Mob could not move.
He could only stare into the eyes like sea chasms, where at any moment it seemed like something with a hundred teeth and bulging eyes would come up to haunt his nightmares forevermore. The thing slithered towards him slowly, hypnotically, it's hollow gaze never leaving his. Somewhere in the middle of it, Mob got the image of the man-like face with a body and long arms, reaching out towards his windpipe—
Serizawa burst from the ground and grabbed the thing by the tail. It hissed and whipped its body around, the trance broken and Mob suddenly aware of his thumping heart. He skittered back a foot, and his hand grazed the edge of a broken china vase, hard enough to slice the side of his finger. In that panic of unexpected pain, he found the motivation to stand, even as his legs shivered under him. He covered his bleeding hand with the palm of the other, more concerned by far with the thing and Serizawa and the safety of Ritsu.
Ritsu.
Mob snapped his head up to look outside the hole. There on the nearest edge he sat, the frightened whites of his eyes visible even from so far away, and contrasted so harshly with the color of his blood. They caught each other's eyes, and for a second neither moved, Ritsu breaking it by mouthing a single word—not unwise enough to call out verbally.
"Nii-san."
Again, that feeling came to Mob: again, he felt the responsibility of being the older brother, of keeping Ritsu away from harm. And again, he felt that cold uncertainty of whether he could provide it; of whether he could be a good big brother and ensure Ritsu and himself would be safe after it was all over. It was part of the burden he chose to accept.
Mob did not know how to reply, so he mouthed back the only words that came to him.
"I'm sorry."
The thing flung Serizawa away by the force of its tail. It saw Mob staring up, and in return it saw Ritsu by the edge of the hole, who jerked away far too late. What might have been a grin twisted its face.
A vessel.
.
Mrs. Kageyama went first up the ladder, with Mr. Kageyama close behind.
They stood together in the attic, the bare bulb above casting muted white light over their faces. Mrs. Kageyama went for the boxes by the ladder, pushing away candles whose glass chimed together and picture frames that shifted and settled. She dug until she found a bag strap: dusty with years of being forgotten and neglected. She tugged, and the rest of the book bag slipped out, as yellow as Ritsu had described it so long ago. She turned it over and found the name tag, written on with faded black ink.
Shigeo Kageyama
Mrs. Kageyama did not try to stop the tears that kaleidoscoped her vison. She drew the book bag in close, like it was a baby, her baby, and looked back to her husband crouching behind her.
"This is it… This was Shigeo's."
.
Reigen stared at his complexion in the bathroom mirror, and he took the thermometer out of his mouth when it beeped, his temperature reading as normal. His mouth pinched at the corner. He wondered if it was wrong and he should try again.
The feeling of unsettledness—of sickness, perhaps, or something similar—had not left. It half felt like he was coming down with a cold or a headache, and half felt like the resulting fear of a horror movie jump scare. Reigen cleared the numbers on the thermometer and waved in back in forth, thinking maybe the rush of cooler air would trick it into reading his body temperature better. He popped it back into his mouth and continued to gaze at his reflection as if it could give him an answer.
The house tremored. Reigen nearly inhaled and choked on the stick thermometer, saved only by his lost balance causing it to tumble into the sink basin instead. For a moment, he fretted over it being an earthquake, but the wisdom of past experiences told him that was probably not the case. And the latter option was much more frightening.
It meant something was wrong with Mob.
.
Mob did not think. He acted.
He lifted his arm, and the thing slammed into the earthen wall. It gave a cry and flailed like it had been stepped on. If he had been in a different mindset, Mob may have been surprised that it still had the power to move while he held it against the wall, but it was no matter as long as it did not get anywhere near Ritsu.
Mob felt all his nerves burn and spasm.
Protectiveness.
"Serizawa," Mob spoke to the spirit in a voice as dark as the sky before a storm. "Get Ritsu out of here."
"Are you sure?" Serizawa sounded out of breath although he could not breathe. "I can still— "
One word: one definitive, unquestionable word.
"Go."
Serizawa's composure wilted, and he knew. He left Mob with the thing struggling against its captor. He rose from the ground for the first time in over a decade, the sunlight harsh and the graveyard lawn too green, but his eyes long since unable to feel light-blindness or pain. He found Ritsu backed against a gravestone, his body hunched in preparation for whatever he thought was going to come after him.
Serizawa extended a friendly hand. "Your brother wants you to leave."
Before Ritsu could answer, the graveyard gates rattled open.
.
Mob was not in his bedroom. He was not in the living room, or the kitchen, or anywhere Reigen would have expected him to go when he got home from his outing with Tome. That left only one place for him to be, and Reigen cursed himself for not assuming he would be in the graveyard in the first place. He shoved on a pair of shoes and rushed out the door, nearly tripping over the shopping bag Mob had abandoned there.
That was the next warning sign. The last was the missing shrine.
It was gone: gone as if it had never been. Reigen saw very clearly the empty sky and ground where the shrine was meant to be, where it had been ever since he could remember, and long before even that. The gate to the graveyard had its doors closed like they were not supposed to be. Reigen pushed them open violently, the metal doors making a shattering sound as they crashed into the fence on either side.
He had a lot to see.
Closer now, he saw the gaping hole in the ground that had collapsed the shrine. Odd movements and sounds and flashes of light came from the hole, and another vibration in the ground loosened clumps of dirt from the edges. Near the opening, Ritsu, face bloody and dirty, had smushed himself against a gravestone, and over him stood—
There was absolutely no proper way Reigen could say his name. But, he managed somehow to spout:
"Katsuya?"
Or: almost Katsuya. Reigen had never actually seen a ghost before, but he assumed this is what they would look like: unaged from death, pale, almost-transparent. Serizawa appeared like he winced, his gaze turning from Ritsu, and his hand still out in offering. Reigen saw in his eyes that sad look of his he would always remember, because Serizawa had a face that hid nothing, and Reigen found that so fascinating. Serizawa's head dipped, and his voice came out softly.
"Oh… Arataka."
No matter how much he wanted to, there was not the time for heartfelt greetings. Reigen hastened down the path towards them, waving his arms urgently.
"Where's Mob?"
Now grief fell Serizawa's face. He didn't know what to say, or rather what he should. Mob had asked him to watch after his brother, but now Reigen was here, concerned and hurt and also in danger. Reigen approached him, and he knew he had to say something, and his reply tumbled out like falling dinnerware.
"The thing under the shrine… He's with the evil spirit that escaped."
Reigen froze in his tracks. A frustrated sort of confusion played with his features, and the orb near Serizawa's heart dimmed considerably. He knew he wasn't much help.
Finally, Ritsu found his nerve and forced his body into action. He stood from the ground by his own accord. He looked to Reigen with a cold disposition not really meant for or directed at him; more one that naturally came out of his resistance to act distressed any longer. He answered what Reigen really wanted to know.
"He's in the hole."
Reigen nodded once, firmly. He immediately went that direction, and Serizawa panicked, reaching out for him far too late.
"Arataka, no!"
He saw.
He saw down the entrance of the hole: saw the broken wood, the arches, saw the shattered vase and the man lying motionless beside it. He saw the basin of the water fountain and the mud of the spilled water. He saw the once proud stairs cracked into mere blocks of stone.
And he saw Mob, his arms ripping apart the jaws of a great snake.
The thing screamed in agony. It could not move enough to strike out—its body pinned to the wall, and its head caught in Mob's vicious grip. Malicious swarms of light pulled it in every direction, seeming keen on tearing the thing apart down the center. An utterly wrathful expression twisted Mob's face into something awful and mean: something not wholly himself, something not fitting of someone so sweet and forgiving and wanting to change. The witness of such unbridled violence in Mob made something unknown strike out in Reigen, and he leaned forward and called down.
"Mob!"
It was like the day he decided to take Mob home. He had an instinct to protect him.
Mob paused. The evil lights, for a moment, softened, and floated away from the thing, back to the aura close to Mob. His hands weakened their hold, and his shoulders relaxed, his head turning to look up at Reigen.
The anger he showed in his actions had been replaced by an odd and gentle need, or fear, like a child feeling their way in the dark for the safety of their parent's bedroom. Reigen thought at that moment that Mob looked like the little boy he had been once, playing with spirits through the graveyard fence and sitting on a wooden bench as he still held the hope of his parents coming to find him in the morning.
His voice was like what someone's heart might sound like.
"Shishou…"
The thing hissed and ripped away from Mob's hands. It struck out from the wall and closed its jaws around Mob's upper body.
.
A/N: It's so weird having Reigen and Serizawa call each other by their first names, but they were friend-os in school.
