Disclaimer: Pokemon. Is. Not. Owned. By. Me. If it was, then you wouldn't have Ash from the anime doing the same thing over and over and over again, season after season after season. If I did own pokemon, Misty comes back, and the anime would actually get something unheard of to the anime creators: a plot.
Spirits of the Past
Part 3: The Search Begins
It took the group about twenty minutes to arrive at their destination. In that time, the channeler introduced himself as Evan. Despite the morbid reason for their journey, he talked unconcernedly about himself. He said that he had grown up in Lavender Town, from way over in the Kanto region. It was there that he got his obsession with ghosts. He was able to develop his already natural channeling abilities and then came to the Sinnoh region to take up his career as a channeler. Jenna marveled at how far he had come – she couldn't even imagine crossing something as vast as the ocean. She still thought belief in the supernatural was rather stupid, but she nonetheless respected Evan for his perseverance. He was also a very agreeable guy, and Jenna found herself liking him by the time the reached the mansion.
Of course, when they did finally reach it, almost all joviality left. Gardenia shivered, and even Jenna imagined that she could feel a slight chill in the air. Evan seemed to cringe a bit. They all just stood there for a moment, in slight awe of the building before them. It was Cynthia who snapped out of it first. She released her Garchomp, breaking the silence.
"Garchomp, please cut down the trees blocking the way." she said. Garchomp tensed, and the fins on its arms seemed to become extra sharp. It leapt at one of the smaller trees that was blocking the way, and brought one of its fins down on the trunk. It easily sliced all the way through, making just enough room for a person to get through. She returned Garchomp to its pokeball, murmering a quick thanks.
"Thank you." Cynthia said as she returned Garchomp, "Now who will be the first to go in?"
"I'll go." Said Jenna after only a moment's hesitation. Though she was slightly creeped out by the Old Chateau now, she did not want to be considered a coward. She went boldly through the doorway of trees, followed by Evan, then Gardenia, and finally with Cynthia bringing up the rear. The grass past the trees – which had probably been a gorgeous lawn at some point – was overgrown and filled with weeds. Jenna could see signs of very few pokemon, which gave the place an even spookier tone. However, Jenna kept moving forward confidently. She was too proud to admit that even she was frightened of the house.
She paused for a moment when she reached the front doors so that they could go in as a group. She noticed the beautiful workmanship of the massive double doors, and thought it was a shame that a place like this had been left to rot in such a manner. She looked at the front and noticed that almost all of the windows were either cracked or broken entirely, and fissures were beginning to appear in what once were sturdy walls.
Jenna stopped admiring the building soon enough, and put her hand out to open the door.
"Wait just a moment…" Evan said, making Jenna stop with her hand still stretched out to open the door. He rummaged around in his pack a bit before removing a pokeball.
"Time to finally do some work, Natu." A small, green bird came out of the pokeball, and stood on the ground near Evan's feet. He picked up the odd-looking bird pokemon and placed it on his head, where it perched contentedly.
"This little guy is good at detecting the strength of spirits, as well as pinpointing their locations. This way, we can at least have some alert if something malevolent is here." Evan explained. "Now you can open the door."
Emily, who now realized she had kept her arm extended as Evan had let out his pokemon, scowled a bit at having stayed in such a strange position for so long. Then, she placed her hand on the ornate door handle and entered the dilapidated mansion.
The group walked into a huge room with an impressive double staircase leading up to a sort of balcony over the main floor. It reminded Jenna of the ballrooms she had seen in movies that took place in older times, though she couldn't tell which sort of era this place was from. Underneath the balcony, directly across the room from where they stood, was yet another ornate doorway. A strange, creature-like statue stood to the left of the doorway. Age showed everywhere Jenna looked: tiles crumbling, fissures in the walls, and stains where water had seeped in. There was a chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling, but Jenna had no idea how the rusted chain that suspended it could possibly hold its weight.
She had taken only couple steps inside when it started. The room seemed to come to life. Chairs, which had been sitting near the walls of room, began to move back and forth. The chandelier swayed precariously, and the broken floor tiles began to rise into the end. A couple pots, which by some miracle still had live trees in them, tipped over and then righted themselves.
Jenna was shocked, and she took quick couple of steps back to the safety of the group. Gardenia was clinging onto Cynthia's arm, and Cynthia herself seemed tense, as if ready to fight this unseen force. Evan, however, seemed unconcerned.
"Tu." Said the Natu from its perch. The feather on the top of its head was raised straight up. Evan nodded, which in no way seemed to bother the natu on his head, then dug through his bag again.
"Cynthia or Jenna, could one of you bring out a pokemon?" He asked, while pulling out a small piece of paper with strange symbols written on it. Seeing as Gardenia was clinging to tightly to let Cynthia do much, Jenna reached into her small, duffle bag-like pack and pulled out a pokeball. She released the pokemon within, Sandy. The Sandslash came out tense, but then its tenseness turned into confusion as it noticed all the unexplainable happenings going on around the room.
"Sandslash, could you put this on?" asked even, as he looped a string through a small hole at the top of the paper.
"Sand?" Sandy said, looking up questioningly at Jenna. By now, the movements of the objects around them had gotten more erratic, but none of it seemed to be coming close enough to do any direct harm to the group. Jenna stayed wary of all that was going on around her, but turned her attention to the channeler.
"Her name is Sandy." Said Jenna to Evan. Then she turned to Sandy and motioned for her to go ahead and let him put it on. Sandy walked over to Evan, and allowed him to loop the homemade necklace around her neck. Almost immediately, the motions in the room stopped. The chandelier continued to sway, but this time it was simply from momentum. Tiles dropped back down to the floor, and the chairs stopped moving from side to side.
"What is this? What was all that just now?" Cynthia asked, bending down to examine the piece of paper now hanging from Sandy's neck.
"It's a cleanse tag. When a pokemon with you holds it, most other pokemon in the area go away." Evan explained.
"S-so that was all caused by pokemon?" asked Gardenia timidly.
"Yes." Evan replied. "Mainly gastly. We could still meet a couple of them, but most of them have left the building for the moment, due to the cleanse tag. This way, we can go on with our search unhindered."
Cynthia finished examining the cleanse tag and said, "Well, let's get going. If the girl is still in here, we need to find her. Where should we go first?"
"Why not straight?" asked Jenna, gesturing to the door that laid across the room from them. "It seems to be the only room on this floor, or at least the only room that connects to where we are now. That way we could eliminate possibilities of where the girl is from the ground floor up."
"But… Wouldn't that be the where the dining room is?" guessed Gardenia, with almost a whimper to her voice.
"Probably." Said Jenna, once she thought about it. "Is there a problem with it being the dining room?"
"Aren't kitchens normally located near the dining room?" Gardenia asked quietly, as if she was hoping the answer would be no.
"Normally. What's wrong with that?" Jenna replied, a slightly annoyed edge coming into her voice at being asked these ridiculous questions.
"Ahh, I see." Said Cynthia, before Gardenia could answer. "The kitchen is where the butler supposedly died. But I think Jenna is right about going there first – it will be easier to comb the house if we do it from the bottom up. Seeing as she's obviously not in this room, we'd best head into that room ahead, whether or not it is the dining room."
"But…" Gardenia meekly started to protest, but stopped as she realized that Cynthia's logic made sense. Since she was clearly outvoted, she crossed her arms tightly as if to reassure her self that she was still there, and remained quiet.
"Well, let's get going now that that's settled." Jenna said, and started walking towards the door across the room from them. She was a bit more confident now – she had stayed relatively calm throughout there first seemingly supernatural experience, and all it had turned out to be were a few mischievous ghost pokemon. Of course there's no such thing as real ghosts she reassured herself, or at the very least, none that can possibly harm the living.
"Wait." Evan said from the rear of the group. "Let me go first, so natu can detect any malignant spirits." Though Jenna had no idea what 'malignant' meant, she guessed that this was probably another load of superstitious poppycock. Nevertheless, she waited for Evan to take up the lead and followed him across the room.
"Hello!" Cynthia's shouted suddenly, making everyone jump. "Is anyone here!"
"What are you doing?" Gardenia asked in a fearful whisper. "You're going to draw all the ghosts right to us!"
"Any ghosts that are here would already know that we have come in, whether or not we yell." Evan said. "In fact, yelling for that little girl might get her to come out, meaning we get to leave sooner. What was the girl's name?"
"If you're sure…" Gardenia said, sounding unconvinced. "Her name is Maria, but everyone calls her Mia for short." As they continued walking across the room, they shouted out Mia's name – they even tried to shout all at the same time. But nothing stirred in the house. If she was indeed in the mansion, she was either ignoring their calls or couldn't hear them.
As they neared the doorway, the natu on Evan's said in its flat voice, "Na." It hopped in place on Evan's head, turning to point to the spot where the strange, creature-like statue sat. Evan stopped, and turned to look at it.
"You're right… that's interesting…" Evan said, apparently to himself. Jenna examined it from her spot behind Evan, just a few feet away from it. At first glance it appeared to be an ordinary statue, but on closer examination, the eyes weren't normal. In fact, if Jenna would have had to describe it, they almost looked like… like they were glaring.
"What's wrong?" asked Cynthia. She seemed unperturbed by the statue, though how she could possibly miss those eyes, Jenna couldn't say. They seemed to bore into her very soul the more she looked at them, and she soon averted her gaze to avoid the uncomfortably feeling.
"There's a spirit trapped here." Evan said. He was about to continue on, but Gardenia gave a soft shreek and ducked back behind Cynthia. That's... embarrasing. Jenna couldn't help but think.
"Get rid of it! I don't want to be within twenty miles of a ghost!" Gardenia said to Evan.
Evan sighed, then said, "Don't worry - this one won't hurt you. It's certainly not a friendly spirit, but it has no ill intent towards us. Not to mention, it seems tied to this statue. It couldn't hurt us, even if it wanted to. For now, let's keep moving - we need to find Mia. I'll come back later and try to send this spirit on, away from this world." He waited for a moment, as if to see if there would be any objections, then pushed on the door in front of him to continue on to the next room.
Jenna flinched as the door came crashing down to the floor. Apparently, the hinges had long been rusting away, and what was left of them had not been enough to hold the door up. Evan payed little mind to it, and simply walked over the shattered remains of the doorway, with Jenna close behind. Jenna vaguely heard the natu give a quick, sharp, "Tu!", but paid it no mind. She was too busy admiring her surroundings. She now found herself in a massive dining room, with a huge table in the center. Despite the years, a white linen tablecloth was still on the table, though numerous stains tainted the fraying and discolored fabric. Even the candlesticks - which appeared to be pure silver - remained after all these years. It was rather dim in the room, but enough light filtered in from windows and numerous cracks in the wall to allow them to see. To her left was a room where Jenna could see a couple of bins of trash - she guessed it was the infamous kitchen. To her right was another room, though she could see none of the contents within from her position.
She stepped forward until she was directly behind Evan, who was stopped dead. Sandy nearly walked into the back of Jenna's legs. Jenna was about to ask him what he was doing when she followed his eyes. Jenna nearly cried out in surprise. In front of them, directly across the table, was a man. The top of his head was bald, but the back of his head was covered with thick white hair, that wrapped around his face to form a beard. He stared at the two of them, his face completely expressionless. Despite his outward demeanor, Jenna felt an almost overwhelming feeling of resent coming from him. Though she could have just been imagining it, due to the state her frightened mind was in. Cynthia was still gently coaxing Gardenia to enter the room, and did not realize that anyone else was in there.
Jenna was about to ask the man what he was doing here, when the man turned and actually floated away. If that enough wasn't strange enough, he then glided through the wall, into where Jenna had guessed the kitchen was. As Jenna and Evan stood gaping, Cynthia and Gardenia finally entered the room. They walked up behind the two surprised individuals, and asked, "What's wrong? Did something happen?"
This seemed to awake both Jenna and Evan from their thoughts. Evan muttered something to himself about that being the first time any ghost he had seen had so openly shown itself. Jenna turned around, incredulous that they missed it.
"You didn't see that?! How could you not have seen that?" asked Jenna, in little more than a whisper.
"W-what was it?" Gardenia questioned, sounding as if she really would rather not know.
"It was a spirit." Evan said. He seemed to have calmed down more, and was more or less back to his regular self. "The spirit of an older man. He showed himself to us, and went off that way." Evan said, gesturing to the room to their left. "Natu says that it is quite malevolent, and that it has a fair amount of power. We had best tread carefully - this could end up more dangerous than I had thought. Much more dangerous."
Oh my gosh, my own story is giving me chills... It probably doesn't help that I'm playing the Old Chateau background music as I write this... Anyway, we're finally getting into something interesting. If you thought this part was scary (which admittedly, you may not have...), then just wait for the next one. I still only have a vague concept of what I will be doing, but even that gives me goosebumps... Hope you're liking it. I'll yet again send out my plea for you to go to poketto.proboards104. com - it's a great pokemon forum. Also, a quick note that may come into play in the next part - the Old Chateau is not room for room like it is in the game. The characters will stick mainly to those main rooms, but realize that there will probably be other hallways and such; I mean, this is a mansion. But you can worry about that when the time comes. I think I already did this in my first chapter, but I've yet again got to congratulate I'm afraid of jellyfish (/imafraidofjellyfish) and Vampire Freak Forever (/vampirefreakforever) just for being two of the most awesome people I know. If you like randomness, check out their fanfics... or at least I'm afraid of Jellyfish's Harry Potter fanfics.