Chapter Fourteen:

Seto moved along the second floor hallway with Yami, the both of them holding their respective weapons and moving with caution. They'd reluctantly abandoned the bedroom where Yugi had been; clearly he was not there now. A thorough search had made them both certain of that. Now Seto was angry and upset as they walked, shoving open the other doors on the floor and looking in them as well. Yugi was missing, having just disappeared like all of the other people in this house. When he got him back, he was tearing this place down personally.

"Something is going on here," Seto growled softly to Yami. "I don't believe it's just ghosts."

"But that's what it seems to be," Yami retorted. "Aibou has disappeared, Joey is missing, things are coming to life and killing people. What more do you need?"

"You said you and Wheeler started up to the attic, but didn't go. Why?"

"I told you. We went up to the third floor, but Abigail and Oscar were still awake--"

"How do you know that? Did they tell you to leave?"

"No, actually. They didn't know we were there. We were passing Abigail's room and heard a disturbance. We decided to check on her, after what had happened during the seance. We thought perhaps the ghosts were indeed turning violent, after the stories Abigail told us, so we pushed open her door a little and peered in. She was in bed, with Oscar. She heard the noise of the door, but didn't see us. We came back downstairs and that is when Joey became possessed. You know what happened then. After you went downstairs, Joey and I were attacked by the Johnstons and had to split up. Now she's dead, the others are missing and now--"

"SON OF A BITCH!"

His outburst made Yami jump so badly he nearly dropped his sword. He turned around, raising it up defensively, his eyes searching for a threat. Seto, however, had just figured something out.

"What?!" Yami demanded, breathing quickly from the startle. His eyes were wide and dilated and Seto realized just then how on edge and scared he was. Until now, he'd hid it well.

"I know--"

"Yami?"

They both looked as Wheeler's voice came to them. He had just come up the stairs from the ground floor, stopping and staring back at them. Seto noticed that he was spattered with blood and that his right hand was cut, dripping blood down his fingers. His eyes focused on Yami and then he ran down the hall towards them, grabbing him up.

"Oh, I'm so glad I found you!" Wheeler gasped, nearly lifting Yami off his feet.

"Joey! Are you hurt?"

Wheeler dipped his head down and kissed Yami hard on the mouth before drawing back and shaking his head. "Just a cut on my hand. This blood--ugh, gods, I'm sorry." He stepped back, wincing as they all saw that the blood on his clothes had smeared onto Yami. "It's Johnston's. He's dead."

"So is his wife," Yami said, looking down at his shirt. "The guillotine in the torture room beheaded her."

Joey shuddered, then looked over the top of Yami's head to Seto. "Where's Yug'? The room's empty!"

"We know," Yami said. "Aibou has disappeared. Kaiba, what were you about to say?"

Seto didn't know exactly why he had been silent all this time. He'd let Yami and Wheeler greet each other without interrupting and that said something about him, a change that had occurred since becoming lovers with Yugi, that he hadn't realized before. But now that Yami had gotten back on track, he was happy to do so as well.

"I know who's doing all of this."

That caught both of their attentions. "Who?" Wheeler asked. "And how did you figure it out? I mean, I know, 'cause I saw--"

"Oscar and Abigail," Seto agreed with a nod.

"Yeah. Well, Oscar, anyway. I was in the conversancy when Anglien's ghost led me out through the French doors. Just ahead of Oscar, who came in holding a kerosene lamp, looked around, and left. I was thinking, with all the screaming going on around here, why didn't he look more upset? I asked Anglien if she'd helped me escape him and she nodded. He was doing the killing, not the ghosts."

Seto frowned slightly as he realized just how close they'd all come to being alone with the murderer. Wheeler had been led out of the conversancy just before Oscar had come in and Seto himself had entered right after he'd left, searching for the voice he'd thought had been calling his name. Yami had lucked out at being in the torture room and out of sight.

Yami looked between them. "But why would--"

"Because they're not Abigail and Oscar," Seto said.

Now Wheeler looked at him in confusion. Clearly he hadn't worked out this part. "Then who are they?"

"Annika and Onfroi."

"But those two are dead."

"Who says? Even Abigail and Oscar said there's no graves for them because no one knows where they died. I don't think they died at all. I don't know how this magick stuff works, but I've given up fighting it. I don't know their motive or how they're doing it, but think about it. They're the only ones who haven't been attacked in any way. They keep this house running, have been doing it for years, but they've never been hurt, no matter how many people die and disappear and they just laugh off what happens. They're never around when someone does get hurt. And Yami just said you two found them in bed together when they haven't shown any signs of being together before now. Why hide it? Who would care if they were together, but they seemed to think someone would. And look at the names. 'A' and 'O' which is too much of a coincidence for me when you put everything else with it."

"Yami, is it possible?" Wheeler asked.

"I suppose so. I have heard of rituals involving immortality, there's many stories of such throughout all the centuries, from every culture. But why would they be doing it?"

Seto glared up at the third floor above him. "Let's go find out."

They headed towards the third floor stairs, and were surprised to find that the stairway door was closed. Seto tried it and was confronted with the same problem as the door to the bedroom that had held Yugi; the knob turned but the door did not open. Growling, he gripped his axe in both hands and raised it up.

"Move back," he commanded.

He swung with all his might, sinking the axe into the hardwood. In a couple of minutes, the door was little more than splinters on the hinges and a pile of firewood on the floor. Seto stepped through the hole and started up the stairs, still holding his axe, Yami and Wheeler following along behind him. He didn't trust this quiet. Where was all the activity they'd been dodging until now?

The third floor hallway was dark and deserted. Wheeler gestured around with his arm. "It wasn't like this before. What happened to the lights?"

Ignoring the question, Seto headed down the hall, still gripping his axe, now as on edge as Yami. Why was it so quiet? On the right was the office, which was closest to the stairs.

"You might not want to look in there," Wheeler said softly behind them. "Johnston didn't die very nicely."

Seto ignored the room more because he was sure there was nothing in there but a corpse. The next room was Annika's bedroom, the door of which was closed. Seto kicked it open unceremoniously, expecting something to happen and almost irritated when nothing did. Was this some sort of game to them? If it weren't for the fact it wouldn't be smart to do so, he was half-tempted to shout out a challenge to the two.

The room was as empty as everything else. The bedroom was a lavish affair, bigger than any of the other bedrooms, decorated in emerald green, dark wood, and white. The bed looked like a Victorian four-poster and all of the other furniture as equally antique. Nothing looked out of place or suspicious, and there was definitely no people or ghosts.

"Uh, guys?"

Seto looked over his shoulder, seeing that Yami was close behind him and peering around his arm; now they both looked at Wheeler, who was looking down the hall. Quickly, Seto looked, and saw a pair of identical teenage boys standing at the far end of the hallway, side by side, translucent and silent.

"Well, fuck if it isn't The Shining," Wheeler muttered.

Despite the ghosts standing at the end of the hall, Seto and Yami both looked at them. He saw them out of the corner of his eye and smiled a little with embarrassment.

"Uh, American horror movie. Freaky twin ghosts at the end of a hotel hallway that--"

"Fascinating," Seto interrupted. He stepped forward a little, brandishing his axe to the ghosts, despite being fully aware it would not affect them in the least. "Do you have something to say?"

The ghosts merely looked at them both, then, as one, pointed to a door right next to where they were standing. Then disappeared into thin air. Seto frowned, staying where he was with Yami and Wheeler just slightly behind him. Clearly none of them were anxious to follow the directions of the ghosts.

"Can't win the Duel if you don't take risks," Seto finally muttered to himself, starting down the hall.

Yami and Wheeler followed him immediately. He'd give them that credit, that neither one of them was a coward. And he was damn sick of this whole situation.

There was another door on the other side of the hallway from where the ghosts had indicated. Seto wasn't going to take any chances and looked inside as it was open. It was Annika's morning room, filled with delicate looking cherry-wood furniture upholstered in soft floral patterns on cream-colored backgrounds. The curtains were lacey, opening to a spectacular view of the mountains in the distance. Nothing looked suspicious in there either.

Well, by process of elimination... Seto grabbed the knob of the door and pulled it open, glad it didn't resist him like the others. This turned out to be the stairwell that led up to the attic.

"Where we were headed in the beginning," Wheeler said from behind him.

"I suppose Yugi must be up there," Seto said.

He started up the narrow, steep stairwell, still holding his axe. Yugi had been missing for more than an hour now. Plenty of time for something horrible to have happened to him.

"Kaiba."

The horror in Wheeler's voice made him stop half-way up the stairs and look down at him, though he really didn't want to. Because Wheeler's voice told him something else was wrong and now Seto didn't want to know what it was. Enough things had gone wrong and it seemed just like when they were about to get a handle on things, something else went wrong. Yugi was still missing. Whatever had gotten ahold of him was sure doing its best to keep them from getting them back. And Seto couldn't stop his mind from coming up with all sorts of unsavory possibilities of why the occupants of this house, whether living or dead, were so interested in him. Not to mention that it was just a matter of time before one of them slipped up and got killed. Though Seto had not had any close brushes with death himself yet, it was only by quick reflexes that Yami was not downstairs skewered on metal spikes and Wheeler in the room down the hall, crushed into the carpet beneath a four-hundred-pound bookcase.

And though Seto didn't want to admit it even to himself, the possibility was very real that Yugi was dead. None of them had seen him in all this time and with what had been happening to the other occupants of this house, that spoke of no good. Others had disappeared never to be heard from again, without even bodies to be discovered. It seemed that was the exact fate Yugi had drawn.

So he didn't want to look, but he did look and he saw that Wheeler was standing pressed up against one of the walls, showing the stairs down below him out into the third floor hallway, and the fact that the space was completely empty. Wheeler's brown eyes looked up at him with unspeakable fear and though he didn't need to say it, he did.

"Where's Yami?"