The Haunting of the Children's Home

It was a nice night for a funeral.

It was a little past six in the evening, and the Sun had almost set. All day it had been bright and warm, with the sky being that perfect shade of blue that just beckoned everyone to come outdoors, the wind was gentle, and the air pleasantly balmy. And now that it was on its way out, it was leaving Gensokyo with an equally warm and pleasant evening.

Normally on days like that, the children would all be outside chasing each other across the field, napping in the shade of the trees, or roughhousing in the grass. Not on that day though. They were outside, yes, but they were instead gathered in the small copse of trees that they avoided at all other times.

It was there that those who had died in the orphanage were laid to rest, or at least those who had enough of their bodies recovered to allow for it.

Satoko stood in front of the freshly carved headstone, a tiered stone rectangle that reached up to her waist. In her hands was a small, black box. Haruna stood next to her left, with a paper lantern in her hands. Shion was at her right, holding a small bag tied with a piece of twine, which threaded through a pair of coins at the ends. Mokou was standing a little further back, Joshua next to her, little Akito in his arms.

As for the children, they were all present. All of those who had been taken by the spiders and those who had gone after them had woken up, and like Kohta, Rumia, and Haruko, none of them could recall anything about what had happened to them in the Bone Orchard. But something had happened to them, of that Mokou was certain. She had already sent word for the Hakurei Shrine Maiden to come, and until she arrived there was little they could do but watch and wait.

Personally, Satoko didn't know how much she trusted Mokou's judgment. After all, the woman was supposedly a centuries-old murderess. It wasn't out of the question that she might be a little on the unstable side.

Still, there was something odd about them now. Now that they were all awake, they seemed so solemn, so quiet, even moreso then one would expect from traumatized children. The six of them were standing together, apart from the others. That had been at Mokou's insistence. While Satoko understood the other woman's concerns, she hated having to do that to them. The other children were whispering about them already.

At least they seemed normal now. Rumia and Keine were side-by-side, awkwardly shuffling their feet. Kana was also standing quietly, though every few seconds she started coughing. That was worrisome. She had been out the longest, and had felt the weakest upon waking up. According to Haruna, her slight frame had been damaged the most by the spiders' venom, and she would be sick for some time. Kana had insisted that she was well enough to attend the funeral, but now Satoko was regretting not making her stay in at least. Haruko and Hayate were both softly weeping, mourning their friend. Kohta had his hand on Haruko's shoulder, which was very kind of him, seeing how little they hadn't gotten along before. Satoko wished that she had done more to curb the three girls' meaner habits while Eiko was alive, but it was far too late for that now.

They waited, watching the Sun. It sank lower and lower, bleeding gold and orange into the horizon, its blood cleaning the sky away and allowing the stars to shine forth.

Finally it vanished fully, and night emerged. It was time.

Satoko took a deep breath, and she started singing. It was a song that her mother had taught her, who in turn had learned it from her mother, and so on. It was a song that was only sang by her family, when they failed in their duty to look after the small souls entrusted to their care. In other parts of Gensokyo, they sang other songs when laying their dead to rest. This one was theirs.

It was a song that thanked the gods and spirits for allowing them to look after the child during her time on Earth, and asked for forgiveness for not being up to the task. And it beseeched the river-guardian to bear the newly departed soul across, and for the Yamaxanadu to be kind.

When she was done singing, Satoko knelt down to place the box holding Eiko's ashes in a small door set in the bottom of the headstone. Shion placed the bag she was holding right next to it, and the two slid the door shut. That done, Haruna lit the lantern she was holding and let it fly. It rose up higher and higher, to join the stars in the sky.

It was all completely symbolic of course. The bag was filled with stones and earth taken from the homestead grounds. By now Eiko's soul would have already crossed the River Suzune, while the Shinigami that manned the ferry would have already been paid from the offerings the orphanage had made at various shrines over the years. But it was good to remind everyone that though Eiko was dead, she was alive and well somewhere else.

They watched the lantern sail higher and higher. It was good that the wind was so low, else it would probably be blown completely off course to get caught in a tree.

And then it burst into flames.

Haruko and Hayate both screamed as the burning scraps of paper rained down on them. So did some of the boys. Akito started crying. "Holy shit!" Rumia blurted out.

"What happened?" Haruhi cried. "Why did it do that?"

Mokou was already in motion. "Everyone back to the house!" she said. "Go on, go!"

"Wait, what just happened?" Kazuchika demanded. "Why'd it explode?"

"No clue, but we don't want to wait around to find out. Move!"

Everyone hurried back to the house. The only sound came from Haruko, Hayate, and Akito, who were still softly crying. Satoko was deeply shaken. What had happened? Why had the lantern caught fire? Maybe Haruna had accidentally lit the balloon part with the matches.

(Eiko's mouth fell open, and out wriggled a fat-bodied black spider. It crawled up the dead girl's face, toward her eyes)

Or maybe it was something else, something much worse.

Then, as they were about halfway to the house, Dai leaned over to Yoshi and said in a loud whisper, "So…does that mean Eiko's in Hell now?"

What happened next was comparable to a single thrown stone upsetting the balance of a the side of a hill to cause a rockslide. The moment the words were out of Dai's mouth, a chorus of gasps went up and everyone spun around to stare at the boy. For his part, Dai immediately realized that his comment had been very unwise and his face turned red. However, before he could say anything in his defense, chaos erupted.

There was a strangled sound of pain, and then Haruko shrieked, "YOU LITTLE BEAST!" before launching herself at him. She knocked the younger boy over and began pounding at his face with both fists.

Yuuki, Yoshi, and Hiro all ran to their friend's defense. Hiro managed to wrap his arms around Haruko's neck and pull her back, though that didn't stop her from clawing at Dai while shrieking.

Then a hand grabbed a handful of Hiro's hair, and a fist drove into his face.

The fist belonged to Kohta, who had begun charging almost at the same time as Haruko. Hiro released Haruko's neck and stumbled back. This of course drew the attention of Yoshi and Yuuki, who both ran in to tackle Kohta.

They were stopped though, stopped by Rumia and Hayate, who grabbed a boy each and, in synchronization, shoved the two of them backward. That allowed Keine charge in with a running tackle of her own. She drove both of her shoulders into each of the boys, taking them both off their feet and sending them flying back into the gob smacked older kids.

Things might have erupted into an all-out brawl right then and there, but that was when the adults finally intervened.

"STOP IT!" Haruhi screamed. "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?! STOP!" Haruna and Joshua took more direct action, putting their bodies between the two groups and walling them off while Shion quickly pulled Dai away from the crowd before anyone else took a swing.

"HEY!" Satoko shouted. She whistled loudly, shutting down the yelling and drawing everyone's attention. "What's wrong with all of you? We're being attacked by Human and youkai alike and just got done burying one of our own, and now you're fighting each other?"

Haruka pushed her way past Mr. Joshua. "He said Eiko was in Hell!" she screamed as she jabbed an accusatory finger at Dai.

"No, I didn't!" Dai shouted back. "I just asked if she was there, I didn't say she was!"

"That…not really better," Shinji said.

"Hey, seriously dude. What the hell?" Tomohiro added.

"I didn't mean it like that! I was just…well, her lantern caught fire-"

"It was an accident!" Hayate said.

"-and she was always been pretty mean-"

"Go to Hell!" Haruko snapped.

"She was!" Now that he was put on the spot, Dai was determined to not back down. "And so were you! The three of you picked on me and Yoshi and Hiro all the time!"

"Dai," Haruna said. "Shut your fool mouth. Right now."

"There's a time and place for everything, son," Mr. Joshua added, laying a gentle, but firm, hand on Dai's shoulder. "And that was completely out of line."

Dai looked like he had been betrayed. "But-"

"All right, enough of the bullshit," Mokou growled as she pushed herself into the center of the rabble. "Look, you're kids. And kids fight, kids get mean sometimes, it happens. That doesn't mean you're damned to Hell just because you're still young and a jackass. Otherwise, Hell would be a fucking boarding school.

"And for your information, Dai, no. No, Eiko did not go to Hell. You know how this works. When you die, your soul heads to the River Suzune, where it's picked up by the Shinigami. And if you can pay the Shinigami's price, she'll boat you across to be judged by the Yamaxanadu. And this house donates fairly regularly to at least three different shrines to cover that very price, right? So, Eiko is set there. And as for her being mean, you're right! She was. But she was a kid, just like the rest of you. And sure, the Yamaxanadu has a reputation for being kind of a hardass, but she's also got a soft spot for kids, and isn't about to send one to Hell unless they were genuinely evil right out of the womb, which Eiko was not."

Despite Mokou's logical dissertation, many of the kids looked unconvinced, which included Eiko's friend Hayate, which was interesting. "How do you know?" she demanded, tears in her eyes. "How do you know she won't? You saw what happened to the lantern! Do you know her?"

"What, the Yamaxanadu?" Mokou shrugged. "Yeah, a little."

"What," Hayate said, visibly caught flatfooted. She wasn't the only one. Even Satoko, who already knew a thing or two about Mokou's past, was taken back by this. Yamaxanadu Eiki Shiki wasn't someone one made acquaintances of.

"I mean, I've never actually met her," Mokou clarified. "But before coming here I've been known to do odd jobs for people, and she's needed a thing or two done in the mortal world that needed a mortal agent."

Hayate stared dubiously at her. "What kind of things?"

"Hunting down escaped evil spirits, mostly." Mokou said. "Actually, she sent her Shinigami after them, and her Shinigami hired the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, and the Hakurei Shrine Maiden hired me because I knew the area better than she did, and I got to talk to both of them about the boss, but that's getting away from the point, which is regardless of her attitude, and regardless of what you all thought of each other, Eiko did not go to Hell. She's at peace in the Netherworld right now, and you two will get to see her again someday. But it's my job to make sure that day is a long time from now, so let's all get something straight: we have actual enemies now, which means that of this moment, you are all on the same side. No more dumb bickering, fighting, bullying, trying to get each other in trouble, that sort of thing." To Dai, she said, "And Dai. Seriously. Time and place for everything. You don't have to like Eiko, but-" Then she seemed to catch sigh of something over Dai's head, and her voice trailed off. "Uh…huh."

A group of men were approaching, men that Rumia did not recognize. There was five of them, and they had an air of purpose and authority about them. However, they weren't wearing the sort of robes she had seen on village elders or the uniforms commonly sported by guards. Rather, they all had on simple, heavy brown robes with long hoods, ones that were kept down.

The one in the lead was the shortest and the plumpest, of comparable shape to Gendou Sonozika, though he had no beard or hat, and his greying hair framed his head like the mane of one of the lions from one of Joshua's stories.

Satoko was immediately on her guard. She knew those men. She had seen them before, during her trips to the Human Village. And she knew who they followed.

"Ah, good afternoon," the leader said in a high, squeaky voice, using that fake pleasant tone that that his ilk used whenever they were going out of their way to be condescending. He looked around at the group. "Ah, but perhaps not so good. What's this, a fight? Well, if you can't even go for a midday walk without turning on each other, then I guess that…incident in the market is to be expected."

If Satoko had been angry before, then this brought that rage to a froth. "Seiya Kirisame," she said. "One of Nathaniel Skinner's stooges, if I recall. What are you doing here? You are not welcome, especially not today."

Seiya Kirisame's smirk grew wider. "So unwelcoming. Are you this surly even at home?"

"We're coming back from a funeral, if you must know," Satoko said.

That took Kirisame off guard. "Oh, ah, I'm…sorry to hear that. Someone from one of the villages that you were…friendly with?"

"One of the children," Satoko said coldly. She watched Kirisame's face intently. Mokou and Joshua had both said that the spiders had spoken of taking instructions from a Human, a small, plump Human with a squeaky voice, and this one certainly fit the bill.

Sure enough, Kirisame's smirk disappeared completely. "Oh," he said again. All of his smug bravado was gone, and he seemed utterly unsure of how to continue. "I…my condolences. Was it…an illness, or…"

"No," Mokou said as she strode forward and placed herself between the men and everyone else. "A youkai attack, actually. From the Youkai Forest.

The blood drained from Seiya's face. "A…oh."

"Spider youkai, to be specific," Mokou said. Her tone was casual, almost conversational despite the horrid things she was discussing. "Seven of our children were taken. We managed to get six back, but they had already…started when we got there."

"Spider youkai…" Kirisame whispered.

"Yeah," Mokou said, staring down into the man's eyes. "Four of them."

Kirisame swallowed. "And…what did you do with…said spider youkai?"

Mokou shrugged. "Dealt with 'em. With prejudice."

"And they killed one of your children?"

Satoko stepped forward to stand next to Mokou. "Justify your presence, or leave," she said.

Kirisame didn't respond. He seemed to be quite beside himself, having lost his line of thought and was mentally fumbling around to find it again. Even the men who had come with him were glancing at one another in discomfort.

"Final warning," Mokou hissed. "Speak, or get out."

One of Kirisame's companions nudged him with his foot, startling him. He swallowed again, cleared his throat noisily, and said reached for something in his robe. "W-Well, this…is awkward then," he said, pulling out piece of paper. "I am very sorry to have to bring this to you on this sad day but…here."

He held the paper out. Satoko snatched it from his fingers scanned its message. When she looked up again at the messenger, her dark eyes could have rivaled Mokou's in burning rage.

"We're being banned from the village market?" she said. This kicked up murmurs and gasps of surprise from the children and their caretakers. Haruna said nothing, though the fingers of her fists squeezed so hard that everyone could hear her knuckles pop. As for Mokou, she merely looked over to Satoko and the letter in her hand. Then, moving with slow deliberation, she turned her gaze directly toward Kirisame, her hawk-like focus conveying far more malice than words ever could have.

"It was Leader Sonozika's decision!" Kirisame protested, his words coming out as terrified squeaks. "In light of what happened last week-"

"Bullshit!" snapped Haruko. "They were the ones that started it!"

"That's not what witnesses say!" Kirisame yelled back. He might have kept yelling at her, but then the same man who had nudged him before placing a steadying hand on his shoulder, likely to remind him that getting into a shouting match with a child would not be to his benefit. Taking the hint, Kirisame stopped himself and took a deep breath. When he had regained some measure of composure, he ignored Haruko and turned his attention back to Mokou. "And…you. Fujiwara no Mokou, is it?"

Mokou arched an eyebrow.

"Regardless of who was initially at fault, you did insult Leader Sonozika and his guard when he was just trying to clear things up," Kirisame said. Now that he had gotten to his reason for coming, which was no doubt well-rehearsed, he seemed to be regaining some of his confidence. And his slime. "To say nothing of your threats to Brother Nathaniel!"

"Oh, did I hurt their feelings?" Mokou said. "Then why are you here and they're not? If they got a problem with what I said, then fine. They can come here and punch me in the face themselves."

Visibly annoyed by being literally talked down to by a woman, Kirisame tried to straighten up to his full, unimpressive height. "They are very important men, and-"

"But they ain't kings," Haruna said as she joined her friends in the center. She was of a more comparable height to Kirisame, but was packed with considerably more visible muscle than he. "And you're forgetting how this works. Gendou Sonozika heads up the Human Village, sure, and he's got some measure of authority outside of it. But he don't rule it. He can't tell the other settlements how to run their business. And he can't ban nobody from something he don't run. That's up to the other village elders."

Despite the fact that he and his mostly silent associates outnumbered the women directly confronting him five-to-three, Kirisame's nerve was fast slipping. "I…I think you'll find that the village elders hold Master Sonozika in considerably higher esteem then you give them credit for!" he cried. "Enough that-"

Joshua walked up to the trio and took his place next to Haruna, arms folding and dark eyes calmly staring right into Kirisame's.

"-er, that-"

Shion took the spot next to Satoko.

"-I'm sorry, is this-"

Haruhi inhaled deeply to calm her nerves, but she went over to stand next to Shion.

"-are you threatening us?" Kirisame sputtered. "I'll have you know-"

"Andrew," Joshua said.

The name being as unfamiliar as it was, everyone on Joshua's side all looked over to him in bewilderment. However, one of the robed and previously still figures visibly winced.

"Andrew, I know that's you," Joshua said. "Come on, kid. Take that hood down."

A pause, and then the figure reached up to lower his hood. Beneath it was a young white man with untidy hair the color of straw and a face full of freckles.

"Andrew, why are you with these men?" Joshua said. "Intimidating orphans and trying to cut them off from help. Come on, kid. You know this isn't right."

Andrew nervously licked his lips. "B-But Brother Nathaniel says that y-you've been consorting with demons! He says that you'll taint us all!"

"Nathaniel is a sad, broken man," Joshua said. "He sees devils in the candle smoke and hears Satan's whispers in the wind. And he now works to doom children. If I recall, Christ had quite a few things to say about men like him."

"But there are demons out there!" Andrew protested. "There's youkai, and spirits, and…actual demons, and-"

"Enough!" Kirisame spat. "Brother Andrew, it is not your place to speak. Put you hood back up and shut up!"

"But-"

"Do it!"

Andrew looked shaken, but he did what he was told.

"I think we've heard enough from you," Satoko said. "You've delivered your message. And since it seems that you're intent on exiling us from the rest of the Human population, I guess that just leaves us with this plot of land within our fences. So that means that you're trespassing. So get out."

"Hey, wait," Kirisame said. "You can't just-"

Mokou took a step forward, opened her mouth, and exhaled a torrent of fire right into the dirt road right at Kirisame's feet.

That finally got the desired effect, and the five of them quickly fled, practically tripping over each other in their desperation to get away. Two of them took to the sky immediately, and the others were quick to follow.

As for Satoko and her family, they were more than a little gobsmacked. After all, it was one thing to know that Mokou was talented with fire magic, but having her literally vomit up flames on command? Now that would take anyone by surprise.

Fortunately, young Shinji knew exactly what to say. "You can breathe fire?" he said to Mokou.

Nodding, Mokou coughed up a bit of smoke and said, "I don't like doing it. Gives me a sore throat."

"Still, you can breathe fire!" Shinji sounded genuinely hurt. "That is so cool! How come you never showed us?"

"Never needed to. And it gives me a sore throat, I just told you!"

"Enough," Satoko said wearily. "Everyone back to the house. This day has been long enough as it is."

…

Dinner was a quiet, sober affair, with very little actual eating and even less talking. With Mokou now on permanent defense duty, Shion and Haruhi had prepared it, putting together a simple meal of steamed rice and spinach. Joshua had tried to pitch in, but his lack of culinary skills soon became apparent, and the two women kindly, but firmly, suggested that he find some other way to make himself useful.

And that was the problem.

Joshua was the handyman. He fixed things that broke, he improved things that needed improving, and he helped teach whatever practical skills he could. Plus, he was always on hand if any of the children needed an understanding ear. Normally that gave him plenty with which to occupy his time, but now what they needed was far outside of his wheelhouse. Perhaps Satoko would let him reinforce the house, board up the windows, and strengthen the walls. He didn't like the thought of turning their home into a fortress, but they had to be prepared for any eventuality.

For now though, everyone was going to be sleeping together in the main room downstairs. Joshua was given a sleeping mat, and he brought it down along with a pillow and blanket and a few select belongings, mainly a bag of toiletries, his Bible, and his old wallet, which now only contained pictures of his friends, both from this world and the one previous. As he spread his mat out in one corner, he noticed one boy in particular looking a little out of sorts.

Dai was sitting cross-legged on his own mat with his head bowed. Normally he would be up and running around with his friends, but even they seemed to be giving him the cold shoulder.

Wincing, Joshua went over to the boy and sat down next to him. "You all right, son?"

Without lifting his head, Dai lifted his left shoulder in a half-shrug.

Sighing, Joshua leaned back on his palms and stretched his legs out. "I guess we were a little hard on you. But you do understand why, right? Even if you didn't like her, that wasn't the-"

"I didn't mean it like that," Dai muttered.

"Oh?"

Dai gathered up his legs under his chin and stared balefully out at the room. "I've just…you know, been thinking…"

"About?" Joshua prodded.

"The ones you brought back. You know, Kohta, Haruko, and the rest. The ones that didn't die."

Well, that was putting it bluntly. "What about them?"

"There's something wrong with them, isn't there?"

Joshua slowly breathed out. "Seems that way."

"What is it?"

"I'm…not entirely sure myself," Joshua admitted. "It seems that they picked up some kind of…" He winced. Even after all these years, some of the more occult aspects of Gensokyo still made him uncomfortable. "Well, the Youkai Forest has a lot of…"

"Dark magic?"

Joshua nodded. "A good a thing to call it as any. We're not really sure what it is, but we're keeping them separate until the Hakurei Shrine Maiden can come by and take a look at them and hopefully cure them."

Dai still didn't look at him, and Joshua wondered how much of that the boy understood. He was only eight, after all. Hell, Joshua himself had been in Gensokyo longer than Dai had been alive, and he barely understood any of it.

"So it's like what they called us then?" Dai said at last.

"Who?"

"Those men. Youkai…taunted?"

"Tainted," Joshua corrected as a sour feeling built in his stomach.

"Right. That's what they are, right? They got taken by youkai, and now they're youkai tainted."

"Is that why you thought that maybe Eiko went to Hell?"

"That's how it works, right?" Dai said with a shiver. "Youkai are evil, and everything they touch is evil, and evil people go Hell, so…"

"Dai, Dai, listen! That's not how it works!"

"How do you know?" Dai said in an accusatory tone. "You have your own weird Outsider religion! You don't understand any of our world."

Defensive indignation welled up inside Joshua, hot and salty, and he bit down on his tongue to keep himself from taking the bait. Dai was just a child, a child who was feeling scared, confused, and alone. "I do," he said, keeping his face and voice calm. "I do have my own faith. But I've lived in Gensokyo for a pretty long time. And I've done everything I can to learn how things work here." He shifted his weight. "Look, Dai. Evil isn't some kind of stain that you get on your clothes and can't wash off. Evil is a choice, something people have to decide to be. Sometimes bad things happen, and you get angry. Sometimes you grow up being taught bad and hateful ideas. And sometimes you do get, well, smeared with something evil, like the kids upstairs did. But that doesn't make you evil. Things that happen to you aren't your fault. Things that you're told by evil people aren't your fault. It's letting that evil get past the skin and worm its way into your heart that makes you evil. Those men that came here today? They weren't born evil. They didn't become evil because evil touched them. No, it was their choice to let fear and ignorance decide how they were going to think and believe, so that they now think that hurting us is the right thing to do. That's what makes someone evil. Eiko wasn't evil. She wasn't very nice, and…yes, we should have done something about that, but she wasn't evil. And the rest of the kids that went into the forest aren't evil either. They got touched by something that we don't understand, and we're going to do everything we can to get it off them, but they're not evil, they're just kids that need help." He patted Dai's shoulder. "Same with you. Don't listen to those brown-wearing idiots. They're all fools."

Dai frowned. He didn't seem to be totally accepting what Joshua was telling him, but he wasn't rejecting it outright either. That was fine. Sometimes it took a bit for lessons to take hold.

Then he asked that question. "What about Miss Mokou?"

It took a considerable amount of will to keep from wincing. "What about her?" Joshua said.

"Everyone's saying that she's something…bad. That she's lived forever and killed a lot of people. Is she evil?"

Joshua slowly breathed out. That really was the real question, one that he had been grappling with ever since the spider's nest, and especially since she had opened up to him about her past. "I…don't really know," he admitted at last. "Y-Yes, she's a lot more than she seems to be. And yes, she's…done a lot of bad things apparently. I don't know if that makes her a bad person or just someone who fell to a bad place, but…" Sighing, he looked to the stairs, which led to where Mokou was currently sealing off the sick room for everyone's protection. "Some things are so far beyond our understanding that it's impossible for us to judge. Whatever she is, and whatever she's done, I guess we'll just have to leave that to the gods, yours and mine, to judge. But this much I do know: she is on our side. And if she is a monster, then I'll take a monster like her than the ones in the Human Village any day."

…

It was almost time for bed, but Noba felt sick.

He had been feeling sick for days, ever since he had gotten hurt at the market. Honestly, he really didn't remember all that much about the incident. The last thing he could recall with certainty was the night before, when he, Shinji, Kazuchika, and Tomohiro had been discussing a rather lovely young woman they had seen working a stall the last time they had been there, and whether one of them would be able to work up the courage to go speak to her.

He had to piece together what had happened from what the others had told him. Apparently some of the local boys had been making passes to Haruko, Hayate, and Eiko, and he and his friends had taken exception to that and stepped in. And from there things had escalated until practically the whole market had devolved into an outright brawl, and Noba had taken the worst of the beatings.

On the one hand, he felt that he should be proud of himself for stepping in to defend his family. On the other, it was hard to feel good about any of it when his head would not stop aching, nor his stomach stop churning.

Just rest, the grown-ups had told him. Rest, and let yourself heal. Let us know if it hurts too much. In time it will get better.

Groaning, Noba leaned forward and grabbed onto his head.

Whatever was wrong with him, he was almost certain that it wasn't something so simple as a knock to the head. He had taken knocks to the head before, including one when a bout of roughhousing with Tomohiro and left him dizzy for three days, and that hadn't been anything like this. This felt like pressure was building deep inside him, like a teakettle without a faucet, while the air thickened around him. It was growing without and within, and constantly getting worse.

He fumbled around the stuff he had brought down for his medicine, which were simple herbal pills that Miss Shion had given him. The relief that they gave him was small, but it was better than nothing, and they did help him sleep.

Unfortunately, his search came up empty.

Noba stared in despair at his small pile of belongings. He had forgotten them. How had he forgotten them? His head hurt so much that one would think that they would be the first thing he would bring down with him! Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot!

Then he looked over to the stairs. Well, he supposed that he could just go up and get them now. They were keeping everyone downstairs just as a precaution, right? And he had just been up there to get his stuff. All he had to do was head back up the stairs, nip into the boy's dorm, grab his medicine (he had probably just left them on the chest at the foot of his bed), and head back down again. It would take probably around three minutes.

Except something about heading back upstairs filled him with dread. Because that was where they were.

He still didn't know what to make of the events of the last few days. A youkai attack, right in broad daylight? Nearly half of the other kids taken? Eiko Goto, one of the girls he had gotten hurt defending, now dead? And the others…

Something was wrong with them. Something was terribly wrong with them.

He had known that even before the grown-ups had told them. Just looking at them had made the ache in his head spike, and it only grew worse the closer he got to them. Beyond a shadow of doubt, they had brought something back with them, something evil.

Miss Mokou was guarding them now, which was good. There were whispers going around that Miss Mokou was something more than she seemed, something dark and deadly. That may be so, but as far as Noba was concerned, it was a good thing. They needed a little dark and deadly on their side, and she didn't make his head hurt.

Still, heading upstairs would mean getting closer to those kids, and they just scared him.

Noba tried to lay down and sleep. He tried to ignore the pounding in his head, tried to think about something else, anything else.

A few minutes later he got up with a frustrated growl.

Tomohiro, Shinji, and Kazuchika, who had all been talking in a circle, looked at him. "Hey, where you going?" Kazuchika asked.

Noba nodded toward the stairs. "Forgot my medicine," he mumbled. "Be right back."

With that said, Noba started the ascent up the stairs.

He wasn't sure if it was the pain inside his head throwing him off, but for some reason the climb seemed three times more difficult than it normally was. That was odd. He went up and down those stairs every day without thinking about it. Hell, he had just been up there to get his things. But now that everyone save for Miss Mokou and her wards were all downstairs, effectively making the second floor something of a quarantined zone, it did feel that the staircase had grown in length while the steps themselves shrank in size.

Noba's mouth had gone dry. He tried to wet it, but had limited success. It was just nerves, he told himself. You were literally just up here, and had no trouble getting up and down! Still, by the time he had finally reached the second floor, he had broken out into a cold sweat.

As Noba stepped onto the second story, he shivered. Had someone left a window open? He was pretty sure they had made sure they were all shut tight and locked. He had even heard Mr. Joshua suggest boarding them up, though Miss Satoko had shot that down. He had a feeling that she would change her mind before too long.

Regardless, despite it still being midsummer, the air felt bitter cold, enough to make his breath steam.

The chill ought to be good for his aching head, and yet it now felt worse. Noba breathed deep, hoping that the cold air would numb the pain, but it did nothing.

The hallway stretched before him. Noba frowned. Apparently his mind was still playing tricks on him, because it seemed to be stretching quite a bit longer than it ought to be, like someone had gripped it at both ends and pulled it out like a piece of taffy.

Maybe he was coming down with something. Wouldn't that just be fantastic, to get sick on top of everything else?

Wrapping his arms around him for warmth, Noba headed down the hall. As he went, his feelings of unease only continued to build.

There was just something wrong about the hall, something he couldn't put his finger on. But the lines felt off, like entering a hall of framed pictures that were all tilted. If he stopped and focused on something in particular, then it looked fine, but when he took in the whole of the hallway, it just looked weird.

There actually were a few framed pictures along the way, and Joshua stopped at one in particular. It had been taken about a year prior, roughly around summer solstice. It was a group shot of all the children currently living at the Aoki Yume's Children's Home, with their adult caretakers standing behind them.

Despite how bad he felt, Noba couldn't help but smile at the memory. Life had been pretty good back then: pleasant, simple, and worthwhile. There had been no monsters attacking from the forests, no awful people beating them up, and no horrible pounding in his skull. But now, everything had gone horribly wrong.

Then Noba frowned. Wait, there was something off about the photograph, something that had changed from the last time he had seen it. His eyes zeroed in on the dead girl Eiko, who was standing with her friends Haruko and Hayate. She was smiling, yes, but her smile wasn't the small half-smirk she used to wear, oh no, her smile now was a wide and toothy grin, one that was way too wide and way too toothy, and that was because her lips were gone, taken clean off, leaving her with a skeleton's smile. The rest of her face was dead too, the nose gone, likely bitten off and swallowed as an appetizer, and in place of two child's eyes, Eiko had two empty, black pits in her face, just like her corpse.

Eaten. Her entire face was eaten off.

Noba's shivering now had little to do with the cold. His gaze then slid from Eiko's face to that of her friends. Both Haruko and Hayate still had their faces, their smiles untarnished, but not their eyes. But unlike Eiko, their eyes hadn't been plucked out and the empty sockets photographed. Oh no, they had been burned right off of the photograph itself, like something had lit a match and pressed it to each of their eyes, leaving a black circle each time.

His eyes then shot to Kana's. Black circles. Kohta? Black circles. Rumia? Black circles. Keine?

Noba swallowed. Keine's eyes had also been burned out of the picture, but she also had something new, something that the other defiled children hadn't been given. A pair of curving horns rose up from her head, like those of a ram or a bull All taken together, it made the sweet, slight girl's visage downright demonic.

Noba didn't want to see anymore. He wanted to stop staring at the photograph, to close his eyes and violently shake his head to clear it from the evil visions and open them again to find everything as it should be, with no horns, no fleshless faces, and no black circles.

He didn't. Instead, he looked up, up at where the caretakers were standing in the back.

Miss Satoko looked fine, perfectly normal, with that tired, yet happy, smile she always wore when things were good. Likewise Miss Haruna's lovably rough face was just as it should be. Miss Shion looked normal, as did Miss Haruhi.

Not Mr. Joshua though. Instead of the happy, white grin shining in his dark face he had worn that day, Joshua's face wasn't smiling at all. Instead, he was staring solemnly back at Noba, his eyes hollow and haunted, his face flushed with sweat. He looked like a man who had seen things and done things that he would be much happier forgetting, and who knew full well that he never would.

Noba swallowed. Then, though he didn't want to, he looked over at Miss Mokou.

Miss Mokou had been standing a little bit away from the others, near the group without actually being a part of it. Even so, she had been smiling along with everyone else when the picture had been taken. She still was actually, but now her smile was wide and crazed, not the naked grin Eiko had, but the deranged leer of a madwoman. Her clothes had been simple and clean in the picture, just her shirt and her suspenders, but now her shirt was ragged and unbuttoned, hanging loose and smeared with something that might have been dirt, might have been blood. Her face was smeared with it too, caking her cheeks and around her crazed grin. One strap of her suspenders hung down, and her hands, formerly in her pockets, were now hanging at her sides, filthy fingers curled into claws.

The photograph was in black-and-white, but one thing now was not. Her eyes, wide with manic glee, were bright red.

Sweat was starting to sting Noba's eyes, and he realized how long it had been since he had last blinked. He shut his eyes tight and swiped his hand down over his forehead and his face. He breathed in and out, trying to slow his panting down, trying to slow his heartrate, all the while silently and desperately crying out any gods that might be listening.

He opened his eyes.

They were normal again. Miss Mokou. Mr. Joshua. The rest of the kids. Everyone had on their normal faces wearing normal smiles, as it ought to be.

But that didn't mean that the picture had been set right. Before there had been eighteen children and five adults. Now the picture was so packed with people that Noba couldn't even begin to get a proper count. Standing with the kids that he knew were many, many new ones, ones that he didn't recognize, ones that he had never seen before. And yet they were there, wearing the same uniforms as those who belonged.

Noba stared at them and they stared right back.

He breathed in and out. No, this was wrong, this was wrong! Why were there so many? Why were there so-

A hand came down on his shoulder.

Noba screamed and swung his fist. It impacted against a hard palm, which was attached to a strong hand, which was attached to…

To Noba's chagrin, he was staring right at Miss Mokou.

"Sorry for scaring you," she said, moving the fist she had caught away from herself. "But what are you doing up here? Upstairs is restricted now!"

Noba struggled to find his tongue. "M-Medicine," he stuttered. "I forgot my-"

"Is that it?" Miss Mokou rolled her eyes. "Oh, for the love of…Hang on."

Mokou walked down the hall to the nearby boy's room (which was now perfectly straight and of normal length, because of course it was), and emerged a moment later with the bag of pills.

"Here," she said, tossing it to him. "And don't come up again. This place is quarantined for a reason."

Noba's fingers fumbled, and the bag dropped to the floor. He quickly picked it up. "Er, thanks." He paused, and said, "Uh, M-Miss Mokou?"

"What?"

"The picture. It…"

The picture was completely normal. No deformities, no additional faces, everything was as it should be.

Miss Mokou glanced to it, and then at him. "Did it change?"

Noba hesitated, and then nodded.

"Did the place feel strange when you came up here?"

"Yes. Everything felt too long, and the air felt…thick."

At this, Miss Mokou sighed. "Well, what do you expect?" She nodded to the sick room, which now had sealing charms all over the door. "I sealed those kids off for a reason!"

"They're doing it?" Noba said in disbelief. "I mean, whatever it is that…changed them?"

"Obviously," Miss Mokou said dryly. "Now, unless you're planning on spending the night up here in the freaky funhouse, I suggest you swallow your medicine and stay downstairs!"

Noba numbly nodded. And then he turned and hurried away as fast as he could.

…

The day died, night fell, and the Aoki Yume's Children's Home was left alone in the dark.

Now officially exiled, it now stood by itself, a tiny island refuge for those who dwelt within, facing oppression from its back and invasion from the front, left vulnerable to the wild beasts and evil spirits that roamed the plains and forests of the Wilds and the nefarious scheming of those who had isolated them in the first place. Already several of their number had been taken and dragged off into the darkness, and one had not come back. As for those who did, no one could say they had returned whole.

Mokou was afraid.

It was curious thing to feel again; she had not really known fear for a very long time, save for a scant few occasions over the centuries. And as one Eirin Yagokoro was not involved, she did not fear for herself. No matter what happened from here on out, she at least was guaranteed to come through alive and well.

No, what she feared for were the tiny, fragile lives entrusted into her care. Mokou was a powerful woman, perhaps too powerful. But her power was directed at self-preservation and wanton destruction. She could lay every single Human village, town, and settlement to waste within a few hours with relative ease. She could challenge such mighty creatures as Dragons or Demons and at least expect to make them sweat. Hell, she was pretty sure she could take on the great Yukari Yakumo and, if not exactly win, give her something to remember her by. But when it came to keeping these few children safe long enough for them to reach adulthood, then even with all her power, she did not feel that she was up to the task.

Not that she wasn't going to give it her all. The ability to burn mortal and immortal alike to ashes might not be much use when she wasn't even sure of the threat just yet, but her impossible durability meant that she at least could throw herself in its path when it revealed itself. To that end, she had appointed herself as the official guardian of the Black Circle Six, as she had taken to calling them. Rumia Yagami, Kohta Momoi, Keine Kamishirasawa, Haruko Kamijima, Hayate Maeda, and Kana Anaberal were back in the sick room, this time to stay until Miko Hakurei finally arrived. Their sleeping mats were arranged in a circle on the ground, their feet all facing the center, while Mokou sat in a chair near the window, arms folded as she watched over them. The chair was leaning back on it hind legs, courtesy of Mokou shoving her foot up against the cabinet. The door and window were both locked tight, charms had been stuck to the walls, and the wards protecting the orphanage grounds had all been replaced. And as for Mokou, she could go for days without sleep before she began to even think of getting tired. She had once hidden unmoving and unsleeping for a solid week in a corner of Eientei just so she could murder Kaguya Houraisan during her birthday party. If anything was to come for these kids from without or within, it was not going to catch her unawares.

A small wooden clock sat on the counter across from her, softly counting away the hours. Out in the hall, the big grandfather clock's loud ticking could be heard, set in time with its smaller brother. Every now and then, Mokou's eyes would flit from the children over to check the time. The night was steadily passing by.

Ten o'clock. Ten forty-five. Eleven seventeen.

So far, so good.

Eleven thirty-six. Twelve o'four. Twelve twenty-nine.

Kohta was snoring.

One eleven. One forty-one. Two o'clock. Two fourteen.

So far, so good.

Two twenty-two. Two thirty-eight. Two fifty-five.

And then the ticking…just stopped.

Mokou paused her rocking. Her eyes, as sharp in the dark as they were in the light, focused on the clock's face. The hands were still moving, indicating that it was two after three, but the clock in the hall had simply stopped ticking.

Interesting.

Mokou took a quick assessment of herself, checking all of her sense. A moment later she determined that she was in fact still wide awake, and this was not the result of her drifting off into a dream. Whether or not that was a relief remained yet to be seen.

Carefully relaxing her foot, Mokou lowered her chair back onto all four legs. She sat with both feet planted on the ground, hands on her knees, ears straining.

The only sounds were the children's gentle breathing, Kana's rasps, the ambient sounds of the old house settling, and a far off owl hooting.

Then someone started knocking on the door. Loudly.

Mokou didn't cry out in surprise, didn't jump, didn't even jerk, but she did sit up straighter, her eyes focused on the locked door as someone in the hallway slammed their fist against it over and over, banging as loud as they could.

"Who is it?" she said.

The banging stopped, but nobody answered.

Moving as smoothly as a cat, Mokou rose from her chair. On the floor, the six children were still lying asleep, the note of her their breathing having not changed at all. She treaded around them, heading toward the door.

The door handle started to turn.

Mokou watched as it twisted first one way, and then the other, its old joints whining. However, it was still locked, so whoever it was that was trying to get in was unable to open the door. The knob than began rattling and shaking as the banging began again.

"Who. Is. It?" Mokou said loudly, not caring if she woke the children. If they could sleep through that racket, then they could sleep through her voice. Besides, she was pretty sure that she was going to want them awake for this.

This time the banging and rattling didn't stop, but instead picked up in fervency. Mokou levitated a few centimeters into the air, turned her body fully around so that her face was close to the floor, and peered through the crack beneath the door.

There was nobody in the hallway beyond.

That didn't stop the banging though, and what was more, it was starting to spread.

What sounded like several fists pounded at the walls. The sick room sat in a corner of the house, so two-thirds of the wall with the door also shared a wall with the room right over, Shion's room to be specific, while the other wall bordered Haruhi's room. And from the sound of it, both rooms were filled with people, all slamming their hands against the walls.

Mokou reached into her pocket and withdrew a spellcard.

And then the banging started happening against the other two walls, the ones that went outside.

Mokou whirled around. From the sound of it, the sick room was surrounded on all sides by people trying to get in. And they were on the top floor! Not that it would matter in a country full of people who could fly, but that handily ruled out anyone else from the house being the culprit.

Speaking of which, the six children in the room were still fast asleep!

Mokou glided over to the window and creaked open the shutters with one finger, just enough for her to peek out.

It was a nice, clear night out. And it was completely empty.

Almost as if they had sensed her looking out, the banging stopped.

Mokou opened the shutter fully. She of course wasn't going to open the glass window itself, but she had enough of a field of view to survey most of the side of the house and the moonlit lawn below.

There wasn't a single living soul to be seen.

Oh shit.

Mokou moved back from the window. Almost immediately the banging began once again, this time from all over! The cabinets were shaking from the force slamming against the walls, and the door knob was about ready to fly right off if it rattled any harder.

"Enough!" she shouted. "Reveal yourself!"

Again everything again fell silent.

And again it started up all over again!

Mokou had no idea what to do. She didn't even know what was happening. Anything from the Forest of Magic would have been stopped by the new wards, and anything Human would have tripped the early warning spells. Whatever this was, it was new.

She wasn't scared though. Supernatural threats were no stranger to her; hell, technically speaking she was one. But she would feel considerably better about her situation if she knew what she was dealing with.

Then, as she slowly rotated around, Mokou got her first real jolt.

The six children, who had all been sleeping soundly just a moment ago, were now all awake and sitting up, staring at each other.

Well, of course they would be awake! Nobody ought to be able to sleep through that racket! It was honestly more of a mystery why it had taken them so long to wake in the first place!

But they didn't seem distressed like young children woken in the middle of the night by such a cacophony might have. They weren't crying out, they weren't asking what was wrong, they weren't crying, they weren't shouting, they weren't looking around in confusion, they weren't reacting at all.

They were just…sitting there, staring unblinking at one another. Kana had even stopped coughing.

Now Mokou felt actual fear.

The six children, some of which who had actively loathed one another earlier that same week, continued to stare. Then, as one, they all turned to look over their right shoulders at the walls.

"Enough!" they said with one voice. "Leave!"

And with that, the banging stopped, the knocking ceased, and the door knob lay still. And this time it stayed that way.

Out in the hallway, the big clock began once again to tick.

Mokou's heart seized up. She had been right. If the kids' fluid, synchronized movement hadn't been a tipoff, the change in their voice more than confirmed it.

It had not been their voices coming out of their mouths. That voice had been colder than winter and deader than dry bones. If a coffin were to be extracted from beneath a sheet of ice, and the corpse within were to speak, it would have a voice like that.

And when it spoke, the things trying to get in had listened.

"Who are you?" she asked the entity she now shared the room with.

Again moving as one, the six children turned their heads to stare at her. Six pairs of dark, beady eyes bore into her own. And though it might have been a trick of the dark, she was pretty sure she saw a faint red light shimmering in those eyes.

Mokou tensed up, fully ready to fight.

Then Kana started coughing.

It was like a spell had been broken. The kids finally blinked their eyes, and then began looking around in confusion. "Uh…" Hayate said.

"Wait, what the hell?" Kohta added, scratching his head.

Mokou didn't drop her guard.

"Miss Mokou?" Keine said. "What…just happened?"

It took some doing, but Mokou found her tongue. "You don't remember?"

"I…" The tiny girl frowned. "I remember…I think I was dreaming. Dreaming about a deep, black pit. And…"

"Chains," Kana said. "And quite a lot of them."

Mokou had no idea whatsoever what to say to that.

And then, from somewhere else in the house, someone started to scream.

…

For what might have been the first time since she had realized that she had left her drab, anxious, and hopeless life back in what she now thought of as the Outside World for an actual world of magic, Melissa Garcia wanted to go home.

It was the strangest thing. Her old life had, in its strangely parallel way, mirrored her current circumstances, except everything had been drab and bleak instead of colorful and full of magic.

Like almost everyone at the Aoki Yume's Children's Home, she had never known her parents. They had died when she had been very young, and she had grown up in a Catholic mission. It had been…unpleasant, to say the least. The rules had been strict, the punishments severe, the beds hard, the food unappetizing, and Melissa had expected to go through her childhood with her head down and her mouth shut so as not to attract any undue attention.

The one thing that brought her any happiness was stories. There was one nun, from faraway Ireland, who, when everyone else was asleep, would come into the children's room and tell them the stories from her home, stories of fairies, of spirits, of leprechauns, and of monsters. Melissa always loved those stories, and the world they described seemed so much more lively and fun compared to hers! Unfortunately, one day the nun was caught and reprimanded, and the stories stopped. Melissa's life became just a little more grey after that.

And then one day she had woken up to another day of grey hopelessness, of trying to just get by, of having nothing much to look forward to except for the vain hope that maybe she might one day work hard enough and save enough to live a life that was somewhere above tolerable, only to have those hopes dashed when she had gotten separated from the rest of her group during a trip to the nearby village. As she had searched for everyone else, she had attracted the attention of some local men, the unkindly sort with cruel faces and nasty smiles. They had called out to her, beckoning her to come over, that they would help her.

Instead, Melissa had ran.

And they followed.

Convinced that she was about to become another faceless victim found in a ditch, Melissa had gone this way and that, desperate to lose them while all too aware that they knew the village better than she. And then, at one point, she ducked through a long dark tunnel, one that seemed to stretch on and on, one without any light at the end.

And when she had come out the other end, she was in someplace else entirely, a small village of strangely built houses and strangely dressed people, ones who had been just as surprised to see her as she was to see them. However, unlike her, they had quickly figured out what had happened, and though they spoke strange words that she couldn't understand and clearly couldn't understand her either, they still managed to calm her down and communicate to her that she should follow them.

Melissa had, of course, been terrified. Where was she? How had she gotten there? Who were all these strange people, with their oddly shaped faces and unfamiliar clothes, who spoke to each other with an unfamiliar tongue? And most importantly, would they let her go back before it was noticed that she was gone? If Melissa had gone missing for too long, then she would be guaranteed a beating and several hours spent in the Othering Closet.

However, if she refused to do as these people said, then they would probably beat her themselves, so with no other choice she had followed them. They had taken her to one of the strange buildings made of wood and paper, into a strange room with strange furnishings, where the walls were made from paper, there were no chairs, and everyone sat on the floor at very low tables.

Once there, they had brought an old woman wearing a lovely black robe, and to Melissa's utter shock, she began to speak to her in Spanish: stiff and halted Spanish, yes, but understandable Spanish nonetheless.

The woman had explained to Melissa that she was one of the few in the village who had taken the time to learn almost all of the majors languages of the Outside World, so it was her job to greet newcomers, and Melissa was the first newcomer that they had in the Human Village in several years.

Melissa had still be confused and terrified, so she had begged that woman to please send her back before she got into trouble. She would tell no one that she had been taken or how to get to the strange village, but they had to send her back.

In response, the woman had sadly shaken her head and clicked her tongue. And then she had explained to Melissa a few things that had changed her life forever.

Firstly, she was not going to go back. She couldn't go back. She had been taken, fallen into something called a gap, which was kind of like a hole in a wall, but instead of connecting two rooms, gaps connected two worlds, and rarely lasted long.

Melissa, of course, had not understood at all. She knew the words, she knew what they meant, but the things being described to her were beyond her comprehension? Worlds? As if in, other countries? It had made no sense!

However, there was one thing she did understand, one thing about what they were telling her that her mind and heart had seized upon immediately.

Magic.

She was in a world of magic, a place of enchanted forests and cute fairies, a place where beasts talked and spells were sold on the street corner. And what was more, anyone that came to this magical country, one called "Gensokyo," could also learn magic, to conjure up mysterious powers with her fingers and fly through the air like a bird.

Needless to say, Melissa was entirely too happy to discard any thought of going back, and while learning the language was difficult, she was perfectly fine with calling Gensokyo her home. After all, she was going to be able to fly!

But now she was seeing the dark side of her new home. Because say what you will of the place she left, but there were no monsters emerging from the forest to eat them. There were no curses that necessitated clearing entire floors of the house. There were no demons after her blood, no ghosts seeking to suck out her soul, no monsters other than cruel men, and Gensokyo had plenty of those too.

Now Melissa was scared. And she wanted to go home.

With those who had been recovered from the forest kept by themselves in the sick room, the rest of the children had all been brought into the main room at the foot of the stairs for the night, with all the grown-ups save for Miss Mokou sleeping with them. Under normal circumstances, it would be an exciting change from routine, but Melissa felt nothing but dread.

For one, it wasn't a fun sleep-together, and everyone knew it. There was something very wrong with the kids being kept upstairs, something that the rest of them needed to be protected from. "It's just a precaution," Miss Shion had told them. "The Youkai Forest has all sorts of bad magics, and we want the Hakurei Shrine Maiden to take a look at them first to be safe."

Well, Melissa might still be struggling with the language, but she knew when a grown-up was downplaying something bad. Something was wrong with them.

For another, her best friend Kana was among those being kept away. When she had been taken, Melissa had been scared stiff for her. Kana might be kind of…odd, and prone to saying the weirdest things even when Melissa fully understood her, but she was one of the few at the orphanage to not treat Melissa like an oddity. After all, Kana was kind of an outsider herself, so she had no problem spending time with the girl from the Outside World and not treating her like she was dumb just for having difficulties with Japanese, or weird because her skin was darker and her name unusual. Melissa had even taught her a few words in Spanish, and to her surprise Kana would actually use some of them from time to time. So of course she had been nothing but relieved when Kana had been rescued, only for that relief to turn to dread when she saw how weak and sickly Kana now looked. The bad magics were one thing; they probably had ways of dealing with those! But that dry, chest-rattling cough was the kind of bad that Kana had seen before and fully understood, even before coming to Gensokyo.

And finally, as she lay down on her sleeping mat and pulled the thin blanket up over shoulders, Melissa became intensely aware of a third problem: she was the only girl left.

Eiko was dead, and the Kana, Rumia, Haruko, and Hayate were all locked away. That just left her, the grown-ups, and lots and lots of boys.

She tried to ignore it. she tried to close her eyes and sleep. But Kazuchika's mat wasn't far from hers, and, well, she had been noticing him a lot lately, so sleeping in such close quarters was all sorts of uncomfortable in ways she really wasn't ready for yet, with his short, pale hair and piercing white eyes and the way his shoulders seemed to get more broad and his arms more strong with every passing season.

And Noba wasn't that far either. He wasn't as handsome as Kazuchika, but there was a gentleness about him that Melissa found very appealing. Not weakness, no. Him rushing headlong into danger to defend the other girls was proof of that. But gentleness. And he still was pretty easy on the eyes. As for Shinji, he was kind of an ass, but a brave ass, one that always liked to show off for whoever was looking. And sure, Melissa had rolled her eyes along with everyone else, but on more than one occasion she had secretly appreciated some of his more physical feats, like when he had used his newly gained power of flight to stand on his head and do push-ups, which had caused his shirt to slip down, exposing his…

Groaning, Melissa turned over, away from the group. If the Hakurei Shrine Maiden would be so kind as to show up and return everything to normal, that would be just great!

She tried counting fairies, leaping over a fence. One. Two. Three. Four.

In time, her breathing slowed.

Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.

She began to relax.

Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.

And the fairies were gone, but that didn't stop the procession from leaping over the fence. Except now it wasn't fairies, it was those spider people, the ones that had come for them, the ones that had taken her friends, the ones that had eaten Eiko alive. And now they were coming for her, long arms outstretched, scabby fingers grasping, mouths open like black pits ready to-

Melissa's eyes snapped open as she let out a small gasp.

The room was darker, the lamps having been extinguished. That meant that she had been out a bit longer than her brief nightmare had made it feel. And goodness, it had left her heart racing! Melissa would rather stay up all night than return to that dream!

But even so, it was just a dream. Things were scary and stressful, so of course she would be having nightmares, anybody would. She was all right.

Sighing, Melissa shivered beneath her blanket and tried to relax. Despite it being midsummer, the night had gotten very cold. She turned over and pulled her blanket up further.

Or at least she tried to. The truth was, she only got a few centimeters before she was stopped. Frowning, she tried again to turn, but found that she couldn't. She was stuck.

Now waking up a little more, Melissa tried again and again to roll over. It was like the covers had been tucked in too tightly around her, forming a sort of cocoon that prevented movement. But how was that possible? She only had the one blanket, and you couldn't tuck in covers around a sleeping mat!

She wiggled her hand under the blanket. The fabric felt…different, no longer like the woven wool it had been. Instead, it was sticky.

And then she heard someone crying, a young girl weeping softly to herself.

Gritting her teeth, Melissa strained and pushed. She was unable to break free of whatever it was that encased her, but she at least managed to turn just enough to incline her head and get a good look at the room around her.

The whole room was blanketed in what looked like silky white sheets. They covered everything, from the walls to the stairs to the floor. Everyone sleeping on the ground, child and grown-up alike, was all wrapped snuggly in a white bundle, one tethered to the ground by more of the white sheets.

Melissa stared numbly at the scene, her scared and tired brain unable to make sense of what she saw. She had to still be dreaming, right? It was the only thing that made sense. Why would anyone cover the whole room with…

Suddenly, Melissa realized what she was seeing.

They were spiderwebs.

They were all covered with spiderwebs.

Melissa wasn't the only one who had been woken up. Here and there she saw other kids trying to free themselves. Over in the corner, Mr. Joshua was struggling to sit up, but had only managed to elevate his shoulders. Miss Satoko was tugging and pulling at her restraints, but to little avail. Kazuchika was trashing as hard as he could in his attempts to free himself.

Noba, however, wasn't fighting. Instead, he was staring upward, at the ceiling.

When Melissa saw this, she got a sinking feeling. That was where the crying was coming from.

Now Tomohiro had noticed where Noba was looking. He looked up as well, and his eyes went wide. Over in one corner, Miss Haruhi was making little whimpering sounds as she stared at the same thing they were.

Though she did not want to, Melissa looked up as well.

Eiko was there, handing upside-down from the ceiling by a glob of webbing to the bottom of the chandelier. Her whole body was encased in webs, her legs glued together and her arms stuck to her sides. Only her head was free, and her eyes were closed as she softly cried to herself.

"You…" she whispered. "You…you…you…"

Then her eyelids snapped open, revealing a pair of empty pits.

"You let them do this to me!" she cried. "You let them…them…"

For a moment it seemed as if she were about to vomit. Her mouth opened and closed without any words escaping, and her throat was heaving in and out.

Something was coming out. Something was forcing its way out from inside her mouth, something black and wriggling.

A massive spider emerged from Eiko's mouth, a spindly horror larger than one of Mr. Joshua's fists. It crawled out from between Eiko's lips and walked up (down?) Eiko's face to perch on her forehead.

But it wasn't alone. More were pushing their way out, more than Eiko's mouth would allow. There was a horrible crack, and her jaw was snapped out of its sockets. Her cheeks ripped open like paper, and a torrent of spiders poured out of her to spill down onto the horrorstruck captives below.

…

When Mokou heard those downstairs scream in terror, she found herself faced with an unenviable dilemma.

On the one hand, she knew that she ought to rush in to their defense. After all, now that the invaders were actually in the house, she was pretty much their first, second, and only line of defense. Even an especially armed and determined Human could wreak considerable damage before they were stopped.

But that would mean leaving the six under her care alone, which given what had just happened, was not something she was about to do. And to even if she could, she would have to exit through the front door, which could let in whatever it was that had been banging on the walls.

Damn it.

"Stay where you are!" Mokou called over her shoulder. "Don't leave the room!" With that, she swiftly unlocked and opened the door just enough for her to squeeze out. Then she used her key to lock it again.

As expected, the hallway was empty, which told her what she needed to know about the invaders. Shaking her head, she bolted to the stairs and flew down enough to get a look.

Everyone was sitting up in their mats and screaming at something on the ceiling. Mokou thrust a hand out and ignited a ball of light over her palm.

"It's me, it's me!" she said. "What happened?"

"It's Eiko!" Shinji wailed. "She was here!"

Shit! "Eiko. Okay. Where?"

Everyone pointed up to the ceiling. Mokou craned her neck to look, but saw nothing but the chandelier.

"She…She was there!" Yoshi cried. "I swear, she was right there, hanging from the ceiling!"

"And we were all covered with webs!" Keiichi added. "They were everywhere! I could barely move!"

Melissa had curled into a ball and was rocking back and forth, whispering non-stop to herself.

Mokou looked the scene over. Certainly all the children were in the same panicked state, which ruled out a simple nightmare. She glanced over to the other adults.

Whatever it was that the children had seen, they had seen it too. Haruna was holding a sobbing Haruhi in her arms while she stared blankly at the far wall. Shion was up and moving about the children, trying to do her best to console them. Joshua was sitting on his knees with his eyes closed, hands gripping his cross as he whispered to his god. And as for Satoko, she was holding little Akito in her arms, trying to soothe him as he squirmed and cried.

Mokou jogged down the stairs toward them. "Hey," she said. When that failed to garner a response, she clapped her hands loudly together. "Hey!"

That got their attention. Satoko, Haruna, and Joshua all started, like they had been awakened from a trance.

"What happened?" Mokou demanded. "Tell me!"

Joshua's mouth was moving, but he was having difficulty getting words out. "There…I-I woke up, and I heard crying, but wh-when I tried to-to-to get up…"

"Webs," Haruna said in a hollow voice. "Everywhere. Covering everyone."

Mokou glanced around. Well, these supposed webs were all gone now. "Continue."

"I saw some of the children…" Joshua swallowed. "Well, they were awake, and staring up. At the ceiling. So I looked up too, and…"

"Eiko," Satoko whispered, her arms tightening around Akito. "She was there, hanging from the chandelier."

"Hanging? You mean, like by a rope? A noose?"

Satoko shook her head. "No. She was upside-down, and just covered with webs. She…She talked. She blamed me for letting her die. And then her mouth was just ripped open, and all these spiders poured down on us."

"Her eyes were gone," Haruhi said. Then, in a rising shriek, she repeated, "Her eyes were gone! She had no eyes!" Despite being near a breakdown herself, Haruna quickly shushed her before her panic set off the children.

Not that they needed the help, Mokou observed. It seemed that everyone was near hysterics. "Satoko. I need to talk to you in private."

Satoko stared at her like she was speaking in an alien tongue.

"Please," Mokou said. She held out a hand. "I need to ask you something."

"What? Oh. Ah, okay." Satoko handed Akito to Haruna and got up to follow.

Mokou led her into the hall that led to her kitchen. Once they had a measure of privacy, Mokou said, "Satoko, do you remember what happened to our wards?"

"Of course," Satoko said with a shiver. "They were sabotaged, right? But you replaced them, didn't you?"

"I did. With better ones. But all this has got me thinking about what happened to them in the first place."

Satoko stared blankly at her. "What do you mean? Someone found them and destroyed them. It's not like they were hidden."

"No, but they weren't torn up, they were burnt," Mokou said. Her mind was racing back over the events of the last few days. More pieces to the jigsaw puzzle were coming to light, and she was not liking the picture they were forming. "Someone burned them. All of them, in one night. Doesn't that sound like something we'd notice?" She paused for a moment to mentally examine the evidence, and then said, "I think they were destroyed by an overload spell."

Satoko frowned. As she did not come from an especially magical background, that concept was unknown to her. "Explain."

"Basically, what it does is use a ward network's own connection against it," Mokou told her. "It fires off a highly concentrated stream of magical energy that pushes a ward past its threshold, overloads the runes, and incinerates them. Then it moves onto the next ward in the line, and the next, and the next. Only thing is, this happens so fast that it would be done in less time than I'm taking to describe it, and it does it quietly. We'd have to be looking directly at the wards to notice something was wrong."

Now Satoko got it. She might not be all that versed in combat magic, but she understood the basics, and what Mokou had explained to her drained the blood from her face. "But…something of that magnitude."

"Yeah, it does take a lot of juice," Mokou nodded. "And they're extremely difficult. You have to be pretty proficient with magic to be able to pull one off. But there's a couple more catches as well. First of all, they can't be performed by a youkai without them risking tearing their own bodies apart. Permanently. Even magician youkai that used to be Human can't do them. So whoever pulled this off had to be Human, and a powerful one at that."

"Go on…"

"Secondly, even if you are a Human magician with enough knowledge to safely pull one of these off, you won't be able to do it alone. You need a source of youkai magic at hand to channel into the wards. And that's a one-way trip for the youkai, so they tend to be kind of unwilling."

Satoko made a face. "You're telling me that to sabotage our wards and leave the children vulnerable to attack, a Human captured and murdered a youkai?"

"If they used an overload spell," Mokou said. "Which, okay, is just a theory, but it tracks, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Satoko said with a contemplative nod. "But what does that have to do with what we just saw?"

"Because an overload spell wouldn't just go for the perimeter wards. It would take out every ward, charm, and protective rune in a five kilometer radius, provided that they were part of the same network." Mokou stared hard into Satoko's eyes. "Now, I want you to think really, really hard: are there any other kinds of wards or anything else of that nature that we didn't think of? Maybe something in the house itself?"

That was the key. Until they had been sabotaged, the Aoki Yume's Children's Home had been well-protected against supernatural threats of all kinds. No youkai could even step past the perimeter fence; not even fairies were able to fly past it. Hell, even Tewi needed a special charm Mokou had made for her in order to pass.

But not all dangerous magic came from without. Gensokyo was a country practically made from magic of all kinds, and it wasn't just youkai they needed to fear.

The orphanage had existed for generations, providing a haven and a home for children who had lost their families, protecting them from the dangers that roamed the Wilds. But unfortunately, as the last week had proven, they couldn't always protect them. Sometimes the dangers won, sometimes the monsters got through, or even sometimes fates as mundane but no less deadly as a bad fall, a summer illness, or an inhaled piece of food reared their ugly heads. Children died quite easily, and the orphanage had seen the deaths of many children over the decades.

Now, given the house's age and the pain carried around by its inhabitants, it would make a prime breeding ground for ghosts, specters, poltergeists, and the like. Except it wasn't. The house had never seen single haunting.

The reason for that was quite simple: the Yume family weren't fools. When Satoko's multiple-times-great-grandparents had turned the family farm into an orphanage, they would have foreseen the various dangers it needed to be protected from, both from without and within.

But the downside of that is that if those protections had existed for so long, they would have done their job so well that those that they protected would simply stop thinking about them. And if they were taken away, it might be some time before anyone even thought to check that they were still there, even after the monsters had gotten in.

Before, Mokou had chalked up any strange going-ons, such as the flaming lantern or any strange upstairs shenanigans, up to the curse that the Black Circle Six had brought with them. But now she felt that they had nothing to do with it at all.

"Oh, my gods," Satoko whispered.

Mokou nodded grimly. "Yeah, I thought so. Where?"

"Th-The foundations," Satoko stuttered. "The stones. They all had special runes engraved into them, so any negative spirit would, you know…not form."

Mokou nodded again. "I'm willing to bet anything that those runes are now a scorched and blackened mess."

Both women were now thinking down the same lines. Eiko's death had been horrible. She had awoken weak and sick from spider venom to find herself in a dark and frightening place, surrounded on all sides by hideous monsters. And before she could even figure out where she was and why she was there, they had eaten her alive.

Such a painful and violent death would certainly leave a stamp. And in a place swimming with magic like the Youkai Forest, an aftereffect forming was practically an inevitability. From there, it would either fade away as its body rotted, or it would gain enough strength to continue on, joining the many dark spirits that wandered the forest, forever an echo of a dead girl's pain and fear.

Except the body hadn't stayed where it had died.

"It came back with the body," Satoko said.

"Makes sense," Mokou said. "The place where she died would be unfamiliar, and that nest got scorched pretty bad, disrupting any magical ties. So it would migrate to someplace she knew."

"And with the wards down, it wouldn't have gotten blocked out and broken apart," Satoko continued. "And when we cremated her body…"

"That basically cut it loose." Mokou looked toward the main room, where everyone was struggling to make sense of the fearsome apparition they had seen. "So, on top of everything else, we are now officially haunted.