To reviewers of Chapter 4:
dark-ranmaru: Well, the old mansion's always struck me as a sort of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion sort of place, haha. I'm glad you liked Roxas's commentary, it always makes the story that much more humorous I think.
fei8000000: Granted, I can't really see Roxas as Shikamaru even if he did wear a wig. Not that he looks more like Sasuke… meh. And I could totally see your point about liking a story but not knowing why. I'm guilty of that plenty of times, hehe.
Vampire Ifurita: Sorry for the wait, hope you like this part just as well. Sora's world is rather amusing isn't it?
Hero Of The Hazard: You'd just have to see, don't you. XP
LupinandHarry: The original as in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya? If that's the case, then I'm glad that I'm doing exactly what I had hoped to do when I set out to write this, hehe.
Kazakun08: Thanks for the compliment. Unfortunately, I couldn't have gotten this part out any sooner than I had hoped too. Hope it was well worth the wait.
Chapter 5 – All Hollow's Eve, Part 2
Just in case you forgot what just had happened…
Here's a recap!
Leading our small party, Sora looked left and right in front of him at the front lawn leading to the mansion. Broken pillars sat forlornly about and moss thrived upon the fallen stone. I wondered what had caused the pillars to crumble like that. This mansion couldn't possibly be that old, could it?
We soon stood in front of the two wooden front doors of the mansion. Compared to the broken pillars, the wooden doors seemed as new as ever. What the hell?
Sora visibly gulped and reached out to the brass doorknob. He took a deep breath and twisted the knob. Lo and behold, the door was unlocked! I have a bad feeling about this!
Sora hummed and stepped into the dark foyer, followed closely by Naminé and Denzel. The rest of us looked and smiled encouraging at one another before Kairi and Riku too entered the old mansion, leaving me outside to ponder my "fate".
I exhaled with resignation and entered the mansion as well.
Within, you could smell the dust and the mold of the mansion; it was rather disgusting. I joined the others at the center of the room where a fallen chandelier sat on the ground.
Now, I supposed that if this mansion was anything like the haunted mansion, I surmise that we should've heard a creepy laughter or deep voice welcoming us. But nothing of the sort greeted us. Instead, the door that I had left open suddenly slammed shut behind us, drawing our attentions to it.
I went over to the door to open it back up, only to find that the knob wouldn't twist. I tried the other knob; and no luck either. Pulling on the door did nothing as well.
"What happened?" asked Sora with a hint of worry in his voice.
"The door won't open," I replied.
"What!? That's absurd!" he retorted with a scowl before trying the doors himself. Like me, he had no luck either.
"We're trapped."
When the news that we were trapped in the mansion was acknowledged by everyone, I looked around to observe their reactions. A frown was on Riku's face—that can't mean anything good. Naminé looked as passive as ever, but she didn't seem amused by the fact that we're now trapped in this old, dusty, and in general creepy house. Denzel had latched onto one of Kairi's arm with a squeak; either he's a really good actor or he's a genuine scaredy cat.
Great, you've been to all these different dimensions and now you're scared of this place? I'm sure there are scarier things that you've already encountered!
Kairi seemed worried by the turn of events since she was biting on her nails now. It was a habit that I noticed last year.
Sora gave the doors another shake before sighing exasperatedly and turned around, waving his flashlight around like some strobe light. The movement was so fast that my poor brain was struggling to keep up. I gave up on trying to figure out what Sora's trying to find out and instead, began my own "research" on the first floor.
Without waiting for our intrepid leader to step into the mansion beyond the safe place—as I deemed it—near the front doors, I approached a wooden door off to the left with two rusting armor suits standing guard on its two sides. The doorknob was an unhealthy brown color, making me hesitant about opening said door to see what was beyond.
Luckily for me, Sora had no such qualms about getting his hands dirty that fast. Maybe he thought that there was water here. He reached for the door knob and twisted it open, pushing the door into an even darker place than the foyer that we were standing in.
He shone his flashlight into the room and saw the shadow of a grand piano sitting in solitude within the dusty room. Cobwebs decorated the room in a grotesque fashion while spiders simply sat stilly upon their webs, waiting for a small disturbance before they lunged out to their meals.
Based on the fact that there was a piano within the room, this quarter must have been the music room back in the day when the mansion was occupied. However, the only furniture within the room was the piano, which also meant that the only instrument in the room was the piano. And based on the movies and such, you would think that there'd be more than one instrument, right?
After seeing nothing else within the room besides a set of windows that were much too high and too small to leave the mansion through, Sora went over to the piano and looked down at the dusty keys. Without inspecting the interior of the piano, he hit one of the keys.
The second indication that the house was unnatural was the way the sound traveled through the room. For a small room, the sound seemed to echo like we were in a grand auditorium, rather than this dusty, small room. Not to mention, the sound was rather odd.
"It's flat," commented Naminé.
Of course, being the perfect human being sans the emotions, Naminé would obviously have the trait of having perfect pitch. But that trait does not help us here! Thank you for that piece of useless information!
Sora then decided to hit another key and Naminé commented that it was sharp this time.
While it's slightly amusing to hear Naminé comment on the pitch of the sound that was being played, you can't possibly think that the piano would remain in tune for who-knows-how-long it's been here.
As Sora got ready to play yet another note, I couldn't help but wonder what Naminé was going to say about this note. Would it be flat? Sharp? Or just right?
I watched with anticipation at the playing of the next note. Time seemed to have slowed to a crawl and I gulped with fright, as if I knew what was about to happen next.
Instead of a clear tone that we expected, the third tone that Sora played began with a "crunch" and then a dampened tone. A brief moment of silence froze the room before the pattering sound of hundred of tiny feet met our ears. We watched with surprise as thousands of insects began pouring out of the old grand piano in droves. I don't know who was the first of us to react, but everyone of us ended up screaming like little girls at the sight—well, expect for Naminé of course—before we rushed out of the room in a panic. Our flashlights shook in our hands as we ran out into the foyer and directly to the opposite wall.
Surprisingly, when our flashlights returned to the open doorway toward the creepy piano, no bugs had followed us into the foyer. It was as if they were bound to that room or something.
We all panted with exertion, our hearts racing with fright. No one said a word, even when the door to the bug room had inexplicably closed on its own.
"What… the hell was that?" gasped Sora in between breaths a minute later. "What is wrong with this place? If this was a fun house, it's not very fun!"
No one had an answer or a comment for him. All of us were still much too startled by the unexpected physics anomaly from the previous room; not to mention the fact that we still didn't exactly know what the hell was going on here anyways.
Once we had all calmed down, Denzel immediately went over to the front doors and tried them. Unfortunately, the act was futile; the doors were still locked. He tried to force it open by ramming it with his shoulder, only to end up hurt.
"Ow…" he practically whined as he rubbed tenderly at his bruised shoulder.
Honestly, out of the five of us besides Sora, I would have to say that Denzel does the stupidest thing ever.
Or maybe he's just trying to keep Sora from doing the same things that he would be doing. Why in the name am I justifying his actions anyways?
In any case, after Sora saw Denzel's futile attempt to open the front doors, he turned around to evaluate the door behind us. Unlike the previous one, the two armors that used to "guard" the door had crumpled onto the ground and they were completely dusty and rusted over. It was as if the armors were the complete opposites. The door itself was the same as the other and bore no clue as to where it would take us.
You could barely hear the shaking of the door knob as Sora's hand laid upon it. There was no doubt that he was scared, which unsettled me slightly; after all, Sora has always been the brave one.
For a few seconds, Sora just stood there with his flashlight pointed downward, his other hand sitting on the doorknob as if in indecision. Finally, he gave a soft snort that sounded like a "heh" and took a deep breath, probably trying to muster up the courage to open the door. He stood up taller with a grin before opening the door.
The room was slightly larger than the previous one that they were in. In the center of the floor was a small chandelier that had crashed onto the ground. Broken crystal dotted the floor and a small crater became the focal point of the room that was once lit by the chandelier. A rotted upholstered chair sat in one corner while a blue painted trunk sat in the other.
Sora made his way over to the strange box while I shone my flashlight upward, finding the crack in the ceiling where the said chandelier once hung from. I approached the crater for a better look at the hole above, the sound of crunching crystals beneath my shoes. A rather loud "thud" grabbed the rest of our attention as we looked over to where Sora and Riku stood. The blue trunk was opened and within was a stack of yellowing cloth.
"Tablecloth?" inquired Kairi as she stepped closer to it.
"Or something," said Sora, pulling the cloth out of the trunk. Underneath was a stack of what appeared to be plates wrapped up in newspaper. However, when I took one from that trunk, it didn't feel like any newspaper I've ever handled.
"Feels like magazine paper," commented Denzel, taking another plate from the chest.
Magazine paper? That kind of media hasn't appeared until thirty years ago; this place has got to be older than that.
I handed my flashlight over to Naminé, who had simply stood silent next to me. She shone the flashlight toward the object as I unwrapped it.
"Looks like handmade," said Riku, peering over my shoulder. I shot him a glance; since when has he been an expert at this?
"The surface of the plate's not perfectly flat," he pointed out, "and the glaze is too much for the piece." I continued to stare at him. "My family collects plates as art," he explained at last. I was tempted to not believe him.
"I will have to say though," he continued as he scrutinized the plate that was in my hand, "the ceramic paint that's used is rather unusual."
"Let me see," said Sora, all but ripping the plate out of my hands. Oh what, so you're an art expert now too?
He took a close look with his flashlight. It was so white and bright that I wondered how he could've seen the red pant that's on it.
"Blood," said Naminé simply. Kairi yelped and dropped the plate that she had been holding. The heavy porcelain hit the hard floor and the sound of breaking plate echoed through the room and out into the foyer.
"Kairi," I hissed with slight annoyance.
"Sorry," murmured the girl abashed, her head hung down.
"The red paint is blood," said Naminé again. "There is no question about it."
I swallowed down hard and set the plate that I had been holding back into the trunk, wiping my hands in the process, slightly perturbed by the thing that I had just held.
"What kind of an insane artist would use blood as a medium?" asked Denzel. God, man, you really have no tact do you.
"Someone who is extremely gifted," said Sora, lifting his head with a wide grin. The sparkle in his eyes scares me. "Someone immerses himself in his work deeply. We might be onto something here," he said excitedly. He set the plate down and began his way out of the room, obviously eager to continue his search for more clues.
By the time I had exited the room, opting to just let things sit rather than put everything back into the trunk neatly, Sora was already taking two steps at a time up to the second floor. It would seem that the incident with all the bugs and such had been completely banished from his mind. All he wants to do was to find out more about the mysterious artist who had painted his—or her—plates with blood. To be honest, I'm kind of curious myself.
Upon reaching the second floor, I could see that there were four doors—two double doors, two single doors. It looked as it was symmetrically designed. While obviously the two double doors lead to larger rooms, I had no idea where the single doors led to. They could lead to bedrooms, the kitchen, bathroom, closet, laundry room—anywhere that a door in a normal house would lead to. Then again, this isn't a normal house, now is it?
Since there were no signs hinting as to the rooms that each of the doors led to, Sora decided to check out the closest one: a single door on our left hand side. He pushed open the door and to our surprise and relief, the room was a simple bedroom. Granted, cobwebs were strewn all over the place and the bed was impossible to sleep on; some of the springs had broken out of their configurations and tore through the layers of foam and cloth over them and one side of bed frame itself had snapped, leaving the decrepit mattress slanted towards the ground. Still, the fact that there was someone who once lived like the rest of us comforted our minds.
As I stepped into the room after Denzel, who was still clinging to Kairi as if she was his lifeline, I couldn't help but shiver. Somehow a bitter cold breeze had swept across the landing behind me. I turned to look if my mind was playing tricks on me and found the doorway void of any person.
"Naminé?" I called out, stepping back out onto the landing. I looked all over the foyer and couldn't find a trace of the self-proclaimed alien.
"Wasn't she with you?" asked Sora with a frown.
"I thought she was right behind me," I replied.
"Did the ghosts get her?" whimpered Denzel. I resisted the urge to knock some sense into the younger man or shaking him senseless while shouting "there's no such thing as ghosts" at him. First, that would've made me sound hysterical; second, Sora would have frowned at me and made me do more work for even making such a statement.
Not to mention the fact that I didn't have an explanation for Naminé's sudden disappearance without revealing her actual identity as an alien rather than an ordinary high school student like me.
So, instead of responding to Denzel's question, I turned to scan the foyer once again, frowning as my search came up fruitless. I looked back into the room where the others were and found that Sora seemed to be unconcerned by Naminé's sudden disappearance.
"Aren't you going to look for Naminé?" I asked, watching Sora scrutinize the bed frame closely.
"What for? She'll show up again whenever the bad guys want her to," he said simply. Uh, what?
"Huh?" I uttered thoughtlessly. Sora heaved a sigh of annoyance and straightened up to face me.
"We're in a 'haunted' mansion, idiot," he almost shouted at me, his fingers gesturing the quotation marks as he said "haunted". "Since Naminé disappeared, it's obvious that someone else is here and doesn't want us to solve the mystery behind this place. This place is obviously some hide out for counterfeiters."
Now that's wishing too much, Sora. This isn't like one of the episodes on Scooby Doo, you know. This is real life!
"How do you know that?" I decided to pose the question.
"How else do you explain it!?" he yelled back.
To that, I had no answer. Sora huffed with exasperation and bent down again to look at the etchings on the bed frame. He seems very interested in the details for some unknown reason.
Uncertain what to look for, I simply looked around the bedroom aimlessly. It wasn't until I had looked about me several rounds to realize that this room was indeed strange.
"There's no bathroom," Riku said with a grin.
"No windows either," added Kairi.
"Looks like a prison cell," I commented. The other four looked at me like I had sprouted another head again. "You know, like the ones that you read in those cheesy stories, where the bad guy locks the good guy or some hostage up in a room?" Now I'm starting to sound like Sora.
"That's absurd!" Sora exclaimed. "Such a room would only exist underground, not on the second floor! Don't you ever think?"
"Maybe it's not a bad guy-good guy situation but family members locking up other family members," I muttered in the end, slightly rebuffed by Sora's insinuations. At that, Sora stood back up and crossed his arms as if he was angry at me. And so I braced myself for another tirade from the eccentric teen. However, instead of an angry rant, he had simply hummed in thought.
"You know, you might be onto something here," he said. "That's probably why the artist ended up painting their pottery in blood, because they couldn't leave the house!"
While Sora's theory did intrigue me, that didn't quite add up. After all, if that was the case, why was there no potter's wheel in the bedroom that we're in? As I recall, a potter's wheel is quite heavy. So for now I'll not agree with the man.
Having found absolutely nothing in the room, we made our way over to the double doors next to the bedroom. This time, Riku and I took the initiative to open the door. Denzel was still clinging to Kairi like a scared little girl while Sora was obviously eager to find a hidden passageway of some sort.
Interestingly, the room next to the strange bedroom was a personal library with bookshelves that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. A chandelier hung over a large wooden table in the middle of the room and a white symbol was drawn at one end of the table.
While I had kept an eye on Riku as I stepped into the room, semi-hoping that he wouldn't disappear like Naminé, I couldn't help but marvel at the room. The library looked like it was two stories tall and had a ladder on wheels hanging from a rail that went around the room. In the center of the wall next to the door, there was a giant portrait of a creepy looking lady whose eyes seemed to follow you wherever you went within the room.
"Where's Riku?" asked Kairi. I looked immediately to the last place I had seen the silver-haired teen at and found no one there.
"Oh great," I muttered angrily. I don't need everyone to be disappearing on me right now! Especially not Naminé and Riku, since they're the only two who can possibly break us out of here. Well, maybe just Naminé. Riku can rot in hell for having suggested for us to come to this wretched place.
Sora seemed resigned to the fact that we were all going to disappear until we figure out this mystery and heaved a sigh. He turned back to the books and dusted some of them off to look at the titles.
As for me, I refused to acknowledge the fact that we're stuck in a scripted event where every single one of us is going to disappear, leaving behind one or two "survivors" to solve the mystery and leave the mansion alive and well, and perhaps, if the story is a happy one, with the rest of us all safe and sound as well. Because of my rebellious nature at that moment, I decided to stomp my way back toward the doors that we had just gone through.
"If you're going to go look for them, take Denzel with you," said Sora before I even took a step out. "That way neither one of you will disappear." I don't know whether he said that to comfort me or to spite me, but at that moment, I was just simply extremely angry with our situation.
I pressed my lips together and gritted my teeth with latent anger. With a frustrated exhale, I acted like a vengeful father about to abuse his son and grabbed a hold of Denzel's wrist, pulling him away from Kairi. The freshman gave a whine like a pup that'd just been pulled away from his mother and was almost near tears when I finally let go of him on the first floor of the foyer.
I couldn't hold onto my frustrations upon seeing that face and quickly muttered an apology shamefully, resisting the urge to smack my own head right there and then.
"You can cling onto me if you'd like," I murmured.
"No thanks," he quickly replied. "That'd be awkward."
"Uh, what?" was my immediate response. Wasn't he all scared of this place just now?
"I said that me," he pointed to himself, "clinging onto you," he pointed at me now, "would be awkward."
"How so?"
"We're both guys, duh!" He said that as if it was the most obviously thing ever.
"And you're fine clinging onto Kairi?" I questioned him, my right eyebrow getting higher and higher on my face.
"I like Kairi. Besides, clinging onto her let's me get closer to her boobs," he grinned.
That time, I smacked my forehead loudly. "Great, I have a hormone-raging teenager with me."
He scoffed. "Speak for yourself, you're only one year older than me," he retorted.
"You know that Kairi's not going to get involved with you, right?" I said.
"Doesn't mean I can't try." I rolled my eyes at him before taking one step towards him and smacking the back of his head.
"Ow. He said rubbed at where I had hit him tenderly. "What's that for?" he whined.
"This isn't the place to be such a pervert," I said. "Also, Riku'll probably whoop your ass if he hears this. He's rather protective of Kairi, you know."
"Like you're not?" he retorted.
"Denzel," I said warningly.
"Oh, fine," he exclaimed exasperatedly. I had to hide my snicker. He was acting more like his sister as each day goes by.
"C'mon, let's go look for Riku and Naminé."
"Yeah, yeah."
Together, the two of us went through the two rooms on the first floor and the bedroom that we had previously "explored" on the second floor.
"Find anything?" came Sora's voice as he and Kairi's came out of the library just as we were about to search through the two rooms on the opposite end of the mansion that we hadn't looked through before.
"Nope," Denzel replied immediately before opening the single door into a black room. I gave Sora a shrug as the younger boy stepped into the room.
"We were hoping that one of these other two rooms would yield some clues," I explained. "How about on your end?"
"Nothing," replied Sora.
Suddenly, the door to the room that Denzel had been stepped into closed.
"Denzel!" shouted Kairi. My eyes widened with shock and I quickly reopened the door and peered in.
Denzel had vanished into thin air.
"Dammit!" I exclaimed angrily. "There's got to be a trapdoor around here." My flashlight swept across the floor rapidly as I sought for anything that might lead me to a trapdoor; there was none. Sora and Kairi quickly joined me in my exploration of the room and they too, could not find anything. The entire room was bare and seamless.
"How could he have disappeared?" I wondered aloud, but none of us had an answer.
Sora sighed once again, which worried me slightly. If he was getting sad, and more Closed Spaces pop up, what will the Organization do without Riku?
"Let's go look at the last room," suggested Kairi quietly. It was as if she was acknowledging the fact that she would be the next one to disappear. And from my experiences with Sora and me being his chosen one, somehow, I didn't doubt it either.
So when Kairi disappeared right after we had entered the last room, neither Sora nor I was surprised. We went about our search mechanically yet full of fear. Would either one of us disappear next? Or was this all a giant prank being played on us and everything would be fine? We were both worried, both anxious, and both had tons of questions with no answers.
It wasn't until I had circled around the room for the third or fourth time looking for something that wasn't there when I realized the familiarity of the room.
Although the colors were different, the room looked strangely like Naminé's living room.
"Don't you think this looks like Naminé's living room?" asked Sora just as I came to the realization.
"Yeah," I replied. While Naminé's living room was completely in white, this room was completely in a shade of brown. It could've been the juxtaposed room that Naminé was searching for if she were an interior designer planning on making her apartment look like a work of art.
I shone my flashlight onto the wooden table in the room and noticed an etching at the end of the table. I quickly dusted the symbol to look at it closely.
"A symbol?" asked Sora, looking at the same thing that I was.
"Maybe," I replied, wondering what it meant.
"I think I know," said Sora.
"Huh?" Sora didn't answer me, but simply grabbed a hold of my wrist and dragged me back in the direction of the library.
"What the hell, Sora?" I muttered exasperatedly after he let me go once we were in the library. The teen didn't answer me in the usual fashion, only went straight to the table and grabbed the white crayon that was sitting there. I guess I never noticed that being there the first time I was in here.
He quickly sketched the symbol that we had found in the room that looked liked Naminé's living room in the circle and a bright light began shining from it. The ground around us shone in a blue square and I pulled Sora back just in time as the majority of the floor disappeared, leaving behind a rather narrow path at the side of the door and the portrait that lead to a set of stairs downward. We turned off our flashlight since blue light shone from the walls of the strange room beneath the library and illuminated the entire area.
Gingerly, we descended down into the room and noticed a doorway on the right side of the room as we came down the stairs. The hallway was dark, but at the end of the corridor, we could see dimmed light. Sora took a hold of my hand, his own clammy with sweat, and pulled me into the darkened hallway, where we carefully ventured through to the other side. Our footsteps echoed through the hall, and the sound was strangely metallic. It felt as if we were in one of those science fiction movies of the future, exploring an abandoned spaceship of some sort.
When we got to the end of the hallway, we could see what was glowing dimly. The room at the end was similar to the other room underneath the library, but the only sources of light for this room was the glow from what looked like computer monitors, a hollow tube with a white light shining up, and a plasma TV with the statistics of someone on it.
"A computer?" asked Sora, looking at the multi-paneled machine sitting in the corner. Lines of indecipherable sentences scrolled upward on the monitors at different speeds while the keyboard was split up into three sections. There was no CPU that I could see and definitely no mouse. I supposed that there wouldn't be any need for a mouse since I could see no cursor on the screens at all.
On the main screen, a line that looked like a command had been typed into the computer. Sora looked at me and I shrugged. I'm pretty sure neither one of us had any idea what that line meant. He reached for the enter key and with a gulp, pressed it down. Instantly a swooshing sound came from behind us and a doorway had opened up on the other side of the room to the left.
Once again, we made our way into the hallway, noticing that it was much more brightly illuminated than any other room that we had been in before. The walls were near white, the ground a dull metallic grey with lines of white shining through the cracks between the panels. Our clicking footsteps echoed through the hallway, bouncing off the metal with crystal clarity. The hall then turns towards our right and both of us stopped in curiosity at the sight.
Large pods that looked like lotus flower buds stood in silence towards the left at the end of the hallway, where another doorway stood. We approached the pods carefully, noticing tendrils of smoke or steam dissipating into the air from various parts of the strange apparatuses. As we got nearer, we could see the reason behind the "smoke".
"It's freezing cold," said Sora as he laid a hand on one of the pods. White frost dotted the surface and formed around Sora's gloved hand as he wiped at the glassy surface. We could see a faint shadow behind the frosted glass, but neither one of us had any idea what was in the pod. The pod itself was oddly seamless, providing us with no viable way to pry open the thing to see what was inside.
I knocked on the glass and noticed the dull sound that echoed back.
"That's some thick glass," I muttered. Sora simply nodded.
Both of us jumped back when we saw a sudden movement within the pod that I had just knocked on.
"What the hell?" asked Sora out loud as he tried to get a closer look at whatever it was that had moved in there. Unfortunately, both the thick glass and the frost had distorted and blurred the image so much that we couldn't see exactly what was in there. All we knew was that something alive was being held in these pods and we had no way of getting them out of there.
"What are these things?" I wondered.
"Cryogenic pods," said Sora after giving it some thought.
"What?" I quacked. "Those things aren't possible with the technology that we have."
"How else do you explain it? Clearly, some scientist is conducting his mad experiments here. That would explain the whole haunted mansion thing. He's put a lot of thought into his cover, don't you think?" reasoned Sora.
"But only on Halloween?" I was still skeptical of Sora's explanation.
"He probably started his experiment on Halloween and after all the rumors, decided to give them more credence by making the mansion haunted every Halloween."
"That's a long time to be keeping this up." I didn't know why I was trying to poke holes in Sora's reasoning, maybe my brain just thought that everything that Sora said is impossible.
"A dedicated scientist would do anything to keep his experiments going," replied Sora simply as he began his way toward the closed doorway near the pods.
"So no crazy artist eh?" He didn't reply, simply shrugging his shoulders as he continued on his way. Somehow, I don't think Sora quite believes in his own theory either.
As soon as Sora neared the blocked doorway, the metal door slid open with a "swoosh" like the other door before. Bright light assaulted our eyes as we gazed upon a pure white room with one single thing within. The soft hum of machinery met our ears and waving green light on the ground decorated the eerie room. At the center of the concentric circles marked by green was a larger version of the cryogenic pod that we had just seen in the hallway.
While Sora contemplated the presence of this larger lotus flower pod looking machine, I opted to examine the thing more closely. I rapped on the surface of the machine and noted the hollow metallic tone.
"Sounds hollow inside," I said, turning around to see Sora still standing still with his arms crossed in thought. He didn't reply to me and I gave the pod no second thought. I began my search through the white room, trying to find any clue as to a possible hidden passageway that might lead me to the others. Sora, on the other hand, continued to mull over the cryogenic pods most likely.
"I think I was wrong," said Sora after I was making my second round around the room looking for clues. I stopped in my search to consider him; after all, I wasn't having any luck in actually finding the said hidden passageway and somehow I doubted I was actually going to find it.
"About what?" I asked. I was getting rather chilly in this costume and this stupid bow was starting to make my back itch.
"It's not a mad scientist doing work. I think the entire family is in hibernation in those pods we saw. They were probably being persecuted for one of their family member's artwork and so they ended up having to hibernate until the future when they wouldn't be hounded for their eccentricities." At that, Sora nodded with approval at himself.
God, enough with the half-assed theories. In case you forgot, we're still missing our friends!
"Either your theory is false or whatever, the others are still missing," I pointed out drolly.
He immediately frowned at the mention of the missing others.
"I know that!" he exclaimed angrily. He then immediately stomped out of the room without making sure I followed. I sighed in resignation, slightly wondering why in the world I was still trying to make Sora think rationally and accept the real life when he's not like me at all.
"Oy, you!" his head poked back into the room. He does care! "Are you coming or not?"
"Of course," I replied, hiding my smile.
I followed Sora back out of the section of the mansion that looked like it came straight out from a science fiction book and we ended back on the first floor of the foyer. With resolve, the two of us returned to the creepy piano room and began our search for our friends anew.
Surprisingly, when we opened the piano, there were no creepy-crawlies. And even when Sora played each note, no mysterious appearance of the insects appeared.
"We weren't hallucinating, right?" asked Sora somewhat fearfully as we shut the piano.
"I don't think so," I replied simply.
We left the piano room and continued through the foyer, knocking on the walls as we went along. We listened carefully for any hollowed sounds from behind the walls that might indicate the presence of a hidden passageway or room, but we had no luck. Even as the night grew colder, we continued our search, combing through the rooms.
When we reached the library for the second time, both of us were shocked to see the library back in its previous state before Sora drew the symbol on the table. The white crayon was back on the table and everything looked undisturbed. We had both rubbed our tired eyes to make sure that we weren't seeing things, but sure enough, everything had returned to its original state.
We must've looked rather silly when we turned to look at each other simultaneously and shrugging at each other. While Sora opted to stay in the library and go through each book, I continued my search through the mansion.
Although I had sincerely desired to find the others somehow, my energy dwindled. The adrenaline rush from earlier had all, but faded away, leaving me with little stamina. I moved from one room to another mechanically, paying little attention to the same sound that replied with each knock. The knuckles on my hands were near raw from all the knocking I did and my eyes struggled to keep open. I must've gone through every part of the room at least four times now and still I couldn't find anything.
I tried to open the front doors again, kicking it with frustration when the lock remained firm and unyielding. Sora laid a gentle hand on my left bicep, stopping me from continuing my fruitless search, before pulling me away from the wall.
"That's enough," he said with surprising gentleness.
I looked at him, sleep threatening to drag me into the sweet darkness, and looked around me. The flashlight that I had place in the middle of the room to semi-illuminate the room was flickering before finally extinguishing, the batteries exhausted. It must've been already past midnight now and I didn't even realize it.
"Come on," Sora said, pulling me towards the stairs. I, being too tired to care, simply allowed myself to be dragged up the stairs and into the library. Sora had reopened the strange wing underneath the library and upon the metal flooring was the yellowed tablecloth we had found on the first floor. I stumbled slightly as I walked toward the tablecloth, muttering incoherently before stifling a yawn.
"Thanks, Sora," I murmured before lying down on the covered ground. The blue light casted about us with strange comfort and I could see that Sora was just as tired as I was right then.
As exhaustion began to set in after our fruitless search for the others, I couldn't help but hear the strains of a demented version of the Moonlight Sonata playing off in the distance. But, since I was too tired to pay much attention to it, the music faded from my mind immediately once I shut my eyes.
It was the sound of birds chirping that brought me out of my slumber.
As I blinked away the sand from my eyes, I could see that it was morning. The eeriness of the entire place had seemingly disappeared, leaving behind a simple abandoned mansion. I groaned, not being a morning person, before grimacing as my sore back ached from having slept on an unusually hard surface.
When I sat up, I was shocked.
While Sora had slept beside me, clinging onto me some time during the night, the others had all reappeared and were sleeping rather comfortably in a circle around the two of us.
I took a glance at where we were, and somehow we had managed to move from the library down into the foyer. Sunlight shined brightly through the glass doors at the back of the foyer that I had never noticed before.
Gingerly, I laid Sora's arms down onto the makeshift sleeping mat and made a beeline to the front doors. I twisted the knob and the lock easily gave way. I pulled the doors open and saw morning greet back at me.
"Wake up," I said, shaking each of the SOS Brigade member up.
"Sora, wake up!" The said-teen groaned and slapped my hands away.
"Leave me alone," he muttered.
"We can get out!" I exclaimed. That caught his attention and his eyes immediately snapped open.
"What?"
"We can get out!" I repeated, pointing to the opened doors.
"How?"
"Ugh," groaned Denzel. "What a nightmare." He rubbed at his eyes and smacked his lips in distaste.
"Did we all have the same dream?" asked Riku, stifling a yawn.
"It is possible," said Naminé simply, the first to stand up in preparation for our departure.
"It was all, a dream?" asked Sora with slight confusion.
"I don't want to think about it if it was," I replied. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
The others nodded in agreement and we quickly gathered our things from the ground. Without another look at the strange place, we left the mansion in silence, all of us happy to be out of that place and going home.
I wondered how I was going to explain my sudden "disappearance" last night to my parents.
Thinking back on it, I should've known that something was seriously wrong when none of the other three—er, I mean four… Goddammit, why did Sora have to recruit Denzel this year?
But I'm rambling.
In any case, as Riku and Naminé both verified it after we came out of the mansion, we somehow managed to get stuck in a Closed Space. The fact that all of us had ended up in one of Sora's bubble is a rather unsettling thought. Not to mention the lack of Nobodies made me wonder how in the world did we get out in the first place!?
When I voiced my concerns that first day after we escaped in the clubroom, Riku only frowned.
"Sora didn't make that Closed Space," he said.
Wait, did I hear that right?
"What do you mean? Isn't he the only one would could possibly make that dimensional rift?" I asked, blinking with confusion.
"No," said Naminé without lifting her head from the new book that she was reading. "He's not the only one."
I continued to blink, not understanding what the other two were suggesting.
"There is another being with the same powers as Sora," said Kairi softly as she entered the clubroom. The smile that was usually on her face was replaced by a worried frown.
"You mean… Sora's not the only god-slash-autoevolution generator-slash-time manipulator here?" I must've sounded really odd then.
"There is another," replied Naminé. "And that person has our counterparts."
"People from your own organizations?" I queried.
"No," replied Riku grimly. "People from rival organizations. And they do not accept Sora's existence."
"You mean, they know that Sora's a god? And you all know that there's another god too?"
"We've always speculated that there was another," said Naminé, looking up for the first time. I knew this matter was very serious then. "We've just never found that person."
"Until now."
Kairi nodded. "Until now."
"What do you think of the other, uh, god, then?" I dared to ask.
"That person is just a shadow of Sora," said Riku firmly. "We have to restore those powers to Sora, who is the rightful owner."
"Oh…" I uttered dumbly. "I see."
Something tells me that a great battle will occur in the future.
Pray that it's not the end of the world!
"By the way, what happened to you all that night?"
The other three looked at each other before turning to me and replying simultaneously, "Classified information."
What… the crap.
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and Haruhi Suzumiya do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though.
A/N: Oh me gosh! An update! Sorry for the really long wait, but I hit a sort of creative writing block when I was working on this chapter. Although the fic is based loosely on the events of the Haruhi Suzumiya series, this chapter isn't actually based on any of the chapters from the books. That's probably why I had such a hard time trying to stick with the general theme of Haruhi without making it too mundane or horror-centric seeing how they're in a haunted house after all (wink). To be honest, there were couple of sections where I had to rewrite several times because I felt I was writing more like I do in The Heart of a Nobody rather than in this fic. That only added to the delay of the update. Sorry for that.
Unfortunately, as I've said in the A/N for one of the latest chapters for The Heart of a Nobody, I will currently be focusing my time on completing that fic rather than this one simply because I don't have the time right now to work on both. My apologies for people who prefer this fic over the other, but you'll have to wait awhile for the next update. I am happy to say that there isn't that big of a cliffhanger with this chapter than with the last. I'm sure having that cliffhanger for the past four months wasn't a good move on my part; hopefully this chapter had resolved every question you guys might've had about the haunted mansion, hehe.
Anyways, until my next update, thanks everyone for sticking with the fic and I appreciate your dedications.
