InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Every Day Is Halloween ❯ I see dead people... ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Blanket Disclaimer:

Inuyasha, and the characters therein, are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. I am in no way affiliated with Takahashi, or VIZ Productions.


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Hello, and welcome to my tale. I won’t bore you with too many details before we get to the good stuff. My name is Kagome Higurashi, and I’m of Japanese descent though I’m a Southern California girl through and through. I know a little bit about Japanese mythology, but there aren’t any mythological creatures like youkai in the story I’m about to tell you. That’s not to say this story is lacking a supernatural flair, though. There’s nothing like a good Japanese ghost story, right?

 

But first, more about me. Let’s see... I’m twenty years old and have a fourteen-year-old brother named Souta. Our father died when Souta was just a baby and our mom had to move back in with her parents, but we pulled through. Grandma’s since passed away, so back home it’s just Souta, Mama and Gramps. I also have a cousin my age named Sango who’s got a little brother Kohaku who’s a couple years younger than Souta, our father’s brother’s children. She’s cool people, but isn’t in this story. I’ve since moved out of the house and onto campus; I’m a junior in college, studying to be a therapist. That’s how I met Eri, my roommate, and her friends Yuka and Ayumi, who are also dormmates of ours at the university. We’ve unofficially formed our own little clique, though don’t ask me how it happened. I guess all us Japanese-American girls have to stick together, right? No matter how annoying they get at times...

 

Did I say that out loud?

 

Anyway, I hang out with them almost exclusively, which usually means I get roped into doing things I wouldn’t ordinarily do, which brings me to the story that’s about to unfold. It all started when Eri suddenly told me, just one day before Halloween mind you, that she thought it would be the ‘bestest, most funest’ idea in the world to go to our town’s old, run down cemetery, where the bodies of some people from this gruesome horror story that’s been passed around campus for the last fifty years are buried, and I don’t know, hold a séance or something? I was only half paying attention once I realized her plan involved me not getting to party on campus the following night. I’m studying to be a shrink, not a nun, and I’d wanted to party, damn it. I told her no. I know I did. But yet, somehow, come the following night there I was, meandering through a century old cemetery, and that’s where my story begins.

 

I still remember it like it was yesterday...

 

 

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 

 

Chapter one: I see dead people...

 

 

 

 

I can’t believe I let Eri talk me into this... I thought, as I held my mini Maglite with trembling fingers.

 

I was shaking because I was cold, not because I was scared. Certainly not. Not that traipsing through a century old graveyard in the middle of the night was my idea of a fun girls’ night out, but I most certainly wasn’t scared.

 

“Ooohh, this is going to be the best Halloween ever!” Eri squealed enthusiastically as she skipped and danced ahead of the rest of us, leading us all to our destination.

 

I rolled my eyes at her antics.

 

I’m twenty years old, for crying out loud! My idea of the ‘best Halloween ever’ includes the three Cs: campus, cocktails, and catsuits. Strap on a few action movie accessories and I’m ready to sexily save the world, kicking evil’s ass while simultaneously showing off my fabulous curves. It’s my favorite kind of getup, since I don’t go for the cliché that is the ridiculously short ‘school uniform’ skirt. Just because like 90% of anime girls are drawn wearing panty-flashers doesn’t mean I have to dress like that in real life.

 

And just because I don’t take my fashion tips from Easy Access 101 doesn’t mean I’m a prude, either. You can be covered up and still show it off at the same time. College dorm parties are the shit, and I had had plans for that year’s Halloween that involved borrowing my cousin Sango’s homemade ‘demon slayer’ costume and doing myself up like a post-apocalyptic bad ass, but alas, instead of spending that moment in time squeezed into form-fitting black leather while drinking something blue through a funnel, I’d instead somehow found myself wandering through the cemetery with my roommate and her friends, freezing my butt off in an unimaginative pair of jeans and a black graphic tee from Hot Topic.

 

“Do you think the stories are true?” Ayumi asked me as we walked, pulling me from my thoughts.

 

She clutched her jacket a little tighter around herself as she waited for my answer, making me rue leaving my hoodie in the car.

 

“Do I think Kikyou and Inuyasha really existed, and that their tragic deaths really happened?” I asked in reply, answering her question with a question. “Yes, actually, it is a true story,” I verified without hesitation. “I looked it up yesterday.”

 

You better believe I’d looked it up. As soon as Eri’d convinced me to participate in this little adventure of hers I’d spent the rest of the day doing online research on the murders. I’d never really cared to know if the story was true or not before then, but there was no way in all the hells I was actually going to waste my Halloween night playing this little game with her if the people in question had never even existed, so I’d quickly become a woman on a mission.

 

Fortunately, fifty-year-old murders weren’t really that hard to look up if you were tenacious enough. I’d found more than one website talking about the history of our university that’d mentioned the horrific deaths at least in passing. I’d even verified with a couple of phone calls that their murderer was still alive and still behind bars.

 

“But do I think that the ghost of Kikyou is going to show herself when we ‘summon’ her...?” I added then, snorting. I didn’t try to conceal my amusement at the absurd notion. “I thought we were college juniors. High school is over. We may as well say ‘Kikyou’ three times in front of a mirror.”

 

That statement made Yuka giggle, and I got the distinct impression that she didn’t believe in the supernatural aspect of the story, either, but had agreed to go along with Eri’s plan simply because she hadn’t had anything better to do. I knew she usually took her little sister Trick-or-Treating, and that that year her ‘little sister’ had announced she was too old for Trick-or-Treating and was instead spending the night at a friend’s slumber party.

 

Probably saying ‘Kikyou’ three times in front of a mirror... I thought, amusing myself as I chuckled out loud. If Yuka or Ayumi wondered what I was laughing at, they didn’t ask.

 

Eri wasn’t paying us any attention, the hardcore believer determinedly shining her flashlight from headstone to headstone as we walked along, searching out the specific grave she was looking for.

 

“Well, I don’t know about ghosts, but it’s super messed up, what happened back then. I actually wish it weren’t a true story,” Ayumi said after a moment, bringing my thoughts back around to the details of the horrific event in question.

 

They’re details that every student at our university knows by heart.

 

The story goes that fifty years ago, on Halloween night, a campus party at our university turned into a major blood bath when this guy named Naraku, who was super jealous of the happy lovers Inuyasha and Kikyou because he wanted Kikyou all for himself, decided to go completely mental and in a fit of ‘if I can’t have her no one can’ he brutally murdered Kikyou in cold blood.

 

The kicker, though, was that he had somehow managed to find out what Inuyasha’s costume was going to be, which was incidentally the Phantom of the Opera, so it’d included a face mask, and so he’d dressed up in that exact same costume and somehow managed to take Inuyasha’s place by Kikyou’s side for a few minutes. Rumors say Naraku had a couple of buddies detain Inuyasha on his way back from the bathroom. They were both around the same build, both with long black hair the same length, and so with the face mask it made sense that you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart that easily.

 

So there Naraku and Kikyou were, strolling along, Kikyou believing she was still with her boyfriend, when suddenly he produced a knife and stabbed her in the heart. Inuyasha’s said to have arrived on the scene too late to save Kikyou’s life, or even just have a final moment with the dying girl, and supposedly according to eyewitnesses she died believing that Inuyasha had killed her, calling Naraku by Inuyasha’s name as she demanded to know why he had done it.

 

Inuyasha, of course, had immediately gone crazy with grief once he got there and then immediately went after Naraku, who had been in some kind of shock himself and hadn’t fled the scene yet, just staring down at Kikyou’s body, the knife still in his hand, as if only just then realizing what he’d done. They got into a violent brawl, fighting over the knife, until they both ended up with serious wounds, Inuyasha more so than Naraku. He bled out before the paramedics arrived, and it’s said he died moaning Kikyou’s name over and over, apologizing for his inability to protect her.

 

The doctors were unfortunately able to save Naraku’s life, but with that many eyewitnesses it was an open and shut case and he’s still in prison to this day for the double homicide, but it’s little consultation, and now, Kikyou’s ghost supposedly haunts both our school and the graveyard, seeking vengeance. I’ve even heard that the house where she used to live is haunted, too, her spirit going back home for some reason or another. Those kinds of details can’t be found in any official reports, of course, but the legend that this tragedy has become on campus seems to grow in intensity each and every year.

 

It got me thinking, if I were ever brutally murdered at a college Halloween party, would I rather haunt the college, my family home, or the graveyard? Though then again, why choose? A ghost could do whatever they wanted, right?

 

Yeah right.

 

When I’d first heard the story my freshman year, I’d thought back then that, while it was probably based on truth, a lot of the details had also probably been warped throughout the years to make the whole thing sound worse than it really was. The way they’d hyped up Kikyou’s supposed appearances on campus, especially around the holiday, with nothing happening that I’d ever seen, I’d started to doubt the legitimacy of the Halloween connection altogether, figuring that that part of the story was probably just folklore. To learn the day before this little venture into the unknown that the majority of the details surrounding their deaths really were accurate had surprised me, but at that time that hadn’t meant I was suddenly convinced that all of the ghost stories associated with Kikyou’s murder were also true.

 

At that time I’d been thinking that it was going to take a whole lot more than fifty years of accurate event recounting to convince me that we were dealing with anything paranormal.

 

I was pulled from my musings by the sound of Eri’s voice suddenly shouting, “This way!”

 

Yuka and Ayumi immediately jogged to catch up to Eri’s position at her summons; I just rolled my eyes again.

 

Come next Halloween, since I’ll be twenty one and finally able to order drinks in an actual nightclub, my ass is so hitting Santa Monica Blvd., with or without Sango’s AniCon costume... I thought, slamming my eyes shut in surprise and shielding them with my free hand when somebody’s bright flashlight beam suddenly hit me square in the face.

 

“Kagome, are you coming?” I heard Yuka’s voice ask, and I grumbled a reply of, “Yeah, yeah, yeah...” as I made my way over to where the rest of them were standing.

 

Eri frantically waved her free arm at me in a beckoning fashion as I neared, shining her flashlight at a specific headstone.

 

Glancing down at what was written, I felt the hairs on my arms stand up a little, although at the time I’d convinced myself it was just the cold. I’d already known she had been a real person, after all. But even so, to be in her presence was still...unnerving. I hadn’t realized how much it would affect me until that very moment.

 

There, illuminated by Eri’s flashlight, was none other than Kikyou Takahashi’s gravestone. It was a very surreal moment, coming face to headstone with the legend herself. The dates carved into the stone’s surface were the final confirmation; she had indeed died on Halloween, precisely fifty years ago, at age twenty.

 

“This is definitely the right Kikyou,” Eri said with a tone akin to wonder in her voice, Yuka and Ayumi both nodding silently with semi-frightened looks on their faces.

 

Oh please...

 

Whatever unease I’d started to feel had immediately been wiped away by their expressions. I couldn’t believe they were actually falling for the hocus pocus. I mean okay, so Kikyou really was a real person, and we’d found her grave, but they were looking like they’d expected to see a hand burst its way up through the soil at any given moment or something.

 

I had to liven the mood...pun intended.

 

“OooOoooo...” I hummed in a ghostly sing-song voice. “I am the ghost of Halloween past...” I said with a chuckle, just to lighten things up.

 

It worked, for the most part, as Yuka and Ayumi both chuckled along with me, while Eri suddenly became the one looking nervous, as if I were going to anger Kikyou’s spirit.

 

“Kagome!” she hissed, as if trying to keep her voice down. “Be respectful.”

 

I snapped my stance tight, standing at attention, and saluted, which made Yuka and Ayumi both laugh a little harder. Eri also cracked a grin despite herself, and shaking her head at me in amusement, she then swung her backpack off her shoulders, took a seat on the grass at Kikyou’s right, and began digging through her bag.

 

“Everyone into position,” she said, as she gathered her things.

 

“Pardon me,” said to no one as I wide-stepped over Kikyou’s grave to get to the other side, having a seat opposite Eri, Kikyou’s headstone diagonally to her left and to my right.

 

Chuckling a little more at my antics, Yuka and Ayumi both took seats beside us as well, Yuka to my left and Ayumi across from her, at Eri’s right. If you made Kikyou’s headstone the top point, then you could’ve sketched out a five-pointed star between us all. The positions were intentional; just one more thing for me to roll my eyes at.

 

Glancing at Kikyou’s headstone while Eri worked, my eyes softened, my heart truly going out to the girl. It was legitimately horrific, what had happened to her back then.

 

But just because she died such a tragic death doesn’t mean her ghost appears when summoned, or that she’s doomed to forever wander the Earth in limbo, unable to find peace from her belief that her lover betrayed her... I thought then, still convinced that all the spooky mumbo jumbo was nothing more than generations of students being dumb and trying to scare one another.

 

After all, even ‘Bloody Mary’ had been a real person at one point in time.

 

Thinking about what Kikyou’s legend had become in that moment had my mind wandering over in the boyfriend’s direction, as I glanced around aimlessly in the dark, wondering if Inuyasha’s grave was anywhere close by. I felt it was a shame that nobody had ever seemed to think about poor Inuyasha over the last five decades.

 

Sure, we all knew he hadn’t really killed Kikyou, and it most definitely was tragic that Kikyou had died believing that he had, but what about how Inuyasha had died knowing that Kikyou had died believing he’d killed her? Knowing that Naraku had just murdered his girlfriend and he hadn’t been able to prevent it? Hadn’t been able to protect her? I hadn’t thought it very fair that history was only remembering him in passing while Kikyou became a star.

 

I was pulled from my wandering thoughts as Eri said my name.

 

“Here, Kagome, you can help take pictures,” she said, leaning forward on her knees and left hand, her right hand outstretched across Kikyou’s grave to pass me her digital camera.

 

I leaned forward as well to reach for it, repressing my desire to sigh as I took it and sat back down. Turning it on, I noted the full battery charge.

 

Glancing down over the space between us at Eri’s handiwork, I had to hand it to the girl. She’d really gone all out for the occasion.

 

“Wow, you take this kind of thing seriously, huh?” I asked, chuckling a bit although honestly, I was also a little impressed.

 

Sitting on the grass between us, on Kikyou’s grave at approximately where her chest should be, was an arrangement of five short white candles, which would’ve again formed a five-pointed star if you traced a line between them all, the top one pointing towards Kikyou’s tombstone. Lying within the center of the would-be pentagram was a framed 8x10 photograph of Kikyou herself, which I recognized from my online research as an enlarged photocopy of her high school yearbook photo. Apparently, while I’d been doing research the day before, Eri had also been doing her own preparations.

 

Staring at the photo for a moment longer, I’d felt something stir within me. She’d been a very pretty girl. Also Japanese-American, her hair was long and straight, her expression proud and serious. She’d been going places, before it’d all been ripped away from her in a single moment of horror. An almost overwhelming sadness started to come over me as I thought about it, for both her plight as well as Inuyasha’s, and so looking away from her picture then, I focused back on what Eri was doing.

 

Watching her light the candles one by one, I thought back to my conversation with her the day before, as she’d expressed her desire to come do this. She’d said she wanted to come to the cemetery because that way it would just be us, instead of at our school where there were bound to be multiple groups of people also trying to summon her. Idiots drunk off their asses and thinking that talking to Kikyou was just a game. Eri was a believer, and she thought Kikyou’s spirit really was still around, and also really in pain because of how she’d died. She’d said she figured that the last place Kikyou probably wanted to be was on campus on Halloween night, and that she’d most likely be at her grave, plus with the ancient, spiritual connotations of All Hallows’ Eve, the cemetery was the best place to make contact with her, anyway.

 

I’d supposed that that made a small amount of sense, not that I’d believed we were actually going to make contact, mind you. Eri had also said that since all of the people involved were Japanese that we were the best people for the job, that Kikyou would probably feel the most comfortable talking to us, since back in the ‘60s racial segregation was more prominent. That made sense, too, if you thought about it, although honestly I’d thought at the time that Eri was just grasping at straws, coming up with anything as an excuse.

 

As I’d thought about it in that moment, though, as I watched her light the final candle, I’d hypothesized that the race thing was probably why Naraku had been obsessed with Kikyou to begin with, at least in part. She’d probably been the only Japanese girl at our school at the time, or the most desirable one in his mind, at least. I’d also found out during my research the day before that Inuyasha had actually been half Japanese with an American father, his parents originally from Hawaii, and so Naraku had probably thought he wasn’t good enough for Kikyou.

 

Naraku and Kikyou had also both been internment camp babies, their parents having to struggle for a time after the war, and Inuyasha’s family had been spared that experience; it was probably yet one more thing that Naraku had thought meant that he and Kikyou were better for each other. It was just my own personal theory, of course, but it did make a small amount of sense, you know, from a crazy man’s perspective.

 

It made a hell of a lot more sense than coming to a graveyard in the middle of the night just because you wanted to talk to a ‘real life’ ghost. No contradictions there. But Eri’s fascination with ghosts notwithstanding, the spirit world isn’t a damn petting zoo. If I’d have actually believed at the time that Kikyou’s ghost was still around then I would’ve probably told Eri that we should just leave her the hell alone, though of course looking back on it I’m glad I hadn’t, but at the time I’d honestly only been thinking to humor my roommate. I’d been thinking that nothing was going to happen.

 

How wrong I was.

 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

With everything set up and ready to go, Eri took out and turned on a small digital voice recorder, speaking into it briefly like they do on Ghost Hunters and other such paranormal ‘reality’ shows. She told it the date and time, and our location, and then sat it down on the ground in front of the candles, opposite the headstone.

 

I was just glad the four of us were sitting too far apart to hold hands, or I was sure she would’ve asked us to do so in that moment.

 

“We are here on this sacred night seeking an audience with the ghost of Kikyou Takahashi,” she said then, the expression on her face as serious as ever as she addressed the unknown powers that be, the rest of us trying not to giggle. “Kikyou, are you here with us? If you are here with us, please give us a sign of your presence.”

 

The wind picked up ever so slightly, making the candles’ flames dance around a bit harder for a brief moment.

 

“If that was you we thank you for your answer,” Eri immediately replied, not missing a beat.

 

Oh brother... I mentally groaned, before remembering I was supposed to be taking pictures. Anything to distract myself from watching just how seriously Eri was taking the whole thing.

 

“Kikyou, we have brought with us a device that will help us to hear you if you can speak to us. If you can say something, please speak up as loudly as you can into the small device sitting before the candles.”

 

I couldn’t help myself.

 

“Your mother sucks cocks in Hell,” I grumbled low.

 

Yuka snort-laughed, but Eri’s unamused glare shut her up just as fast.

 

“Kagome, this is supposed to be serious,” she scolded me next.

 

“I thought this was supposed to be fun and the best Halloween ever,” I replied tartly.

 

“She does have a point,” Yuka stated, coming to my defense.

 

“You guys...” Ayumi suddenly spoke up, earning our attentions as she showed us the screen of her iPhone. She had also been taking pictures. “What’s this?” she asked, showing us a picture of the darkened graveyard behind Yuka and me with what looked like a blueish out of focus blob in the bottom left corner.

 

“A blueish out of focus blob?” I provided.

 

“It’s probably just lens flare from one of our flashlights, or maybe a bug flew in front of the lens or something,” Yuka said, shrugging.

 

Ayumi frowned, turning her phone back around to face herself again. She stared at the photo for a moment longer, biting her lower lip.

 

“Shall we continue?” Eri asked, addressing all of us.

 

“Yeah...” Ayumi answered, putting her phone back into camera mode, taking more pictures.

 

I started clicking away again too with the camera Eri’d handed me, just taking random pictures of the area all around us. So far all of the shots on my screen had looked perfectly normal.

 

“Kikyou, if you are still here with us, can you please give us another sign of your presence?”

 

Nothing.

 

“Kikyou, if you are here with us, please do something that will let us know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is you.”

 

Nothing.

 

Eri sighed, looking a bit disappointed. I couldn’t help myself; she’s my friend, after all.

 

“How about we try provoking her?” I asked then, in part to cheer her up by playing along instead of trash-talking the fact that nothing was happening, although another part of me was honestly a little anxious to hurry up and get the whole thing over and done with.

 

If something was actually going to happen then I’d wanted it to happen already. Otherwise, if the night was going to be a total bust, then I’d wanted Eri to realize it soon enough for me to maybe still have time for some fun back at the dorms. It was only around ten o’clock, after all. Plenty early.

 

I didn’t wait for Eri’s answer before I spoke back up again.

 

“Hey, Kikyou...” I began, raising my voice. It’s not like anybody else was around to overhear me making an idiot of myself. I could live with Yuka’s teasing. “Aren’t you upset about how you died? I sure as hell would be. Naraku claimed to love you, and then he just up and murdered you because you loved Inuyasha. I bet you never saw that coming. Bet you thought Naraku was a good friend, huh?”

 

“But Kikyou thinks Inuyasha killed her,” Ayumi pointed out.

 

I just shrugged.

 

“That’s what she thought as she died, but if her ghost actually is still around then don’t you think she would’ve learned the truth by now? Besides, even if she is still trapped in that hatred like the stories claim, I’m not going to play along and lie to her, unjustly bashing Inuyasha’s memory in the process. Wouldn’t that piss off Inuyasha’s ghost? Somebody’s got to think about his feelings, ‘cause if Kikyou’s spirit really is still around then I bet his is, too.”

 

“She’s got another point,” Yuka chimed in.

 

“Thank you,” I replied with a nod, sending her a playful grin that she returned with a wink, the two of us silently communicating our lack of belief and our amusement.

 

I continued then, snapping random photos as I spoke.

 

“You were only twenty years old. You had your whole life ahead of you and he stole it away. For what? Why? Why?! That’s not how you’re supposed to treat the woman you love. Hey, Kikyou! I’m talking to you! Aren’t you upset that you were murdered?!”

 

A large gust of wind rose up out of nowhere and snuffed out all five candles. Honestly, I chalked it up to Southern California weather, but the look on Eri’s face. Priceless...

 

Giddily feeling like luck was on my side, I kept going.

 

“Good...looks like I got your attention,” I said, setting the camera in my lap for a moment as inspiration struck and I began unscrewing the end of my mini Maglite just enough so that the light went off. Eri wasn’t the only one who watched the Syfy network.

 

“Now, Kikyou, I’ve got this flashlight set up so that if you twist the end only the tiniest bit the light’ll go on or off...”

 

I proceeded to demonstrate, then sat the flashlight down on the grass beside the voice recorder, facing away from the headstone, while Eri shakily relit the candles. I ignored her fluster. She’d wanted a Halloween to remember and I was going to try my damnedest to give her one.

 

“So I want you to turn it on for me. Think you can do that?” I asked ‘Kikyou’ then. “If you’re really here with us, then I want you to twist the head of this flashlight until the light comes back on.”

 

It only took maybe five seconds after I said that before the light actually came back on, much to my surprise but also joy.

 

Well I’ll be... I thought, pleased with myself, not having been sure if it was going to work or not.

 

I’d been mentally preparing myself for a suspenseful moment or two before fate regretfully called my bluff, Eri getting disappointed again when nothing else happened. Instead, as the light came back on, Eri stared, wide eyed, but with an unmistakable grin tugging at the ends of her lips. She looked like a kid in a candy store

 

Ayumi gasped, fumbling with her phone for a moment in her surprise, her eyes wide as well but definitely with less enthusiasm than Eri’s.

 

Yuka, meanwhile, shot me a playfully accusative glare, as if accusing me of staging it but while also assuring me that she wasn’t going to rat me out, finding amusement in the others’ reactions. I tried to send her an innocent look back, letting her know that I hadn’t really done anything on purpose, but I don’t think she believed me.

 

Eri regained her composure in that moment and took the reins of our ‘investigation’.

 

“Kikyou, if that was you, can you turn the light back off again?” she asked, while simultaneously setting up her own flashlight the same way, twisting the head until the connection was just barely in the ‘off’ setting, only the slightest twist needed to turn the light on or off. “We need to know that that was you, so if you want to take this opportunity to communicate with us, you have to let us know that you’re really here and that we really are talking to you. Please turn the light back off again to show us that you’re here and that you understand.”

 

Not really expecting the light to go back out again, I mentally started counting, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand... It literally only took two seconds for the flashlight to turn back off.

 

So much for thinking that I might not have made the connection loose enough and that it’d merely reconnected for that reason.

 

“Shit...what the hell?” Yuka asked then, finally starting to take things a bit seriously, as was I.

 

Turning my head to meet her eyes I muttered, “You got me.”

 

“Okay, good, that’s good,” Eri said, continuing as if Yuka and I hadn’t said anything.

 

She then proceeded to place her own flashlight down on the grass, on her side of the voice recorder, so that the voice recorder was in the middle of our two flashlights, each flashlight facing away from the headstone.

 

I picked Eri’s camera back up, and then looked across Kikyou’s grave to where Ayumi sat, her iPhone still gripped tightly in her hands.

 

“Ayumi, keep taking pictures,” I said then, mostly to give the spooked girl a task to focus on, as I fiddled with my own borrowed camera. “I’m switching to video,” I said, putting Eri’s Kodak into camcorder mode.

 

“We’re going to try and ask you some ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions now, okay Kikyou?” Eri asked, getting no immediate reaction. She kept going. “The flashlight closest to me will be yes, and the flashlight closest to Kagome, the one you’ve already turned on and off, will be no, do you understand? If you understand, then light up my flashlight, the yes flashlight.”

 

It lit up.

 

“Okay, good. Now can you turn it back off again?”

 

It went off.

 

“No freakin’ way...” Yuka muttered, sounding truly perplexed.

 

“Looks legit to me,” Ayumi answered, clearly trying to be brave although it was obvious she was really starting to feel uncomfortable.

 

I mused that if Kikyou’s apparition had suddenly appeared in that moment Ayumi probably would’ve pulled a ‘Casper’ and jumped up stuttering ‘A g-g-g-ghost!’ before running away. The thought made me smirk a bit, although I still had to admit that the flashlight thing was intriguing. Even though it had originally been my idea, I hadn’t really expected it to work.

 

Maybe there’s something to this whole paranormal thing, after all... I thought then, seriously doubting that any of us were actually turning the lights on and off with our own minds.

 

Lying about moving the pointer on a Ouija board was one thing, but while I did believe the human mind was capable of great feats, I wasn’t so sure we could stare at a loose flashlight and ‘will’ the light to turn on and off on command. So barring it being some crazy-ass coincidence, the power flow connecting and disconnecting at random because the connectors were at that perfect sweet spot of looseness, I had actually been leaning towards a supernatural explanation in that moment. What other explanation was there?

 

On a TV show you could crop it in editing to make it look like the light was immediately turning on and off even if there was really a five-minute wait or more after each question and it’d really just been from an arcing connector, but this was real life, in front of our faces. To quote Sherlock Holmes, when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

 

A vague childhood memory briefly started to come to mind in that moment, but I shook my head to clear it and refocus my attention on where I was and what I was doing as Eri began speaking to Kikyou again.

 

“Kikyou, are you still angry about how you died?” she asked.

 

The ‘yes’ flashlight went on...and back off again a few seconds later without Eri even having to ask. Smart ghost. Usually on those types of shows they always have to coax it into turning the light back off again before asking the next question, which had always made me wonder how long it was actually taking the light to go on and off, and if it really was a trick in the editing and in reality the light was turning on and off at random.

 

I’d always wanted to try the flashlight trick myself at home, just to see if it’d actually flicker on and off by itself if loosened just right, but I’d never gotten around to actually doing the experiment. In that moment I’d really wished I had. The whole thing could have still just been a crazy coincidence, like with the wind earlier, and so in that moment I made the executive decision to deduce once and for all whether we were actually dealing with a real ghost or not. I was open to the possibility, but I wasn’t going to just blindly believe without solid evidence.

 

“Kikyou, I’m going to ask you five questions just to make sure you’re really here and talking with us, so some will have yes answers, and some will have no answers, and I want you to answer all of them correctly, understand?” I said, earning a glare from Eri but I didn’t care.

 

She opened her mouth to say something, probably to warn me about pissing Kikyou off and losing our connection with her, but before she could even say anything the ‘yes’ flashlight went back on and off again. She closed her mouth with an audible click of teeth, then, a look of surprise on her face, and I smirked, sending her a playfully superior look for having gotten my way before nodding my head in respect towards the flashlights.

 

“Thank you,” I said to the flashlights, just to be courteous, just in case, before starting with my series of questions. “Is your full name Kikyou Takahashi?”

 

Yes.

 

“Did you die in a car accident?”

 

No.

 

“Did you die on Christmas Eve?”

 

No.

 

“Were you stabbed to death?”

 

Yes.

 

“Were you and Inuyasha dressed up as Christine and the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera?”

 

Yes.

 

I just sat there, completely dumbfounded.

 

Well shit... I thought, unsure of what to say or do next.

 

“Satisfied?” Eri asked suddenly, not in a rude tone of voice, but instead with a poorly suppressed chortle as she gave me a playfully superior look, her eyes sparkling merrily. She’d known I hadn’t been a believer. The look in her eyes said ‘Ha! In your face!’

 

I deserved it.

 

I still stuck my tongue out at her, though.

 

Giggling, she got back to her own questions, then, and I let her, my mind wandering again as I continued to film the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ flashlights continue to go on and off when appropriate, only paying half attention to what Eri was actually asking as my mind traveled back in time.

 

I remembered being six years old, shortly after my father’s death, and telling my mother about how Daddy had come to see me before bed, how he’d come to say goodbye and tell us to not be sad, that he loved us very much and everything was all right. I remembered how she’d tried to convince me it had all been a dream, and how adamantly, at first, I’d denied it being a dream. How sure I’d been that I had been wide awake at the time, and that I’d really seen him sitting on the edge of my bed, that he’d really spoken to me.

 

I hadn’t understood at the time why telling my mother that Daddy said not to cry had made her cry even harder; I hadn’t understood why she’d been so angry with me for ‘fibbing’ when I’d been telling the truth. I remembered then, in that moment, as I vaguely paid attention to Eri’s various questions, that back when I was six I’d finally made the decision to just not talk about it anymore, knowing it made her sad, and then, eventually, as I got a little older, I’d actually started to question myself about what I remembered. Had it all been a dream? I’d eventually convinced myself that it had been.

 

Now, in that moment, as it looked more and more like Eri was actually speaking to Kikyou, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

 

Sounding kind of like a crime scene investigator interviewing a witness – or suspect – Eri had been asking Kikyou questions like ‘Did you know a man named Naraku?’ and ‘Had you and Inuyasha been having relationship issues?’ That last one had received a strong no response. Inuyasha seemed to be a sensitive subject because every time his name was uttered there was a gust of wind associated with Kikyou’s answer, as if that was her way of giving us a little attitude to accompany the turning on and off of the flashlight, which admittedly could seem like peaceful communication otherwise. How, exactly, does one go about making a flashlight yell a response, right?

 

Kikyou found a way.

 

“Is Kagome correct in thinking that you do know that Inuyasha’s innocent?” Eri asked, and I can understand why she’d asked that. She’d wanted to get that aspect of the folklore cleared up, as had I.

 

Perhaps Kikyou had learned the truth about Naraku’s deception at some point over the years, and she was merely hanging around now because she was still pissed off about having been murdered either way.

 

It was a logical hypothesis, and one that I’d thought made perfect sense, but if that’d actually been the case then she would’ve just lit up the ‘yes’ light again, no harm no foul. Instead, all hell broke loose.

 

“What the...my phone just died,” Ayumi said, earning three sets of eyes on her for a brief moment before the ‘no’ flashlight, my flashlight, lit up and stayed on, the beam becoming brighter and brighter until Ayumi and Yuka both had to shield their eyes while Yuka cried out “What the hell?!”

 

And then my flashlight actually started shaking, I swear to the fucking gods the damn thing was vibrating, and with matching shaking hands I tried to record the event like a good little reporter.

 

That time, my shaking hands had had nothing to do with the cold, although I couldn’t help but notice how freakin’ freezing it’d suddenly felt. Then, the tiny light bulb exploded with a loud pop, and all four of us screamed and jumped to our feet, backing away a few paces. I was still recording, but then the camera went dead. Not sure what else to do, I tucked it into my pocket for safe keeping.

 

Another strong gust of wind rose up in that moment and blew out all the candles again, leaving our only light sources Ayumi and Yuka’s flashlights, and standing on either side of Kikyou’s grave as we were, Eri and I stayed very close to our respective, flashlight wielding partners.

 

In the beam of Yuka’s flashlight I noticed that I could actually see my own breath, as well as hers. It’d been cold before but it hadn’t been that cold. I was too full of adrenaline to care too much about the temperature, though. This shit was going down and suddenly, I’d felt guilty and responsible, my sympathies for her plight returning full force. Now fully convinced that we really were dealing with her ghost, I’d felt that I had to apologize, on behalf of all of us, but mainly for my own previous foolishness.

 

“Kikyou, I know I was trying to get a rise out of you earlier and threw your death in your face, and I’m sorry. That was very cruel of me, and I didn’t mean to upset you so much. The truth is, I hadn’t even thought you were real when I said those things. I thought talking to you was just a game and so I was just saying whatever I wanted. That’s no excuse, and I apologize. I don’t know what else has been said or done to you over the last fifty years, if other people have been playing along with your dying belief of Inuyasha’s betrayal just to bring out your hatred, but if so then that’s even crueler because the truth is Inuyasha’s not the one who killed you, Naraku did.”

 

There was another strong gust of wind in that moment, but nothing else seemed to happen afterwards so I kept going, holding my arms tightly folded across my chest as I shivered. It was all I could do to speak without chattering teeth.

 

“It’s perfectly all right to be upset about how you died. Nobody blames you for being angry about your death. But Inuyasha is innocent. He didn’t-”

 

“Noooooo!!!”

 

“...Please tell me you guys heard that?”

 

Ayumi and Eri both made their way around to my and Yuka’s side of the grave, giving Kikyou’s plot a wide berth as they circled around to stand with us on what was Kikyou’s left.

 

“That sounded like a woman’s voice crying no,” Yuka said, referring to the scream I’d just heard, and Ayumi and Eri both nodded their agreement as well.

 

I sighed a little in relief to know that I hadn’t been the only one to hear it, even though the fact that it’d been real was more than a little unsettling in its own right.

 

“I hope your voice recorder is still working,” I said to Eri, who glanced briefly over towards the grave to where the recorder still sat between our two flashlights.

 

“I’m not checking it,” she replied, mindset to abandon ship. “I think we should just get out of here.”

 

“No argument here,” Yuka said right away, which earned a frantic nod of agreement from Ayumi.

 

“But, isn’t that kind of like letting the genie out of the bottle and then running away?” I asked, biting my lower lip in thought. “Don’t we have a responsibility to make this right?”

 

“You want to stay?” Yuka asked me incredulously.

 

Do I? I’d questioned myself, unable to fully explain the emotions I’d been feeling.

 

All I knew was that my earlier sympathy towards Kikyou was back, and while yeah, I’d been spooked for a minute there, I wasn’t really afraid of her. There were no stories in the last fifty years of Kikyou’s spirit actually hurting anybody, after all. I felt like she needed help, she needed closure, and maybe it was tough love, but she needed to hear what I had to say; she needed somebody to tell her the truth. For some reason, I felt like I was the only one who really cared, and that if I didn’t try to help her, nobody else ever would.

 

“If you guys want to leave, fine. I can call a taxi to take me back to the dorms later.”

 

Assuming Kikyou hasn’t sucked my phone’s battery dry... I added in my thoughts, not saying that part out loud.

 

I didn’t want my friends to feel guilty for ‘abandoning’ me if they wanted to hightail it out of there. I didn’t really want to stay, either, but I’d simply felt like I needed to stay. Something inside of me would just not permit me to leave just yet. It was almost like I was supposed to be there.

 

“We came here together and we’ll leave together,” Eri stressed, and before I could open my mouth in protest, thinking she was about to try and insist that I leave with them, she added, “So if you want to stay, we’ll stay.”

 

“We will?” Ayumi asked, sounding like a disappointed child, before shooting me a falsely brave smile and adding, “I mean, of course we will.”

 

“We did all agree to come do this here tonight,” Yuka conceded.

 

“And it was originally my idea,” Eri also acknowledged, shooting me a supportive grin and nod.

 

Smiling at what genuine friends they were turning out to be, it dawned on me in that moment that I wasn’t feeling quite as cold as I had been moments prior, and realizing that nothing else had seemed to happen after hearing that disembodied scream, I began thinking that maybe the paranormal activity had reached its peak. Usually on those kinds of shows they might get one big reaction or response to something, but it’s climactic, with nothing else really happening afterwards. Mentally crossing my fingers that that was the case, I decided to approach Kikyou’s grave to retrieve Eri’s flashlight and, more importantly, the voice recorder.

 

“You guys stay here, I’ll be right back,” I said as I left the group.

 

“Famous last words,” I heard Yuka mumble under her breath although I probably wasn’t supposed to hear her.

 

I didn’t comment, leaving them where they stood as I slowly approached Kikyou’s grave. I felt like I was approaching the mouth of a cave and I wasn’t sure if an angry bear was inside or not. But I really wanted that voice recorder and so it was that desire that drove me forward.

 

Stepping around to the foot of Kikyou’s grave, because I felt it was better to ‘face’ Kikyou head on, look her tombstone in the eye as it were, I glanced down over the plot stretched out before me and the five doused candles with Kikyou’s picture in the middle, and quickly decided to leave that stuff alone, my goal only to retrieve the voice recorder and working flashlight. Yuka was shining her mini Maglite in my direction in ‘flood beam’ mode to give me a little more light to see by, which I greatly appreciated, since it was pretty dark out otherwise since it wasn’t a full moon. I was actually glad that it wasn’t full moon, though. That would’ve added an extra touch of ‘spooky’ I definitely didn’t need.

 

Stepping forward, and onto the actual plot of Kikyou’s grave, I reached down for the recorder first, picking it up, before then reaching for Eri’s flashlight. It turned on before I touched it, my hand outstretched towards it, and I jumped a little in surprise, snatching my hand back as I stood up straight. Then I heard what sounded distinctly like a wicked female chuckle, like the kind of quiet laugh a female villain in a movie might make under her breath as she watched her plans fall into place, and for some reason, it pissed me off.

 

“Oh, so you think this is funny?” I said in an irked tone of voice, earning confusion from my friends as Ayumi chimed in with, “I don’t think this is funny at all.”

 

I passed them a quick glance, unable to see much since Yuka’s flashlight was still shining in my direction, but I quickly realized they apparently hadn’t heard that laugh, not that it mattered. I had, and I knew it was real; I knew Kikyou was fucking with me.

 

I bent down and reached for the flashlight again, and it rolled to the side by a few inches, just out of reach from my current position. I stood back up empty handed again, feeling more exasperated than anything else.

 

So we’re reduced to playing ‘keep away’ now? I thought, not afraid in the slightest even if I should have been; even if a normal person would have been.

 

I wasn’t a non-believer who’d suddenly been forced to accept that ghosts were real and was inexplicably totally fine with it. Not really. I’d realized in that moment that I originally had been a believer; I’d seen my father’s ghost as a child, had spoken with him, and I’d forgotten. I’d made myself forget. Made myself pretend I didn’t believe. Looking back on it, I’d even seen my grandmother’s smiling face out of the corner of my eye at least once or twice shortly after her death, even though I’d immediately brushed it off at those times, telling myself it was just my mind playing tricks on me.

 

Now that I’d been reminded that ghosts were very much real, I’d thought of Kikyou as a person no different from anyone else; an angry woman who felt jaded and scorned.

 

“Hell hath no fury...” I muttered under my breath.

 

My friends got braver in that moment, apparently wondering what was taking me so long, although they must have all seen how Eri’s flashlight had turned on before I’d reached it. Huddled together as a group they inched their way closer to me until they were just a couple of feet behind me, facing Kikyou’s grave head on as well.

 

“Is the recorder still working?” Eri asked, and I glanced down at the voice recorder in my hand to note that it did indeed appear to still be recording, it hadn’t turned off.

 

“Looks that way,” I answered, since we had no way of knowing what was actually on it until we played it back. Could’ve been nothing but static.

 

Turning and handing the recorder to Eri, I then made a third grab for the flashlight, and I didn’t flinch when the light went back off again before I touched it, picking it up quickly before it could roll away again. I heard my friends’ collective intake of breath at the light going out, but I didn’t look their way as I screwed the Mag’s head back into the ‘on’ position, tightening it to the ‘spotlight’ setting just to make sure Kikyou couldn’t turn it back off yet again.

 

Ignoring how cold the flashlight actually felt to the touch, like it’d been in a freezer for hours, I shined the light on Kikyou’s 8x10 photograph. Since I’d clearly been wrong about the paranormal activity having reached its peak, I knew my mission wasn’t over yet. Kikyou was still with us, which therefore meant I still had to talk to her.

 

As if telling me not to look at her, the glass of the framed photograph cracked as soon as my light beam hit it, and from a central point, directly over her face, spider-webbing outward. I flinched for a split second at the unexpected act, but didn’t let it rattle me as I still said my piece.

 

“Kikyou, the truth hurts, and I can get why you don’t want to let go of the hatred you’ve felt for the last five decades, but the fact remains that Naraku is your killer. Yours and Inuyasha’s. He went to prison for your murders and is still there, for life; he’s seventy years old and is going to die behind bars to pay for what he did to you. It might not seem like justice was served since he didn’t die for what he did right when he did it, but if you really want revenge then go haunt his ass in his prison cell and make the rest of his days miserable. There’s no reason to hang around the cemetery or college making yourself miserable, holding on to a grudge you shouldn’t have had in the first place. Inuyasha is innocent.”

 

As soon as I finished speaking the air around me suddenly got so cold again that all the hairs on my arms stood back up, goose bumps covering my exposed arms. I could see my breath again, and my flashlight got colder and colder until it almost burned my hand and I had no choice but to drop it, hissing in discomfort as my fingers tingled.

 

My friends gasped, and Ayumi started to say “Kagome, are you-” and I assume she was going to ask me if I was okay, but in that moment the flashlight beam started flickering and she cut herself off mid-sentence, all four of us staring at the flashlight as the beam got duller and duller before it went out, this time as if from dead batteries. I leaned forward to pick it back up again, just to see if it might possibly still work, but before I reached it all five candles around the broken picture suddenly flared to life.

 

That got my attention, as I gasped and jumped back in surprise. I didn’t actually scream, but my friends did. I can’t really say I blame them, either. At least nothing especially freaky happened, like a thin trail of fire suddenly going from candle to candle, drawing out the pentagram in the grass. That would’ve been a cool addition if this were a movie, but this was real life and I was just about at my limit for ‘freaky’ for one night. Kikyou was seriously trying my patience.

 

“Where’s the ghost of Inuyasha when you need him?” I mumbled quietly, sarcastically, until saying it out loud caused the proverbial light bulb to light up over my head.

 

Where was the ghost of Inuyasha?

 

“Kikyou, isn’t Inuyasha’s spirit around anywhere?” I asked her then, truly perplexed. “Don’t you know that he’s dead, too? That he died the same night you did? That he died fighting Naraku for your sake? Can’t you talk to him?”

 

Nothing else immediately happened, so turning and glancing over my shoulder at my friends for a moment, I shrugged, and then turning back I spoke to the sky.

 

“Inuyasha? Are you here?” I asked.

 

Nothing.

 

Turning around again, I addressed my friends.

 

“I don’t understand why there aren’t any stories about his ghost appearing or sticking around because of what’d happened. I mean, I seriously doubt he just ‘passed on’ all nice and peaceful like, if the eyewitness reports are true,” I said, and Eri shrugged.

 

“I don’t know, Kagome. The stories are what they are,” she answered.

 

She did have a point. Logically, the only reason there were no stories about Inuyasha’s spirit to go along with the stories of Kikyou’s spirit had to be because he hadn’t been making appearances like she had been over the last fifty years, but why? I knew I didn’t really understand how the whole ghost thing worked, but I’d seriously doubted his absence was because back in the day people had actually beckoned Kikyou through a séance which had then made her spirit stick around afterwards for some reason, while Inuyasha had never been summoned. I’d supposed it was a possible explanation, but it just hadn’t felt right. Yuka had had a different theory, which she chimed in with in that moment, and hers had immediately felt right to me.

 

“Maybe it’s because Kikyou died thinking the love of her life killed her, so she’s fueled by the power of her hatred, just like the legend says, while Inuyasha just died knowing he had failed to save her. He died feeling remorseful, instead of vengeful, so his ghost probably just isn’t as strong as hers.”

 

“That makes sense,” I’d agreed right away, believing she was correct. “Maybe he even-” I’d started to add, but stopped mid-sentence, when I thought I saw some movement behind my friends, like a shadow person walking between the headstones.

 

Noticing where I was looking they all turned around to look in that direction, too, Yuka and Ayumi both shining their flashlights that way, but there was nothing.

 

“What?” Yuka asked as she moved her beam around.

 

“Thought I saw something,” I answered honestly, before quickly turning and scooping up both flashlights on the ground, Eri’s and mine, before Kikyou could do anything else to them.

 

After confirming that Eri’s wouldn’t turn on I tried swapping batteries, since I’d figured the batteries in my broken mini Mag were probably still good. Turned out I was right, and the batteries had indeed still been good, for all of five seconds. I’d made a happy sound as Eri’s flashlight came back on, but it just got super cold again, until it felt like I was holding dry ice, and dropping it when the sensation got painful the light then proceeded to flicker out, those batteries clearly drained as well.

 

“Damn it,” I grumbled under my breath.

 

Then, to make matters worse, both Ayumi’s and Yuka’s lights also flickered out in that moment, earning frightened whimpers from my three friends as they huddled together even closer.

 

At least Kikyou hadn’t attempted to freeze their hands off. She must have just drained their batteries for the energy boost. I got the distinct impression that I was her main target, although I also knew I’d put myself into that position, and that was fine with me. If I could keep her attention focused primarily on me so that she’d leave my friends alone, I knew I could handle whatever she threw at me.

 

I hadn’t really meant that literally, but when another strong gust of wind that seemed to be focused exclusively on me came from the side and pelted me in the face with a little bit of sand, I stood my ground and took it, just turning my head to protect my eyes. I didn’t get afraid. I didn’t run away or beg Kikyou to stop it. And I most certainly didn’t apologize for telling her the truth.

 

“Is that all you got?” I said once the wind died down. “Throwing a tantrum doesn’t change the fact that you’ve held on to misguided anger for the last fifty years.”

 

“Shut up!”

 

“Did you guys hear that, too?” I asked my friends as I glanced their way almost nonchalantly; they nervously nodded their heads in the affirmative.

 

“Kikyou, let’s be reasonable about this and talk it out. Why are you so upset? If I’m way off the mark here and you’re pissed off for some other reason, and you do indeed know that Inuyasha isn’t your murderer and my having the wrong idea about your anger is just upsetting you even further, then please say so. Please tell me why you’re upset and then maybe I can help you.”

 

“There’s no helping her...” I heard mumbled quietly, so quietly I wasn’t sure at first if I’d even really heard it, and I knew there was no way my friends had.

 

Instead of the kind of disembodied way Kikyou’s screams had seemed to echo and come from all around us, with no distinguishable direction the sound had come from, this voice had almost felt like whoever’d spoken was standing right behind me, whispering in my ear. I’d definitely also heard it in only my right ear, and not my left.

 

Caught off guard, I’d quickly turned around, as if honestly expecting to see someone standing directly behind me, even though I knew it couldn’t have been any of my friends because they were all still huddled together a few feet away, and besides...it’d been a man’s voice.

 

“What is it?” Eri asked, apparently able to tell from my expression that something’d just happened.

 

“I thought a heard someone else’s voice,” I answered.

 

“I haven’t heard anything else after she screamed ‘shut up’,” Yuka supplied.

 

I just nodded, then closed my eyes and tried to listen.

 

“Inuyasha, was that you? Are you here with us?” I asked.

 

Nothing.

 

I kept going, assuming our theory was correct and that his spirit just wasn’t as strong as Kikyou’s.

 

Especially now, if she’d been drinking from our batteries and he hadn’t gotten any. What I’d started to say before, when I’d thought I saw a shadow person in the background and had cut myself off, was that maybe he actually had been around too this whole time and just nobody’d ever noticed him. Anything he might’ve been able to do, like the occasional knocking sound, flickering light or moving object, had probably all gotten contributed to Kikyou.

 

How frustrating.

 

Well, we all know life isn’t fair, and I guess it looks like the afterlife isn’t fair, either... I’d thought sympathetically, before trying again to make contact.

 

“Inuyasha, if there’s anything you can do to let me know that you really are here, anything at all, then please do it, whatever it is. I need to know that you are here with me.”

 

I’d realized right after I said it that I’d said ‘me’ instead of ‘us’ but didn’t bother correcting myself. I had kind of felt like I was going it alone at that point, my three friends just observing, not that I blamed them. They were troopers for sticking around at all when they’d wanted to leave, as frightened as they’d been.

 

Instantly at my words, I had felt my body temperature drop, but silently praying it was actually Inuyasha trying to communicate and not an attack by Kikyou, I tried not to resist and let the sensation of being enveloped by a subzero mist consume me. It was surreal. I was too cold to shiver. I felt on the verge of passing out. I must have looked it, too, even in the low light of the five candles and partial moon above, because I vaguely heard Eri cry out my name in concern, but her voice had seemed muffled and far away.

 

Then I felt it; a hand, gripping my own. A strong, male hand, clasping mine and squeezing gently. The kind of squeeze a friend might give you in encouragement if you were nervous about something you were about to do.

 

Slowly, as if in a trance, I’d moved my head to look down at our joined hands and saw nothing but my own, empty hand, even as the sensation remained. Looking back up, to where the man holding my hand would have supposedly been, I was startled, but not afraid, to see a pair of soft brown eyes staring back at me. They’d almost looked...concerned, and with a hint of guilt, as if those eyes, too, were worried for my well-being.

 

I blinked and it was gone, and then suddenly I was on the ground and my friends were hovering over me, trying to help me back on my feet while frantically asking me what’d happened and if I was all right.

 

I knew what had happened, but how to explain it to them? He’d had to tap into my own energy in order to show himself, but that was all right because I’d told him to do whatever it took, and to know that I’d been right, that Inuyasha was also still around, that had been a triumphant moment for me. That he’d apparently felt guilty for having to do what he’d done I’d found touching, and all the more reason to harbor no ill will towards him because of it.

 

Wobbly getting back on my feet, I’d assured them, “I’m...I’m fine...”

 

Feeling better by the moment, I’d straightened up and added proudly, “He showed himself.”

 

Eri was looking at me in concern, not as if she didn’t believe me, but probably because she did; she was worried for my well-being after a close encounter like that.

 

“It’s all right,” I’d assured her and the others then, as I made eye contact with all three of them one by one. “He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He’s not violent. His eyes looked so...apologetic.”

 

There was another crazy gust of wind as I said that last part, which should have blown out the five candles again except instead it only made them glow even brighter, the wind fanning their flames. Then the broken frame in the middle started to shake, and I distinctly heard Inuyasha’s voice say “Kikyou, don’t.”

 

He’d sounded worried, almost like he was pleading with her.

 

I don’t think my friends heard it, but all four of us definitely saw it as a few triangular shards of glass suddenly rose up out of the broken frame and made a beeline straight for my face. I didn’t have time to scream, or turn away and try to shield myself. I watched, in shock, as the glass levitated and then immediately bolted towards me, and then, all of a sudden there was a man standing in front of me, facing me. A Japanese man with long black hair, dressed in an old style black suit with a black cape and white ruffled shirt.

 

His Halloween costume.

 

But he wasn’t wearing the mask, and his face... I couldn’t describe the emotions his expression evoked in me. There was a desperation there, as if he’d tapped into a power reserve he hadn’t even known he’d had, just in order to manifest himself and save me.

 

And he had saved me. The glass shards, they’d fallen to the ground when they’d his back, as if he’d honestly been as solid as he appeared.

 

“Kagome...what?” Eri said slowly, in wonder, and I glanced her way for a brief moment and then instantly regretted it when Inuyasha disappeared. I looked back and he was gone.

 

“Did you guys see that?” Yuka asked then, amazement in her voice.

 

I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could, Ayumi chimed in with, “It was like, like a human-shaped mist, and it blocked the glass somehow.”

 

“Do you think that was Inuyasha?” Yuka asked.

 

“Must have been,” Eri replied.

 

“Human-shaped mist?” I asked, confused. Was I really the only one who’d seen him looking like a normal person?

 

“You didn’t see that, Kagome?” Ayumi asked, surprised. My next comment made her eyes bug out even more.

 

Shaking my head, I replied with, “I saw a man, as if he’d really been standing here. I saw Inuyasha as a full-bodied apparition.”

 

“Ooohh, was he hot?” Yuka asked with a chuckle.

 

Typical Yuka.

 

Although it was comforting to know she believed me. From their expressions, they all did, and sure, doubting me wouldn’t really have made any sense at that point since we all knew we were dealing with the real thing, but even so, it was a nice change to tell somebody I’d seen a ghost without getting ridiculed for it.

 

“Actually, yeah. Total looker,” I’d admitted then, smirking. It was the truth, after all.

 

That had apparently not been a wise thing to say in Kikyou’s presence, however, because the broken picture frame started shaking again, accompanied by a female scream, and not wanting to take any chances, since I doubted Inuyasha could pull a repeat of that stunk so soon, if at all, I cursed under my breath and immediately turned and bolted.

 

“Shit,” I’d said, as I ran past my friends, grabbing for them as I passed. “Come on!” I’d added, as I ducked down behind the first headstone I saw, the others hot on my heels.

 

The four of us huddled together on that stranger’s grave, using their headstone as a shield. I’d figured Kikyou was most likely just throwing the glass and couldn’t control the shards like heat-seeking missiles, so it’d seemed a safe enough location in a pinch. I’d hoped, at least, although it’d thankfully turned out I was right as nothing flew past us and then turned midair to get us like sitting ducks. Instead, we heard the sound of glass hitting the back of the gravestone we were huddled behind, and the four of us tucked in even closer.

 

“I can see we caught you at a bad time. We’ll just be on our way, then,” Yuka said, although she didn’t budge. None of us moved an inch until we were sure it was over.

 

Very carefully untangling ourselves a couple of minutes later, I gasped when my eyes glanced over the gravestone I was leaning against. It was Inuyasha’s.

 

Whispering, I’d gestured to the headstone.

 

“Look,” I said, earning my friends’ attention as I pointed. The trio all stared, dumbstruck.

 

“So he protected you twice,” Ayumi stated in wonderment, as if Inuyasha’s spirit had led me to his grave.

 

Maybe he had.

 

“Thank you,” I murmured low, resting the palm of my right hand flatly on the headstone, over his name.

 

Turning to Eri then, I said, “I’m still not giving up on getting through to her, but I think I agree that we should go ahead and call it quits for the night at least.”

 

“No argument here,” Eri said, reaching across her chest to pat her backpack’s shoulder strap, gesturing to the voice recorder she’d tucked back within the bag. “We’ve got plenty of evidence to go through, anyway. This is far from over.”

 

That statement reminded me of what I’d captured on video, and I reached into my jeans to hand her back her digital camera, which she took and put away as well. The four of us then slowly rose to our feet, glancing carefully in Kikyou’s grave’s direction, and noting that the candles were all out again I think we collectively silently agreed that if Kikyou relit them again and caused a fire that it’d be her fault as we left our trash and made a mad dash for the car.

 

As we neared Yuka’s car she got her keys out of her pocket and started pushing the unlock button on the key fob, but it didn’t work, and she quickly got frustrated, cursing at the remote and pushing the button even harder as we neared.

 

“You-know-who must have drained that battery as well,” I said as we got to the car and Yuka used the actual key to unlock her door manually, quickly putting the key in the ignition and turning it into auxiliary to prevent the alarm from going off while simultaneously pushing the unlock button on her door so that the rest of us could get in the car.

 

I was just glad her car wasn’t the new kind that didn’t even take a key, because then if the fob went dead you were probably screwed. I was also tremendously grateful the car’s own battery hadn’t been drained. It started right up, and we quickly got the hell out of there, and even though it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet I immediately decided to hell with the Halloween parties back at our dorm. My ass was going straight up to my room and locking the door until sunrise.

 

Not that I’d thought a locked door would actually help me in any way, or daybreak for that matter, but it was the principle of the thing.

 

Grabbing my hoodie off the floor of the back seat and sighing in relief as I wrapped it around myself, slipping my arms through the well insulated sleeves, I then pulled my cell phone from my back pocket and wasn’t really surprised to discover it wouldn’t turn on, either, that battery also completely dead. I was really glad my friends hadn’t decided to abandon me. I’d told them so in that moment, too.

 

“Thank you guys so much for sticking with me when I hadn’t wanted to leave yet. I’m sorry I put you through that craziness,” I said.

 

“Sorry?!” Eri asked as she looked back at me from the front passenger seat. “Tonight was awesome!”

 

Yuka laughed, and said, “I can’t wait to tell my sister. She’s going to shit her pants.”

 

Slowly, Ayumi cracked a smile.

 

“I bet nobody else has got a story like we’ve got,” she said.

 

“It is an awesome story,” I admitted, “But let’s not forget that Kikyou’s a real person, with real feelings. Really messed up, warped feelings, but feelings none the less. I don’t want to turn her into a circus freak show. If more students find out about our ‘success’ and try to contact her themselves for fun and games then I’ll probably never be able to get through to her or help her find peace.”

 

“What, you want to adopt her all of a sudden?” Yuka asked. “For only fifteen cents a day you too can help end a ghost’s purgatory...”

 

I laughed.

 

“I don’t even know what I want to do, or what I can do,” I admitted then. “I just feel like...I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

 

“Kagome Higurashi, the Ghost Whisperer,” Eri said as she looked my way, giving me a teasing wink.

 

I just shrugged.

 

Yuka started singing. “When there’s somethin’ weird, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Ka-go-me!”

 

That had all four of us laughing, and the further away from the cemetery we got the more at ease I felt. The rest of the drive back to campus went by peacefully, and walking up to our dorm house after parking the car we all disregarded the loud sounds of partying coming from all around us, ignoring the random costumed people running to and fro, and saying our goodnights, Eri and I retreated to our room while Yuka and Ayumi went their separate ways.