Nor'hanger Abbey

A Detective Conan Fanfic
By
Deborah (Kosagi) Brown

Acknowledgements:
All usual disclaimers regarding ownership of Detective Conan and related characters apply. This stuff is copyrighted to Aoyama Gosho.

Much thanks to Ysabet and Ryo Hoshi for their beta-reads, without which I'd probably have far too many spelling, continuity and grammatical errors.

Chapter 1: A Hunting We Will Go – In which Heiji discovers that seeing ghosts isn't necessarily an asset to ghost hunts.

"Explain to me again why I'm letting you drag me here?" I glared at my companions – well, two of them, at least – and stuck my hands in my pockets sulkily. Over our heads was a tall building that loomed in the pale moonlight like Dracula's Castle. And whose idea was it to choose the night of a full moon for this nonsense, anyway? I fully expected bats or some such to start swirling around one of the turrets any minute.

"Oh, Heiji-kun. It's just a ghost hunt. Do you have any idea how much the tickets cost? It'll be fun," Kazuha chided me. My dear friend. My childhood friend. The only girl with whom I've spent more time with than her would be my mother. Kazuha was obviously finding my reluctance highly amusing. She wouldn't if she knew how I felt about ghosts, and why. "Anyway," she continued, "If Ran is okay with coming here, then you – big bold brave Detective of the West Hattori Heiji," she poked me in the chest, "shouldn't be shaking in your boots like this."

"Ahou," I muttered and stalked away. I wondered how she'd gotten Ran to agree in the first place. Ran doesn't like ghosts. It's the only thing I think I've ever seen her truly scared of. "I need some fresh air. You two go on in. I'll be there in a few minutes." I noted a small shadow detach itself from Ran and bounce along to follow me, but I ignored him in favor of making my way as far from the building as possible. Only when I'd reached a boulder set at the edge of the drive did I stop and park myself.

The small shadow hopped up and sat quietly beside me for a long moment. I'll give Kudo I mean Conan, credit. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. Better than I do, probably. Of course, given that he's had to hide his true self behind the mask of the child that he hasn't been for ten years, that's not surprising. He can't afford to let the Black Organization figure out that the drug they'd intended to kill him turned him to a little boy instead.

"So, how did Kazuha talk Ran into it?" I asked after a long moment of companionable silence.

"She said that there's no real ghosts. It's just a fun get-together, a chance to test one's mettle." Conan said, not bothering with his usual little boy style now that we were in private. He looked up at the building. "Northanger Abbey. Brought over brick by brick from Scotland in the sixties. Inherited from her grandfather by the well-known horror actress Abe Hiromi. A woman whose fascination with the supernatural has led her to try every means she can to make contact with it."

"Lovely." I leaned back on my hands and watched the building. It looked exactly like one of the haunted houses in all those old English Hammer films I used to watch as a boy. Not that that was what was bothering me. The problem was that the building not only looked haunted, it was. My newly acquired 'talent' had shown me that before we'd gotten halfway up the drive. No doubt Abe-san would be thrilled to know. Not that I plan to tell her.

"I take it there's been no let-up on the symptoms?" Conan said sympathetically. Over a month ago I'd come into contact with the Black Organization myself and now I had my own little problem. Accidentally drugged with another of their experiments, one intended to increase psychic abilities, I could see the dead.

"Nope. Did you know," I added sourly, "that the dead far outnumber the living?"

Conan gave me a look. "Not everybody who dies becomes a ghost, surely?" I knew Ai, his companion in misery owing to the same drug he'd been given, was certain I was merely visualizing old memories rather than seeing real ghosts, but Conan – at least – was willing to accept my opinion on the matter.

I sighed. "Nah. Near as I can tell, the ones I'm seeing are the ones who were most distressed by dying." I looked at him. "You know we had a field trip to Nagasaki last week?" At Conan's widened eyes I managed a grin. I didn't have to be psychic to know what he was thinking. "It wasn't that bad," I told him, though my voice shook slightly at the memory. "I knew what I was going to see. And it's been a while now. The longer the ghost's been dead, the less obvious they are to me. I can ignore them fairly easily."

"Still"

"No, what really spooked me was ground zero." I gazed at the moon, remembering. That cold moment of realization at the very center of where the Americans had dropped the second bomb. "Oh, there were ghosts in the area. Not many, but I don't think it's possible for any place to go without a violent death in forty plus years."

Conan frowned. "Then what?"

"It was empty. The edges were crowded with ghosts. I had a hard time avoiding them, in fact. But the center, the utter center, was as empty and still as the face of the moon." I looked down at him and grinned wanly. "They all died so fast. So utterly and absolutely fast that they never had time to regret. Never had time to feel it. One second alive. The next" I snapped my fingers, "gone." Taking a deep breath, I got to my feet. "So I suppose that, after that, I shouldn't let myself be spooked by a haunted house game. Even if the house really is haunted."

***

He watched the two coming up the walkway with a mixture of amusement and chagrin. This was going to be a hard job with these two here. Admittedly, he didn't know the Osaka-ko very well, but all reports said the Great Detective of the West was Kudo's equal. Circumstances were going to make matters even harder, even riskier. Kudo had never known his daylight persona, had never had an opportunity to meet him in his real identity. Keeping the truth out of the light was going to be difficult. Still, that's part of the job, right? Risk. He grinned.

***

Ran and Kazuha had gone in already when the two of us reached the entrance. The woman in white who'd made me realize just what I was in for earlier was still wandering about wringing her hands. She was a very old ghost, barely visible even to my talent. She'd been pretty, though, and I wondered what her story was. Not that I was curious enough to try and touch her to find out. The other aspect of my ability: I pick up bits of information from people – living and dead – if I touch them, something I avoid as much as I possibly can.

There was an old, old man at the doorway waiting for us. Hunched, lank white hair tinged a dirty yellow, face a city map of wrinkles. Exactly the sort of person I'd expect to find in a place like this. If anything, he was almost too good to be true. From Conan's rolled eyes, I could tell he agreed with me.

"The young ladies have gone on to the sitting room," the old man said in a thin, hoarse and quavering voice. "They said for you to join them there, young masters." Picking up a candelabra, he turned to walk down a long, darkened hallway. In the shadows I could make out wooden panels, faint glints of gold, a hint of scarlet and sapphire. The details were obscured, but there was a sense of opulence, a feeling that – in full sunlight – the brilliance of the furnishings would be blinding. Abe-san was one rich lady.

"C'mon, Heiji-niichan!" Conan headed down the hall after the old man. For someone with significantly shorter legs than mine, he moves pretty darn fast. I broke my reverie and hurried after.

The hall was long. Long enough that the lights from the old man's candles couldn't reach the other end. We hadn't quite reached halfway when the first moaning started. "Lady Susan," the old man said. "Killed in the eighteenth century by a spurned lover." He paused for effect, the light pooling around us. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of movement. A pale shrouded object floating past us and into the darkness.

I yawned. So this was what it was going to be. A bunch of faked up ghosts to make up for the fact that what few real ones were there weren't readily viewable. Conan glanced at me and took my reaction as a guideline. Though he jumped and started, I could tell it lacked enthusiasm.

"C'mon," I growled at the old man. "It's been a long trip here, your boss' chauffeur is a hopeless driver and I want to sit down and take a load off before bedtime. Not to mention I'm starved. I wait much longer for supper and I'll be the one haunting this place."

The old man surprised me by not seeming to be bothered by the fact that I was taking the hauntings in stride. He simply moved on, though not very fast, passing some busts set high above us that decided to turn their heads just as we were passing them. I ignored it as studiously as I had 'Lady Susan' and continued on. C'mon. I've been to Disneyland. That trick's old hat now. All they had to do was carve a face into a concavity and keep the thing up out of reach to get a spooky, but not particularly difficult effect.

One cold spot, a light ball or so and a full torsal apparition later and I was getting not only blasé, but over-confident. I could handle this. After all, most of it was fake and the few real ghosts all had to be old and fading, right?

As we approached the sitting room, I discovered just how wrong I was

***

Watching Hattori's behavior puzzled him. Oh, it was no surprise that he was unimpressed by the special effects. Abe-san's methods were obvious to a skilled observer. What really interested him, though, was how Conan seemed to be taking the Osaka-ko's reactions. It was almost as if he was following the 'older' boy's lead. As if Hattori knew something that Conan didn't or couldn't. When Hattori had fallen on his rear with a tiny, terrified, whimper, the young detective's face as pale as possible under his Osaka tan, he knew beyond a doubt that there was something very odd going on.

***

Standing between the three of us and the doorway was a large dog. Black as the blackest coal, it ought not to have been visible, for the light from the candles hadn't reached it. I knew, though, that I was seeing it with a different sort of vision. A vision that needed no light to discern every muscular line of its body. Even if I hadn't realized that much, I would have known it for a ghost. It had no head.

A sense of something hot and raging overwhelmed me and before I knew it, I'd dropped backwards, tripped and landed on my tailbone. Fortunately for my state of mind, if not for my reputation, the dog was gone in the second or so it'd taken for me to recover, otherwise I'd have been having hysterics. I looked up at the other two and shook off the old man's offer of a hand up. I wasn't wearing my gloves and the last thing I needed was to find out what kind of dark secrets he was hiding. "I'm okay," I said, standing and glanced down at Conan, who raised a curious brow. "Tripped," I explained. Conan's curiosity would have to wait until no one else could hear me. "Sorry 'bout that." I resettled my hat, using the moment to recover my composure.

"Oh dear. I should have the maid check the floors. Perhaps she did not clean the wax properly." To my relief, the old man accepted my explanation. He gave me a nervous smile and went to the sitting room door. Pushing it open to reveal a place of light, warmth and life, he bowed to us as we entered. "If sirs will excuse me, I should be getting back to my duties now, Heidi will be escorting you to supper, then to your rooms. Your baggage, of course, will have been brought up already." He turned and left, limping slowly away while I watched him curiously. He seemed almost too good to be true.

Conan looked at me. "Think he's an actor?" he asked, echoing my thoughts, and I nodded. No one could be that perfectly suited to the environment.

"Hey, Heiji! You going to stand there and stare? Come in and be introduced!" Kazuha's voice broke into my thoughts and forced me to turn. It's amazing how much like a fishwife she can sound when she wants to. "That girl's going to make some man miserable one day," I muttered to Conan.

"Oh really?" he asked in an irritatingly amused voice, brow raised in obvious amusement.

I glared at him. "Oh really." Okay, so maybe I won't be completely miserable, but there's no way I'm going to admit that. Hell, we're still in high school. For all I know, she'll find someone else to inflict herself on that she likes better. And won't that make me even more miserable. I cut that thought process short. Admissions like that aren't part of the reputation, after all.

"HEIJI!"

"Hai, hai!" Stepping into the sitting room in response to Kazuha's yell, I looked around and frowned. The first person I laid eyes on was an older woman, heavy set if not actually fat, with blonde dyed hair and sour pursed lips, a brightly colored scarf adorning her neck with a big sapphire colored stone pinned to it. "Oh great. Not her again!" I remembered her only too well from a case Conan and I had solved some time back. Maria Toda, a fortune-teller and Sherlock Holmes fan. She apparently liked haunted houses too.

Glancing at the rest of the group, I saw a young gaijin couple obviously more interested in each other than the furnishings. The girl was a red-head, pretty in a vapid sort of way and the boy was tall and gawky, with a short brush of blonde hair. Across from them, looking like he didn't want to be there at all, was an older man – tall, salt-and-pepper grey hair and a small goatee – who almost had to be a professor or doctor of some sort. He was doing his best to make his companion – a young man just five or six years older than Kudo and I – miserable. The short, wispy fellow was looking a trifle bedraggled, his suit was wrinkled like he'd slept in it and his dark hair was tousled.

Deciding that introductions could wait, I looked further around to find Kazuha and Ran. The girls, of course, had found themselves a third crony to hang out with. They could have been old friends, from the way they were giggling over something, but I'd never seen the girl before. Slim, dark brown hair and reasonably pretty, she smiled over at us in a friendly way.

"This is Nakamori Aoko," Kazuha said, making the introductions. "She's here with one of her friends."

"Yeah, and I wish he'd quit poking around and come back," Aoko-kun said sourly. "Kaito is such a nuisance."

"Eh, and what makes you think I'm anywhere but here?" The voice came out of the statue to my left and might have made me jump if it hadn't been for the fact that it was very real and alive. Besides, my 'talent' had never included audible phenomena before. I glanced casually around and saw nothing. When I looked back, however, a young man was standing behind Aoko, leaning on her with a huge grin and a bunch of fake flowers in his hand. "Hey."

"Kuroba Kaito, you stop that right now. It's bad enough you interfere with school this way. Can't we have one trip without your silly magic tricks?" Aoko looked peeved and I could see her hand clenching as if she were trying to grab something that wasn't there.

Kuroba's grin only broadened. "Ahhh, you have no romance, Aoko." He bowed to the girls and as he straightened drew some white and sweet scented objects from thin air, presenting them to Ran and Kazuha. "At your service, Kusukawa-san, Mouri-san."

Every hackle on the back of my neck rose and I glared at the guy. Roses. White roses, for gods' sake! Kazuha's pleased expression didn't make me any happier. I was tempted to grab the things from his hand when Conan sneezed several times. "Oh I'm sorry, Kuroba-san," he gasped, sniffling and sneezing again. "I guess I'm 'llergic."

"Oh." Kuroba's expression was a mixture of chagrin and amusement. "Really? I'll put them away, then."

I made a mental note to thank Conan, both for blocking Kuroba's little gesture and for distracting me. Grabbing the roses would have been risky, not just because of my little 'talent' but because it would have looked bad. I didn't want to offend Kazuha by making her think I considered her my territory. Not to mention I don't want to put ideas in her little head. Yet.

Glancing at Aoko, I noted that she was holding on to her temper by a bare thread. From Kuroba's faintly delighted expression I would bet that he'd played that little game as much to pull her chain as to pull mine. And why do I have this odd feeling he's pulling Conan's too? It made no sense, though. As far as Kuroba knew, Conan was just a kid, too young to have feelings for girls Ran's age. Yet his short, sharp, glance downward told me he was checking Conan's reaction as well as mine.

"I'm sorry," Aoko said after Kuroba had disposed of the flowers somewhere. "Kaito's always pulling pranks like that. He likes to live dangerously."

"Gotta practice," Kuroba grinned and seemed about to say more when a young woman stepped out of the door across the way. Dressed in a maid's outfit, I suspected she must be the woman the old man had called Heidi. Platinum blonde hair cut in a short bob was held back by a single black ribbon and she wore a short black dress with a frilly white apron. The legs revealed by her outfit were – well, stunning is the only way to put it.

Kazuha's elbow nudged its way sharply into my ribs. "Quit drooling," she growled at me. "I can't take you anywhere." I rubbed the back of my head in embarrassment and forced myself to look at the woman's face instead of her many assets. Didn't help much, though. She had perfect skin, huge blue eyes and bowed lips. Another one too good to be true. I noted Conan's wide-eyed expression with amusement, but refrained from commenting. Ran would not approve. Besides, he could easily have been looking at the faint smear of greasepaint that was hidden just at the edge of her collar. Its color was pinkish-grey and a small suspicion niggled at me.

Bowing to the group, the woman held the door wide. "Good evening, sirs and madams. Dinner is ready to be served. If you will accompany me to the dining room?"

***

The by-play between himself and the two detectives was risky, but fun. Teasing Conan especially had been easy, because the little shrimp didn't dare show his real reaction to having someone offer his girl a pretty flower. Though I admit he did a good job of covering for it with that sneeze. Allergic indeed. As for Hattori, that one had been more than satisfactory, the way his hackles had raised. Distraction. Keep them distracted by the minutiae and hopefully they wouldn't notice anything else about him. It worked with Aoko, if not Hakuba, after all. But then Hakuba was as tenacious as the English Bulldog.

To Be Continued...