Chapter Twenty-Eight: Memories

"You are walking through the darkness of your mansion's basement. Tell me what you see."

The blackness is absolute. No light shines through to reflect in my eyes. Mokuba is nearby, telling a ghost story. A story about a dragon pendant I bought him for his birthday. There was a ghost story behind it.

"Oh? Tell me about this dragon pendant. You've never mentioned it before now, not even on the report."

This pendant has such strange eyes…they change color and sometimes seem to glow. Mokuba wanted it with a complete determination and desperation he sometimes gets, and because this was a gift in apology for being gone on his birthday after I promised to be there, I couldn't resist. He thought I'd like that it was a curling dragon, but it always seemed to be aware, somehow. Like it was watching us and biding its time.

"It was merely a necklace, Mr. Kaiba. Surely it didn't hold such powers."

It'd almost made me hit my brother! It truly lives up to the curse. It's the reason my brother vanished…

"…Okay. All right. So what did you do next after hearing your brother telling that story?"

A light came on; the nerd herd was discussing details of the story. Then Mokuba changed the topic to something else—his haunted mansion game. I reached them in time to hear him explain the rules of needing five cards to get out of the place. These cards were secreted in places in the maze that had once been our basement.

Everyone started off. I waited with Mokuba in the beginning place and we entered the area together. He wanted to know how his friends were doing in his game.

"Explain more about the setup of the basement."

Mokuba had made it extremely realistic and apt to last awhile. Servants had been assigned roles, some to jump out and scare people, others dressed up to make appearances. Plenty of objects had been placed all over to invoke horror, like a mechanical spider and coffin. In various places, cards had been hidden that took guts to get. Mokuba showed me where one had been—in the mouth of a very realistic, even moving, were-beast. A person had to reach a hand between the teeth and risk getting bitten to get that card.

"Now explain exactly where you went with your brother and who you saw, what you did, and everything else, step-by-step."

After entering the maze, I told my brother how proud I was of what he made. With our flashlight, we kept going through the place. He was slightly worried, thinking it may have been too hard for his friends, so we walked to see how they were all doing.

I noticed that a lot of the decorations and things in the maze were objects I had created before in order to use in amusement parks, but had been rejected for some reason or another. My brother used them well and fit them into the spooky theme.

Mokuba heard a noise and was going to see who had made it, but one of our butlers came up from behind and reported that one of the cards had been taken. It was one from a mechanical spider.

We went first to see if some music was working. Mokuba had ordered it specially from America, some type of Halloween music.

After that, we went to various rooms and areas to check on how everything was doing. At least four rooms were yet untouched, the cards intact.

Then we came across the mechanical spider, but as we had known, it had been defeated by someone in the maze. Mokuba was slightly disappointed, but he hadn't wanted all his friends to fail utterly, so he wasn't too upset.

In fact, we started bantering about made-up words and then whether or not he had been working for me or just receiving an allowance. It was all just part of our usual conversations that we'd have on any given day.

"No ill will towards each other?"

No! We both knew we were teasing, and we weren't bothered by it. My brother was in one of the best moods he could be, and to be honest, so was I. Never had I been so proud of him than I had been at that moment.

The servant found us after that.

He claimed he had been attacked, and I left with him to find Wheeler and remind him that this was all a game. Mokuba was left to continue his search of the maze to check on how his friends were doing.

…That was the last time I saw my brother. That's the last I remember.

"What about hunting for Wheeler?"

Oh, I went into a medieval-like room and looked around, but I never found him there. Just something wet that had dried on a skin rug. The servant I was with was still nervous, but he stayed with me as we went hunting for Wheeler.

That's all I remember.

"No, it's not. Your brother screamed. Did you hear him?"

…

…Yes…yes, I did. It echoed down the corridors, through both fake and real walls.

"What did you do when you heard that, Mr. Kaiba?"

I—I…

"Just take the time, think it through."

…

I tried to find him. The walls went flashing by, the servant left behind. It was my brother's scream. I'd know it anywhere. And when it went silent, I feared terrible things. Wheeler attacking another person was what I first thought, but when Mokuba went silent like he did, I worried that something even more brutal had happened.

The maze was too confusing for me, though. After my brother went silent, I had little chance of finding them. But I wouldn't give up. I called his name every once in awhile, fearing he was unconscious or even…dead. In the dark, when one is desperate, one's mind fills with nightmares much more easily.

I couldn't say how long I stumbled around the area, but I eventually found a room shining dimly ahead, and I could make out two figures there. One was short, roughly my brother's size. Even with my hopes raised and from the distance in the dim light, I was certain it was he.

The other figure wasn't too much higher, and I would have recognized that hair anywhere. It was Yugi. They were talking.

"Did you hear the conversation at all?"

Yes. Yugi was questioning whether that scream had been real, and my brother admitted it had been him. But Mokuba said he must have had some sort of hallucination or something. Everything was just fine now. Still, he grimaced once and put a hand on his chest as if it pained him, but Yugi didn't seem to realize it.

By that time, I was approaching swiftly, and I made no attempt to conceal my sounds. Both turned toward me and Mokuba smiled.

"I'm just fine, big brother!" he claimed despite my worried questions. "The servants came as soon as I screamed, and they'll tell you, I'm not injured!"

I brought the attention to his chest grimly. After a little pressure, Mokuba admitted it pained him, but there was nothing there. Wait…

"Was something there, Mr. Kaiba?"

He…he-he was trying to hide it. Something was there, but it was higher than where he lifted his shirt. I saw a dark spot on his skin from at the very edge of where he had lifted the garment. And when Mokuba replaced his shirt, I noticed it lined up perfectly with where he usually wore the dragon pendant.

It was a burn mark, a scorch.

That damned pendant was making the curse come true! It was slowly eating my brother! It had to be why he was injured. The pendant, the dragon pendant! It was that thing that had destroyed my brother…the curse was awakened once more and it has to be why my brother is gone!

"Mr. Kaiba, stay focused on your memory. What happened with your brother after that? Where did you go?"

Someone must have taken him away after we left Yugi, after I heard a strange voice and then saw nothing but blackness…

"You were attacked after leaving Yugi?"

Someone knocked me out and took my brother. Right as it happened…I realized I had failed. That necklace of my brother's, of course someone would go after it! It had been bothering me forever. It was the reason I had nearly hit my brother once. As soon as my eyes broke contact with it, I had been myself again.

That talisman had been making its move since we first brought it home.

Someone was probably attacking my brother because they, too, had fallen under the charm of it …it could have been anyone in our basement. That necklace could make anyone act strange.

"The dragon pendant?"

No…not the dragon pendant. There was no dragon pendant.

The necklace Yugi gave my brother.

"Slow down, Mr. Kaiba. No dragon pendant? But you said you gave it to your brother. And now you say Yugi gave something to your brother?"

Yes…it was another pendant like the Millennium Puzzle. Before I reached them, I saw Yugi point at the necklace that my brother was wearing. And Mokuba was really excited when he looked down at it, though he'd had it for longer than just then. It was something he'd wanted for a long time. But I never gave it to him. I never gave him any necklace.

Yugi had said, "Mokuba, I'm so glad to see you wearing that gift I gave to you."

My brother said in return, "Are you joking? I've been wanting something like this forever! It's my favorite object!"

It was a pyramid-like amulet, smaller than Yugi's, and yet…I had never known my brother had wanted it. Mokuba never told me about it. Still, it was inevitable that I saw him wearing it after Yugi had given it to him, yet, whenever I asked him about it, he never replied to my questions. So here, at last, I learned who had given him the necklace. When I reached them, he had hidden it back under his shirt where he usually wore it. The card locket was out in front.

"Mr. Kaiba, tell me once more exactly what happened after leaving Yugi. What did you hear? What did you notice?"

Footsteps behind me…a low chuckle…blackness swirling—we were around dry ice…nothing more after that.

Absolutely nothing. I was sitting in the darkness, waiting for something. But I don't know what.

The next thing I recall is being in the main starting point of the maze with Yugi and the others with me. They had opened the door with their cards, but everyone was asking where Mokuba had gone to. Even the servants were looking for him.

Everyone started trying to find him in the maze, flashlights distributed, people working to get the real lights back on. But nothing of my brother did we find. Nothing at all. Some of the maggots seemed to have gotten out of their place and were wriggling on the ground, nearly all of the rooms had their cards removed, a few paintings were disheveled like they had been rearranged, the fire had gone out, the scary music's tape had run out, and the stuffed were-creature had been destroyed.

That was it. Nothing of my brother around at all.

"Are you sure that's all you remember?"

No more! I don't know any more! Just blackness! AAAAAHHHHHH!

"Mr. Kaiba! Are you all right? Can you hear me?"

"Oh, good! Here, help hold him down, tightly. Don't let him move. Mr. Kaiba, I'm going to get you out of this trance—nothing like this has never happened before. Calm down. Stop trying to stand, Mr. Kaiba! When I count to three, you will open your eyes and be back in the psychiatrist's office. One…two…"