Yu-Gi-Oh!
Legend of
Shades of Death Road
Dear Diary,
I started my first day at my new school today. It was a bit... interesting, to say the least. People kept giving me strange looks, like they knew I didn't belong. That was rather unsettling. Role call in my classes was even worse. Once everyone found out my name was Jennifer, the strange looks turned into something like pity. I finally said something to the one kid - Dan, I think he said his name was - and he told me what was up.
Apparently there's this road nearby called "Shades of Death Road", and it's supposedly haunted. He told me that a lot of strange things go on there, and no one really knows how it started. He just knew of a girl - who had been a new girl in her school in Hackettstown - named Jennifer, who had committed suicide near the road back in the late 1800's. The place where she died became known as Jenny Jump State Park... not a very comforting thought to say the least.
That's not the only thing about the road either. I looked it up during break. Apparently there's something about a girl in a prom dress, and lights dancing above the surface of Ghost Lake, and another thing about a shack where the only working thing left in it is an organ built into the wall...
Jennifer
Diary Entry #999
April 26, 1998
~.oOOo.~
Yugi Mutou drummed his fingers on the passenger door armrest in a show of impatience. He watched as outside the cars zipped past theirs, already knowing where they were going and intent on getting there despite the late hour. Cocking his head to the side, he regarded the man sitting in the driver's seat next to him, who was too busy looking about for road signs to really notice he was looking at him. They were on Route 611 in Hope, New Jersey, heading south toward Hackettstown and... that was all they knew about where they were.
"Admit it," Yugi said. "We're lost."
Yami Yugi repressed the urge to growl. "Aibou, we are not lost," he insisted. "Lost would mean that we have no idea where our surroundings lead and where exactly we're going. I THINK I know where we're going, and that's all that matters. Besides, once we manage to find Route Eighty, I'll be able to easily find our way to Rockaway, and then we'll be at Anzu's house in time to yell at her for moving to such an obscure part of this country."
Yugi rolled his eyes and sighed, before pointing out the window excitedly. "Look, mou hitori no boku! There's a gas station. Why don't you stop and ask for directions?"
The spirit of the pharaoh regarded the "gas station" they were pulling up on critically. It was nothing more than a few pumps and an office in the middle of nowhere, much like everything else they had passed by that Halloween night. Why Anzu had moved to such a... primitive area was beyond him, but he was not about to argue with his aibou. He pulled into the gas station slowly, coming to a gradual halt as a gangly old man with a weeks worth of beard and scraggily cloths came up to them from the office.
"Excuse me, we're trying to get to Route Eighty," Yami Yugi said to the man after lowering his window. "Do you know the quickest way there?"
The man scratched his beard in thought. "Route Eighty, hunh?" he said in a cracked old voice. "Well, I reckon it's pretty easy to get to. Just depends on how brave 'ya are."
Yami Yugi raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
The man moved aside slightly, pointing to a derelict old road directly across from the station. "That there is Shades o' Death Road. It's a drive, but it leads right into Route Eighty, only..." He trailed off, looking down at the two of them with a slight smirk. "The road is haunted. BADLY haunted."
Yami Yugi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The man was telling this to a five thousand year old spirit brought to flesh through the efforts of the young man sitting next to him.
"Thanks," he said, putting the car into gear before angling it toward the road.
"Don't say I didn't warn 'ya!" he heard the man call after them, before he managed to roll his window up again. Yugi looked back at the gas station nervously as they started down the road.
"Mou hitori no boku... are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked, anxiously.
Yami Yugi tossed his lighter half one of his confident smirks. "Don't worry, aibou. Even if this road is haunted, I won't let anything harm you."
Yugi smiled, comforted, before snuggling close to his darker half. Yami Yugi put an arm around him, driving with one hand on the steering wheel as they made their way down the road, the high beams illuminating the distance a head of them. Hour long minutes passed that way, and the Egyptian spirit was about to suggest they put on the radio, when he saw an odd sight on the road ahead. Standing to the side, her dress sparkling in the light of his high beams, was a young woman in a prom dress. He brought the car to a slow halt before the girl as she came to the side, and Yami Yugi rolled down his window for her.
"Hello there," he said warmly. "What are you doing out here?"
She looked down into the car with wide, sad eyes. "Could you give me a ride home?"
Yami Yugi frowned, looking down at the clock. It was already midnight - had they really be driving for that long? - and they were supposed to be at Anzu's house hours ago.
"Sorry, we really don't have the time," he told her. He turned away from her slightly, pointing down the way they came. "If you want, there's a gas station at the end -"
He stopped as he turned back to the girl. Somehow, in the brief moment he had turned away from her, she had gone. Blinking a couple times, he looked back down to Yugi, who was halfway to sleeping.
"Did you see where she went?"
Yugi raised his head blearily. "Where who went?"
Yami Yugi just shook his head, heading down the road again, going a little faster this time. Maybe he was just seeing things, but there was still that little nagging voice in the back of his head, telling him that stranger things have happened...
"Mou hitori no boku! Look out!"
Yami Yugi hit the breaks at his aibou's shout, just barely avoiding hitting a dear head on. His sudden braking made the car fishtail violently however, and before either of them knew it, the car was spinning out of control down the road. Yugi was keeping a death grip on the arm rests, fighting the urge to scream and distract his darker half, who was busy fighting to regain control of the car. Suddenly, there was a thud, and the two of them would have gone flying through the windshield if they had not been buckled in as the car came to a sudden and violent stop. They did hit their heads on whatever was in front of them, however (the steering wheel and dash respectively), and before they blacked out, the sound of a young girl laughing joyfully reached their ears...
~.oOOo.~
Kristen groaned as she looked at the stack of boxes in front of her. Tilting her head slightly, she glared at the man behind said offensive boxes, wishing she could punch the pudgy Irish man and not have to worry about loosing her job. It was near closing time at the Phillipsburg Game Stop, and her ever so slightly annoying manager had decided to tell her - TELL her, not ASK her - to perform a task she deemed impossible.
"Tell me again why I'M the one that has to take these to Pedro's store in CHESTER?" she asked.
Eric just raised an annoyed eyebrow, before forking a thumb toward the back room of the store. "Because she can't drive and Pedro needs these games by tomorrow."
"But..." Kristen protested, trying to think of a good excuse. "I'm lucky I can find my way HOME at night! How am I supposed to go from Phillipsburg to Chester and NOT get lost?"
As if in answer, a be-speckled pair of wide eyes and the face they were attached to poked out from the door hidden in the wall that lead to the back room.
"I SORTA know a round about way to get there," Jennifer said, wiping her hands off on an already dirty paper towel. "Dad and I went up there once, remember? To pick up that old school Zelda DVD? 'Sides, you're sleeping over tonight anyway. May as well make the most of it."
Eric gave Jen one of his "looks". "Did you finish cleaning the bathroom?"
Jen put her hands on her hips and squared her shoulders, the action making it look like she filled in the whole doorway.
"EXCUSE me, Eric," she snarled, giving him a glare that would have fried a hole in his head if looks were lasers. "I told you from the get go two things that I absolutely refuse to do: steal, and clean the bathroom. I'll put up with your hopeless attempts at singing and dancing, I'll fix the shelves, the computers, the islands, the drawers, the cabinets, and I'll deal with the hicks, snobs, hillbillies, and yuppies that we get in here. But if you expect me to clean something that had YOUR ASS ON IT, you SO have another thing coming."
All throughout the exchange, Kristen had a hand clamped over her mouth, leaning over slightly so her blonde hair would cover up the fact that she was fighting back a laugh. Jen was the only person she knew who would willingly tell off her boss without worrying about getting fired. Of course, Eric would not fire her just because she mouthed off to him; he had enough common sense to know the store would never be properly cleaned again if she left.
Eric sighed, before waving the two girls off. Kristen grabbed the boxes of games and Jen grabbed her coat and the half of her room that she always toted around with her, before the two of them left the mall and went out over to Kristen's beat up car.
"So, how do we get to Chester from here?" she asked.
A thoughtful look crossed Jen's face. "Well... once we get near Hackettstown, I think I'll be able to point you in the right direction. It's over a mountain and everything, so I hope you've got plenty of gas."
She checked her watch, seeing that it was already ten 'o clock. Her dad expected them to be home soon. Oh, well; he was just going to have to wait.
~.oOOo.~
The world was spinning around them, but at least Yami Yugi and his little aibou were still in one piece. Somehow, the two of them had managed to squeeze out of the car to assess the damage. Sadly, there was no saving the vehicle; the thing was completely totaled, the back end almost completely wrapped around the tree they had collided with. It was a miracle the gas tank had not exploded. Yugi had clung to his darker half tightly at the sight of the car, trembling slightly.
"Can this night get any worse?" he had asked.
Of course it did. Not two seconds after the words had left the little one's mouth, the sky was illuminated with a flash of lightning. Not ten seconds after that, the heavens opened up with a vengeance. Not a second after that, they were soaked to the bone and shivering in the cool night air. They ran down the road as fast as they could, the pharaoh nearly carrying his little hikari as they did so. The two of them were about to pass a large lake, when Yugi pointed out a small shack nearly hidden in the forest. Seeing no better option, they both bolted for the small house.
Yami Yugi looked around the derelict old shack, trying to find a fireplace where they could warm themselves. He finally spotted one, but it looked like there had not been a fire in it for years.
"Aibou," he said, looking around for something he could use to start a fire while motioning to a nearby flight of stairs, "why don't you see if there's anything upstairs that we could burn."
Yugi nodded, before heading up the rickety old stairs. He only ran into a problem once, as his foot encountered a loose step board, but other than that, he made it up to see the ruins of the top floor. There was not much there, just a few old bed sheets and a rotting mattress, but it would have to do. He grabbed the sheets and was about to head back down stairs when he caught sight of a nearby balcony.
The young man approached the balcony with slight trepidation, looking out into the rain-filled night. The sight that greeted him was breathtaking despite the lousy weather. The balcony looked out directly over the lake they had passed, which was rippling from the water falling on it. He smiled; this was probably a beautiful place to live at one point in time.
Yugi was about to go back downstairs again when he caught sight of something odd at the lake. There was a bright light, shining in the very center. It was moving about strangely, and as he squinted, he was able to see why.
The light was really a woman, dancing in the center of the water.
"M-M-M-M-M-M-MOU HITORI NO BOKU!!!"
The sound of Yami Yugi pounding up the stairs followed immediately, only interrupted by a yelp as his darker half encountered the loose step board. The pharaoh was at his side in the next instant, and Yugi wasted no time burying his face in his chest.
"Aibou, what is it?" Yami Yugi asked. "What's got you so worked up?"
Yugi pointed to the balcony behind him, not removing his face from his chest. "Th-th-th-there. O-o-on the l-l-lake."
Yami Yugi blinked and looked... before frowning down at his hikari.
"Aibou, there's nothing there..."
Surprised, Yugi finally looked up, turning back to the balcony. Indeed, the lake had returned to its previous state, with only the rain affecting its surface.
"B...but, I know... I saw..." Yugi trailed off, at a total loss.
"Aibou, I think that old man got you too worked up," Yami Yugi stated. "Why don't we -"
The pharaoh cut himself off as a brightly light suddenly flared up before them. Squinting, the two looked out at the lake again, only this time instead of one dancing light, there were dozens. These lights were much less defined than the woman was, but it was clear the two were of the same origin.
"A...a...aibou..." Yami Yugi stammered slightly. "Let's just g-go back down stairs."
Yugi was way ahead of him.
~.oOOo.~
As they stopped at the first red light they had encountered since leaving Phillipsburg, Kristen took the time to pound her head against the steering wheel. Why she had let herself be conned into doing this, she had no idea. Maybe it was because she dyed her hair blond; the chemicals affected her brain more than she thought. She glanced over at Jen in the passenger's seat, who gave her a sheepish look.
"If I could find something familiar, I'd be able to tell where we are," she said.
"Where have I heard that before?" Kristen asked, trying to shy away as Jen took off her Yankees cap and whacked her with it. "Hey, no hitting the driver!"
Jen rolled her eyes before checking her watch again. Eleven thirty; they had been driving around for over an hour and a half. Her father was going to KILL her...
~.oOOo.~
Yugi snuggled up against his darker self, trying to keep warm, but the fact that he was soaked was doing little to assist in that task. They could not get the fire to light; no matter how hard they tried, the fire died... went out before either of them could really get it going. So, they were stuck trying to rely on their own body heat to keep warm, while outside the whatever-it-was that was on the lake was giving them quite the lightshow.
"Hey, aibou, what's that?" Yami Yugi asked suddenly, nodding toward something on the other side of the room. Yugi looked up to see what looked like a keyboard built into the wall on the opposite side of the room. Various pipes extended up from it, and he could make out a few foot pedals underneath, most of which had broken off ages ago.
"Looks like an organ," Yugi mused, standing up and walking over to it.
"You mean like the ones cheesy evil villains play?" Yami Yugi asked, right behind him. "Shame it's attached to the wall. Otherwise, I'd take it and give it to the tomb robber."
Yugi let out a snort as he fought to cover a laugh. "I'll tell him you said that..." he muttered as his other half went up to the keyboard. The spirit played a few notes, before falling into a haunting Egyptian melody. Yugi listened, enraptured, forgetting he was still wet and cold as he watched his other's movements. Delicate fingers flew over the keys, caressing the music out with the softest of touches. He closed his eyes, a lazy smile growing on his face at the thought... before his eyes snapped open again, catching the casual smirk on the pharaoh's face.
"You're doing this on purpose!" he accused. Yami Yugi chuckled, finishing up his song before grabbing up his aibou with a swift motion. Yugi's yelp at the action quickly turned into a moan as his other self started sucking on his sensitive earlobe.
"I just thought of a wonderful way to get warm..." the pharaoh murmured, getting another moan out of his little aibou as he started trailing kisses down his neck.
"R-Ra damn you and your insatiable libi-"
Yugi suddenly cut himself off, quickly and drastically turned off. Yami Yugi backed off with concern, seeing that the young man was looking over his shoulder, his eyes wide in shock. The pharaoh looked, and the same look managed to grace his face.
There was a man sitting in a chair near the organ. He was not old, nor was he young, and wore a very old - possibly 1920s - style of suit. He looked as if he had been listening to the song Yami Yugi had been playing before he practically glomped his hikari, and was now watching the two of them in a sort of amused curiosity.
A disappearing prom girl they could take. A girl dancing on the surface of the lake was creepy. Lights floating around the surface of the water were stretching it. A guy in an old style of dress suddenly appearing out of no where and then watching them just as they were about to make love...
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Yugi and Yami Yugi bolted out of the house quicker than a person could say, "Duel Monsters". Thankfully, the rain had stopped - as well as the lights on the water - and once they were far enough away from the lake and the shack that they could not see either anymore, they slowed and stopped, fighting to regain their breath. Yugi fixed his darker self with an annoyed look.
"Next time an old man tells you a road is haunted," he said, "BELIEVE HIM!"
Yami Yugi nodded in agreement, not about to argue with that. Once their hearts had stopped pounding in their chest, they started back down the road, passing their wrecked car again as they headed back for the gas station on Route 611. Yugi clung onto his other half for dear life, afraid of what else they would encounter on the dreaded road. The pharaoh wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulders, whispering soothing words to him, though he himself was nervously looking about.
It was not until the end of the road was in sight far ahead of them did they get the feeling they were being watched. The two of them glanced over their shoulders... and stopped dead in their tracks. Behind them, hovering almost playfully was a softly glowing sphere of light.
"Wh...wh...what's that...?" Yugi whimpered, clutching to his other self tighter.
"I have a feeling I don't wanna -"
Yami Yugi cut himself off as the light suddenly started swinging back and forth violently, red seeping into the soft glow until it was glaring the color of blood.
"Mou hitori no boku..."
The light zoomed toward them angrily.
"Aibou, RUN!"
~.oOOo.~
Kristen was nodding her head in the need for sleep, forgetting - and not caring enough - to switch her high beams off as a car came in the opposite direction. She did care though when the other driver flashed their high beams at her as they passed, startling her. Jen frowned, shaking her shoulder slightly.
"Hey, toughen up, it's only midnight," she said playfully.
"Yeah, and I've been working all night," Kristen grumbled. "Unlike you, I can come in before five during the week."
"Touché," Jen replied with a chuckle, before nodding down to the radio. "Does the CD player work? I'll pop in my Limp Bizcut CD."
Kristen nodded. Jen looked outside briefly before going for her book bag in the back seat... and did a quick double take. Was that really...?
"Stop the car!"
Surprised, Kristen slammed on the breaks, almost making Jen crack her skull open on the dashboard in front of her. Unhindered, she leapt out of the car as soon as it stopped, looking up at a taller than normal street sign as the blonde girl started swearing under her breath. The brunette outside suddenly let out a whoop of triumph, jumping up and down excitedly.
"Damn!" Jen exclaimed. "I never thought I'd be happy to see this road!"
"Do you know where we are?" Kristen asked, joining her outside. Jen pointed up to the street sign.
"Shades of Death Road."
"Shades of WHAT?!"
Jen rolled her eyes. "Your brother's a 'Friday the Thirteenth' fan, and you don't know about this place?" she asked dryly. "Anyway, we passed Hackettstown entirely, we'll have to -"
The shorter girl cut herself off as she caught the sound of heavy breathing coming from down the road. After a moment, two young men with strangely spiked hair came running over the first hill leading into the haunted road. The almost twins saw the two girls, and stopped hesitantly.
"Please say you're not ghosts," Yami Yugi said.
Jen put her hands on her hips, a sour look on her face. "Hardly," she replied dryly. "Are you two crazy? What were you doing on Shades of Death Road, at night, ON HALLOWEEN!?"
Yugi fixed his other half with a sour look as they walked up to the girls. "We were taking a shortcut to Route Eighty," he replied. "We were lost."
The brunette just shook her head. "Kid, the only people stupid enough to take THAT road as a shortcut to Eighty are tourists and my friend Chester, and that's only because the ghost don't seem to bother emphatics."
Yami Yugi sighed. "I wish I'd known that," he muttered. "I'm never coming near this place again."
"Good advice."
The pharaoh sighed again, wiping the sweat off of his brow. "Anyway, what time is it?"
Jen checked her watch. "A few minutes before midnight."
The two of them stared. Whatever answer they were expecting, it was not that.
"M-midnight?" Yami Yugi stammered. "Are you sure?"
"Yup," she replied. "My watch is set to the clock at our workplace, and it's been two hours since we were last there."
The pharaoh gulped slightly. It had to have been at least two hours since they had encountered the girl in the prom dress. The clock had said that it was twelve THEN, though, and he knew the time was right; daylight savings time had ended recently, and he made sure the clock was set properly.
"What made you decide to take that road to get to Route Eighty anyway?" Kristen asked, speaking up from where she was hanging over the hood of her car.
"An old man at the gas station directed us toward there," Yugi answered.
The girls frowned. "What gas station?" Jen asked.
Yami Yugi pointed. "That gas... sta...tion..."
The pharaoh stared, eyes wide in surprise. There was a gas station there all right... only it looked like it had not been used in at least fifty years. Him and his hikari exchanged bewildered and horrified looks, before coming to the same conclusion.
"Can we get a ride?" they asked at the same time.
~.oOOo.~
Jen yawned, stretching as they pulled into a parking spot in the Chester Mall parking lot. She turned to the two boys holding onto each other in the back seat, a slight smile on her face, as Kristen pulled the lever that would pop the trunk.
"We'll be right back guys," the brunette assured them, grabbing the paperwork for the drop-off. "We'll be right back, and then you can show us where your house is."
Yugi and Yami Yugi nodded, weary from the events of the night. Kristen and Jen swung out of the beat up car, leaving the interior light on for the boys, grabbing the boxes of video games from the trunk as someone came out of the Game Stop store in front of them.
"It's about TIME you got here!" Pedro's soft voice called out to them as they approached. "What took you so long?"
"Oh, you know us, Pedro," Jen replied, her typical smirk growing on her face. "We need a map to find our way out of bed in the morning."
Kristen gave her a sour look. "You need a map to find your way out of the X-box section."
Jen just grinned, showing off her teeth. "You need a map to find your way out of the Gameboy Advance section."
Considering that the X-box section at the Phillipsburg store was four walls long, while the Gameboy Advance section was only a small island on the left side of the store, it was easy to see who won that argument. Kristen pouted as she handed off the boxes. Pedro chuckled.
"So, how lost did you two get?" he asked.
"We ended up near Shades of Death Road, which turned out to be a good thing," Jen answered casually, handing him the paperwork to sign, indicating he had received the transfer. Pedro's eyebrows shot up into his hairline, surprised.
"How can being anywhere NEAR that road be a good thing?" he asked, bewildered.
Kristen forked her thumb back to her car. "We picked up a couple of boys running down the road. They told us they were taking a short cut to Route Eighty when their car crashed."
"Poor guys had quite a fright," Jen finished.
Pedro, however, was looking at the car, frowning in concern. "What boys?"
Kristen and Jen turned back to the car. The interior light was still on, but there was not a trace of the two boys. The girls blinked, caught off guard; the boys could not have been ghosts! Jen had touched the little one; she had given him a hand into the car. There was no way...!
"M...maybe they saw someone they knew and left..." Kristen suggested, a little freaked out.
Jen looked around at the parking lot, which was empty except for theirs and Pedro's cars. Out of habit, she glanced down at her watch; one thirty in the morning.
"God, I hope you're right..."
~.oOOo.~
Jen woke up just in time for lunch later on in the morning. She yawned heavily, covering her mouth with one hand and stretching with the other as she made her way to the parlor. Kristen was already there, dressed in a warm pair of pants and a shirt, sprawled out in the couch with the remote for the television in hand. "Spongebob Squarepants" was playing on the screen.
"How can you watch that crap?" she asked the blonde, plopping down on the couch next to her feet.
"Spongebob is cool, man! Don't diss it!" Kristen protested, before yelping as Jen snatched the remote away. "Hey, c'mon!"
"Hush, I want to catch the news real quick," the brunette replied, waving her off before switching to News Channel 4. Kristen pouted, a look that Jen probably would have laughed at if she were a little more awake.
"That was my show."
"My remote."
"My Spongebob!"
"My TV."
"Two boys in New Jersey are recovering in Hackettstown hospital this afternoon after spending the night on the most haunted road in the state."
That announcement from the news anchor brought the playful argument to a dead halt. The two girls stared at the screen as it switched to footage of Shades of Death Road, seemingly harmless in the warm light of the afternoon sun.
"You wouldn't believe it, but this is one of the most haunted roads in the state of New Jersey," the voice of WNBC4's New Jersey reporter announced, her voice dubbed over the scenes of the road. "This innocent stretch of land has claimed many lives over hundreds of years, and almost claimed two more last night."
The scene switched to the Jersey reporter, standing near Ghost Lake, which was glimmering slightly in the sunlight.
"At about one thirty last night, emergency services in Hackettstown received a nine-one-one call from a cell phone," she announced. "The two boys, Yugi and Panseru Mutou had swerved to avoid a deer, lost control of the car, and impacted against a tree. The car had compacted drastically from the crash, trapping the boys inside."
Both Jen and Kristen managed to have the same wide-eyed expressions of utter shock on their faces as the screen switched to a divided image of two, almost identical tri-color spiky haired boys. Both had odd purple colored eyes, though while one was wide-eyed with adorable innocence, the other boy's were narrowed with experience.
"Are... are those...?" Kristen stammered, as the screen switched back to Ghost Lake.
The reporter continued before Jen could get out an answer: "Now, the younger of the two boys is still unconscious in Hackettstown Community Hospital. However, the older boy is awake and talking. He reportedly told police surveying the accident that he knew the two of them had left the car when it started to rain, and took shelter in a shack next to Ghost Lake behind me. He says he doesn't remember much after that. Rescue crews, however, say something different; they say the only way the boys would have gotten out of the car without hurting themselves any worse than they already were... they would have had to have an out-of-body experience. Not only that, but the only shack that is anywhere near Ghost Lake, and as you can see, there's not much left to that."
The camera zoomed in on the land near Ghost Lake, where the two girls could make out the faint outline of a house's rock foundation, and very little else. Jen and Kristen exchanged bewildered looks as the news broadcast went on. After a long moment of silence, the two of them came to a mutual conclusion.
"I am NEVER going near that road again."
Legend of
Shades of Death Road
Dear Diary,
I started my first day at my new school today. It was a bit... interesting, to say the least. People kept giving me strange looks, like they knew I didn't belong. That was rather unsettling. Role call in my classes was even worse. Once everyone found out my name was Jennifer, the strange looks turned into something like pity. I finally said something to the one kid - Dan, I think he said his name was - and he told me what was up.
Apparently there's this road nearby called "Shades of Death Road", and it's supposedly haunted. He told me that a lot of strange things go on there, and no one really knows how it started. He just knew of a girl - who had been a new girl in her school in Hackettstown - named Jennifer, who had committed suicide near the road back in the late 1800's. The place where she died became known as Jenny Jump State Park... not a very comforting thought to say the least.
That's not the only thing about the road either. I looked it up during break. Apparently there's something about a girl in a prom dress, and lights dancing above the surface of Ghost Lake, and another thing about a shack where the only working thing left in it is an organ built into the wall...
Jennifer
Diary Entry #999
April 26, 1998
~.oOOo.~
Yugi Mutou drummed his fingers on the passenger door armrest in a show of impatience. He watched as outside the cars zipped past theirs, already knowing where they were going and intent on getting there despite the late hour. Cocking his head to the side, he regarded the man sitting in the driver's seat next to him, who was too busy looking about for road signs to really notice he was looking at him. They were on Route 611 in Hope, New Jersey, heading south toward Hackettstown and... that was all they knew about where they were.
"Admit it," Yugi said. "We're lost."
Yami Yugi repressed the urge to growl. "Aibou, we are not lost," he insisted. "Lost would mean that we have no idea where our surroundings lead and where exactly we're going. I THINK I know where we're going, and that's all that matters. Besides, once we manage to find Route Eighty, I'll be able to easily find our way to Rockaway, and then we'll be at Anzu's house in time to yell at her for moving to such an obscure part of this country."
Yugi rolled his eyes and sighed, before pointing out the window excitedly. "Look, mou hitori no boku! There's a gas station. Why don't you stop and ask for directions?"
The spirit of the pharaoh regarded the "gas station" they were pulling up on critically. It was nothing more than a few pumps and an office in the middle of nowhere, much like everything else they had passed by that Halloween night. Why Anzu had moved to such a... primitive area was beyond him, but he was not about to argue with his aibou. He pulled into the gas station slowly, coming to a gradual halt as a gangly old man with a weeks worth of beard and scraggily cloths came up to them from the office.
"Excuse me, we're trying to get to Route Eighty," Yami Yugi said to the man after lowering his window. "Do you know the quickest way there?"
The man scratched his beard in thought. "Route Eighty, hunh?" he said in a cracked old voice. "Well, I reckon it's pretty easy to get to. Just depends on how brave 'ya are."
Yami Yugi raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
The man moved aside slightly, pointing to a derelict old road directly across from the station. "That there is Shades o' Death Road. It's a drive, but it leads right into Route Eighty, only..." He trailed off, looking down at the two of them with a slight smirk. "The road is haunted. BADLY haunted."
Yami Yugi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The man was telling this to a five thousand year old spirit brought to flesh through the efforts of the young man sitting next to him.
"Thanks," he said, putting the car into gear before angling it toward the road.
"Don't say I didn't warn 'ya!" he heard the man call after them, before he managed to roll his window up again. Yugi looked back at the gas station nervously as they started down the road.
"Mou hitori no boku... are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked, anxiously.
Yami Yugi tossed his lighter half one of his confident smirks. "Don't worry, aibou. Even if this road is haunted, I won't let anything harm you."
Yugi smiled, comforted, before snuggling close to his darker half. Yami Yugi put an arm around him, driving with one hand on the steering wheel as they made their way down the road, the high beams illuminating the distance a head of them. Hour long minutes passed that way, and the Egyptian spirit was about to suggest they put on the radio, when he saw an odd sight on the road ahead. Standing to the side, her dress sparkling in the light of his high beams, was a young woman in a prom dress. He brought the car to a slow halt before the girl as she came to the side, and Yami Yugi rolled down his window for her.
"Hello there," he said warmly. "What are you doing out here?"
She looked down into the car with wide, sad eyes. "Could you give me a ride home?"
Yami Yugi frowned, looking down at the clock. It was already midnight - had they really be driving for that long? - and they were supposed to be at Anzu's house hours ago.
"Sorry, we really don't have the time," he told her. He turned away from her slightly, pointing down the way they came. "If you want, there's a gas station at the end -"
He stopped as he turned back to the girl. Somehow, in the brief moment he had turned away from her, she had gone. Blinking a couple times, he looked back down to Yugi, who was halfway to sleeping.
"Did you see where she went?"
Yugi raised his head blearily. "Where who went?"
Yami Yugi just shook his head, heading down the road again, going a little faster this time. Maybe he was just seeing things, but there was still that little nagging voice in the back of his head, telling him that stranger things have happened...
"Mou hitori no boku! Look out!"
Yami Yugi hit the breaks at his aibou's shout, just barely avoiding hitting a dear head on. His sudden braking made the car fishtail violently however, and before either of them knew it, the car was spinning out of control down the road. Yugi was keeping a death grip on the arm rests, fighting the urge to scream and distract his darker half, who was busy fighting to regain control of the car. Suddenly, there was a thud, and the two of them would have gone flying through the windshield if they had not been buckled in as the car came to a sudden and violent stop. They did hit their heads on whatever was in front of them, however (the steering wheel and dash respectively), and before they blacked out, the sound of a young girl laughing joyfully reached their ears...
~.oOOo.~
Kristen groaned as she looked at the stack of boxes in front of her. Tilting her head slightly, she glared at the man behind said offensive boxes, wishing she could punch the pudgy Irish man and not have to worry about loosing her job. It was near closing time at the Phillipsburg Game Stop, and her ever so slightly annoying manager had decided to tell her - TELL her, not ASK her - to perform a task she deemed impossible.
"Tell me again why I'M the one that has to take these to Pedro's store in CHESTER?" she asked.
Eric just raised an annoyed eyebrow, before forking a thumb toward the back room of the store. "Because she can't drive and Pedro needs these games by tomorrow."
"But..." Kristen protested, trying to think of a good excuse. "I'm lucky I can find my way HOME at night! How am I supposed to go from Phillipsburg to Chester and NOT get lost?"
As if in answer, a be-speckled pair of wide eyes and the face they were attached to poked out from the door hidden in the wall that lead to the back room.
"I SORTA know a round about way to get there," Jennifer said, wiping her hands off on an already dirty paper towel. "Dad and I went up there once, remember? To pick up that old school Zelda DVD? 'Sides, you're sleeping over tonight anyway. May as well make the most of it."
Eric gave Jen one of his "looks". "Did you finish cleaning the bathroom?"
Jen put her hands on her hips and squared her shoulders, the action making it look like she filled in the whole doorway.
"EXCUSE me, Eric," she snarled, giving him a glare that would have fried a hole in his head if looks were lasers. "I told you from the get go two things that I absolutely refuse to do: steal, and clean the bathroom. I'll put up with your hopeless attempts at singing and dancing, I'll fix the shelves, the computers, the islands, the drawers, the cabinets, and I'll deal with the hicks, snobs, hillbillies, and yuppies that we get in here. But if you expect me to clean something that had YOUR ASS ON IT, you SO have another thing coming."
All throughout the exchange, Kristen had a hand clamped over her mouth, leaning over slightly so her blonde hair would cover up the fact that she was fighting back a laugh. Jen was the only person she knew who would willingly tell off her boss without worrying about getting fired. Of course, Eric would not fire her just because she mouthed off to him; he had enough common sense to know the store would never be properly cleaned again if she left.
Eric sighed, before waving the two girls off. Kristen grabbed the boxes of games and Jen grabbed her coat and the half of her room that she always toted around with her, before the two of them left the mall and went out over to Kristen's beat up car.
"So, how do we get to Chester from here?" she asked.
A thoughtful look crossed Jen's face. "Well... once we get near Hackettstown, I think I'll be able to point you in the right direction. It's over a mountain and everything, so I hope you've got plenty of gas."
She checked her watch, seeing that it was already ten 'o clock. Her dad expected them to be home soon. Oh, well; he was just going to have to wait.
~.oOOo.~
The world was spinning around them, but at least Yami Yugi and his little aibou were still in one piece. Somehow, the two of them had managed to squeeze out of the car to assess the damage. Sadly, there was no saving the vehicle; the thing was completely totaled, the back end almost completely wrapped around the tree they had collided with. It was a miracle the gas tank had not exploded. Yugi had clung to his darker half tightly at the sight of the car, trembling slightly.
"Can this night get any worse?" he had asked.
Of course it did. Not two seconds after the words had left the little one's mouth, the sky was illuminated with a flash of lightning. Not ten seconds after that, the heavens opened up with a vengeance. Not a second after that, they were soaked to the bone and shivering in the cool night air. They ran down the road as fast as they could, the pharaoh nearly carrying his little hikari as they did so. The two of them were about to pass a large lake, when Yugi pointed out a small shack nearly hidden in the forest. Seeing no better option, they both bolted for the small house.
Yami Yugi looked around the derelict old shack, trying to find a fireplace where they could warm themselves. He finally spotted one, but it looked like there had not been a fire in it for years.
"Aibou," he said, looking around for something he could use to start a fire while motioning to a nearby flight of stairs, "why don't you see if there's anything upstairs that we could burn."
Yugi nodded, before heading up the rickety old stairs. He only ran into a problem once, as his foot encountered a loose step board, but other than that, he made it up to see the ruins of the top floor. There was not much there, just a few old bed sheets and a rotting mattress, but it would have to do. He grabbed the sheets and was about to head back down stairs when he caught sight of a nearby balcony.
The young man approached the balcony with slight trepidation, looking out into the rain-filled night. The sight that greeted him was breathtaking despite the lousy weather. The balcony looked out directly over the lake they had passed, which was rippling from the water falling on it. He smiled; this was probably a beautiful place to live at one point in time.
Yugi was about to go back downstairs again when he caught sight of something odd at the lake. There was a bright light, shining in the very center. It was moving about strangely, and as he squinted, he was able to see why.
The light was really a woman, dancing in the center of the water.
"M-M-M-M-M-M-MOU HITORI NO BOKU!!!"
The sound of Yami Yugi pounding up the stairs followed immediately, only interrupted by a yelp as his darker half encountered the loose step board. The pharaoh was at his side in the next instant, and Yugi wasted no time burying his face in his chest.
"Aibou, what is it?" Yami Yugi asked. "What's got you so worked up?"
Yugi pointed to the balcony behind him, not removing his face from his chest. "Th-th-th-there. O-o-on the l-l-lake."
Yami Yugi blinked and looked... before frowning down at his hikari.
"Aibou, there's nothing there..."
Surprised, Yugi finally looked up, turning back to the balcony. Indeed, the lake had returned to its previous state, with only the rain affecting its surface.
"B...but, I know... I saw..." Yugi trailed off, at a total loss.
"Aibou, I think that old man got you too worked up," Yami Yugi stated. "Why don't we -"
The pharaoh cut himself off as a brightly light suddenly flared up before them. Squinting, the two looked out at the lake again, only this time instead of one dancing light, there were dozens. These lights were much less defined than the woman was, but it was clear the two were of the same origin.
"A...a...aibou..." Yami Yugi stammered slightly. "Let's just g-go back down stairs."
Yugi was way ahead of him.
~.oOOo.~
As they stopped at the first red light they had encountered since leaving Phillipsburg, Kristen took the time to pound her head against the steering wheel. Why she had let herself be conned into doing this, she had no idea. Maybe it was because she dyed her hair blond; the chemicals affected her brain more than she thought. She glanced over at Jen in the passenger's seat, who gave her a sheepish look.
"If I could find something familiar, I'd be able to tell where we are," she said.
"Where have I heard that before?" Kristen asked, trying to shy away as Jen took off her Yankees cap and whacked her with it. "Hey, no hitting the driver!"
Jen rolled her eyes before checking her watch again. Eleven thirty; they had been driving around for over an hour and a half. Her father was going to KILL her...
~.oOOo.~
Yugi snuggled up against his darker self, trying to keep warm, but the fact that he was soaked was doing little to assist in that task. They could not get the fire to light; no matter how hard they tried, the fire died... went out before either of them could really get it going. So, they were stuck trying to rely on their own body heat to keep warm, while outside the whatever-it-was that was on the lake was giving them quite the lightshow.
"Hey, aibou, what's that?" Yami Yugi asked suddenly, nodding toward something on the other side of the room. Yugi looked up to see what looked like a keyboard built into the wall on the opposite side of the room. Various pipes extended up from it, and he could make out a few foot pedals underneath, most of which had broken off ages ago.
"Looks like an organ," Yugi mused, standing up and walking over to it.
"You mean like the ones cheesy evil villains play?" Yami Yugi asked, right behind him. "Shame it's attached to the wall. Otherwise, I'd take it and give it to the tomb robber."
Yugi let out a snort as he fought to cover a laugh. "I'll tell him you said that..." he muttered as his other half went up to the keyboard. The spirit played a few notes, before falling into a haunting Egyptian melody. Yugi listened, enraptured, forgetting he was still wet and cold as he watched his other's movements. Delicate fingers flew over the keys, caressing the music out with the softest of touches. He closed his eyes, a lazy smile growing on his face at the thought... before his eyes snapped open again, catching the casual smirk on the pharaoh's face.
"You're doing this on purpose!" he accused. Yami Yugi chuckled, finishing up his song before grabbing up his aibou with a swift motion. Yugi's yelp at the action quickly turned into a moan as his other self started sucking on his sensitive earlobe.
"I just thought of a wonderful way to get warm..." the pharaoh murmured, getting another moan out of his little aibou as he started trailing kisses down his neck.
"R-Ra damn you and your insatiable libi-"
Yugi suddenly cut himself off, quickly and drastically turned off. Yami Yugi backed off with concern, seeing that the young man was looking over his shoulder, his eyes wide in shock. The pharaoh looked, and the same look managed to grace his face.
There was a man sitting in a chair near the organ. He was not old, nor was he young, and wore a very old - possibly 1920s - style of suit. He looked as if he had been listening to the song Yami Yugi had been playing before he practically glomped his hikari, and was now watching the two of them in a sort of amused curiosity.
A disappearing prom girl they could take. A girl dancing on the surface of the lake was creepy. Lights floating around the surface of the water were stretching it. A guy in an old style of dress suddenly appearing out of no where and then watching them just as they were about to make love...
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Yugi and Yami Yugi bolted out of the house quicker than a person could say, "Duel Monsters". Thankfully, the rain had stopped - as well as the lights on the water - and once they were far enough away from the lake and the shack that they could not see either anymore, they slowed and stopped, fighting to regain their breath. Yugi fixed his darker self with an annoyed look.
"Next time an old man tells you a road is haunted," he said, "BELIEVE HIM!"
Yami Yugi nodded in agreement, not about to argue with that. Once their hearts had stopped pounding in their chest, they started back down the road, passing their wrecked car again as they headed back for the gas station on Route 611. Yugi clung onto his other half for dear life, afraid of what else they would encounter on the dreaded road. The pharaoh wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulders, whispering soothing words to him, though he himself was nervously looking about.
It was not until the end of the road was in sight far ahead of them did they get the feeling they were being watched. The two of them glanced over their shoulders... and stopped dead in their tracks. Behind them, hovering almost playfully was a softly glowing sphere of light.
"Wh...wh...what's that...?" Yugi whimpered, clutching to his other self tighter.
"I have a feeling I don't wanna -"
Yami Yugi cut himself off as the light suddenly started swinging back and forth violently, red seeping into the soft glow until it was glaring the color of blood.
"Mou hitori no boku..."
The light zoomed toward them angrily.
"Aibou, RUN!"
~.oOOo.~
Kristen was nodding her head in the need for sleep, forgetting - and not caring enough - to switch her high beams off as a car came in the opposite direction. She did care though when the other driver flashed their high beams at her as they passed, startling her. Jen frowned, shaking her shoulder slightly.
"Hey, toughen up, it's only midnight," she said playfully.
"Yeah, and I've been working all night," Kristen grumbled. "Unlike you, I can come in before five during the week."
"Touché," Jen replied with a chuckle, before nodding down to the radio. "Does the CD player work? I'll pop in my Limp Bizcut CD."
Kristen nodded. Jen looked outside briefly before going for her book bag in the back seat... and did a quick double take. Was that really...?
"Stop the car!"
Surprised, Kristen slammed on the breaks, almost making Jen crack her skull open on the dashboard in front of her. Unhindered, she leapt out of the car as soon as it stopped, looking up at a taller than normal street sign as the blonde girl started swearing under her breath. The brunette outside suddenly let out a whoop of triumph, jumping up and down excitedly.
"Damn!" Jen exclaimed. "I never thought I'd be happy to see this road!"
"Do you know where we are?" Kristen asked, joining her outside. Jen pointed up to the street sign.
"Shades of Death Road."
"Shades of WHAT?!"
Jen rolled her eyes. "Your brother's a 'Friday the Thirteenth' fan, and you don't know about this place?" she asked dryly. "Anyway, we passed Hackettstown entirely, we'll have to -"
The shorter girl cut herself off as she caught the sound of heavy breathing coming from down the road. After a moment, two young men with strangely spiked hair came running over the first hill leading into the haunted road. The almost twins saw the two girls, and stopped hesitantly.
"Please say you're not ghosts," Yami Yugi said.
Jen put her hands on her hips, a sour look on her face. "Hardly," she replied dryly. "Are you two crazy? What were you doing on Shades of Death Road, at night, ON HALLOWEEN!?"
Yugi fixed his other half with a sour look as they walked up to the girls. "We were taking a shortcut to Route Eighty," he replied. "We were lost."
The brunette just shook her head. "Kid, the only people stupid enough to take THAT road as a shortcut to Eighty are tourists and my friend Chester, and that's only because the ghost don't seem to bother emphatics."
Yami Yugi sighed. "I wish I'd known that," he muttered. "I'm never coming near this place again."
"Good advice."
The pharaoh sighed again, wiping the sweat off of his brow. "Anyway, what time is it?"
Jen checked her watch. "A few minutes before midnight."
The two of them stared. Whatever answer they were expecting, it was not that.
"M-midnight?" Yami Yugi stammered. "Are you sure?"
"Yup," she replied. "My watch is set to the clock at our workplace, and it's been two hours since we were last there."
The pharaoh gulped slightly. It had to have been at least two hours since they had encountered the girl in the prom dress. The clock had said that it was twelve THEN, though, and he knew the time was right; daylight savings time had ended recently, and he made sure the clock was set properly.
"What made you decide to take that road to get to Route Eighty anyway?" Kristen asked, speaking up from where she was hanging over the hood of her car.
"An old man at the gas station directed us toward there," Yugi answered.
The girls frowned. "What gas station?" Jen asked.
Yami Yugi pointed. "That gas... sta...tion..."
The pharaoh stared, eyes wide in surprise. There was a gas station there all right... only it looked like it had not been used in at least fifty years. Him and his hikari exchanged bewildered and horrified looks, before coming to the same conclusion.
"Can we get a ride?" they asked at the same time.
~.oOOo.~
Jen yawned, stretching as they pulled into a parking spot in the Chester Mall parking lot. She turned to the two boys holding onto each other in the back seat, a slight smile on her face, as Kristen pulled the lever that would pop the trunk.
"We'll be right back guys," the brunette assured them, grabbing the paperwork for the drop-off. "We'll be right back, and then you can show us where your house is."
Yugi and Yami Yugi nodded, weary from the events of the night. Kristen and Jen swung out of the beat up car, leaving the interior light on for the boys, grabbing the boxes of video games from the trunk as someone came out of the Game Stop store in front of them.
"It's about TIME you got here!" Pedro's soft voice called out to them as they approached. "What took you so long?"
"Oh, you know us, Pedro," Jen replied, her typical smirk growing on her face. "We need a map to find our way out of bed in the morning."
Kristen gave her a sour look. "You need a map to find your way out of the X-box section."
Jen just grinned, showing off her teeth. "You need a map to find your way out of the Gameboy Advance section."
Considering that the X-box section at the Phillipsburg store was four walls long, while the Gameboy Advance section was only a small island on the left side of the store, it was easy to see who won that argument. Kristen pouted as she handed off the boxes. Pedro chuckled.
"So, how lost did you two get?" he asked.
"We ended up near Shades of Death Road, which turned out to be a good thing," Jen answered casually, handing him the paperwork to sign, indicating he had received the transfer. Pedro's eyebrows shot up into his hairline, surprised.
"How can being anywhere NEAR that road be a good thing?" he asked, bewildered.
Kristen forked her thumb back to her car. "We picked up a couple of boys running down the road. They told us they were taking a short cut to Route Eighty when their car crashed."
"Poor guys had quite a fright," Jen finished.
Pedro, however, was looking at the car, frowning in concern. "What boys?"
Kristen and Jen turned back to the car. The interior light was still on, but there was not a trace of the two boys. The girls blinked, caught off guard; the boys could not have been ghosts! Jen had touched the little one; she had given him a hand into the car. There was no way...!
"M...maybe they saw someone they knew and left..." Kristen suggested, a little freaked out.
Jen looked around at the parking lot, which was empty except for theirs and Pedro's cars. Out of habit, she glanced down at her watch; one thirty in the morning.
"God, I hope you're right..."
~.oOOo.~
Jen woke up just in time for lunch later on in the morning. She yawned heavily, covering her mouth with one hand and stretching with the other as she made her way to the parlor. Kristen was already there, dressed in a warm pair of pants and a shirt, sprawled out in the couch with the remote for the television in hand. "Spongebob Squarepants" was playing on the screen.
"How can you watch that crap?" she asked the blonde, plopping down on the couch next to her feet.
"Spongebob is cool, man! Don't diss it!" Kristen protested, before yelping as Jen snatched the remote away. "Hey, c'mon!"
"Hush, I want to catch the news real quick," the brunette replied, waving her off before switching to News Channel 4. Kristen pouted, a look that Jen probably would have laughed at if she were a little more awake.
"That was my show."
"My remote."
"My Spongebob!"
"My TV."
"Two boys in New Jersey are recovering in Hackettstown hospital this afternoon after spending the night on the most haunted road in the state."
That announcement from the news anchor brought the playful argument to a dead halt. The two girls stared at the screen as it switched to footage of Shades of Death Road, seemingly harmless in the warm light of the afternoon sun.
"You wouldn't believe it, but this is one of the most haunted roads in the state of New Jersey," the voice of WNBC4's New Jersey reporter announced, her voice dubbed over the scenes of the road. "This innocent stretch of land has claimed many lives over hundreds of years, and almost claimed two more last night."
The scene switched to the Jersey reporter, standing near Ghost Lake, which was glimmering slightly in the sunlight.
"At about one thirty last night, emergency services in Hackettstown received a nine-one-one call from a cell phone," she announced. "The two boys, Yugi and Panseru Mutou had swerved to avoid a deer, lost control of the car, and impacted against a tree. The car had compacted drastically from the crash, trapping the boys inside."
Both Jen and Kristen managed to have the same wide-eyed expressions of utter shock on their faces as the screen switched to a divided image of two, almost identical tri-color spiky haired boys. Both had odd purple colored eyes, though while one was wide-eyed with adorable innocence, the other boy's were narrowed with experience.
"Are... are those...?" Kristen stammered, as the screen switched back to Ghost Lake.
The reporter continued before Jen could get out an answer: "Now, the younger of the two boys is still unconscious in Hackettstown Community Hospital. However, the older boy is awake and talking. He reportedly told police surveying the accident that he knew the two of them had left the car when it started to rain, and took shelter in a shack next to Ghost Lake behind me. He says he doesn't remember much after that. Rescue crews, however, say something different; they say the only way the boys would have gotten out of the car without hurting themselves any worse than they already were... they would have had to have an out-of-body experience. Not only that, but the only shack that is anywhere near Ghost Lake, and as you can see, there's not much left to that."
The camera zoomed in on the land near Ghost Lake, where the two girls could make out the faint outline of a house's rock foundation, and very little else. Jen and Kristen exchanged bewildered looks as the news broadcast went on. After a long moment of silence, the two of them came to a mutual conclusion.
"I am NEVER going near that road again."