Disclaimer: I don't own any of this and I'm not trying to sell any of it.
AN: updated 6/19/18
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PERSONAL CASE: GHOST ON A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
No, our time wasn't disheartened.
~o0O0o~
"Uwaaah!" I yell, turning in time to see a huge bolt of lightning flash outside the window, thunder drumming in the sky.
"That was an awesome shout," Yasu laughs at me.
"The thunder just startled me, okay?" I say.
He and I are putting away knick knacks that have been strewn about the SPR office. I make sure tea bags are back in their correct containers, creamer and sugar aren't left out, and napkins are stacked neatly. Yasu is putting away books pulled down from the small bookshelf, decorations are back to their normal places, pens and paper are in their holders, and the few paintings on the walls are straightened.
Madoka comes out of Naru's office. "Okay, his desk is back to the way he likes it. I'm going to give Lin's office a quick dusting."
"What's that in your hands?" I ask, noticing a pink envelope.
Madoka winks at me, saying with a coy smile, "A secret love letter for Lin," and then marches to his office.
"Is she serious?" I whisper to Yasu. He shrugs in return.
"Senpai, I think I'm done, so I'm going to head home before she thinks of more stuff for us to do," Yasu says. He's smiling wide but I can see the bags under his eyes, hiding behind his glasses.
"Of course, Yasu," I say, smiling back. He bows out of the office in a hurry, backpack in tow.
"All done," Madoka exits Lin's office, a wide grin spreading across her face. "You'll have to tell me what his reaction is once he gets back."
"Are you not going to be here when they get back?"
Her smile drops a little. "No. I wanted to visit with them. It's sad because we cremated Eugene, but then Noll and Lin went to England and I stayed back. So I didn't get a chance to spend more time with them. And now the higherups are giving me another assignment and I have to leave again." Sighing, she heads to the coatrack, grabbing her jacket in preperation for the rain. "I'm really glad I got to know you though," she adds. "Keep the kid out of trouble."
"I will!" I smile to her before she heads to her hotel room, leaving me alone in the office.
I look at my phone as I shrug into my own jacket. Eleven o'clock... It's late. There's an email I missed, but it isn't from Naru. We haven't messaged since our last case...
I sigh and head outside.
"Awe man, why does it have to be raining?" Whining, I run home in the dark, my arms stretched over my head in place of an umbrella.
Soft splashing rings with each step on the wet cement before it begins drizzling down, pounding on the hard surface like an orchestra of drums. It's close to the end of November, but instead of snow, I'm being drenched with freezing rain. Clinging to the hood on my coat now, I try harder to shield myself from the icy pelets that sting my skin as they make contact.
Despite the fact that today has been another case-less day for SPR, I ended up staying late to help Madoka. Naru and Lin are due to arrive in just a few days, so we were making some last minute preparations for their return.
But if I had just left when I normally do I might have avoided all of this rain…
"Believe me, Mai," Madoka had said as we swept the kitchen, vacuumed the purple carpet, and cleaned the light yellow walls. "Naru will probably still be a grouch when he gets back, but he'll be less of a grouch if he can't find anything to complain about." At that moment I sighed and went back to dusting off the tables.
I knew she was right, and I didn't want to leave her and Yasu cleaning on their own, so I stayed longer than normal.
Thunder booms overhead and I watch lightning dance and crackle across the sky. It illuminates the underbelly of the clouds hanging above the world; the shadows making scary shapes of wolves and foxes among the night.
"Isn't that forest a shortcut?" Gene asks me, materializing at my side. I barely see him appear from the darkness, his presence causing me to stop midstep. I slip and fall.
"Ow!"
"You okay?" He asks, barely hiding his want to laugh at me.
Grumbling, I stand up and look towards the woods nearby. The area is a large park filled with trees. It's rundown and uncared for with cracked stone steps, weeds overruning the flowerbeds, and a large puddle of water pooling in a concaved section of concrete.
"Well yeah, but I heard that it's haunted," I mumble. It seems silly to be frightened, but my throat is clenching from a pestering fear resting on my shoulders. The coverage from the trees might lessen the rain though...
"Are you afraid?" Gene says while chuckling. I turn my head away from him, my cheeks heating up in a blush. "Why are you afraid of a haunted park? You deal with spirits all the time."
"But I'm not alone normally," I argue coarsely, my voice raising as I try to make my point.
"We're alone and you're not afraid of me," he says. It's true, Gene's a ghost and I'm fine around him... and I suppose I have run into a handful of other spirits who haven't tried to kill me... Truthfully, going through the park is a good idea, and the rumors of it being haunted are just that: rumors. It's senseless to be afraid of something that might not even exist. Right?
"Oh alright," I say defeated. I take careful steps along the slippery stones as I walk past the park entrance; a red Shinto archway with paint chipping off and faded gold letters that read 「Chizuru no Kawa」.
"Chizuru no Kawa?" Gene says to me as I enter into the park.
"Oh, so you can read that?" I say. My fear heightens as he reads the park name. A shiver covers me, my body freezing from the never-ending drizzle.
"It's in hiragana so yea," Gene says. "Shouldn't it be written in kanji?"
"Yea, but which kanji...?"
Gene pauses. "What are you talking about?"
I look at him and see Naru. It takes me a moment to remember that even though they look Japanese, they aren't. Genetically maybe, but they were born in America and raised in England. And they have a hard time with kanji…
"It's obvious that Kawa is supposed to mean river. There's a river that runs through the entirety of the park. The word Chi is for thousand, and Zara is for crane." I look off to a gazebo and nod to it. "There's a plaque in there that explain the name. Back when the park was first opened there was a ceremony. A school came to the park and decorated it with a thousand cranes in hopes for good fortune. So in honor of the students' dedication, the park was named River of a Thousand Cranes."
Gene smiles. "Well that's interesting. That's not scary at all. But why hiragana?"
I glance towards the other side of the clearing. We're about to enter the woods finally, but I point out some play equipment. "The hiragana is so that kids can sound the name out."
"Makes sense."
The rain begins slowing its onslaught as I walk beneath the pitiful forest's canopy. Despite the leaves blocking out the heavy drops of water, and the large trunks shielding me from the wind, I begin shivering as the night air continues to cool. It's darker within the forest and I fumble across the misshapen pathway until I trip all together and fall into a puddle of mud.
"Are you okay, Mai?" Gene asks as he crouches beside me.
"I'm fine." I stand up shakily, my clothes and hair drenched in dirty water. I keep thinking back to the name of the park.
This place really gives me the creeps…
"Chizuru… doesn't always mean thousand you know. The haunting in this forest. It's said that a man died here a long time ago. He drowned. After that, there was a whisper that never left this park. Maybe chi didn't refer to thousand… Maybe it referred to blood. And zuru could turn it to bloody. So instead of River of a Thousand Cranes, everyone began to refer to it as The River of Bloody Cranes or The Bloody River." I take a step, limping heavily. "All you do is select the kanji you want, and then the name changes drastically…."
Gene and I move forward in an awkward silence. I feel silly for telling him everything because I can tell he isn't taking it as seriously as I am. Maybe he's right though. Maybe I shouldn't take it so seriously...
I've been to this park a few times before.
With my mother...
It was abandoned then too, but I liked the quiet. It was peaceful. Serene even. My childhood memories aren't vivid, but this one I remember like it was yesterday. My mother, her long brown hair flowing to her hips, was holding my small hand as we entered into the park.
"Mama! Wanna push me on the swing?" I giggled, hurrying over to the playground.
"Of course, Mai-chan," she said to me. But our neighbor had just spotted us, and pulled mom aside to speak with her. Bored, I went to the swings without her.
A man was there, and he helped me climb into the swings. He pushed me on them, back and forth, for hours it felt like. I giggled and laughed loudly to my hearts content.
"Higher! Push me higher!" I yelled.
Finally, our neighbor left and my mom came to play with me.
"Look at you, Mai-chan!" She said and she was ecstatic to see me on the swings. "You're swinging all by yourself!"
I stopped swinging, looking behind me as my sandals dug trenches into the sand. He wasn't there.
"But there was a man. He was helping me swing," I started to explain, but mother's expression stopped me. She was stark white, mouth gaping, eyes wide and scared. That look burned into my memory. I felt suddenly like I had done something wrong, and while she dragged me off from the park, lecturing me for interacting with a stranger, I drowned out her voice with what-if thoughts of kidnappings.
Is that the real reason I'm afraid of this park...
"After a fall like that you should really sit down. Why don't you come and join me?"
My eyes widen with frisson, the words bringing me back to attention. Slowly, I turn my head to look over to the new voice that has joined us, and find a man sitting on a park bench. He's much older than I am, taller too, but he seems weak, his old fashioned clothes dripping over thin arms and legs. Shaggy hair droops across his face and he pushes it up so that he can take a better look at me.
Hesitating for a moment, my legs aching, and the wind still knocked out of me from my fall, I decide to sit next to him. "So what brings you into the forest at this time of night?" My voice quivers as I speak. The dampness on the bench is soaking into my pants, my thighs burning with its cold touch.
"I'm always in the forest," the man says. "I'm lost and I don't think I'll ever find my way out. I saw you fall. Thought you might want to rest before moving on. Maybe even chat with me. I don't often find people to talk to here."
I want to point out that we're right next to the park entrance, but decide to hold my tongue. Maybe he's just drunk. His words are slurring together. But at least now my mind can be distracted from the haunting.
"I wish I could find the town though, not that it would matter. I don't have a family waiting for me anymore," he says with a whispered tone.
"Anymore?" I say. "What happened?"
"I used to have a beautiful wife and three kids, but one day I arrived home to police informing me that my wife had crashed our car. She and my children had died in the accident." He looks down and I notice him wring his hands nervously. "I was distraught and came to the park to think, but it was a stormy night just like this one. While looking down into a trench, the earth I was standing on subsided from the rain and I fell. After pulling myself back onto the land, I found that I wasn't able to leave the forest."
I realize he isn't lost and that he probably can't bring himself to leave the forest because he's depressed about his family's death, which is understandable.
"But is this really how they'd want you to live?" He looks at me with a funny expression and I realize I said that last part out loud. "B-b-basically," I say, fumbling over my words as I construct my reasoning into a proper sentence. "If your family is as sweet and caring as you make them out to be, then instead of moping around you should go out and try to make the most of your life while you still have it to live. It probably pains them to watch you feel so miserable while they're waiting patiently for you to join them. Make the most of your life while you've got it because your loved ones will be there to meet you when it's your time to go."
He smiles as a large burst of wind escapes the hold of the trees, rushing past us. It whips by, and I clutch my sides, shivering; the cold biting painfully into my arms and legs.
"It's freezing," I say, my teeth chattering.
"Thank-you for your kind words," the man says. For a second I feel warmth eminating from him and I wonder if he's brought out a match or a lighter. "It was nice to see you again, Mai-chan."
My eyes widen, my mouth dropping as Gene's obnoxious laughter echoes in the background.
"I can't believe that you didn't realize you were talking to the spirit who haunted this forest the whole time," he says snidely.
"Shut up, Eugene! How was I supposed to know?" I say bitterly.
"He was glowing just like I am, duh," Gene says. "Or did you not notice that you could see him clear as day despite how dark it is right now?"
I stand up from the bench and continue home, tired of the cold, tired of the rain, and tired of the teasing. "Where'd he go anyway?"
"You cleansed him," Gene says with a smirk.
"What? Another one? How?" I ask frantically. What's up with all these exorcisms I've been performing? Okay, sure it's only been two, but that's still two more than I'm used to. He pats me on the head and asks how I think I did it. "Well, when he and I were talking, an image of a woman and three children came into my mind, and I felt an insurmountable feeling of love and patience. So I just told him what I felt."
"I think Hara-san is wrong. You may in fact have the makings to be a medium," Gene says as we begin to near the edge of the park. "What did he mean by that anyway? When he said it was good to see you again."
My gaze drops. "That man. His spirit resided here when I was a small child. I met him once. He pushed me on the swings."
As we exit the park I'm overjoyed by the streetlamps elluminating my path, and the easing of the rain.
Just a few more minutes and I'll be home.
AN: Please review!
