Chapter 5
The sun was setting long before the thought even crossed Gaara's mind to turn around and try heading home. By that time, with the sunlight waning, he found himself far past the school and into the outskirts of town where suburban houses tapered off into larger, older structures that had not quite enough land to be called farms, but too much land to be considered part of the city. He'd stopped running a long time ago and had simply dropped into wandering in any direction away from his house, not really paying attention beyond what was needed to make sure he didn't wander out in front of a car, or into the side of a building.
His head hurt from everything running through his mind, and yet he'd reached a moment of what could almost be called mental numbness. He didn't know what to do and he certainly didn't know how to react to the whole situation, so he didn't react. Instead he let it fester, hoping that in the repeated action of seeing the scene in his mind, he'd find some sort of solution, or even a logical thought.
He knew what he had seen. He hadn't touched the television and yet it had acted on his own. Gaara wasn't sure if she'd done it, or if that thing which had come out of the wall had, but he had a feeling it was her. He couldn't quite place it, but it seemed more likely that it was her, since she had appeared first. Either way, no matter what caused it, the message was crystal clear.
Haku was dead. And so were the boys he'd seen from the vision. It didn't take a leap to notice that those were most likely, without a doubt, the blurred faced he'd seen in the dream of what had happened. That added together didn't create a very friendly picture or thought. The ghosts he'd read about didn't do that. He knew that the ones in storybooks really only ended up being about as threatening as the children under sheets who pretended to be them during Halloween.
Sure, some of them got violent, but that was mostly to scare up money in movie tickets where fans had gotten sick of just seeing white specters and wanted more blood and gore. Ghosts didn't massacre people. Humans did that.
He'd given up trying to figure out how much his life had changed in the last couple of days, it just wasn't even worth the effort it would have required. All he knew was that now he had to deal with this new thing following him around. Granted it wasn't exactly following him the way she did, but if there was one thing he'd learned about these things it was that if you saw them once, you'd see them again. Ghosts, specters, spirits, whatever they were supposed to be called, were never a single phenomenon for him. They repeated, usually quite often, and many never went away.
The problem was that most of them developed a distinct pattern or at least stuck to one place. He'd seen others before, at random times, but they always stayed attached to that place and it was more like seeing someone waiting in a window each time you passed, they didn't follow him. This one, the one that was apparently Haku, did. He didn't like how this pattern was proceeding and he wasn't fool enough to think it wouldn't continue.
Haku had shown up in his dream. He remembered seeing the boy's face at the end. And then he'd been down by the willow trees and the fence, making that a second time. Then a third in his own house. Luckily he hadn't shown up for the rest of the day and had given Gaara time to think.
Gaara stopped walking and glanced out over the wide yard of grass in front of him. Across about an acre of land was an old house, standing in defiance to the time and weather, some how managing to stay there in spite of all the odds and forces pushing it down. But it wasn't the house that interested him, rather the graveyard that stood a few feet away.
The graveyard housed, for lack of a better word, the majority of those who had passed in the city. A couple families, with the money to be so picky, had their relatives buried elsewhere, but the majority now resided in the large headstone spotted plot of land, which the owners of the farm-like house took care of. Gaara really couldn't care less about the other residents in the city, dead or alive, but he knew the graveyard pretty well.
It was where she was buried.
As a child, when things had gotten so bad that he'd actually been spurred to run away for a small period of time, he'd always gone to the graveyard. He could remember nights of falling asleep, curled against her headstone with her looking on in her strange wispy form. It was a place for comfort, which was rare.
In his rush to leave the house and get away from that thing which had come through the wall, Gaara had fallen back into old habits and wandered here, once again. This place was honestly a last resort for him. So, in a way, it just went to prove how much the entire situation disturbed him.
Gaara stopped walking and peered past the gate, his eyes finding her stone in amongst the neatly tended rows and random droppings of flowers. For a moment he actually considered staying there for the night, but his mind soon changed, as he realized that was really the stupidest thing he could do with the mood his father was in. In all likelihood the older man had forgotten about the beating and probably didn't even care anymore. Gaara even doubted if he'd noticed that his son was gone. Still, risking being discovered as missing wasn't something he wanted to risk if he could avoid it, especially not while the wounds on his back were still healing. As comforting as it would have been to fall asleep next to the cold stone, it wasn't worth the risk.
Frowning to himself, Gaara turned and started on the most direct route home.
This walk took little to no time, since he knew the route by heart. Skipping through alleys and ducking under fences to cross empty backyards, Gaara reached his house in almost record time without running or even really quickening his step. The sun was just below the horizon, the darkness covering the world around him with its thick and peaceful blanket. The moonlight shone over everything… Especially the police cars at his front door.
Gaara froze in the neighbor's yard, staring at his own front door through the flashing red and blue lights. Several police cars dotted the road and he could see policemen moving back and forth, a couple unrolling the bright yellow tape, while a reporter lingered on the sidelines taking pictures. Gaara just stood there staring, not really believing what he was seeing.
Then his feet seemed to move on their own and suddenly he was racing across the lawn, ducking under the tape and moving through the front door. He vaguely heard the yells from the policemen, but really didn't care. He just ran into the house, and landed smack against a large uniformed man's arms, catching him before he tripped right into the crime scene. Gaara's ears filled with fuzz from pure shock and he couldn't hear what was being said to him. All he could do was stare at the sight in the room and go completely still.
The living room didn't look like his living room anymore. Nothing had really changed about the room; all the furniture was in the same places and all the decorations hanging and dusty on the walls. But there was an added layer coloring the dull dark carpet, wet and black. Blood surrounded the remains of his father, scattered across the floor, looking like a doll that had shattered to pieces. All his limbs were still attached, but they were twisted in ways that the human body had never been meant to bend in. Thankfully his face was turned in the other direction, but the scene was gruesome enough.
Gaara's knees gave out and he crumbled to the ground, the cop holding him following him down to keep him mostly upright. Gaara didn't care. He didn't even feel the arms around him any more.
All he could do was stare at his father's body.
And pray that he didn't turn out like his mother.
