The Gateway
The bell rung signifying the end of class, and a certain brunette rushed up the stair case that led her to the music room. Her footsteps were quick but steady. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. Her hand grasped the door handle, twisted it, and pushed it open to reveal the room.
Sometimes she would stand out side the door listening to her friend's mindless banters and mindless ramblings about how horrible your day was. She was getting good at echolocation. Closing her eyes trying to imagine how they look like while she was eavesdropping. Her other senses have sharpened to compensate.
In the music room was four of her classmates, they hung out frequently after school, drinking tea and eating sweets, like they were doing right now at the moment. Enjoying their care-free student lives.
Yui spotted her friend Ritsu drooling at the table, her right arm cradled her face and her left arm dangled. She had shoulder-length brown hair and slicked back her bangs with a headband.
"Yui!" A voice greeted.
It was Tsumugi a flaxen-haired beauty, she was smiling blithely as she got an empty teacup for Yui and poured tea.
"What's with Ritsu?" Yui asked as she set her holdall down at the bench she then sat down next to Azusa.
"She's been sleeping ever since we got here." Mio answered. She then gently laid a hand on Ritsu shoulder, squeezed the living daylights out of it, and gave it a hard shove.
Ritsu jolted awake, slamming her back into the chair, and looked up at Mio in shock.
"Wake up lazy bum" Mio greeted. Ritsu blinked groggily until her face clearly came into view. She let out a sigh of relief. "I am so glad to see your face."
She raised a bemused brow. The reaction wasn't quite what she was expecting. She wanted more irritation, anger, and outrage, not relief. "Did you have a nightmare or something?" she joked.
Her eyes narrowed, brow creased, and cheeks scrunched as a momentary darkness descended upon her. "No, I just woke up in one."
Mio was about to retort to her witty statement but her tired eyes stopped her. Heavy bags dragged the skin underneath, as if her eyeballs were melting. No longer flat against the desk, her cheeks were surprisingly gaunt and barely covered her skull structure. She didn't realize how terrible she looked. All her serenity disappeared in a flash, and in its place was immense fatigue.
"Are you okay?" she asked worriedly.
Her eyes darted around nervously before she answered, "I've been doing some research for my essay paper lately."she continued, "While researching…I overheard a story of Sakuragaoka Girl's High School" Her dark expression didn't waver.
The grey-eyed girl started to quiver, "A story?"
"I was in the library computer researching until I heard two girls from the occult club talk about the 5 horrors of this school"
Mio's eyes widened, she didn't like where this conversation was going. She quickly moved from Ritsu's side while covering her ears and squatted. "Shut up Ritsu!"
Ritsu smirked. She turned her head to look outside the window and stayed silent for a couple moments to gather her thoughts. After shaking her head several times, she finally turned around.
"You should tell us Ritsu!" Yui urged as she turned to Azusa who laughed nervously. But the three girls were intrigued.
"Sounds pretty freaky." Azusa smiled nervously again while cupping her tea cup.
So…
CUTE!
Yui always thought Azusa brought that feeling in her... It's like she had to protect her or something. It was definitely the power of moe. The worst part? She had no control over it. Her head would get light and her knees would begin to buckle. Was this... what it felt like to swoon? It felt disorienting and unexpectedly pleasant, but Yui loved cute things and she had to admit, Azusa was one of them.
"So what are they?" Tsumugi prodded interrupting Yui's thoughts.
"Okay the first one is called the Snickering dog, the story goes that a girl was wandering after school here, she encountered a stray in one of the hallways and decided to take him home. She adored dogs and they adored her back. The dog would snicker thus her giving the name Snickers. Ever since she took on snickers, dead animals had been appearing on her lawn. Even though she kept the windows and door closed, every morning, she saw Snickers outside with the bodies. She decided to hide the bodies in her shed. Finally one day the police arrested her for animal cruelty. But she kept yelling that she didn't do it and Snickers did. The police told her that they had her neighbors saw her steal a cat and kill him with a shovel. They searched the premises in the shed and found out the girl was entrapping animals in a shed where they suffocate to death. They also found no traces of 'Snickers' and labeled her as a psychopath. With the shovel in her hand and the bodies shoved in the shed. She looked around, she couldn't find Snickers anywhere, and it was like he never existed. As she got arrested and shoved into the car, she could have sworn she had heard snickering"
Tsumugi chuckled. It was a lightweight tale to her as she was growing up around them. "So the girl killed the animals all along? That's pretty good, but it's nothing clever."
"It's not like I made it, I'm just telling you what it is," Ritsu answered back. "Anyways, the second story is called Light and Fluffy Death"
"Interesting, how does it go?" Azusa asked.
"Well this next girl she was popular, very popular that she always felt she was being stalked. At the corner of her eyes she always saw a shadow but no one was there. She felt each time she was alone she was being watched, that vague sense of unease in a perfectly normal environment. That is when she felt a pair of eyes on her, each time she saw a blink of movement at the edges of her vision; flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, or always feel watched and scrutinized while she was alone.
She decided to go to the student council to report her problem. The student council president told her she was being too paranoid but they would look into it. She decided to shrug it off, instead it got worst as she started receiving photos in her mail, at first she couldn't really make out what the first Polaroid was. It looked like a patch of desert, it was too blurry to decipher; it appeared as if the camera had been moved while the picture was being taken. As the school year pressed on they kept coming. She took the first envelope and sat it on the floor and sat the blurry desert Polaroid on top. Then laid the second envelope right next to it and placed the oddly angled Polaroid of a building's top corner on top and did this with each picture until they formed a grid that was about 5X10; She noticed that the pictures gradually became more decipherable. The Polaroid pictures added up to make a picture. There was a tree, a traffic light, power line, a group of people walking into some building. And then she saw something that vexed her so powerfully she saw herself. In this photograph of the group of people entering the building she saw herself in the very back of the crowd of people. She was at the very edge of the photo, but it was undeniably her. And as her eyes swam over the sea of Polaroid's she became increasing anxious. It was a really odd feeling – it wasn't fear, it was the feeling you get when you are in trouble, when you're in danger. And this feeling only intensified as she looked on at the rest of the photos after that the one that had so powerfully struck her.
She was in every photo.
None of them were close shots. None of them were only of her. But she was in every single one of them – off to the side, in the back, bottom of the frame. Some of them only had the tiniest part of her face captured at the very edge of the photo, but nevertheless, she was there. She was always there.
There was no return address on the envelope. Scared, she decided to file a report to the police department but of course there wasn't anything they could do until the person got into contact and told her it was likely a prank. Being paranoid for her life she started to skip classes and head to the back of the school to hide, where she met the predator and the girl was killed."
"That's blunt." Tsumugi said. The brunette didn't even bother to build up the suspense for the encounter.
"Now let me explain, it said the killer killed the girl by first suffocating her with a doll then putting her in a horse suit costume and was decapitated."
Azusa shuddered. "Did a girl actually get killed behind our school?"
Ritsu laughed. "No, if it was true how would this school be running? They're just made up, it's not like they're actually real. It's really to keep kids from ditching classes. You wanna hear the next one?"
They nodded, "Of course."
"How about you Mio?" Ritsu grinned. Mio was huddled in a isolated corner blasting music through her iPod, blocking Ritu's word with her ear buds. She hated when Ritsu told stories and purposely tried to scare her. Catching Ritsu's teasing face Mio held up her fist in a threatening way, but it only encouraged the brunette to go on.
"The Next Story is called The Lucid Dreamer. It's said that a miserable girl committed suicide by jumping of the rooftop. Her spirit still dwells there so if you stay on the rooftop long enough, it'll try to take control of you and make you jump off, plunging to your death."
"Didn't you say 'lucid dreamer'? Who came up with that story?" Tsumugi pondered.
"The girl would always have these crazy realistic dreams that she couldn't take anymore; she couldn't tell whether it was reality or a dream. It was like she was having a bad episode. Anyways the rooftops have a history of bad falls and accidents. It's to keep us out of the rooftops."
"I see" Yui said rubbing her chin, "I'm beginning to notice the trend of murders here."
"Well this one was a suicide, Yui. That's where the horror comes from. And they're not real, it's brings more depth into the school." Ritsu said. "To the next story?"
They nodded.
"This ones a classic tale of hide and seek called 'Seek and Find'. The day before summer vacation a group of girls decided to stay late at school to hang out, so they played hide and seek. One of the girls thought it would be fun to hide in the photography's storage room. Unfortunately the room didn't have electricity wiring because no one stayed in that room because of the strong chemical smell. Realizing the door was lock she began to panic, trying to look for a way out. While she was trying to find a key, an unlid bottle of photographic product fell and spilled on her, blinding her. No one found her as she kept screaming for help and she clawed the door until her nails bled."
"That's disgusting" Yui made a sour face in distaste but Mugi only laughed.
"Nothing scares you huh Mugi?" Ritsu deadpanned.
"Not really, it's because I've grew around these stories."
Ritsu continued. "Legend says that if you stay in the storage room at night you'll find the girl and she'll ask you:
Why didn't you help me when I screamed?
Before you can answer, she'll hug you and say:
I wonder…will anyone help if you do?
Then you disappear...
Forever."
The room went silent for a while, until Azusa asked her to continue on to the last tale.
"Finally, the last one is the Isolated Girl, and this one actually scares the crap out of me because I've actually seen it myself."
"You have?" Tsumugi asked skeptically.
Ritsu nodded. "There's this abandoned mansion that belongs to this creepy old guy that's long dead. If you look at the windows though, you can occasionally catch a glimpse of a little girl. They said the girl used to attend this school, she was lonely and quiet. Despite the police looking in the building, nobody has ever been found living there. "
"You saw the girl in the window?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what did you see?"
"Let me explain the girl's origin first. There are several frightening theories, but the worst is the abused victim theory. They say she was locked up in the house and constantly abused until she killed herself. If this was true, then it meant that the owner was some crazy rich psychopath. They say that he hid her body somewhere in the house and her ghost is trying to reach out, hoping that somebody could find her body."
"How did they come up with that?"
"People like to think of the worst. I don't know who she was. Maybe it's his daughter or some random kid off the street? I think the fact that nobody knows is what makes it really creepy."
Yui mulled over that piece of information. Lack of knowledge always increases the tension. "So what did you see?"
Ritsu narrowed her eyes. Out of all the legends, this was the one that always had her on edge. "I never told anyone of this, but when it was Christmas I needed some extra cash for presents so I got a job delivering packages. Strangely there was a large package for the mansion. When I got there the door was unlocked. It was pretty freaky inside. All the furniture was covered up in white sheets and the whole place was just dusty and covered in webs. I went up the stairs and wandered around the hallway. I saw this one room in particular with a ton of locks outside: dead bolts, latches, chains, you name it and it was there."
"Outside the door?"
Ritsu nodded. "It was definitely built to keep people trapped in."
"Did you open it?"
Ritsu shook her head.
"Why not?"
"The thing is...there was a peephole looking in. I could look inside without actually opening the door, but when I put my eye against it..."
"Yeah...?"
She paused to draw out the suspense, although the memory itself was enough to freeze her veins. "I couldn't see anything."
Tsumugi chortled in disappointment. "That's a letdown."
Ritsu took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "That's what I thought at first. It was like something was covering the hole. I just saw white and red. I was pretty freaked out at that point and I dropped the package and got out of there. It wasn't until later on that I figured out what I was actually looking at."
Tsumugi crossed his arms and prepared herseelf. "What was it?"
Ritsu pointed to her face.
"An eye."