Genre: Mystery/Horror
Rating: T
Purpose: Theme of the Month
Title: Ghost Stories
Syaoran stood on Tomoyo's doorstep with Eriol and Takashi. He was dressed in a green outfit with a green hat and a plastic sword and shield. He had a half sad half frustrated look on his face. Eriol, on Syaoran's left, was dressed in a pumpkin outfit with a green hat acting as a stem on his head. He was smiling quite happily through the doorway. Takashi had a similar smile on his face. He was dressed in complete black, shirikens hanging on his outfit.
"Sakura, Tomoyo, please let me inside." Syaoran pleaded with puppy eyes.
Giggles erupted from the inside of the doorway. Five figures gathered around to peer at the boys standing outside. Sakura's green eyes stood out from her black, witch costume, complete with a broom and pointed hat. She smiled at her boyfriend.
"Sorry Syaoran, no boys allowed until ten o'clock." Sakura said, laughing.
"You can't make an exception?" Eriol asked, although he didn't seem to care whether he had to wait or not.
"Sorry, rules are rules." Tomoyo said, wearing a shimmering angel costume with sparkling wings.
"Who makes up the rules?" Syaoran asked.
"We did!" Rika exclaimed, jumping in the background and giving the boys a gimps of her pirate outfit, complete with a bandana and eye-patch.
"Ya, and there can be no breaking of the rules!" Chiharu exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips while looking very cute in her fairy costume.
"Didn't you know," Takashi piped, pointing his finger in the air, "that in the olden days, women made all of the rules and the men had to be their slaves."
Syaoran sent a horrified look at his ninja-dressed friend. Chiharu on the other hand, shook her head in hopelessness.
"Until nine, why don't you boys go out trick-or-treating for us?" Naoko asked sweetly, dressed as a bunny.
"Trick-or-treating?" Syaoran asked incredulously. "But we're nineteen."
"You don't look your age." Tomoyo assured.
"Syaoran might not, but Takashi and I certainly do." Eriol commented, receiving a glare out of Syaoran.
"Come on Syaoran, don't you want to get me some sweets?" Sakura asked, eyes brimming with cuteness.
Syaoran tried to resist, but there was no resisting those green eyes at point blank. The poor boy's shoulders sank and he nodded.
Cries of joy erupted from the five girls. "You're so kind, Syaoran-kun." Rika commented.
Eriol, Syaoran, and Takashi were each handed ghost, pumpkin, and skull buckets respectively. Syaoran peered curiously at his little bucket.
"Where did you find these?" Syaoran asked.
"McDonalds, of course!" Takashi piped up.
"Actually, he's not lying this time." Fairy Chiharu said, slapping her hand to her forehead.
"I like the prizes in happy meals." Naoko said sheepishly, hiding her blush with her fuzzy bunny hands.
"Now go get us some candy!" Sakura cried, making little sweeping motions with her broom, as if sweeping the boys off the porch.
She stood in front of the doorway so the boys wouldn't have any second thoughts about trying to get back into the house. Syaoran got a better look at her witch costume with its laced bodice, gauzy skirt, striped tights, and shimmering shoes.
"Go my friends, while the night is young!" Sakura cried, making a sweeping motion so great she almost knocked her pointed hat off her head.
Tomoyo jumped in front of Sakura in her shinning angel costume. "Don't let Syaoran take all the chocolate!" Aiming her cry toward Eriol.
The pumpkin boy simply winked a blue eye, smiling at his little angel.
Amidst all of these lovely thoughts, the door was unceremoniously slammed in the poor boys' faces. They frowned at the door. Takashi nudged Syaoran to let him know they might as well go get the candy.
"It could be fun!" Takashi said enthusiastically, walking down the pathway that led to the front gate.
"Indeed," Eriol agreed, "besides, we'll have to come back once these little buckets are full, and that won't take very long, will it?"
Syaoran smiled and shook it. "No it won't, not very long at all."
Back inside the house, the girls were gathered in Tomoyo's living room. They had arranged themselves in a circle. The lights were out and candles were lit, sitting all over the room.
"Time for ghost stories!" Naoko said in a spooky voice, shining a flashlight in her face.
"I have an idea." Tomoyo said.
"Go ahead then." Rika encouraged.
Tomoyo nodded, sending her halo wobbling. "Alright. Once, on a dark autumn night, Sakura was walking through the countryside."
Sakura skipped down the pathway in her cute witch costume. She was carrying her broom and a pumpkin pale.
"La la la la la, I'm Sakura and I'm cute and I wish that Tomoyo could videotape me in cute costumes all day long."
Sakura gagged. "That doesn't seem like me."
"Continue, continue," Naoko pressed.
Sakura had lost her map and was trying to find her way home. Her cell phone had no service and she was walking down the road in hopes of meeting a traveler or finding a shop with a phone she could borrow.
After walking through the evening and part of the night, Sakura finally came upon a little shop a little ways off the road. There was an old dirt path leading up to the shop. Although it was nighttime, the shop's lights were still on and Sakura could tell that the sign in the window was still flashing "Open".
The green-eyed girl was excited to find a shop. She quickly ran up to the old building, happy that she wouldn't have to go wondering around the countryside all night. Sakura, being the cute naïve girl that she was, didn't second guess as to why a little shop was stationed in the middle of open country where it could not possibly have good business, if it had any business at all.
"How old am I supposed to be in this story?" Sakura asked, thinking that Tomoyo must be imagining a younger version of herself for the story.
"Well, you're as you are now. Why?" Tomoyo asked, curiously.
Rika sweatdropped. "Don't worry about it, just continue with your story."
A little bell rang as Sakura stepped through the shop's door. The shop sold little Japanese trinkets like charms, seals, bracelets, candy, incense, and other little knickknacks. There was a little desk in the back of the shop that a little old woman sat behind, dressed in a dusty kimono.
"Hello there little girl, it seems you're a little early to be trick-or-treating. Isn't that tomorrow night?" The little old lady asked.
Sakura shook her head. "Oh, I'm not here to trick-or-treat, I've lost my way home and I was wondering if I could borrow a map or a phone."
"Ah yes, I do have a map, as for a phone, I paid my bill late and it won't be working until tomorrow morning." The old lady explained.
Sakura smiled and clapped her hands together. "If I could borrow your map I would be very grateful."
"By all means." The old lady said. She searched through her drawers and pulled out an old and wrinkled map.
Sakura carefully unfolded the map. The map was at least twenty years old though, and the area on it looked unfamiliar to her. She re-folded the map and placed it back on the desk.
"I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem that this map is going to help me." Sakura said. "Is there another shop nearby with a working phone?"
The old lady shook her head. "I'm sorry sweety, but you must have walked a long way to get here. There are no other buildings for at least another five miles."
"Oh," Sakura sighed, feeling a little sad that she wouldn't be getting home that night.
"If you would like though," the old lady began, "you can stay the night here and use the phone in the morning."
Sakura's eyes lit up. "You would let me stay?"
The old lady nodded. "Yes dear, you may stay. It's no good to have young ladies tracking through the countryside at this hour. It wouldn't be good for your health."
Sakura nodded, trying not to think of what 'unhealthy' things included.
"Only you would come up with that." Chiharu interrupted, raising an eyebrow at Tomoyo.
"I'm just being realistic." Tomoyo explained.
Rika rolled her eyes. "Because Sakura skipping down the random countryside dressed up for Halloween and trick-or-treating the day before Halloween is realistic."
Naoko hushed her interrupting and incredulous friends. "Seriously guys, you're ruining it for me."
Sakura began to munch on some candy corn as Tomoyo continued with her story yet again.
The old lady showed Sakura to a little room in the back of the shop. There was a twin bed and a small desk. There was also a little window veiled with translucent curtains, giving a view of the grass and trees behind the shop.
"You may stay here tonight, I'll be asleep upstairs if you need anything." The old lady said.
Sakura nodded and she was soon left alone. She tried to go to sleep, having borrowed a long, flannel nightgown from the old lady, but she found that she was unable to fall asleep. She kept tossing and turning restlessly.
Finally, when she realized that she wasn't going to be falling asleep any time soon, she sat up in bed. She flicked on the lights. Sakura went to the little desk and opened the drawers, hoping to find a book to read or some paper on which to doodle.
The drawers had some old magazines in them as well as a few newspapers, but nothing that Sakura found interesting. She soon grew cold outside of her blankets, and went to the foot of her bed where she had left her striped tights. She bent down to grab them when she noticed something under the bed.
Sakura knew that she shouldn't have looked at whatever it was, but her curiosity got the better of her and she reached under the bed to pull out a little shoebox. Like everything else in the house, it was covered in dust. She opened the lid to find what appeared to be a little diary.
It would be an invasion of privacy if Sakura looked, there was no denying it, but she couldn't help herself. She opened the diary and read. It began very normal. It seemed that it belonged to the old lady that ran the shop. It started out when she was about perhaps thirty or forty and just opening the shop.
After a few entries concerning the opening of the shop, the tale the diary told became strange. The old lady had written about a little room in the back of the shop, the same room that Sakura was staying in, and of how weird noises could be heard from inside at night. It told of how she would go to the room and there would be nothing, but when she would shut the door the noises would start again.
At this point, Sakura was thoroughly freaked out, but she found that she could not put the diary down or stop reading the words on the pages. The diary went on to describe of how the old lady began having dreams about things happening in the room, horrible things. She had dreams of a young girl being locked inside the room, trapped for long periods of time without food or water.
It seems that in the old woman's dreams, the girl ended up dying in the room, haunting it. Every night, the old lady heard scratches, and every night she had the same dream where the girl died in the room. Until she finally realized, and wrote in red ink, that the little girl in the room had been herself, and that the old lady now was actually a ghost, tied to that shop, never able to leave.
Sakura was shaken to the core. Certainly this was all nonsense. None of this diary could actually be real. It was all imagined. None-the-less, Sakura quickly stripped off her nightgown given to her by the old lady. She pulled on her witch costume in anxiety, aware of every sound that she made.
She tip-toed to the door and tried to open it, finding that it was locked. Sakura panicked for a moment, but she regained her wits and summoned her magic staff, using the Key Card to unlock the door. As Sakura slipped into the main section of the shop, she saw the old lady at the exit, holding a hatchet in her hands.
Without thinking Sakura threw a card up into the air.
"Freeze time!"
Knowing that she wouldn't be able to hold time for long, she ran past the old lady and transformed her staff into wings. She shot out the door into the night. Although she made it out safely and managed to return home, when she went back later during the day with the police, the shop was gone. The police asked citizens of the nearby towns, but none of them had ever heard of the shop before.
The End!!
"What?" Chiharu asked, the look on her face let everyone know she thought the story was lame.
"Okay, so why did Sakura use her magic wand once she was in danger, but not when she was lost in the country?" Rika pointed out. "It doesn't make any sense."
"Of course it doesn't." Tomoyo said. "Have you seen most of the horror movies out there? Most of the plotlines have major holes."
"I liked your story, but it wasn't really that scary, even for me." Sakura said.
Tomoyo pouted a little. "Well I liked it because it starred kawaii Sakura."
"Does your boyfriend approve of your Sakura obsession?" Naoko asked.
"Well…it's not really an obsession, more like a hobby." Tomoyo answered.
Before anyone could even send her a strange glance, the doorbell rang.
"Are those trick-or-treaters?" Sakura asked.
Tomoyo opened the door to find a pumpkin, Link, and a ninja on her doorstep. They had smiles on their faces and their buckets were full of candy.
"You boys are a little early." Chiharu said from her seat in the living room.
"We've got about as much candy as we can carry." Syaoran said.
"It's true," Takashi agreed, "Eriol even turned his hat upside down so that he could hold more candy."
Eriol held out what had been his pumpkin stem hat, now acting as a pale to hold candy. Tomoyo clapped her hands and smiled at the boys.
"Good job everyone, come inside and dump the candy out in the living room."
"Wait a second, it's not nine yet, they can still go back out and get us more candy!" Chiharu exclaimed.
"Come on Chiharu, give them a little break." Sakura said.
"Yeah," Rika agreed, "besides, it's almost nine anyway."
"So what were you ladies doing while we were gone?" Eriol asked, taking a seat on the rug next to Tomoyo.
"We were telling ghost stories." Naoko said, jumping in excitement.
"Ghost stories?" Syaoran said distastefully.
"It's alright Syaoran, they're not very scary." Sakura assured.
"The last story wasn't, but this one will be!" Naoko said, flashing her flashlight in everyone's eyes.
Rika entered an old, abandoned hospital. She had dressed in a little, red dress in hopes of sunny weather, but the weather was cloudy and overcast. She had her camera around her neck and a little book bag hanging at her hip. She was at the hospital for a report she was writing on a few doctors who had been doing odd experiments on patients during the 1950s.
The young reporter was going to go through the hospital in search of reports, documents, and any other evidence she could find to support her theory. Because the hospital had been immediately shut down after the doctors' procedures came into the public light, it was left in similar condition from over 50 years ago. It was a time capsule, just waiting for Rika to sift through its contents.
The door to the hospital had been boarded up, but after almost 60 years of weathering, it hadn't been hard for Rika to remove the wood and slip in through the doors. She entered the front desk and waiting area. The walls and floor tiles were badly deteriorated. Everything was a shade of grey from being covered in so much dust.
Rika made her way to the front desk on which there were stacks of old papers and files. There was an old telephone sitting on the desk, a yellow-white color. Rika picked up the receiver and wasn't surprised to find that the line was dead. After placing the receiver back down, she began her search of the patients' former rooms.
The young reporter went through a couple of rooms, taking pictures before disturbing any items. She came across a few patient reports. Each of them contained recordings of odd types of treatment. One patient, an adult male, had his blood drained in his right arm. The other patient, a young girl, had been forced to listen to some odd sort of music.
It wasn't long before Rika came upon the office of a doctor on the first floor. His name was still on a rusted metal plate on the front of the door. Rika juggled her camera in her right hand as she pushed the door open with her left hand, clutching some of the patient reports.
Upon opening the door, Rika was stunned to see who looked liked a doctor standing in the office with his back to her, looking out the window. She was so surprised she almost lost a hold of her camera, accidentally taking a picture and setting off the flash. The light hit the doctor, causing him not only to scream out in pain, but to become transparent to Rika.
Rika was chocked with fear, dropping the reports that were in her left hand. She was frozen with papers at her feet as the doctor turned around to face the young woman, his eyes red and what appeared to be blood running down his face. He slowly began to make his way toward Rika.
Her mouth opened but she could not scream. She did the only thing her mind would let her do. She pressed her finger down on the camera, taking another picture. The light flashed again and the ghost of a former doctor sank into the floor and disappeared.
The room was silent, nothing moved and nothing made a sound. It took a few moments before Rika regained her wits and bent down to quickly gather the fallen reports and shove them into her book bag. She knew what she had seen was real and she knew that her body was screaming to run out of the hospital and never return. But Rika could not leave. Not yet.
An audible gulp broke the silence as Rika swallowed her fear and continued to search the room. This report would give her better story opportunities in the future; it would give her a name. It was scary, but as long as she had a hold of her camera she should be fine. She couldn't let this opportunity pass her. It might be the only one she would get.
Her decision to stay soon proved to be a good one. Rika found a journal in the desk, probably belonging to the doctor she had just seen Instead of thoroughly reading through it as she had done with the other reports she had found, she simply flipped through the pages before stuffing it into her bag. After encountering the doctor she had come up with a new policy. Collect information first, read it later!
Once she was done with her investigation of the first floor, Rika was beginning to question if what she had seen had been her imagination, or some kind of prank set up by some kids. She approached the stairs.
'One down, two more to go.' Rika thought, concerning floors in the hospital.
She took a deep breath and placed her first foot on the stair. She was unable to climb through as a hand roughly grabbed her shoulder. The poor girl shrieked and whipped around, taking a picture with a blinding flash.
"Gha!" The figure gasped, stumbling backward. "Rika, what did you do that for?"
Rika blinked in confusion. Standing before her, rubbing his eyes, was Yoshiyuki Terada. She gasped before throwing her arms around her boyfriend in a great hug.
"I'm so glad you're here, I thought…well, you startled me!"
Yoshiyuki laughed. "Remind me to never do that again."
Now that his vision was cleared, he took a good look at his girlfriend, who was staring up at him with her hands on her hips. He looked her up and down once before raising an eyebrow.
"You're doing research through a dusty hospital while wearing that?" The older man asked.
Rika crossed her arms in embarrassment. "Never mind. I have to get working."
She started up the stairs again but paused and looked at her boyfriend. "What are you doing here anyway?"
Yoshiyuki smiled and scratched the back of his head. "Well you know, I didn't want you to be alone and freaked out in this dusty old hospital. I thought I'd tag along and keep you company."
Rika smiled and began her journey up the stairs again. "Well then, come help me look."
Yoshiyuki bounded up the stairs after her, pulling his camera out of his pocket.
"Would it be alright it I used this?"
Rika nodded, feeling some relief. "Sure!"
On the second floor were more patients' rooms and the media room containing the PA system and the radio controls. The pair made their way to that room first, seeing all of its contents through its large glass windows. Although it was clear that nobody was inside, Rika just couldn't shake off a weird feeling that something wasn't right. The two entered the room though, with no problems.
There were sheets of music and documents concerning the strange songs the nurses made the children listen to. Songs that were supposed to help them get better. Yoshiyuki sifted through the music sheets as Rika took pictures.
"What do you say, onto the net room?" Yoshiyuki asked.
Rika nodded, eager to move onto their next destination. They made to the door, but the figure of a nurse blocked their way. Yoshiyuki actually recoiled with a yell of surprise. Rika used her fast reflexes to snap two pictures. The flash lit the room twice and the nurse screamed before melting to the floor, just as the doctor had done.
The two sat paralyzed in silence staring at the place where the nurse had been standing. Rika slowly looked at Yoshiyuki, hoping he wouldn't dash out of the hospital. He just looked at her though, his chest heaving.
"That's not the first time that's happened, is it?" He asked, although not expecting an answer.
"No," Rika said, giving it to him anyway.
"So…you just take its picture and it goes away?" Yoshiyuki asked.
Rika nodded. "Just a couple of flashes should do."
"Alright, we should move on." Yoshiyuki said, yanking the door of the media room open.
Rika followed suit and hurried out of the room. They had an unspoken agreement at that moment.
Don't speak, don't pause, just do the work and get the hell out.
Yoshiyuki didn't ask Rika how she had discovered to dispel the ghosts, or if they were both going crazy. He decided that he would leave such questions for a more convenient time. Such as when they were both out of the hospital.
The pair grabbed as many documents and took as many pictures as they could handle. It all boiled down to the very last room left to search. It was time to enter the surgery room.
Rika grabbed the door handle and slowly pushed the door open. It creaked forward to reveal a dark room with many tables covered in what used to be white clothes, spattered with aged blood. The pair worked fast, anxious to escape. They photographed the devices used for "treatment" and grabbed a few journals before heading for the door.
As Rika's hand was on the doorknob, she heard a terrible cracking sound behind her. It sounded as if it was coming deep from within someone's throat. She and Yoshiyuki turned to find a doctor a few feet behind them, holding the ghostly remains of his bloody surgeon instruments.
Yoshiyuki acted fast and flashed a picture. This did little to stun the ghost, merely making him pause for a few seconds before advancing toward the couple. Rika flashed another fast picture, also having little effect.
The reporter and her boyfriend pressed themselves against the back of the door, desperately taking picture after picture. They fell into a panic as the ghost grew inches away. It grabbed a hold of Rika's wrist and yanked it forward. The ghost gave and evil smile before slicing a thin, shallow, line down the smooth part of her arm with his scalpel.
Yoshiyuki flashed his camera, once, twice, three times, before the ghost finally shrieked and fell into the floor. He grabbed his girlfriend's arm and they dashed down three flights of stairs. The phone that had been dead earlier began ringing as the pair flew past the front desk, ignoring its pleas to be answered. They ran out of the hospital without looking back.
Although Rika published her article, neither she nor Yoshiyuki told anyone about the ghosts they saw, or showed anyone the pictures they took. Rika did gain enough evidence to convince the city to make the hospital an 'off limits' zone, but not much else.
The young reporter could do nothing else but pray that nobody else would try and brave through the hospital. The wound that the doctor gave her became infected and festered, refusing to heal for a month, giving Rika a constant reminder that what had happened to her and her boyfriend had been real. The pictures were developed, revealing ghosts in some pictures where they hadn't been seen by Rika or Yoshiyuki. Some of the pictures containing Rika or Yoshiyuki also contained a ghost standing right next to them, staring at them with dead eyes or haunted expressions.
Although the horror was over, and neither encountered a ghost again, their time in the hospital continued to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
"The end." Naoko announced, content with her story.
"I liked that story." Rika announced.
"Only because you were in it." Sakura pointed out, gripping onto Syaoran's hand and trying to act like it hadn't scared her.
"Your story was scarier than Tomoyo's." Chiharu stated.
"What was your story about?" Eriol questioned, gazing at his girlfriend.
Tomoyo bowed her head to hide the faint blush on her face. "Oh, you know, it was about Sakura wondering around the countryside, dealing with angry ghosts."
Chiharu shook her head. Takashi, sitting next to her, grinned and mentioned that the story sounded interesting. Everyone knew that he was trying to make her feel less embarrassed, although he didn't know what from.
"Why doesn't one of you boys try telling us a story?" Rika suggested, munching on some kettle corn.
"May I point to my cute little descendant?" Eriol asked, pointing to Syaoran.
Syaoran was about to send a glare to the four-eyed pumpkin, but everyone else seemed excited at the proposition, so Syaoran let it slide. He wracked his brain for a few moments, thinking of a story he could tell that would be scary, but wouldn't freak Sakura out too much. The light bulb in his head blinked on and he got an evil grin on his face.
"Once upon a time, Sakura was wondering through the country side-"
"We already heard that one!" Naoko interrupted, wanting some variety to their storytelling.
"Fine!" Syaoran said, crossing his arms.
The group stared at the Chinese boy from their seats in the circle. They watched him brood over what story he could tell. The evil grin returned.
"Once upon a time, Eriol was walking through the countryside."
Naoko and Rika glanced at each other before rolling their eyes, letting Syaoran slide this time. Takashi and Eriol seemed to be the only ones who were genuinely interested in where this story was about to go.
Eriol, walked down the muddy road between the rice paddies (sp?). He was wearing his summoning robes, not minding that they were growing filthy in the mud that he trekked through. His hands were loosely linked behind his back in a carefree manner, not seeming to care that he didn't know where he was, or where he was going.
"This seems familiar." Tomoyo whispered to herself.
The young magician came upon an old shrine that had long been absent of any mikos or tourists. It was dusty, rotting, and about to collapse at the slightest wind. Being Eriol though, he didn't seem to care that by entering the shrine he would possibly be endangering his life, or the structure of the temple, and he entered it anyway.
The shrine was fairly small. The first step was broken and the railing was sagging. There were traces of paint, having long been weathered away. The ropes were frayed and anything that used to be shining metal was now rusted and ruined.
The only thing that was not old, and was what had drawn Eriol to the shrine in the first place, was a shining mirror in the back, on top of a little table. Eriol carefully tread across the creaking wood floor toward the mirror. He was very cautious, perceiving that the floorboards might not be able to hold his weight. He made it to the mirror without trouble and began to reach out for it.
"Stop!" A voice cried.
Eriol turned to see a beautiful miko standing at the top of the shrine's steps. She had long dark hair that was let loose and her eyes were filled with a warning look.
"I wonder who the miko could be." Takashi said, glancing at Tomoyo casually.
"Is this your mirror?" Eriol asked.
The miko nodded. "You cannot take it from the shrine."
"And if I do?"
"A terrible curse will be placed upon you."
Eriol smiled, as he always managed to do, but the miko simply watched him.
"That is a problem, because I need this mirror." Eriol said to the miko. "Are you here to protect it?"
She nodded.
"Why don't you come over here?" Eriol suggested.
The miko floated across the room. No floorboards creaked under her feet. She stood in front of Eriol, an empty look in her eyes. The young magician merely nodded.
"As I thought." He gave the miko a warm smile. "You are not of this world, are you?"
He asked a question, but the miko knew that he already knew the answer. She reached out to touch him, but only a cold wind brushed against his skin. Eriol's hand glowed with a warm light, and when he reached out to touch her he made contact.
True emotion seeped into the miko's face.
"…What?"
"I think you've been guarding this mirror long enough." Eriol told her. "Maybe you should let someone else take care of it."
The miko didn't say anything, her eyes were glued to her hand where the magician was touching her. He used his free hand to grab the mirror. This made the sleeping spirits awaken.
"You are hunted now." The miko said, looking quickly into Eriol's eyes. "They won't stop until you're dead, until they have your soul, until you're damned to wander with them."
Eriol's smile conveyed no other emotion other than calm. "Well then, we certainly can't let that happen."
The spirits of former mikos and priests rose from the ground, filling the small shrine. They all faced Eriol and the miko, intending to take care of them both.
"Now we are both doomed." The miko said evenly, already having accepted her fate.
"There's one thing you should probably know about me," Eriol said, a glyph glowing brightly below his feet, "I don't follow the rules very well."
A white light filled the small shrine, exorcising all of the lost souls. They each made a screeching sound that echoed into a sigh of relief. The spirits dissipated and became one with the light. The miko next to Eriol looked at him in wonder as she too began to dissipate.
"I…don't know how to thank you." She said softly. "I've been trapped here for so long."
Eriol put his hand on the girl's transparent shoulder, causing wings to appear on her back.
"Like I said, it's time for someone else to watch over this mirror. You need to rest."
The miko nodded and gave the faintest of smiles.
"Yes, that sounds pleasant."
When the light faded the spirits were gone. The shrine was left dark and quiet. Eriol looked into the mirror to see Clow's face smiling back at him.
"It's time we had a chat, right Clow-sama?"
"The end!" Syaoran said triumphantly.
"I don't see how that was supposed to be scary." Naoko said.
"Yeah," Sakura agreed, "no offense or anything Syaoran, but even I wasn't scared by that story."
Syaoran sat up on the backs of his heels. "It's scary because Eriol survives and brings back someone just like him."
A piece of candy flew through the air and hit Syaoran on the head, courtesy of Tomoyo.
"What was that for?" Syaoran asked.
"You deserved it." Tomoyo said simply.
"It's your own fault, you chose me to tell the story."
"Enough, children," Takashi interrupted, "why don't we just settle for watching a scary movie?"
"Let's watch Ju-On!" Naoko suggested.
"No!" Sakura cried, causing her boyfriend to glare at the girl in the bunny costume.
"Sakura's not going to like any movie you guys pick, so it doesn't matter which scary movie you choose." Chiharu said.
"We want everyone to enjoy it though." Rika said.
"Maybe you should choose a movie with zombies instead." Eriol suggested.
"I can handle zombie movies." Sakura said brightly.
After much arguing, the group finally decided on a zombie movie…after which they watched Ju-On. It was a sleepless night for almost everyone, except Eriol and Naoko, who weren't troubled by mere ghosts. Sakura swore off scary movies again but everyone knew that she would be back next year, doing the same exact thing.
XXXXXX
VictorianPearl: Wow, this is the longest one-shot I've ever written.
Li: I'm very proud of you.
VictorianPearl: You should be! I don't know why, but I got inspired by the spirit of the month. Also, my friend made me play the latest Fatal Frame on the Wii, and since it was in Japanese and I couldn't understand half of it, it left a lot of mystery to the storyline.
Li: Readers, enjoy this one-shot, who knows when another will be posted.
VictorianPearl: Actually, I'm considering posting a Thanksgiving one-shot, on Thanksgiving Day. It will have to be AU though, because this is obviously not a day they celebrate in Japan. I like the idea so much though that I'm going to post it anyway. I'm mixing cultures!
Li: Aside from that, it's probably going to be another dry-spell in the one-shot zone.
VictorianPearl: That may or may not be, but I'm going to get my laptop back on Friday, so Eternal Flame will be coming soon!