Chapter 16: Hawthorn House
When Shiro received the call, he felt like the world was collapsing in on him, only barely keeping it together by being reminded that Yukio was still there.
So, instead of breaking down, Shiro raced to True Cross.
On arriving, he found Yukio being worried over by three of the boys he taught, his son shaking and barely holding himself together.
"Yukio!" Shiro called out to his son.
"Dad!" Yukio cried out.
Shiro was quick to embrace his son, to ensure himself that at least Yukio was okay.
"Dad, Rin's gone." Yukio sobbed into Shiro's chest. "That demon showed up and took him."
Shiro only held Yukio tighter, running a comforting hand down his back.
"Shh, it's okay." Shiro comforted, like Yukio was just an upset child.
And really, no matter his position, Yukio was still just a child.
"It's not okay." Yukio denied. "I-I was m-meant to watch him. But I-I let him get taken anyway. He'd still be here if I'd just looked after him."
Yukio wanted his dad to get angry, to punish him for losing Rin, because that's what he deserved.
"It's not your fault, Yukio." Shiro only offered assurances instead. "It's that demon's."
Truthfully, there was a part of Shiro that wanted to yell at Yukio for losing Rin, but it was squashed down by the rational side of him, who knew that a fifteen-year-old, no matter how well trained, could not be expected to keep his eyes on someone one-hundred percent of the time.
Steeling himself, Shiro turned to the three boys, who had just been standing around awkwardly since Shiro's arrival.
"Report!" Shiro ordered.
"Uh," Miwa is the first to stand at attention. "We passed Rin following another child on the way to class and didn't think anything of it until sensei appeared, looking for Rin and explaining that there shouldn't have been another child. We raced after Rin, finding him at the edge of the wards with a group of children on the other side, they then grabbed Rin and pulled him out of the wards where this woman then revealed herself to be a demon, grabbed all the children and ran off. We ran after her but eventually lost her trail."
Shiro took a deep breath and let it out.
With how one of the children had been seen willingly helping Mami in her kidnapping of Miss Akami, he should have expected for her to use the same tactic to bypass the wards around True Cross.
The small group looked towards the sound of approaching footsteps, finding Coraline and Mephisto approaching, with some of the Exorcist not that far behind to survey the scene.
Shiro's eyes widened when he spotted Kuro lying limp in Coraline's arms.
"I found him on the way here, next to a half-eaten fish." Coraline explained as she carefully handed off the familiar to Shiro. "Looks like he was poisoned."
Shiro sighed slightly in relief when he caught that Kuro was still breathing, hopefully meaning that the demon had only been given something to make him sleep rather than to hurt him.
Turning to the three students, Shiro handed Kuro to one of them.
"Take him to Mrs Moriyama, she'll be able to look over him and give him an antidote to whatever was used." Shiro instructed.
The boys seemed reluctant to leave but didn't disobey the Paladin, leaving the Exorcist group.
Once the boys were gone, Shiro quickly turned around to face Mephito, glaring accusingly.
"If I find out that you let this happen, I'll make you wish you were dead." Shiro threatened.
"Shiro, I'm hurt." Mephisto said, faking being offended. "You think that I would let little Rin get taken away again? My wards are made to keep out demons, not children."
Shiro glared, not believing the demon for a second.
Mephisto prided himself on being all-knowing so that he could be the master manipulator. So, it was unlikely that the demon hadn't been aware of the Beldam-controlled child entering into True Cross, or Mami waiting at just the other side of the wards.
"We can discuss how much to blame Mephisto later." Coraline diverted. "Right now, we need to focus on retrieving the children immediately."
"But it has the last child, isn't it going to just run with them now?" One of the team asked.
Coraline shook her head. "A Beldam can't just up and abandon their lair." She said. "When building their lair, they become tied to it. She'll return to it and undo the bindings, and likely do something the children to ensure they can't be taken from her again. So, we need to find her lair before that happens."
Shiro frowned heavily. "We still have a handful of locations left to search. Our forces will be split if we're going to investigate them all at once."
Coraline nodded in agreement.
"Do you maybe have anything that can be used to track Rin?" She asked.
Yukio gasped, scrabbling to bring something out from under his uniform, a carved charm attached to a necklace.
"The pendant you gave to Rin." Shiro recognised.
"I gave Rin a mirror of this. If I made them correctly, they can be used to track each other, within a certain range." Yukio explained, shaking slightly.
He really hoped that he'd made the pendants correctly, and that Mami wasn't taking Rin out of the tracking range.
"Does somebody have a map on them?" Shiro questioned his team.
"Here!" One of the team came forward, pulling a map out.
The map was laid flat on the ground with Yukio's pendant held over it, the young Exorcist chanting some words followed by Rin's name. The pendant began to swing on its own, tracing around the map in a circle before pulling in one direction at an angle, like it was being pulled by a magnet, touching down on the map.
"We have them." Shiro smiled for the first time in a while. "Good job, son." He patted Yukio on the back.
Coraline scrutinised the pendant on the map closely.
"She's still on the move." The British Exorcist concluded. "She's still moving towards her lair."
Looking at the map, Yukio and Shiro realised that the pendant was still moving slowly across the map.
"Cross reference where the pendant is currently pointing with the location of True Cross and compare it to our current list of locations. See if we can figure out where the demon's lair is before she reaches it." Shiro instructed the team.
"Yes, sir." The team responded.
They quickly took note of where the pendant was pointing on the map and got to work.
"I hope Rin will be okay." Yukio mumbled to himself.
"Don't worry, the kid survived being with the Beldam for seven years, I'm sure he can survive a little longer." Coraline assured. "Besides, I'm pretty sure the Cat is following them, since he's not anywhere around here."
"The cat?" Yukio questioned. "You mean your cat?"
Coraline nodded. "He's the one who helped me when I encountered my first Beldam as a child, and he'll help the other children."
As Shiro started preparing his team for the raid on Mami's lair, he once again wondered about Coraline's cat, knowing that there had to be something supernatural about the creature. Considering how old Coraline described herself as being when explaining her first Beldam encounter to him and the age she currently was, her cat had to be very old by now, yet could apparently keep up with a fleeing Beldam when trained Exorcists couldn't.
…
In a short amount of time, Shiro and his team had assembled, ready to set off and storm Mami's lair.
"Dad, please let me help." Yukio begged.
Shiro sighed.
His older son had been begging to be part of the team since the preparation had started.
On one hand, Shiro wanted his son to stay away from the Beldam case, to not risk the safety of both of his sons at the same time. And there was also the risk of Yukio letting his emotions inform his decisions since Rin was involved.
But Shiro also knew that he couldn't just say no to his son, it would eat Yukio up inside to be left out of the team, feeling as if he wasn't able to do anything in protecting his brother. And this time, there was no younger brother to watch over to keep Yukio occupied from the hunt for the one who took Rin.
"Fine." Shiro relented. "But I need you to promise that you won't let your emotions get in the way. I know your instincts will tell you to protect Rin at all costs but remember that there are the other children that also need to be rescued and returned to their own families."
It hurt Shiro to insert this stipulation, as he too wanted to priorities his own son, but he knew that he needed to act professional in this. Those other children also had parents who loved them dearly and who wanted nothing more than their children back, just like Shiro, and the man could not put his own wants above them, no matter how much he wanted to.
Yukio bit his lip but nodded. "I won't let my emotions control me." He promised.
The teams loaded into their vans and set off, following the direction Yukio's pendant was pointing towards.
After a while, they noticed that the pendant has come to a stop.
"Looks like we finally have her lair." Shiro commented. "Hawthorn House."
He recognised the location from the list, the house had been near the bottom of the list, labelled as "unlikely", as the house was meant to be occupied.
"Researching now." Yukio said, pulling out his laptop to search all the information they had on the location.
After a couple of minutes, they had information.
"Hawthorn House, owned by a Mister Tomoe Hachi." Yukio read the information aloud. "Lives on his own with no other close family and is apparently well-known in the village that's close by."
Shiro hummed and messaged for a few of the team members to break off from the group and enter the local village instead to interview people.
After an annoyingly long time of being cooped up in the van, the Exorcists finally arrived at Hawthorn House, a rather large property that seemed deceptively homely, considering that a Beldam was currently using it for her lair.
"Spread out and start laying down the barriers, we need to make escape as hard as possible." Shiro instructed as soon as the team started spilling out of the vans.
Coraline looked up at the house and once again found herself briefly thrown back into her memories.
Though the entire building looked different. Coraline couldn't help but compare it to the Pink Palace, where she had met her first Beldam, the Other Mother, as a child.
"The place is big, and that's just the stuff above ground." Coraline commented. "A lot of places for Mami to hide."
Pulling a suitcase out of the van, Coraline opened it to reveal many stones among bubble wrap to keep them from damage. The stones were of varying shapes and sizes, all with a naturally formed hole or two in them.
"Hag Stones." Coraline explained as she began handing them out to every member of the team. "They're a natural protection against the manipulation of demons like Beldams, and looking through them can reveal things to you through a Beldam's spell."
Shiro looked over the stone he'd been given, recognising it as being the same sort of stone Coraline had given his son. He didn't know if Rin had it on him when he was taken, but if Coraline was telling the truth about the Hag Stones, then Shiro hoped he did.
Opening another compartment in the suitcase, Coraline pulled out what looked like a set of optician glasses, though there were no lenses in the eye pieces, and there was some sort of metallic claw coming off one of the eye pieces. Coraline then took one of the Hag Stones for herself and slotted it into the metallic claw before putting on the glasses.
The purpose of the eyepiece became apparent when Coraline moved the claw holding the stone so that the hole was in front of her eye, allowing her to see through the hole without needing to hold the stone herself.
"Sorry, I only have one." Coraline shrugged to the other Exorcists.
Shortly later, while the Exorcists were just about to enter the house, Shiro's phone range. The team members he'd sent to the village reporting in on what they'd found.
"Apparently, Mr Tomoe was seen only yesterday." Shiro explained to the rest of the team.
"But then, shouldn't he have noticed the demon and children in his house?" One of the team questioned.
"Mr Tomoe mentioned his granddaughter and her children coming to stay with him to the people in the town. Obviously, our demon and children." Shiro explained further.
It didn't take Yukio long to pull up the necessary information.
"Mr Tomoe's granddaughter went missing years ago, though he apparently never gave up looking for her." Yukio said, showing off a picture of said granddaughter, who looked very similar to Mami's human form.
"So, Mami took advantage of Mr Tomoe's grief and desire to see his grandchild again, as well as his likely poor eyesight, to sneak her way into his home." Coraline theorised. "Allowing her and the children into his home without the need to kill him."
"Does that mean that the old man's still alive?" One of the team asked.
Coraline shrugged. "With us finding the lair, there's no need for Mami to keep him alive, but there's also no reason for her to kill him either." She said.
"We'll have to see if we come across him." Shiro said. "For now, let's move in."
…
Using the floor plan of the house, the team split into groups to enter the house at different locations.
As soon as they entered the house, the Exorcists could already tell that something was off.
"Is it just me feeling a little disoriented?" One of the team asked.
"It'll be Mami's magic, some Beldams can warp reality within their lairs." Coraline explained. "It's only going to get worse the further we get to the heart."
"Warped how?" Yukio asked.
"Things becoming bigger, rooms bending, doors that shouldn't be there, doors that are no longer there, things floating. It really depends on how strong the Beldam is." Coraline said. "Mami seems fairly young, in terms of being a demon anyway, so I don't expect the warping to be worse than what I've already experienced fighting other Beldams."
The had group travelled further in, the building becoming even more warped around them, when another one of the groups radioed in.
"We've found Mr Tomoe." Said one of their teammates on the other end of the radio. "He's alive but doesn't appear to be aware."
The group turned to Coraline for an explanation.
"Probably an effect of Mami using her magic on him to stop him from questioning things and then withdrawing it now that he serves no use. Provided that she didn't influence him to do anything bad, he should be fine." Coraline shrugged.
The group travelled even deeper, things becoming even more warped than before.
"I don't think this place even fits the building plan anymore." One of the team muttered.
Coraline hummed in agreement.
"This is more reality warping than I'd expect from a Beldam like Mami, considering her original set up relied on mental warping rather than reality warping. Those children must have really boosted her powers." She commented.
Shiro and Yukio remained quiet, knowing that Rin was likely what allowed Mami to have so much power.
Hearing something, Shiro quickly held up a hand to halt everyone.
"Be ready." Shiro warned.
There was a pause of silence.
Then emaciated creatures burst out from the shadows and through the walls to attack.
Rin sniffled and tried his best to stop the tears spilling down his face, which he wasn't doing a very good job at.
The other children were in the room with him, playing with various toys that littered the rather tall room around them. Some of the others were on beds, like Rin, while others chose to play on the floor.
Mami, thankfully, was in the other room, preparing something.
The other children had tried to include Rin in their play, but the boy had proved too upset to involve, trying to get away from the friends he'd wanted to desperately to see only a few hours ago.
The only friend Rin let close was June, who did her best to comfort him despite her hazy eyes and slurred speech.
After another stuttering sob, Kiki looked up at Rin.
"If you can't calm down, Mami can give you some special tea." Kiki told Rin innocently. "It helped June calm down after Mami first brought her home, though I think it made June a little too tired since she doesn't want to play at all."
Rin was old enough to know what "drugged" meant, and he did not want to end up like June.
So, Rin slipped off the bed and headed to the door, hoping that Mami was too busy in the other room to notice him leaving.
Opening the door, Rin immediately froze when he was met by the horrifyingly familiar sight of emaciated bodies.
The monsters of the city patrolled the hallway outside.
Rin's breathing became quick and short as those lidless eyes turned towards him.
Before the creatures could move, Mami appeared and shut the door, somehow keeping the creatures out.
"T-the m-monsters…from…from the…" Rin struggled to comprehend what he saw, turning to Mami for comfort even though he knew that he shouldn't.
"What?"
"The monsters are here?"
"Are they going to kill us?"
"We need to leave!"
The other children started to panic.
"The people who took you must have led them here, they've put you all in danger." Mami said gravely. "Don't worry, they can't get through that door, I've put special protections on it."
Rin found himself once again falling for Mami's words.
How else could the monsters from the city, which he'd been told was all just a shared dream caused by Mami, be here?
Still, Rin felt as though something wasn't quite right.
"Soon, I'm going to take us all far away from here." Mami promised. "Where the monsters won't be able to find us ever again. I just need to prepare something first, so we can't be separated again."
With that, Mami went back into the other room.
"I wonder where we'll go."
"Maybe a faraway country, like India."
"No, if should be a cool place, like in a sea base under the ocean."
"Better yet, a moon base."
As the others came up with fantastical places that Mami would take them, Rin settled back on the bed, confused in his thoughts.
June mumbling something brought him out of his thinking.
"What?" Rin asked his friend.
"Don' be'eve 'er." June slurred.
Rin sighed, feeling his tears return.
"I don't know what to believe." He admitted.
Catching a flash of black in the corner of his eye, Rin turned to see that a black cat was now in the room.
"Kuro?" Rin mumbled hopefully.
His expression fell when he realised that the cat wasn't Kuro, though he did recognise it as the one that walked around True Cross campus.
The other children failed to notice the cat, too wrapped up in their conversation, as it stalked its way over to Rin.
"Uh, hi?" Rin said quietly.
The cat looked over to the door that Mami was though, his ears twitching, as if listening for the demon.
Apparently satisfied that Mami wasn't going to appear, the cat then started pawing at Rin's chest.
At the feeling of his necklaces pressing against his skin, Rin gained a vague understanding of what the cat wanted and pulled out the stone he'd been given by the Exorcist lady and the pendant his brother had given him.
The cat then pointedly nudged the stone.
"This thing?" Rin questioned.
Despite showing nothing all the other times that he had looked through it, Rin once again brought the stone up to his eye and gasped.
Through the hole in the stone, the room he was in looked different, much smaller and with less vibrant colours.
Looking at his friends, Rin found that their eyes were clouded over through the stone, except for June's, and all of them had some sort of thread coming off of them then led through the doors Mami was through.
Still looking through the stone, Rin looked over to the cat, only to find him gone.
Lowering the stone, Rin caught sight of a black tail disappearing under the bed. But when checking under the bed, Rin found nothing there.
Rin looked down at the stone in his palm and realised that the Exorcist lady really had given it to him for a reason, and now the cat was telling him to use it.
Wandering around the room, Rin looked at it through the stone but didn't find anything new of note. Then, he came to a stop in front of the doors that Mami was through, gazing at the window that was in the door.
Carefully, Rin pulled himself up to peak through the window, finding a still human-looking Mami drawing something on the ground and placing candles.
Putting the stone in front of his eye, Rin was shocked to see Mami's demonic form instead.
Rin quickly ducked from the window before Mami could spot him.
"Do I see the truth?" Rin wondered to himself.
Was that why he was given the stone? Because it broke through the illusion?
Suddenly, Rin remembered the monsters outside, and how they made him question the truth.
If the stone showed Rin the truth, then it'd tell him if Mami was being truthful or not, right?
So, carefully and quietly, Rin snuck over to the door and opened it only slightly, so that he could see the horrifying creatures in the hallway.
Then, Rin lifted the stone to his eye and immediately cried out in horror.
Coraline cried as she looked at the creatures currently attacking her group, doing little to defend herself against them, forcing Shiro and Yukio to defend her.
"These demons look like what Rin described from that imaginary city." Yukio grunted as he fired off shots, careful not to hit any of the team.
"Can a Beldam bring imaginary creatures to life with their reality warping?" Shiro asked Coraline as he defended her.
Coraline didn't respond, only continuing to look at the attacking creatures with a deep sadness.
"What's the matter with you?" Shiro questioned, wondering why Coraline was suddenly refusing to fight.
"There…" Coraline stopped, unable to bring herself to say it. "Look through your stones. Just look."
While Coraline's special glasses allowed her to continuously look through her Hag Stone, all the other Exorcists had yet to use theirs because of the sudden attack, meaning that the specialist was currently seeing something the others weren't.
Getting some space from the creatures, Yukio was the first to hold his Hag Stone up to his eye.
He then immediately almost dropped it, horror written all over his face.
Concerned at both Coraline and his son's reactions, Shiro brought his own Hag Stone to his eye.
"Oh, fuck." Shiro swore.
Through the small hole, Shiro still saw the creatures, but they were now silhouetted with a small and emaciated figure inside each.
Children stared at Shiro with empty eyes, expressions of terror frozen on all of their faces.
"These children, I recognise them." Shiro said in disgust. "They're the dead children from the Beldam's old lair."
The rest of the team gasped in shock, suddenly finding themselves reluctant to do anything but defend themselves against the creatures.
Coraline looked pained.
"Some Beldams will have their previous victims linger around them as ghosts, but I've never seen something like this before." She said.
Despite the new revelation, the ghost creatures still continued to attack the Exorcists, seemingly unable to understand any attempts to reason with them. Meaning that the team had to fight, despite their reservations.
"They just keep coming." Yukio gritted his teeth.
"The demon killed a lot of children." Another member of the team said gravely.
In the end, it wasn't the Exorcists of the ghost creatures that ended the fight, it was the house itself.
"I think the Beldam is warping things even more." Coraline said, wobbling on her feet as the ground shook.
One of the team looked over to her, only for their eyes to widen.
"Look out!" They shouted.
But it was too late, Coraline only had time to look down and see the ground given way underneath her feet before she fell.
"Ah!" Coraline cried out alongside Yukio as they both fell through the floor.
"No!" Not even thinking, Shiro jumped after them, Yukio specifically, not wanting to be separated from his son.
And before the rest of the team could do anything, the floor sealed right back up, leaving them to deal with the ghost creatures while three of their team was separated down below.
Author's note: Please comment
I have had that reveal planned since near the start of the story.
The creatures are actually Mami's ghost children.
The creatures are actually inspired by the ghosts from the final arc of a manga called "Ghost Hunt", which I highly recommend (there's an anime that follows the manga rather closely, but the final and conclusive arc wasn't adapted for some reason).
Trying not to be too spoilery, but the ghosts in the final arc are dead children, which look like emaciated, pot-bellied figures, linked in to how they died. And I based the creatures on how I remember them looking.