The Anti-Zemyx Day Twelve

Title: Room Numbers Six and Nine

Genre: Humour, Romance (?), Suspense, Horror ?

Rating: T

Summary: Day Twelve. Two ranks. Four friends. Six Rooms. And nine shades redder.

A/N: Ever spend a night in a haunted house? Two more days! After this is done, I'm going to update Hellfire Seas and SMFTP, and maybe Twilight Bridge, but boy do I need a break! One week hiatus comin' right up! Enjoy~

It was another week-long break from Ansem University, and everyone had decided to go their separate ways during the holiday. Kairi and Xion were going to stay with their godfather, Xemnas, at his city penthouse; Vanitas was going to visit his parents, as well as bring them some money to pay their health bills, and bring his uncannily similar mannequin along for the ride; Saïx was planning to spend some time 'working' out of town (no doubt an order from Xemnas; he was as loyal as a puppy to his boss and was in the know for all of the Cardiac Research Center's President's elaborate schemes); and Marluxia and Larxene were planning to spend some 'alone' time at Topside, the wealthiest and flashiest part of the city, as well as visit the famous, blitzy Gambler's Ace cantina, owned by Luxord Fate, and gamble (as well as win) large amounts of money at the betting parlor/arcade, through partially questionable means.

The remaining six, Naminé, Roxas, Sora, Demyx, Zexion, and Axel, had decided to stay at Naminé's house on the outskirts of town, a large, white mansion, split into two parts and connected by a short 'tunnel', and surrounded by acres of grassy land; with the boys occupying one half, and Naminé working on her paintings and drawings in the other, sleeping wherever the hell she felt like once done for the day. After talking out their plans with everyone, packing, and going over financial matters for the fourth time that week, the entire 'household' was ready. Aerith bade them all an especially fond farewell (whereas Larxene's was utterly sarcastic) as she waved at the leaving cars and promised to take care of the three-story apartment while they were gone.

Because of the city's sheer size, it took the six three hours to even catch sight of the lone building, which was much too far away from school and far too lonely and quiet for Naminé's modest tastes, to live in for more than a month.

After the three hours needed to get there (and then some), Axel drove up the gravel circle and parked his red truck in front of the Victorian porch, and honked the horn very loudly to wake up the sleeping boys in the back, grinning as they jumped and glared at him with sleepy eyes.

"Yo. We're here."

A bleary-eyed, half-asleep Demyx shuffled to the trunk of the pickup to help Roxas unload, and groaned as he leaned his face and arms against the cool metal.

"Whatimeizzit?" Roxas glanced at the silver watch Marluxia had given to him for his last birthday.

"Seven past eight. Why are you so tired?" Demyx emitted a sound halfway between a groan and a laugh.

"Stayed up til three."

"What the hell were you doing until three?" asked Roxas with big eyes, as he unloaded Sora's bulky, heavy suitcase from the truck. Demyx grinned and woke up a little more.

"M'was playin' World That Never Was online."

"Again." Demyx nodded, and sheepishly smiled.

"Again." Roxas rolled his eyes and thrust Sora's bag at the musician.

"Here. You can carry this in. It'll help wake you up." Demyx oof-ed at the sudden weight, but obliged and carried the bulky bag up to the steps, where Naminé was in the process of twisting the key into the lock. After a few tries, it click-ed and opened creakily, and the young blonde pushed the white door open further, to allow Demyx in.

There was only a thin layer of dust on the floor, as Naminé had just visited two months ago, and the lights burned brightly still the moment the switch was flipped. Demyx made two trips, hauling in the numerous bags of luggage (as they weren't sure if Naminé's washing machine worked or not), as did Zexion and Roxas, only Zexion was carrying stacks of boxes in his arms, and Roxas was hunched over, carrying sleeping bags on his back.

They looked quite ridiculous.

Naminé clapped happily as all of the moving was done, and led them upstairs to the second floor, leaving the boys to carry their own luggage with them (as well as hers).

There were ten doors on the second landing, all along a long, carpeted hallway, with six of them adorned with a gold numeral attached to the door, shining brightly against the chipped white paint.

One, two, three, six, eight, and nine.

There were shadows of numbers on the other ones, where one could assume that once there hung a golden numeral, too. The blonde girl began walking down the corridor, her pale reflection flitting past the many mirrors hanging on the walls between each door, and examining the knobs. She turned around.

"Some," she said, gesturing with her hand, "of the doors don't open. They've been stuck closed ever since my grandmother was here, and before she came, they said that there was a horrible accident. Something about a massacre of the refuging royal family? Anyway, with shouting mobs and curses and a quite a few deaths, as well as several beheadings and acts of backstabbing. My grandmother said that the ghosts still seek vengeance for the ruin of the family, for their fall from grace. Choose your own rooms," she said, with a mischievous smirk, one so unfamiliar on her face, and yet befitting it in an odd, eerie way. "Sweet dreams!" She winked at the five boys, two of whom had gone pale and stared at her incredulously. With a wave of her hand, she disappeared from the landing and walked back downstairs, giggling softly to herself as she went. The boys looked at each other in silence. Roxas glanced first at Zexion, who was standing there awkwardly, then at his brother Sora.

"...Did you know Naminé could be quite so sadistic?" Sora shook his head, and edged closer to Demyx, halfway hiding behind him.

"Nuh-uh. Did you?" Roxas looked around and shook his head.

"Nope. Let's pick our rooms. I'm getting paranoid. Especially with all of these mirrors..." Axel agreed wholeheartedly, and the five began trying to open the doors.

It turned out that only the doors with numbers still on them opened. Sora wondered out loud if that meant that, if, while they were sleeping, their numbers fell off, whether or not they would be able to get out. Zexion immediately knocked on a wooden stand underneath one of the mirrors and shook his head, saying that it was not wise to jinx such things, to which Axel replied with a question of since when was Zexion so superstitious?

Ignoring him, Zexion chose room Six, while Demyx chose Nine, Axel chose Eight, and Sora and Roxas shared One, as it was closest to the stairs. Three remained empty; perhaps it was because of the ugly, dark, and suspiciously gore-like stain underneath the door?

All of the rooms currently occupied were the same: a single, light grey bed in the middle of the room, with the head against the wall, and a dresser to the side. A simple chandelier decorated the ceiling, and the windows were hidden behind white curtains. The simplicity was overwhelming and suspicious, arousing anxiety and paranoia from some of the friends. As Naminé never saw reason to visit the supposedly haunted rooms her grandmother told her about, the furnishings were sparse, though oddly free of dust.

Zexion left his luggage outside of the room when he entered, and examined the mostly empty chamber with detached distrust, touching the surface of the dresser and frowning when he found no dust upon it. Quickly, he left the room and walked downstairs to the kitchen, which was as smart and as clean as when it was newly refurbished, and found Naminé there. She smiled sweetly (too sweetly, he noted) as she saw him, and took a sip of her water.

"Yes?" Zexion brushed aside a strand of his metallic slate hair from his face and looked at her evenly.

"Naminé, when was the last time you, or anyone else, entered those rooms?" Naminé frowned slightly.

"Um... maybe the last time I came here? Why, did you find a body?" her voice rose oh-so-slightly with excitement. Zexion smiled and shook his head.

"No. I was just curious. Thank you." Naminé shrugged. "Do you happen to have some salt around?"

She pointed at the white cupboard to his right.

"It's in that big can. No, yeah, that one." Zexion took it down carefully, as though it might break, and nodded his head.

"Thank you. Good night."

"Good night."

She watched his back retreat as she wondered what the salt could possibly be for.

As Zexion entered the room once again, he sprinkled a light dusting of salt upon the floor of the doorway, as well as around the windows and around his bed. Axel, Sora, Roxas, and Demyx watched with mute fascination as he silently repeated the same ritual over for each of their rooms, wondering when on earth did sensible, no-nonsense Zexion, who yawned through NC-17 movies and horror fairs get so superstitious. Sora eventually found his tongue as Zexion finished sprinkling salt around the bed he and his brother would share.

"Er... Zexion, not to be rude, but what're you doing?" Zexion did not look up as he answered.

"The second-floor's east wing is disquieting. I sense something strange and unfamiliar, and do not wish to take any chances. Salt is purifying: we should all be kept safe this night. It may just be that I'm tired and Axel slipped something into my coffee again..." Axel chuckled at this; "but then again, it may not. I also smell a lingering scent of... anger, if anger had a scent, in the air. Sleep well." He then swept out of the room; Sora and Demyx stared in shock after him as he entered room Six. Roxas looked at Axel.

"D'you think he's serious?" The tall redhead gave him a long look, and sighed.

"Must be. He's never been like this before, and if Zex says things will bode ill, then they will indeed bode ill. For whom it is not always certain. Well, I'm off to bed!" he said in a cheerful tone, leaving a puzzled Roxas pondering how a single person could go from dark and grim to cheerful in less than a second. He shrugged, letting the matter drop, and changed from his day-clothes to his green pajamas after closing the door behind him. Once he carefully placed his clothes in his suitcase, he glanced over at Sora, who, having changed while his brother was, was rocking slightly on the bed with his arms around his legs.

"Sora...?" Roxas was nervous: if Sora were to have another attack, while they were three hours from any decent hospital... The brunet looked over at the blond climbing into his bed, and ceased rocking.

"It's too... white, here. Too clean. Like something was washed away..." Roxas smiled weakly and hugged his younger brother before crawling under his sleeping bag's blanket, as the beds had nothing but sheets on them.

"Don't worry. Zexion did the whole... salt thing, so we'll be safe, yeah? Go to sleep. I'll be right here."

Demyx lay in his sleeping bag on his borrowed bed, and fell into a deep sleep from the moment his eyes fluttered closed. It was most likely from the exhaustion of staying awake all day with no coffee, but there could have been another force at work. His eyes rolled beneath their fleshy lids as he began dreaming.

He dreamt that he was walking down the hallway once more, except this time, only room Nine had a number left on it, and blood was seeping from the cracks underneath the doors from each room, each with a different undertone. Room Eight's blood was much too bright to be red, room One's blood was mixed red and gold, and room Six had red tinged with silver and black. Demyx shuddered in the dream, and continued walking down the hallway; but no matter how much he walked, he still remained in the same place. Running had no effect either. Sighing, he looked into one of the mirrors, and gasped at what he saw.

There were four people in the mirror. One, a prince, another, a captain, with the other two just normal people. The prince looked strangely familiar, almost like his own reflection, but it was and wasn't him. There was something in his eyes that deeply unsettled the dreamer. Demyx shook his head and looked at the others.

The captain looked like Zexion, verily so, but the reflection had darker skin, more tanned, and had an athletic air about him. He was confident and outgoing, with an easy smile revealing sharp teeth, and had his hair swept a little more out of his face, so that his aqua eyes could be seen clearer.

No, wait.

The real Zexion had aqua eyes. This one had amber ones, flecks of gold in the irises, looking so similar to a reptile's. Behind him, with the same eyes, stood a twisted reflection of Axel, smirking at the dreamer, and before his reflection, stood a twisted mimicry of Roxas.

All of them grinned wickedly at the dreamer, their eyes laughing and smiles kind, not quite hiding their sharp teeth, as they waved at him.

Demyx was riveted to the spot: he couldn't move, couldn't wake himself up; he was trapped until the nightmare decided to release him.

The four friends in the mirror remained there for a minute, with Demyx's reflection standing right where he was, before the scene changed, and revealed a family of six. There was a father, a mother, three sisters, and a young brother, who so uncannily resembled Roxas, but wasn't him. The family smiled and waved cheerfully at Demyx, but then their smiles turned to faces of horror as they stared at Demyx, at something they couldn't see.

Is this the family that was murdered?

One by one, they fell, gristly wounds opening themselves on their bodies, cut and shot there with invisible weapons, when at last no one was left except for the frightened, bloody little boy, who had his sister's defensive corpse draped over his shoulders and front. Demyx found himself leaning unconsciously closer and closer to the mirror, as his mouth moved to warn the boy; but try as he might, no sound came out.

The mirror's image changed again, and this time, it was the four friends-who-were-not-friends again, with Axel grinning, eyes milky-white, and rotting, maggoty, skeletal hand reaching through the mirror for Demyx's face.

With a scream, he woke up.

Sweat soaked his sleeping bag, and Demyx saw claw marks scraping themselves onto his leg as he screamed. His throat felt raw. There was a sudden thump from above him. Instinctively, he looked up at the faded painting on the wall above the headboard of the bed. There was another thump, and the painting fell from its hook, bringing along with it a bloody machete, which fell and fell closer and closer to Demyx's head until––

With a scream, he woke up.

Sweat soaked his sleeping bag, and Demyx looked at his legs once again.

There were no claw marks. He sighed deeply, and wiped away the tears streaming down his face, not even aware that he had been crying.

A dream within a dream...

There was a sudden crash, as well as several muffled thumps, and Demyx's door burst open, with Zexion and Axel standing in the doorway, pale and concerned, with Axel wearing nothing but black gym shorts and Zexion a holey tee with loose, drawstring pants. Their eyes were wide.

"Demyx...?" The musician stared at his friends blankly, with all of his emotions quivering behind his mask of vacant expression.

"Did you..." Fear began seeping through the filter. "Did you see... the dream? With the mirror and the burning and the blood?"

Hang on. Burning? What burning?

Zexion shook his head, and Axel walked over to the younger student, feeling his forehead for a temperature.

"...Demyx, did you see a nightmare?" The redhead's usually casual manner was discarded: gentle concern remained. Demyx neither nodded or shook his head.

"I..." He glanced up at the painting above his headboard. It seemed glued to the wall. He swallowed, hard. "I saw... the family... get murdered... and the mirror... it showed... showed..."

Demyx could say no more, his mind was already trying to create a memory block against what he had seen. Axel shh-ed soothingly and hugged the traumatized youth, patting his back awkwardly. Zexion remained in the doorway.

This place... is there asbestos in the walls?

"Demyx. You may sleep in my room tonight, if you feel you will see these dreams again. That way, I can keep an eye on you, or, if you like, we can move to Naminé's side of the house. The side that was added on fifty years later and is not haunted." Demyx nodded, still within Axel's embrace. "I suggest you go down to the kitchen with Axel and drink some hot chocolate to calm yourself. It's almost dawn. Maybe you should sleep on the sofas." Demyx nodded again, but barely believed his ears when Zexion uttered those words.

Dawn? It's so dark! Even with the walls this white...

The morning brought with it a cheerful sky, clean air, and the smell of bacon and eggs cooking in the kitchen directly below, courtesy of the blonde artist. With the sunlight, everything seemed less scarier, and everyone blamed their exhaustion and anxiety for the scare. Roxas and Sora had slept like rocks (something that mildly irritated/worried Zexion when he heard that), but had no strange dreams, which only seemed to affect Demyx. As they sat down for breakfast, Zexion slipped in Demyx's dream to Naminé as she served the bacon. She cast an amused, innocent eye in his direction.

"Oh, so they're real?"

"You mean you didn't know?" Naminé laughed.

"Of course I knew! I just never believed it. There's a difference between knowing and believing. I never saw them, just heard their whispers sometimes. But don't worry. They have no reason to kill you." Demyx squeaked and coughed into his eggs. Sora smiled.

"Yeah! Don't worry! We'll all be there for you!"

He looked so innocent, it was hard to say no.

After breakfast, Zexion asked Naminé if they could move their rooms, but Naminé said no.

"Once you've picked the room, you have to stay there until you leave. It's the rules."

"We don't need that rule, Naminé! Demyx needs his sleep, preferably uninterrupted by your silly rules." Naminé looked up, shocked.

"I didn't make the rules up."

The day passed quickly, with the group playing board games and horseback riding through the fields of a stable a half-hour away, and pretty soon, everyone forgot the previous night's horror from the light atmosphere. After a particularly enjoyable dinner (with steak, salad, and mashed potatoes, as well as a side of Roxas's jokes and Sora's silly questions), Zexion graciously allowed Demyx to sleep in his room, even helping him move his bags, but halfheartedly regretted it when Demyx got his flirt back on.

"Hey, Zexion?" he asked, casually but grinning as he did so. Zexion turned the page in his book.

"Yes, Demyx, what is it?"

"You know, our room numbers together make up 69..." Demyx snickered. Zexion froze, and went from pale, to faintly pink, and went through eight other shades of pink and red before he threw his pillow at the blond.

"That's disgusting. I'm straight and you know it." It could have been wishful thinking, but Demyx could have sworn he heard hesitation in his voice. "You're an idiot, Demyx." Slapping a hand to his heart, Demyx feigned a fatal wound as he protested.

"Hey! Now that's just plain rude!" Zexion resumed reading his book, but finished the paragraph and bookmarked the page.

"And your innuendo was just plain sickening," he replied. Taking a deep breath, he shouted out, "AXEL!"

From the next room over, Axel shouted back.

"WHAT?"

"I WILL BE SPENDING THE NIGHT WITH NAMINÉ! Take care of Demyx while I'm gone!"

"...SURE!" Over the shouting, Demyx smiled as he heard the distinct music of World That Never Was playing on Axel's laptop, but faltered slightly when he saw Zexion gather up a few belongings and look down at him.

"Good night, Demyx. May your dreams exclude me from committing any actions that would further my humiliation should I know of them." He left the room, but Demyx glimpsed the small smile twitching on his lips. He sighed and took out his blue cellphone, dialing 13 on his number pad. The phone rang twice.

"Hello?"

"Roxas?"

"Yeah? Who else?"

"...So much for your idea. It didn't work." The idea had seemed foolproof at dinner: frighten the ghosts away by spending the night together, as well as get some fun out of it.

"Aw. Too bad." said the smaller blond. Demyx shrugged.

"We can try something else later." A grin spread on his face, plotting and yet innocent. Roxas nodded on his end of the phone, before he realized something.

"Yeah... Wait where are you?"

"In the bedroom, why?"

"...You do realize that I'm in the SAME HOUSE as you, right? You couldn't come down to the kitchen? It's like, what, two minutes away."

"I felt lazy." And it was true. Demyx lay on Zexion's bed, sprawled out on the white sheets, and stretched like a cat. Roxas grinned.

"...Not surprising."

A/N: I rushed, I apologize! But I'm dead tired.

OH. Do not, EVER write a horror story in the freaking dark. Oh my GAWSH. It was so scary! All these sudden noises, and it was silent before my parents came home and I freaking Jumped. Lol But I hope you enjoyed! Thanks! Reviews please?