The Information
There were loud footsteps that trailed down the hall and no one said anything as the door was flung open and a man walked in.
"I'm in the middle of work and I get a call from the police informing me that my house caught fire. What is the meaning of this!? I thought your job was to catch these stupid ghosts; not burn my house down!"
"I can assure you we did not mean for that to happen. We were-"
"Oh you didn't mean that to happen?" Mr. Hoen said, cutting Naru off. This made him pissed. "Then I guess its okay than. All if forgiven. Who the hell do you think is going to pay for all these damages? It's not like I have money falling out of my ass and I can just replace everything! Now I want to know how you're going to fix this!"
"We will do everything we can to prevent this from happening again. Though, having you yell is not going to get anyone anywhere," The sharpness in his voice made Mr. Hoen go quiet. "What happened to your kitchen is unknown to us due to the fact that every single one of my team was in this rom. If you would wait for me to finish processing my tapes instead of bursting in here accusing everyone, we might know what really happened." Mr. Hoen remained quiet, but never once did the anger look from his face fade. "If you continue to accuse my team of something, they did not do, I will have no choice but to pack up and leave."
"I don't want to find anymore damages done to my house. If it wasn't for the fact that my sister asked you to come here, then I would have never even let you in my house." He said after a minute of silence.
"You're sister?" Bou-san asked, a little confused.
"Yes, my sister. She continues to believe in all those ridicules things. Truthfully, I think you are all frauds," He sounded so proud of himself as she said this. "but I thought I would humor her this one time. Don't make me regret it." Then he left.
The room remained silent for a moment before someone spoke up.
"Did he just say we were frauds?" Everyone looks to Bou-san, who had his eyes on the door. "Wasn't he the one who told us to come?"
"That was what I thought," Ayako leaned back in the couch.
"He came to the office, but he wasn't the one who wanted us to come," Naru said as he reached for the file on the table. He opened it and looked through it. "His wife was."
"But he said sister," Bou-san pointed at the door as if the man was still there.
"What if we were mistaken?" Ayako asked. "What if the woman we met was his sister, not the wife? We just assumed she was because they had the same last name, but we could be wrong."
"No, she was the wife," Naru said, looking intently into the file. "That man wasn't Mr. Hoen."
Yasuhara walked down the street, humming to himself. He was on his way back from the library, and he had some new, interesting information to tell Naru.
"It caught fire?" said one of the women Yasuhara was walking past. He slowed his pace a little, listening to their conversation. "Good. That place needs to burn to the ground."
"Airu, don't say things like that!" whispered the brunette next to her. Yasuhara looked over his shoulder to find that the woman had paused in their walk. "For all you know, we could be next."
"Next? Yea, right! As long as we stay away from that disgusting house, we will be fine. I mean, it's only ever happened when someone was on the property."
Curiosity taking over, Yasuhara turned over and walked the short distance between him and the girl, wearing the brightest smile he could muster.
"Hello," He said. Both women looked up at him, surprised for a second, before relaxing and smiling back. "I hate to bother you two lovely ladies on this wonderful day, but I'm here investigating that house you both were just talking about. I was wondering if you could answer some of my questions." The women looked at each other nervously, not sure if they should or not. "Don't worry, I'm not with the newspaper or any TV station. I am just a simple bystander who would like to get as much information as possible on that house."
"Are you looking to buy it or something?" The brunette said defensively. Yasuhara was shocked a little at the tone, but pushed it aside and smiled a little more.
"No, my boss is currently helping them with some…issues they are having and he asked me to collect information. Please, anything and everything you say will be kept a secret between me and my boss."
"It's haunted."
"Airu!" The brunette looked at her friend, shocked.
"What? It's not like he could do anything bad anyway," Airu said, turning to her friend. "Even if he does spread the information around, who is going to care? We all know it is true."
"That it is haunted?" Yasuhara asked as he pulled out his pencil and began to take notes on the blank piece of paper he had prepared.
"Not only haunted, but possessed. Do you know how many times things have moved in that house?" Airu turned her full attention o Yasuhara and began to go off on everything she knew. "The last two times I was there, the front door has changed locations. Not only that, but it seems the doorways and rooms themselves change. The first time I was there, the bathroom was on the left side on the second floor hallway. When I went over again a few months later, it was on the right on the first floor."
"Could it be they had two bathrooms?" Yasuhara asked, but the woman just shook her head.
"I asked about it, and they said they only had one bathroom and it was on the first floor. But I swear, it was on the second floor before."
"What about the third time you went over?"
"It was back on the second floor." Silence took them over as Yasuhara quickly wrote this down.
"That's not all," The brunette shifted uncomfortable as she looked anywhere but Yasuhara. "I went over one day because my boy kicked his ball on their yard. When I knocked on the front door to ask if I could get it back, no one answer, so I thought that maybe no one was home. So I went back there by myself but when I went back there, some little kid had the ball. I asked for it back, but they just laughed and ran inside the house."
"What happened next?" Yasuhara asked when the woman paused for a few minutes.
"I knocked on the door, trying to get it back, but instead of the little girl answering, Mr. Hoen answered and yelled at me. I told him his daughter took my sons ball, but he said he didn't have any children nor was there any on his property. Then he pointed to the yard and told me my sons ball was right there and to get off his property."
"So wait, a little girl kidnapped your son's ball and ran in the house, but according to Mr. Hoen, there were no children there and that your son's ball was in his yard?" Yasuhara asked, trying to sum up everything.
The woman shifted uncomfortably again before nodding. "The scary part was that he was right. My son's ball was where it had landed back in the yard."
Yasuhara wrote this all down before looking back up at the women. "What about the previous owners? Did anything happen with them? Do you know any reports or notice anything out of the ordinary?"
"No, not really. The Sontas were really nice. They rarely came out of the house and when they did, they looked a little…out of it."
"What do you mean out of it?" Yasuhara flipped the page, making more room to write.
"Well, Mr. Sontas wife was ill. She had been pregnant a few months before they moved in and well…she had a miscarriage. Apparently, she was so upset, that she got extremely ill. Mr. Sonta had to work three jobs and take care of her, so he didn't get much sleep." Airu said, trying to think more about the old neighbor.
"From what I heard, he was sick a lot himself too, but he never showed it because he wanted his wife to get better." The brunette chimed in, seeming a little more comfortable with the conversation.
"Do you know what happened to them?" Yasuhara asked. He already knew what had happened to them, but he wanted to see if what he had found was correct.
"They moved out, what was it…two years ago?" Airu looked at her friend, not sure of her answer.
"Two years ago?" Yasuhara asked, complete surprise filling his expression.
"Yea, about two years ago, they moved out. Why?" Airu asked, not understanding his surprise.
"No reason. I just have one more question. Did you happen to see them move out or was this something you heard?
"We saw the moving truck and we saw people carrying boxes out of the house, but no, we never saw Mr. or Mrs. Sontas leave the house." Airu said, sounding a little confused on why he wanted to know that.
"Thank you for your time," Yasuhara smiled. The women smiled before bowing and continuing their walk. Yasuhara reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone and dialing the number he knew by heart. It rang two times before he heard the familiar annoyed voice on the other side of the line.
"Yes?"
"Naru? I have something you need to hear," Yasuhara said as he began to head back in the way of the library. He needed to go review all the notes he had taken and he needed to do a little more digging. There was a noise before Naru spoke up again.
"You are on speaker. What is going on?"
"First off, I just talked to these two nice ladies on my way back and I have to say they were really pretty. One of them might even be Bou-san's type. Not that he needs anyone else when he has me. Oh! I know, do you want me to set up a double date with them?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" He heard Bou-san say from a distance away. He assumed he wasn't next to the phone like Naru.
"Like I said I met these wonderful ladies and-"
"Yasuhara, stop wasting my time. What do you have for me?" Naru said, sounding tired.
"Oh right!" Yasuhara took a left turn and headed down the road, adjusting his papers so he could see. "I was talking to the woman about the house we are investigating and they gave me some interesting things. First off, apparently the first woman said the house changed. The first time she was over, the bathroom was on the second floor and the second time she was over, it was on the first."
"What about the third time?"
"Back on the second floor," Yasuhara flipped the paper, ready to talk about the Sontas.
"Matsuzaki, where is Mai?" Naru asked, his voice sounding distance. Yasuhara waited for a reply, but all he heard was a muffled noise.
"Did she say what floor it was on?" Naru voice came again. There was another reply that Yasuhara couldn't hear. "Radio her and Father Brown and tell them to find out what floor the bathroom is on and I want them to check it every hour for the next twenty four hours. If it changes, I want to know how many times and the times."
"Naru," Yasuhara called, bringing his attention back to him. He had just reached the small library that was in the small town and was using a small waist high wall around it as a table as he flipped through the papers. "There is something else."
"What is it?"
"The previous owners, the Sontas, died eight years ago, but according to the women, they moved out two years ago."
"There is a six year gap there…" Naru said, thinking to himself. There was silence as Yasuhara went to the notes he had taken earlier on them. "How did they die?"
"They went missing according to the police," Yasuhara scanned his notes, grabbing the information he needed. "There was a complaint of loud screams but when the police arrived, there was no one in the house. The only thing they could find was blood that was everywhere. They assumed it was a murder and or kidnapping. Though, they never found the bodies and after a half a year they gave up."
"Did the woman psychically see them move out two years ago?" Naru asked. There was a noise and he heard footsteps.
"Wait, what do you mean they just gave up?" It was Bou-san. "Why would the police just give up on something like that and especially after such a short time?"
"Apparently, it wasn't something on the top of their list of things to do. Around that time, there was a serial kidnapper going around collecting children and young teenagers.""Did they find the person who did it?" It was Ayako. Yasuhara guessed she had moved closer to the phone at some point.
"No, apparently, there was no trace of them ever going missing. It was like they vanished," Yasuhara turned the pages and skimmed down it, trying to find the one piece of information he needed. "Here it is. A few months after the children stopped disappearing, one of the bodies appeared of a…Misaki Sato. He was six years old and was the second child to go missing."
"Naru!" Yasuhara listened as he heard the door slam open and someone run it. "I can't find Mai!"
"What?" Naru, Bou-san and Ayako said at the same time. Yasuhara listened as the person explained.
"One minute we were changing the tapes in the cameras and when I turned around to grab the new tape, she suddenly vanished. I looked for her all over the house and I can't find her," Yasuhara recognized the voice as John's and he sounded out of breath.
"Damn it." Naru said to himself. "Matsuzaki, help Father Brown look around the house. Takigawa, check outside and around the house. Go into the forest if you have to. Lin, see if you can catch her on any of the tapes."
"What do you want me to do?" Yasuhara asked as he collected his papers, getting ready to run back to the house.
"I want you to get as much information you can on those children who went missing along with the Santo's and report back as soon as possible. If you have to, talk to some of the neighbors."
"Roger!" Yasuhara hung up and began to run back in the direction of the house. He had already collected the information on the children and since he could only find a little information on the Santos, he decided to get whatever else he could from the neighbors around town.
Come back
Stay here with us
We won't hurt you
The voices rung in Mai's ear, causing her to cover her aching head. The blood that slowly moved through it pounded over and over, making it worse.
Don't leave
Stay with us
We won't hurt you
The coldness around her stung her skin and with every in breath she took, her lung were set on fire. She needed to get out of here.
Come back
Don't leave
We won't hurt you
Mai looked around one last time, not completely sure on how she had gotten out here in the forest or how she was ever go to find her way back.
Hey! I know, I disappeared for a while! I apologize because of that! I wasn't in the writing mood and when I tried to write, it was horrible! But now I'm back and I promise, the next time I update wont be in two or three months...it will be in four^^ No, not really, probably next week or something. I need to catch up on this. I hate dragging it out like this, and I hate making you lovelies wait.
So here is the next chapter! Sorry it was on the boring side, but this stuff is important and yea...but Oh no! Mai got lost...again...like EVERY single case they go on...where are you naru!?
I do not, under any circumstance, own Ghost Hunt. All rights go to the Author; Fuyumi Ono
I do not, under any circumstance, own the Picture used with this story. All rights go to the Artist, SARETTA1 (saretta1 . deviantart . com) (*please minus spaces before adding to your url box)