Disclaimer: I do not own Ghost Hunt.

"English speaking"

"Japanese speaking"

'Thinking'

Chapter 8

Monday, day 1

It took them all about two hours to set up all the cameras and monitors they needed. Since there had been no activity on the first floor, they only had one camera in the hallway. But just in case, they put cameras in every room on the ground floor. Two covering the hallway from either side, one to see most of the entryway and one facing the front door.

Mai had taken all the temperatures. The house had a general temperature of about 12-15 degrees celsius. The hallway though, was only at 9 degrees. And that troubled them all a bit. There had not yet been any activity, but that was to be expected.

They were all gathered in the base. Lin , Naru and all the monitors were set up at a large desk in one corner. They had moved a couch and a coffee table in there, so everyone could sit. Mai had made some tea for them all, and they were currently sitting silently. Yasu and Madoka were doing their researcher's thing. Lin was watching the monitors. Naru was studying the case file with his father again. And Mai was deep in thought, looking at the picture of the watery footprints again.

'The echo in the dripping must be something created by the spirit. But if they hear it every night, does that mean the spirit comes by every night? If it does, then why don't the footprints appear every night as well? And why did they start in the middle of that hallway? Why not at the end of it? What is in that hallway?!' She was getting frustrated now.

"Do we have a piece of chalk?" She asked the room in general.

Martin pulled out a piece that he kept in his briefcase. "Here." He went over and gave it to her.

"Thank you." She told him.

"What are you planning?" Oliver asked. That was kind of a random request.

"I need to see something. Lin, would you keep an eye on me on the monitors? I'm going downstairs." Lin nodded to her.

"Wait." Yasu pulled something out of his bag. "Here, don't forget this, Mai-chan." He tossed her the thing. She opened her hands to reveal a small rectangular device. Oliver had seen something like that before. It was an industrial type flashlight. Waterproof and very hard to smash. "Just in case, you know."

"Thanks." Mai said and clipped the thing in a belt loop.

She was about to walk out the door, when Oliver grabbed her arm. "Hold on. What are you doing?"

"I don't know exactly. I just need to see something. You can come with me if you want."

He looked at her and she looked back. "Fine."

"Fine." She walked out the door and he followed.

As they walked down the stairs he asked her a question. "What's the flashlight for?"

"Hmm? Oh come on, you know how I am. Getting stuck or trapped somewhere is like a 50 percent chance for me. This is just in case I get stuck somewhere with no light. Not that there is much of a chance at that happening here."

"But it's good to be on the safe side." He finished. He was not liking the fact that he knew her statistics to be true. But was at least glad that she seemed to take percussion.

"Exactly."

They reached the dreaded hallway. "So what now?"

She sighed. "I'm going in there."

"What?!"

"I'm going in." She repeated and took a step forward.

Oliver grabbed her and pulled her back. He took hold of her shoulders and turned her to face him. "What are you thinking? You told everyone not to, and now you're gonna do it yourself?"

"Naru..?"

"No, Mai. Maybe you weren't aware, but when you warned us, your expression told of danger. You're not going in there."

She looked at him like she didn't understand why he was worried. Then she took her hands and placed them on his forearms. Her face changed to one of understanding. "I get that you're worried. So let me explain. Imagine that you're walking outside at night."

Oliver raised an eyebrow and looked at her like she had lost all sense of reason. But she just laughed at his expression.

"Hold on. It'll make sense in a minute. So you're walking on a road with street lamps set at a certain interval. They are just close enough so you don't have to walk in darkness. But then you come to a part where the next two street lamps have gone out. You can see to the other side where the next lamp is, but everything in between is completely dark. So now you're standing under the last lamp before the darkness, worried because you can't see what's hiding in there. You know you can walk at least a few steps before it becomes so dark you can't see your feet. But you don't know exactly how far. Well, that is what I want to do."

"You want to see how far you can go in before you can't see your feet?"

"Yes." She nodded.

"But there is no darkness to blind you. So what will tell you when you've reached the point you're looking for?"

"See, that's the point I don't know yet. I'm sort of just hoping that my instinct will tell me." She looked sheepish.

Oliver sighed. "Alright. I'm guessing the chalk is for marking the floor when you find it?"

She smiled and nodded again. Glad that he understood her plan. He let go of her and she turned to the hall once more.

"I'm going in with you." He said with no room for arguing.

"That's fine. Just stay right behind me. Okay?"

"Fine."

The hall was just about 8 metres long. Mai took a tentative step forward. After explaining her theory, she had a strange urge to look down at her feet. The thought made her smile a little. She took another feeling in her gut was getting stronger. Another step. The floorboards creaked. Another step. The hall was lit by the ceiling lamps, but she had a feeling of darkness descending on them. Another step. Her gut and the base of her spine were tingling. Like when you were on a really tall roller coaster. Not quite like falling because you know there's something stable to hold you in place. But like you're anticipating a drop. Another step. She was about three metres in now. Half a metre from where Mr. Adleigh had said the footprints had appeared.

Mai looked at the floor in front of her. "There." She pulled the chalk out of her pocket and drew a line from one wall to the other. She stood back up. Naru was now beside her. "I have to do it on the other side too. But I think maybe it's just the next metre of so that's the problem."

"What are you sensing from it?"

"Darkness." She stretched out her arm into the air before them.

"What is it?"

"Feel the air. I think it's safe. Try to stretch out your hand." He did. "Does it feel colder here?"

"It does." Taking note of that for later, they proceeded to walk through the other rooms to the other side of the hall. The same process started and Mai marked the floor a little more than a metre from the other line. They took a look inside the bathroom they had earlier said was off limits, since no one was supposed to go down this way. There was nothing to see, and the only thing Mai felt was a lingering sense of fear. But that could have been from the little girl and Mrs. Adleigh as the incident had happened not so long ago.

After making another batch of tea, they went back upstairs. Martin and Madoka asked Mai a bunch of questions, and she relayed to them all the strange tingling feeling in her gut and spine.

Mr. Adleigh called shortly after to tell them the answer to Mai's earlier question. Apparently, the water had not been real. The reason why Mrs. Adleigh had taken the picture, was because she was afraid that someone had broken in and she wanted to have photographic evidence for the police. This was smart as they had disappeared only 20-30 minutes after she had taken it.

It was time to get something to eat. Mai and Madoka made dinner, they ate, and then Yasu and Martin washed up. They apparently had a good talk because when they got back, The professor went straight toMai and sat down on the sofa next to her.

"Mai. Yasuhara tells me that you have completed a case in under an hour. Is this true?"

Mai looked at Yasu. "If you're thinking of the fluffy case, then it doesn't really count because I didn't allow the woman to pay me."

"So it's true?" Martin asked.

She sighed. "In a way, yes."

"Wow, Mai. Tell us what happened." Madoka said, Coming over from talking with Lin and sitting down on Mai's other side.

"Look, it's really not that interesting." Mai tried to avoid the story.

"Really? I think that getting a 'fluffy' feeling is pretty interesting." Yasu said. He was having way too much fun with this.

"Yeah, what's that about? Why fluffy?" Madoka asked. Mai noticed that Martin had taken out his little notebook again. Even Naru had turned around to listen.

Sighing again, she gave into her fate. "A woman named Mrs. Tanaka called me one morning saying she thought a ghost was haunting her house. She told me that she could hear creaking and scratching noises. And then she told me about a weird distorted crying. Not like a baby, but more like weiling. That's when I got this weird 'fluffy' feeling. Like something soft was brushing up against my skin. I had some free time, so I told her that I would be over within the hour and take a look at the situation. When I got there, I felt nothing."

"Nothing at all?" Martin asked, nose buried in his notes.

"Nope. Nothing. We took a walk around the house and at some point, I heard it. The weiling. It was weird, because it sounded familiar in a way, I just couldn't quite place where from. We were on the first floor then, and I noticed a hatch in the ceiling. The 'fluffy' feeling came back then. I asked her what was up there, but she said that there wasn't supposed to be anything but a few old boxes. She was 63 years old and couldn't climb the ladder, so before her husband had died the year before, she had asked him to take anything of value down."

She gave herself a moment to breathe, and for Martin to catch up with his writing. "I did actually write up a case file on this. I can send it to you if you want Prof."

"Oh, I would very much like that, yes. Thank you." She watched him fundly.

"What did you find in the attic?" Naru asked her, bringing her back to her story.

"Right, yes. So I went up there. I expected it to be dark but a small part of the roof had fallen in, letting the sunshine light up the room. I quickly found the culprit and called for Mrs. Tanaka to find me a laundry basket lined with an old blanket or towel."

"What did you need that for?" Madoka asked.

"There was a litter of kittens up there." She said with a fond smile. "A pregnant cat had apparently found the whole in the roof and had thought it the perfect place to give birth. Right next to where she had chosen, there was a bunch of old pipes that went all throughout the house. The pipes had carried the sound of the kittens meowing and distorted it, to sound more ominous. The mother had of course scratched the floor around her children and the floorboards creaked whenever she walked on them. And there you have it. Case solved."

"So the kittens were the reason for your 'fluffy' feeling?" Martin asked.

"Yes. And obviously I couldn't ask her to pay, since there really was nothing but a bunch of cats scaring her. Which is why I say it doesn't count."

"Oh, but it totally does." Madoka said. "You got a reaction from your ESP, without there being the presence of a spirit. That's super cool, Mai."

They had a few laughs before Naru became irritated and told them to quiet down. Eventually they decided to go to bed. Four bedrooms divided by four men and two women. Mai and Madoka shared one, then Naru and Yasu in another, and lastly Martin who was sharing with Lin, but he had first night watch and wasn't going to bed yet.

Mai was very tired. Even though she had taken a nap on the way there, she could barely keep her eyes open. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she was out.

Mai opened her eyes to darkness. At first she thought that she might be astral projecting into one of the deep layers. This is normally where she would have seen Gene. But trying to move made her realise differently. She couldn't move. She felt her whole body aching with cold like she had in her dream about Charlie Wilkens who had frozen to death. Well, maybe not quite the same. It wasn't a freezing temperature, but she was shaking. Her head throbbed like she had hit it on something hard.

The sound of dripping water could be heard. 'The echo!'

It sounded like she was in some sort of cave. Inhaling through her nose she smelled salt and mildew. And there was something tangy in the air. Like pee. She realised that the person who's memories these were, had peed themselves.

More water sounds. Not dripping, although that was still sounded through the space she was in. No this was different. It sounded like a pool of water splashing against stone. The sound sent fear shooting through her. She didn't know why. It was just water. But something about it was very frightening to the person she was with.

Tuesday, day 2

Mai woke up shivering. She was freezing but her covers were warm to the touch. The cold had evidently followed her out of the dream. Looking over, she saw that Madoka's bed was empty. She looked at the clock and saw that it was already 7:15.

Mai got up and got dressed after brushing her teeth and using the toilet. She walked to base and found everyone but Madoka there. Lin looked really tired. He should go to bed soon.

"Goodmorning. Where's Madoka?"

Martin and Yasu greeted her with 'good mornings' of their own, and she was told that Madoka was making breakfast.

"Did we get anything last night?" She asked.

"Only the sound of the water dripping. Madoka tried to wake you to hear it, but she couldn't stir you." Naru told her. He handed her a pair of headphones so she could listen to the recording. It sounded just like the dripping from her dream.

Reminded of it, she told them all about what she had.. Well not seen, but heard and felt.

"Why were you afraid of the water?" Naru asked her.

She shook her head. "I don't know. I just was. Like the sound meant something bad was going to happen."

"At least now we know why there is an echo. If the person was trapped in a cave of some kind, and that was the only thing they could focus on. It makes sense that the sound would follow them."

"Are there any caves around these parts?"

Oliver looked to Yasu. "Can you find out?"

"I'm on it. In the meantime. Listen to what Madoka and I have found so far." Yasu replied, tapping on his computer and turning it around. Seven pictures of different men and women were shown. "These people have all been reported missing in the area. The times of the disappearances span over 83 years."

"Is there a pattern in the timeline?" Oliver asked him, but the answer came from the doorway.

"None at all." Madoka said. "The first two disappearances happened only nine months apart. But all the others have different intervals of years between them. The largest leap was 32 years. Furthemore, two of the victims bodies washed up in the sea in two different places. Both are very far from here. And the times the two victims went missing were 54 years apart. We're looking into all of the people's backgrounds, but we haven't found anything of interest yet."

"So we have seven potentials for the spirit passing through here." Oliver concluded.

"Can't we rule out the two that washed ashore?" Yasu asked.

"I don't want to rule out anything, before we know for sure. Good work, finding this though."

"And on that note. Breakfast is ready, so everyone come eat." Madoka announced. "You too Koujo." She gave her husband a stern look.

They all went down to eat.

The next few hours went by uneventfully. Mai was starting to get anxious. She hated this part. Sitting around and waiting with nothing happening was nerve racking. She was sitting in front of the monitors next to Naru. All of a sudden she jumped when a hand landed on her right knee.

"Stop that." Naru said without looking at her.

She blinked. "Stop what?"

He turned. "Your leg was jumping up and down."

"Oh. Sorry." He removed his hand. Mai could still feel the heat of his touch.

"If you're bored, Why don't you go take a nap?" Martin said from behind them. "Maybe you'll have another dream that could tell us more."

Mai sighed. "It's not that I'm bored. I just hate this waiting around. It's always been the hardest part for me. And I'm not tired, so I wouldn't be able to sleep." She looked up and turned around. "But I could make myself tired. Someone please take over for me here." She stood up and walked towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Naru said, sliding his chair over to take her place.

"I'm going to clean." She answered.

"Clean?"

She turned again to face him. "Yeah. Vacuum, do the laundry, prepare lunch. Anything that will make me physically exhausted." She tied her hair up with a haritie she found in her pocket. Then she walked out.

Oliver kept an eye on her through the cameras. She was actually doing what she had said. For the next two hours she went around the house like a white tornado, cleaning anything she found to have a speck of dust. She also gathered all of the dirty clothes she could find, both the Adleigh's and their own. Except of course Martin and Lin's. Lin was still sleeping and she didn't want to wake him. She made lunch for everybody and sat some aside for Lin in the fridge.

At 01:45 pm, Lin was up and was eating his food while watching Mai scrub every inch of surface in the kitchen. He had seen her moving around on the screens and asked what the hell she was doing. "She's making herself exhausted so she can take a nap." Yasuhara had explained. It had not escaped his notice that Noll was only staring at the screen that featured Mai, and not all of them.

So now he was sitting here eating his meal and watching Mai with a scrutinising stare. It only took him another few minutes to get up and go over to her. He put his hand on her arm that was holding the sponge to stop her. She didn't look up.

"That's enough Mai. You've been scrubbing the same spot for over a minute. It's clean."

She looked up at him. Her eyes were dull. "But Lin-san, I still have to.."

"No, you don't. You look dead on your feet. You're plenty exhausted now. Go take that nap and I'll wipe the counter for soap." He knew that she was tired, since she hadn't questioned the change in language.

Mai just nodded at the look on his face. She took off the rubber gloves she had been wearing and went out of the kitchen.

An hour and a half later she wobbled into the base rubbing her eyes.

"Hey, Mai-chan." Yasu greeted her. "Did you have a new dream?"

She blinked and looked at him with a confused expression. "Does having the same dream again count?"

"What? You've never had the same dream twice."

She shrugged and sat down on the sofa.

"Are you sure it was the exact same?" Oliver asked her.

"No. There were small differences, but.."

"Tell me."

She looked at him. "In the first dream my head was throbbing like I had hit it on something hard. But this time it wasn't. Instead my shoulder was hurting really bad. Like it had been dislocated. And there was a thought that came to me, or rather the person who's memory it was."

"What was the thought?"

"I need to find my way out before it comes back." She quoted. "But I have no idea what 'it' was."

"Otherwise it was the same?"

"Yes."

"Could it have been a different person?"

Her eyes widened in realisation. "Yes… I think it could have.."

"So we have at least two spirits here."

Mai stood up and walked to his side. "Maybe even more. We do have 7 victims."

"So now we just need to figure out how many we're dealing with and who they are."

"And how they ended up in that cave-like place and where it is."

"And why they were afraid of the water."

"We know that at least two of them were floating in the sea at some point. That leaves five bodies undiscovered. Could they have floated further out?"

"It's not impossible, but if the bodies ended up in the sea around this coast, then the possibility of them ending up further out is slim. The current would only carry them inwards towards Cardiff."

"So that means they are either still somewhere in the cave or at the bottom of the sea somewhere, given the bodies had decomposed before ending up in the water."

"Yes. That way they wouldn't have surfaced."

Martin watched this display with awe. Noll and Mai were finishing each other's sentences and building on them. They were in perfect sync with each other. He had never seen anyone other than Gene keep up with him at this pace. They were rapidly reciting the facts of the case and making educated conclusions. He had never seen anything so.. So… So amazing. If Mai Taniyama had not been sent from heaven to bless his son, then his name wasn't Martin Davis. He would have to call his wife later to tell her.

After the two youngest of the investigation had wrapped up their little brainstorming session, Mai went to make a batch of tea. This was another thing that Martin noticed. Noll was actually drinking tea again. Luella had told him that Mai made her own blend, and after tasting it himself he acknowledged that it was indeed very good. But Luella had said that it was Noll who told her that it was good, before she even had a sip. Clearly, their son cherished this small thing very much. So much so, apparently, that he had not been wanting any other kind for years.

It warmed Martin's heart to see his son like this. He had told Noll in the car that he thought him to be in love, and he had tried to deny it, but it was so obvious to see that it was a wonder the girl had not noticed. Perhaps Mai just wasn't interested. But that could not be. The way she interacted with Noll spoke clearly of some kind of affection of her own. Luella had told him to try and figure out why these two had separated six years ago, with no contact since. And it was becoming increasingly apparent that something dramatic must have happened to make them willing to lose all contact with the other for so long. Concluding that neither of them would ever tell him the truth, he decided to have his wife ask Mai when they got back. Women always had more trust in each other. Or maybe Madoka could do it. She knew Mai before, she could have some input. Or maybe Yasuhara would know something. He decided to ask the two researchers later on.

For the sake of his son, he would try not to meddle too much, but he knew that a bit of medling might be necessary.