Dark Side of the Moon
Part 2

Here's a bit more!

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Lina cracked a small smile. "It's not a spirit. It's a ghost."

"A ghost?" Amelia repeated. "But I thought ghosts couldn't move
things."

"How many ghosts have you known, Amelia?" The girl shrugged. "When
should Silphiel be here?"

"As soon as it's dark. I'll go tell the guys we're staying here
then." Amelia went down the stairs. After a few moments, Lina
followed her, but only as far as the odd room. She stepped in it and
shut the door. Almost immediately the handles over the larger basin
began to turn themselves and water came out of the faucet and began
to fill it.

"What? Do I stink or something?" There was a faint giggle. A cabinet
beneath the smaller basin opened, and a towel came floating out to
sit on the odd-shaped contraption beside the water-filled
vessel. "Well, I guess we're both girls here." She stripped quickly
and got in the water. "Gods, this is perfect," she whispered, sinking
down deeper.

"I'm glad you like it," an unfamiliar woman's voice answered, and
Lina bolted upright.

"Who's there?"

"You can hear me?" the voice shrieked. "You can really hear me?"

"Of course I can hear you. Why wouldn't I be able to hear you?"

"You'll talk to me?" She sounded sad now. "Everyone who has ever come
here has always ignored me." Hence the note, Lina thought. She must
not like to be ignored. Who could blame her, if she's been here since
before Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye went to war? "What's your name?"

"Lina Inverse. What about you?"

"Tsukino Usagi."

"Tsukino? What an odd name."

"Tsukino's my family name. Everyone called me Usagi or Usagi-chan.
I'm pleased to meet you - Do I call you Inverse or Lina?"

"Inverse is my family name." She paused, looked down, and
blushed. "Could we continue this conversation some time when I'm not
naked?"

"Gomen nasai, Lina. I'm used to not having a body now; I forgot about
that. I'll go."

"It's okay, I guess. Could you slide that towel a little closer over
here?"

Usagi laughed. "Sure." As if on its own, the soft piece of cloth
floated over to the edge of the -

"What do you call this thing anyway?" she asked, gesturing to the
basin in which she lay.

"A bath tub." She laughed. "One of the first groups of people to come
here were a bunch of scholars. One of them almost died of fright when
I cut the water on. I guess things like this aren't in the world
anymore."

"How long have you been here?"

She sighed. "It seems like forever. Since. . ."

The temperature in the room dropped radically. Lina shivered and
slipped as far down in the water as she could. "Usagi?"

"I can't stay here any longer," the ghost whispered. "He's coming,
and I'd hate for him to find out there are living people here. I'll
be seeing you, Lina."

"Who's coming?" She was met by dead silence. "Usagi?"

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"Don't you dare try to warn them away."

"Don't go near them."

"You've warned away every human that has come here in the past. I
want something to toy with again."

"Like you did that poor scholar? No way. I'm not going to let you.
Besides, it was so hard to make myself material enough to cut him
down."

The third entity nodded silently, and Usagi patted him softly as best
she could. He had hardly spoken a word when he was alive; he was too
silent now, even for a ghost. He and his group of fellow scholars had
thought they were prepared to enter this cursed house. She supposed
it was only sheer luck that only one of them had died here.

"I'm going to have some fun with our guests whether you like it or
not, Usagi. It's up to you, though, which ones I play with."

"I won't let you do this."

"They're just after the treasure anyway. Doesn't that make them
worthy of punishment?"

With that, the evil one faded away. She paced back and forth across
the bedroom floor, her transparent feet never really touching. "We
can't let him do this, you know," she said to her companion. He
nodded back at her. Even to her, a fellow ghost, he was barely
visible; he had exhausted a great deal of what little energy he had
trying to scare off Lina's friends downstairs. "We have to stop him.
It's obvious Lina and her friends won't leave, at least not tonight."
Her frown deepened, and her speed increased. "We'll just have to keep
an eye on them."

He looked up at her, apparently worried, and held up two fingers.

"What? Oh. Well, there are four of them, so maybe they'll break off
into two groups. That way, we'll be able to -"

She froze and ceased speaking as her latest lap brought her up to the
window. Her companion slid up closer to her and glanced over her
shoulder. He tapped her shoulder urgently and held up five fingers.

"I know, I know. Five of them, two of us. We have trouble."

************************

"Glad you finally decided to show up, Silphiel," Lina drily commented
as the young shrine maiden stepped inside the house. A long-forgotten
stick of metal tossed itself at her idly before Gourry batted it away.

"Lina-san," the dark-haired woman stated warmly, "it's so good to see
you again."

She nodded. "Well, I'm going on to bed, you guys. I'll see you in the
morning."

Amelia waited until the redheaded sorceress was out of the room and
most of the way up the stairs before she turned to the others and
asked, "Does it seem like Lina-san's acting strange to anyone but me?"


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Lina sighed and stretched and collapsed on the bed - then coughed at
the wave of dust that action had produced. From across the room, she
heard a faint giggle. "Usagi? Is that you?"

"Hai, Lina, it's me." She paused, whispering as though she were
conversing with someone else. "It's us."

"Us?" There was more than one spirit here?

"Well, yeah. I don't know my friend's name, but he was a scholar in
life."

"So there are two ghosts in this house?"

"I . . . guess you could say that." Usagi sounded evasive.

"Explain, Usagi."

The ghost chuckled. "There are two ghosts here: myself and my friend
here. He was the one who was throwing things at your friends, you
see. Then there's the spirit of the house."

"So there is a spirit here?"

Usagi sighed. "Yes, a very evil one. He drove my friend here to kill
himself. I don't even remember a time when he wasn't here to torment
me. He's tried his utmost to kill everyone who has ever entered this
house, and since this time of the year is peak for him and me, he
usually succeeds in driving them mad." She paused for no reason Lina
could detect. "Okay, you go do that. I'll be here."

Lina faintly saw a breeze moving the hair ribbons that hung from the
guardrails to the steps. "Where's he going?"

"To keep an eye on your friends." Alarm shot through Lina, and she
bolted upright. "Don't worry. He won't hurt them or anything. He only
threw things at them to try to scare them away, but since that didn't
work, he'll protect them now. He's freer to move about the house than
I am anyway."

"How so?"

"Well, our tormenter has made a game of this. I'm safe from him, so
long as I stay on the top two levels of the house."

"But, Usagi, you're a ghost. He can't hurt you."

"That's not entirely true. A human can't hurt a ghost, true enough,
but ghosts and spirits are made out of the same material and we're
real enough to each other, unless we use up a lot of our energy. I've
been at his mercies before. I have no wish to be there again. You're
the only one on the upper levels, so I'll stay with you. Besides,"
she could almost sense the ghost winking at her, "you'll talk to me."

That was a cue if she'd ever heard one. "So what do you want to talk
about?"

"I . . . want to know what the world is like outside the house. I
barely remember what my own world was like; I want to know all about
this new one."

And she'd been hoping to find out about the World Before too. Damn,
Lina sourly thought to herself. With an internal shrug, she started
talking. She never even noticed herself getting sleepy until she
heard faint shifting sounds. "What are you doing, Usagi?" she asked.

"I thought you might like a nightgown, unless you want to sleep in
your clothes."

She glanced down at herself. "I never even thought about that."

"Well, for one who has weathered the things you have, sleeping in
your clothes is probably a very trivial thing." A pair of blue
pyjamas floated up out of a drawer and over to the bed.

"You know, Usagi, that's really kind of unnerving. Is there any way
you can make yourself, you know, visible?"

"I would, Lina, but it takes a lot of effort just grasping things.
Ghosts are not made for moving things about, you know. It takes a lot
of energy, and we ghosts have only so much to spare."

"Then why do you keep using yours to help me out?"

"From what I can remember, I've always been this way. I like to help
people, especially friends. And since you're the first person in over
a thousand years who has wanted to talk to me, I think you're a
friend, don't you?" She didn't even give Lina a chance to answer
before she continued. "Okay. Stand up, Lina. Pyjamas, bed. You look
exhausted. It must have been quite a long journey here from wherever
you came from."

"You always seem to be trying to get my clothes off me," she idly
complained. Usagi burst out laughing. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing, nothing, just the idea of me trying to get someone's
clothes off them. I don't even remember how clothes work or what the
real purpose of them was."

As soon as Lina set her cape on the bed, it was picked up and swished
around an invisible body. As it settled down, a faint outline of a
human-like form took shape. Damn, Lina thought again, even dead women
have better bodies than me. "I don't think it's your colour, Usagi."

"You think?" As if on its own the cape twisted back and forth before
the larger mirror that stood on its own beside the bed. "Yeah, you
may be right, Lina. But it would be nice to be able to feel cloth
again." She sighed, taking the cape off and folding it neatly,
placing it on the desk seat, as she continued to do for every item
Lina took off. "You know, Lina, sometimes I almost think I remember
how things smelled, how food tasted, but then it fades, and all I can
remember is this dark death." Abruptly she changed the subject. "You
and your friends should leave here tomorrow, Lina. It won't be safe
after then."

She pulled on the pyjamas and slipped into the bed. "Why not?"

"He'll be stronger tomorrow, strong enough to physically hurt
someone. He gets stronger every year at this time. Sometimes I worry
that he's going to become strong enough to break through the barrier."

"Barrier? What barrier?"

"Between death and life, of course. He wants to be alive again." She
chuckled mirthlessly. "All ghosts do."

"I can imagine. Why would he be stronger?"

"Because the day after tomorrow marks the day he and I began our
struggle. Both of our powers will be at their peak for the next three
days after then."

"Why, Usagi?"

"Because the day after tomorrow will mark the anniversary of him
putting a knife through my chest. My father retaliated and almost
killed him though. We both lingered on the edge of death for three
days. After the first night, strange earthquakes started, and I
vaguely remember hearing people talking about great beasts fighting
in the skies far away. And on the third day, I woke up and dragged
myself all the way to the door of this house, with that bastard right
on my heels, when a weird blast of radiant light cut through us." She
chuckled again. "And we both died. If we'd gotten to the house, we
would have been safe, I think."

Great beasts fighting in the skies . . . That would have to be
Ceiphied and Ruby-Eye. Gods . . . Then that means she died right as
their battle finished. "Usagi. . ."

"But I think you need sleep more than you need to hear my tale of
woe, so good night, Lina."

The minute Usagi extinguished the light, she could feel her eyes
drooping shut. Within moments, she was asleep.

The ghost of a long-dead young woman stared down at the person in her
bed, wishing she could hate her for being there, for invading her
house, her routine, for being here at a time when he was at his
worst, when she'd have to keep her in her sight. But she couldn't.
She smiled to herself. Yes. This she remembered. This was what it was
like to have a friend. She balanced her less-than-material body just
right and lay down beside Lina on the bed. And, because ghosts had no
need for sleep, she watched her all night.