from the centerpiece clinked as they struck each other.

"Before you ask, it belongs to me," Bakura spat before coughing again.

Anzu relinquished her hold on the necklace after it began to feel like he was going to snap her wrist in half but still gave him a disapproving stare. "Oh, really?"

He nodded, still glowering.

"Fine, I believe you."

Bakura wheezed something that vaguely resembled a laugh. "No, you don't."

Anzu frowned. She was never a good liar. Bakura looked to be something of an expert.

"Why should I believe anything you have to say?" she accused.

He couldn't seem to muster a reply beyond the bitterness in his expression growing more pronounced.

"That's what I thought," Anzu said as she pried his cold grasp from her arm. "I won't take it from you, but once the Ishtars get back you're going to have to return it."

Anzu left him alone in the bathroom while she made dinner after a small spat over whether or not he should have to bathe himself. Somehow she lost the argument by a landslide. Sad, considering her opponent was deathly sick. He probably wouldn't have any appetite-she certainly didn't after seeing him cough up so much blood-but cooking was something for her to do.

She heard him talking to himself again. Between the door and the sounds of cooking she couldn't make out the words, but it made her skin crawl nonetheless. Thankfully, after a while it inexplicably stopped.

It took nearly an hour and three cans of soup before she managed not to have it boil over or burn. Even then she could only salvage one portion. Maybe she should have taken that cooking class instead of a free-form dancing one.

Anzu opened the door to the bathroom holding a small cup of soup and announcing, "Okay, so I burned most of the batch, but this was what survi-"

She dropped it after taking a step into the room.

Red decorated the white room in thick, half-dried pools, and was splattered haphazardly on Bakura's body. It wasn't from his mouth this time. There were multiple puncture wounds in his chest, though they didn't seem as effective at doing him in as the slashes on his left arm right below his shoulder. And he was most certainly dead, as confirmed when Anzu's shaking hand touched his still pulse. His face seemed a little more peaceful in death, though that was of small comfort to her.

The object used to inflict all of the damage, ironically, was the necklace, as evidenced from the blood sliding off of the pendulums. Anzu picked it up and swallowed before noticing something written messily in blood on an otherwise clean piece of tile.

TAKE CARE OF THEM

There was a scrawled arrow pointing to where the gold object had been laying. He must have miswritten "them" instead of "it" when referring to the necklace.

She stared at the words and tears inexplicably began to prick at her eyes. "God, Bakura, you're so messed up..." Was so messed up...

Anzu avoided the blood and the corpse in her hasty exit, shutting the door to the bathroom behind her and leaning against it. The stench of blood was more than capable of sliding out from between the cracks. She couldn't stand to bury him even if she wanted to, not yet. And besides, he apparently didn't want her to either. Then what did he want? Cremation, maybe?

Anzu got a few steps away from the door before realizing that she still had the necklace in her hand. There was blood dripping off of the pendulums in steady streams. It made her sick to think of going to clean it off in the bathroom, and it would haunt her memories even if she simply used the sink in the kitchen. Wiping it off on her clothes was out of the question.

So she came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to clean it off in the snow. It required going outside in the cold weather and risking getting as sick as Bakura (was) but Anzu couldn't quite bring herself to care. She went out dressed as warmly as she was when retrieving Bakura, that is to say a t-shirt and jeans, and dunked the pendant into the snow next to the doorstep. Icy cold bit at the exposed parts of her body hungrily and snow settled in a cloud over her body in spite of the fact that she had only been out for a few seconds.

The red slid off in diluted pinkish streams. She couldn't stand to look at it for too long, so she directed her gaze at the ground.

Only to immediately wish that she hadn't.

A hand, bluish black with frostbite, was reaching up out of the snow, shortly followed by another. Anzu's jaw dropped and she blinked several times. It was a hallucination in light of seeing a dead body. She was tired and traumatized and-

A head with its tongue lolling out and a ghoulish semblance of a face emerged next and let out what was unmistakably a moan.

Anzu stood up mutely, spine straight as a rod, and began to back away feeling her pulse begin to throb in every part of her body, only to let out a shriek when she ran into something behind her that was most definitely not the door.

Instinctively she whirled to look even though she really didn't want to, and her blood turned to slush. Anzu stared up at a humanoid, hunched over figure clothed in an elaborate suit that was falling apart to reveal rotten bluish skin. One eye, more bulbous than the other, stared down at her while the squinted one rolled around in its skull. Its mouth was hanging open to reveal twisted, yellowed teeth that stuck out at angles they really shouldn't have been able to.

Anzu came to the decision that if she had to choose between a head with a pair of arms and a full bodied zombie, she would definitely take her chances with the first. She took a few steps back, avoiding brushing the thin rapier that the thing was holding and turned around to run. She couldn't hear pursuit, thankfully, but she had to dodge around what appeared to be a hoard of wispy white faces and nearly slipped in the snow that was beginning to form into ice.

There were suddenly all sorts of horrible things lurking in the darkness, hissing, laughing, or moaning, all of them with different shades of rot in place of a normal pallor, if they had any skin or flesh left to speak of at all. Some of them touched her with limbs-or what was left of them-more chilled and clammy than the air. The stuff of nightmares was quite suddenly overwhelming her as she sprinted through the graveyard, heart racing and the inside of her body feeling on fire even as the outside grew numb.

And then, quite suddenly, she came to the gates.

The locked gates.

Anzu's long-since numb fingers couldn't even get a grip to climb over as she scrabbled at the metal. She heard telltale giggles behind her and glanced over her shoulder as sweat dripped into her eyes.

A woman, with blue skin like the first two she had encountered, skulked forward clutching something in her arms. A doll, Anzu realized blearily, something like a marionette. It was broken and dismembered beyond repair. And it appeared to be laughing at her, tiny, crudely carved lips parting and meeting repeatedly with little wooden clatters and giggles. Anzu looked up just long enough to meet the woman's small golden eyes before she passed out in a dead faint, Bakura's necklace still clutched in one hand.

At some point Anzu drifted back into consciousness.

"...shame, scaring your new master like that."

A few whimpers and something like a growl could be heard.

"You do realize I did it for you, don't you? Now I can be closer to you than before."

Pause.

"Don't give me that. I was going to die eventually anyway. Better at my own hand then something as pathetic as illness."

A few murmured replies of agreement.

"You will treat her better from now on. Though I may not have wanted her to in the end, she did attempt saving my life..."

Pause.

"Do you understand? All of you?"

There was a chorus of garbled cries.

"Good. Now the first thing to do is..."

Anzu didn't hear any more after that.

Anzu's eyes were gummed and heavy when she opened them again. She sat up slowly, half expecting to be lying in the snow with multiple limbs frostbitten. Instead she found herself lying in bed.

"Anzuuu! You here?" A familiar voice chirped.

"Shush, Marik, she's probably sleeping."

"No, I'm awake," she called as she stood up, almost unwilling to accept that it had all been a nightmare.

Anzu walked out to greet the Ishtars, feeling like she was about to cry in relief as she hugged each of them in turn, even a slightly surprised Rishid. Marik, of course, was more than willing to accept the embrace.

"...You're back earlier than I thought you would be," she said at length.

"Yes, well, someone didn't want to leave this place with one person for more than a day," Marik said with a reproachful look in his sister's direction, who ignored him. He glanced back at Anzu. "Nice necklace, by the way. But I don't think gold is really your color."

Anzu paled and glanced down to see Bakura's necklace. If Marik was complimenting her on it and not accusing her of thievery, then Bakura hadn't been lying. But… she hadn't put it on yesterday, not after...

The night's events returned unbidden, and with it the memory of what had happened to Bakura.

She sprinted to the bathroom, bile rising up in her throat at the thought of seeing Bakura's corpse after an entire night of rotting. Unfortunately for her, Ishizu was about to enter it.

"Wait! Don't go in there!"

She'd already opened the door, but that didn't stop Anzu from throwing herself in front of it, arms splayed in an attempt to cover up the doorway.

Ishizu glanced at her uncertainly. "Is something wrong, Anzu?"

"I-it's not-I can explain!"

"What are you talking about?"

Anzu glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see the bathroom in the same state as before. Instead it was in a sparkling state of cleanliness...

...nearly a sparkling state of cleanliness, anyway.

The message Bakura had written to her in his blood was still on one of the tiles, though it was being scrubbed away by two girls. They were nearly identical, with grayish skin and blonde hair tied up in bows, the only difference being their pink and blue outfits. They turned their heads both completely around to face her with blank, stoic eyes for a moment before picking up two boxes, one black and one red, and walked through a wall in the direction of the graveyard.

Anzu swallowed and turned completely around, disregarding a confused-looking Ishizu in favor of walking over to the window to look out. She had to blink slightly at the glare reflecting off of the snow and ice before she could make anything out.

The same figures from before were milling around in the graveyard in their various gaits, from strolling to stumbling to crawling. Somehow they didn't seem as intimidating in the light, particularly not when one of the spirits waved at her. Anzu waved uncertainly back, not noticing the Ishtars staring at her.

And then she caught sight of Bakura.

His skin was tinted a pale gray and there were visible wounds and bloodstains where he had maimed himself, but other than that he looked to be relatively content from where he sat on top of the same gravestone he had occupied during his life.

She offered some semblance of an explanation to the Ishtars, not clearly remembering what she even said, before she cautiously went outside. Much to her relief, none of the monstrous forms attacked her, though a couple did move towards her. It was almost like she was still in a dreamlike state, keeping herself in suspended disbelief that they were actually there. That Bakura was even actually there…

He glanced up as she came over and smirked, looking considerably less grim and bitter then he had the day before.

"You won't have to invite me inside anymore," he said with a warped but still somehow genuine smile.

She would ask for him to explain later, once she wasn't still feeling so faint. At that time Anzu didn't hesitate to look him straight in the still-unnerving scarlet eyes when she, albeit shakily, smiled back at him.

All of the spirits in the graveyard are based off of Bakura's cards; Earthbound Spirit, The Earl of Demise, Souls of the Forgotten, Dark Necrofear, and Cursed Twin Dolls.