Devil's Night

Chapter I

"Eyes"

by Arienna Natalitha

Disclaimer: Reborn isn't mine.

Tsuna was walking home late from his cram school. There had been a quiz that he didn't understand, and he had asked his tutor to explain it to him. And when he realized the time, it was already 9 PM.

He hopped the entrance portal of a residence, taking a shortcut. But just when he was starting to climb the boulevard hill, the lights around the road suddenly went off. The few lights from the houses on the rear side of the road had all also simultaneously went off as well. Was this a blackout?

Even if this is a residence area, it felt too quiet. Tsuna realized that far on his right side behind the buildings was untouched woodland area. He felt shivers run down his spine at the thought of being alone in a deserted road near woodland area at night on a blackout. But he forced himself nonetheless to keep walking on, and reassuring himself that all this feelings of fright and anxiety will disperse as soon as he saw the face of his mother and noisy Lambo and I-Pin back at home.

But, just in case, he fastened his pace.

In this eerie silence that engulfs him, he could only hear the sound of his footsteps and the loud pounding of his heartbeat.

He kept walking, and he began to question himself whether he heard something akin to a whisper on his ear. Or was it just a breeze of wind that played mind tricks on him?

His heart continues to beat like crazy, and now he was sure he heard an eerie sound of something being impaled in a slow motion to a wall. P-probably it was just one of the residence putting nails to the wall to hang something? Right?

Well... anyway... before he began to lose his sanity-or worse, starting to scream like a girl for letting his fear and his paranoia get the best of him, Tsuna pretended to be all cool and walked as if he had no care in the world, and he started humming his school's anthem (just like the little bird his scary prefect owned).

Crash

He stopped his hum halfway, and his movement stopped altogether.

But then he heard murmurs of people, and his shoulders relaxed. People... there are still people inside the house, thank God. Oh, Tsuna, it's just a voice of a plate or the kind being broken. It's dark, so people tend to be careless around the house. Something being broken, something you accidentally step on-it all bound to happen anyway. He had got to stop being so paranoid just because of this.

"My God... I need to stay calm. Let's sing Namimori Middle's anthem again. From the top…"

His steps felt lighter, now that he confirms other human presence beside of him. He chuckled to himself about his own silliness, and he continues to ascend the hill, as he hummed in a low voice.

A few steps and mere seconds later, he heard those screams.

Instinctively, he shot his head backwards. It was from around the same house he heard something being broken.

More screams of people in agony, and Tsuna felt his knees wobble weakly as he jerked backwards in shock. Those screams... it's... as if... it's a scream of pure horror like when Tsuna watched those victims falling from an airplane crash... when they're about to meet their dea-

Another eerie scream of women and men blended together with night's cool ignorant air. It jerked Tsuna to his bottom on the ground, and it sends a pack of adrenaline rushing through his veins, screaming at him to go, run, go away. Go, he must. Away, from whatever horror took place right in front of him. The sound of human voices screaming in agony, sounds of blood splattering from places Tsuna would not like to imagine, and more sounds of things-and bones-breaking... names, questions, more names-always the same one-came flying out the house with a force as if chasing Tsuna away...

...he still could hear the invisible force those sounds and voices gave him ringing on the back of his ears, even as he had run as fast as he could to the peak of the hills and he let himself being pushed down towards gravity down the slope.

"I didn't hear anything... I didn't hear anything... I didn't do anything...!" he kept repeating those sentences again and again, as an act of reassurance.

He didn't know how far he had been running and he didn't much care. But he didn't stop. He couldn't. He took a glance through his shoulder, verifying that he had run far enough from the dreaded place.

But to his horror, he instead saw a bloodied hand and a pair of blue and red eyes out of thin air, trying to reach him.

Tsuna screamed in full horror, as he felt slimy hand touched him on the back of his neck.

Taking that as a cue, he ran faster and faster, forgetting that he was the slowest running student at school and that he had always comes last in a rally. Run, Tsuna, run…

He couldn't sleep.

He couldn't sleep even when he was sleeping inside Lambo and I-Pin's rooms, flanked between the two of them together (and Lambo was drooling on his leg, too). Even when Nana had repeatedly assured him that what he saw was just a projection of his own paranoia, due to the blackout.

That bloody hand and those pair of mismatched eyes still haunt him, making him unable to sleep. It's as if he was under constant watch of that eerie glance...

And so, he couldn't sleep at all. And that's why he was late for school the next day.

He managed to dodge his school's crazy prefect's "whip of love" just by an inch—despite his drowsiness. But he kept snoozing off during classes and even on lunch break and this worries his two best friends. Though not such a bright student at school, as far as his friends knew, Tsuna wasn't the type to usually doze off during lessons.

So being cornered and tired, Tsuna relented and consult to his friends about his worries.

"What? Horror screams and then bloody hand trying to strangle you? Ha, you got a very hyperactive imagination, Tsuna!" his cheerful happy-go-lucky baseball player friend, Yamamoto, laugh everything off like he always did.

"This is a serious case. I didn't know that particular area to be a haunted residence. It was probably the spirit of a vengeful ghost that was murdered cruelly on that house, maybe some of his organs are missing and his body part disembodied, and was buried all over the area. Did he, by any chance, got ahold of you, Tenth?" Gokudera solemnly asked, with an air of seriousness different from Tsuna's earlier friend. And he's using that nickname again; a character from a TV series about a mafia gang who has supernatural abilities that he likes so much. Even though Tsuna felt weird being compared to a fictional 10th supernatural mafia boss...

Anyway, Tsuna told them how the hand managed to reach his back, just a little bit.

Gokudera's eyes become much more focused, and as he folded his arm in front of his chest, he said, "That's not good."

The brunette paled a bit when Gokudera explained that Tsuna might be cursed by that thing, and it will continue to exist as long as the ghost hasn't earned his revenge yet.

"Tsuna, come on. Don't listen to him, he's an occult freak, remember? How many cases are there about people who mistakens white cloth floating in the dark with ghosts under the effect of paranoia? I passed that road on my sushi delivery duty all the time! And often at night, too. And there wasn't any cemetry or any human body parts found or sacred ancient trees cut off before the construction began. My father told me it was a bare land, so there's no chance of that happening, in my opinion."

"Thickheaded idiot like you couldn't possibly understand the soul of supernatural or superstition. Things like this happens all the time at around us, regular people just don't realize it, that's all."

As Tsuna stood helplessly to watch his two friends bicker back and fro, he was rather startled when both of them suddenly turn to him and declare it would be best to look at the crime scene with their own eyes to make sure. So this afternoon, after school is over, the three of them will be heading down towards the house for a test of courage.

The place was exactly how he last saw it yesterday night. He couldn't really remember any details, since there was a blackout and how he got a hand trying to strangle him through thin air and all, but Tsuna was sure no major change occured. And the house they're investigating stood inconspicuously similar like any other around them, nothing seemingly amiss, and nothing out of ordinary.

"So there were people living on this house," Gokudera made a remark as soon as he finished inspecting the outward appearance on the sighted building. "The grass and plants are well taken care of. They probably just cut the weed a few days ago, judging by the condition of the grass. And a vehicle just took off a few hours ago-probably a jeep. The muds on these tire prints are pretty fresh. They probably drove off from someplace where it rains, though maybe they just drive on a pool of water somewhere on the way here."

While Gokudera continue his detective observation on the road of the surrounding area, Yamamoto walked straight onto the vertical fence and ringed the doorbell. Tsuna reprimand his friend for doing such rash thing, because they don't have any excuse for intruding if there really was someone who lives there. But Yamamoto only waved his hand at him, and he peered inside from between the bars when no one seems to answer.

"The entire curtains are closed. According to Gokudera, transportation means just departed a few hours ago. There's no one there to answer the bell. That means there really are no one inside, and we should be save."

"What do you mean 'we should be safe'?" Tsuna frowned.

Once again, Yamamoto managed to astonish him when he went ahead to climb on the fence.

"Wha - are you crazy? Get down off that fence, Yamamoto, before someone sees us!" Tsuna panickly pulled on his friend's trousers, eager to get him down.

But Yamamoto assured him that it was okay, and it was the fastest way to find out about things.

Just when Yamamoto has flunked his leg on the other side of the fence, Gokudera came scrambling to their place, a sentry followed closely behind him.

"Tenth, we've been compromised! Run!" screamed Gokudera on the top of his lungs.

"You little scoundrels! Tresspassing and vandalizing on someone's lot under my very own nose. Not happening! Just wait, you rascals!"

Gokudera quickly took the appaled Tsuna by the hand and dragged him along, while Yamamoto easily jumped off the fence and ran as fast as he could.

After their failed attempt at investigating earlier, Tsuna had to say goodbye to his friends because he got cram school to attend to. Gokudera left with a promise that he would check the background of the house owner as soon as possible, and would let Tsuna know immediately. Yamamoto told him to not worry, because he will try to find better place to continue their courage test, some place where it's a lot scarier and no sentries around.

"I don't even understand what topic Yamamoto's mind was wandering off to anymore..." the brunette gulped and waved at his two friends who already went their separate ways.

Cram school was such a bore. Math, specifically. He still couldn't bring himself to understand integral formulation, even when his tutor has impatiently tapped his pencil on the table in annoyance. Tsuna got a feeling that if he couldn't find miracle to answer the problem for him, that pencil would be flying onto his forehead, right in the middle of his left and right brain.

And it did.

The whole class laughed at his misfortune and he could only rub on his forehead, embarassed.

"Sawada-san is so helpless. We just studied them yesterday!" a young boy with striped red and white scarf on his neck, whose intelligence and photographic memory had allowed him to skip a couple of grades ahead, snickered and looked at Tsuna in a degrading way.

But soon, Tsuna will forget about all the humiliation, though. For what came at night made all his misfortunes seemed so small.

AN: so, I was digging on my earlier archives and found this. It was actually my first attempt at writing horror of any kind, inspired by my friend's story about a blood stain at her work's gordyn that could never get washed off. Haha. Don't know if it suits you readers taste tho... horror is not something you'll see me walking around with. -sweatdrop-

UPDATE 28/12/12: scratch out one or two lines, add sub-title on the chapter number.