Disclaimer: If Ghost Hunt belonged to me, would I be writing Fan fiction? Of course not.

Blind Sight

Friday

November 17

Day 1

4:30 PM

"This is the place?" Ayako said, examining the a small two-story café the SPR van was parked in front of. "It sure doesn't look haunted."

"You can't judge things by their appearance, right?" Mai responded, peering at the building, then conceding, "But it's certainly not what you'd expect from a haunted house."

Two days earlier, Mai had been sitting on the front room the Shibuya Physic Research office, filing various legal papers from small cases they'd already finished. There was no noise at first, then a slight knock was heard, followed by the ring of the bell on the door. Mai turned around to see a girl about her age, with long black hair and blue-grey eyes standing at the desk. She was wearing a long white sweater, and she stood silently in front of the desk as Mai walked up to meet her.

"Um . . . can I help you?" Mai asked. The girl was so silent and pale; she almost looked like a ghost herself. Mai found herself checking to make sure the girl had legs and she wasn't actually talking to a yurei.*

"My name is Hitotose Akiyuki. I had an appointment?" the girl said. Her voice was very clear, with every syllable enunciated so clearly that Mai didn't answer aloud for fear of sounding like she was talking with a mouth full of oatmeal. Instead, she nodded, and waved one hand at the couch in a 'sit,' gesture, and left to find Naru and Lin.

Lin was emerging from his office with his computer, having remembered the appointment and been listening for the doorbell. Mai went to Naru's office, knocking before opening the door. "We have a customer," she reminded him.

"I know," Naru said, closing the notebook in front of him. Of course you did, Mai thought, 'Cause it would kill you to just politely thank me!

Mai left the office with Naru following her a few moments later.

Naru walked up to the front door of the café, and pushed it open. It swung with a cheery jingling of bells, and a call of, "We're closed today, sorry!"

A dark haired woman of around 40 breezed through the sliding door separating the collection of tables for the restaurant from an unseen room in the back. She looked at them for a moment, and then said, "Oh, are you from Shibuya Physic Research? The people Akiyuki went to?"

"That's correct," Naru said, "I'm Kazuya Shibuya. I own the business." Mai watched to see surprise cross the woman's face at Naru's youth, but it seemed she'd already known.

"You are young, Aki-chan was right. I'm Akiyuki's aunt," she explained, then added, "Well, I suppose you'd better come in then. We've prepared the rooms you've asked for." As the group of spiritualists stepped into the room she added, "Oh, and you'll want to avoid standing by the shelf with the dishes on it. Or anything else heavy, for that matter." She said it with a smile, but her tone was tired.

Naru nodded and lead the team, currently composed of Lin, Mai, Ayako, and Bou-san, behind the woman. Hitotose led them into the back, which was a large kitchen. On the right side of the kitchen, another large set of sliding doors had been pushed back to reveal a living room. "The café takes up most of the bottom floor, so we live in the loft upstairs," Hitotose explained, "Your rooms are upstairs, as well, but you have free roam of the place. The café is closed, as you heard, so nowhere is off-limits right now."

"Can we speak to the sister that your niece spoke about when she came to visit us?" Naru said. Hitotose nodded.

"I'll get her. Akiyuki will want to be there too, do you mind?" she asked, waving them up the stairs into a narrow hallway that had several doors on either side of it. Three of them were opened, and she led them into an average sized wood-paneled room with several large tables pushed against the walls. "I'm afraid that this is the best we can do for equipment rooms. This house is old, and this room has the most electrical outlets in the entire place, except for the kitchen."

"This will do fine," Naru said, and then added, "I would like to hear from everyone who experienced phenomena in this house. That includes Akiyuki; and yourself."

"That's impossible," Hitotose frowned, "Because a number of customers also experienced things, and we don't have their contact information. I believe that between the three of us, you should be able to get most of the information you're looking for, though."

Naru frowned slightly, but nodded. Hitotose left, mentioning something about getting Akiyuki and her sister, then arrived back only moments later with Akiyuki behind her, looking less like a ghost than the day she'd arrived at the office. She was leading an albino girl with long white hair and a cheerful smile.

"Start bringing in the equipment," Naru instructed, and gestured for the sisters to sit in front of him. "I heard from your sister that you experienced much of the phenomena that occurred in this house," he said, speaking to the white haired girl.

"Yep," the she smiled, "That's me. I'm Hitotose Mamori, nice to meet you." She spoke normally, but had a distinct Osakan drawl that contrasted starkly with her sister's crisp speech.

Mai set a three tea cups down on the coffee table between the couches. Naru grabbed his own, but Akiyuki simply watched it, hands folded in her lap, as the ghostly steam drifted from the cup. Lin's fingers hung poised over the computer, waiting for the interview to begin.

"What brought you here?" Naru said, jumping straight to the point. Akiyuki seemed relieved, and started her story in a business-like tone.

"I recently moved to the area along with my twin sister. Our father works overseas, and our mother died 14 years ago. Normally his business trips are short enough to leave us by ourselves, but since this particular trip is scheduled to last over a year and a half, he decided that we needed some kind of adult guardian. We have an aunt that runs a café in a town near here, and she had some back rooms that hadn't been used for a long time. She unblocked the rooms, and we moved in about two and a half months ago."

Akiyuki took a breath, and shifted her hands in her lap. "For about a week, everything was normal. Then strange things started to happen around the cafe. At first, they were actually extremely helpful – meals would be prepped, even though nobody remembered making them, drinks that should have gone cold remained the same temperature, or we would leave the house and when we came back, objects that had been left out or dishes left undone had been put away. It stayed that way for a little over two weeks."

Lin's fingers flew across the keys as Akiyuki paused again. "At the start of our fourth week in the house, we started to notice changes in whatever force had been housekeeping before – instead of cleaning, it would knock small objects off shelves, or it would knock pots of ingredients over. Sometimes it would pull books off shelves and fling them across the room. We never saw the objects start moving – we would simply be sitting in a room next door and suddenly something would crash, or fly into a wall, even though there was nobody there. The stove would occasionally burst into flames, and customers would say they felt like someone was watching them. We didn't do anything, though, because it never caused much damage. It was like having an energetic dog in the house, rather than an angry ghost."

Mai shivered. It sounded like a classic poltergeist, to her. Akiyuki's expression darkened as she continued her story. "A few weeks later, after we'd been there for maybe a month and a half, the spirit changed again. Larger objects started to move, once a chair was thrown with such force it shattered when it hit the wall. Doors and windows started to slam themselves randomly, and usually they'd be locked closed for several minutes. We started hearing noises about that time, too. My sister heard them first – footsteps, pounding, wailing. Baa-chan** started hearing them shortly after her, and recently I have been able to as well. My aunt is a very tolerant person, because Obaa-san*** was a bit of a spiritualist, so she didn't want to go for help just yet. She tried exorcising the backrooms herself, but immediately after she tried that, my sister started to see things."

Akiyuki's hands were turning in her lap by now and she started to speak faster than before. "You don't know my sister, so the words 'she started to see things' don't mean as much as they should. She's been blind since the day she was born, but she started to see eyes and foggy shapes follow her around the house. My aunt took her to the doctor to make sure it wasn't a problem with her eyes, but there was nothing wrong. A little over a week ago, my aunt woke up in the middle of the night, paralyzed. She said she felt hands pinning her shoulders against the bed, and she screamed. She could move again after my sister and I entered the room, but the bruises are still there."

By now, Mai was standing, trying to keep from gaping like a fish. "That's scary!" she exploded, "Why didn't you go for help?"

Akiyuki's head fell into her hand. "We did," she said so softly it was hard to hear her. "Obaa-san came to visit, and she tried exorcising my sister and aunt's bedrooms. She had requested that we stay outside while she worked, so no one would distract her or be in any danger. While she was in my aunt's bedroom, we heard a horrible scream that was sharply cut off, but the door had been jammed. By the time we'd broken it down; Obaa-san was already dead. She had been strangled."

Mai's hands lifted automatically to her throat. Then, she walked over to Akiyuki's side, setting one hand on her shoulder, wishing there was something she could do.

Akiyuki looked up and shrugged Mai off, but as she finished her voice was hoarse with sadness and fear. "Until then, I had seen very few of the events myself. More often, they were witnessed by my family instead of myself, or by families in the café. But as we came into the room to find Obaa-san dead, I saw the wall start to bleed."

"The wall was . . . ?" Naru said, asking for clarification without actually asking.

"The wall was bleeding," she repeated, "Like the wall had pores, and there was blood coming though them. I know there was blood. I could smell it," she wrinkled her nose slightly at the memory, casting her eyes down at her hands. "My family saw it, too. It spelled out three words, and then disappeared."

"What did it read?" Naru asked, as Lin continued to type quickly. Mai stood behind Akiyuki, hands balled into horrified fists.

"It said 'stay away, bitch,'" Akiyuki answered. "There's nothing we can do anymore. We needed to find someone to come, and nobody else would accept our case because they're afraid of dying like Obaa-san." Her voice was bitter, but somehow hopeful. "I read on the Internet that this agency accepted a case where there were deaths involved before."

Naru nodded to Lin then turned to Akiyuki. "We'll come," he said, and started to give her instructions regarding their rooms and arrival time.

Mai walked back to the room with the last of the computer equipment. Mamori, Akiyuki, and Hitotose were sitting on the ground, though Naru had long since pulled a chair up to a table so he could write in and flip through his binder. Lin sat on a black office chair, setting up the equipment. Mai sat on the floor as well, slightly away from the family.

" . . . . I'd always see the eyes right before I went to bed, or when I woke up," Mamori was saying thoughtfully, "I thought they were awful, but once they led me away from a bookshelf right before it got pushed down, and it's never done anything to hurt me. Another time, when I got separated from Akiyuki in the market, I found her again by following the shape. It's so hard to explain what I'm seeing, because I don't have anything to compare it to."

Naru frowned thoughtfully. "You've never seen anything like this before?"

Mamori tipped her head to one side, thinking. "One other time, I did. I saw the same sort of eye shapes once, when I fell into a pond and nearly drowned when I was 8 years old. But they were different, then. Not different in shape, or size, just different. Like, when I drowned, the eyes made me feel good, and now the make me feel anxious. And they've changed another way, too. As if they were . . . hued differently," she said drawing pictures in the air with her hands, trying to explain what she'd seen.

"Were they different colors, Mamori?" Akiyuki suddenly asked.

"I guess," Mamori said, "I don't know what colors are, really, but that's what I want to call them. The first time I saw them, they were a . . ." her hand flapped uselessly in front of her, "Colder color, like water or fog. Now, they're a hot, angry sort of color."

"Blue and red," Ayako said suddenly, "I'm willing to bet the first eyes were blue or grey, like Akiyuki's, and the second eyes were red, like Mamori's." Mai noticed, for the first time, Mamori's strange albino eyes, a brownish red.

"I dunno," Mamori said, "Your guess is better than mine."

"Speaking of markets," Hitotose interrupted, "I need to go shopping, if you're done with us for now. If there's anything else you need to know, I'll be happy to answer any questions later." She stood up, and so did Mamori and Akiyuki.

"We're in the third room on the left from the top of the stairs," Akiyuki said, "Even since Obaa-san died, Baa-chan has been staying in my room, and I'm staying with Mamori. We'll be there if you need anything." Akiyuki led Mamori out of the room, and Hitotose followed them out with a little parting wave.

Naru looked at Mai. "Start setting up the cameras, Mai," he instructed.

"Yes," Mai sighed, taking the equipment and heading off into the house.

"This house," Mai complained to Bou-san as they set up the final camera, "Is deceptively large. I don't know how so many rooms can be fit into such a small space!"

Bou-san laughed, and explained, "Houses like this are built to be narrow rectangles so that a lot of storefronts could be crammed close together. They extend a lot farther back than they appear from the front."

"Is that angle okay, Lin?" Mai called through her walkie-talkie.

"That's fine," he answered, "You can come back to base now."

Mai joked with Bou-san as they arrived back at base. Naru was looking over his notes, and Mai stood in front of him, trying to grab his attention. "Any ideas, Naru-bou?" she asked.

"It's a poltergeist of some sort, right?" Ayako said, "A lot of the signs are there – flying objects, locking doors, strange noises, small fires, and apparitions."

"Ordinary poltergeists don't kill spiritualists that try to exorcise them," Naru said, "And apparitions don't usually occur for people that can't see. For that matter, traditional poltergeists are usually tied to a place, not a person, so the eyes wouldn't have travelled with the girl since she was eight years old. More likely, there's another kind of spirit tied to the younger sister that was upset by her recent change in living arrangements."

"If we know that much, we can exorcise the spirit, right?" Bou-san asked.

"No," Naru snapped coldly, "You appear to be forgetting the level of spirit we're dealing with. It not only resisted an exorcism, it killed the exorcist. It created illusions that the family could not only see, but smell. It's at a much higher level than trying to exorcise it with such little solid information."

"Fine, fine," Bou-san said, "I was just asking. So nobody can exorcise it?"

"John might be able to," Naru said, "But first I'd like to know more about the kind of spirit this is. At this point, we still haven't seen any kind of activity. Once we know more about the spirit we're dealing with, we will be able to exorcise it."

Naru snapped his binder closed, and left the room. Mai stayed at the base for awhile, watching the monitors until Hitotose arrived home and treated them all to a traditional Japanese style dinner.

Everything stayed peaceful until about 1:00 AM the next morning.

*Yurei: A classical Japanese ghost usually portrayed as a person with long, dark hair wearing a white kimono. They disappear at the waist, which is why Mai is checking for legs.

**Baa-chan: A disrespectful title used for a middle-aged to older woman. Akiyuki is using it playfully, but you wouldn't want to use it to refer to most Japanese women because it's usually taken as an insult.

***Obaa-san: A respectful way to say 'Grandmother.'

Here's the first chapter of my first Ghost Hunt fic every written. It's very different from what I've done before, so bear with me until I can pin down the writing style. This case will circulate more around the original SPR, but I couldn't see a way to fill in all the information from before the case started with out heavy OC involvement. Mai and the rest will play a bigger part in the following chapters. Please review and let me know what you think! I love criticisms as well, as long as you pinpoint what's wrong.