InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Goodnight ❯ An Unwelcoming Welcome ( Chapter 1 )

Goodnight
Written by Gueshoo
Chapter #1
An Unwelcoming Welcome

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The sky was bleak and gray; it wouldn't rain that day... It would just be extremely cloudy. The air was cool and crisp with little wind. It was only noon.

The sound of a person typing on a key-board was all that could be heard in the vehicle besides the sound of rolling, rubber tires on the gravel and country music being softly played on a stereo. Mrs. Higurashi slowly drove through the forest, being careful not to hit any sort of creature that might unexpectedly pop out of the brush. Her son, Souta, sat staring off into the greenery, most likely day dreaming about ways to escape from his mother and run back to his old home, he seemed to be pouting, probably from the fact that all of his video games were currently packed in his suitcase and he couldn't get to it. Mrs. Higurashi's daughter, Kagome, leaned on the car's window, doing god-knows-what on her laptop, she wore headphones, which were successfully blocking out the 'horrible' country music her mother was listening to. Mrs. Higurashi's father snored loudly as he slept in the passenger's seat.

The family was usually very happy and almost always bursting with joy, but they were anything but in the mood for cheerfulness.

After Mr. Higurashi had passed away, less than six months before hand, they had little money to still live in their shrine. Mrs. Higurashi did not work, and neither did her father. Only two months after Mr. Higurashi's death, had the grandfather had a heart attack costing the family money for the hospital bills. Eventually, the government forced the family to leave the shrine.

A month earlier, Mrs. Higurashi found a very large and beautiful home far away from their old home, it was also very cheap.

Kagome sighed and closed her laptop, then took the headphones off. She looked outside of the window, staring at the large trees as they passed by.

Not to mention that the house was extremely cheap, but it also had absolutely no electricity or plumbing whatsoever, and Mrs. Higurashi didn't plan to change that anytime soon with the small amount of money she had to keep her family from the streets.

Kagome wasn't sure how long that they had been stuck in the car, inside of the awful forest. She checked her watch.

Kagome had always wondered why the home was so cheap. From what her mother had told her, the house was enormous. Kagome sighed and began to stare at the car's ceiling; those two facts didn't fit together... Perhaps it was just that the house wasn't updated to modern times...

"We'll be there soon," Mrs. Higurashi told her family.

Kagome began to pout. She had already made a list of everything she would have left behind at her old home. Among the many things, three seemed to stand out to her: her friends, her father, and her happiness.

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"Did you hear?" the young boy asked his older sister.

"Hear what?" Sango asked him.

"You know that creepy house down the road?" Kohaku asked her.

"I pass it almost everyday in order to get to school," Sango told him dryly.

"Well, anyway, some people are moving in..." Kohaku told her, trailing off.

"You're point?" Sango asked annoyed.

"Duh! It's haunted!" Kohaku exclaimed.

Sango rose her eyebrow at this. "Ghosts are just imaginary monsters that some freak made up to scare gullible and naive kids, Kohaku," Sango replied simply.

"Miroku says he thinks it's haunted too!" he fought back.

Sango gave him a wry look, "My point exactly..."

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"This place is creepy!" Souta exclaimed. He stood in front of the large house. The home was indeed creepy. It was painted gray, but the paint was pealing off, showing a dirty, once warm, almost cream color. It was two stories tall with an attic, the [what could almost be considered] windows were full of dust, about six were broken. The two wooden front doors weren't in good condition either, one was barely hanging onto its hinges and the other looked like it was almost completely rotten. The yard was full of dead plants and trees. The site wasn't very welcoming...

The bag Kagome held in her hands instantly dropped to the ground when she laid her eyes on the site, "W-We're supposed to try and live in that?!"

"Oh, quiet, honey. You make it sound like the end of the world," Mrs. Higurashi told her daughter.

"No, she's making it sound like a house from a horror movie!" Souta told his mother. "Which it does look like!"

"Didn't you guys ever hear of roughing it out?" Mrs. Higurashi asked her two distressed children.

"I've also heard mass murderers!" Souta argued. "They hide out in places like this or what if there's a monster or alien or something?!"

Kagome sighed, "...Or rabid animals..."

"That too!" Souta told Mrs. Higurashi.

"There's absolutely no monsters or anything of that sort, Souta," Mrs. Higurashi told her son reassuringly. "...But, when I looked at the brochure for this place, the home looked good as new, not anything close to this beaten down..."

Kagome glanced at her grandfather in the car, "I bet he won't be too happy either, Mom..."

Mrs. Higurashi sighed, "You're right. He'll probably go around trying to banish all of the demons in the place."

Souta chuckled, "He's going to take it even worse than when we moved into the shrine!"

"This is going to absolutely suck," Kagome muttered under her breath. She picked up her dropped bags and headed towards the crumbling building, ready for what she thought could be the worst.

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She smiled wistfully, "Do you think 'death will do us part'?"

Inuyasha looked at her in the eyes, "Nothing will do us part... Not even hell or heaven... Much less death..."

Kagome smiled at him, she laughed, "Promise?"

He nodded his head and smiled at her, "I promise."

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Mrs. Higurashi was the first to actually enter the almost-collapsing building; Kagome walked in with Souta trailing behind her. The two's grandfather was still in the car at the moment, trying to catch a few more "Z's."

"A-Achoo!" Souta sneezed.

"Excuse you," Kagome told him.

"You're excused!" Souta happily replied.

Only a few seconds passed by...

"I'm waiting for some monster thing to grab you, Kagome, drag you away, and then eat you," Souta told her.

"You mean like that black shadow right behind you?" Kagome asked him back in an uncaring tone.

Souta quickly turned around, "Where?! Where?!"

All that met the frightened boy's sight was a hall with an empty door way at the end.

"Oh, sorry, Souta. It's your shadow! Silly me," Kagome told him with well-hidden sarcasm.

Souta glared at her, then huffed, but he continued to follow her through the long hallway.

"I bet this place's ancient!" Souta smiled excited.

"...That means it's more likely to fall on us..." she said under her breath.

"Do you think there might be some old stuff around here?" he asked her anxiously.

"Like a skeleton?" she asked him as a horrified look came across his face. "I wouldn't bet on that," she told him before he could udder a word. As she said that, a look of relief passed across his face.

"But, if you're lucky, you might find a few moth-eaten dresses," she told him off-hand.

"Gee, thanks," he mock thanked her.

"You're welcome," she replied to his rudeness.

"Hey, Kagome?"

"Hm?"

"Where's Mom?"

She shrugged as the duo reached the end of the hall. They were now in an extremely large room, with a very high ceiling. The wood in the room actually wasn't rotting away but was quite healthy, at least from what Kagome could tell. A grayish -almost an extremely dirty peach- color was painted onto the walls. Dust lightly covered them with dirt piled in the corners of the room. Large windows (with no glass) were obviously created to make the room light up, but due to the cloudy weather, little light came in. The ceiling had to be at least twenty-five feet tall in that room and each wall looked to be about seventy feet long.

Kagome took in the surroundings of the place, to only realize that there was something really odd about it... From what she had seen so far, the rooms were covered in dust and dirt accumulated over the years, but there were no cobwebs or spider webs anywhere...

"Woah..." Souta told her, his mouth hanging slack.

Kagome put her hand under his chin and shut his mouth for him, "I know catching flies isn't fun, but just imagine what it would be like for a bee to fly in there," Kagome scolded him, but smiled lightly none the less.

Souta ripped his face from her palm and glared at her, "Hahaha," he replied dryly.

Kagome sighed, "Let's just go ahead and find Mom." With that said she began walking again, trying to hear for her mother's footsteps, or possibly find a place that was livable for her possible bedroom.

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Mrs. Higurashi lightly fingered the brittle wood of an old chair. She stood in (at least what seemed to be) the dinning room. It wasn't too awfully large, but it had more than enough room to fit a family of twelve for a meal. The walls appeared to had once been a warm, inviting peach color, but were faded and dirty. A small, almost completely rotten, wooden table took up very little space, with only two chairs in a corner of the room. There were two large windows, but one was broken.

She wasn't very happy at the moment, not only for the fact that her two children were complaining about it relentlessly, but because this wasn't anything at all like the home was described to be in the brochure she had picked up for it at the local real-estate office, it had even had a picture on the cover of the home, but in much better condition. Actually, the photograph was in black and white, and Mrs. Higurashi had her suspicions that the photograph was over fifty years old...

Mrs. Higurashi's eyes narrowed,
Those lying, deceiving bastards...

For the past thirty minutes, Mrs. Higurashi had been putting up a happy front, which she wasn't feeling at the moment. That place was in shambles, about ready to fall down if any wind were to blow, which she hadn't felt any at all that day. She wouldn't be surprised if Moth-Man was to come out and eat their car (which actually a friend of Mrs. Higurashi's was letting her keep until she could find a loan to buy a new one) with her father in it. All of the few plants still around were dead, while there was absolutely no grass in the yard, due to it all probably dying long ago and never coming back. Mrs. Higurashi wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be that the sun never shined on that house either...

"Mom?!" Souta's voice echoed through the empty rooms and hallways, she could tell that he was close.

"Yes, dear?!" she answered back loudly, so he could pinpoint which room she was in. She quickly composed herself and put her "happy-face" back on.

The door to the room quietly squeaked as Souta pushed open the door and walked in.

Mrs. Higurashi smiled at her son, "Where's Kagome?"

He wrinkled his nose in distaste, "Oh, her?"

"Yes, Souta..."

"She just had to find the perfect room for her very own bedroom," Souta slightly over-exaggerating. "I think she just wanted to find the best room so I wouldn't get it... And she left me in this creepy house all by myself!"

Mrs. Higurashi sighed, "Thank you, Souta..."

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The floor boards sqeaked under Kagome's weight as she walked through yet another hallway, all in all there were five main hallways in the house from what Kagome had seen, and two that branched off of the main hallways. She was now in the last hallway that came off of the grand room.

After peaking into about five rooms which were full of dust, a few with long-dead animals, and dirt everywhere, she found a very clean room. It's walls were a pale yellow, but they weren't faded, actually, the place looked like someone had been cleaning it everday. What was even more surprising was that there were a few pieces of furniture in there, a bed (but with no mattress or pillows), a desk, and a night table. The wood on each piece looked almost as if it was just polished.

Kagome looked at the door that was now behind her and also led to the hallway, perhaps it was the door that helped preserve the room, Kagome bent down and took a closer look at the part where the door met the ground, there was a special air-tight rubber pad on the bottom, and all on all of the other edges of the door.

What the hell?!..."

Kagome quickly jumped up and ran to find her mother, she knew this house was abandoned before any sort of air-tight concelers made out of rubber was around, and someone had to have polished that wood not too long ago!

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Rubber tires rode over the gravel of the road as Sango headed towards the old, creepy house on the hill with the brand new family now in it.

Her father had made her greet them, he was unable to come due to a rabid dog on the loose about thirty miles away. He brought Kohaku, her brother, along to learn more about animal control because Kohaku was very interested in the career.

The grayish building (Sango always had trouble calling the place a house or home due to its creepy aura) came into view, as did a volks wagon in front of the gate.

After a few minutes Sango was in front of the gate herself, she got off of her bike and let it fall to the ground. She didn't care about the piece of junk.

She casually walked up to the front doors, well, what could almost be called front doors, and simply walked in. There was no doorbell, and if she even tried to knock on the door her hand would either go through it, or nobody would hear it.

Walking inside Sango began to search for anyone else who might be in the place.

She finally entered what some might call the grand room, and found several more hallways to look down, she entered the hallway closest to the right, and took another left at another corner.

She collided with something.

That something screamed.

And Sango screamed right back in horror.

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Two screams echoed through the empty house, and reached Mrs. Higurashi and Souta's ears. Both of their eyes traveled to each other and locked, then both quickly bolted, Souta trying to get out of the house and Mrs. Higurashi trying to find the source of the noise.

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"Who the hell are you?!" Kagome yelled at the girl who had just fallen to the ground.

Kagome had an odd suspicion that this person was the one who had her room in tip-top shape.

"I'm just you-!" The girl started.

"And, just who are you?!" Mrs. Higurashi's voice boomed.

"Look, I was just tryi-" Sango was cut off by the woman.

"This is private property, and I suggest that you get off of it before I call the police," Mrs. Higurashi said in a calmer manner, but with an angered undertone.

"I'm your neighbor!" Sango said before anyone could say anything back. "I came hear to welcome you, that's all!"

Both of the Higurashis blinked a few times to let the information absorb into their minds.

"...I'll tell you what, I'll let you off, but please don't walk in here like that again, you almost gave me a heart attack," Mrs. Higurashi told Sango reassuringly.

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After the little incident, Kagome and Sango had talked for a few hours and were getting to know each other; Sango had left before dinner.

Dinner had passed, and Kagome was now in the oddly sealed room, she had completely forgotten about the odd rubber sealing, and was currently re-mixing one of her songs on her laptop.

Her eyelids became heavy, as she glanced at her watch to find that it was almost midnight. She shut the laptop, and laid on top of the frame of the bed, she was forced to use several blankets as a make-shift mattress, and a rolled up towel as a pillow for the night, and a couple of thin blankets to cover herself from the night's cold.

The tightened her body into a small ball, and she was lulled into the land of sleep by her own breathing.

She never noticed the outline of a young man watching her from her desk.

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A/N Well, that's all for this chapter...

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