Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Beyond the Looking Glass ❯ Prelude: The Beginning ( Chapter 1 )

Beyond the Looking Glass

 

Author's Notes: It's October, which is horror month, so I came up with this as a tribute. As I've noted in my profiles, I'm a horror freak and I love anything that is creepy, and maybe a little bit wrong. First off, I'd like to say that this was partially inspired by the Fatal Frame games and deals a lot with ritual and the distortion of time. Secondly, no character is safe in this fic, and I mean nobody. Anyone can die or lose their sanity. Nearly all of them will do terrible things to themselves and each other. It's dark and depressing, and maybe a little bit twisted. Happy Halloween!

 

Pairings: 1x2, 3x4, 5+Meiran, Relena+1, 6+5, 13x11, slight Hilde+2, Father MaxwellxSister Helen, RalphxChris.

Warnings: Death, AU, OOC, gore, violence, language, lemon, yaoi, het, ghosts, screwed up time, flashbacks, mutilations, cannibalism, dark.

Summary: Heero and his friends Quatre, Trowa, Wufei, Relena, and Zechs must do a project on their town's history. Relena suggests that they go to the Matsuei Mansion, a huge building that is known to be haunted and has been standing in their town for as long as anyone can remember. It seems like a good idea at first, a bunch of friends spending their holiday week off in an ancient, beautiful mansion, but when Quatre and Heero start to have visions of a ghost in a blood stained kimono, things go horribly wrong.

 

 

Prelude: The Beginning

 

Excerpts from the journal of Professor G_____, found by officer Takanawa at the Matsuei Mansion on October 13, 2003:

 

 

September 26, 2003

 

After many hours of preparing, my colleagues and I are finally on the road to Nasue, a small rural village on the northern coast of Japan. It has been thirteen long years since I started by career in the area of paranormal research, but this is the first time my friends and I will be able to put our theories to practice. It is very exciting, even as our old rental car, packed to the brim with supplies and equipment, journeys through the rocky, forest paths towards the huge mansion that I can see now, just over the horizon. The town cannot truly be called a village anymore as it is just as advanced as Tokyo, though much smaller and more… intimate. Still, when we arrived in Nasue this morning, it felt like we had taken a step through time. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Everyone in this field has reasons for being here, experiences as a child, superstitious parents, perhaps, but I know that I am taking this long journey from England to Japan because of my natural curiosity. I had always had a deep interest in monsters and specters as a child and I had never been a non-believer. I, like any self-respecting scientist, have a healthy attitude towards disbelief, but I also have an open mind, unlike my colleague J who is sitting in the front seat, a death grip on his precious lap top. We have been struggling for years to try to take a trip such as this. It seems that men such as us can only exist as professors, teaching children while our dreams and aspirations rot in the corner of our minds, but after many, many years of pleading, the university has allowed us to go, if only to laugh at us when we return, tails between our legs. There had been much argument where we should go, but in my mind at least, the Matsuei Mansion was the only fitting place for our expedition.

Some say that Japan is the most haunted place on earth, with its clinging to old traditions and ritual, the Shinto temples that line any rural path and the superstition that many of its people still practice. That is certainly true here in Nasue, as many people shy away from us and become tight lipped at the mere mention of where we are going. Some make old signs at us and one kind old lady even gave H a good luck charm. Such fear and superstition is not odd in the fields that we study, but it still makes me nervous. S offered to look at the supposed `World's Most Haunted Places' list for our destination, but I suggested something a little bit more… mature. It is true, in this day and age the term `paranormal research' is usually saved for TV shows where shaky cameras follow hosts as they run around old castles as they scream and claim that they are being chased by some unseen specter. People like us are a dying breed, but I refuse to debase myself to the title of `primetime entertainment'. The Matsuei Mansion will never make that list for a very simple reason. It has never been successfully labeled as `haunted'. There is no proof simply because people become `spirited away' when they go to that place. They disappear, or show up dead. It seems like the typical ghost story; “In Japan there stands a mansion where many have died and it is assumed to be haunted. All who enter the house die or disappear,” only, that isn't quite the truth. Some die, some disappear, but others simply go mad just by entering the place. Of course, there are still doubts, as there always are in legends such as these, though there is some oddness about the legend. People will disappear in the region, then reappear days later horribly mutilated. There are stories like this all around the world, but there is something about that place that scares all of us, even J, though he refuses to admit it. Paranormal research itself is not a lucrative field. In this, you are either mocked or ignored, but there is some fun in it. In all of my years of teaching, I had never left England, but here I was in Japan and I have to admit, it is a beautiful place.

The road leading to the huge mansion rocked the car and J swore as he was jostled. It was obvious that the dirt, forest road was rarely used anymore and the car struggled up it. J, H, S, O, and I have been working together for the past ten years. I, personally, study the energy force given off by paranormal events. It is an odd thing to believe, but paranormal energy, if examined and somehow harnessed, could be used as a replacement for electricity and fuel. It is a private theory of mine, but one that is hard to prove. H is more impressed by the psychological element that seems to follow these events. He thinks that there are some people who are more susceptible to paranormal events due to psychic frequencies. S used to be a mechanic and is very interested in the paranormal influence on man made appliances and metal. O studies the affects that supernatural events can have on the physical body while our skeptical friend J is more concerned with the science behind paranormal research. If one of us can find one thing, one… spark, I would consider this long trip worth while.

 

The house looms through the trees, sending a chill down my spine. If I squint, I can see a shadowy figure in one of the wood barred windows, but I am sure that it is just my over expecting imagination.

 

 

End Prelude

 

There's 5 `teasers' and a prologue before we get into the main story with the guys.