A/N: Hello, hello. Thank you, reviewers! Whee. Yes, this is indeed Fatal Frame: Americanized. Except I would do a better job Americanizing FF than Hollywood.

Rehd-fawx: Wow. That is creepy. Eeerie coincidence...lol. Thank you for the nice review.

TeoToriFoxfire: Thank you for the nice review! I'm glad I was able to be scary.

NIGHT ONE: THE STRANGLING RITUAL

Hour One: Hathorne Mansion

"High on a hill sits a big old house with something wrong inside it/Spirits haunt the halls and make no effort now to hide it"--The House Upon the Hill, from the Secret Garden

October 3rd, 1986

Seventeen year-old Michelle Hughes had hoped it wouldn't come to this. She had hoped that her brother would come home from that mansion and that his friend Joel would be fine and that everything could go back to normal. But she knew better. The second day that Mark had been gone, she knew better. Something had gone wrong on September 24th, she had sensed it, and now Michelle felt that it was her duty to find out exactly what.

Still, she wished that she could find out exactly what had happened to her brother without going into that creepy old Hathorne Mansion.

As she walked up the old cobbled path to the mansion's entrance, she felt a heaviness in the air. As though hundreds of thousands of terrible things had happened in that house..as though those terrible things refused to leave and saturated the air.

It was at times like this that Michelle hated having a sixth sense. Because of that sixth sense, she saw things everyone else didn't, heard things...felt things. Mark had had that sixth sense, too. He was the only one, other than her long-dead mother, that understood her, and without him Michelle felt so utterly alone.

She secured her brown ponytail, and, gripping the flashlight she'd brought along, she braced herself and pushed the double doors of the Hathorne Mansion open.

Whatever happens, there's no going back now.

Michelle walked into the foyer and looked around. A tarnished brass chandelier dangled from the ceiling, and she could make out some faded portraits on the walls. She noticed a door on the western side of the room, and she walked toward it, certain that her brother could not have stayed in the foyer. She paused then, sensing a presence behind her. She slowly turned around...

Nothing.

She sighed with relief and continued walking toward the door.

As she approached the door, she was aware that someone was watching her. She quickly turned around.

"Mark?"

The person behind her wasn't Mark, though. Michelle was face-to-face with a pale, disheveled-looking man wearing a black t-shirt and khaki pants. She slowly backed toward the door, afraid of what he might attempt, but, just as suddenly as the man had appeared, he vanished. Michelle froze on that spot and fought her urge to run for the doors and get the hell out of there.

I can't leave, she thought, Because Mark's in here. Because he could be hurt. Steeling her nerves, Michelle turned the doorknob and walked into the next room. What she saw sent chills down her spine. The beams on the ceiling were visible, and ropes dangled from them. If she had wanted to, and if the ropes weren't so old, Michelle could probably have climbed up onto the beams.

What are those ropes FOR? Michelle thought. Shaking her head, she walked down the hall. She saw a mirror at the end of the hallway, and laying on the floor in front of it...

That looks like Mom's old camera! Her heart raced, and Michelle walked toward the mirror. When she got there, she realized, with horror, that it was her mother's old camera...and underneath it was her brother's notebook! She carefully picked up the camera and the notebook. Hm. There seemed to be other pages from a different person in there. She carefully opened the notebook and read them:

EDITOR'S NOTE I

August 20

Mr. Thomas wants some background material for his next work. There's reportedly a book about the Hathorne mansion by a folklorist that once lived here. It's a book about all the rumors of human sacrifice rituals and mysterious disappearances of young girls between the ages of eight and sixteen who were invited to the mansion...and never returned.

The author is one Edward Majors, but the title of the book is apparently "Unknown".

August 22

I can't find that book anywhere, but I did do some research on the folklorist. He lived in the Hathorne Mansion to do his research on it, but after some event he and his entire family just...vanished. His book isn't anywhere, but I found a missing persons article from the period when he lived in the house.

EDITOR'S NOTES II

September 10, 11 A.M.

It looks like all those murders in the nearby town and that strange earthquake last week all have something to do with this mansion. I bet Joel's book is going to include all of these events. I wonder if he'll let me include an excerpt in my magazine..?

September 10, 4 P.M.

The entrance door is broken. When did that happen? We're going to have to find another way out, because it won't open.

EDITOR'S NOTES III

September 11

I haven't been feeling well the past few days. Actually, I haven't been feeling well since Cassie took my picture.

What do those ropes mean?

Michelle shuddered and closed the notebook. As she did so, she caught her reflection in the mirror in front of her. But there was the reflection of...someone behind her, too. The reflection of ghostly white woman in a white, medieval-styled dress and long, white-blond hair that fell into her face, obscuring all but her mouth, which was twisted in a wicked, malicious smile...and around the wrists, ankles, and neck of the woman were ropes.

Michelle froze, paralyzed with fear as the woman's reflection moved toward her. She quickly looked behind her. There was no one there.

A ghost?

As the ghost came nearer, she could hear its voice in her mind, as clearly as if the ghost had spoken out loud.

(suffer)

Michelle screamed, and the ghost vanished...