In the UK, Fatal Frame is known as Project Zero but I'm sure everything
else about it is the same. This fic probably contains millions of
spoilers, especially later on, so I strongly suggest you play the game
first! (Go on, its awesome hehe) Anyways, there is a slight bit of Shounen
ai later on (boy x boy stuff) but nothing explicit so don't worry! This
fic is actually a really old one I wrote a long time ago and I recently
found the disk hanging around in my room, so I decided to finish it off!
Anyways, enjoy ^_^
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Akemi was thinking, which wasn't all that unusual for her. She was always thinking about something or other at random times, such as 'why don't cute guitarists from my-best-friends-brothers-band fancy me as much as I do them?' She was referring to Eien of course, the guitarist from Peroxide Blue, who she had liked since they were about eleven. But right now, she was thinking about how dark it was, and how the brightness of the full moon allowed her to see everything around the van and outside it. They had been driving for hours, on the way home from Peroxide Blue's latest gig. Rika, Akemi's best friend, was sitting in the shotgun seat arguing with her brother Reijiro as usual, While Akemi was crammed into the back of the van with Kaii, Isamu, Eien and hoards of guitars, drums and various other bits of band paraphernalia. It wasn't such a bad thing being in there with Eien of course, but he had fallen asleep a long time ago and now the only other one awake besides the squabbling siblings in the front was Kaii, the bassist.
She turned to Kaii, who was fiddling with the strings on his bass and trying to tune it in as best he could while Reijiro had music screaming out from the stereo. Kaii smiled at her and put the guitar down.
"You okay?" he asked her politely. She nodded and smiled back. Kaii was a really nice guy, always there to offer a compassionate, caring shoulder to cry on. He glanced out of the window onto the road and watched vaguely as the trees sped past. There were no other cars out this late, so Reijiro had taken the opportunity to drive as fast as humanly possible on the rocky, uneven road, which wasn't really that fast since even he, reckless though he could be, understood what it was to be a good driver.
"Christ, it's dark....", Kaii commented, and Akemi agreed. The night seemed to have fallen insanely quickly, and the rain had started up. For now it was just spitting, but it was doubtless that a full on, raging thunderstorm would probably hit within the hour. In the front, the twins and stopped arguing long enough for Rika to turn around and inspect the group in the back.
"Hey, Akemi?"
"Yeah?"
"What time are your parents expecting you back?" Akemi looked at her watch and groaned.
"In about half an hour", she replied, sounding a little worried.
"Really? Oh shit, you might want to ring them and tell them you're gonna be a little bit late", Rika said,"were nowhere near the town yet, tell them we had engine trouble or something okay?"
Akemi nodded and took Kaii's cell phone when he offered it to her. She punched in the number and swore when the familiar recording answered telling her that she was out of the service range. She handed Kaii's phone back and leaned heavily on the back of her seat, muttering to herself about the incompetence of service providers and wondering if she was going to get grounded or just have her allowance cut again. It wasn't as though she made a habit out of coming home late; it was just unavoidable most of the time. Tonight, the gig hadn't actually finished until 11.30, and the drive home was at least an hour long. 'So much for being home for 12.30' she thought. Her Dad would probably buy the engine trouble story, and it wasn't uncommon for the cell phone service to be crap in the hills, but her Mum would be less than impressed.
The van carried on down the road for a while longer until it hit a pothole in the road and bounced violently on its suspension, waking both Isamu and Eien up.
"Christ, sorry guys!" Reijiro called from the front. The van had come to a total standstill, and refused point blank to fire up again. Reijiro swore and slammed his fist onto the dashboard, making Rika's coke can topple off and pour all over her pink summer dress.
"Reijiro!!!!" she screeched
"Sorry, my bad", he answered. He climbed out of the van and lifted its hood for inspection. Kaii, Eien and Isamu went to help, leaving the girls in the van. They stood for a while, poking around inside the hood and discussing technical jargon that neither Rika nor Akemi understood a word of. Rika tried the ignition when Kaii signalled to her, but nothing came of it. Rika turned back to Akemi again.
"So", she said, grinning childishly,"still have a thing for Eien?" Akemi blushed and attempted to hide behind her glossy black hair, making Rika laugh.
"Haven't you told him yet?" she asked.
"Hell no!" Akemi answered "as if! I don't think he likes me anyway". Rika shrugged in a 'well-you-will-never-know-if-you-don't-try' way, and Akemi gave her the finger, in a friendly way if such a thing was possible. Rika grinned and tried the ignition again for Kaii, which still didn't work. Bored with sitting in the van, she got out to join the others, and Akemi followed her. Eien was trying to get a signal on his phone while Kaii and Reijiro inspected the vans under carriage. Eventually, Eien gave in with the phone and turned to the others for a suggestion.
"Do you think anyone lives around here?" Isamu asked no one in particular "because we could use a land line to call for help or something...." Eien looked around.
"Wait, there's a point, where are we exactly?" Isamu shrugged and pointed to Reijiro.
"Ask him, he's the one who got us out here". Reijiro turned and tried to look innocent.
"Don't blame me!" he protested "Rika was the one reading the map! She got us lost!" Rika started to protest herself but was cut off by Akemi stepping in to break up the potential argument.
"Either way" she said "We need to try and find a house, we need to call someone from a landline since the service up here sucks, I'm going to go back up the road a bit and check out that side road we passed before, okay?"
She started off, and was pulled back by Eien. The faintest flicker of scarlet embarrassment flashed across her face.
"You're not going anywhere alone, Akemi" Reijiro said.
"Yeah" Kaii agreed, "We're all going to go, safety in numbers and all the rest of it. You don't know if anybody living up here is safe to be talking to, especially in the middle of the night." She nodded, and Eien let go of her arm, although she would have been perfectly happy to have him hold onto it all night if he had wanted. The boys pushed the van into the trees a little way so it was out of sight from the road and Reijiro locked it up. Rika pulled her jacket over her shoulders and huddled close to Akemi for warmth. The wet patch where the coke had spilled on her was bad enough, but the rain, which had grown heavier now, wasn't exactly helping any. The girls walked with Reijiro and Isamu in front, Kaii and Eien behind up the uneven road, getting drenched in the rain and feeling thoroughly miserable. Isamu looked up and spotted what appeared to be a driveway leading a little way up the hill to a house.
Akemi sighed thankfully and they trudged up the soggy dirt path to the doors. The house was huge, more like a mansion and appeared quite run down. The old wooden doors were rotting away and looked like they hadn't been opened in years. It was as foreboding as it gets. The mansion looked so old, Akemi wondered if the floors were even safe to walk on.
"Open it" Kaii whispered to Reijiro.
"What?! Hell no, you open it!!"
"Bugger off I'm not going anywhere near it!"
"Oh for Christ's sake...." Eien mumbled, pushing past them and easing the door open just in case it disintegrated at his touch. The old, rusted hinges creaked eerily and dust fell from them. Eien stepped into the dry room first, followed by Kaii and Reijiro then the others. Isamu twisted his long hair to wring the water from it, and Kaii panicked incase the rain had caused his bright blue hair dye to run. Eien left his hair as it was, wet and straggly, which Akemi couldn't help but think made him look incredibly hot. Rika looked like a drowned rat with her hair stuck to her face, and everyone felt thoroughly miserable.
"This place must be damn old...." Reijiro commented, looking pointedly at the huge hole in the floor where a ceiling beam appeared to have crashed through the wood. Akemi shivered, and blushed again when Eien put his jacket around her shoulders, which despite the rain outside was quite dry inside.
"Hello?" Kaii called "anyone home?" There was no reply to Kaii's call.
"I guess no one's home then! Oh well, maybe we should try somewhere else!" Rika said, turning back to the door happily.
"Oh no you don't" Isamu said "were staying here until someone gets home if we have to, besides this place is huge, maybe they didn't hear us". Rika frowned and looked back to the hole in the floor.
"Judging by that" she said "I'd say no one's home and no one has been home for quite a while". Isamu shrugged.
"I'd rather be in here than out in that crappy weather, and I think the others agree, right guys?" They all nodded.
"You never know Rika" Akemi said brightly, maybe they're fixing the place up and haven't got around to doing that yet."
"Somehow, I doubt that...." she replied.
They left the room through a door at the side, into a dark hall.
"Why on Earth are there ropes hanging from the rafters?" Kaii mumbled to Reijiro. Reijiro shrugged and advanced down the hall, moving the ropes of the way as he did. The old floorboards creaked and groaned with every step the group took, and Akemi groped in the darkness for Rika's hand. They moved silently to the hall's end, where two doors led off on either side.
"Oh, bloody marvellous", Isamu groaned. Reijiro laughed nervously and pointed to one door.
"Safety" he said, then pointed at the other and said "certain death". The others joined his nervous laughter and grouped more tightly together.
"I'll take door number one" Isamu said, "anyone agree?" Kaii nodded, as did Reijiro and Rika. Akemi and Eien didn't answer.
"I don't like this" Eien said glancing at the doors, then into the mirror on the wall "something doesn't feel right...."
"Thanks for lifting to mood...." Kaii said sarcastically.
"Actually" Rika piped up "I agree with him, something isn't quite right here...." Akemi squeezed Rika's hand. The atmosphere in the building was beyond eerie and border-lining petrifying. The whole place was unnaturally silent; no one beside themselves could possibly be in here. There wasn't even the feeling that the people of the house where upstairs in bed.... and yet the house didn't feel empty.
"How about we leave?" Isamu suggested, "there's no one here but us and this place is putting the shits up me".
"I'm good with that," Kaii said.
"We can't leave!" Reijiro protested, "there has to be a phone in here or something, everyone has a phone!" The others agreed after some convincing, and it was finally decided that Akemi, Eien and Isamu would go through one door while Reijiro, Rika and Kaii went through the other and that they were all to meet back in the hall within one hour. Isamu pushed their allocated door open, and it practically fell of its hinges straight away. Isamu jumped back into Akemi who yelped a little louder than she had intended. The group froze again, and then laughed it off nervously before finally separating.
Isamu entered the room first, which appeared fairly empty. There were a few dust-shrouded cabinets around and what looked like antique plates. The room was so dusty, in fact, that they were leaving footprints as they moved through it. Akemi, who had a slight allergy to dust, sneezed six times in a row when Eien opened one of the cabinet's drawers. Inside was an old, yellowing newspaper. Eien took it out and read the headline aloud.
"Himuro Mansion family move out, daughter distraught".
"Himuro Mansion, is that the name of this place?" Akemi asked.
"I think so, this picture looks just like it, only in a much better condition. Apparently the last family to live here moved out because their daughter was traumatised by people 'talking' to her, people only she could see". Eien turned around to Isamu to find him inspecting the wooden wall closely. He was looking through a small crack into the next room, and was totally fixated.
"Isamu?" Eien called.
"Eien, I think there's someone in there..." he replied with a whisper, as though he didn't want to be heard. Eien approached the wall and Isamu made room for him to look too. The room looked like it was full of Japanese porcelain dolls, and besides a few burned out lanterns and a faded green cushion on the tatami mats, there was nothing else in there.
Eien straightened up.
"I think you may be seeing things Isamu", he said quietly, almost pitifully.
"What? No way! There was a girl in there! A little girl in a white kimono! She was sat right there by that cabinet!" Isamu explained, doing his best to defend himself.
"Well, maybe it was just a shadow?" Akemi suggested hopefully, although something had just sent a shiver down her spine. Isamu snorted and flicked his long hair back.
"Sure, maybe it was only a shadow, but it sure as hell looked like a little girl was sitting there looking at me..."
"Eien?" Akemi asked, tugging gently on his sleeve "can we leave now?"
"Sure Akemi, Isamu were going to look somewhere else now okay?" Isamu turned around and looked at them, then nodded. They started up the small flight of rickety stairs in the corner of the room and reached the landing looking down on the room they had just been in. Akemi tried the door at the top of the stairs, and with some help from Eien, managed to push it open.
"That was bizarre", she said when they stepped through "it was like someone was holding the door shut".
"Probably the hinges or something", Eien suggested, "they look a little rusted". Isamu followed them through the door, walking backwards and still staring down at the tiny hole in the wall. The new room appeared to be some kind of observatory. Akemi rolled the Shoji screens at the end of the room open to find a balcony overlooking the garden. She looked down upon the cherry tree in the centre of it, and suddenly became very cold. She stared hard at the tree, and a shape came into form. She clapped a hand to her mouth in shock.
"Eien!! Isamu!!" she called to the boys "Look!" They came running out onto the balcony and followed the direction in which Akemi was pointing. From the branches of the ancient cherry tree, a woman was hanging on a rope by her neck. Her eyes were half closed and her mouth twisted as though she had tried to take in one last struggles breath before her end. Her kimono hung loosely about her body, and looked old and faded, like it had been worn many times for many years. Her body was swinging gently on the rope, and it turned so her face has directly staring at the balcony in a glazed sort of way. Eien took in a sharp breath and grabbed Akemi's hand and Isamu's sleeve.
"Let's go, okay?" he whispered, gently pulling them backwards back into the observatory, unable to take his eyes off the woman, until she suddenly vanished. They stood rooted to the spot in fear, huddled close together. Akemi felt the boys trembling behind her, and realised she was shaking herself. She rolled the screens shut quickly.
"Trick of the light?" she asked hopefully.
"Must have been", Isamu answered her "something like that anyway."
"She looked so real...." Eien whispered.
"Yeah.... but I think we should get moving now, anyone agree?" Isamu said, nervously. Akemi nodded and started over to another door at the side of the room. She pushed it open and looked into the murky corridor beyond.
"Hello?" she called, not entirely surprised when no one answered her. She stepped through first, followed by Isamu the Eien. She called out again for good measure and was satisfied that no one besides them was around. Some steps led down from the walkway they were on, so they took them down into another corridor. It was darker down here, but typical techno junkie Isamu had his trusty miniature flashlight in his back pocket. He took it out and flicked it on. The circle of yellow light swallowed the corridor, revealing that it turned corners at both ends and the walls were streaked with dark red lines.
Isamu stepped up to the wall to inspect it closer, the small group already knowing what the lines were.
"Blood..." he mumbled. Akemi absent-mindedly stepped closer to Eien and, without realising it, clasped his hand. He made no effort to shake her off, instead he squeezed it reassuringly. She felt a flutter in her heart that unfortunately quickly dispersed when she noticed that Isamu had turned the flashlight to the far end of the hall, his breathing sounded shaky like something had just terrified him.
"Something..." he said, sounding like his throat was as dry as a desert in peak summertime "down there..." They followed the line of light and stared at the wall where the corner began. A sound, like footsteps, was growing steadily more distant. It didn't take a genius to work out that someone was walking down the corridor away from them. Eien started cautiously towards the sound of the footsteps and nervously peeked around the corner. A man was walking slowly down the corridor, so quietly and smoothly it was as if he was floating. His unusually long arms stretched to either side of the hall, scratching his fingers along the wood and leaving dark red streaks behind.
"Oh shit...." Isamu said, his voice no more than a whisper "the blood's from him..."
"Hey! Hey you!" Eien called "Hey! Can you help us?" The figure stopped momentarily, then carried on along the hall.
"Eien..." Akemi whispered, "I don't think calling to him is such a good idea..." She began to step back, and the figure turned to face them. Its face was contorted horribly, and Akemi screamed. She pulled on Eien's hand and they broke into a run back down the corridor dragging Isamu after them. They turned the other corner and sprinted to a door at the end of it. Akemi wrenched it open and threw herself through it out onto a wooden walkway. She fell to the floor, banging her knees painfully. Eien came through and stumbled over her, falling into the wall followed by a rather petrified Isamu.
"What the fuck was that?!" he screamed. Eien picked himself up and offered a hand to Akemi, pulling her up after himself.
"I don't know," he answered Isamu "but I think we should find the others and get the hell out of here".
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Akemi was thinking, which wasn't all that unusual for her. She was always thinking about something or other at random times, such as 'why don't cute guitarists from my-best-friends-brothers-band fancy me as much as I do them?' She was referring to Eien of course, the guitarist from Peroxide Blue, who she had liked since they were about eleven. But right now, she was thinking about how dark it was, and how the brightness of the full moon allowed her to see everything around the van and outside it. They had been driving for hours, on the way home from Peroxide Blue's latest gig. Rika, Akemi's best friend, was sitting in the shotgun seat arguing with her brother Reijiro as usual, While Akemi was crammed into the back of the van with Kaii, Isamu, Eien and hoards of guitars, drums and various other bits of band paraphernalia. It wasn't such a bad thing being in there with Eien of course, but he had fallen asleep a long time ago and now the only other one awake besides the squabbling siblings in the front was Kaii, the bassist.
She turned to Kaii, who was fiddling with the strings on his bass and trying to tune it in as best he could while Reijiro had music screaming out from the stereo. Kaii smiled at her and put the guitar down.
"You okay?" he asked her politely. She nodded and smiled back. Kaii was a really nice guy, always there to offer a compassionate, caring shoulder to cry on. He glanced out of the window onto the road and watched vaguely as the trees sped past. There were no other cars out this late, so Reijiro had taken the opportunity to drive as fast as humanly possible on the rocky, uneven road, which wasn't really that fast since even he, reckless though he could be, understood what it was to be a good driver.
"Christ, it's dark....", Kaii commented, and Akemi agreed. The night seemed to have fallen insanely quickly, and the rain had started up. For now it was just spitting, but it was doubtless that a full on, raging thunderstorm would probably hit within the hour. In the front, the twins and stopped arguing long enough for Rika to turn around and inspect the group in the back.
"Hey, Akemi?"
"Yeah?"
"What time are your parents expecting you back?" Akemi looked at her watch and groaned.
"In about half an hour", she replied, sounding a little worried.
"Really? Oh shit, you might want to ring them and tell them you're gonna be a little bit late", Rika said,"were nowhere near the town yet, tell them we had engine trouble or something okay?"
Akemi nodded and took Kaii's cell phone when he offered it to her. She punched in the number and swore when the familiar recording answered telling her that she was out of the service range. She handed Kaii's phone back and leaned heavily on the back of her seat, muttering to herself about the incompetence of service providers and wondering if she was going to get grounded or just have her allowance cut again. It wasn't as though she made a habit out of coming home late; it was just unavoidable most of the time. Tonight, the gig hadn't actually finished until 11.30, and the drive home was at least an hour long. 'So much for being home for 12.30' she thought. Her Dad would probably buy the engine trouble story, and it wasn't uncommon for the cell phone service to be crap in the hills, but her Mum would be less than impressed.
The van carried on down the road for a while longer until it hit a pothole in the road and bounced violently on its suspension, waking both Isamu and Eien up.
"Christ, sorry guys!" Reijiro called from the front. The van had come to a total standstill, and refused point blank to fire up again. Reijiro swore and slammed his fist onto the dashboard, making Rika's coke can topple off and pour all over her pink summer dress.
"Reijiro!!!!" she screeched
"Sorry, my bad", he answered. He climbed out of the van and lifted its hood for inspection. Kaii, Eien and Isamu went to help, leaving the girls in the van. They stood for a while, poking around inside the hood and discussing technical jargon that neither Rika nor Akemi understood a word of. Rika tried the ignition when Kaii signalled to her, but nothing came of it. Rika turned back to Akemi again.
"So", she said, grinning childishly,"still have a thing for Eien?" Akemi blushed and attempted to hide behind her glossy black hair, making Rika laugh.
"Haven't you told him yet?" she asked.
"Hell no!" Akemi answered "as if! I don't think he likes me anyway". Rika shrugged in a 'well-you-will-never-know-if-you-don't-try' way, and Akemi gave her the finger, in a friendly way if such a thing was possible. Rika grinned and tried the ignition again for Kaii, which still didn't work. Bored with sitting in the van, she got out to join the others, and Akemi followed her. Eien was trying to get a signal on his phone while Kaii and Reijiro inspected the vans under carriage. Eventually, Eien gave in with the phone and turned to the others for a suggestion.
"Do you think anyone lives around here?" Isamu asked no one in particular "because we could use a land line to call for help or something...." Eien looked around.
"Wait, there's a point, where are we exactly?" Isamu shrugged and pointed to Reijiro.
"Ask him, he's the one who got us out here". Reijiro turned and tried to look innocent.
"Don't blame me!" he protested "Rika was the one reading the map! She got us lost!" Rika started to protest herself but was cut off by Akemi stepping in to break up the potential argument.
"Either way" she said "We need to try and find a house, we need to call someone from a landline since the service up here sucks, I'm going to go back up the road a bit and check out that side road we passed before, okay?"
She started off, and was pulled back by Eien. The faintest flicker of scarlet embarrassment flashed across her face.
"You're not going anywhere alone, Akemi" Reijiro said.
"Yeah" Kaii agreed, "We're all going to go, safety in numbers and all the rest of it. You don't know if anybody living up here is safe to be talking to, especially in the middle of the night." She nodded, and Eien let go of her arm, although she would have been perfectly happy to have him hold onto it all night if he had wanted. The boys pushed the van into the trees a little way so it was out of sight from the road and Reijiro locked it up. Rika pulled her jacket over her shoulders and huddled close to Akemi for warmth. The wet patch where the coke had spilled on her was bad enough, but the rain, which had grown heavier now, wasn't exactly helping any. The girls walked with Reijiro and Isamu in front, Kaii and Eien behind up the uneven road, getting drenched in the rain and feeling thoroughly miserable. Isamu looked up and spotted what appeared to be a driveway leading a little way up the hill to a house.
Akemi sighed thankfully and they trudged up the soggy dirt path to the doors. The house was huge, more like a mansion and appeared quite run down. The old wooden doors were rotting away and looked like they hadn't been opened in years. It was as foreboding as it gets. The mansion looked so old, Akemi wondered if the floors were even safe to walk on.
"Open it" Kaii whispered to Reijiro.
"What?! Hell no, you open it!!"
"Bugger off I'm not going anywhere near it!"
"Oh for Christ's sake...." Eien mumbled, pushing past them and easing the door open just in case it disintegrated at his touch. The old, rusted hinges creaked eerily and dust fell from them. Eien stepped into the dry room first, followed by Kaii and Reijiro then the others. Isamu twisted his long hair to wring the water from it, and Kaii panicked incase the rain had caused his bright blue hair dye to run. Eien left his hair as it was, wet and straggly, which Akemi couldn't help but think made him look incredibly hot. Rika looked like a drowned rat with her hair stuck to her face, and everyone felt thoroughly miserable.
"This place must be damn old...." Reijiro commented, looking pointedly at the huge hole in the floor where a ceiling beam appeared to have crashed through the wood. Akemi shivered, and blushed again when Eien put his jacket around her shoulders, which despite the rain outside was quite dry inside.
"Hello?" Kaii called "anyone home?" There was no reply to Kaii's call.
"I guess no one's home then! Oh well, maybe we should try somewhere else!" Rika said, turning back to the door happily.
"Oh no you don't" Isamu said "were staying here until someone gets home if we have to, besides this place is huge, maybe they didn't hear us". Rika frowned and looked back to the hole in the floor.
"Judging by that" she said "I'd say no one's home and no one has been home for quite a while". Isamu shrugged.
"I'd rather be in here than out in that crappy weather, and I think the others agree, right guys?" They all nodded.
"You never know Rika" Akemi said brightly, maybe they're fixing the place up and haven't got around to doing that yet."
"Somehow, I doubt that...." she replied.
They left the room through a door at the side, into a dark hall.
"Why on Earth are there ropes hanging from the rafters?" Kaii mumbled to Reijiro. Reijiro shrugged and advanced down the hall, moving the ropes of the way as he did. The old floorboards creaked and groaned with every step the group took, and Akemi groped in the darkness for Rika's hand. They moved silently to the hall's end, where two doors led off on either side.
"Oh, bloody marvellous", Isamu groaned. Reijiro laughed nervously and pointed to one door.
"Safety" he said, then pointed at the other and said "certain death". The others joined his nervous laughter and grouped more tightly together.
"I'll take door number one" Isamu said, "anyone agree?" Kaii nodded, as did Reijiro and Rika. Akemi and Eien didn't answer.
"I don't like this" Eien said glancing at the doors, then into the mirror on the wall "something doesn't feel right...."
"Thanks for lifting to mood...." Kaii said sarcastically.
"Actually" Rika piped up "I agree with him, something isn't quite right here...." Akemi squeezed Rika's hand. The atmosphere in the building was beyond eerie and border-lining petrifying. The whole place was unnaturally silent; no one beside themselves could possibly be in here. There wasn't even the feeling that the people of the house where upstairs in bed.... and yet the house didn't feel empty.
"How about we leave?" Isamu suggested, "there's no one here but us and this place is putting the shits up me".
"I'm good with that," Kaii said.
"We can't leave!" Reijiro protested, "there has to be a phone in here or something, everyone has a phone!" The others agreed after some convincing, and it was finally decided that Akemi, Eien and Isamu would go through one door while Reijiro, Rika and Kaii went through the other and that they were all to meet back in the hall within one hour. Isamu pushed their allocated door open, and it practically fell of its hinges straight away. Isamu jumped back into Akemi who yelped a little louder than she had intended. The group froze again, and then laughed it off nervously before finally separating.
Isamu entered the room first, which appeared fairly empty. There were a few dust-shrouded cabinets around and what looked like antique plates. The room was so dusty, in fact, that they were leaving footprints as they moved through it. Akemi, who had a slight allergy to dust, sneezed six times in a row when Eien opened one of the cabinet's drawers. Inside was an old, yellowing newspaper. Eien took it out and read the headline aloud.
"Himuro Mansion family move out, daughter distraught".
"Himuro Mansion, is that the name of this place?" Akemi asked.
"I think so, this picture looks just like it, only in a much better condition. Apparently the last family to live here moved out because their daughter was traumatised by people 'talking' to her, people only she could see". Eien turned around to Isamu to find him inspecting the wooden wall closely. He was looking through a small crack into the next room, and was totally fixated.
"Isamu?" Eien called.
"Eien, I think there's someone in there..." he replied with a whisper, as though he didn't want to be heard. Eien approached the wall and Isamu made room for him to look too. The room looked like it was full of Japanese porcelain dolls, and besides a few burned out lanterns and a faded green cushion on the tatami mats, there was nothing else in there.
Eien straightened up.
"I think you may be seeing things Isamu", he said quietly, almost pitifully.
"What? No way! There was a girl in there! A little girl in a white kimono! She was sat right there by that cabinet!" Isamu explained, doing his best to defend himself.
"Well, maybe it was just a shadow?" Akemi suggested hopefully, although something had just sent a shiver down her spine. Isamu snorted and flicked his long hair back.
"Sure, maybe it was only a shadow, but it sure as hell looked like a little girl was sitting there looking at me..."
"Eien?" Akemi asked, tugging gently on his sleeve "can we leave now?"
"Sure Akemi, Isamu were going to look somewhere else now okay?" Isamu turned around and looked at them, then nodded. They started up the small flight of rickety stairs in the corner of the room and reached the landing looking down on the room they had just been in. Akemi tried the door at the top of the stairs, and with some help from Eien, managed to push it open.
"That was bizarre", she said when they stepped through "it was like someone was holding the door shut".
"Probably the hinges or something", Eien suggested, "they look a little rusted". Isamu followed them through the door, walking backwards and still staring down at the tiny hole in the wall. The new room appeared to be some kind of observatory. Akemi rolled the Shoji screens at the end of the room open to find a balcony overlooking the garden. She looked down upon the cherry tree in the centre of it, and suddenly became very cold. She stared hard at the tree, and a shape came into form. She clapped a hand to her mouth in shock.
"Eien!! Isamu!!" she called to the boys "Look!" They came running out onto the balcony and followed the direction in which Akemi was pointing. From the branches of the ancient cherry tree, a woman was hanging on a rope by her neck. Her eyes were half closed and her mouth twisted as though she had tried to take in one last struggles breath before her end. Her kimono hung loosely about her body, and looked old and faded, like it had been worn many times for many years. Her body was swinging gently on the rope, and it turned so her face has directly staring at the balcony in a glazed sort of way. Eien took in a sharp breath and grabbed Akemi's hand and Isamu's sleeve.
"Let's go, okay?" he whispered, gently pulling them backwards back into the observatory, unable to take his eyes off the woman, until she suddenly vanished. They stood rooted to the spot in fear, huddled close together. Akemi felt the boys trembling behind her, and realised she was shaking herself. She rolled the screens shut quickly.
"Trick of the light?" she asked hopefully.
"Must have been", Isamu answered her "something like that anyway."
"She looked so real...." Eien whispered.
"Yeah.... but I think we should get moving now, anyone agree?" Isamu said, nervously. Akemi nodded and started over to another door at the side of the room. She pushed it open and looked into the murky corridor beyond.
"Hello?" she called, not entirely surprised when no one answered her. She stepped through first, followed by Isamu the Eien. She called out again for good measure and was satisfied that no one besides them was around. Some steps led down from the walkway they were on, so they took them down into another corridor. It was darker down here, but typical techno junkie Isamu had his trusty miniature flashlight in his back pocket. He took it out and flicked it on. The circle of yellow light swallowed the corridor, revealing that it turned corners at both ends and the walls were streaked with dark red lines.
Isamu stepped up to the wall to inspect it closer, the small group already knowing what the lines were.
"Blood..." he mumbled. Akemi absent-mindedly stepped closer to Eien and, without realising it, clasped his hand. He made no effort to shake her off, instead he squeezed it reassuringly. She felt a flutter in her heart that unfortunately quickly dispersed when she noticed that Isamu had turned the flashlight to the far end of the hall, his breathing sounded shaky like something had just terrified him.
"Something..." he said, sounding like his throat was as dry as a desert in peak summertime "down there..." They followed the line of light and stared at the wall where the corner began. A sound, like footsteps, was growing steadily more distant. It didn't take a genius to work out that someone was walking down the corridor away from them. Eien started cautiously towards the sound of the footsteps and nervously peeked around the corner. A man was walking slowly down the corridor, so quietly and smoothly it was as if he was floating. His unusually long arms stretched to either side of the hall, scratching his fingers along the wood and leaving dark red streaks behind.
"Oh shit...." Isamu said, his voice no more than a whisper "the blood's from him..."
"Hey! Hey you!" Eien called "Hey! Can you help us?" The figure stopped momentarily, then carried on along the hall.
"Eien..." Akemi whispered, "I don't think calling to him is such a good idea..." She began to step back, and the figure turned to face them. Its face was contorted horribly, and Akemi screamed. She pulled on Eien's hand and they broke into a run back down the corridor dragging Isamu after them. They turned the other corner and sprinted to a door at the end of it. Akemi wrenched it open and threw herself through it out onto a wooden walkway. She fell to the floor, banging her knees painfully. Eien came through and stumbled over her, falling into the wall followed by a rather petrified Isamu.
"What the fuck was that?!" he screamed. Eien picked himself up and offered a hand to Akemi, pulling her up after himself.
"I don't know," he answered Isamu "but I think we should find the others and get the hell out of here".