An aching pain ran through the boy's head as he lied on the floor. His hand fidgeted and moved around the floor, trying to grasp onto the instrument he was known for. But he couldn't feel anything.
Kubo eventually sat up, looking to each side. Where was his shamisen!? He looked with his one eye at the floor, briefly hearing moaning. He heard footsteps, pounding ones. Somebody was coming. Having no way to properly defend himself, he had to stay out of sight. Running around the corner, he backed away, his back touching a cold mirror. Kubo felt any balance he once had disappear, falling backwards and into a new room. He was lying on the floor, his elbows slightly scraped from how abruptly he fell through.
Suddenly Kubo heard a noise. He looked in the direction of the sound, but while his eye was having trouble adjusting to the darkness around him, he could see a familiar shape.
His shamisen.
Pluck.
He didn't know who was playing his shamisen at first, but the fact that anyone that couldn't be seen was playing it half-worried him, the other half wanting to just see who these people were. One by one, three floating figures...spirits, appeared. All three looked different...but there was one thing they all had in common.
The buttons.
Instead of big to small eyes with an orb of colour, they were replaced with big, black buttons, stitched in the place where the children's eyes should have been. One of them looked up at him as Kubo could only come out with one question, "Who...who are you...?" he questioned; not frightened of these beings - more horror over one question. How did these spirits end up like this?
The girl who was looking up at him was the first to answer him, "Don't remember my true name..." she mumbled, showing a sign of sadness. "Your...instrument...is very, very nice, sir. What...what is it called?"
"It's a shamisen," Kubo answered her as he did manage to get the thought that jumping straight to the question going through his head would just be out-of-place. A taller spirit with a face of perpetual horror turned to him,
"You're wondering...who did this...The Beldam."
"The...The Beldam?"
"Yes...she spied on our lives through the little doll's eyes...and saw that we weren't she lured us away with treasures and treats, and games to play, gave all that we asked. Yet we still wanted we let her sew the buttons. She said that she loved us. But she locked us here...and ate up our lives. Until...she came; she gave us our eyes, returned them to us. But now The Beldam has abducted you...we're stuck back here - our eyes gone again."
Kubo listened, he almost saw the story unfold - each one being lured in by this Beldam, being happier, only for their hopes to be torn apart and their lives taken from them. Their eyes taken from them, losing their true humanity and being trapped as ghosts in this one place. "I'll find your eyes." Kubo vowed, before one of the ghost girls, namely the one who'd been playing it in the first place, handed his shamisen back to him.
Soon enough, Kubo found himself nodding and finding an escape out of the mirror. He ran throughout the house, but it seemed more like a maze. It never seemed to end, the walls extending further and further and never stopping again. He stopped abruptly, hearing a cold, chilling voice, it almost seemed to be singing. Singing his name, in fact."Kubo...? Come now; you could be happier here. You wouldn't need to remember what happened to...your mother...! Or your father, or any of your other friends..."
As his breaths became heavy, Kubo was paralyzed for a second. The memory of being taken away from his mother. Monkey, the last part of his mother that he'd had slowly perishing. Beetle, the very little of his father that he'd had during his journey being struck down right before him.
Returning to reality, Kubo was about to run only for his red robes, his father's robes to be caught on a long spider-like leg with a terrifying figure coming towards him. She possessed a paper white face covered with cracks and was extremely thin - one push would seem to tear her in half. Her hands weren't even made up of flesh, with needles at the tips of her fingers.
Ready to take his last eye and replace them with buttons, take his soul. The Other Mother chuckled at his attempts to get away from her. Kubo had to think of something, grabbing desperately at his shamisen, he began playing, making the paper spawn, growing figures of their own and knocking the Other Mother back thanks to rapid attacks towards her.
Suddenly, Kubo heard a pounding from behind him. This was his chance! As he ran out, he could hear someone pursuing him. The words distorting, he slammed the door shut before leaning on the wall beside him, desperately trying to breathe. He barely caught it again, shaking slightly as those memories flashed before his eye. Wincing slightly, he looked up and saw a silhouette passing by the moon. He knew he had to return - his village needed him, his grandfather needed him. And right now - those children needed him, needed him to get their eyes back, so they could move on, regain their last parts of humanity.
Soon Kubo was sprinting towards a garden in the distance - it just seemed so elaborate that it seemed to be a place where a ghost eye could be hidden. As he walked through the garden, he shuddered slightly as he noticed one thing. The silence. This couldn't be good - that was what he knew for sure.
Tempted to play his shamisen, Kubo moved his hands further from the three strings in case he would be attacked. He glanced around for the eye...
He suddenly turned around, seeing blue flowers that almost seemed to have mouths, coming straight at his legs. He dodged the first time, knowing he couldn't just walk around now. Kubo glanced again, seeing them coming at him repeatedly - the third time, one grabbed his ankle, making him lose balance long enough for another and another and another to grab him. Kubo dropped his shamisen, but he desperately tried to grab it. It was pulling him in...!
Kubo knew he had to think fast. Noticing a sharp but strange item, he gripped onto it before being wrapped up by these plants. Although Kubo struggled to exhale as these plants forcefully encased him in their grasp, he cut through the roots as quickly as he could, how he managed to do it so quickly...well, he was unsure.
Once he'd cut them, the plants slowly returned to where they'd once been, leaving the boy a chance to regain some breath. Kubo noticed it earlier though - the buzzing. Turning around, he grabbed his shamisen tightly, before quickly beginning to play. It was like the other way around - when he'd been out in the cold barren wasteland known as The Ice Fields, he'd played a bit of a trick on Monkey, accidentally spawning birds and mosquitoes. Now he was in her place; but obviously this wasn't just a trick.
The wasps were trying to grab something from him. The strings! Unfortunately, one pulled off the strand of his mother's hair, another taking off the white string that had once been apart of his father's bow which had found it's way to Beetle, then to him, but now in the mouths of wasps.
Kubo's eye suddenly narrowed in a near furious manner, anger burning within them, not tolerating these creatures taking one of the few physical pieces of his mother and father he always had with him. Running straight at them as he took off a part of the bridge's railing and threw it in their direction, causing their descent. He immediately ran to where they'd landed, quickly re-attaching the strings to his shamisen.
Click-clack.
Click-clack.
Click-clack.
"What...?" he muttered to himself, noticing a man sitting in a strange way, hunched over, hands limp and on top of a round item, impossible to see due to the darkness that cloaked it.
"Ssssoorrry...shhhee...Mothherrrrrrrr's...makkkkinggggg me..." a low, croaky voice hummed out, finally revealing itself.
The description had been correct alright. Metal legs like needles came towards the boy with the shamisen rapidly, the first one coming down hard enough to knock him over. He crawled away at first, but soon got a firm hold of his senses as he pushed himself back to his feet. Glancing behind him, Kubo could tell from the heavy structure that it could easily fall through the bridge.
Not that he hadn't understood - 'Mother's making me.'
The Other Mother, the Beldam of course.
This man in with a gangly and stick-like form was being forced into this and if Kubo were to be perfectly honest, he didn't want to kill this man. He was smart enough to hear it. It was as if the Beldam was a puppet master, better than his shamisen's magic controlled his origami and papers. A manipulator.
He had every right to think that, looking back at the three Ghost Children he had encountered back in that dark room, the only door being a mirror.
Suddenly the strange moving creature laid its feet on the light wooden bridge, breaking a lot more then he'd hoped for, as it wasn't just this man that collapsed as bits of wood fell through underneath his feet. Kubo's hands barely managed to grasp onto the wood, hearing the bridge splinter more and more, barely being able to take his weight. Despite this, he reached to the remaining being as it was submerged, but instead of a hand, he felt a strange round ball in his hand. The Ghost Eye. Before going, the figure put his head underneath Kubo's foot so he could get up better.
Backing away slightly from the weakened part of the bridge, he stared at where the figure (known as the Other Father) had once been. Kubo couldn't help but feel guilt churn in his stomach, a puppet under control, only to break out at the last second and help him before Kubo could do anything to save him.

The ground shook lightly, making him look around him, before noticing the garden, while dark had still had a strange sense of colour, now turned to pure gray stone.

"Thank you, sir...! But there's still two eyes left lost." a male voice called him, the Ghost Boy. Afterwards, he seemed to mutter, "I think miss would like you."
"Who is this...miss...?" Kubo asked him, tilting his head slightly.
"Coraline..." the voice drifted away soon after, the face fading away.
"Don't worry; I'll get all three of your eyes back. It's a promise." Kubo said, before going to find the next two eyes.
As he walked out of the gray garden, the boy couldn't help the questions floating through his head - more than three in fact. Why did this Beldam abduct him? She seemed weak and frail, like she was starving. Did...did she need the souls of children to survive? That was horrible. He must have been apart of some last strange ditch attempt. A failed ditch attempt, but still a last attempt none the less. One that if he made a wrong move, he wouldn't just lose his soul, but also seem to disappear without any trace as he definitely wasn't in his home, the place he knew the best.
Suddenly, the sound of light singing bounced around his ears, grabbing Kubo's attention. "Huh...?" he mumbled, only to put the pieces together. "A ghost eye could be in there. I've gotta go in." he added, before going down those stairs with, to be fair, some added confidence.
But when he went inside, he was disturbed to find a large empty room. Kubo knew better now. Large, silent, empty spaces were a terrible sign of danger, and now, obvious signs. Kubo wasn't going to risk an ambush. Not again.
A small item lightly touched his feet, making him kneel down, pick it up and mess about slightly with a small addition to it, a light abruptly coming on, the room illuminating. He didn't move, in case he was to be ambushed without a single warning.
He was right to do so - as the item (known as a flashlight) was directed at different parts of the room, once it had crawled over the roof, dog-like creatures with strange wings were hanging upside down, similar to bats. One loudly hissed at him, making him turn the light off for a moment, making them stop.
"Guess they don't like light, huh...?" Kubo smirked slightly. Right. He knew what he was doing, at least he thought so anyway. Just don't disturb them, if he didn't annoy them, then perhaps they wouldn't try to kill him. That confidence quickly dissolved when he heard a light turn on, making him turn abruptly. Glancing around, Kubo debated whether or not to climb onto this platform, something told him this was a trap set up for him, or Coraline who had saved the ghost children before.
To be fair, when told about her, Kubo had wondered about who she was - but now was not the time. He knew that, so he quickly focused back on the strange items dangling in mid-air. Kubo reached inside a bag, only for his eye to meet a strange sight. In basics, it didn't seem too strange, two hands, holding the other. But it was the skin that made it more eerie - one hand was a light shade of red, rather than the colour of flesh, the other a light green. He slowly moved his hands, being able to grasp onto a light ball, almost like a strange new item, smooth.
But the iron grip in his wrists made him stop in his tracks for a moment.
"GIVE IT BACK!" the two voices shouted, dragging him towards them as he was stuck on the floor. Kubo tugged his hands back as hard as he could, only managing to get one free for just a moment, but the pinkish-red hand already grasped it.
Luckily though, Kubo had just enough time to throw it, shutting his eye. "Please let this work...! This needs to work! Come on!" he exclaimed in a quick and haphazardly way.
As the creatures' rage and longing for blood became clear, the two distorted figures were distracted for long enough to give him a chance to avoid death, but as he looked back, he was forced to see these two female figures be mangled by these strange organisms before turning stone cold.
A female voice greeted him, "Please hurry, sir! The web is unwinding. You're running out of time before you're gone!"
Nodding, Kubo sprinted out as quickly as he could, knowing time wasn't on his side. As he was outside, he looked up at the dark and lonely sky, adorned with one large moon, but here; it seemed to be an eternal night.
Glancing around, Kubo thought to where the last eye could be. The Beldam might have wanted access to them, whether it was to toy with them or take whatever was left, he looked up and saw a staircase. He held his breath as he crept up those white steps, aware that one wrong move could easily mean it would be over.
Entering the room, trying his best not to fear the time limit that pushed pressure onto his robes, it seemed his senses had heightened; though it was mostly out of fear, or at least that was what he suspected. He heard a presence behind him, but debated whether or not to look back in case of it being a trick.
"Hello, little boy...! Would this be what you're looking for?"
The final eye was revealed. Kubo gazed straight in its direction, before stating firmly, "Yes."
"Honestly; do you think winning this game against her is a good thing?" the cloaked figure asked, crawling around, keeping the ball out of his reach. "You'll just be stuck with that same town, every day, doing the same thing every night-"
"I'd prefer it that way." Kubo retorted, sighing a bit as he rolled his eye slightly.
"Instead of staying here with us...!"
"She kidnapped me; don't know if you've noticed." Kubo said, trying to get the eye, but it was still just out of his reach.
"If you stay here, you could have whatever you want...alwayyssss!"
"She. kidnapped me. She took me away from grandfather, my town; I need to return to them!" Kubo responded. He grabbed at the figure's hat, only for thin white rats, almost as narrow as his papers to come out. A figure made out of rats. The ring-leader grabbed the last eye, taking it like it was a toy ball.
Following after it, he suddenly felt something sticky and strange attach himself to him, which he threw in the direction of the rat with the remaining eye...
but in doing so, the other two rolled from the pocket and fell out to the steps.
Only did he realize he'd made a mistake when it shook as he glanced around desperately, only for it to collapse.
There he was.
Lying on the ground again, staring up at the moon as a black button's silhouette almost covered it. Kubo's hands desperately reached around for the eye, the two eyes he had gathered. Why couldn't he get up!? Even though the pain from before wasn't as terrible as it was now, like a burning through his spine, he could still get up, surely!
A horrible sight met his eyes. Trapped staring up there at the cold sky, it turned from a dark world of nothing to a white world that went on forever. Kubo could only crawl, feeling slight relief as he felt three round circles. He smiled slightly, holding it up briefly. "Yes...! Yes...! I've got it; it's not over, I can still-"
Kubo heard a crack, followed by more and more. He gasped out loud as the terrain around him seemed to completely fall apart. He dragged himself towards the steps, reaching the door, only for him to seem to hang on, his legs dangling. "No...no, no, no, no!" he cried out, desperately trying to push himself up, crawling himself onto the floor, shutting the entry to a fate worse than death, to fall forever, staring at nothing for a painfully long time until you just shut your eyes and forgot all about it.
Taking a deep breath, Kubo reached into his pocket, exhaling quietly with a pinch of relief as he knew the Ghost Children's eyes were there. He would put them somewhere safer if he could, but he'd woken up in this place with nothing.
He leaned on the wall, trying to ignore the shooting pain that ran through him every time he made a move. Kubo eventually reached the door, hearing the Beldam speaking behind. He gulped a bit, knowing he was alone. No - he wasn't. He grabbed his shamisen, looking down at the strings and plucking as gently as he could on the two strings. He was never alone as long as he had those two strings with him.
Smiling a bit, Kubo's hope had been raised as he put on a confident and brave mask as he entered the room, eyes narrowed towards the creature sitting there in front a fire of green.
"So, you've found the Ghost Eyes...? And you think this'll get you home, do you?" the Beldam asked, a smug snarl on her face.
Kubo nodded and looked at them, but doubted that she would let him leave, even if he got all three. As it definitely seemed as if she knew of him trying to find the Ghost Eyes.
"And I doubt you've remembered, you still need to find your own way out of here, don't you?" the Beldam had got at him there. How exactly to get out, Kubo was unaware - even so he racked his brains as hard as he could.
Kubo looked at the white door, but didn't realize it seemed as if he was answering her. The Beldam unlocked it, and calmly, she announced. "You're wrong, Kuuubooo...this won't lead you there. I guess you're stuck here, aren't you...? All. alone, except with me."
His hands immediately reached for his shamisen. "No." he replied, quietly. "I'm not alone." his tone having an edge as he began to play, the paper seeming to form into soldiers themselves. One in particular pulled at her hair, getting some out, grasping at the needles and ripping one out - and the button eyes to go along with them.
"You...YOU LITTLE BRAT!"
The floor seemed to collapse, Kubo falling to the bottom of a spider web. He tried to move his hands, but could barely do so without tying his shamisen back, unintentionally returning his paper back. Looking up, he heard a laugh, filled with malice. Like a monster in your nightmare, ready to come and get you as you slept.
Kubo saw the Beldam coming in his direction. He yanked his foot away from the web, kicking the Beldam in the face, knocking her back slightly. He crawled onto the outside, only to feel something on his robe, trying desperately to drag him down. Kicking again, the Beldam let out an inhuman shriek at him. "DON'T LEAVE ME!"
Kubo's hands grasped the door, tearing it open as he dragged himself through, hands from the ghost eyes gripping the door, making him try to pull it shut. But something strange was that nobody tried to stop them from doing so. Kubo suddenly figured out why as he cried out, dropping and seeming to stop in mid-air. All he could see was white, where was he...?
"Was...was this what she meant by this wouldn't lead me home...?" he wondered, but for some reason, he couldn't move his mouth. It was as if his body parts had fallen asleep, his arms, his head, his legs, his lips. The only part that hadn't were his eyelids, but they drooped.
"No...! Must...stay awake. Must...stay...awake..." he muttered, only to go silent.
Floating in nothingness. Exactly what he had been trying to avoid this whole time.