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Chapter 51
"Two peaceful days in a row?" Kaito grinned up at the nearly full moon, "Thank you!"
Their second say in Ainsworth (their first planned 'actually a vacation' day, at that) had been just as quiet and unbloodied as their arrival day. Shinichi nodded agreement for the thanks and deliberately did not ask for a third. If they were granted one, great. If not—well, two was more than he usually got while on 'vacation', so he'd just be grateful for what they'd been given. "What are we doing tomorrow?"
"Hiking?" Kaito suggested.
Shinichi considered. Hiking rarely turned out well for him, but he did enjoy it. "Sure," he agreed. If something was going to happen, it wouldn't matter where he went, that would be where it was going to happen. He'd been assured of that. (Which, okay, creepy, and he wasn't sure whether it was him or whoever was killing that was being prompted to the places. He didn't want to know.)
"You're thinking about morbid things again," Kaito observed.
Shinichi shrugged, "Can you blame me?"
Kaito paused, "You know, the sad thing is that, no, I really can't."
Shinichi shook his head, lips quirking. "So. Dinner?"
"Probably a good idea, yeah. We did kind of skip out—I guess our day isn't over yet."
"Asking for trouble, Kai," Shinichi groaned. "Asking."
Kaito shrugged, "We'll deal with trouble if it comes. Meanwhile, what do you want to eat?"
xxxx
Trouble didn't come until the next day, naturally out hiking on a little-used trail. Of course that it was a little used trail was the trouble, though they were fortunate in it not seeming to be a hostility-driven sort of trouble and no one was dead.
Part of the trail had washed out at some point, and the group of four who had also chosen the trail that day had tried to bypass the wash-out by going above it.
Shinichi or Kaito could have done it. A few professional athletes could probably have pulled it off—vaulters or gymnasts. The average person—maybe. If they had a good eye for stability and a healthy dose of caution.
Those four obviously possessed neither, because two were unconscious ten meters down the mountain, one was awake but obviously in possession of a broken ankle another four after that, and the fourth actually seemed to be the least injured but thoroughly stuck in a tangled thicket of spruce saplings a good ten meters after that.
Shinichi pulled off his watch—thank you, Agasa and satellites—and tossed it to Kaito.
Kaito immediately flicked it open and rapped out the pertinent numbers. Voice recognition worked well enough, but his own enunciation was always that little bit clearer than Shinichi's when he really tried, so he'd only have to voice-dial once. Saved time.
As Kaito relayed the trail's name and the last marker they'd passed, Shinichi dropped down the side of the hill to check over the two unconscious hikers. He called up that one was probably only concussed, but he wasn't sure about the second's spine and there wasn't much he could do for either under the circumstances. He continued down and helped the one with the broken ankle into a somewhat more comfortable position before locating splint-worthy sticks quickly and carefully setting the break.
He wasn't surprised when the girl passed out, and ran a quick check for further injuries while keeping the trapped one talking—he got their names and that they were actually local, not tourists. Apparently this trail was one of five favorites that the group (high school age, of course, because kids were dumb. Even Shinichi had been dumb at that age, when he wasn't being a terrifying genius. So had Kaito. Young and dumb. Not nearly enough common sense.) The boy in the thicket was Joshua 'don't call me Josh' Campbell. The girl with the broken ankle was Emily Haven, and the two—boy and girl—unconscious further up the hill were David Brenton and Hillary White.
"Rescue's on the way," Kaito called. "Shin-chan? Where do you need me?"
"Campbell-san says he's not hurt, so we can get him out without worrying about aggravating anything. I'll need an extra brace for leverage, though," Shinichi called back, also in English for the sake of their conscious rescue-ee.
Kaito nodded and snapped his fingers, producing an over-the-chest harness and climbing rope, which wound itself round a tree to give Shinichi something to attach the harness to.
"How'd you do that?" Campbell demanded, wide-eyed.
"Magic!" Kaito said cheerfully. "I'll keep an eye on Brenton-san and White-san. Shin-chan, have you got him?"
"One moment," Shinichi reached into the tangle and caught both of Campbell's arms, hoisting back with the rope as his anchor. "Campbell-san, can you get your feet under you now?"
"I—uh, yeah, I think so. Just a sec," he squirmed against sap-sticky branches and did manage to get his feet to the ground, which made getting him the rest of the way out a lot easier. Two more good tugs, and he was free.
"All right, good," Shinichi slipped back out of the harness and handed it to the teen—other teen, he mentally corrected. He was a teen, too. "Put that on, we can use it to get you up to your friend. Haven-san should be waking up any moment, and it will be much less frightening with someone she knows in sight."
"Is everyone going to be okay?" Campbell asked anxiously, doing as he was told readily enough. "I knew we shouldn't have tried getting past that until a trail crew got out here, but I didn't say anything! I should have said it was a bad idea!"
"I did not see any immediately fatal injuries, if that's what you're asking," Shinichi replied frankly. "Your friends will likely all have to spend some time in the hospital, although it is unlikely that Haven-san will be retained overnight provided she has someone at home to look after her. It's difficult to tell the state of the other two while they remain unconscious, though. It is possible that Brenton-san has a neck injury, and almost certain that White-san has a concussion, which could mean any number of things, most of them not good."
Campbell swallowed, clearly looking for something to focus on aside from the fact that they didn't know if his friends would be all right. "You—you sound very knowledgeable about this kind of thing."
Shinichi sighed, "I am a detective, Campbell-san. I work most closely with Tokyo's Division One—violent crimes. Mainly homicide. I have seen many, many injuries of varying severity, and these are far from the worst. It is honestly a relief that they have not been inflicted intentionally. Most of those I see are."
But these hadn't been, or if they had, it wasn't by the conscious party. The kid was genuine in his concern. He also—understandably—was not particularly comforted by the frank statement.
"Seeing signs of life up here, Shin-chan," Kaito called. "Brenton-san may be waking up. Can you get up here and help me keep him from moving? I'm still not sure about his spine."
A quick glance showed that Haven was also waking, and Shinichi grimaced, "Campbell-san, please keep Haven-san calm, she's waking, too." He didn't wait for a response or even to finish his own instructions as he scrambled to get up the mountainside quickly without putting himself at unnecessary risk. The last thing they needed was another injury.
xxxx
The wait had been grueling in and of itself, though the fact that by the time the rescue team got there, all injured parties were awake and relatively coherent was… a mixed blessing, actually. It was a good sign, but it also meant keeping them calm and still—very still in Brenton's case—had been that much more difficult. On the up-side, prognosis was good and while Brenton did have a neck injury, it was thankfully not spinal.
Kaito and Shinichi had also been able to come to the reasonably confident conclusion that it really had been a case of idiocy and accident, rather than malice. Then again, it was a small town. Small towns tended to have equally small crime-rates, and the 'murder' and 'attempted murder' was certainly a rarer find in those areas.
Not that it was generally apparent, with Shinichi in the area, but there was the fact that it wasn't Shinichi's presence that drew crime, but rather that crime tended to draw Shinichi's presence. Or, that's what the miko had said, anyway. This though, this was a trip of necessity—they had chosen to come here to take care of something vitally important and the timing had been pre-set by available non-school days.
Maybe that made a difference?
Kaito shrugged to himself, dismissing the notion. It didn't really matter either way, what would happen would happen and if they didn't have even a clue as to what it might be, they'd just have to take it as it came.
And they now had four friends in Ainsworth, which was a bonus. Sure, it would have been nice to have made them under different circumstances, but gratitude would have them more likely to be comfortable with talking to them, and they were looking for a cave that was only technically open to the public. It was decidedly not a tourist attraction, out of the way and involving local… Kaito was hesitant to call them 'urban legends', because the fact remained that the cave housed Pandora, but they'd found it the first time by chasing—ironically—horror stories.
The one they'd found showed as a local legend, and it would be interesting to hear a local's accounting. They could also have the excuse of trying to distract and/or cheer up the one still confined to a hospital bed for another four days, immobilized for another two. The injury hadn't been spinal, but aggravating it could cause enough swelling to put pressure on his spine, which could lead to spontaneous collapse and actually cause permanent damage.
"So," Kaito started brightly, sliding into a lull in the conversation. "Any local legends? There are a lot around Tokyo—even involving Shin-chan's house, as his entire neighborhood except him and the Hakase seem to think it's haunted—but I don't know what kind of stories that can be found in this kind of area."
"What, like ghost stories?" Haven asked, blinking.
Kaito nodded cheerfully, "That's one kind, sure."
White tilted her head before wincing slightly. Her concussion had her a little hazier than she should have been, and there was an unfortunate amount of bruising on her shoulder and upper back what made that an uncomfortable action. "Ow," She remarked conversationally. "There's that old cave up the mountain to the east," she offered.
Bingo.
Shinichi looked mildly interested, "Oh? What about it?"
"Story goes that it's cursed," Brenton informed, stuck staring at the ceiling with the neck-brace. "It's got a little—I don't know, shrine? Something like that in the back. A few cave paintings. Lots of natural quartz, and the shrine has a big piece on display. Sometimes there's weird lights up that way, and howling and other weird sounds. I think it's mostly just wolves, but the other kids at school say there's skinwalkers or wendigo or some other monsters up there."
Kaito had to ask, because he hadn't actually heard the 'monster' bit. The local folklore website had said 'haunted' and 'blood-red light' and left it at that. "What's a skinwalker? Or a wendigo?"
"Skinwalkers are a Native legend, but what exactly they are varies by tribe. Around here, people think they're vindictive old shaman gone mad, who started taking the skins of beasts and using them to change their form. That's what got them exiled and made them turn into monsters, that they were using their magic the wrong way."
That… considering what Kaito knew of actual magic, that sounded unnervingly possible—or something very like it, anyway. He grimaced, noticing Shinichi's sudden stillness and knowing he thought the same. "Ick. Creepy. Do I even want to know what a wendigo is?"
"Monster that feeds on human flesh," Haven replied, suddenly cheerful. Oh, the sadistic type when it came to storytelling. "Those stories go that they were people, who, for one reason or another, ended up going cannibal and eventually turned into monsters. Fast, strong, long-lived, can hibernate for years until someone wanders too close. If they don't kill you, their touch turns you into one of them."
That one was far less likely—or, not in the sense that the stories probably made it sound. Classic Mad Cow Disease, more-or-less. Cattle got it second, timeline-wise, by being fed ground cow leftovers. Humans—specifically cannibal tribes, mostly island-bound off the African coast—got it first*, and pretty much the same way. If a group got locked in cannibalism long enough—yeah, they'd go nuts, get aggressive (could it be called 'murderous' when they were killing out of genuine insanity?), and probably go after people as food after having been using them as food to make them go nuts. Which, okay, one more reason to not be a cannibal. Aside from the 'ick' factor and the general moral reasons, that was. Yay for medical reinforcement? (The things he learned living with Shinichi.)
"Yeah, I didn't want to know," Kaito informed, making a face. "Gross."
"There are weird lights from up there some nights, though," Campbell admitted. "It's creepy. No one around here sleeps well those nights, either. The mayor's sent people up to look it over, but nothing's been found. Some of the other kids dare each other to go up there at night, though—no one ever stays the whole night. They come back saying that it just feels too wrong."
Shinichi frowned consideringly.
Kaito groaned. "Great, he's gone into meitantei-mode. We'll be going up there and finding out what's going on, now."
"Oh, yeah," Campbell sat up a little straighter, "You said you're a detective, Kudo?"
Shinichi nodded, "Mainly homicide, but I've worked other cases, too. I'd like to take a look at that cave tomorrow—during the day, Kaito, don't look at me like that. I want to be able to see. If there's evidence of human tampering, I can probably track down the source. If not…"
"You can probably track down the source anyway," Kaito grumped fondly. "You always do."
"If you get the Red Nights to stop, no one will complain," Haven informed. "They don't happen all that often—near the full moon, sometimes, but not every full moon and not always the full moon, but… I get nightmares those nights, and I know my parents do, too."
Brenton grunted agreement, as did Campbell. White shivered, "I get night terrors, sometimes," she admitted. "Nightmares I can't wake up from, even after I am awake. I got them when I was little, but they stopped before we moved here. They always come back on the Red Nights, though. If it weren't for these guys, I'd have asked my parents if we could go somewhere else within six months of moving here."
Shinichi frowned, a genuine look of concerned thought this time. Kaito found himself echoing the expression. "That's weird," he agreed. "That sounds… I don't like that."
An echo from Pandora, probably, which meant lead-lined silver should do the trick. Wood on the outside so it didn't look valuable. Lead blocked all sorts of things, and silver scattered 'malicious' mahou for all that it could be used to amplify other kinds, from what Akako had taught them in the future-that-wasn't.
Meanwhile, even though they didn't have the attention of the Black, they still had a reasonable excuse to be going to that cave. Without a gem involved and with what sounded like a prank in poor taste to anyone who hadn't had magic proved to them, there was no reason for a teenage detective going to check out strange reports to be considered weird.
Better safe than sorry. Always better safe than sorry.
"Well, I guess we have a plan for tomorrow," Shinichi offered, a little hopefully.
Kaito gave a long-suffering sigh. "Never could resist a mystery," he moaned, woefully dramatic.
Shinichi huffed.
Kaito laughed, "Yeah, yeah, plan for tomorrow. So long as you're not hauling me off in the wee hours of the morning, sure. Why not? Let's go to the haunted cave."
Shinichi rolled his eyes, "Ghosts-"
"'-don't exist, Kaito'," Kaito finished for him, grinning brightly. "So you've said. Who knows? You might even be right!"
He hadn't been*, and they both knew it, but ghosts were rare and physically harmless. More like shadows than anything, memories that left imprints—not actual spirits of the dead.
"If you guys are going up there, good luck. I hope you find out what's causing the weirdness."
"Oh, we'll certainly try. Any other mysteries around here for Shin-chan to look into, so long as we're at it?"
Brenton gave a soft huff as he rolled his eyes sideways to try and look at them, "Well, if you could figure out how Daisy the pony is always getting out of her pasture…"
Kaito chuckled, "We could look into it if you really want us too."
xxxx
*That's what Dad said about Mad Cow Disease, anyway, if paraphrased. There was a lot more medical terminology and scientific names of diseases and disease types. Considering he was the guy that did the autopsies before he retired, I'm inclined to believe him.
*Ghosts existing is canon, at least in the anime. I can't remember the episode name/number, but there's a little girl ghost shown to the audience who is also shown to Ayumi, but never proven. The fact that someone else had been faking her ghost was punished by her showing up to the one doing the faking, too, but everyone thought it was their plan to turn the trick around on the culprit that freaked him out so much. It's done so briefly and subtly that it's easy to ignore or overlook, but there it is, all the same. (Then again, magic existing is also canon, considering Akako.)
