Hello again!!! Okay, I think I was pushing it with twelve reviews...it was very cruel...for the readers AND for the author. So, I have decided: to HELL with the review requirements. I hated them anyway...don't know why I started them in the first place....

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I stared gloomily out the crystal-clear, rain-streaked window of an orphanage living room. Girls about my age whispered inaudible words behind me, but I paid no attention to them. I didn't care about them, and I didn't really want to hear what they were talking about. All I wanted to do was go back home and see my friends! Images of them--mostly Naru--kept creeping into my mind that would make my chest constrict and suffocate me. My heart ached to be away from here, and my head hurt from all the tears that I had cried.

I'd already been here for four days--it was now a Wednesday-- and things weren't getting any better. I still hated the almost-like-Mom-used-to-make meals, the creaky twin beds, and the wide, eerie hallways. I had nightmares every night, but each time I woke, I could never remember what they were about. To top it all off, I cried at least once every damned day. I couldn't stand it here.

Strangely--and maybe a plus--no paranormal activity had occurred yet here. I had heard no disembodied girls' voices, and nobody had disappeared. It was odd...could it all have been some elaborate prank that they were all in on?

Suddenly, it clicked: Naru and the others were coming to investigate this weekend.

I nearly jumped out the roof in excitement and joy. They're coming! Naru's coming! They're coming! Naru's coming! I screamed excitedly in my head.

I was so excited, I just HAD to call and tell them! When I'd first gotten here, I'd searched my floor of the orphanage for a phone to use, but I'd found none. Then I'd been too dejected to go and look for one, so I hadn't tried again yet. Now was the perfect opportunity to search again!

I sat for a few moments, reasoning. I had called here and talked to the secretary, so there had to be a phone around here somewhere. In the reception area, or around there, maybe.

I looked up and called to the girl closest to me. "Hey! Do you know where the nearest phone is? Or maybe the reception area?" I asked.

The girl, who had wavy gold hair and bright blue eyes, gave me a look. "Why do you want to know?" she asked. "Do you want to get in trouble?"

I looked at her in confusion. "Trouble?" I repeated.

The girl sighed in exasperation. "Maybe she doesn't know, Tomomi!" one of her friends whispered.

"Maybe so, but you'd think it would be common sense in the first place!" Tomomi snorted, tossing her hair. "Listen, new kid!" she snapepd at me. "Using the phones is off-limits."

I stared at her, mystified. "Why?"

Tomomi gave a frustrated sound, and put a hand to her forehead. "You have heardthe stories, right? About this place being haunted?"

I nodded quickly. "Yeah. Of course."

"So you're not a total loss after all. Anyway, every time a girl here does something without asking--using the phone, for example--they disappear."

I reeled back in shock. "What?! How'd you find that out?!"

She shrugged. "Well, I wasn't here when they first discovered it, but I've heard the story. One morning, a girl here who had a brother that had been taken to a different orphanage, wanted to call him. She found a phone, and used it."

"Did she talk to him?"I asked.

Tomomi gave me a weird look. "Yeah, but that hardly matters. What really matters is that the morning after she called him, she found long, bloody gashes on her back. In the hallway outside her room, the sentence 'Good girls will obey all rules' was found written in red, dripping blood." Her eyes flashed ominously.

I let out a gasp and cringed. What a horrible story!

"And that's not all," she continued, her voice still dark and bleak. "The blood on the walls was tested, and it matched the girl's blood exactly."

"Did she write it herself?" I asked in a trembling voice.

Tomomi shook her head. "No. Her fingers were spotless. And then, not realizing why it had happened, the girl called her brother again. The morning afterwards, she was found dead in her bed with large slits going all the way down the undersides of her arms."

I trembled and clenched my eyes shut tightly. Damn! I wish I could call Naru and tell him about what I just found out! "Do you know of any other incidents?" I asked, opening my eyes to look at her. I tried desperately to keep a tremor of fear out of my voice.

"What are you, an investigator?" Tomomi snorted. "Yeah, of course! How else would we have established the rules here?"

I took a deep breath. I used to help with investigations, I thought gloomily. "What else happened?"

"Well, a different girl lost one of her belongings...a precious heirloom from her deceased mother, I think. So, you can imagine that she would be pretty worked up. She looked up and down for it on her floor, but she couldn't find it. She finally decided to go look around in the closets in the reception area, and when she was standing in one, the closet door slammed shut on her. She felt hands strangling her throat, and she couldn't call for help. Later, she was found unconscious on the floor of the closet. The bruises on her neck formed the same sentence as the incident before: 'Good girls will obey all rules'."

I unconsciously lifted a hand to my throat.

Tomomi's voice dropped even lower. "A week later, the girl went looking in the basement for her heirloom. Everybody else was up here; minding their own business, when there was an awful scream. They went down and found a bruise from a sharp rock right between her dead, distant eyes."

She straightened up. "And the violence and terror continues on," she said. "Every month, at least three people are badly injured or disappear."

Uncontrollable shivers racked my body. Fear gripped my mind; froze me in place. What was going on here? What if I accidentally did something wrong and I was next?!

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Oooh, this chapter gave me chills to write!!! Reviews are VERY welcome, although (like I said above) I've gotten rid of review requirements. It was for the sake of my sanity that I did.... :D