Chapter 10 - Across the Whisper Bridge

"Mio... Wait!"

"Mayu, come on! Come on!"

"Wait! I can't! Mio, please! Don't leave me! D-!"

A shrill scream rang in Yugi's ears amidst the rustling of leaves and he sharply sat up. For some reason, he expected to find himself back in the dark forest, so it was a surprise when he saw that he was sitting on the cold ground, staring at a long bridge, stretching off into the distance. Several moments passed before he remembered what had happened and where he was: Kurosawa House, where Mio had gone.

Slowly getting to his feet, Yugi groaned as a sharp pain pierced his head and he pressed his palm to his aching temple. He was freezing cold and his arms and legs had gone numb. "What happened?" he moaned.

He heard the Pharaoh chuckle. "You were knocked out. When the gates opened, the villagers showed up. You staggered back, fell through and hit your head as you went, but the gates swung shut again so the villagers couldn't follow you."

Yugi turned to look at the grand wooden gates and then stared at him incredulously. "That makes no sense at all. They're ghosts! Surely they could just... walk straight through them, couldn't they?"

Yami's face darkened. "I sensed that they were... afraid of this place."

They looked up to the house and Yugi couldn't help but shiver. "There's something... weird about that house."

"Which is saying something," Yami remarked. "Considering what we've seen of the village so far."

Taking a heavy step forward, still struggling to get the feeling back into his numb legs, he switched on the torch that was clasped in his hand and saw a glint in the faint light as it reflected the camera on the ground. He picked it up and stepped onto the bridge. It creaked and groaned with each step he took, as though protesting his weight on its fragile structure, and he looked fearfully over the rail to the water below. The wide lake was covered with a thin layer of mist that let very little light to the surface of the water, which was cold-looking, dull, grey and lifeless like everything else.

Keep walking, he told himself. Listening to the groans of the bridge, Yugi shuddered at the thought of being plunged into the lake's merciless depths and he turned his gaze forcefully away from it, focusing instead on the house; a less pleasing prospect, but certainly a less worrying one at that precise moment.

Then his foot hit against something cold and he tripped.

As his face hit the bridge, the creaking became louder and for one terrible moment, he thought he heard the wood begin to give, snapping underneath him. He froze, his mind alive with panic. If he got up now, the bridge could break beneath him and he'd find himself struggling in the icy water below; if he didn't move, the wood might break anyway. Should he move to get out of danger or wait for it to pass? At last, after the few seconds in which this whole argument flitted through his mind, he decided to wait. He lay there, completely still until the creaking stopped. Sighing, he pulled himself up onto his knees, relishing the silence. Well, almost silence, if not for the whispering -

Wait.

He could still feel the cold thing around his foot, and what's more, it was pressing down into his ankle....

His head turned sharply to look at his foot.

A white hand reached up through the broken bridge and gripped tightly to his ankle.

Crying out in shock, he tried to pull himself free, shaking his foot, but it gripped him all the tighter, holding on as if for dear life. It shimmered, like the hand of a spirit, but he could feel the cold, clammy fingers on his skin and he cringed at the feel of the spongy softness of rotting flesh as it tried to pull him closer and closer to the hole. Kicking out, the hand was bent back and finally let go, flailing around as it tried to find him again, but Yugi had already pulled back.

He was panicking, the memory of the icy, wet fingers on his flesh shocking him out of any voluntary movement as he crawled frantically backwards along the bridge, ignoring the creaks that had caused him so much worry only moments ago.

Suddenly, the hand retreated back below the hole. Just as Yugi's heart rate began to return to normal, two hands reached up, pressed down on the bridge and a head of black hair began to rise up from the lake underneath.

[The camera, Yugi! Use the camera!]

His hands scrambling for the old device, he held it up to his eye, staring at the thing that now started to float slowly towards him, its arms held out on either side of itself. The runes lit up with a hiss.

FLASH!

A strangled cry of pain rang out, then a strange gasping sound, before the thing slowly fell back and disappeared below the hole.

As he finally began to calm down, Yugi pulled himself shakily to his feet, holding onto the side for balance and he felt Yami's hand on his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" Yugi nodded dumbly. "We've arrived."

Yugi turned as he heard this. They stood before another set of gates, ornately decorated in a way that made the other ones look plain and simple, and stretching up higher to a wooden arch intricately carved with the symbol of a butterfly.

Taking a deep breath that forced him back into control of his limbs, Yugi stepped up to the gates and pushed against them. They slid open easily and revealed a courtyard on the other side, lit with stone lanterns along the path that led straight to the front doors of Kurosawa. He looked up to the roof and the buildings behind. The house was huge. He began to wonder how easy it would really be to find Mio in this place.

Where are you? he thought, as he approached the gates.

A flash of white forced him to stop. The girl in the white kimono had suddenly appeared before the doors, facing away from Yugi. Gently, she pushed her hands against the doors, but instead of opening them, she simply faded through the wood.

As she disappeared, a delirious giggle echoed across the courtyard.

The inside of the manor house was almost completely derelict. The vapour from the lake hung about the main room like a dense mist and rotted at the wooden floors, which were stained with brown and black splashes and littered with wilted flower petals. At some point, guests were probably greeted in this hall and Yugi could almost picture the household standing on the raised floor, the servants taking their shoes as they entered a vibrant, colourful house, the faded remnants of which stood before him. The long curtain hanging across the entrance hall was torn in places and thick with dust.

Frowning, he lifted the torch as something shifted on the other side of the curtain... but then the light began to flicker. Yugi hit the torch against his palm, but the beam died and no matter how many times he flicked the switch, it wouldn't come back on. "Damn!" he hissed, afraid to raise his voice in the silent house.

Then suddenly, there was a loud bang. Yugi span around to see the door of the house was now closed. He pulled them, as hard as he could, but they wouldn't budge and as he struggled, he dropped the useless torch to the ground.

Don't leave me...

Yugi looked up sharply. A dark shape moved behind the curtain and a glistening pair of eyes stared at him sadly through the large tear.

"Mio?"

At the sound of that name, she turned away and disappeared, leaving a faint light behind her. Yugi ran up to the curtain, pulling it aside to see her limping towards a round window at the end of the hall and as he struggled to get through, she opened a door and vanished into the room beyond.

Finally freeing himself from the tangle of the curtain, Yugi ran up to the door and pulled it open. A gust of wind rushed into his face and he found himself looking into a dark corridor and somewhere nearby, he heard a door slide shut.

"Mio! Are you down here?" Only the silence of the corridor answered him and he hesitantly stepped into it, letting the door fall closed behind him.

Suddenly, a presence hit him as forcefully as the gust of wind and his breath caught in his throat as suddenly a swarm of white villagers began to rush down the corridor towards him.

The Kusabi is coming!

Closer and closer, their faces twisted with fear, they ran straight at Yugi and he held up his hands as if to stop them. But the moment they reached him, they vanished.

Slowly, he continued through the corridor, feeling the presence grow stronger and stronger as he walked cautiously through, though no more villagers appeared. There was only one light in the whole hallway, at the very end beside a door. Yugi's eyes widened at the splashes and handprints all along the wall and door in a colour that was unmistakably blood. He almost gagged at the sight of it. There was so much! It took him a lot to reach out to the handle of the door and he was almost relieved to find that it was sealed shut.

"Wonder if I can take a picture?" As soon as he said this, another presence filled his mind and he held up the camera towards the door, seeing the blue haze around the rim of the lens. FLASH! The photo froze in place before his eyes and then slowly began to shift. It showed him a room, a single lantern sitting in the middle of the floor, where two bloody bodies sat side by side, gashes across their pale faces and their limbs ripped off. The walls seemed to be a mirror of what was out here, splattered with blood and the prints of clawing hands.

The image faded and Yugi pulled the camera away from his eyes, disgusted by what he had seen. Even if this thing had saved his life, he began to feel more uneasy about carrying it around.

Has she returned?

A villager in black robes appeared briefly at the end of the hallway, but he vanished behind the next corner. Yugi shuddered as he left the light of the lantern, wishing sorely that his torch was working, but he made his way along, reminding himself that one of his friends may well be in danger. At the corner, he looked to where the priest had gone and saw a pair of sliding double doors. As he walked up to them, he shrugged to himself, thinking that they looked normal enough.

[Yugi! There's something in there.]

Yugi stopped, his hand poised above the door handle. [What is it?]

Yami didn't answer. Instead, Yugi was suddenly flooded with a sense of dread and fear that overwhelmed him, not only from the Pharaoh, but from something inside this room.

Trembling from the force of it, Yugi nonetheless shook his head. "Mio could be in there. She can't defend herself against what's in this house."

"By far the most dangerous place in the whole village... is Kurosawa House."

Whatever made it dangerous... it didn't matter. Nothing could stop him here.

Sharing in his resolve, Yami reached down to the door with Yugi and they slid it open.

The room beyond was larger and grander than anything they had seen so far. The centre was on a raised platform, divided by partition walls that had been decorated with mountain scenery and cherry blossom trees. In the very centre was a sunken fire-place, an incense burner hanging above it from the ceiling. The air was quite light in this room, unnaturally so and Yugi stepped up towards the fireplace uneasily. The room looked even bigger from the middle and he slowly turned on the spot, taking in every part of it, trying to figure out which part made him feel the way he did. Something in here was making his heart pound faster, his wide eyes feel dry and his limbs become weak and numb.

Looking down into the fireplace, something caught his eye and he stooped down carefully. It had been many years since that fire had been used, yet he still felt as though it could burn him, given half the chance, and some part of him even expected it to burst into flame as soon as his hand touched the cold ash. It was all nonsense, of course, and he managed to pull out a slightly burnt piece of paper. He brushed the ashes from it and read the hastily written words.

"Yae is not coming back. Did she really leave Sae behind? Did she survive in the forest?

"If Sae is cleansed and acts as Shrine Maiden alone, the * might be appeased. The records do not mention any rituals with a single Shrine Maiden, but I will do it. I have to try.

"Yae... Why did you run? Why won't you come back?"

Yugi frowned as his eyes returned to the * sign at the top of the page. What did that mean? But the page was clear about one thing. The girl, Sae, had been in this house.

"They were going to use her for the ritual, weren't they?" he said.

"I wonder if the ritual took place in this house...?" Yami wondered aloud. Sighing, he looked around the room. "Let's go, Yugi. There's nothing else here."

They both knew he was lying, but they said nothing. It was impossible to pin-point exactly where this malevolent presence was, but since it hadn't made itself known, it couldn't have been that much of a threat. Yugi left the paper in the fireplace, his experience with the Miyako woman's ghost teaching him not to hang on to such things and made his way off the platform.

A light flashed through the room.

Yugi looked up at the windows in the roof above as another flash, followed by a deep rumbling, filled the room. "A storm?"

He stared for a moment, waiting for the sound of rain that didn't come. Turning, he saw another door behind the partition wall and made his way across to it. He didn't get very far, as his foot once again caught against something.

He stopped. The floor was shadowed, so he couldn't see what was there, but it hadn't tried to grab his foot this time. Still... there was something there... He slowly began to bend down, his eyes making out a vague shape on the ground, but not very clear. Bending down, he got closer, closer, trying to see...

A flash of light revealed a screaming face staring up at him.

Yugi leapt back in fright and tripped backwards, almost falling to the ground and he cried out as he saw a body at his feet and another behind him and another and another and -

The empty room had suddenly been filled with dead bodies, bleeding, leaning against the walls, sprawled out on the floor. Every way he looked he saw more blood, more faces fixed in expressions of horror and pain, and his panic began to rise as he stumbled back across the room, staring at them all, the ones caught between the raised platform and the ground, the ones surrounding the fireplace.

He raised his eyes to the fireplace.

She laughed her hideous, wild laugh, her mouth wide open with glee.

The world seemed to slow down as he stared at her, unable to move. Her white kimono was splattered and soaked with blood, her pale cheeks smeared with it and still she continued to laugh, framed in the carnage all around her feet. Her laughter became a distant echo, becoming more wild, more terrible the longer it went on and Yugi could not tear his eyes from her, mesmerised by the mirthless sounds erupting from her mouth. It seemed almost to be a laugh of... despair. Ultimate insanity.

As she threw back her head in a long, high-pitched scream, a white mist began to envelop her and it was then that Yugi saw the shimmering red mark on her neck. Not a butterfly, but a straight line across her throat.

The mist began to shift, taking a definite form and Yugi looked up at it as the girl faded into the background, stepping out of the spotlight as the creature moved towards him, its clawed hands reaching out to Yugi. It's body was bound in ropes and the broken ones, where his arms had been freed, drifted around him as if in the water, and his almost-human face screamed silently with empty eye sockets.

Something shifted at his feet and Yugi leapt back as one of the bodies got up, reaching desperately out to him as the creature got closer. The edge of the mist touched him and he convulsed and fell lifeless to the ground. Yugi backed up sharply and fell from the platform to the ground.

He landed on empty floor. The bodies had vanished. The girl had gone.

But the creature was still approaching.

Still sitting on the ground, he pulled himself away from the platform as it got closer and closer, and he watched its flailing hands, knowing that just one touch could -

His back hit the wall. He couldn't move. Couldn't escape.

Suddenly, the wall vanished and his heart dropped as he fell through. Hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him through the open door, where he lay shell-shocked, listening to the door being slammed shut above him.

Gulping at the air, trembling like a drowning person, he slowly pulled himself to his feet and looked over at his rescuer.

"Mio!"

She didn't reply. She just stared at the door she had closed and after a moment, she raised her hand and a blue shimmer crossed the frame and settled into place. Yugi's eyes widened as he watched her, then he remembered the camera.

"Here," he said, holding it out to her. "You need it more than I do. I can protect myself with the Millennium Puzzle, so you don't have to worry."

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the camera in his hand, then she shook her head. "I-I can't use that," she said, so quietly, she might have been whispering.

"What? But... it's yours!"

Again, she shook her head and stared at the door. He followed her gaze and a chill ran down his spine at the memory of what was behind it.

"What was that thing?"

"It's called the Kusabi. Sae controls it."

Yugi turned sharply to her. "Sae? You mean that girl was Sae?"

"Yes... And if you see her again..." Her eyes were dark as she looked up at him and he could almost see something, something moving, a living memory, within the onyx irises. "Run for your life."

Author's Note: So sorry about the delay! Had a bit of work to do. I've been looking forward to this chapter though and I had an mp3 of Sae's laughter playing all the way through writing it. Scary stuff!

Please r&r! It makes my day!