The Spirit of Fear
Halloween, the only night of the year where people of any age can dress up and do stupid things like scare small children and ask complete strangers for candy. Well, that and New Year's, depending on how drunk you are. Every one knows spooky stuff always happens on Halloween, due to the abundance of spirits and ghosts that are permitted to wander the mortal realm. This is the context in which a curse takes place. But the scariness hasn't begun yet, its only 12:00 pm.
"Yusuke, leave the frikin' radio alone! If you screw up the dual play in this van, my step-mom will kill me!" Lil slapped the hands of a Spirit Detective in the front seat, while swerving dangerously on the road. She was hosting a Halloween vacation in the house of a close relative. Lil was an old friend of Yusuke's from grade school.
Yusuke rubbed the back of his handed offended, "I'm just trying to change the channel from static, we went out of local radio stations' range hours ago!"
"You don't even listen to the channels enough to tell what they are!"
"Will you two stop fighting before Lil kills us all?" Keiko said from the front-middle row in the van. The front seat became quiet, but thick with angry tension. The seating of the van went as follows: Lil was driving, next to her in the middle was Yusuke, and beside him sat Botan. In the front-middle row of the van Keiko sat behind Lil, next to her were Shizuru and then Yukina. In the rear-middle row of the van were Jin, with his head hanging out the window in the breeze, Touya, sleeping quietly, and Kazuma, Shizuru's little brother. In the very back, very last row were Kurama and Hiei with one spare seat between them laden with a large cooler.
All eleven of the strange friends were starting to develop cabin fever, and sore rears from sitting so long. "Ey' lass, are we there yet? Me bum hurts and there's no room in 'ere!" Jin asked for the millionth time. Lil turned in her seat, glaring at the Wind master, flames trailing out of her eyes, and snarled viciously, with huge fangs. Jin gave a squeak and ducked out of her sight range. Turning back to the road, she growled through gritted teeth, "We'll get there when we get there!" The empty countryside surrounded them on all sides with no signs of letting up, except for the occasional field of crops or a small forest, and the sight of mountains looming ahead.
Lil was taking them to her grandfather's manor in the mountains. His large house was nestled in the center of a rocky mountain chain, somewhat isolated from tourists, cities, and the noise of people. "Look every one, the gates are just ahead!" Lil chirped happily, her mood swing forgotten. She slowed the speed of the van and stopped in front of a pair of wrought iron gates. Rolling down her window, she pressed the intercom switch next to the road. A voice spoke from the box, "Who goes there?"
"Its me, Grampa! Will you open the gates please?"
"Come on in," the voice chuckled as the mechanical barrier separated and allowed them passage. The long driveway took a minute to cross; it led the butt-weary travelers to the huge house in the forest around the mountains. I was an old Victorian looking house with four floors and a large lawn with many fruit trees scattered around. The travelers piled out of the van to stretch before unloading. Lil walked up to the house, where a man was waiting. He was tall and built strong, with black speckled gray hair and a bushy moustache with a friendly curl on either end. His brown eyes twinkled with mirth as he welcomed his granddaughter with a rib-crushing hug. He then turned to his ten other guests, "My name is James, welcome to the manor."
