Jin'ei: A Man's Soul
Title: Jin'ei: A Man's Soul
Author: JeniOctavia Ramsey
Summary: They were shunned on our world, three warriors who thanklessly saved Earth from the evils that were, with powers passed down from ancient beings that once thrived and vanished in to the mists of time. Social outcasts, they lived on the fringe of society, unable to be among 'normal' human beings. Hurled in to a new place, can they find what it takes to save a world that isn't thier own and help a young man protect his home from a new kind of evil?
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Legend of Zelda, but Jenria, Ceilidh, and Adian are mine. And...any other original characters that may pop up later on.
A/N: This. Is. Long. I think I said this at the huge Author's Forward, but I think it needs to be said again. I don't write two, three page chapters. I go all out, so read this only if you feel you can stay commited to my blathering stupidity. :)
Chapter One
Canby, Oregon
2005
It started with the phone calls.
At first Jenria Hikaru thought nothing of them. Even if the phone number belonging to the secluded country two-story farmhouse was unlisted, she knew there were still ways for silly teenagers to get a hold of it and start in on prank calls. They probably thought they were tormenting some crotchety old woman.
The first time it rang she was a tiny bit surprised, as both of her housemates were currently in the house, down in the basement game room murdering each other on one fighting game or another. While they each had cell phones of their own, they rarely used them, even when out. The phone was a courtesy thing as well, there for the use of an emergency and hardly anything else, just like their mobiles. Any of the houses amenities were simply to make life on that distant plot of land easier, and were most often paid for in cash to the local small town companies, eliminating any chance of a major paper trail.
Obscurity was their credo, and they had learned to live by it very well.
So when the phone rang, Jenria's expression was one of severe confusion, eyebrows arched eye and forehead furrowed. She could hear it from the upstairs office, as the door was currently open and the room was directly across from the stairwell that lead down to the kitchen where the cordless sat on the kitchen counter. She doubted her housemates could also hear it, though, as they so often had the volume turned up on the big screen it was like being in a movie theater.
She leaned over in her chair, staring through the open doorway to the stairs, hesitant to go down and pick it up. The phone continued to ring, its incessant electronically made noise begging her to come and answer. Whoever it was, they were being quite insistent. Sighing she rose from her office chair and headed slowly down the stairwell, hoping that the caller might realize they had a wrong number and simply hang up. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs and started in to the kitchen foyer the ringing had a certain shrill, desperate quality about it, imagined of course, but annoying to Jenria's ears nonetheless.
She paused at the counter, staring at the white handheld sitting so innocently in its cradle. She reached a reluctant hand towards it and finally lifted the receiver to her ear, a tiny beep telling her that the phone was now on and connected.
"Hello?" she asked in a somewhat normal tone that she'd managed to bring up at the last second.
Nothing but silence greeted her on the other end.
"Hello?" she asked again, more demanding this time.
A soft, almost unheard hiss could be heard, all too short to identify a source.
"Hello? Is anyone there?" she questioned, trying to keep the concern out of her voice.
This time a longer hiss, then a click. The other end had hung up, leaving her with a dial tone and a strange expression upon her face. She let out a sigh and placed the receiver back where it belonged. Just then Adian Cannon, Jenria's oldest and only male housemate came through the adjoining basement door, empty plate and cup in his hands. He paused seeing Jenria standing near the phone, her face still knotted in upset.
"Hey, everything all right, Jen?" he asked, going to set his dishes in the sink. Jenria's head jerked up, not expecting to see him there.
'Uh. Yeah. Nothing's wrong," she assured him, putting a smile to convince him that her words were true.
He frowned uncertainly, gesturing to the phone with a nod of his head.
"Some one call?" he asked, the same tone of cautiousness that Jenria had taken when answering the ringing contraption. She glanced down at the phone again, momentarily lost in thought before answering.
"Solicitors," she said in a strangely flat tone. Before Adian had a chance to inquiry anymore, she turned and retreated back up the stairs. The older boy kept his worried frown but chose not to follow. Instead he went to the phone and pressed the 'up' button for Caller ID, but found only a frustrating 'unavailable' for a response.
Giving a shrug, he returned to the basement for more gaming.
That was where Jenria had hoped it would end, but the feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that she should only be so lucky.
Yet weeks passed and nothing of noting significance occurred. Life in the house continued as usual, Adian going to do the occasional shopping in town with the group's one car, a beat up but reliable 2000 Ford Escape, Jenria working desperately on her online courses, and the other female housemate Ceilidh O'Dalley MacKinnon spending her time to herself, either reading a book or playing video games. In the grand scheme of things, existence for the three social outcasts seemed plaintive at best, more like three ghosts unwilling to give up life even if they couldn't live within it.
That was how things had been for years, though, and they were accustomed to it. Perhaps not content with it, but at least they had grown to realize that there was little else they could do. They were different from the rest of the world, and they knew it all too well. It was best to stay out of the public eye, and out of public in general. The place they had chosen to make their home was far enough from civilization to put them at ease, but close enough that they could still survive. Those in the tiny community of Canby just up the rural highway never asked any questions of Adian when he went in to town, at least aloud, and that was just fine with him.
It was these things that Jenria had been contemplating late one evening when Adian was out and Ceilidh was spending time in the small forest that surrounded the field when the phone rang again. Her spine tensed at the sound, faint in her large corner room but still audible as the house was deathly silent from within that night. Worrying that her fellow housemate could possibly be in danger, she wasted no time getting down to the kitchen.
However when she picked it up and found herself connected to the other end once more, she only heard that familiar static hissing noise. She listened instead of questioning the presence on the other side. The hiss went in three-second lengths, with about five seconds in between each one. It continued that way for nearly a minute before it switched to something entirely new: a voice. Not a normal voice, though. It wasn't speaking English, or any earth-bound sounding language for that matter. It sounded high, and in fact it seemed to be singing more than speaking. The tone was similar to that of a harp, sharp and ringing but in a haunting melodic sense. It was soft; so much that normal phone line distortion nearly covered it up entirely. Had the house not been so quiet, Jenria wouldn't have picked up on it entirely.
She blinked several times, completely lost as to what exactly it was she was hearing. She stood there, listening, straining her ears to wade through the thoughts racing through her mind. It simply continued on, repeating what sounded like three notes, possibly three words, over and over again. She finally slammed down the phone in annoyance. Pranks, kids pulling pranks. It simply had to be. They'd located the house number somehow and thought it fun to torment her.
She returned to her room, sticking to her resolve that she had the answer in that thin little explanation, hoping that the pranksters had gotten their fun and were done messing around with her.
Two days passed, and Jenria was once again alone in the house when the phone rang. She was more hesitant this time, but worried too much about leaving Adian or Ceilidh in trouble to simply let it ring this time. Yet she had the same experience: this hissing then the strange voice singing those disturbing three notes. A part of her pinned down the possible tune as something of a lament, as there was a certain sadness about it that very slightly struck a cord with her. However she refused to believe it any more than cruel jokes.
Yet it continued to happen, and she was alone every time the electronic trill of the landline started up once more. Every time its grating sound filled the quiet house, not a single soul save for her was in the large dwelling, and the more it happened the more disturbed she became. Eventually she stopped picking it up all together, sending out a prayer that her friends were actually safe rather than lift the receiver to find out that they weren't. She couldn't take it anymore, hearing those bizarre noises and getting absolutely no answers in the mean time.
Then one day it stopped. She was in the office expecting the phone to ring and it never once uttered a single noise. Weeks began to pass once more in silent bliss, and soon the incidents were shunned from her mind all together.
"Pranks," she told herself with defining certainty, "That's all they were. Pranks."
Still something in her heart warned her not to brush things off so simply, for she would know better than anyone: life was far from simple.
Happy to just put it behind her, she ignored the voice of reason and went back to business as usual.
Almost a month after the calls had stopped, the three of them were sitting in the main living room enjoying a meal that Jenria had made up while watching a new movie that Adian had bought for them. The film was quite suspenseful, and the added ambiance of lights off and a single lamp on low lighting in the connecting dining hall had them all wound tense, enjoying the plot twists and intense parts. Every time some one jumped the other two would chuckle and poke good-natured fun until they were pulled once more in to the action of the movie.
Suddenly amidst a very graphic murder scene a cell phone went off, cutting through the room like a knife with its musical polyphonic ring tone that was probably from some video game or another. All three let out yelps of surprise, looking around for the source of the disturbance like animals caught on the hunt. Adian grabbed the remote and paused the DVD, annoyance replacing nervousness.
"It's not mine," he stated, "mine's in my room."
The ring tone continued, loud and long with its aggravating song played in such a way that songs should never be portrayed in. All three got up off the couch, moving their dinner trays back to search for the source of the phone. Finally Adian checked behind one of the end tables, retrieving an older Nokia model with a scratched red and black case.
"Mine," Ceilidh admitted sheepishly, reaching out to take it. Before Adian could hand it over, though, Jenria snatched it clean out of his hand, holding it up to her face to see the glowing screen. The illumination cast a sickly green glow upon her fair skinned features, her wide eyes making her face akin to that of a frightening porcelain mask.
"Jen?" Adian queried, moving towards her anxiously. He didn't like the look she had about her, and a ball of tenseness was building in his stomach. Something felt terribly wrong. Ceilidh, however, didn't seem to notice, as she was waving her hand in the air talking about prank phone calls and how she never gave her number out, even if Adian didn't believe her on that. Jenria pressing the answer button and holding the phone up to her ear silenced her rambling, fingers trembling in a death tight grip around the small mobile.
"H-hello?" she asked, tripping over the simple word.
"Jen…ri…a…" a whisper soft voice greeted her, the sound strangely distorted and cracked. The young girl turned her frightened gaze to her two friends, both of who were staring back in wonder and fright. Her lips opened but no words emerged, just a weak cry of surprise that she could barely force out.
The singing, the strange lamenting tune, began, louder this time, almost urgent sounding. The volume, though normally not quite so blaring at its highest had some how been pushed higher, for everyone, not just Jenria, could hear this strange song.
"Wha…?" Ceilidh mumbled, pointing at her phone and looking to Adian for answers, as if he had any at all to give. He was too wrapped up in Jenria to notice the younger girl's half asked question.
The first voice spoke her name again in the same broken manner, and then followed it with the names of her two friends. The poor girl was terrified, her body trembling as she clutched the phone so hard her knuckles turned white. Adian and Ceilidh could only watch on in concerned silence, uncertain, wondering if they should do anything yet wondering more if they even could.
Jenria turned to them, pallid and stricken. She went to speak, but was instantly cut off by a sudden and horridly shrill noise that came through the phone and filled the entire room with its presence. All three screamed, the noises ripping in to their eardrums like claws to flesh. Jenria released the phone and threw her hands over her ears, curling in to a fetal position while remaining on her feet. Adian put his hands over his ears as well and looked at Ceilidh.
"Sorry!" he yelled above the din before slamming his foot down on the cellular contraption repeatedly. Its light frame crushed easily with a sharp crack, and the room was filled with a sudden ringing silence. Adian breathed a sigh of relief, turning apologetic eyes to his friend. She gave a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders.
"I needed an upgrade anyway," she said simply, though her voice was just slightly shaken.
Adian nodded and went to kneel down by Jenria. She was still curled up, knees pulled to her chest, head ducked down and arms wrapped above her head. Body quaking, weak whimpers emitting from her curled up form, she refused to raise herself up even after the shrieking had ceased. Placing a gentle hand on her shoulder, Adian coaxed the girl to raising her head enough to look at him.
"The call. That wasn't the first time?" he guessed, receiving a slow nod in reply, "Something about that voice, though…?"
There was a long silence, Jenria simply staring up at him as if not really seeing him.
"The voice…it was Andrea…"