Fandom: Naruto
Author: Snow Tigra
Pairings: SasuNaru
Warnings: Horror, as usual and Alternate Universe. The rest is up to my muses
Chapter 5
The next morning came and went and Naruto really didn't feel any better. He stayed curled in the bed, watching the lighthouses around the room as they shined out their fake water-colored lights across painted seascapes, searching for ships that would never come sailing in any closer. The sunlight dotted through the lacy curtains into the room and danced over Naruto's face, taunting him with fake cheerfulness and hints of the smile he might have had, were Sasuke still next to him.
Days alone sucked.
Days alone after a fight sucked more.
Naruto finally managed to pull himself out of bed well after noon. Shower and an attempt at food didn't really help the matter, but around the time he was attempting to eat the cardboard that this family called cereal he had a plan formed. Iruka did always say that the best way to sort out a problem was to clean, something about the action allowing one to clean their head and get things straightened out until the problem really didn't seem so bad. And part of Naruto's job in this house was to keep it clean, so spending the rest of the day dusting and sweeping really only made sense. Then, just maybe, Sasuke would come back and knock on the door that night to apologize… or at the very least Naruto would have an idea of what to say to him if he called.
Naruto abandoned the food down the drain and opted for Sasuke's favorite breakfast – a can of pop – and made his way to the hall closet to gather cleaning supplies and threw himself completely into the work.
Hours passed with no real incidents as Naruto dusted old carved furniture, swept hardwood floors and carefully vacuumed carpets that really looked far too expensive to be stepped on. The house was really so clean it didn't need much attention, but once Naruto set his mind to it he found he was quite happy for the distraction and he abused it to its fullest potential. The house would be shining and spotless before he debated the issue with the fight and Sasuke again, he was going to make sure of that.
Somewhere along the line Naruto made his way to the second floor and was going room by room, cleaning every nook and cranny he could find. He stepped into the playroom without a second thought and carefully began to wash the walls, careful not to disturb the painted mural of a beach when a familiar sound echoed through the room, of child's laughter. Naruto frowned softly and didn't turn.
"I'm not in the mood really, you made Sasuke and I fight."
He didn't have to turn back to know the little boy was standing behind him and he could just picture the boy cocking his head as he focused on the wall. The last thing Naruto wanted to deal with today was ghosts.
But then… something occurred to him.
Naruto turned to look at the boy and found him sitting in a corner of the room, playing with his teddy bear and being happily distracted by whatever stories he was telling in his mind.
"Hey kid… do you know what Sasuke saw?"
The little boy stopped bouncing his teddy bear and looked up to meet Naruto's eyes. Naruto watched as he opened his mouth and it moved, looking like it was forming words, but no sound came out. Instead the boy soon moved to his feet and wandered over to Naruto, dragging his teddy behind him.
"Right, yeah, silly me, ghosts can't talk. You only moan and rattle chains and stuff, isn't that right?" Naruto couldn't help but roll his eyes at himself as he picked up the broom and started to sweep. It took him a second to realize but the ghost boy was now standing over by the large dresser as if he were trying to reach behind it.
Naruto blinked.
"Oh what the hell." He set down the broom and walked over to the boy. Glancing at his hand one more time and the weirdly proportioned face, Naruto gave a shrug and stepped to the side of the dresser, slowly pushing it away from the wall.
What he found behind the dresser was the last thing he expected in a place like this. Scattered across the wall in this specific spot were pencil and pen marks with a bit of marker and crayon mixed in. Small uneven lines created a ladder up the side, ticking off a child's height until it reached the exact height that the ghost boy was standing at, marking him as a little over eight years old. Crayon hearts and something that might have resembled a teddy bear were drawn on the lower part of the wall next to a name.
"Gaara?"
Naruto blinked and turned to look at the little boy. "Is all this yours? Are you Gaara?"
The little ghost boy's lips moved, lengthening into a long and very creepy smile that Naruto half expected to have lines of razor sharp teeth. But his eyes shone with light on the distorted face and Naruto couldn't really feel creeped out, it wasn't like it was the little boy's fault that he was a ghost. Naruto returned a small smile.
The little boy, Gaara, quickly ran over to the wall, pointing at some of the markings, obviously trying to tell Naruto something. His motions were quick and his mouth moved as if he were attempting to talk a mile a second, and Naruto surprised himself by laughing, the sound filling the room. The sound made the boy stop and look at him with a cocked head, but Naruto just couldn't help it. Suddenly all he wanted to do was laugh.
The good mood was suddenly contagious and the boy was smiling more, pointing and nearly jumping as he silently told Naruto about every mark on the way, animated in only the way a young child can be. Naruto's grin never left his face as he watched the little boy. He couldn't hear him and had no idea what he was saying, but he didn't care. It was just too cute to resist.
On the wall, toward the floor, about ankle height, was a place where child scribblings had traced out hand prints on the wall, perfectly matching the ghost boy's hands. He pressed his hands to the wall, over the tracings, then smiled and pointed at Naruto. Naruto shrugged to himself and knelt down, placing his hands on the wall over the markings to make the boy smile more.
"Ooops, looks like my hands are bigger then yours." He smiled and turned toward the boy…
But the boy was gone.
Naruto blinked and sat back from the wall, glancing around the room. Oddly enough he found the room empty, no ghost boy in sight. He'd just suddenly disappeared into thin air.
Naruto blinked again and even rubbed his eyes for his own benefit, but the ghost boy was completely gone with no sign of coming back. Upon realizing this Naruto couldn't stop his smile from disappearing. He was so happy being distracted with the cute little dead child, it had taken his mind completely off Sasuke…
He stopped that thought before it could completely destroy the mood. Turning away from the wall he moved to pick up his broom and start cleaning… only to find that the broom was gone.
"What the hell?"
A quick check around the room left no clue as to where the broom had gone to, save for one small factor. The room Naruto was now standing in was spotless. Not spotless as in perfectly cleaned, but rather spotless in the fact that there was no cleaning that was needed from age or action. In fact, and perhaps a much better description, the room was brand new.
"How the hell…"
A giggle passed through the room and Naruto jumped as if he'd heard a thick blood curling scream. Before he could relax and yell at himself for being so jumpy, a young boy scrambled into the room, a smile pasted brightly across his face.
His short and muzzled red hair was easily familiar as was the pair of worn and loved overalls that failed to clasp over one shoulder, though now Naruto could make out the true features of his face. Bright green eyes and a cute little smile would have charmed any would be parents and probably charmed his own parents even more. His smile and giggle were just as contagious a second ago, and Naruto once again found himself smiling brightly as the boy dropped down in the small indoor sandbox and began playing with some of his toys. He was just a normal little boy.
"Gaara," the name was said with a good natured laugh and Naruto jumped again – though not as severely this time – and turned to find another person standing in the doorway. She was a beautiful young woman, resembling Gaara in many ways. Her body was thin and almost athletic, but not enough to take away the very distinct fact that she was a beautiful female. Her red hair was streaked very lightly with blond, which could have been natural, and her eyes were the exact same shade of green. She wore a simple but flattering summer dress, her hair tied back with a ribbon.
Naruto stepped back silently and watched as the woman stepped over to the sandbox and scooped up some of the sand, playing with him. He tilted his head a bit, surprised that for the first time he could actually hear Gaara's voice.
"Gaara honey, mommy has a secret to tell you."
The little boy looked up, his eyes shining in excitement. He set down his shovel and crawled closer, waiting eagerly for the secret.
"Gaara," she said, the smile nearly glowing on her face "You're going to have a little sister."
"Sister?" The little boy blinked at her and tilted his head.
The mother smiled sweeter. "You're going to have a little mommy to play with. Her name will be Temari."
"Te… Te.. maaa… ri…"
"Temari."
"A sister?" Naruto stepped back from the two of them, some need to let them have their happy moment in privacy over came him and he felt the need to leave the room and let them be. However, his step back seemed to trigger something and a literal crack shattered the vision in front of him. Naruto winced and ducked out of the room, holding his head as their voices echoed around him, painfully loud.
And then suddenly the ghost boy was in front of him again.
Screaming.
The sound exploded through his brain, hard enough and painful enough to send Naruto crashing to the floor, knocking one of his knees hard on the floor. Naruto covered his ears – for all the good it would do – as tightly as he could, but the sound only seemed to get louder. Keeping his eyes closed and his ears covered, he moved back from the ghost boy, trying to get away without falling flat on his face.
Too late he realized that there wasn't a wall behind him, but instead a set of stairs.
Naruto cried out in pain and rolled himself into a ball as his body tumbled down the hardwood staircase. Blackness rocketed through his brain as he crashed onto each step and was sent painfully down onto the next. A couple seconds of quick and harsh pain seemed like a life time, until he landed on the floor with a force hard enough to send red sparks through the blackness of his mind and he could feel one of his knees growing warm with blood from the abused skin, while his arm started bragging about the size of the bruise he would have in the morning.
At least the screaming had stopped.
Naruto groaned loudly in pain and rolled over onto his back, catching his breath. The pain from the fall and the ringing in his head slowly began to shrink into a dull thudding in his body, but it was still strong enough to discourage any movement.
"I hate ghosts. I hate huge houses. I hate cleaning. I miss Sasuke. I hate taking care of this stupid living twilight zone of a house! I NEVER SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THIS JOB!" He yelled as loud as he could and for a moment he actually felt good about adding his angry voice to the house's silent atmosphere. Then the satisfaction faded and Naruto went back to moaning in pain.
At least nothing was broken.
He didn't know how long he lay on the floor, and honestly didn't care, but finally he managed to feel numb enough to try sitting up. His body trembled from the effort and he could feel more bruises yelling at him for attempting to move, but somehow he managed to make it to a sitting up position. Taking a slow breath he rubbed his head and looked around.
"I'm by the office… maybe I should call an ambulance and tell them this fucking house is trying to kill me. There're enough movies about crap like that," he muttered to himself as he pulled himself up on the wall and clung to it as he stepped into the room.
His steps stopped as he heard the same giggle and this time Naruto wasn't happy to hear it. "NO! I'm sick of being haunted! I hurt like hell! Just leave me alone!"
The giggle didn't stop and Naruto felt the room around him shift again, becoming that strange clean as the play room above had been. Naruto scrambled over to the desk and grabbed for the phone, but his movement was too frantic and he only ended up knocking it to the floor, the sound echoing around the room painfully loud. Naruto swore and moved after it, determined to call for help…
Help from what?
Naruto paused in mid-motion as the world around him went deathly silent. Everything seemed to stop and even the air tasted stale and dead. Then, melting in around him, whispers began to fill his ears. He turned, not able to resist wondering where the sound came from. Looking up, he found he wasn't the only one in the office anymore.
Standing not two feet away from him was a tall black shape, obviously a man in some sort of business suit from the edges and contours and cleanly cut silhouette of his hair. The man was moving, animated in his anger, as whispers of hatred emitted from his form, too low and hissing to be understood.
In the doorway, facing the shadow near Naruto, was another, this one wearing a dress that reached her knees, also cloaked in shadows and darkness. Desperate whispers left her lips and the scene around him choked with tension. If death were a being it was standing in this room. Naruto couldn't move, all he could do was crouch on the ground watching as the two shadows grew more fevered in their actions, shaking and jerking as if they were having seizures. Inhuman movements like something from a strobe light rocked each and a low crying of agony filled the room, along with the sounds of a baby crying.
"Fuck this," Naruto muttered and crawled around the shadows, careful not to touch them. Hell if he was staying in this messed up place. He wasn't crazy, he knew when a place wasn't safe, and this room was sooooo not safe at all. Only in horror movies were people stupid enough to stay in a place like this and Naruto had seen enough to know better. Crawling to the center of the room, well away from the two crazy shadows, Naruto pushed himself to his feet and bolted for the door.
Distantly he heard the same scream from the ghost boy echo around him, but nothing could make him glance back. He didn't even stop for his shoes as he tore out of the house, throwing the door open and stumbling out into the night onto the harsh uneven pavement. He'd take care of his feet later. All he wanted now was to get away from that messed up place.
Perhaps if he'd looked back he would have realized his mistake, the door left to swing open in the midnight breeze.