Dang it, and here I thought I was being all clever. Yeah, it's Princess TuTu. Here's the chapter you rightly deserve. And thanks for playing with me. ^.^ I'm sort of stuck in my house in the woods most of the time with just my two year old, so it's good to have people to play with.
R&R! And I'm so glad you guys like my portrayal of Naru. I've heard so many happy reviews on him. It's good to know I did something right, and I hope to write you many stories in the future. ^.^
Chapter 13
I woke up to amber, coal-fired dim, because bladders don't give a damn about sleep.
Or romance, for that matter, as I had to crawl my way out of the combined force of Naru's arms and the lusciously squishy couch.
Lucky for me, Naru slept on, each of his inhalations clicking before whooshing out in sleeping sighs. I smiled at that. I'd never met anyone who clicked in their sleep.
Downside to a mansion is that you can't just covertly turn on a single light to shuffle to the toilet. They have such freaking high ceilings that the lights have to cover a huge area, and thus have roughly the same amount of power as a search light. I probably wouldn't have woken up anyone safe and closed up in their cozy guest rooms, but Naru had no closed doors to block out the blazing mini-suns (at least mini-suns to my bleary eyed, half asleep state).
Thus, I dug out one of the many easily found flashlights from the bag underneath the black monitors. What was a ghost hunter without flashlights?
I was too sleepy to care how creepy a dark house was by flashlight. The fact that a stinking hot man that I'd loved for the good part of nearly two years also played into that. Thus, I went to the nearest bathroom—the one at the top of the stairs and to your immediate right, did my business, and headed on my way.
A baby started to cry.
That woke me up.
"Aw, come on," I moaned. "This can't be a dream, I can't pee in my dreams, what if I pee in real life?" And Naru with me on the couch—now that was a horrifying thought.
The cry rose to a mind-numbing, pleading pitch and had once more taken up the quality of an infant small enough to need its whole body to cry.
I twisted the flashlight behind me to the utility closet where it came from. The door was ajar, as the framing had been damaged under Lin and Naru's combined force. The rock of my heart fluttering at the base of my throat, as I waited for someone else to hear the crying and join me. I even had what I would say: oh dear, looks like that exorcism didn't work, what do we do now?
But no one came out. I turned the flashlight towards the stairs, where it bleached out the tiny amber glow from the parlor. I should go back—back to Naru's arms, where it was safe and warm and let him deal with this in the morning.
The crying wavered, croaked like a cricket. I remembered the little hands on my chest, and how the tiny body had started to calm in my arms.
A great pressure bore down on me, and I looked up to blink away tears. Poor baby. Poor, pathetic, injured baby.
I turned around and made my way to the utility closet. When my flashlight flickered, then died completely, I felt my way to the door and pushed it open with my fingertips. Inside I could hear the baby wailing for release.
The doorknob pressed cold against my hand, and I hesitated.
"Babies aren't meant to be ghosts," I said to the door. "You hold no ill will. You aren't capable of it. You can't even comprehend harming others. This was never your fault. You were born to be loved, and held, and comforted, not left to cry in a closet."
The baby's crying faltered a bit, as though it could hear me. Then it started up in a higher pitch, frantic, knowing I was there.
Help.
I opened the door.
Like before, I could see its small, deformed body despite the darkness. This time no one shoved it into my arms, but rather it squirmed and kicked in the sink with its burnt, raw, bloody limbs. I could see its blood smearing against the porcelain, somehow, even though at first I thought it was the only thing I could see.
I rushed forward, hands outstretched. At my touch the little mishappened hole in the lump of fleshy head wobbled, as though not daring to believe it. The fingerless paddles reached for me and once more held tight to my flesh when I held it hard to my chest.
"Shh shh." Tears were already streaming past my chin. "Shh, little one, shh. It's okay, I got you, I won't leave you alone."
The little body shuddered and its cries lowered to painful whimpers as I gingerly bounced it against my chest. I could feel the blood soaking into my pajama top and dripping off one of my elbows.
Somehow, I could still see the sink. It was almost as though the utility room had become lit with moonlight from the window out in the hall, even though I had been sure the curtains had been closed earlier by Takigawa.
"How about a nice, warm bath," I murmured. "Wash off the blood. You might like the sound of the water." When my teacher's baby had a hard time sleeping, she would turn on a facet in the house for white noise.
With bloody hands, I turned on the facet. Warm mixed with cold, and as I waited for just the right temperature I felt my heart finally calm and the adrenaline slink back from my blood.
Perhaps this baby was what they had failed to exorcize, not the necromancer.
It panicked when I moved to lower it to the sink. I made every soothing noise I could think of and bent over double so its paddles could stay pinched up in my skin. On contacting the rush of lukewarm water, however, its crying abruptly stopped. For a moment, it seemed too stunned for reaction.
Then the malformed hole in its head let out a sound I thought it incapable of: it cooed. A little, perfect 'ooo' like a dove.
And then I could see why.
As the water hit its flayed, red-pink flesh, the blood was washed away and, in its place, new, clean, healthy baby flesh grew back. As I turned it in the water and washed off each of its little limbs, I could only watch in amazement as adorable, chubby legs and toes the size of Good & Plenty candy grew back. I found out it was a little girl, not an it, and at each of her happy squawks I let out a shaking laughs of joy, tasting the salt of my own racing tears.
Then, at last, I washed off her poor, too small, lump of a head with its lone hole.
A scalp topped with soft, blond baby fuzz. Dimpled round cheeks. A little face with cheeks like a Cabbage Patch doll screwed up against the flow of water.
The baby spluttered, then opened big, blue eyes at me.
Then she opened her mouth in an unmistakable, gummy smile. She glowed with health and happiness and the bright gold of purification.
"Well aren't you just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" I pulled her down to touch my nose to hers, to which she let out a shriek of precious, baby mirth and pawed my face with her ten, perfect fingers. "All you needed was a bath! All this time and you only needed someone to help you clean off!"
Get Out.
Ice-hot malice slammed into me, twisting my organs to the bottom of my rib cage and snuffing out my breath. The baby wailed and twisted her hands up against my chest.
True darkness settled in around me. I couldn't see the sink, I couldn't see the baby, though I could still feel her trembling against my breasts and hear the water running.
Mine, mine, she is MINE!
The words flowed through me, below the level of hearing, frizzing on every nerve ending, but no hands touched me. Nothing moved to try and take the baby from me, but I couldn't be sure whether it would stay that way. In my panic I ran to where I thought the door was. Something flickered, and suddenly the flashlight burst to life at my feet with a glow of maroon, Persian rug. I flung myself to it, grabbed it, and swung it back round to the doorway of the utility closet, all the while keeping the wailing tiny girl clamped to my chest.
He filled the doorway. Eight feet tall, four feet wide, arms ape-ishly long and his figure nothing but black static.
The moment I thought 'him' whatever features I thought I could see to place him apart as male faded away, till all I could make out was the sense that someone unspeakably large and hateful loomed over me, rolling with fury, stepping out of the utility closet to fill the globe of pale light.
Give her backLEAVEmine mine mineDIE DIE DIE!
GET OUT!
The little soft body in my arms clung to me harder, wailing. I imagined how she had been just moments ago, hardly identifiable as human let alone a baby—
Something within me shattered, and fury as I had never known before set my skin on fire.
"No, you get out, bastard!"
The black figure fluttered, and I could feel his surprise. I gathered myself from where I had crouched half-fallen to the floor and stomped my foot forward.
"You're the one who keeps her here, suffering like this! If anyone doesn't belong here, it's you! You foul, you sick, you—" and then it hit me, as though handed to me by some otherworldly power. "She's your anchor. You're using her to stay tied to this world."
The flashlight blinked, and in that fraction of a second the elastic figure sunk back into the doorway, hunched like a gorilla, invisible eyes boring into me.
Stop. Shut up. Shut up. Shut UPDIE! DIE! LEAVE AND DIE!you will DIE!
But my mind was rolling. I could almost hear Gene whispering with that shrewd Naru smirk: Karma is a bitch.
"NO YOU FUCKING DIE! This baby didn't die before she was born, you killed her! You killed her so you wouldn't have to face what's waiting for you on the other side for trapping the souls of all those defenseless babies! Hell, you probably killed a few of them yourself!"
The doorway slanted sideways, the black soul becoming more and more cramped within it. Wood groaned. Rapping sounds pattered across the ceiling and walls like a storm of hailstones let loose on the house. Somewhere beyond the light of my flashlight, doors opened and slammed.
"So don't you dare threaten me—DON'T YOU DARE THREATEN HER! I have her now, she's safe from you, so you have no power here! Nothing's keeping you back from the shitloads of karma heading your way, so leave! Die! AND FACE WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"
The whole house shrieked with snapping wood. It groaned with bending bolts, shattering pillars, cracking foundation—
And then there was silence. The doorway stood as it always had, empty, and with the heater's blinking lights within. Dust motes floated about in the flashlight's beams.
I hugged the baby to my face. Her little body truly did glow gold now, and I could see her blue eyes bright as sapphires watching me above a somewhat tentative, gummy smile—if a baby could be tentative in their smiles. I could barely remember the horror she had been before.
Affection warmed me like a dip in a hot bath, and the muscles that had coiled in the darkness relaxed. I took a ragged breath, and it finally reached my lungs.
I kissed her. If only rose petals could be as soft as her skin.
"Now you can finally be with your mommy." I rested my forehead to hers, sighing out the relief I hadn't felt since arriving here. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. But at least you're safe now. You're safe now."
"Mai?"
The hall light flicked on, momentarily blinding me. The weight in my arms vanished, and I thought I could hear the echo of baby cooing.
Monk stood in the hallway, haggard and just more than a little bewildered. Just as John appeared in the crack of his doorway, I heard Naru fumbling up the stairs with a curse.
"—just one minute—one damn minute—"
John rubbed one of his eyes, the other narrowed at me. "What's going on?"
"Who are you screaming at?" asked Takigawa in his best 'I-don't-think-you're-crazy' voice.
And then Naru reached them, wild eyed, hair mussed, and looking P-I-S-S-E-D. I glanced down to make sure the blood on my pajamas had been taken with the spirits. It had.
"This time I really will fire you," Naru started.
"Woa! Hang on! Let me explain."
"Yeah, Naru, let her—" Takigawa did a double take. "Why are you coming up from downstairs?"
"Where did all those rapping noises come from?" asked John. "I thought the whole house was coming down."
Takigawa nodded, still frowning a bit at Naru. "Yeah, Mai started yelling and an earthquake started up. Did you get in a fight with the spirit or something?"
At Naru's paling expression, John's dawning horror, and Takigawa's growing smirk at comprehension between myself and our boss, I could see that I wasn't going to get back to my warm place on the couch anytime soon.
I gave my best toothy smile. "Uh, would you believe me if I said I think there's one last Kuman behind the sink?"