GHOST HUNT: THE MISSING ARCHIVES

Hello this is my first Ghost Hunt story. I hope you all like it. The story will make use of contents from the games KUON and FATAL FRAME SERIES. I'll be, mostly, using the ghosts mentioned in the games. The main plot on each case is fully my creation

Happy holidays! I've been really busy with all this holidays preparations; Beside I had that cosplay parade I was participating in, so I hadn't had time to update

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the characters from Ghost Hunt, or any concept from the games mentioned before.

FILE #4: The pacing Shadow #1

"You dreamt…what?" Hikaru said as we were unpacking our stuff in the room we had been assigned to "I thought you said it'd been a regular dream!"

It was true, I'd said that, but whether I was or not, I was no longer sure of it.

"I was…" I said " At least I thought it was…"
I'd been checking the picture over and over since I first took it out from the envelope. My look traveled from the many jizo statues from a corner of the frame to the wooden door at the opposite side. I was almost expecting the shadow to come out from the image…

I shook my head to clear up my mind and sighed.

"May be we're getting ourselves worked up for no reason…" I said " I mean…nothing really important happened in that dream…may be I saw this place somewhere before and I casually dreamt with it, right?"

I knew better than anyone how much a lie that was. Never in my life had I seen that place nor heard of it. How the hell would I know it existed before hand?

"Mmmm…I don't know, Mai…" Hikaru said bitting her lower lip " Ok…let's do this. We'll take a look at the place; if we confirm the presence of spirit…we call out for help…."

"I guess…that's reasonable… Naru will probably throw the phone at me if I call him for something as silly as this, though..…"

"Don't say that….if it means something dangerous, he'll be here right away…" Hikaru said " He really does care about you, after all…"

"Yeah…I know he does…but I also know, that he won't take a case if it's nothing interesting…." I said rolling my eyes " Anyway….shall we go take a look…?"

"Yes…We still need to find the way"

"That's right….Let's go!"

We left the inn charging with a camera, a map and a notepad. Outside, the weather was awfully hot, and even though it wasn't midday yet, the sun was already high in the sky. The air was filled with by the smell of dried grass and the sounds of the cicadas crying from all directions.

We weren't exactly in the country side, but this wasn't exactly the main city either. Most of the oldest buildings in Kyoto remained in the outskirts from the main city, so this place was technically between the rural and the urban image of the prefecture.

"If I'm not wrong…Kei and Rei lived in a part of Kyoto that was pretty much like here, right?" I said while I looked around us.

"I guess so…The Abe manor is probably and old building, too…" Hikaru observed " It should be somewhere around this parts; but I believe our location is a little farther from the city…right?"

"Just a little bit more ahead, I think…should we take a ride?" I said " I feel like walking though…all those hours of bus rides are still stuck on my legs…"

"I feel like that as well. I think it's better if we walk…"

"Ok…!"

We walked around for a little more, the house was nowhere to be seen. We stopped in side road sushi local to ask for directions. The couple that lived here seemed a little puzzled when we showed them the place and the pictures, but they told us to keep walking a couple streets more. After some minutes under the burning sun, we finally found the building. The manor was practically ruins. Most of the façade had fallen apart.

"Yike….it doesn't look well, right?" I said " Do you think it's safe to enter? I really don't want to end up buried under a mountain of debris"

"By the quick scan I made…it looks pretty stable. I think as long as we watch our steps there shouldn't be problems…"

"All right! Let's go…Hikaru-chan"

I grabbed Hikaru's arm and helped her to get into the manor. The main wall had fallen down so the insides were wide open to the outside. The undergrowth covered the floor, part of the walls, stairs... but thankfully, just as Hikaru had said, the floor was quite solid and the main columns were fine.

" Well…Here we are…"I said " It's not really cozy, is it? I guess it suits for a haunted place… What do you say?"

Hikaru turned her head around; it almost looked like she could see what's around us.

"It's clean…" she replied quietly "I don't feel any spiritual presence. It feels empty, so empty that it kind of feels wrong…."

"So…no ghost?"

"No…the only presence I feel is you, Mai…"

"Thanks to goodness…" I sighed.

Knowing that there was no ghost around, made me feel better. I was glad that my dream was nothing more than a dream. It was truly relieving.

"Okay…" I said taking out the camera " I'll got take some pictures, you stay here and do your psychic scan of this place. I think a map would be useful"

"Very well, Mai….be careful"

I left Hikaru sitting there drawing, while I walked around taking pictures. If Hikaru said there wasn't any ghost there, I guess I could feel safer. I took pictures of every corner of the room, I didn't want to get too far from Hikaru, and besides I was still a little nervous; paranoia maybe?

I laughed of my own feelings when I saw a dark shadow move close to me with the corner of my eye. My heart began beating faster; the flashbacks from my dream filled my head…

"Mai!" Hikaru voice called me " Are you okay?"

"Eh…What? Oh yeah…I was just…spacing out…that's all" I laughed. There was nothing more than plants and wood pieces there. I shook my head and returned to Hikaru " What's up?"

"Nothing…I finished this. I was thinking that maybe…we should ask around the neighborhood. May be someone can tell us something about the rumors…"

"Sounds like a good idea…"

It was nice to be outside once again; I was glad to leave. The sun was hotter than before, making the interviews a lot harder to bear. The interviews didn't go as well as we had wished. No one seemed to know much about the rumors of the so said shrine ruins. Most of the locals were relative recent and they had only known of the existence of the shrine when the workers casually discovered it while they were building a new road.

"Oh, boy…"I sighed. The interviews were not useful at all "How's that no one knows anything about this? This report is going to be harder than I thought…"

"Should we ask the teacher?" Hikaru said.

"No way! We would probably lose points if we do that" I said shaking my head " I think we 're asking the wrong people. We should try with older people; people that have lived here their whole life…"

Hikaru nodded; that's how our intense search for the background of our case began. The hours passed and by the end of the day, we were in our room reviewing the collected data. We had a small board filled with papers, post-it and other stuff. Hikaru was putting more details into our map, while I was checking the pictures I'd taken.

I was passing some random pictures of a broken window, when my hand froze and my eyes went wide.

The picture was clear; it was a photo of a hallway, and right down the hall, there was something. It was barely visible, but it was clear enough to distinguish it. It was a man, or well, the shade of a man. I couldn't make out his face, but his body was clear enough. It was impossible; there was no one there when I took the picture, I was sure, and Hikaru said there was no ghost...but then, who was that?

"Mai….are you okay?" Hikaru called at me " Your aura suddenly changed. Did something happen?"

"You won't believe it…"