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(http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g162/Dran3/th_rural-nights.png)
(Credit: Liamers) (http://s56.photobucket.com/albums/g162/Dran3/rural-nights.png)
I've never posted on JPH!P before, but after I was talking about my fanfic yesterday adventwriter suggested that I post it on here.
First of all, this is a Berryz fic. It is written in a rather unusual POV style which sits somewhere between first-person and third-person. It's written using 3rd person pronouns, but the narrator is still able to see into the mind of the "POV" character, without being omniscient. It's a style that any literature teacher or proffessional would call rubbish, but I've found myself writing in it - though I can't explain why I did it.
Originally I thought about writing a romance story, but found that they existed in abundance. So I opted for something I felt was more untested. A Berryz Koubou horror fic. Of the modest response I've had to the story thus far, people have told me that some parts were genuinely scary, and that they had never seen a fanfic like it. No doubt there are horror H!P fics out there, but I have never seen one either. So to me this feels like pretty uncharted ground.
Anyway. Onto the story.
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Chapter I The whole bus shakes, throwing the unsuspecting girls to the side, as it drives over a hole in the old road. A cry rings out from the front of the bus where Momoko happened to be sitting, as she grabs her head and starts applying pressure to the bruise caused by the window. The others laugh and make fun of her; while Chinami, who happened to be sitting beside her, makes sure she’s okay.
The girls are being taken to a rural village for several days, where they will be filming a TV Special about being in the country and how different it is to the city life that they have grown accustomed to. They are all quite excited about the trip, as it isn’t the kind of work they get to do very often. Miyabi and Risako sit staring out of the window. There is very little green in Tokyo, so they both take the time to admire the nature view. Saki sat behind Momoko and Chinami in her own world, listening to loud music with her headphones in her ears. Maasa and Yurina, however, sit at the back of the bus chatting away about the kinds of things they’ll hopefully get to do at the village.
“Summer in the countryside… It would be perfect with some fireworks at night, right?” says Maasa in a loud voice.
“Yeah!’ Yurina says. “And to gaze up at the stars! I’ve always wanted to do that!”
The others hear their conversation and turn around, they all start giving their own ideas about what they should do over the next week.
No sooner, however, had their conversation started when the bus pulled to a stop. The road ended here, and they would have to walk the other 10 minutes to get to the travel lodge they’d be staying at. Everyone grabs their bags and gets off the bus and they begin making their way to the top of the village, the camera crew walk in front of the girls, filming them as they walk and adjust to the environment they are in. They walk past several houses and wave to the locals sitting outside, catching a bit of peace in the sun on their day off. “Good Morning!” echoes out every few minutes as the girls greet another person.
The girls enter the building, no-one lives here, but it has been well looked-after. Chinami slides the wooden door along and reveals the main room which, unlike the rest of building, has a very modern feel to it. In fact, the village isn’t very modern at all, most of the houses – this one included, don’t have electricity. The camera man peers into the room and has a quick look around. In the middle of the small room there is a table which is situated in front of a couch. Chinami immediately makes for the couch and throws herself on it. “Wow! It’s so comfortable!”
Across the back of the room, there is a large bookshelf with many books and ornamental objects sitting there. On the top shelf sat a vase, nothing in it, and relatively plain, but for some reason it felt out of place; like it shouldn’t be there. The other girls disappeared off to look through the rest of the building, leaving Chinami in the main room alone. She decides to have a look around the room, and moves towards the bookshelf, reading titles off the spines. Nothing interesting. However, she came to the place where the vase was, and after looking at it for a few moments, she felt a strongly compelling urge to touch it, which she didn’t understand. None the less, her hand reached out, and moved towards the gleaming surface of the vase and as her fingers met the cold surface, which for some reason felt rather sticky, though no essence of anything was present on its pristine body, there was a loud crash.
Chinami jumped at the sound and her nail scratched the vase. She quickly turned around to see what the noise was. There was a lot of noise coming from outside, it sounded like the other girls laughing. She stepped out of the room and looked up and noticed Risako sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She asks, “What happened?”
“You didn’t see?” Miyabi says, laughing, as she comes down the stairs, “She just fell. We were coming back down after checking out our rooms and she just dropped.”
“Ehh? Are you all right, Risako?”
Risako nods her head, but doesn’t really say anything. Chinami notices this and lifts her up, taking her back to the main room and sits her down on the couch. Risako looked very scared, and after about five minutes of the others calming down from the laughter and comforting her, she reveals a disturbing and terrifying truth. “It felt like I was pushed by someone…”
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Chapter II
The girls looked at Risako in total disbelief. She was being absurd! “No one pushed you, Risako.” Miyabi assured her. “I was right behind you, and no-one touched you.”
“But I know that something pushed me. I felt it! Besides, we’ve been dancing together for years – you know I’m not one to just lose my feet.”
“I dunno about that, remem—” Momoko adds with a smile but is interrupted by Maasa.
“I’m hungry. Come on, let’s go have lunch.”
Risako agrees, hoping that it will help her get her mind off of what just happened on the stairs. And so the girls all rush around the house, retrieving some boxed lunches which they prepared for the journey that morning. They all sit around the table in the dining room/kitchen, and the girls were eating in front of the cameras. It’s a strange thought, knowing that people will sit and watch you eating on national TV, but the girls are idols, and are used to it. There were two cameramen in the room, as well as a soundman. The girls begin to eat with a hearty “Itadekimasu!”
Eating her lunch, Risako did forget all about the earlier incident, and was laughing along with Miyabi who was acting cute for the camera. In this business you really can’t afford to waste time worrying about trivial matters – especially with such a long day of filming ahead. They eat quite slowly, because in order to keep things interesting and to get good ratings they know that they have to play around, and with Maasa and Yurina making fun of Saki and Miyabi, Momoko and Risako talking while eating on the other camera, Chinami decides to sneak out. “It’ll take them nearly 40 minutes to finish lunch anyway,” she reasons with herself.
Once again, she feels drawn to the room she was in before. And once again, she approaches that shelf with the vase. She examines it closely and notices that, up close, it’s actually a little more decorated than it first seemed. From a distance it looks fairly solid, but upon closer inspection you can make out very fine lines around the whole vase creating an interesting, but unfamiliar pattern. It’s not just unfamiliar, it’s irregular. The craftsman didn’t seem to have any picture in mind when decorating it, but just created these lines and patterns as they came to mind. She stretches out her hand and caresses it, letting her fingers feel the pattern that the vase bears.
And then, something feels odd. Her hand passes over an area with a very different texture to the rest of the surface. Where normally it was very soft and smooth, although it still had a strange stickiness to it, as though someone had covered it in strawberry jam and it left behind a residual feeling, this area was hard and irritable. She moves her fingers away and looks closer at it, and it becomes very clear. Unlike the rest of this dark, metallic vase this area is much lighter, like a golden-silver colour. It seems that when she accidentally scratched the surface earlier a piece of it had come away from the vase itself.
She manages to pull herself away from that room and makes her way back into the kitchen. As she approaches the sink to wash her hands and to get that bit of, what would appear to be a dark paint, from under her nail, Miyabi asks her, “Where did you go?”
“I went for another look around. Have you seen that—”
She couldn’t do it. A great feeling of dread and anxiety suddenly rushed over her and she couldn’t finish her question. She falls to her knees, the tap still running, and begins shaking uncontrollably. No, it’s more like a shudder. The other girls all look up from whatever they were doing and, upon seeing Chinami on the floor, rush to her asking what the matter is. Chinami opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She couldn’t find the words to convey the dark feeling of foreboding that she had. There were none. And so she sat in silence while the others crowded around her. But just as she couldn’t speak, the voices of the girls also sounded far off and remote, as though the sound had passed through the very veil of reality to reach her.
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Chapter III
Chinami awoke to the sound of laughter. A child's laughter. How unnusual. As it begins to get further and further away she opens her eyes and finds herself surrounded by a vast space of emptiness. She notes that she has been laying on the floor. Well, the floor looks like it doesn't even exist, but it was somehow still solid enough to hold her weight. She looks around to see if she can spy anything which might give a clue as to where she has found herself, but nothing. Just the laughter that surrounds her. And so, without even thinking, she decides that she should follow the sound and begins to walk swiftly but carefully through the darkness. Perhaps it's just human nature, to follow a familiar sound when you find yourself lost and all other senses fail you. Not that she recognises the voice, but there didn't appear to be any malintent in it – in fact it is best described as playful.
"Where am I?" She begins to ask herself. "What is that sound?"
Suddenly the laughing stops and Chinami catches sight of a bright light in front of her. It started as if a light entering a box through a pinhole, but it's scope quickly began to expand exponentially and dissolved the darkness and emptiness revealing a familiar room with a heavy atmosphere.
As she looks around, she recognises the room as the same one where she collapsed earlier - the kitchen.
The other members are all sitting around the table where they were having lunch, in tears and visably shaken by the events. Risako sits with her head on the table, covering her tears while Maasa tries to comfort her - though Maasa herself seems to be just as distraught. As Chinami approaches she speaks to them, "Risako? What is it? Maasa, tell me what's going on! Why is everyone crying?"
However, there is no response. She tries asking again, but still no answer. There is no reaction, whatsoever. The girls continued to ignore Chinami despite her efforts to get them to respond, which were naturally flambouyant.
After a few minutes of trying to get someone to notice her, she sat down in a chair beside Captain, who had finally worked up the strength to say something, "Come on, everyone! Let's try to cheer up. Smile!"
Yurina, forced an awkward smile through her tears. It was then that Chinami noticed something peculiar about the whole scene - besides the fact that she was being totally ignored (which, unfortunately, wasn't all that peculiar). No, the kitchen looked different. In fact, on closer inspection the room was very different. There was dust everywhere. You could see it floating in the light coming through the window, which was actually quite dull. The weather this morning was warm and the skies were relatively clear, but now a grey sky lies on the other side of that glass.
Chinami turns to the other members and asks them, "Hey, how long was I unconscious for?" But even serious questions don't seem to be getting through to them.
And now, standing by the window facing inwards, she notices someone standing by the doorway. A small girl. A girl with short, dark hair and wearing a plain red dress. She is staring straight at Chinami with a cold look on her face. The weird thing is that this house is apparently empty. No children live here, and it would be rather unnusual for a staff member to bring his daughter to work with him. This causes the goosebumps on Chinami's arms to fire. There is something creepy about the way that girl is looking at me. And then it hit her - this girl is staring at me!
Chinami approaches the child and tries talking to her, "Hello, who a--!"
Before she could finish, the girl's face suddenly comes over with something and runs away. Was that shyness? Or fear?
The girl runs off leaving Chinami to work out what just happened. "The girl seemed to react to me - the only person who has since I woke up." And with that Chinami decides to follow the child.
As she enters the corridor, however, she finds that the young girl has already vanished from sight. She calls out, "Hello? Little girl?" as she walks through the hallway. No reply comes, however. As she walks around the corner into the main room with the dark vase that had so interested her upon arrival in the house she finds herself about to walk right into someone.
Someone tall it seems, as their chest lies at Chinami's eye level. Their legs must be... levitating 15 inches off the ground. "That's odd," she notes after glancing down at the person's feet. Especially the fact that this person is wearing shoes indoors. She looks back up and lets out a terrible scream and collapses to the floor.
This person isn't levitating, it's hanging! A strong stretch of rope swings around the back of the person's neck and below the chin. As she stares up in horror at the body before her, she finds herself staring into her own eyes. Her own body.
This is the last thing Chinami remembers before waking up in a bright room. Heaven? No. This is the bedroom where the members are to sleep for the duration of their stay. As her eyes adjust to the light, she finds herself alone in the room. Climbing out of bed she hears cheerful voices coming from below.
"What a horribly vivid dream." She whispers to herself.
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Chapter IV
The sun has passed over and is now making it's way down behind the hills in the west leaving the sky and the village both bathed in a warm orange glow. The chirping of cicada fills the air giving the whole place a very nostalgic Japanese feel. A gentle evening breeze has picked up, but the temperature remains warm. Behind the old house there is a large field. Sitting in the field is a makeshift “tent”, and a large table covered in food being enjoyed by the members of Berryz Koubou and by the people of the village they are filming in.
Of course, this is being filmed as a segment for the special, and fairly routine at that. The girls are enjoying the company of the villagers who, although they are following something of a script, are free to do as they please provided certain topics are brought up which the staff picked.
Captain, who is busy sampling various locally grown foods, as well as the trout that Mr. Ogi, who happened to be sitting right beside her, had caught that very morning. She had already chatted a little with him when everyone settled down for the meal, and she was rather enjoying herself.
Ogi is a fairly elderly man. Probably a man in his early 70s, although surprisingly healthy for his age. It must be something to do with the clean air and simple life here, Captain thinks to herself. As for what he is wearing, there is very little of significance, she thinks. Although he is wearing a baseball cap. She had mentioned it before, and it appears that he is a fan of the Chunichi Dragons, although Captain herself isn't a sports fan, so she found herself unable to have any meaningful conversation on the topic.
However, he turns to her and says something which seems to catch the attention of everyone within earshot.
“So, you're staying in the Takaya house, huh?”
“Takaya?” Captain tilts her head to the side as she asks.
“Ah, the name of the family who used to live there. It's the oldest house in the village.”
“Yes. Is there something wrong with that house?”
As she finishes her question, she suddenly begins to feel that the table has gone deathly quiet. What five minutes ago was surrounded by warm and friendly conversation was now as quiet as a dungeon, and the air began to feel likewise heavy. Ogi brings his voice down to a near-whisper and says to Saki, “The whole family were found dead in that house, some 20 years ago. It never got sold because no one wants to buy a house where people have killed themselves.”
A cold chill runs down her spine. “Killed themselves?”
“Yeah. The mother was found--,” Before Ogi could finish, the man sitting beside him cleared his throat and shook his head coldly at the old man. And Ogi apologizes before going back to his food with a smile.
“Now I wish that I hadn't asked. Can I really stay in a house like that? Just what was it that the man didn't want me to hear? No. No, I don't think I want to know it either.” These thoughts fill her mind.
“Saki. Saki. Saki?”
As she turns around, she realizes that everyone is busy chatting away to eachother again. Or perhaps they had never stopped, and it had just been her imagination when the topic seemed to go in a dark direction. Maasa is trying to catch her attention. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay? You look a little pale.”
“Ah, yeah. Sorry, I just zoned out for a minute.”
“Try this. It tastes delicious.”
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I'm not a fan of Berryz and I seldom read their fics but damn! You totally got me hooked at the first chapter! :O It is genuinely scary.
So many questions, donno where to start :D Do continue! I really want to know more about that house :)
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Thanks for the reply. I'm glad that you like it. And even happier that you chose to give feedback. I always like to hear what people think of my fic, even if the comment is constructive criticism. Better knowing that people are actually reading your work and criticising it than going on thinking that no-one actually cares. :)
As for this new chapter, it's pretty short, and does nothing to advance the story. But it's a sweet scene that I wanted to get in there before I have to get pretty dark again for several chapters. The calm before the storm, as it were. But it's something of a contrast to the tone I've written with up til now, and was intended to showcase how wonderful the friendship of the girls in Berryz is.
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Chapter V
The sun has passed over the hills, and only the moon and the stars remain in the sky. In the middle of the field is a large fire which many of the villagers are gathered around. The girls themselves are seated nearby on the ground. Yurina had gotten her wish and was now laying on her back and gazing up to the stars above. In the modern world, the number of places where you can gaze up at the night sky and spot the stars freely are ever vanishing. City lights dye the night sky orange, and the dimmer stars struggle to shine through the light reflecting off the atmosphere, allowing only the brightest to be visible.
But there they are. Laying in the countryside miles from the incredible light pollution of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area and watching one of the most beautiful sights that the universe has to offer.
“And if you look a little to the right you can see the Plough,” Yurina says as she motions the shape of the constellation with her arm.
“Eeeeh? How do you know so much about the stars, Yurina?” asks Maasa, who is laying beside her.
“I love the stars. My room at home is covered with posters of the constellations and the planets.”
Despite being something of a boyish interest, the girls all laughed. For some reason it suited her. Yurina goes back to pointing out the summer constellations that are visible behind the mild cloud cover.
Maasa, who until now had been listening intently to Yurina's lecture on the heavens, slowly begins to drift off to sleep, expedited by the calming sound of her voice and the feel of the summer night breeze. She tried to stay awake, but resistance was futile. There is something oddly sleepy about the countryside. Where it's not uncommon in the city to be up and about until late, being away from the stress of the bustling cities has the strange effect of making you start to drift off at hours which you'd normally consider pretty early.
Captain, who by now had noticed the drowsiness of the girls, smiled and stood up. It may be a relaxing place, but she had to wake Maasa up, because she can't sleep out here in this field all night. And she had to act fast before Maasa fell into too deep a sleep, as she is a notoriously heavy sleeper.
“Maasa,” she whispers. No response. “Maasa, wake up,” she tries again, this time slightly louder. She tries a third time, this time shaking her by the shoulder. Maasa's head lifts and her eyes open. Success! “Let's get back to the house. You can't sleep out here or you'll catch a cold.”
“Okay,” Maasa responds, rubbing the drowsiness out of her eyes as she stands up.
Captain turns around and-- “Oh. Now Risako has fallen asleep.” Chinami and Miyabi are prodding her cheeks as she lies there and laughing. She moves her arm to deflect them, but makes no apparent effort to wake up. Just as Captain goes to wake her, however, Maasa laughs and stops her.
“Don't worry, I'll get it.” She says with a grin on her face, as she carefully lifts Risako off the ground in her arms and carries her back towards the house. “Wow. She's gotten pretty heavy.”
Maasa puts Risako in to bed, taking care not to wake her, and then climbs into her own. The house is large, but there aren't enough rooms for everyone, so Maasa and Risako are sharing a room. She covers herself up, and once again drifts off.
That night, she dreamt of the stars.
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Chapter VI
The sound of wind and rain battering down the hatches fills the house. The beautiful weather of the night before has quickly disappeared, and given way to a summer storm. It's during weather like this that you really start to get a feel for just how ancient a house is. Sliding doors banging between it's fixtures, creaking floorboards and a leaking roof.
Risako wakes to a huge drop of rainwater, which had been gathering by a leak in the ceiling just above her head. She wipes her face dry with the edge of her futon cover, before shifting the whole futon over a little so it's clear of the leak. She attempts to go back to sleep, but the sounds of the house and winds make it somewhat difficult, so she reaches over for her cellphone. Pressing the green button, the LCD screen springs to life and promptly informs Risako that it is still only 5AM. Thinking to herself, “Bloody rain.”
After a moment of failing to drop back off to sleep, she turns her head to the other side of the room and can now make out in the darkness the shape of Maasa's body under her own futon. Facing away from her, her head is obscured by a pillow which she is so tightly gripping to herself. Is she awake?
“Maasa. Are you awake?” Risako whispers – for not wanting to be too loud in case she wakes her.
Silence. However, Risako notices that Maasa grip on the pillow over her head loosened. “Maasa? Are you awake?” she asks, this time slightly louder.
After a brief pause, Maasa lifts the pillow and turns to look at Risako. “What is it?” she asks with an awkward smile. But even in this darkness Risako can tell that there's something amiss. Her eyes are red, and her cheeks slightly wet.
“Maasa? Are you crying? What's wrong?”
“Eh? I'm not crying, don't worry about it. Now what did you want?”
“Don't try to trick me, Maasa. I can see, even now, the redness of your eyes.”
Maasa takes a moment, and then sighs. “It's nothing. It's just the rain. I don't want to talk about it.”
Come to think of it, Maasa always was slightly uncomfortable around water. But the rain? Why is she so afraid of the rain? Not wanting to intrude any further though, Risako just sighs and says, “So you couldn't sleep either, huh?”
“No, the wind woke me up.”
“Me too. It's amazing how quick the weather can change in just a few hours.”
“Yeah. What time is it anyway?”
“Just after 5.” Risako then takes a deep breath, and decides to outright ask it. “Say Maasa... Why don't you like the rain?”
“I catch colds easily.” Maasa laughs.
“I'm serious, Maasa. Besides, we both know that you're never sick.”
Before Maasa could articulate a proper answer, however, a huge crashing sound rings out through the house followed by a scream. Maasa and Risako both jolt up and look at eachother.
“What the--!?”
“A burglar? It came from downstairs. Let's go check.” says Maasa, getting up from bed and rushing downstairs.
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Oh why is Maasa so afraid of H2O?
And a burglar in the house? Or sthg else? :shocked
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Why is she so afraid of water? I hope to make that evident later on in the story. But for now, here's the answer to the burgler mystery.
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Chapter VII
Creak. Creak. The sound of the floorboards shifting beneath Chinami's bare feet seem to echo through the hallway as she sneaks back from her second trip to the bathroom of the night. “I knew I shouldn't have refilled my glass so many times,” she whispers to herself.
She finally reaches the door at the end of the hall, which she opens is carefully and quietly as possible, so as to not awaken Miyabi who is sleeping in the corner. She steps into the room and closes the door behind her, before tip-toeing her way across to her futon. She has to feel her way around to make sure she doesn't walk into bookcases or the desk as it is pitch black. The only window is on the north-facing wall, and with the rainclouds overhead blocking out the moon and starlight, and no lights coming from the few houses in the fairly remote village.
Chinami finally makes it to her bed and climbs into it and tries to fall asleep. But no sooner had her eyes become heavy than when she begins to hear a strange noise.
Scratch. Scratch. The strange sound of scratching pierces the darkness, not at all dissimilar to a cat begging to be let out. Chinami turns over to see what is making the noise, but it's no good. The darkness is too heavy, and she can't discern which direction the sound is even coming from.
“Miyabi?” she whispers. “Miya, is that you?”
The only response is the sound of Miyabi breathing in her sleep.
At that moment, however, the noise stops abruptly and then footsteps can be heard outside the room. Chinami listens intently, somewhat startled by the strange sounds. This time she can tell exactly where the sounds are coming from. As the footsteps get louder, she can tell that they are making their way down the hallway towards the room where she is lying, her heart now pounding.
She tries to rationalize the footsteps. “Hmm. Maybe Maasa heard the strange noises too and is coming to check on us. Yeah, that's it. But that still doesn't explain what the scartching was,” she thinks to herself.
Thud thud. There's a knock at the door. Chinami glances through the dark to where Miyabi is still sleeping. “Miyabi! Wake up!” she whispers loud enough that Miyabi should hear it, but whoever is outside can't. Thud thud. A second knock, this time louder, and Miyabi is still sound asleep. Thud thud. Chinami can't tell whether that last one was a third door knock or the sound of her own heart beating, but it was definitely louder than the first two.
The door opens slowly, and a little light gets in from the window at the end of the hallway which faces the road.
Chinami wants to scream, but as she stares at the open door she is struck by an image of pure terror. There is no-one there. Either she imagined the noises and the door swung open by the power of a breeze through the house, or something very strange is going on in the house.
It takes several minutes of trying to wake a heavy-sleeping Miyabi and failing before Chinami finally works up the courage to step outside and investigate herself. She walks into the corridor and heads to the bottom of the hallway. The only way to go from here is downstairs, so she holds onto the bannister while she carefully steps down the stairs through the darkness.
Her hand encounters something strange when she touches the bannister. Something is wet, but warm. She freaks out, but then forces herslef to grab hold again lest she falls down the stairs. But when she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she feels the same substance on the soles of her feet. Whatever it is, it seems to have pooled slightly on the floor.
As she turns the corner onto the ground floor hallway, she notices a familiar looking little girl walk into the front room. She only saw her for a moment but it felt eerily real. “Come in Chinami. Stay strong! This is just a dream.” she tries to reassure herself.
She follows the image of the little girl and turns into the front room, where she sees the same child standing by the bookshelves, with a terrifying pale light seeming to resonate from her very body, very slightly illuminating the mysterious vase in front of her. The child reaches up her hand, and moves it closer to the vase to touch it. Just as she makes contact with it's surface, she turns to look at Chinami standing in the doorway and gives her the deathliest of glares, before just vanishing suddenly.
Chinami somehow manages to uproot her feet from the soaked floor and take a step forwards. And then another one. Before she knows what she's doing, she is standing in front of the same vase which seemed to have occupied her entire morning. Then she realises that she never actually got a proper look at it. When she tried to get a close look at it before, Risako fell down the stairs. So she reaches out to touch it once more, just as the ghostly child had done. But when he skin makes contact with the cold surface, she recoils her hand back in pain after receiving an electric shock from the object. But as she withdraws her hand, she knocks the vase, and the moments that follow will continue to haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.
The vase falls to the ground, and for Chinami as she watches it seems to move in slow motion. She reaches to catch it, but it's too late. The vase hit's the ground and smashes making a terrible crashing sound, and from the debris Chinami sees in her minds eye the horrifying image of a woman flying forth from the shards straight towards her before simply vanishing into the night.
The shock causes Chinami to fall backwards onto her backside and let out a blood-curdling scream. The sheer terror and adrenaline from everything has caused her entire body to go numb.
Suddenly, loud footsteps come rushing down the stairs, and Risako and Maasa fly into the room.
“What's going on!?” Maasa yells.
“Chinami?”
The two notice Chinami sitting on the floor, shaking uncontrollably.
“What's wrong?” Risako asks her, sitting beside her.
Maasa searches for a light, and finds a battery powered lamp that was given to them by the staff. She flips the switch, and then everyone's eyes widen in horror and confusion.
On the ground lies a broken urn with scattered ashes, and Chinami, the walls, the floors and the furniture are all covered with fresh blood.
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Gasp! I'm so glad I'm not home alone tonight :shocked
Oh gawd! Now their nightmare begins :bleed eyes: And whose blood is that? :panic:
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Chapter VIII
It takes several moments for the whole situation to properly sink in, but after several moments, Chinami, Risako and Maasa all scream together as though it had been rehearsed. They each look at each other in turn and Maasa approaches Chinami and Risako and gives them a hand to their feet.
“What the hell happened here?” Maasa asks Chinami.
“I have no idea. I heard strange noises coming from the hallway, and so I followed them down here, and it was like this when I got here, I think.”
“In the hallway?” Maasa goes out to take a look, holding the lamp which provides the only source of light they have in her hand. She then returns looking even paler than she was before. “The trail of... this,” she says, motioning to the blood that now decorates the room, “It goes right up the stairs and stops on the door of the room you and Miyabi are sleeping in, Chinami.”
“What?”
Chinami runs out of the room and up the stairs, followed by Risako and Maasa. And sure enough, the blood trail does indeed make it's way up the staircase, around the hallway and there are three eerie hand print-shaped smears down the door.
“Risako, wake the others!”
Risako obliges and runs into the other rooms, waking each member as fast and as inconsiderately as she can.
“We can't stay here.”
Soon enough, after much persuasion, the other girls are risen from their sleep, and each one in turn simply stares awestruck at the mess.
"What--?”
“Let's not talk about it here.” Maasa tells a very confused Momoko. “Let's go find the staff. Are they staying outside?”
“I'm not sure,” Captain responds, “Let's see if they are in the camera van.”
They quickly get dressed, and head outside as a group. They can see the bus they arrived in some 30 yards away or so, the equipment van should be just behind it too. The lights are on inside the bus, however, it seems that the staff have taken shelter from the rain inside. When they see the girls approaching, they open the bus doors and ask, “Why are you girls out here? You should all be asleep. We've got to film tomorrow!”
“We can't go back there, something strange is going on in that house!”
The staff look at one another and laugh, but when they notice the looks on the faces of the girls, they realise that something must be going on.
“Okay then, I'll go check it out, and then you girls can go back to bed!” says one Cameraman, and he puts on a jacket and heads out into the rain towards the house.
The sound-man then turns to Chinami and asks, “Huh... Wasn't there a child with you?”
“What?”
“When you were walking out here. I could swear that I saw a young girl holding your hand. Must have just been the rain playing tricks on my eyes.”
Everyone turns to look at Chinami, who looks absolutely horrified at the thought. There is, however, no-one in sight. “A child?” they all ask.
The camera man returns from the house, however, looking rather pale himself. He doesn't say anything to the girls, just whispers to the other members of staff.
“What? Are you serious?” They turn to face the girls, and invite them onto the bus, “Okay then. I think it would be a good idea if you stayed here where we can keep an eye on you.”
The sound-man stays with them on the bus to keep an eye on them, but all of the other staff members go out to check on the house for themselves.
“So Chinami, what was that about a child?” Miyabi asks.
“Huh? Well... Earlier when everyone was asleep I heard weird noises from outside our room. And then footsteps. When I followed them, I could swear that I could see a young child leading me through the house.” She then pauses for a moment, “Actually... It's not the first time I thought I saw that child. I dreamt about her too.”
“So you followed this kid through the corridors? Then what happened?”
“Well, I found myself in the front room. You know, with that vase thing on top of the shelf? Well, I thought I saw her touch it and vanish. And when I went to look closer, it knocked. And then that's when Maasa and Risako found me.”
“Noises? What kind of noises?” Maasa asks her.
“First it was a weird scratching sound. Then footsteps. Finally I could swear I heard someone knocking on our door.”
“Strange, I didn't hear anything like that.” Miyabi ponders.
“That's because you can sleep through an elephant stampede.” Chinami jokes.
The rest of the staff return, and immediately get into the bus and start up the engines. “We can't stay here after all. Let's get out of here.”
They pass the girls their bags, which they managed to retrieve from the house. And then they begin to drive east again.
The road is a lot muddier with the rain, and the wind is beginning to pick up again.
The girls hold on tight to the seats in front as they hurtle round a corner at what, to them, feels like several dozen miles per hour faster than the bus' speedometer is saying. So much so, in fact, that when the driver quickly applies the brakes, it sends the girls all flying forward and Momoko nearly flips over into the seat in front of her.
“Damn!” yells the driver.
And he has every reason to be annoyed. Winds have picked up to extreme speeds, and a large tree has collapsed over the road, which just happens to be the only road out of the village.
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UPDATE PLEASE :twothumbs
what's going to happen next??
i cant wait!! :panic:
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I had planned to update alot sooner, but I've been busy with work. However, here is Chapter IX!
* * * * *
Chapter IX
The staff get out and try to move the tree with sheer manpower, but it's not enough and the obstacle remains stuck. After several minutes of attempt after attempt to shift it, the staff decide that the best course of action would be to wait until the storm clears up and get the help of the villagers to chop the tree up. And so they are forced to return to the village they had failed to escape from.
The driver parks just outside the house where they were earlier. As the bus comes to a halt, the driver opens the doors, and an elderly woman steps onto the bus and asks him, “Have you seen Mr. Ogi? He has gone missing.”
Captain turns around at this and worriedly asks, “Missing? What do you mean?”
The woman responds, “His wife woke up an hour ago to find he wasn't in the house. We've got half of the village out looking for him.”
At this, the girls all turn to give each other a nervous glance before turning back to the elderly woman and offering to help.
“I'll go search for him!” Captain says as she stands up.
“I'll go too.” Maasa adds.
“No. You all stay here. It's too dangerous in this storm.” The driver says, “I'll go out and help with the other staff. You girls just wait here.”
Captain sits back down, looking somewhat disappointed, but doesn't object. She knows it would be bad if any of the girls got sick running around outside like that.
Maasa looks over to Captain, and then she too returns to her seat.
The driver leaves with the other staff members, and goes to search the village and the surrounding area with the villagers, leaving the girls completely on their own in the safety of the bus. The girls sit in almost complete silence for what feels to them like an eternity. Each of them numbed from their experiences of the last two hours, and each of them trying desperately to work out for themselves just what is happening.
Momoko stares out of the window, her mind as dulled as the rest of the girls and in the midst of her reverie mutters to herself, “That little girl is going to catch a cold in that rain...”
This catches the interest of Chinami, who turns to Momoko and says, “What? Little girl?”
Momoko doesn't respond, she simply continues to stare out into the rain and nods her head slightly towards the downpour.
Chinami glances out to where Momoko is staring, and sure enough there is a familiar looking child standing in the rain. By now the other girls are all interested too, and are peering curiously out into the darkness to see the same little girl. Chinami rubs her eyes to be sure that she isn't seeing things, and when she peers outside again, the little girl is still there.
The girl's red dress is completely soaked through and sticks firmly to her body. Her hair is likewise dripping with heavy rainwater. Her head is bowed down, as she faces towards the old house. Chinami can't help but get the impression that the child is crying. Almost definitely. Her arms hang down by her side and her entire body shakes violently whether by the chill of the weather or due to her emotional state. In this moment, Chinami pities the child. It's a strange feeling that, even though she doesn't know her nor why she is crying, she feels some kind of connection with her that she can sympathise with.
Suddenly, the girl turns her head, followed by the rest of her body, and faces towards the bus. She looks in at the windows and sees all of the members watching her and, with tears and rainwater flowing down her cheeks, visible even from where Chinami was sitting, lets out a smile. This smile which, under normal circumstances, might have been considered warm and friendly just feels cold to Chinami. And it sends a terrible shiver right down the back of her spine.
At that exact moment, as if by some supernatural power, the weather gets noticeably worse. The power of the rain hitting the top of the bus increases, and the wind starts to cause the glass of the windows to vibrate uncontrollably. Maasa looks nervously around the bus, looking at the glass as it tries to break free in the wind, and the roof of the bus, which only now does she notice has sprung a leak. No. Make that two leaks. Or three...
Up and down the bus, droplets of water start to fall to the floor below. The roof, made from durable aluminium is started to feel the effects of the increasingly extreme weather, which is now developed into a typhoon. Maasa kneels down with her eyes closed and puts her head between her knees, clearly terrified by the situation and her phobia of the heavy rain.
Chinami returns her attention outside to the child, but the child has vanished. She looks around to see where the girl could have run off too, and when she doesn't see anything, she turns back to face forward and breathes a sigh of relief. But out of the corner of her eye something catches her attention, and she turns towards the other side of the bus to look at it and let's out a horrific scream. The child is standing at the other side of the bus peering in the window with her face no more than two inches from the glass.
The girls all, with the exception of Maasa, turn to Chinami to see what is wrong, and then follow her gaze to the child in the window, before panic ensues. With one incredible gust of wind, a section of the roof at the front-end of the bus collapses, with the rain now lashing onto the floor of the bus from the sky above, a sizeable puddle develops almost immediately. When the girls return their frightened gaze to the window, there is no child there, but the staff returning from their search.
When the staff see the collapsed roof, they become immediately worried for the girls' safety, and making sure they are all not hurt. The girls don't tell them about the child they saw, because they know that it was too far-fetched a story for anyone to believe. But Captain asks the question that the staff had been dreading...
“Did you find Mr. Ogi?”
At this question, the other staff give an awkward glance to their on-site manager, who simply nods, takes a deep breath, and says, “We found him in the mountains several hundred yards behind the house...”
Captain takes a deep sigh of relief, she would have hated for anything to happen to him.
However, the manager continues, “He is dead. It seems his body was drained of blood.”
-
wow it is such an interesting story and its quite suspenseful but it is such a great fit to the characters and also poor Ogi-san
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Was that the same small girl they saw in that room? And the blood in that room...are those Mr Ogi's?
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Yes to both counts. :)
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Chapter X
News of Mr Ogi's death had shocked the village, and the events of the last 24 hours had left the girls very shaken up. The way out of the village was blocked, with the rain pouring down heavier than ever, making it far too dangerous to try and walk out of the village. Also, the staff didn't feel comfortable staying, or letting the girls stay in the house or in the bus which had somehow lost part of it's roof. The villagers weren't comfortable with it either, so the elderly woman from before, Mrs Tanaka, had allowed them to shelter from the rain at her house.
Mrs Tanaka brings several cups of hot tea, which the girls all accept graciously, and each of them takes a sip of before laying the cups gently down on the table in front of them. The girls all look nervously around the room, barely uttering a word, with only the sound of rain beating relentlessly against the walls of the house, with the sliding doors shaking in their frames.
The room itself was fairly basic. A traditional-style room with tatami-mat flooring and a simple table sat in the middle, which was too small for everyone to sit around, so the girls sat scattered around the room. In one corner sat an old TV, with an aerial sticking out of the back which, given the weather, probably wouldn't be able to pick up much of a signal.
After a few moments, Miyabi got up and said she was going to the toilet, she walked out of the room, and along the hallway. The other girls just nodded to her as she left, and continued to sit in silence.
Maasa, now starting to drift off slightly, lays her head down on the tatami flooring and closes her eyes drowning out all sound. But the one sound she can't drown out is the omni-present sound of rain. She feels a shiver run down her spine as she listens to the sound of rain, and the familiar voice carried on it. “Mom! Mom!” yells the voice, growing less distant with each iteration. The dark shroud clears, and she sees the sight that has haunted her for much of her life, water rushing over her with strong currents continually forcing her under the water. It had been a wet day, with the rain pouring down quite heavily. A young Maasa and her mother walking along one of Tokyo's many riverbanks as she made her way home after school. She was only 6 years old.
Maasa ran ahead, her dark raincoat repelling much of the rain, but she stepped a little close to the bank and lost her footing. The wet mud beneath her feet gave way and she slid down into the fast-flowing river.
She has vivid memories of what happened next. She hit the freezing water like a brick wall, her entire body instantly went numb. The currents dragged her further down river, all the while yelling to her mother who was calling back to her. With the fast currents splashing around her and pulling her down below the water where it was moving even faster, she was terrified. Maasa knew how to swim, but it was impossible here.
She managed to grab told of some rocks and somehow managed to hold on, despite the slippery wet surface of the rock. “Mom! Mom!” she cried out, unable to even see where her mother was, all she could do was hold on for dear life.
In the end her mother did rescue her, though both could hypothermia and spent two weeks recovering. Though Maasa was left with some trauma afterwards and even now she has a phobia of water.
Maasa woke to the sound of Saki's voice, and found her looking over her when she opened her eyes.
“You were twisting in your sleep and mumbling a lot,” Captain explains, “Sounds like it was a pretty scary dream.”
Maasa sits up, and wipes the sweat from her brow. “Yeah. I guess it was. Thanks.” She looks around and notices that many of the others have also fallen asleep... all except Miyabi, that is, who didn't seem to be in the room. “Where is Miyabi?”
Momoko speaks from behind Captain before she has a chance to answer, “It's been a while since she left. Maybe I'll go check?” and Captain nods to her.
Momoko runs out of the room, and Captain turns to Maasa, now the only two people in the room still awake, and says, “Pretty crazy couple of days, huh?”
“Yeah. I keep expecting to wake up and find it was all just a dream.”
“Me too. I still haven't been able to work out what is going on. What with the house drenched in blood, and Mr Ogi...” Captain trails off a little at the end of her sentence, but she doesn't have to finish it, because Maasa already understood.
At that moment, Momoko returns to the room and says, “I can't find Miyabi anywhere. She wasn't at the toilet.”
“Huh?” Captain responds, and has Momoko repeat what she said, “I think we should go search for her. Maybe she got lost and went to the wrong room.”
And so the three girls all get up and search each room in the house systematically, but to no avail. Miyabi is nowhere to be found. “She didn't leave the house, we would have heard her.” Captain ponders, now genuinely worried over her disappearance, when Maasa comes to a realisation of her own.
“Wait. Mrs Tanaka isn't here either.”
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:O :O :O
oh no miyabi is gone, suspense and the plot thickens
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Something tells me Miya is in trouble, that is, if she's still alive to still be in trouble :O
That Mrs Tanaka is not a bloodsucking monster or ghost, is she? :shocked
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Haha. Needless to say, Miyabi isn't the safest of the Berryz right now. :p
And I've purposefuly left Mrs Tanaka's character a bit ambiguous while I work out just what kind of direction I'm going to take with her. A ghost? Or perhaps a victim? We'll just have to wait and find out. ;)
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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.
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whoa freaky incident right there, it seems to add more suspense and mystery as it goes along, keep it up :twothumbs
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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 :lol:
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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.
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very haunting for the boy and I guess this is a back story to the horrors of the house
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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.
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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.
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welcome back
Chinami is in a scary place :nervous
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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. :nervous
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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.
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Poor Chinami
Miya in that state is surreal to this fic :nervous
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That's true. ^^;
But the last couple of chapters have been pretty surreal anyway. :D
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That's true. ^^;
But the last couple of chapters have been pretty surreal anyway. :D
yeah it has been I'll be waiting for your next chapter