Goodness, some people have managed to find this crack-fic, though it's still lacking for reviews (thank you, Kayrana). I've taken the time to go against my nature and outline the story, so updates are going to depend more on spare time than inspiration. Also, I've decided that Ryou is essentially replacing Rei (and Kei and Miku). Telling it any other way would essentially cut the best part of the game's story out, and I don't want that even if Ryou's story takes precedence. I'll also be giving the chapters names from the game, but not necessarily in the same order as the game. And I think that's all I have to say other than pretty please review. I'd like to know how I'm doing.
Hour I: The Sign
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The group made it to the campsite just as the sun was going down, and tomorrow they would hike the last mile to where Yugi's grandfather would pick them up. The old mansion had been the highlight of the trip in the eyes of Jounouchi and Honda, and they didn't stop chattering about it. Bakura tried to ignore them as they pitched the tents, cooked a few tins of soup, and played some friendly rounds of Duel Monsters. Anzu kept changing the subject, but her topics of conversation never lasted long.
Now they were finally bedding down. Anzu, being the only female, had her own small tent, but the four boys had to share a large one. Bakura had made sure to claim the wall farthest from Jounouchi, whom they had learned was a very restless sleeper. The blond boy was already asleep, and Bakura hoped he would drop off just as quickly. The daydream, or hallucination or whatever it had been, was still fresh in his mind, but he was sure a good night's rest would help him to forget it.
That was what he thought as he dropped into sleep.
Cold.
Snow falling.
The clinking sound of metal hitting metal. A tiny sound, far away. Like a stake being hit by a mallet.
The mansion loomed before him. And then, he was inside.
It was a dream to him, and in the manner of those who are dreaming, he did not question where he was or how he had gotten there. It was simply a fact that he was here, in this entrance hall that was not quite as ruined as it had been before, clutching a flashlight that barely pierced the darkness.
He was here, and he was scared. That was all he knew.
Bakura gripped his flashlight and started forward. This hall was just like the one in the house they had visited that day, except that it was in less of a state of disrepair. The wooden walls were warped and damp, and bits of tattered cloth that must have once been tapestries or curtains fluttered from beams in the ceiling, but the foundations and frames were all intact. The roof wouldn't be falling in on him. At periodic intervals along the walls were candles in sconces, but their light only just enough to make the shadows more menacing.
Amane was in here…somewhere. He remembered that, and it gave him strength.
He stopped at the right branch. A few steps away the hall also took a left branch. Bakura thought about trying that way, but a small noise reached his ears from the right branch. Is someone else in here? he thought, and he turned down that way. The hall took a sharp left turn and ended in a door. Bakura hesitated, but he pushed the door open.
Beyond was the large room. To his left were the stairs, now intact and leading to a second level, and further along the wall to his right was a ladder leading to a raised platform. The middle of the room had a raised wooden floor with a hearth in the center. The double doors in the back wall were closed. Like the hall, there were candles in sconces by the doors.
Bakura went straight to the back, picking his way around the hearth. Little puffs of dust rose from his footsteps, and the rotting wood creaked. It seemed solid enough, though, and he didn't think that it would cave in. He made it to the doors and tried them.
Locked. Bakura turned around and played his flashlight around the room. The ladder was closest to him, so he started for it, but he froze even as he put his hand on a rung.
He had heard a noise behind him, from the direction of the stairs. Was it a footstep? Was there someone else here after all? "Who's there?" he called, making his way to the stairs and shining his flashlight up into the room above.
A woman walked by the opening, paying him no heed at all.
Bakura gasped and dropped the flashlight. Its light spiraled around the room until it clattered to the floor and rolled to a stop, casting its beam against the nearest wall. The light's afterimage left spots in his eyes, and he shook his head in an effort to get rid of them. Calm down, he told himself. Calm down. Someone else is here. Maybe we can help each other.
He didn't think about what they might need help from. In that curious manner of dreams, he just knew. There was something in this place that was not friendly. Something he had to avoid.
Picking up the flashlight, he started up the stairs.
The small room at the top had drawers and jars scattered around the walls, but nothing else. It seemed to be some kind of store room. There was another door in the far corner, closed. Bakura guessed that the woman must have gone through it.
He tried a few of the drawers. Some had been warped closed by the dampness, and others contained nothing more than some cloths that crumbled to dust at his touch. Similarly, some of the jars were empty, and others had some black, stinking liquid in the bottom. In the corner opposite the closed door was a mirror covered by a cloth. In the closest corner, something reflected light back at him.
Bakura frowned and bent to pick the object up. "A camera?" he murmured.
Not just any camera. The Camera Obscura.
It was old, but it still seemed functional. He flipped open the back to find that it still had film, ancient as it was. Raising the camera to his eye, he focused it downstairs.
A woman and a small girl in old fashioned kimonos looked back up at him.
He hit the shutter button on sheer reflex, and the flash blinded him again. He backed up, stumbling over a jar, and nearly fell. His vision had returned by the time he steadied himself.
He had dropped both the camera and the flashlight this time. Bakura picked up the flashlight first, and trained it down into the hearth room below. There was no sign of anyone. It works, he thought, picking up the camera too. The camera works. Whatever is here, I can use the camera to keep it away. But what about that woman?
He did not question how he knew that the first woman was alive and the other two were not. He only knew, and that was enough.
He opened the door at the back, grimacing at the faint rotten odor that came through it. Standing in the frame, he listened for the sound of more footsteps, but instead a faint but steady clink, clink, clink reached his ears. It was the sound of metal striking metal. Bakura frowned, sure that he had heard that sound before, but he couldn't remember when.
The door had opened onto another hall. There was a barred window in the left wall, and the hall ended in another corridor beyond that. He started down it, pausing to look through the window into another hall.
He was beginning to think that this mansion had more halls than rooms.
The noise was coming from farther down, beyond the fork. Bakura walked to it and looked both ways. The left fork turned to the right after a few meters, and the right fork turned to the left. He got the impression that the corridor actually enclosed a small room. He chose to go right, and walked around to find that the hall did indeed turn to the left again, outlining a room set in the center. The clinking sound seemed to come from the room, but he couldn't see a door. Bakura walked around the next corner, and this time he saw a tiny window, no more than a slit, at eye-level in the room's wall. The clinking did indeed emanate from it, and cautiously he put the camera to his eye as he walked toward it. Whatever was making that sound, he didn't think it was nice.
Inside the room was a young girl wearing the traditional red and white clothes of a priestess. She stood at the opposite wall, right across from him, and was hammering a stake into it.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
His heartbeat quickened at the sight, and he hit the shutter button, this time closing his eyes first. The flash cut through his eyelids anyways, but he could still see when he opened them.
The girl paused, looked around at him, and then vanished.
Bakura's hands shook as he lowered the camera. A current of real thought had started to cut its way through his dream-fogged consciousness, and he wondered, What's going on? Why am I here?
He heard a noise like a sob from around the corner to his right, and he remembered the woman he had glimpsed earlier. Perhaps she knew. Perhaps she could help him.
Bakura went around that corner and found that the wall opposite the room was latticed. He could that other hallway beyond it, and a room made of partitions and screens. The woman sat just outside the room, huddled into a corner with her face in her hands. Bakura frowned; he knew he had seen her walk by the room he had passed through, so how had she gotten over there?
"Excuse me…" he began, putting a hand against the lattice.
The woman jumped and looked up at him in stark terror. "No," she croaked, staggering to her feet. "No, get away!" She ran.
"No, wait, I'm…" Bakura called after her, but she had turned a corner and disappeared. "…not going to hurt you," he finished in a mumble. He completed the circuit back to the short hall near the door, and he looked through the window there, wondering if he could see where the woman had run to.
He saw only the hall stretching into darkness, and in the middle a different woman. She wore only a blue hakama, and her bare chest and arms where covered in dark blue marks like tattoos. She was looking at him with such malice that he whirled and ran for the door, sure that she was following and desperate to get away.
But chill of her presence drew no nearer; only her voice followed him as he yanked the door open. Words filled with rage.
"No one will survive. No one…"
Bakura slammed the door closed. The store room was blissfully quiet and empty, and he sank to the floor in this cold, imperfect sanctuary, trying to slow his racing heart. I have to get out of here, he realized. Hauling himself up, he clattered down the stairs three at a time and turned for the door to the entrance hall.
"Have you seen him?"
He shrieked and whirled, but the room was empty. No one was behind him. He sent his flashlight's beam into every corner, even into the high rafters above, but there was no sign of whoever had spoken. Bakura shuddered and reached to open the door, only to freeze as a small voice asked, "Where did he go?"
Slowly, he dropped his gaze.
The little girl in the kimono stood between him and the door. Bakura shrieked again, backed up, stumbled and fell over the steps to the hearth. The woman joined the little girl, and both advanced on him, reaching out with their pale hands. Now he could see that they were marked too, dark blue patterns that climbed up their necks and swirled over their faces.
"Have you seen him?" the woman said in a voice barely above a whisper.
"I-I don't know what you're talking about," Bakura said, easing back further.
The woman charged at him, hands grasping and eyes wild. Bakura pulled the camera up and snapped her picture without even bothering to aim.
She gasped and backpedaled, and he took the opportunity to get back on his feet. Now he did aim with the camera, and though his hands were shaking, he could clearly see the woman glowering at him as she prepared to rush again. The little girl was there as well, keeping tight to the woman's side.
They hadn't disappeared this time. Bakura wondered if something had gone wrong; the other times these souls had appeared, he only had to take their pictures once for them to disappear. Yet, the woman had clearly been hurt. Maybe he just had to keep trying.
"My husband," the woman said. "Where did he go?" She drifted closer, and closer, and then she reached for him again.
Bakura was ready this time. He kept her face smack in the center of the viewfinder, and when he hit the shutter button, the woman did more than jump back. She fell to her knees. The girl beside her cried out, and together they faded away.
Bakura stayed frozen in place, camera trained on the spot where the pair had been. After a long minute, he dared to lower it, but he kept it close to his chest, ready to use at any moment. He glanced around the big room, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. The woman and the girl were gone.
With a relieved sigh, Bakura headed for the door. This time nothing appeared to block his way out, and he stepped into the hall, ready to get out before anything else showed up.
That plan was dashed as soon as he heard a voice. It was low, constant, a steady flow of words that he couldn't make out. Bakura edged forward and peered around the corner with his camera at the ready. Farther along, where the corridor turned to go the entrance, he could see a pair of feet. Someone was sitting back there against the wall. That woman again?
Of her he had no fear. This woman was alive. Bakura walked down the hall and rounded the corner to see her huddled against a dresser, facing away from the entrance. It was indeed her voice; she was talking to herself so fast that the words almost tumbled over each other as they left her mouth.
"…died too, if only I had died too, it's not my fault I'm the only one who survived, I should have been taken, I didn't survive because I wanted to, I had no choice! I had no choice, if I had died too…"
Bakura walked up and knelt down beside her, but she took no notice of him. "Hey…" he started.
"If only I had died with everyone else, yes, yes! If only I had died with everyone else, then I…"
"Why would you say such a thing?" he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.
The woman screamed and slapped it away. She lurched away and sat against the opposite wall, facing the corridor he had just come down. "Um…" he said, trying to think of something that would calm her down and get her to talk to him.
The woman stiffened suddenly, eyes and mouth open wide in an expression of sheer terror. Bakura blinked, wondering why she would be so afraid of him until he realized that she wasn't looking at him at all. She was staring past him, down the hall to the hearth room. He clutched the camera and turned slowly to see what frightened her so badly.
It was the tattoo-covered woman from the second floor. She watched them both from under her curtain of black hair, and for one eternal second no one moved. The she took a step forward.
The woman shrieked and ran, and Bakura wished dearly that he could do the same. His legs were cemented in place; they wouldn't obey his brain's commands. His hands were shaking so much that he knew he would never be able to snap a clear picture even if he could bring it up to his face.
The tattooed woman drew closer. He could see the pattern now: snakes mostly, intricately entwined with a plant that looked like holly. The tattoo was even in her eyes. She reached out with one hand, stepping forward until the tips of her fingers brushed his chest, just above his heart.
The touch was agony. Colder than ice, a lance of pain that went straight through to his back. His vision clouded over, colors faded, and in that instant he thought he saw something else. Somewhere else. A room full of tattooed women, all of them staked to the walls and floor. Someone beside him, someone dear…someone gone. Someone standing over him, arm raised above their head, bringing it down as if to hammer at something.
Please…let me sleep…
The moment was gone, and at last Bakura was able to move. He broke and ran.
Behind him was the tattooed woman, still reaching, still grasping as she followed him. "No one will survive," he heard her hiss. It spurred him on, even though he seemed to be moving in slow motion. His legs felt like lead, dragging more with every step. The door, the entrance to this hideous manor, was no more than ten yards away. If he could reach it, he would escape. He would be safe.
He felt like he would never reach it.
He put out his hand, grasping for the door the same way that the tattooed woman had grasped for him. Was still grasping for him, just behind him. So close. He pulled one leg in front of the other. Only a step away, and then he could touch the door. He collided with it, and with a shove he burst through to a fleeting vision of falling snow, and then he woke up.
* * *
Yugi was crouched beside him, one hand hovering over his shoulder as if he wanted to wake Bakura but couldn't decide if it was a good idea to try. Bakura stared at him, and then he sat up so suddenly that he nearly bumped heads with the shorter boy. Yugi tumbled out of the way.
"Are you all right, Bakura-kun?" he asked. "You looked like you were having a bad dream."
"Dream?" Bakura murmured. He rubbed the spot over his heart where the woman had touched him, it still hurt. It wasn't the fading echo of phantom pain either; it was a sharp, icy cold pang. As if her fingers were still there, or as if someone had driven an icicle into him. "Was that all just a dream? It seemed so real."
Now he looked around. Jounouchi and Honda were still fast asleep in their bags, though Yugi was almost sitting on top of Honda. The faint light that came through the tent walls indicated that morning had arrived, but there was also the faint patter of rain. It was warm, and it smelled like wet earth and Jounouchi's feet. All the darkness and chill and moldy odor of the half-ruined manor was gone. Even the pain was fading away.
Yugi was still watching him with a concerned expression. "Was it…about the time you were…"
"Possessed?" Bakura finished for him. It was a touchy subject. No one wanted to remind him of those awful years, and so everyone tip-toed around the conversation when it was brought up. Only Jounouchi was direct about it, but it was well-known that he didn't have an ounce of tact. As such, it was often up to Bakura to prod the conversation forward, though he was as reluctant as the other. "No," he continued, and Yugi's face melted into relief.
"You want to talk about it?"
Not really, Bakura thought, but he quickly reconsidered. He had never had the opportunity to talk to anyone about his dreams before. He wondered if it helped. "I was back in that house," he said, drawing his knees up to his chest. "Only it was different. It wasn't quite so derelict. And it was cold. Snowing."
Yugi frowned and scooted closer so he could sit comfortably. "Geez, Bakura-kun, I know the house was creepy, but I didn't think it would give anyone nightmares."
Bakura didn't have any reply to that, so he continued, "It was haunted in my dream. I saw a woman with a little girl. They attacked me. But I also found the camera, and I was able to make them go away with it. There was another woman there, one who I think was alive, but she was terrified, and she ran away every time I tried to reach her. And there was one other woman…"
He stopped there and shivered. Could that really have been just a dream? He could remember her so clearly. All that pain…that rage. It was so familiar somehow. "That woman felt like the spirit of my Ring," he finally concluded in a whisper.
Silence stretched between them, and the sound of the rain against the tent intensified. "I'm sorry," Yugi said after a minute.
Bakura shook his head. "It was just a dream," he said. "Probably brought on by the mansion, and what we talked about inside it." He thought briefly about telling Yugi what he had seen while they were all inside the house, and then decided against it. No need to make his closest friend think he was losing his mind. Instead, he changed the subject. "I thought it wasn't supposed to start raining until tomorrow."
"Yeah, but since when has a weather reporter been right?" Yugi replied. He seemed happy to take the cue and leave the matter of the dream behind. "We should probably wake everyone else up and get the camp packed up as soon as possible. I doubt the rain is going to let up, so we should find Jii-chan before any of us catch a cold from hiking in it."
"I agree. Let's get going as quick as we can. I want to be home already."
