Disclaimer: Ghost Hunt isn't mine.
Chapter 7: A Feeling
The three mutilated teenage girls.
The ones from her dream....
Mai's eyes widened with sudden understanding. The three girls they had found must have been the same ones from her dream and they must have been the daughters of the families that had lived at the Onsen before the Hisagi's.
The ones that had mysteriously gone missing. They must have been murdered.
"N-naru?" Mai whispered. "I know who they are..."
Naru turned to Mai. "How?"
"I just do. They're the ones from my dream. Remember? The disfigured ones I told you about." Mai shivered, remembering the three bloody corpses. "The ones that warned me."
"Hmm..." Naru hadn't yet decided whether or not Mai's dream was correct, although they usually were, "So. You're saying you had a dream about these girls. But how does that prove that they're the daughters of the families here?"
Mai frowned at Naru's inability to see the obvious. "Where else would these girls have disappeared to? It all makes sense. The bodies spanned over a lot of time, so these three match the descriptions perfectly, right?"
"True. Ayako-san, Takigawa-san, John-san. Join Lin and Hara-san at Base, and tell them about Mai's idea."
Mai cut in, "It's not an idea! It's the truth!!"
"How do you know?" Naru deadpanned.
"I... I just have a feeling!"
"So you're backing up your feeling with another feeling?" Ayako, Takigawa and John laughed at that, before filing out of the room in the general direction of Base.
"...." Mai growled. Conceited sonofabitch! "And your point is?!"
Naru looked pointedly at Mai, and then continued. "The three bodies had clothes on. Of course, they were deteriorating, but two of the three yukatas had names stitched into them that matched two of the family names. The third one, the oldest body, had no identification."
"So you were screwing with me just now?" Mai growled again.
Naru smirked and then continued, "But what makes this all so odd is that the room you found the bodies in was boarded up from the inside. Which explains why Takigawa-san was having so much trouble getting it open."
"Boarded from the inside? All three? With no blood on the floor? That doesn't make any sense. Are you sure?" questioned Mai.
"Positive. This all makes me think that the perpetrator cannot be human. I believe that rather than a murder, which was what I first suspected when we found the bodies; a spirit is at work here."
"I guess that makes sense," said Mai grudgingly. "So let's just pretend that there's a spirit on a murderous rampage. How would the scratches on Hisagi's sister Kisa's back, the creepy voice, blood stain, and people in the mirror fit into all of this? And what about the woman that got attacked?! There's definitely way too much stuff going on here to be the work of just one spirit!"
"If you had murdered a bunch of people, would you want others to find out your secret? asked Naru. "I believe that the spirit is just trying to scare people away to keep them from uncovering the truth. And don't forget the three girls in your dream; they are also probably trying to warn us away from the spirit, to keep us from meeting similar fates."
"Yeah, that would make sense. The three were telling me to stay away from the woman, the one they said 'did it all for greed.' So we can assume that the murderer is a woman, right? But we have to find out why she's was greedy, and why she decided to murder all of these people, to make all of this make sense... Dream Naru hasn't been showing up much lately. Do you think that the evil spirit is keeping him away?"
"Dream Naru came appeared in your dreams and you didn't tell me? Mai! You need to fill me in on all of your dreams immediately. They could be important," insisted Naru.
"Well, you were being such a jerk! Maybe I just didn't want to tell you!" Mai stuck out her tongue at him cheekily. "Not everyone lives at your beck and call, Naru."
"They should," Naru said with a slight smile.
"Egotistical bastard much?" Mai asked playfully. She was in a pretty good mood. After all, bits and pieces of the case were beginning to come together! She smiled at Naru's heaved sigh, and then sobered slightly.
Murderous spirit + dead people. Mai gulped. Sounds like fun...
TBC
A/N: Thank you for reading! Revisions as of 5/25/09.
^Shinigami's Lullaby^
