Rural Nights [ChXIV]

[Dran]

Chapter XI

  Miyabi awakes to darkness. The familiar sound of wind and rain is immediately recognizable as it batters against the side of the building. She waits for a moment, listening to the sound of the wind and the creaking of the house, while her eyes are attempting to adjust to the darkness. She hears a noise. The faint sound of crying. However, she can't determine it's source, either due to the darkness, or it just being her imagination. But gradually her eyes manage to adjust and, though the darkness is still very much impenetrable, she now can make out shapes. The room appears to be the room that she and Chinami were staying in in that old house.
  Miyabi calls out in the dark, “Chinami? Is that you?”
  There is no response, but the sound of sobbing continues.
  “Chinami? If you are there, please answer me!”
  She crawls her way through the dark to Chinami's bed and carefully reaches out her arm. She moves her arm towards the bedding, her entire body shaking from anxiety. She finally rests her hand on Chinami's back and begins shaking her. “Chinami! Answer me!”
  But no sooner does Miyabi start shaking the body in the bed, than does the blanket fall aside to reveal that there is actually no-one there. She looks at her own hands, realising that they are starting to numb from the cold and are shaking uncontrollably. She could have sworn that she had touched someone's back.
  She quickly retreats back to where she had woken, and this time adjusts her ears more sensitively to try and pick up the source of the crying. It doesn't appear to be coming from within the room, in fact, it's almost certainly coming from the hallway outside.

  Miyabi gathers up her strength, despite every fibre in her body telling her that it's probably safer in the room than it is out there, and gets to her feet, making her way to the door.

  Curiously, the door seems to fall open of it's own accord as she touches it. It reveals a familiar hallway on the other side with minimal light seeping in through the window at the other end. She uses this tiny slither of light and the sobbing sound through the rain to find her way, slowly walking along the corridor. The amount of willpower required to simply move a single step leaves her feeling drained, as she passes each door in the corridor, too frightened to peer into any of them.
  As she peers around the corner at the end of the corridor, and down the stairs, she can see an eerily translucent light illuminating the floorboards at the bottom. There still appears to be blood all the way down and covering the floor and walls, and the sight of the cold light shining dimly, but still piercingly, off the surfaces send a shiver down her spine.
  She grips onto the handrail firmly, but not too tightly so as to touch as little of the blood as possible, which still scares her. One step after another, she carefully proceeds down the stairs. By now the crying is getting louder and more pronounced. It seems to resonate and echo through the building itself.

  As the hall at the bottom of the stairs slowly comes into view, she notices at the end of it, by the entrance way, someone standing there with their back to her. Swaying slightly as the person stands there, with arms firmly planted by their sides, the person mourns loudly and mutters incomprehensible words through it all. Miyabi takes a closer look, and upon realising just who it is, calls out to her.
  “Mrs Tanaka? Are you okay?”
  Suddenly the crying stops. Mrs Tanaka mutters under her breath, “You can't help me. No-one could.”
  “Help you? I... I don't understand.”
  Mrs Tanaka suddenly flinches, her head flies round to one side, and then her body follows. Miyabi has never seen such an elderly woman move so fast. Mrs Tanaka turns to face her, and the strange light, which seemed to emanate from her very body, suddenly becomes even colder. Mrs Tanaka's eyes, wide open, and unnaturally light – so light, in fact, that the iris almost appears to be white.  “Of course you don't. Not you. You're not the one!”
  Mrs Tanaka's whole body flinches this time. “This one has served it's purpose.”
  Miyabi, not understanding the situation at all, runs forward for Mrs Tanaka.
  "NO! You will not be allowed to escape!”
  As Tanaka screams that out, Miyabi's legs seem to lock up and she falls to her knees. “Ehh!? My legs won't move.”
  “Of course not. You won't be leaving here now, will you?”
  Suddenly Miyabi feels a sharp pain in her leg. She instinctively reaches down to grab the area that hurts, just below the knee, and is shocked to find something there. Something that shouldn't be. She looks down, and right there, by her shin, a large shard of glass is impaled into the side of her calf.

  And then, as if that wasn't enough, the light suddenly fades, and with a thud, the silhouette of Mrs Tanaka crashes to the ground. Miyabi uses her arm to pull herself over to her, and begins violently shaking Mrs Tanaka. “What's wrong? Mrs Tanaka? Wake up! Wake up!”

  She doesn't respond.

[kuro808]

whoa freaky incident right there, it seems to add more suspense and mystery as it goes along, keep it up

[badsaints]

spooky~ Mrs Tanaka was possessed? Wait, both of them are supposedly missing right? So are they in another place or twilight zone or something?

I'll just wait for the next chapters for the answer

[Dran]

Chapter XII

  A bright light. The sound of buzzing cicada and chirping birds flow in through the window. It's morning. A young girl, only 9 years old, lies in her futon on the traditional tatami mats. She shifts her arms to shield her eyes from the sunlight pouring in throw the window as she tries to work out where she is. Ah, yes. She was asleep. This is her room. It's a good room, it sits on the second floor of the largest house in the village, overlooking a great field where the other children were now playing.
  The girl's eyes adjust to the light as she looks at the room around her. She climbs out of her futon, slightly drowsily, and gets changed into her clothes.

  She carefully steps out of the room, and makes her way down the stairs. As she makes her way past the kitchen, she sees her mother cleaning up. She had been trying to keep herself busy a lot lately, as father was recently killed in an accident in the hills only a year ago. He would go out after work to get some firewood to heat the bath. He didn't return, even after several hours. His body was never found, but after three weeks of searching he was presumed dead.
  Mother had been stressed to the limit, dealing with the loss as well as raising their daughter. But she tried to keep her mind off it.

  She goes past, steps into the doorway and puts her sandals on, calling out to her mother, “I'm going out!” and leaves before even getting an answer.

  She steps outside into the hot sun and raises her arm to the sky. It's a fine day. Nary a cloud in sight. She runs behind the house and vaults the wall into the field where the other children are playing.
  “Satsuko!” they yell out to her as a baseball lands at her feet.
  She picks the hard-ball up and throws it to one of the other children, who, with a powered throw, returns it to the pitcher and saves the round.
  "Nice throw,” he says as he walks up to her, “We need another left-fielder. Do you want to play?”
  She nods, and so joins the friendly game of baseball. It's quite a popular game around here, and living in a small rural village like this means that there's lots of open areas for the children to play. She plays pretty well too. She always was good at ball games.  It's common for everyone to work in the fields during harvest time, especially when hands are short, including the children. It's a time-honoured tradition. And so you develop quite a bit of body strength very early on, giving her a keen throw.

  They play, and play, and play. Steadily the sun moves across the reddening sky, and one by one the other children are called back home, until none are left.

  “Nobu, it's time to come home.” yells a middle-aged man from across the width of the field.
  “Okay, dad.” says the boy, turning to wave goodbye to Satsuko as she's left there alone.
  “Ah, Satsuko. Shouldn't you be getting home too? Your mother is probably worried sick.”
  “Yes, Mr. Ogi. I was just heading home now.”
  “Okay. Don't stay out too long. Wouldn't want you catching your death of a cold. Not with all your mother has to worry about at the moment. Come on, let's get you home too.”

  She makes her way home, following behind Mr. Ogi and vaulting the stone wall as she had done this morning, and making her way around to the front of the house.

  “Mum, I'm back!” she calls as she enters the house, taking off her sandals. “Mum?”
  She could tell instantly that something wasn't right. Surely her mother hadn't forgotten to make some food? But the house was completely devoid of the smell of cooking rice. She steps into the corridor and turns the corner into the house itself and is thrown back off her feet with shock as she lets out a horrid scream.

  Mr Ogi runs quickly inside to see what the matter is and, following her gaze, he looks up to see her mother hanging from the ceiling by a knotted piece of rope.

  “Oh my god.” he mutters as he holds his arms around her.
  But Satsuko, unable to take her eyes off her mother, merely begins to shake her head voilently and, as Mr Ogi tries to calm her and restrain her, she kicks him away and runs out of the house with Ogi in full chase.

  She didn't know where she was going. It didn't matter. Her father and abandoned her, and so had her mother. What was there left here for her but to run?

  Her entire body, now completely numb from the tiredness, swiftly moves down the hill onto the road and begins to follow it leading out of the village. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Her heart is working overtime and her brain overclocked, she barely even notices where she is. Yet, after little time at all, she already finds herself at the bridge which is the only way out of the village. Only here does she stop, looking back at the home she just fled from with nothing but the clothes on her back. What was she going to do, anyway? That part hadn't been worked out.

  Find her father. Yes. That's it. She'd go search for her father. All of this is his fault. They said he was dead, but he can't be. He can't die until he apologises for everything.

  While she was having this internal dialogue, however, Mr Ogi and some of the other villagers had managed to find her and catch up. “Satsuko! Come back!”
  Upon realising that she had been discovered, she takes one last look at that village and turns her back to it and puts one foot in front of the other as she starts to run.
  Yet, somehow, her foot failed to find the right motion, and gets caught on the back of her other foot. Suddenly, she falls. Toppling ever downwards into the river by the bridge.

[kuro808]

very haunting for the boy and I guess this is a back story to the horrors of the house

[Dran]

Yeah. I felt that I was left with an opportunity to do what I want with the story before I enter the final act. So I wanted to give a bit of backstory, as well as tie up a few loose-ends and things that weren't really explained, only hinted at, in earlier chapters.

[Dran]

I took a long break from this fic to focus on another one while I worked out what direction I should go in. But I've come back to it, and the end is now in sight. The end is only one or two chapters away.

* * * * *

Chapter XIII

 The girls are out searching for Miyabi. They run through the village, calling out "Miyabi! Miya! Mrs. Tanaka!" But the only reply that comes is from the winds. The wind is incredibly powerful, and what little clothes the girls packed for the trip do nothing to keep the chill out. But, fueled by nothing other than adrenaline, they head out into the night to call out.

 Chinami walks slowly up the hill, along the single road leading out of the village. Perched there, about halfway up, is the empty house. Even in the pitch blackness of the night, it seems to cast a long shadow. She stares up at it for a few moments, pondering this fact.
 A shiver runs down her spine, as she is overcome by the strange sensation that the building itself is staring back at her. And yet, here, at the base of it's ominous shadow, seems to be the most disturbingly calming area of the whole village. Even the winds appear to have gone silent.

 "Huh? Silent?" Chinami turns around and realises that it isn't just the winds that she can no longer hear. The yells and cries of the other members, trying to find Miyabi, have also vanished.

 "Captain!? Maasa!?" She cries out. But this time, not even the wind responds to her cries. She turns back to the house for a moment, which somehow feels like it has gotten even larger in the few moments she had been looking back down the hill, and then returns her gaze to the village. She goes to take a step back down the hill. "Perhaps the others have found Miyabi and they went back to Mrs Tanaka's house?" But when she goes to make a second step, she realises that both feet are firmly rooted to the ground.
 "Wha--!? My-- My feet won't budge!" She tries again. And yet again. But it's as though the messages aren't being recieved from her brain to her legs. "Then I'll crawl!" She goes to get down on her knees, but is then suddenly stricken by a horrible realization. It's not her legs that don't want to move. It's that something doesn't want her to leave.

 Once again, she returns her glance to the empty house, now looming over her as though it had never done so before.
 She takes a deep breath, and begins to walk slowly towards the house, each step taking her deeper into the shadow and the unknown. Or so her brain, which is now working overtime to process this situation, is telling her. And yet, as if willed on by some strange force, each step feels easier and more essential than the last.

 She enters the doorway of the house. Or that's what it was before. For some reason it now feels like a portal to some other world.
 That other world was completely shrouded in darkness. More so than the world outside, she felt. That was just a dark night. This kind of darkness is more like a complete absense of light.
 She proceeds through the hall, one step at a time, with her arms stretched out in front of her like some blind man without his cane, barely aware of even the space in which she occupies.

 Her foot catches on something. A log? No. That's not it. She ponders this as she falls and smashes her face against the floor. As she sits up, she can feel the presense of a strange, deep liquid running down the side of her face. At this point, she's not sure whether the blood is hers, or Mr. Ogi's blood which covered the walls and floors before. It was cool, but she was so frightened that she felt she couldn't rule out her own blood being frozen.

 "Wait. What did I trip over?" She turns around, on her knees, and reaches out for the object lying on the floor. She feels the soft touch of cotton. A yukata? She spreads her arms out in a much wider search pattern, and realises that she's holding on to an arm.
 She grabs the body, and rolls it over onto its back, and suddenly jumps backwards in fright.

 An image flashes up in her mind. A familiar face. The eyes are rolled back into the temple, and only the red-veined whites of those terrible, tired eyes are visable. But there's no mistaking those features. It was the face of Mrs Tanaka.
 Suddenly she gets the image of that face being enveloped by darkness, and vanishing completely into the void.
 Unsure just what it means, Chinami reaches out her arm once again towards the body. But her hand only meets air. Whatever had been here was no longer. Or perhaps it had never been, and she is just imagining things.

 "Damn it! If I don't get out of here soon I'm going to go crazy!"

 But her attention is suddenly diverted. She turns her head to the side, and notices a strange light. Or not. It's a light of no real substance or colour, and yet somehow seems to be all colours. It illuminates nothing, and yet she can see it eminating from the wall where once the mysterious blackened urn sat. Chinami found her lips moving of their own accord. "The colour of... night?"
 She slowly gets to her feet, and makes her way towards the light. She crosses the room, and approaches the wall where she saw the light eminating from.
 "It seems to be coming from... behind this wall." What's going on? She reaches out and touches the wall. But finds nothing solid when she does so. Instead, the wall itself mysteriously disintigrates away into darkness, revealing a curious passage.

 As she steps forward, she turns to find the room she just came from has vanished completely, and instead, a seemingly identical passage to the one in front.

 Nervously, Chinami makes her way along the passageway, unsure of what to expect.

[kuro808]

welcome back

Chinami is in a scary place

[Dran]

Thanks!

To be honest, I'm still not even sure how Chinami managed to become the central character in all this. It just kind of happened. 

[Dran]

Chapter XIV

  After walking for what seemed like an eternity, the passageway opens up into a large chamber.

  Lining the walls of the chamber are six arched enclaves, slightly raised above the rest of the floor. Residing at the back of each one is a mural. Shapes, and images, painted on to the walls with an invisable light. It's not that Chinami can see the shapes. Not in the way one normally sees an object, at least. It feels more like... She can feel them, burning themselves onto the back of her mind's eye.

  Each one seems different from the others. That one on the right seems to be of the house, overlooking the village. How strange, that almost seems like an entire lifetime ago, and yet it is still omnipresent in her mind. The large, imposing structure, which somehow looked peaceful when they first arrived. Now that really was a lifetime ago.

  In the enclave next to that, there was another image. A depiction of a little girl, it seemed to her. "A little girl? I've seen this somewhere before..." Chinami thought to herself. "But where?" As she began to wrack her brain for the relevent memories, she was suddenly overcome by an intense burning sensation.
  Collapsing to her knees, she let out an involuntary whimper as she regained her stability. Something wasn't right. Why couldn't she remember?
  But then something she wasn't expecting caught her eye.
  There, in the centre of the third image, was a golden urn. A golden urn she definitely knew she recognised, because there in the image, standing over it, was Chinami herself.

  "That can't be right. What the hell is this?"

  There was no mistaking it. The face in the image was indeed her own. Why was it there? Why was it a scene she recognised? And, more importantly, where was she? She struggled but couldn't come up with any logical explanations.
  Before she could look at the images in the enclaves opposite, she noticed that at the far end of the chamber, opposite the entrance, there was a podium or altar of some description. The altar itself was decidedly unremarkable, save for the object placed neatly on top of it.
  Sat there, on top of the altar, was a large, golden urn. The same one, in fact, as the one she accidentally destroyed - as the image in the third enclave depicted.
  She suddenly felt drawn to the object, as she had before when she first laid eyes on it in the house the day before. As she approached, she could feel that she wasn't the only one drawn to it. The very light of the room seemed to be gravitating towards it.
  As she began to reach out to touch it, she recalled the previous incident and quickly withdrew her hand again, feeling it safer to simply observe it with her eyes. She had started to walk carefully around it, getting a sense for the urn as a 3-dimensional object, when she felt her foot catch on something.
  This time she manages to stop herself before falling over, and, looking down at her feet, notices a familiar face.

  "Miyabi! What are you doing here?" She throws herself onto her knees beside her, and begins yelling anxiously at the body in front of her.
  "..."
  No response. "Miyabi! Wake up!" She tries again.
  "..."
  Still no response.

  Then, as she starts to become more desperate, a noise begins to echo through the hall. Footsteps. Loud and sharp, made all the more intimidating by the accoustics of the hallway. They seem to be getting closer.

  Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

  For a moment, she turns her attention back to Miyabi, who still remains motionless on the floor. She begins to shake Miyabi quite violently, breaking out into a frantic scream. "Miyabi! Wake up, now!"

  Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

  "MIYABI!"

  It was here that she felt the piercing voice ring out, made powerful by the echo.

  "She won't wake up."

  Chinami whirls around, and, there, standing in the doorway is a figure. A familiar figure at that.

  "What have you done?" Chinami challenges the figure.
  "I've not done anything," the voice sounds back, "It was you."
  "It was... what?"
  "It was you who released me into this world, was it not?"
  "I have no idea what you--"
  "The urn, you simple child!"
  "I'm older than you!"
  "Then you should know better than to smash cursed artefacts."
 
 She had a point. It did seem that, had Chinami need touched, and consequently destroyed, that urn then none of this would have happened. Whatever 'this' is.

  "Then what happened to Miyabi?"
  "The girl? She was quite useful in bringing you here. Her usefulness has almost come to its end, however."
  "You'll let her go?"
  "She'll be free to go... But she won't be of much use to any of you, either."

  Just as Chinami was about to ask what she meant by this, the urn on the altar shook violently for a moment, and suddenly she felt as though she had run into a brick wall.
  Clamboring to her feet again, she realised that it had given off some kind of shockwave.
  Even more peculiar was the fact that Miyabi was now sitting up, with her hands resting on the urn.

  "Miyabi! What's going on!?" Chinami almost knocked her over with the force she leapt at her with.
  "..."
  What? Still no response?
   
  The urn began to shine brightly, as if reacting to Miyabi's touch. It started as a golden glimmer, but quickly started to get brighter and brighter. Within a couple of seconds, it was giving off enough light to actually illuminate much of the large chamber they were stood in.

  "What are you doing to her?" Chinami turned back to the young girl, who was stood there a moment ago. But now, mysteriously, had vanished.

  This filled her with more dread and foreboding than when the spirit was there in front of her. She had no idea what was going on, or how to stop it. And attempts to remove the ever-brighter urn from Miyabi's cold grasp proved futile.   

  Cold?

  Now that she thought about it, the more intense the glow of the the urn became, the more the very colour in her face seemed to simply vanish.

  Is that what the girl meant? "She won't be of much use to any of you, either." Wait. Does that mean--!?
  Chinami began to panic. After another futile attempt at breaking Miya loose, she ran around screaming at the top of her lungs.

  "STOP THIS! SHE'LL DIE!"

  The very walls of the chamber seemed to shift and morph. In fact, the room felt like it was much smaller than it had been when she first walked in, and even now those walls relentlessly pressed down on her like a leopard makes for its prey.
  Now desperate, she did the only thing which made sense to her in that instant. She picked up a rock, and with an incredible sense of conviction, brought it to bear down on the urn.
  As the urn shattered inwards, an immense light contained within exploded out in all directions. Chinami found herself completely enveloped in that light. And the screams.

  The screams?

  She recognised that voice. It was Miyabi's. All that courage and conviction which had so fueled her just a moment ago melted away in an instant. What had she done?
  Something horrific lunged at her. Her reflexes kicked in, and she batted it away, and it landed a few feet away from where she sat. That horrible thing... was a human. In fact, it was Miyabi - her face all dried and shrivelled.

  As the bright light faded away, so too did Miyabi's voice. First the screams became a kind of wretched whimper, before dying out completely. And then, darkness replaced light. Just as Mrs Tanaka seemed to be swallowed up by it earlier, so too now was Miyabi.
  And Chinami... she didn't know what to make of it. Still too numbed by the whole experience to feel anything, she simply lay there in the dark, and let out an exasperated sigh.

  "You should know better than to smash cursed artefacts, huh?" She repeated the girl's words to herself. "Indeed, I should have."

  Miyabi was... gone. She was gone. And it was all Chinami's doing. So she told herself. But, what could she have done? That thing was killing her.

  As she lay there, pondering this to herself, she found her mind becoming ever cloudier. As if a dark cloud had moved in front of the moon, or a thick Tokyo fog had descended around her head. She knew that she should get up and fight it, but she couldn't bring herself to so much as lift a finger. And so, too, did Chinami vanish into the darkness.

[kuro808]

Poor Chinami

Miya in that state is surreal to this fic

[Dran]

That's true. ^^;
But the last couple of chapters have been pretty surreal anyway.

[kuro808]

That's true. ^^;
But the last couple of chapters have been pretty surreal anyway.

yeah it has been I'll be waiting for your next chapter