Kyo and Kagura were watching "A Haunting" one day, and the lady called in an exorcist. Allen Walker was the first thing that came to mind. ;D We would love some reviews!
"Mom," whispered a frightened ten-year-old girl as she clutched tighter to the end of her mother's shirt, "it's coming to get me."
The woman picked up her daughter held her close as she stared into the space where he daughter had been staring wide-eyed in fright. "Sush, Carlie, there's nothing there."
The little girl hesitantly looked up from her mother's shoulder. She followed her mother's gaze, whimpered in fright, and hid her face in her mother's shoulder again. "They're still there, Mommy," she whispered.
"Who?" asked her mom, begin to panic for her child.
"The ghosts."
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"Bye!" shouted a young girl as she ran towards a car stopped at the curb a head of her.
"Hi, Mom," she said, sliding into the backseat.
"Did you have a good day at school, Carlie?" asked the girl's mother, twisting around in the front seat.
"Uh-huh!" The girl nodded enthusiastically to emphasize her statement, her brown ponytail pulled up at the top of her head swinging a bit in time with her nods.
Her mother smiled. "That's good." She had been worried about her daughter lately. At home she was claiming to see some strange things. However, it seemed the phantoms didn't plague her while she was in school. "Do you want to stop somewhere before heading home?" she asked, checking on her daughter's reaction in the rearview mirror.
"Yeah!" Carlie exclaimed excitedly. Her expression showed a mixture of excite about getting to go somewhere with her mother, but also relief at getting to delay returning to the house.
Carlie was convinced, no, she knew, that the house she lived in with her mother was haunted. She saw the ghosts there. They were always there, and at first they never did anything, they just stood there and watched her as she played in her room. Once when she was younger, she tried pointing out the group of people to her mother. Her mother had smiled at her and said ("Of course I can see them, honey!") But Carlie had always known that her mother had lied to her. Her mother never seemed to know how many people were in the group, or whether they were boys or girls. And most importantly, her mother never knew, or pretended she did, that the group didn't move around the house or go to school with Carlie. They stayed in her room. Always. And eventually Carlie trained herself to ignore the group.
The group was made up of seven children. The oldest was a boy named William. He was eighteen years old, and that would never change. The second oldest was fifteen, a girl, and her name was Anastasia. Then was another girl. This girl's name was Ashlyn, and she was ten years old. Another boy was next, he was eight years old and named Carter. Then came a set of twins, one boy and one girl, their names were Clara and Jack and they were only six. Last was a three-year-old girl and her name was Eva. None of these children ever spoke, none of them ever told Carlie their names and ages. She just instinctively knew. They were all dressed in odd clothing, Carlie was reminded of the old clothing people wore in the pictures in her storybooks. None of the children did anything to Carlie or even spoke to her. They just watched her. Although, she felt it was creepy, Carlie just shrugged it off and shoved it out of her mind. She had many more pressing worries. What game she would play next with her mother when she was three and four, making friends and going to kindergarten for the first time when she was five, keeping her friends and surviving first grade when she was six, a whole new level of consciousness when she was seven, and as her awareness of the world around her grew, Carlie found it progressively easier to ignore the ghosts. Eventually the group of somber children fell to the back of Carlie's mind, and she started to forget their presence.
Until one day, not more than a few months before Carlie drove with her mother to the ice cream shop after school, Carlie entered her room and felt that something was off with the children. Since she had become less aware of their presence over the years, it took Carlie a while to realize what it was. Ashlyn had a large bruise on the right side of her face.
"Are you okay?" Carlie had asked.
She received no response.
Carlie stood up and tried to touch the injured girl.
The children vanished.
Carlie gasped.
And the children returned.
Carlie's hand was still outstretched, but she wasn't touching any of them. If she focused her mind and her eyes on her outstretched hand, the children disappeared. If she focused on the air around it, the children were there. The same as always. Staring. Watching.
It was then that Carlie determined that the children were ghosts.
Day after day, Ashyln's condition deteriorated. She was covered in more and more bruises. And slowly, William started to gain bruises too.
"What's wrong?" Carlie asked one day.
The children just started back.
And then one day, Ashlyn disappeared altogether. Carlie promptly panicked when she was this. "Where's Ashlyn?" she asked of the children.
She expected no response, but then there was some. Instead of the blank stares she usually got, the children turned a bit in her direction, staring at her sadly.
Carlie was shocked. "Can you speak?"
The stares seemed to say, "We wish we could."
Over the days William's bruises began to get worse and worse, until he too finally disappeared. But this was not the only big discovery Carlie made about her ghosts that day. She discovered that the other five remaining children could now move. They moved around in a pack, and Carlie found that watching them move was fascinating. It was inhuman, which, of course, it was and impossible to describe.
Anastasia was the next to get bruises. But she was not the next to disappear. The middle boy Carter's bruises appeared suddenly and violently until he disappeared too. And now the children could talk. And they moved around independently, Anastasia (who Carlie now learned was called "Ana" by her siblings) would stay in Carlie's room with little Eva. Carlie would see her cradling her sister, whispering soft words of comfort or lullabys.
The little twins, Jack and Clara, however preferred to stick with Carlie. The followed her like ghostly shadows, looking up at her, panic in her features. Carlie could guess easily enough what it was they were afraid of; it was the disappearance of their siblings. She once tried to comfort them, but it seemed to do no good since Carlie wasn't really sure what it was that was happening.
Nothing else significant happened with the ghosts for a while, and in this time Carlie began to develop some theories. Her first theory was that someone was torturing the children, beating them up and then killing them. She figured that the last part of the siblings' life was replaying itself out again, for her. And when the children disappeared, that they had been killed by their assaulter. She was sure once the seventh child died they'd all reappear. This she was sure of. They were ghosts after all. What she wasn't sure of was what would happen when they did. Whether or not the whole ordeal would play again, or if they would ask her for her help. She rather hoped they wouldn't ask for her help, since Carlie had never dealt with the supernatural murders before. While she was not afraid of the children, she was afraid of their assailant.
Her second theory was that as more and more of the children disappeared, the powers of the remaining ones increased. At first, with all seven of them, they would just stare blankly. Once Ashlyn had left, they could convey emotion. Then William left and they would move. Carter left, and they could speak. Carlie was rather afraid of what would next happen, it was frightening for her to think about what would happen if they became solid.
The next child to disappear would be Jack, and this effect was the turning point in Carlie's situation. This time, she actual saw the murder occur.
She came home from school one day and entered her room, expecting to see Jack and Clara rush up to her, and Ana soothing Eva. But instead she walked in and stared, petrified at the scene before her.
A new ghost had appeared, although Carlie could not see it like she could the children. This new figure was completely dark, and she couldn't make out any features. This mysterious figure was lashing out against Jack, bruises were appearing rapidly all over his body. His three sisters stood in the farthest corner, Clara's face hidden in Ana's skirt, and Eva was pressed against he oldest sister's shoulder, shielded from the beating unfolding in front of them.
Carlie watched in horror as Jack was beaten and thrown against various bits of furniture that no longer existed, but Carlie could see flashes of them as Jack was thrown against them. This was the first time Carlie ever feared any of her ghost. She screamed and ran downstairs into her mother's arms, shaking and crying.
"What's wrong, Carlie?" her mom asked, rubbing Carlie's long hair soothingly.
Carlie broke down and told her mother everything about the ghosts, and at the end, she knew her mother did not believe her, and that her look of concern was for Carlie's health, not the fate of the seven children who had died so many years ago.
On the current day, however, Carlie and her mother had returned from eating ice cream, and Carlie had stopped on the porch of their house.
"I'm not going in, Mommy," she said, shaking her head. She was terrified of what she would see when she went inside, all of the seven children were gone now, just their bloody murder remained to haunt Carlie.
"Sweetie, there's nothing in there," said Carlie's mother, stopping in the act of removing her nametag (it read simply "Natalie") to look her daughter hard in the eye. "There's no such thing as ghosts."
Carlie nodded her head. "Yes there is."
"Well why don't you stay near me then, and I'll protect you," Natalie Swaim suggested.
Carlie still looked scared, but she clung to her mother's arm any way and consented to be led into the house. All day she followed her mother around like a terrified little duckling. There was so sign of any paranormal activity until Carlie was helping her mother with the dishes after dinner.
Carlie let out a bloodcurdling scream, dropped a dish, and started talking slow, small steps backwards.
"You can't touch me!" she bellowed to thin air, still backing up slowly towards her mother.
"Carlie," her mother began, concerned, until she felt a gush of wind brush passed her arm. "What?" she wondered as Carlie screamed again, "Don't touch my mom!"
Then a gash appeared out of nowhere on Carlie's forearm. Natalie screamed in concern for her daughter. "Carlie…"
"This knife can hurt us, Mom!" the girl screamed, clutching her mother.
Natalie lifted Carlie up in her arms (Carlie wasn't very big after all) and fled from the house. She booked a room at a hotel a few blocks away and she and Carlie (arm newly bandaged) slept there that night. Natalie now believed in the ghosts her daughter spoke of.
Late a night, when Carlie had finally succumbed to her exhaustion, Natalie opened up the hotel's Yellow Pages to look for and exorcist to rid their house of these ghosts. They couldn't afford a new house.
Finally she came across an agency that seemed that it might be able to fulfill her needs. "The Black Order," she read aloud, "if devils are threatening you we have plenty of strong, trained exorcists to help you out." It was her only choice. She dialed the number. "6-6-6-E-x-o-r-c-i-s-t."