And I am back with another chapter for this story. Got on a nice little binge write for this one. Anyways let's just get on with it and enjoy the chapter!

Ch.4

Roxas entered the kitchen and placed the album down on the table. He had it closed for now because he wanted to explain everything he could before revealing the photo.

"So…all of this started this morning when I was talking with Ven about what I planned to do with you guys when you got here. And then I brought up something that caused Ven to act the way he was acting. You guys know about the legend of the cursed Twilight Town mansion right?"

"We've all heard rumors and stories about it," Riku said.

"Do any of you believe it's true?" Roxas asked as he sat down at the table while all three shrugged at his question.

"I don't know… we don't hear as much about as you would, since you actually live in the town where it is," Sora said.

"It is a scary thing to think about. All those rumors and stories about people disappearing after going there," Kairi added.

"Well… Ventus seems to believe that the mansion is really cursed. He told me this morning that years ago he went there with a friend of his, and that that friend was 'taken' by the mansion." Roxas paused for a moment before he looked at Sora again. "And just now... Well...Sora I need to ask you something first."

Sora raised an eyebrow, "What is it?"

"Do you… have an older brother?" Roxas asked.

Sora's eyes widened for a moment, before a little sadness filled his eyes. He sighed as he nodded, "I do… or I did I guess. I never really talk about it."

"What do you mean?" Kairi asked with a confused look, giving the indication that Sora hadn't even told Kairi. Riku also gave a similar look as Kairi did.

Sora sighed. "My mom and dad don't like to talk about it, but they told me one day that my older brother disappeared one day. He disappeared a few months before I was born…"

"Did your parents ever tell you anything about your brother?" Roxas questioned.

Sora shook his head as he lowered his head. "No. I've seen a few pictures of him… but other than that I really don't know anything about him. My mom and dad really don't like talking about him…"

Roxas sighed, now feeling bad that he had asked Sora questions on a touchy subject. He wanted to apologize, but he had no idea what to say. And it seemed neither did Kairi or Riku. They just placed a hand on Sora's back, hoping it would be comforting. Roxas sat there for a moment as a silence had come over all of them. But now he had more information. He couldn't believe it, but what Ventus said might just have been true. "Was his name Vanitas?"

Sora's head shot up, his eyes wide. "How… How did you know that?"

"It's what Ven told me. Apparently they were friends when they were young," Roxas answered as he opened up the photo album and showed everyone the photo of Ventus and Vanitas.

"He does look kind of like you," Kairi commented as she looked at the photo.

Sora didn't say anything, he only stared deeply at the photo. His mind lost in his thoughts. There was a sadness in his eyes as he looked at the photo. Out of curiosity he slowly flipped the page and found that there were more photos of Ventus and Vanitas together. Photos of them standing nicely and smiling and others of them playing around and goofing off.

"And you said that Ventus believe that his friend...Vanitas… was taken by the mansion?" Riku asked after a moment.

"Well Ventus didn't tell me everything. But he said Vanitas was taken by the mansion, which means he must have gone there with Vanitas when he was younger."

Kairi frowned, "That's so sad to hear. Ventus still seems rather upset about it even today. I do hope he will be all right." Kairi paused for a moment before looking over at Sora, who was still looking through the album. "Are you okay Sora?"

"Yeah...It's just… nice to be able to see more photos of Vanitas for once," Sora muttered, his focus still on the photos. After a moment he closed the album and looked back at Roxas, "Sorry… I'll look through more of it later if that is alright. But… what does all this mean then?"

"Um…" Roxas started, trying to regather his thoughts. "So my point was… Ventus thinks that the mansion took Vanitas. He believed in the supposed curse that is in there. But… that can't be real right? There has to be some logical explanation for what happened right?"

"I don't know…" Kairi started. "That mansion is rather mysterious. I also did some research on it along with everything else I could learn about Twilight Town. Though the mansion was the hardest thing to find information on, there seems to be hardly anything about it online. I did find a website that had a bunch of old newspapers about the mansion though."

Roxas's eyes widened with curiosity. "What did you find out? Anything about the curse or something?"

"Well... it's hard to explain," Kairi said as she opened up her backpack and pulled out a folder. "I printed off all the information for some reason… Just a feeling I guess… that I might need it."

She pulled out bunch of pieces of paper and placed them on the table. Roxas, Riku, and Sora leaned in to look at what was said on the papers. All of them were articles that looked like they belonged to newspapers, some far older than others. Though the strangest part was most of the text in the articles were faded or blurred, making most of the text hard to read.

"The oldest thing I could find about the manor was it's creation. It apparently was built over two hundred years ago. And that when it was built its name was 'The Twilight Manor'." Kairi picked up one of the papers. "From what I could read here, it's said that The Twilight Manor was a mansion that was said to hold many rooms and that it was to be open to the public. Kind of like a hotel. It was going to hold fun parties and other events."

"Does that article say who was the owner of the mansion?" Roxas asked.

Kairi shook her head. "No that's one of the parts that is blurred out. I tried to look that up on it's own, but I literally could not find anything about who the owner of the mansion was."

"Dang…" Roxas sighed as his shoulders slumped. He knew it didn't mean a whole lot, but he was genuinely curious about the mansion's origins. Though maybe if they could learn something about the owner, it would help, but for now they were at a loss for that.

Riku picked up one of the papers, reading over the article before he spoke aloud, "This one says that the mansion didn't even stay open for a year. It mysteriously closed after a few months. No word was given as to why it closed or if it would ever open up again. The owner… the name is blurred out… they would not answer any questions pertaining to the mansion."

Sora now picked up a piece paper. "Though it says here, there were rumors throughout the years that it was going to re-open several times, but it never did. It remained closed." Sora looked at another piece of paper, "Then about ten years after the mansion had first opened, the owner disappeared. No one knew what happened to them."

"The owner of the mansion disappeared?" Roxas asked. Now they seemed to be getting somewhere hopefully. "Like just gone and vanished?"

"That's what it seems," Sora said as he read further into the article. "It says the owner had been living in their mansion on their own ever since it closed. Any workers that had been at the mansion when it was open lost their jobs when it closed. The only one left in the mansion was the owner. Over the years the owner had hardly made contact with anyone outside of the mansion. So when they disappeared, there was not a whole lot of clues leading to where they could have gone. There was a investigation but…" Sora trailed off as he read the next page to the article.

"But what?" Kairi asked.

"One day some of the investigators went to the mansion to search for clues to where the owner could have gone...but they never came back," Sora replied.

"So people really did vanish after going into the mansion...all after the owner vanished as well…" Riku commented.

"But that doesn't mean it's some curse or whatever right? It could very well be something else… right?" Roxas asked.

"It's possible… but it's a rather strange thing to happen. Especially after the first few investigators vanished… others went in to try to figure out what happened...but they didn't return either," Sora said.

"Is there anything else interesting to note?" Roxas then asked as he looked through a few more articles, not finding anything else truly significant. "Like maybe how the rumors of the mansion being cursed was created? Or maybe even any about curses or demons or whatever else is apart of the legend."

"Nothing else really," Kairi said. "I think people just started that legend due to the owner and those investigators disappearing. There are a few more articles about various people who snuck into the mansion and never came back, but those stories stopped being told in the newspapers a little less than a hundred years ago."

"Why though? Shouldn't people know that the mansion is taking people? If that is what actually is happening?" Roxas asked. All of this was rather confusing. He still couldn't figure out why and how people could just vanish from a mansion after entering it. There was still so many questions he had.

"I think I have a idea," Riku said as he leaned back in his chair. "If the public knew for a fact that the mansion was taking people and that the curse was real, that could cause a lot of panic. I bet whoever knew about what was going on with the mansion wanted to keep it quiet, so there would be no mass panic or anything."

"And then they finally sealed it off from the public, so no one else could go to the place and also get lost to the mansion," Kairi stated.

"That's why… the stories and rumors died down over the years," Roxas said as he remembered what Ventus had said earlier that morning about it being closed off to the public.

"None of these though answer why the people vanished though… and that is what we all want to know…" Riku said.

"Well that means… we have to go to the mansion and figure that part out," Roxas stated.

The other three stared over at Roxas, all with wide eyes.

"But...all ways of getting to the mansion are closed off. There isn't any way to get there," Riku said.

"And even if we did...if the curse of the mansion is real… wouldn't it be dangerous to go there?" Sora asked.

"Yeah I know… but I just gotta find out about the place. Aren't you guys curious? Why do people disappear when they enter the mansion? I wanna know the reason."

"I do too…" Sora said with a slight sigh. "If I could find out what that mansion does...I would learn what happened to Vanitas. It's just something I want to know I guess."

"But there still isn't any way for us to even get there," Riku restated.

"Well… there may actually be," Kairi said as she picked out one of the piece of paper. "The mansion was built around the same time as the Underground Tunnel Passage System. So when the town was creating all the entrance doors around Twilight Town to connect it all, it says here there was even one tunnel that exited out right near the mansion. But that tunnel was closed when the mansion closed of course."

"Does it still exist? Or did they wall it off or something?" Sora asked.

"I don't know… the article doesn't say," Kairi replied.

Roxas closed his eyes and thought. He thought of the layout of the tunnel system that ran under the town. He had been in there plenty of times before so he was familiar with how everything looked. Suddenly his eyes shot back open as he stood up.

"It's still there! I remember that there has been one tunnel gate that has always been closed. I never once saw it open. That has to be it."

"But did it look like they walled it off behind the gate? If it is then we have no chance of getting there," Riku said.

"I don't know… I never really looked before. But we got to go and see now!" Roxas exclaimed. "We can discover the mystery behind that old mansion."

"Are you sure though? Isn't still dangerous to go there?" Sora asked.

"We would probably get in trouble if we were to get caught," Riku added.

"We won't get caught," Roxas stated as he shook his head. "No one is watching that area. It's abandon. All we gotta do is sneak over there and then sneak back once we discover something."

Kairi looked at Roxas with a concerned look. "What about your brother though? I don't think he would want us to go over there."

"He can't know about this. He'll just overreact or panic again. This has to be just between us."

"Roxas…" Riku said clearing his throat. "You're forgetting though that the tunnel to the mansion is gated off. We don't even know if we can get it open. Even if we did, it may set off an alarm."

Roxas frowned as he looked at Riku, the only one in their group who was fifteen. Roxas didn't know if Riku was being like this because he was fifteen while the rest of them were fourteen and thirteen or if he was general just a downer about most things. Roxas scrunched up his nose before he said, "Why do you gotta be so pessimistic about this?"

Riku shook his head, "I'm not trying to be. Just being realistic. I know you are curious and excited about the mansion. I also am curious about it, but I am just trying to think things through before you go barreling head."

"Fine…" Roxas sighed as he finally sat back down. A moment later a thought came to him. "Oh! I know! My friend Pence might be able to help. He is really good with technology and stuff."

"You sure though? I mean do you really wanna go through with something like this?" Kairi asked.

"This could be the coolest thing we ever do. I promise we can go look around Twilight Town today, but tonight or tomorrow I wanna try to go to the mansion. What do you guys say?"

Sora, Riku, and Kairi looked back and forth between themselves and then Roxas. They seemed to be deeply thinking it over. Roxas took in a deep breath as he waited as patiently as he could. Finally they spoke up.

"I guess we could at least try," Kairi said.

"It would be rather interesting to see that place in person," Sora added.

"If we can get it to work, then let's try to do it," Riku also added.

Roxas smiled, "Great! I'll give Pence a quick call and talk things out with him. This is going to be awesome!"

And that wraps up a big backstory filled chapter. There still is a lot of mystery, but things have been learned. But now what will happen when they go to the mansion? Find out next time!