This time I might just disappear
Ghost Hunt and Mystery Skulls (animated)
I originally though of making this a full story but find myself not knowing what to write next so it has ended up here in hopes that someone picks it up and makes it a full length story.
Mai stood in a forest, it was dark but a light in the distance allowed her to see, all around her small specks of light drifted upwards and everything was silent. The forest was beautiful yet Mai couldn't help but feel scared for some strange reason, she felt particularly scared of the glowing light in the distance that seemed to have gotten closer despite her never moving. A raven suddenly emerged from the shadows and flew right into Mai's face, letting out a loud 'caw'.
Mai jumped as she was startled out of her day dream, she looked at the boiling water in the kettle in front of her and then cried when she realised where she was.
"It happened again." She whispered to herself. "Thanks, Mor."
Mai poured the water into the teacups that had already been set out and stirred the tea before adding the sugar and milk that had been asked, she then set them on a tray and carried them out of the kitchen and to the waiting table.
"Here you are." Mai said with her best cheerful expression as she set down the tray on the table.
"About time." One of the men said rudely.
"Sorry for the wait." Mai apologised, leaving before the customer could say anymore.
Mai managed to get through the rest of her shift without anymore 'drifting off', as she called it.
Mai slid her key into the lock before opening the door to her shared apartment, she closed the door behind and then collapsed onto the couch.
"Rough day?" Yasu asked as he emerged from his bedroom.
Mai only groaned in response.
It had been a few years since the SPR disbanded and Naru and Lin departed back to England. The former SPR members rarely, if ever, got in contact with each other with the exception of Mai and Yasu, being only one year apart they were able to keep in constant contact until both of them graduated from their schools, after that Yasu recommended that they move into a shared apartment while they furthered their education, and so they did. They shared the apartment with a few others around their age and both got part time jobs in order to pay their rent, only Mai had trouble keeping her jobs due to her ever growing psychic abilities making her space out and end up making mistakes.
"I drifted off when I was making tea but I managed to snap out of it relatively quickly so no mistakes today other than some customers getting their tea late." Mai explained.
"That's good." Yasu said. "What did you see this time?"
"A forest with a scary glow."
"I wonder if it's anything important."
Mai shrugged. "I don't know. Anyway, I'm having an early night, I'm beat."
Mai reluctantly stood up and dragged herself to her room, changed into her night clothes, and went to bed.
Mai opened her eyes to find herself in an endless void of darkness with the usual glowing lights rising upwards all around her. There was a 'caw' and a weight suddenly landed on her shoulder, she turned her head to see the same raven from before standing on her shoulder.
"Hey, Mor, thanks for earlier."
The raven let out another 'caw' in response.
The raven's name was Morana and she was Mai's spirit guide, when Gene's body had been found and taken back to England by Naru and Lin he had stopped visiting her and acting as her spirit guide, Mai supposed he had crossed over, after that Mai had had to face her visions on her own until one day the raven showed up and started guiding her through her dreams. Though the raven never spoke Mai had somehow understood that the raven was female and named Morana.
Morana took flight again and Mai followed her, the forest from before then suddenly appeared but the light was not present this time, Morana landed on a branch and waited. Mai was just about to ask a question when she heard a voice.
"Mummy! Daddy!" it was the voice of a little boy.
Mai turned to see a small boy walking through the forest looking lost, in his hands he clutched a toy dog. She then heard a snarling sound and the boy became even more scared as he looked at something behind Mai.
Before Mai could turn and look she woke up
Mai gasped as she shot up in bed. She looked over to her clock as saw that it was only four in the morning, she calmed her beating heart and lay back down to get some more sleep knowing that Morana would prevent any more visions for tonight.
Mai woke up again at a more agreeable time and then went about her usual daily morning routine.
"Morning." Ailith, one of her flatmates, greeted her, handing over a cup of tea.
"Thank you." Mai said, cradling the cup in her hands.
"Another rough night?"
"Yeah. I got a vision of a young boy lost in a forest."
"Poor kid."
Ailith was one of the few people who knew of Mai's abilities and wasn't sceptical about them, it was actually the same for everyone who shared the flat because everyone in the flat had an interest in the paranormal. It had been a very rare stroke of luck, when Yasu had been searching for a apartment he and Mai could live in he managed to stumble across two vacancies that had the term of 'must like the paranormal', after an interview both moved in with a group of fellow young adults interested in ghost and psychic powers. Everyone in the apartment quickly found out about Mai's abilities and were very understanding about her situation, Mai was sure that if it wasn't for them putting in words at their work places then she would have had a much harder job at getting work than she already had.
After breakfast Mai and Ailith set off for work, both of them sharing the same workplace, at one of the local cafés.
Mai approached an outside table containing three people and a dog, she had never seen them before and they stuck out like a sore thumb in the café, there was a rather big man dressed in purple and rather ridiculous purple hair that somehow suited him, a woman dressed in blue with blue hair and pink glasses, the last man was the most normal looking with one piece of clothing only being one colour and he had blond hair spiked up with a few brown strands at the front, the final member of their party was a white dog that seemed to have hair that was red and black and wore glasses that were perched on its nose.
"Hello, what can I get you?" Mai asked as she reached the table.
"Two coffees, one tea, and a large pizza." The purple man responded, using an accent Mai didn't recognise.
Mai could tell that the group was foreign from the man's accent and the trouble he had pronouncing the words properly.
"Forgive me for asking, but Japanese isn't you best language is it?" Mai asked as she wrote down the order.
"No, we speak English most of the time." The blond-haired man responded with better speaking skill than the purple man.
"Oh, good, I know English." Mai responded in English, she still had a heavy accent but was more understandable than the purple man speaking Japanese.
Mai had taken an English class when it was presented as an option for school and ended up being one of the highest scoring for that class.
Mai left and returned shortly after with their orders.
"So, what are you doing here, a holiday or something?" she asked as she put the tray holding the orders on the table.
"We're here for an old relative of mine," said the blue woman. "He says a ghost is haunting his land and causing trouble for him."
Mai froze at the mention of ghosts and stared at the blue girl, who continued on obliviously.
"He doesn't know for sure if it's a ghost or not, if it is then the police can't do anything and he doesn't trust any paranormal investigators not to be fakes and just spin a story in order to get paid. We're paranormal investigators of sorts ourselves but be have exposed our fair share of hoaxes on our cases, so my relative trusts us to find out whether the ghost is fake or not and get rid of it if it is. Are you alright."
Mai mentally shook her head to snap herself out of the daze she'd been in since the woman mentioned they were paranormal investigators.
"Yeah. It's just, I was involved in the paranormal a while back, so you brought back some memories."
The woman looked excited. "Really? It's always good to meet a fellow paranormal investigator!" she got up and vigorously shook Mai's hand.
"Well, I was more of a assistant but I did learn my fair share of things."
"Wow! Hey, maybe you can join us on the case!"
"Vivi, stop hassling the girl." The purple man told the woman.
"Lay off, Lewis, I was just asking. So?" Vivi turned back to Mai.
Before Mai could answer a voice shouted out to her.
"Mai! Your job is to serve the customers, not socialise with them! You can talk on your break or after you get off." It was her boss.
"Okay, sorry!" Mai called back to her boss. "Catch you again sometime." She said to the group before walking back inside.
"Who were they?" Ailith asked Mai.
"Paranormal investigators apparently." She answered.
Ailith raised her eyebrows before they both got back to work.
"Aw, I didn't get an answer." Vivi moped.
"You did kind of put her on the spot and she doesn't even know us." Arthur answered his friend.
"I suppose. But I have a real good feeling about her, and she said she was on a paranormal investigation team!"
"Which, for all we know, could have been just another fake one."
"We have run into a lot of them." Lewis agreed.
The three ate their food, Mystery even managing to nick a slice of pizza, and stood up to leave.
"Hey, wait!"
The paranormal investigators turned around to see a young woman with white hair and eyes that looked red in the right light.
"Hi, my friend told me you were paranormal investigators." The woman said.
"Yes." Vivi said.
"Here." She handed them a slip of paper with an address on. "My flatmates and I are all interested in the paranormal and such, so you can drop by if you want to. I'm Ailith by the way."
"Thanks, we'll drop by if we can."
"Okay, now I've got to get back to work."
Ailith quickly left.
"Think she's telling the truth?" Lewis asked.
"Well, we'll see." Vivi answered.
"Vivi, correct me if I'm wrong, but last time we followed an anonymous address we ran into a small cult." Arthur said with a slight tremble.
"Arthur, you're over reacting, they were a bunch of collage kids who didn't know what they were doing."
Arthur crossed his arms as they made their way back to the van.
Ailith and Mai were at the flat and using some of their rare time off to watch some TV, Yasu and the other guy they shared the flat with were both out doing their own things. There was a knock at the door and Ailith answered it, she open the door to reveal Vivi and Lewis on the other side.
"So you came. Come in." Ailith invited them in, she coughed and pointed to their shoes to remind them that it was polite to remove their shoes.
Vivi and Lewis looked around to apartment to see that it was very clean, on one of the walls there was a huge note-board with many newspaper clippings and printouts pinned to it, further inspection revealed it to be about different paranormal goings on, there was a few charms littered around the room to most likely ward away spirits.
"Who is it?" Mai asked.
"Those paranormal investigators you spoke to earlier today." Ailith answered.
Mai turned around to see them.
"Hello again. Where's your friend?" she asked, she spoke in English for their sake, Ailith also spoke English so she didn't need to worry about constantly swapping languages
"He didn't want to come due to past experiences he's had." Vivi answered.
"Okay." Mai and Ailith answered unsurely.
"So, why are you here?" Mai asked.
"We just wanted to see how much interest you have in the paranormal, no offence but most people we meet interested in the paranormal in any way turn out to be fakes."
"I can sympathise." Mai said, remembering when she and the team had worked with a man pretending to be Oliver Davis.
Thinking of the real Oliver Davis made Mai feel a cold twinge in her chest. 'No Mai!' she chastised herself. 'Don't think about him!'
"Well, we're not super obsessed but we do believe in ghosts and all that, mostly we just look up ghostly activity and then try to work out whether it's a real ghost or not." Ailith said, pointing to the note-board.
"You said before that you were in a paranormal investigation team, were they legit..." Vivi trailed off, realising no one knew the others names.
"Oh, I'm Mai."
"And I'm Ailith."
"Vivi."
"Lewis."
"Well, were they?" Vivi asked again.
Mai thought back to all the times she'd seen a ghost, was possessed by one, and almost killed by one. "Considering all I've seen, I'd say yes. But we've been disbanded for a while now." She answered.
"Oh." Vivi said, slightly disappointed that she wouldn't get to meet another proper investigation team. "I was hoping you could help us our case, we're a bit stuck at the moment."
"What's the case?" Ailith asked with interest, even Mai was interested.
"A ghost is supposedly haunting the woods around my great-uncle's hotel, it's scaring off his guests."
"There have been complaints of howling and crying right outside a persons window and many have reported seeing a ghostly entity wandering around the woods." Lewis added.
Mai froze and thought back to her dream of the boy lost in the woods and the snarling she had heard.
"A little boy, lost and alone." She said without realising it.
Vivi and Lewis turned to her in shock.
"What did you say?" Lewis asked.
"What?" Mai asked, not realising what she thought had been said aloud.
"You said, 'A little boy, lost and alone'." Vivi said.
Mai eye's widened when she realised what she had said.
"How did you know the ghost was of a little boy?" Vivi asked.
Mai sighed and decided to tell the truth. "I often get these dreams about ghost. Last night I had a dream of a young boy lost and alone in some woods."
Vivi suddenly squealed. "Oh my god, that means you're psychic! I've always wanted to meet someone who's psychic!"
Vivi ran over and enthusiastically shook Mai's hand.
"This is perfect, with you helping us we can solve the case!"
"Wait, what?" Mai asked.
"Slow down, Vivi." Lewis told his friend.
"Come on, please!" Vivi begged Mai.
"I-I'll have to think about it." Mai said.
"We understand." Lewis said before Vivi could say anymore. "Contact us if you want to help."
Lewis handed Mai his number before forcefully pulling Vivi out the door, Ailith closing it behind them.
"You alright?" Ailith asked Mai.
"Yeah, just a bit much that's all." Mai replied.
"Know what you're going to do about the offer.?"
"Not really."
"Why don't you have an early night, maybe some rest will help you sort every thing out."
"Yeah."
Mai went to bed and quickly fell asleep, that night she had the same dream.
Mai stood outside a large hotel, next to her were Lewis, Vivi, the other member of their group Arthur and their dog Mystery. After the last dream she had decided to help out so she could stop dreaming about it. Vivi and Lewis went on ahead while Arthur and Mai hung back with Mystery, who Mai had a feeling that there was more too, Mai looked at Arthur and couldn't help but liken his expression to one of someone going to his doom.
"Are you alright?" Mai asked Arthur.
Arthur looked at her before sighing.
"Not really." He answered. "It seems like whenever we deal with a case that involves real ghosts, demons or whatever I end up in some sort of danger, it's like it's attracted to me."
Mai smiled. "I know how it feels, believe me." She said. "Back when I did this sort of thing for a job I always had to be rescued by my team in some way, whether because or a spirit possessing or attacking me or something else. I was told that spirits are apparently attracted to me because of my spiritual energy."
"How did you deal with it?"
"I decided to learn how to defend myself from spirits, such as using the nine cuts."
"Nine cuts?"
Mystery looked at her with an expression she had never seen on a dog before but she ignored it.
"It's sort of like making spiritual energy that can hurt spirits and make them desperse, how long they desperse for depends on how powerful the spirit is though."
"Do you think you could teach me?" Arthur was eager to learn how to defend himself against attacking spirits.
Unfortunately, Mai shook her head. "You have to be some form of a spiritualist I think, and even if you did have some phycic energy I'm not someone who sould be teaching you, I'm no expert and it was a Shrine Maiden and Monk who taught me how to make spiritual attacks. Sorry."
Arthur sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "It's okay, it was just a thought."
Mai and Arthur then decided to join the other two and go inside the hotel where they had a small base set up inside one of the rooms. As they walked inside Mai spotted a raven watching her from where it was perched on top of a weather vein. The base wasn't very impressive, the Mystery Skulls had none of the equipment that the SPR had so all they had to work with was written notes that had observations, statements and theories about the case along with some research they had dug up.
"What have you found out so far?" Mai asked.
"Well, after what you said yesterday I started looking up cases for missing or dead children in the area, I found a few matches and they thanfully all have pictures of the children, I'm hoping you can recognise which child is the ghost we are dealing with." Vivi said.
Vivi handed Mai some pictures of children and she shuffled through them until she saw and recognised a young boy.
"It's him!" she gasped.
Vivi took the photo and looked at the boy's file.
"Hino Isao." She read from the file. "He went missing back before the hotel was built and was never found."
"So, I'm guessing if we find his body then he will find peace." Lewis said.
"But how would we find the body?" Arthur asked.
Mai shrugged. "I didn't see anything that would help locate him in my dreams." She said.
"Well, at least we know who the ghost is, hopefully we can contact him to convice him to move on or at least show us where his body is." Vivi said as she started searching more about Isao.
Mai walked out of the hotel and into the forest, above her a raven flew to guide her way, she knew she was dreaming because of how distorted everything was and the fox-fires that drifted around her, she supposed she fell asleep while resting on the bed in the room the Mystery Skulls used as their base. She continued to walk until she came to some trees tightly packed together, near them she spotted something lying on the ground a picked it up. It was a toy dog. Mai heard snarling and turned to see a wolf, it pounced at her.
Mai darted awake as Vivi shook her.
"Are you alright?" the blue-haired woman asked.
"I was dreaming." Mai answered.
Vivi's eyes lit up. "Was it a vision?" she asked.
Mai nodded and stood up quickly and made for the door.
"I think I know where to look." She called as she ran out.
The others quickly followed her as she took the path she did in her dream.
The journey through the forest was longer than it was in her dream but that was to be expected, but after a while of walking after they wore themselves out from runnning they came across the tightly packed trees from her dream.
"It was here." Mai said unknowingly.
"Alright, spred out and see what you can find." Lewis instructed.
After a few minutes of searching Mystery started whining to gain everyone's attention as he dug underneath a log, he then used his mouth to grab what he unearthed to reveal a very dirty, very torn toy animal that Mai was just able to recognise as the little boy's.
"It was his." Mai said. "He had it when he was attacked."
"Who attacked him?" Vivi asked.
Mai shook her haid. "Not who, what. It was a wolf, or a pack or wolves."
Vivi put her hand over her mouth while the men hung their heads. "Poor kid." She said.
"How are we going to find his body?" Arthur asked.
Everyone shrugged.
Mai suddenly felt a cold pressence and Mystery started growling.
"He's here." Mai gasped.
Mai gasped as everything went black.
When Mai opened her eyes she was still in the forest but the darkness and fox-fires gave away that she was currently in the the spiritual plane.
"Mai!" Vivi's voice called.
Mai looked to the right to see the Mystery Skull and herself standing only a few feet away, Vivi was shaking her body but in her soul was currently seperated from her body so her body just stood there.
Mai felt a small hand wrap around hers, she looked down to see Isao looking up at her while his hand held hers.
"Hello, there." Mai said as she crouched down in front of Isao. "I'm Mai. You're Isao, right?"
Isao nodded shyly.
"Are you lost?"
He nodded again.
"I can take you home but I need to know where you are."
Isao gained tears in his eyes and shook his head.
Mai sighed, she got up and walked over to the group who couldn't see her before picking up the toy dog from where Mystery had dropped it, she gave it to Isao and as she handed it over it was fixed and looked like it had in her dreams.
"I know you're scared." Mai spoke softly. "But there are people who love you waiting for you back home. Wouldn't you like to see them again?"
"Yes." Isao whispered timidly.
"Then why don't you show me? I'll keep hold of you the entire time."
Isao cried and made a grabbing motion with his hands to signal that he wanted to be held. Mai bent down and lifted the boy up into her arms where he burried his face into her chest.
"There, there, it's going to be alright." Mai comforted him.
Mai started walking with Isao subconciously telling her where to go despite not saying or doing anything beside seek comfort in her hold. They eventually came across a small cave hidden by trees and bushes, walking through them she saw that the cave used to be a wolves den before they were most likely driven away by the owners of the land, from the dirt she saw the white of bones sticking out from where they were burried.
"You're here?" she asked.
Isao nodded his held but didn't look up from her chest.
"Okay, let's go back and tell the others."
"No! You said you wouldn't leave!" Isao cried, clinging to Mai and refusing to let go.
Mai was a little lost on what she had to do, children ghosts tended to be very tempermental so if she left Isao to tell the others he could get violent but none of the others were psychic so she couldn't tell them from the spiritual plane. Mai heard a caw and looked up to see Morana perched on a branch looking down at the two, this struck Mai with an idea.
"Mor, go and try to get Mystery, the dog, to follow you here and bring the others." She told the bird.
Morana gave another caw before flying off.
"Mai!" Vivi shook the unresponisve teen.
A minute ago she had stopped responding to anything and her eyes strared off blankly into the distance as if she weren't there at all.
"You think its one of those psychic trance things?" Arthur asked as he waved his hand in front of Mai's face.
"Maybe." Vivi said with a hand on her chin.
Mystery sat on the ground, the ghost boy had dissapeared somewhere else but so had Mai's presence, and when he looked at the ground he saw that the toy dog was also gone. Mystery suddenly felt another presence and recognised it as the one that seemed to follow Mai around wherever she went, he looked up to see a raven circling overhead before it flew off in a direction, Mystery knew it was calling him to follow. He barked to gain the others' attention before chasing after the raven.
Vivi, Lewis and Arthur looked up as Mysery barked before running off, chasing something.
"Arthur, you stay here with Mai. Lewis and I will see what Mystery is running after." Vivi instructed.
Lewis and Vivi then ran off before Arthur could protest.
Mai sat outside the cave with Isao cradled on her lap, time didn't have that much meaning in the spiritual plane so it felt like they had been like this for a while. She eventual heard a caw and saw Morana flying down to her before perching on her shoulder, not that long after Mystery came running through the trees and stopped right before them.
In the spiritual plane Mai could now tell that Mystery was not an ordinary dog, looking at him she could see a kitsune even though his dog form was perfectly solid looking as well.
"I had a feeling there was more to you." Mai said.
Mystery looked at her with intellagent eyes.
"He's in there." Mai motioned to the cave. "He won't let me go until he's back home."
Mystery nodded to show he understood.
When Vivi and Lewis can running through the trees Mystery guided them to the cave where they uncovered part of Isao's remains. The two left to tell the owner that they found a young boy's body while Mai left to go back to where her body and Arthur were as she couldn't stand to be near the cave anymore, she didn't go back into her body because of Isao but she stayed near while Arthur kept guard of her body after he lay her down and used his jacket to cusion her head.
People came and uncovered the rest of Isao's body before taking it out of the forest, Mai quickly followed with Isao, once they were finally out of the forest it was time for Isao to cross over.
"Goodbye, Miss Mai." Isao said as Mai placed him on the ground.
Isao ran off and for a split second Mai saw the building that had been there before the hotel before it disappeared along with Isao. She smiled before going back to her own body.
Mai gasped as she came back to herself and sat up before falling down again from dizzyness.
"Are you okay?" Arthur asked as he came over, relief evident on his face.
"Yes." Mai rasped. "Water."
Arthur quickly went to his bag and pulled out a half-finished bottle of water and handed it to Mai who finished it off.
"What happened to you?" Arthur asked.
"Out of body experience of sorts." Mai answered. "I met Isao though."
"You did?"
"Yes. But he's moved on now."
"That's great. This has been one of our easiest cases yet, though that might be because of you."
Mai shrugged. "He just needed to be brought back home." She said.
Arthur helped Mai to stand before they made their way back to the hotel.
When they got back and met with the other two members of the team Mai found herself in a bone-crushing hug from Vivi.
"Thank you! I don't know how you did it but you were such a big help!" Vivi shouted.
Lewis and Arthur were quick to help Mai from Vivi's hold.
"Sorry." Vivi appologised with a nervous laugh.
"It's okay." Mai waved them off. "So, will you been going home soon?"
"We're thinking of staying for a bit to take in the sights before we go home. What's the point of going to another country if you're not going to explore?" Vivi laughed. "Hey, why don't you hang out with us and show us around?"
"Sorry, I have work." Mai said with a shrug.
"Okay then, maybe we'll see you around."
"Yeah, maybe."
Mai then headed home.