InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Onigumo House ❯ Chapter 3

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

Leaning casually in the doorway of the last room at the very end of the hall, a room that appeared to have been a regular bedroom at one point but now, it was set up with four hospital style beds, a table with a single lamp along with some archaic and rather scary looking medical equipment sitting on it on the other side of the room, Hiten watched, amused, as Yura appeared to be trying to do an EVP session but without the electronic voice recorder.

 

“Are there any spirits present?” she asked the empty, poorly lit room. “If there are any ghosts here with us this evening, please make a noise,” she requested.

 

Smirking, Hiten reached up with his left hand and very gently knocked on the door two times.

 

Gasping in surprise, Yura whirled around at the sound only to slump in disappointment at the sight of Hiten standing there laughing at her. She wasn’t embarrassed, though.

 

“What’d you do that for?” she asked, annoyed. “If there are ghosts here, then you might scare ‘em away.”

 

“If there are ghosts here,” he countered, “then I dare them to scare me away.”

 

As if on cue, one of the round scarificators on the table fell over onto its side before rolling off the table to land on the floor with a loud clank.

 

Yura and Hiten both jumped in surprise, but the latter was quick to blow it off.

 

“Nice try,” he said to Yura, as if she’d actually staged it somehow.

 

Striding into the room a ways, he flashed her his best bedroom eyes and said, “How ‘bout you and me see how many more vibrations we can cause in this room.”

 

“Nice try,” she repeated sarcastically.

 

Just ‘cause she was dressed like a slut, and would’ve gladly jumped either Kagewaki or Inuyasha’s bones if the situation had permitted it, that didn’t mean she’d throw herself at just anyone.

 

Fortunately, while Yura got the distinct impression that Hiten wasn’t usually the kind to take no for an answer, it was probably the belief that there were indeed hidden cameras, and the very real fact that they weren’t alone in the house even if they weren’t being filmed, that had him just shrugging her rejection off as if he couldn’t honestly be bothered.

 

“Suit yourself,” he answered before turning and leaving, as if she’d had her chance and she blew it.

 

Rolling her eyes at his retreating form, Yura got back to what she’d been doing.

 

ooo

 

Having initially grabbed her blanket and pillow, bringing them into Sango and Miroku’s room and leaving them on the fainting couch where she’d be sleeping, Kagome had then gone back for her bedclothes, heading to the bathroom at the end of the hall to change and do her business rather than risk overstepping her bounds by using Sango and Miroku’s en suite.

 

Waiting her turn for the hall bath since Inuyasha had beaten her to it, she’d been left to the privacy of her own thoughts while clutching her pajamas out in the upstairs hallway. True, she could’ve gone downstairs to one of the other bathrooms, but she felt safer being closer to Sango and Miroku, and Inuyasha.

 

Calm down, Kagome, he has a ‘girlfriend’, don’t forget. Mental air quotes added because she didn’t think their relationship was going too well, but she also knew that it was really none of her business. Besides, since when do you have time to even contemplate the possibility of romance?

 

On that note, the bathroom door opened, revealing Inuyasha still dressed in his day clothes, toothbrush and toothpaste in hand. He smiled at her, his friendliness clearly genuine.

 

“Goodnight,” he offered, as he headed down the hall towards his own bedroom.

 

“Goodnight,” she replied, before ducking into the bathroom to change.

 

She figured, what with privacy laws and all, that the bathrooms, at least, probably did not have hidden cameras.

 

Changing into her pajamas after emptying her bladder and brushing her teeth, Kagome was thankful that she’d brought one of her modest flannel sets. It was cold at night those days, and so accordingly, she’d brought her light and darker blue large square checkered pajamas. It wouldn’t be inappropriate in the slightest to wear them in front of Sango and Miroku.

 

True, she had no idea what either of them would be wearing to bed, not that it really mattered, she supposed, since she wasn’t going to actually be in the bed with them, but she assumed they’d be decent enough or Sango wouldn’t have offered. She assumed everyone had probably brought modest nightwear, except maybe Yura.

 

That thought had her chuckling a little.

 

She didn’t begrudge the woman her choice of wardrobe. It was Halloween, after all, and if she had the body to go along with it then she wouldn’t mind dressing a little slutty herself at times if she could excuse it as a costume. All in good fun, right?

 

Releasing a sigh that was meant to relax her but the act of clearing her head actually just brought thoughts of poor Kagewaki back to the surface yet again, Kagome headed back towards her room to put her day clothes, toothbrush and toothpaste away in her bag before retiring in Sango and Miroku’s room for the night. The uneasy feeling she’d had ever since pulling up in the taxi had intensified tenfold since poor Kagewaki’s death. Hopefully her feeling of foreboding would eventually go away and she could get some sleep, but how she wished she and the others would’ve just called it quits and gotten the hell out of there. Something just wasn’t right.

 

She hated feeling overruled, the majority of them having voted to stay until morning, but she supposed she could understand that there wasn’t really a genuine need for urgency, at least where Kagewaki was concerned. He was already dead, so then what difference did it make, right? Yes, they were supposed to call the police right away, but if push came to shove where law enforcement was concerned she had no problem throwing their ‘hosts’ under the bus. Why the hell were they locked in? And why the hell were there no landline telephones? There was literally no way they could have saved Kagewaki’s life, under the circumstances.

 

That was what she kept telling herself, at least, even though she still couldn’t shut up the nasty little voice in the back of her mind that kept on trying to tell her that she’d failed, that it was her fault he was dead because if she’d done something differently, more correctly, she could have saved him. It was unfair, and probably untrue, she knew, but still.

 

Even so, she was not going to lie to the police and risk her professional career, and by extension her brother’s very life, if the others ended up wanting to come up with some kind of cockamamie story that he must’ve come back down to eat some leftovers after the rest of them had gone to bed, choking all by himself and they didn’t find him until morning.

 

First of all, that or a similar story could be proven untrue forensically so easily that Kagome would have no business wanting to get into the medical profession if she were honestly stupid enough to think they could possibly get away with such an obvious lie. Second of all, she just wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, or look at herself in the mirror, if she weren’t completely honest with authorities.

 

Looking at herself in the mirror in that moment, the mirror in question being an intricately framed oval that hung over the chest of drawers where she’d sat her yellow overnight bag, Kagome gasped and whirled around when she thought she saw a shadowy figure standing behind her, but there was nobody there.

 

Okay, that’s it, this place is definitely haunted, she thought with a shudder as she grabbed her bag to bring with her as she headed for Sango and Miroku’s room.

 

Speaking of Sango and Miroku, Kagome was glad that at least they had agreed with her, voting with her when it came to the decision of leaving. She supposed it was just democracy at its finest that they had been outnumbered, but she was actually kind of glad they’d taken a vote. It had been a rather civilized way of settling things, and at least it hadn’t been eight against one. No, Sango and Miroku had sided with her, and so had that dreamboat Inuyasha. She wasn’t surprised that his ‘girlfriend’ had sided with the others, but it actually meant a lot to her, for some reason, that he, at least, had been on her side.

 

Still, the majority vote had been to remain and so remain she did. She didn’t know how she was supposed to concentrate on the game, whatever the game was, but she would do her best. Assuming Yura was right and the bedrooms had all been rigged to do something spooky then she supposed it didn’t really matter where she was, and contrariwise, assuming all the ‘spooky’ would actually be caused by real ghosts doing real shit, well, then all the more reason to crash with Sango and Miroku.

 

“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m going to be Halloweened out for a while after this,” she murmured to herself before knocking gently on the master bedroom door before cracking it open. “Knock knock?” she said then.

 

“Kagome, come in,” Sango greeted. She was dressed in black and pink flannel pajamas, Miroku in black and purple, proving Kagome’s hypothesis right.

 

Oh, Miroku had teased his wife that afternoon when they’d been packing, wanting her to bring one of her lacy negligees, but Sango had very logically and with a bit of exasperation pointed out that if something spooky happened in the middle of the night and they had to go running out of their room, she wanted to be wearing something that actually covered her tits and ass.

 

They didn’t go to bed right away, the three of them staying up a while to discuss their present situation. Yes, it was pretty much agreed that Onigumo House was legitimately haunted, but that didn’t mean they didn’t think the place wasn’t also rigged up to do some artificially spooky stuff in the name of the contest, and they were all convinced there were hidden cameras throughout the place. Maybe it was going to air on TV or the Internet, or maybe it wasn’t, but surely there had to be some way in which to determine who’d been disqualified versus who was advancing, so somebody had to be monitoring the situation, right?

 

“The only problem with that theory, of course, is what Inuyasha pointed out. How come nobody came in to assist us after Kagewaki had his accident?” Miroku pondered.

 

“Then maybe it really is going to be for a hidden camera show or even a documentary on fear or something, but so right now nobody’s actually monitoring the cameras,” Kagome suggested as one plausible explanation. “Of course, that brings us back to the drawing board as far as how they’ll know who the ‘winner’ is, hmmm...”

 

“I’m more worried that it means we’re all on our own should something else happen,” Sango stated uneasily, earning her husband putting his arm around her reassuringly as they sat together cross legged upon the bed while speaking to Kagome who was sitting on the fainting couch across from them.

 

The future doctor hugged her pillow to herself at the thought.

 

“Well...that’s why we’re all just gonna stay in here for the night, right? So nothing else will happen, at least to us.”

 

She was suddenly reminded of how Yura had pointed out that Byakuya had said the winner would be whomsoever survived the longest. Surely he hadn’t meant that literally...right?

 

ooo

 

Downstairs in the study, Kikyou was having a marvelous time. Although most of the books were not first editions she’d actually found three, so far, that she was pretty sure were the real deal.

 

“Hey, I found a creepy room full of medical stuff that looks like a makeshift infirmary, probably where Naraku had his ‘test subjects’ recovering,” Yura said suddenly as she popped her head in the doorway. “Wanna hold a séance with me? I’ve had a little bit of activity happen already.”

 

“No thank you,” Kikyou answered politely, although on the inside she was mentally rolling her eyes. “Perusing their book collection is all I want to do before retiring for the evening.”

 

It truly was a substantial collection, wall to wall, floor to ceiling bookcases completely filled with vintage or antique novels, at least half of them leather bound. A thin rolling ladder was even attached to a track on the ceiling. The only problem was the single banker’s lamp on the desk not providing very much light to see by. If only she’d thought to bring a flashlight.

 

“That’s cool,” Yura answered before wandering back down the hallway a little bit.

 

Not really into old books all that much, Yura did have an appreciation for fine art, and so while Kikyou continued to go through making a mental list of the various books she thought the owners might be willing to part with, Yura admired the antique oil paintings that lined the hall on either side between rooms. A nearby one was of a ship at sea, while the one nearest the suit of armor was of a beautiful woman. Each one had an eerie, hauntingly beautiful quality about them that made them feel right at home in Onigumo House, even though Yura would bet they had been bought by an interior designer for the sake of the tourists. She didn’t really see the mad scientist doctor having such fine works of art, but she didn’t really mind if they were additions because they were still beautiful paintings.

 

“Man, the only thing that’d make these paintings even better is if they changed every time the lights flickered,” she joked, the sconces flickering again in that moment as if on cue, although Yura paid the supposed coincidence no mind as she continued to admire the painting of the woman.

 

“What are you yammering on about?” Kikyou asked disinterestedly from her place inside the study.

 

“The eerie looking paintings,” she answered. “Haven’t you ever gone on the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland?” Yura asked.

 

This time, Kikyou actually did roll her eyes.

 

“Not since I was a child,” she replied, not taking the bait to come out into the hallway since this was now the second time Yura had tried to get her to step away from the books. Did she think they were friends or something?

 

Not dressed like that we aren’t, Kikyou mentally snickered to herself. Even back when she was a waitress she would’ve never been caught associating with anyone wearing Yura’s godawful ‘slutty prostitute’ costume or whatever the hell it was supposed to be.

 

“No wonder you’re into stupid old books,” came Yura’s reply then. “You’ve got no inner child.”

 

“For your information, these books are for my aunt,” Kikyou defended.

 

“Whatever.”

 

Yura’s tone suggested she didn’t believe her, not that she cared, still refusing to take the bait and exit the study.

 

Deciding that there were far too many novels she wanted in order to be able to remember them all, Kikyou began removing the ones she was most interested in in that moment, stacking them on the desk. She would have just written a physical list of the best books, but she’d already checked all the drawers in the desk and there were no pens or paper anywhere to be had.

 

In fact, the drawers were all completely empty, as if the room had been staged to look like an archaic study for this event and it wasn’t really a study Dr. Onigumo had ever used while he was alive. Who knew what the house had really looked like back then? The entire place had probably been transformed for tourists, staged, turned into what one would expect to see in a hundred-year-old haunted house. Which, if true, would probably work to her favor as that meant the family would almost certainly be less emotionally attached to any of the books she wanted to make an offer on, if they were just props.

 

Of course, it was also equally as plausible that the mundane odds and ends that made a home look lived in had been removed while leaving the rest of the original ambiance intact. She supposed she’d never know for certain unless she stumbled upon some old photographs of what the property had been like back then, but she highly doubted it. Either way, it wasn’t really any concern of hers, as she continued to go through the books on the shelves and pull out any exceptionally good ones for consideration.

 

Yura, having given up on trying to get a rise out of Kikyou, was fully immersed in that first painting. The woman hanging right next to the suit of armor that stood beside the door to the study. She was a so pretty, a pale blond thing in a medieval dress looking like the beautiful lady the knight was sworn to protect. Yura found herself especially drawn into the woman’s hazel eyes, almost as if she could feel the soul of the woman who’d posed for the portrait reaching out to her from beyond the grave.

 

Shaking her head at such silliness, she laughed, again remembering as the sconces flickered once more how the paintings in the Haunted Mansion would change in time with the fake lightning flashes. The wall sconces, which in her mind had obviously been rigged to dim and flicker in a deliberate attempt to amp up the spooky, continued to cast the portrait in an eerie and irregular glow, and her mind became completely lost in the feel of the moment.

 

“We have nine hundred and ninety-nine happy haunts here,” she said menacingly, earning an amused snort from Kikyou from within the study that made Yura crack a grin as she continued. “But there’s room for one thousand.”

 

She spread her arms wide, as if presenting the space. A faint noise coming from the suit of armor earned her attention, but her reaction time was slow as the painting continued to hold her captive. She turned her head just in time to watch in belated comprehension as the giant battle-ax slipped from the knight’s grasp and cleanly severed her right hand at the wrist.

 

Releasing a blood curdling scream, Yura held up her bleeding stump of a wrist and stared at it in shock before fainting. Rushing into action at the sound of the all too real scream, Kikyou ran out into the hall just in time to catch her, getting completely covered in blood in the process. Seeing what’d happened, she screamed as well.

 

Everyone else came running at the sound.

 

From his place chilling in the other bedroom down the hall, having been lying in bed staring up at the ceiling and wondering if he should try to bang Tsubaki or Kagome, Hiten was the first to arrive at the sound of Yura and Kikyou’s screams, followed swiftly by Manten from the kitchen.

 

Upstairs, Kagome, Sango and Miroku were still deep in conversation when Yura’s scream initially chilled them to their bones. Already bolting to their feet, they were just rushing out of the bedroom when Kikyou’s scream gave them an extra burst of adrenaline.

 

Inuyasha, too, had sat up with a start at Yura’s scream. He would’ve immediately gotten up to investigate as well, except being so horribly nearsighted he initially paused in order to put his contact lenses back in. Upon hearing Kikyou’s scream, however, he forwent his contacts and bolted from the room. Just because she was an annoying bitch who clearly no longer loved him, assuming she honestly ever had, he, at least, had truly loved her once and he definitely didn’t want to see her hurt. She didn’t fear easily, and he knew no fake haunted house bullshit would’ve caused her to scream like that, so it was with his heart in his throat that he rushed down the second floor hallway and down the stairs right behind Kagome, Sango and Miroku.

 

Even Tsubaki, who had snorted to herself at the first scream, became a little more concerned at the second, and it was the sound of everyone running past her room and down the stairs that had her deciding she’d better see what was going on, too, just in case.

 

As they arrived on the scene, everyone stared in horror at what they saw happening before them. Everything had been kind of fuzzy for Inuyasha at first, but as he got closer even he could see what had happened, and he was horrified.

 

Kagome was the first to recover from her shock. True to her calling, even though her ultimate goal was to become a neural specialist and not a general surgeon, she rushed forward in that moment and dropped to her knees before the sitting Kikyou who was still holding the unconscious Yura. Kikyou had both of her hands clasped tightly around Yura’s stump, doing her best to stop the blood flow, but she couldn’t hold on tight enough. There was so much blood. Far too much blood, truth be told, which had now stained the legs of Kagome’s pajama bottoms, not that she cared.

 

“Are you wearing a belt?” she asked Kikyou, not remembering and unable to tell with the way Kikyou’s blouse billowed over her waistband.

 

“No,” the older woman answered, her concise response and the look in her eyes both telling Kagome that Kikyou was getting pushed to the limit of her tolerance. She looked like she was about to pass out, herself.

 

“Is anyone wearing a belt?!” Kagome called over her shoulder, then. “I need something I can turn into a tourniquet!”

 

“Don’t look at me,” Manten said with a helpless shrug. “Belts and I don’t exactly get along.”

 

“Here,” Tsubaki said then, the woman having thrown the matching robe to her nightgown on when she’d left her room. She handed Kagome the belt from her purple and magenta robe, not worried in that moment about it falling open since she was wearing a gown underneath that came down past her knees.

 

Kagome gratefully accepted the robe belt and tied it as tightly as she possibly could around Yura’s right arm, between elbow and wrist, but she feared it was already too late. Checking for a pulse, she couldn’t find one, so then she gestured for everyone to be quiet a moment as she bent down and listened for a heartbeat, ear to chest. Yura’s body was silent, and also much too cold. As she’d feared, it was too late.

 

“There’s...there’s nothing I can do,” she said remorsefully, meeting Kikyou’s eyes with sympathy as the older woman paled at the realization that she’d just had a woman die in her arms.

 

Gently laying Yura on the floor, Kagome slowly got to her feet, offering her hand to Kikyou to help her up as well. Shakily, Kikyou accepted, letting Kagome pull her to her feet. As if on autopilot, Kikyou approached Inuyasha, then, her mouth opening and closing a few times although she had no idea what to say. Normally she’d have wanted to comment on his beautiful brown eyes, reminding him yet again that with simple lasik surgery, which he could easily afford, he could keep his gorgeous eyes without the hassle of glasses, but even she could tell it would be an inappropriate comment at a time like this, so she let it go.

 

Kagome was not so quiet.

 

“Okay, this time we need to call 911. This wasn’t a simple mishap like somebody accidentally choking to death,” she stated with as much authority as she could muster, deciding to not rehash the fact that Kagewaki actually had hand prints on his throat that suggested he’d been strangled.

 

“I agree,” Inuyasha stated, the man currently holding the still stunned Kikyou in his arms, having figured she could use whatever comfort he could offer her.

 

He didn’t care that she’d gotten his own clothes all bloody. It wasn’t like he couldn’t easily replace them. She was in shock and he wasn’t going to be cold to her at a time like this.

 

“Come on, this was obviously a tragic accident,” Hiten said then, with a gesture to the fallen ax still lying on the floor next to Yura’s severed hand.

 

“Even so, this needs to spell game over,” Miroku insisted.

 

“And how do we know it was really an accident?” Inuyasha asked Hiten, Kikyou looking up at him with wide, unblinking eyes at the possibility. “Byakuya did say whoever survives the longest,” he reminded her quietly as he met her eyes, not wanting to scare her further but needing to voice his opinion. Looking back up at everyone else he added, “What if the person who put this night together is some kind of deranged killer and the whole house is rigged to kill us all?”

 

“Either that, or there are murderous ghosts here,” Sango chimed in nervously, rubbing her right hand up and down over her left arm from shoulder to elbow as she glanced around the room uneasily.

 

Hiten only shrugged, briefly meeting his brother’s eyes as if silently asking Manten his opinion. Manten smirked and rubbed his belly before departing without a word, heading back towards the dining room.

 

“Whatever’s going on here, we’re not leaving,” Hiten declared then.

 

“You’re really willing to risk your life for a million dollars?” Kagome asked in disbelief.

 

He smirked at her rather wickedly.

 

“No, but I’m willing to risk yours.”

 

Fuming, Kagome approached and made to punch Hiten right in the face, but Sango and Miroku both rushed forward to hold her back.

 

“Kagome! Kagome, he isn’t worth it,” Sango stressed.

 

“Think about your career,” Miroku added, which got her to calm down. The last thing she needed was an assault charge on her record, even if the smug bastard deserved it.

 

For his part, Hiten had never even looked nervous for a second, as if he’d been fully prepared to knock Kagome out should she have tried it. It made Inuyasha’s own blood boil in response.

 

“And where exactly were you when the ax ‘accidentally’ severed Yura’s hand?” he asked him then.

 

Hiten actually took a step back at that, a brief, very brief, flash of worry appearing in his eyes because if the others actually ganged up on him that would definitely put him at a disadvantage.

 

“He didn’t do it,” Kikyou murmured then, her voice sounding almost robotic.

 

“Kikyou?” Inuyasha murmured tenderly.

 

“I heard the ax fall to the ground,” she explained. “I heard her scream, and when I ran to her there was nobody else there. Then Hiten showed up from down the hall.”

 

Hiten smirked triumphantly at that, his expression taunting everyone. “See? I didn’t do it. You lot are paranoid.”

 

“Two out of ten people dead within a half hour of each other, on Halloween night, in a haunted house we’re locked inside of, in a process of elimination game that was never thoroughly explained to us...I think we have the right to be paranoid,” Kagome stated, earning a nod of agreement from Sango and Miroku.

 

“We also now have the right to break the fuck out of here, and the homeowners shouldn’t be able to sue us for a stupid broken window,” Inuyasha declared as he gently let go of Kikyou before walking with purpose into the sitting area by the fireplace.

 

Objects farther away were out of focus, true, but he could see well enough to pick up one of the smaller chairs. It was heavy, but he was strong, and he lugged it back into the great room past the others who were all gathered near the mouth to the hallway. Walking right up to the large picture window beside the double doors, he adjusted the chair so that he was holding it feet out, the back of the chair to the side so he wouldn’t stupidly jab it into his gut, and charged.

 

“Aahhh!” he yelled as he rammed the glass as hard as he could with the feet of the chair, completely expecting the window to shatter.

 

Instead, he bounced back, losing his balance and falling to the floor with the now somewhat bloody chair landing beside him.

 

“No, oh no no no...” Kagome murmured as she rushed over to the window and without even thinking of the potential consequences, punched the glass with her right fist as hard as she could.

 

But there were no consequences, save for bruised knuckles and the oddly satisfying exertion of energy after having been denied the chance to punch Hiten in the face. The window didn’t break, because it wasn’t glass. Tapping it with the nails of her left hand and listening confirmed it. “The window’s acrylic!” she declared.

 

“What?!” Miroku exclaimed in shock. It was his turn to go over to the other windows, tapping each of them one by one. Every single one was made out of thick Plexiglas.

 

“What about prying the pins out of the door hinges?” Sango asked then.

 

“Nice idea in theory,” Miroku said, as he examined the front doors. “But it looks like, even if we managed to find a screwdriver or something, these bad boys have been upgraded, too. There’s no prying the pins out of these hinges.”

 

“What about a back door?” Kagome suggested. “Surely there’s got to be one, like in the kitchen, yeah?”

 

Miroku quickly rushed through the dining room and into the kitchen because indeed, there was a backdoor.

 

“It’s no use,” he answered as he reappeared less than a minute later. “It’s also locked, solid wood, the window is Plexiglas, and the hinges are solid with no accessible pins.”

 

“So we really are trapped here?” Tsubaki asked, sounding a little uneasy herself now.

 

“Looks that way,” Inuyasha answered, trying to stay calm when all he really wanted to do was take the knight’s battle-ax and chop through the door à la The Shining. But he wasn’t stupid. Like Miroku said, those doors were heavy duty solid wood, and Inuyasha knew he wouldn’t be able to break through them like that.

 

“Well...we better move Yura’s body to the other bedroom,” Kagome stated then, gesturing down the main hallway. “Assuming any of us are still alive come morning, we can explain what happened to the police,” she added dryly.

 

Morbidly, everyone agreed, before Tsubaki excused herself to go back up to her bedroom for the night and Hiten, perhaps a little shaken himself though refusing to admit it, also headed to the servant’s bedroom he’d chosen for himself.

 

“Are you all right?” Inuyasha asked Kikyou then. “I agree with Kagome that we should get Yura’s body put into the last bedroom.”

 

Better downstairs and down the hallway no one was using rather than upstairs next to the rest of all of them, he thought. Now here was hoping nobody else died because sooner or later they’d run out of places to put the bodies and he did not want to sleep in a room next door to a corpse.

 

“Yeah, I’m...I’m fine,” Kikyou stated then, earning a nod from Inuyasha before he moved to stand over Yura’s body. She wasn’t fine, but what did he care?

 

Considering she was already covered in blood, Kagome volunteered to help Inuyasha carry Yura in that moment, not seeing any point in letting Miroku get all bloody as well.

 

“She’s not as heavy as Kagewaki,” he pointed out, as he scooped the poor woman up into his arms. “Especially with all her blood on the floor,” he added under his breath, walking carefully in his bare feet so as not to slip.

 

Avoiding stepping in the blood was impossible, and he feared this night was going to haunt him for years to come, but he’d break down later. Right now, he had to be a man and keep his shit together.

 

Kagome, too, was trying her best not to lose it, as she picked up Yura’s severed hand, figuring they’d better not just leave it lying in the hallway. She also moved the ax so that it was against the wall and less of a tripping, or cutting, hazard.

 

“Lead the way,” Inuyasha said to Kagome then, since he couldn’t really see much of anything, especially in the low, flickering light of the hallway.

 

“Fifth door on the right,” Sango called after them, before she and Miroku moved to go have a seat on the love seat by the fireplace. They were far too shaken up to try going back to bed.

 

Kikyou watched her boyfriend and that woman disappear down the hall with narrowed eyes, ignoring it as Sango and Miroku moved to have a seat over by the fireplace. How dare Inuyasha leave her at a time like this?! She was in shock here, people! Okay, so she wasn’t really in shock anymore, but still. At that medical student’s bidding he just scooped Yura’s corpse up and trotted after her like an obedient puppy!

 

Calm down, Kikyou, she tried to reason with herself, knowing damn well she’d pushed Inuyasha past his breaking point by dragging him to this event. She had easily been able to tell that he was planning on breaking up with her, win or lose, so why begrudge him playing nice to that would-be doctor?

 

It was just the principle of the thing, she supposed. Also, the fact that Yura had just bled out in her arms    had put her into a bit of a mood. The fact that it might not have been an accident was just icing on the cake. Why had she wanted to come to this stupid thing again? Oh right, to win her very own million dollars. Was it worth it? What if the people running this place really were killing everyone off? What if she was next?

 

I think Tsubaki has the right idea. I’m just going to go shut myself up in our bedroom for the rest of the night.

 

Looking down over herself, she realized she’d better get cleaned up, first.

 

ooo

 

As Kagome led Inuyasha to the fifth door on the right she had no idea about the death glare Kikyou had shot their way, not that she would’ve cared had she known. She wasn’t trying to take Inuyasha away from her, after all. In that moment, all she wanted was to get Yura put to bed.

 

You make it sound like she’s just passed out, Kagome thought, tears stinging her eyes at the knowledge that, yet again, she’d been powerless to save someone’s life.

 

Inuyasha could read her thoughts loud and clear from the look in her eyes, standing close enough to her to see her face clearly even in the expected low lighting of the last bedroom, and as he laid Yura out on the four-post bed he glanced back up at Kagome and murmured tenderly, “You know her death isn’t your fault, right?”

 

“Logically,” she conceded with a meek nod, as she reached forward and gently placed Yura’s severed hand where it belonged, placing it on the bed at the end of her wrist. “But I still feel like I should’ve been able to do something,” she added.

 

“Once someone’s lost too much blood they won’t live without an immediate transfusion,” he argued gently. “Even I know that much and I know jack shit when it comes to medical stuff.”

 

Wordlessly, Kagome nodded again.

 

“Don’t let these deaths discourage you,” Inuyasha added then, trying to cheer her up however much would be appropriate under the circumstances. “I’m sure you’ll make a fabulous doctor one day.”

 

That got the reaction he was hoping for, as her sad eyes hardened a little bit, not in coldness, but in resolve. Determination.

 

“I must. My brother’s life depends on it.”

 

Inuyasha remembered then, how while they were picking out bedrooms upstairs she’d said that she was going to become a specialist. He’d figured at the time that the disease she was determined to cure had touched someone in her life, but he hadn’t known if the person was still alive and she was playing beat the clock, or if they’d already died and she had merely made it her life’s goal to save everyone else with the same disease.

 

“Both, actually,” she explained after he told her his thoughts on the subject. “Our father died from fatal insomnia, but Souta also has the gene and will probably develop the condition at some point, unless, of course, they...or I...discover a treatment.”

 

“If anyone can do it, you can,” he told her, smiling a little when she blushed.

 

“You don’t even know me,” she pointed out.

 

“That may be true,” he conceded, “but I don’t need my contacts to see the hardened resolve in your eyes. Your convictions should be commended.”

 

She smiled a little, then blinked in realization regarding his comment about contacts, since his golden yellow eyes were now a warm, chocolate brown.

 

“Oh yeah, I noticed you took out your lenses for bed, but they’re prescription? I’d just figured they were cool for the sake of cool. Didn’t realize they were also functional.”

 

He snorted a chuckle.

 

“My girlfriend...” he stressed – he might as well have used air quotes – “...doesn’t like them.”

 

“What?” she asked, genuinely surprised. “Why? They really go with your whole look.”

 

He shrugged, his body language conveying that he neither knew nor cared. “She doesn’t like the bleached hair, either. Made the last five months of my life a living hell after I refused for the fifth time to dye it back to black.”

 

“So she liked you better before, huh?” Kagome asked, trying to sound sympathetic to both their situations when what she really wanted to do was call Kikyou a bad name. “Well I think your current look looks great.”

 

“Thanks.” He meant it. “And to answer your question, I looked like this when we first got together, and she had at least acted like she was fine with it. I should’ve realized she was just looking for a way to quit her waitressing gig. We met at an 18+ nightclub, so she had probably been cruising the scene, and it’d been my outfit, not my hair style, that had drawn her to me because it told her I had money. Things were great for the first month, but then she saw my high school graduation photo, and fell in love with the old me.”

 

“Well that’s just all sorts of not fair,” Kagome stated then. “You’re allowed to look however you want to look and if she loves you, she should accept you for who and what you are.”

 

“I agree,” he said. “Which is why I’m pretty sure at this point, she never truly loved me. She might’ve fallen for me had I done what she asked, but with as much as she insults my looks these days I’ve come to the conclusion the only reason she originally hooked up with me was for my money. At first she’d always apologize after blowing up at me, and not to be crude but the makeup sex was awesome, but just like a guy who beats up his wife then apologizes, she kept getting worse and worse, and now all we ever do anymore is fight.”

 

Kagome nodded her understanding to everything, not asking him how much money he had, nor did she care. That was his business. She did have one question, though. Even if she was being a bit nosy, given their current topic of conversation she figured she could get away with it.

 

“How come you don’t just break up with her, then?”

 

“After this bullshit is over, I intend to, and she knows it.”

 

He then explained, briefly, he and Kikyou’s latest fight, and how she’d agreed that if he helped her win this money she’d get out of his ‘freakish’ hair, although he was pretty sure she knew he was planning on breaking up with her win or lose. Why he hadn’t tossed her out on her ass before now was probably just that, he would’ve literally been tossing her out on her ass since she had no job, no money, and no place to live without him, and he had loved her, once, and so he just couldn’t bring himself to be that cold to her.

 

“If neither of us win this money, even assuming there is a prize at this point and it wasn’t all a lie to lure us to our deaths, I plan on giving her a severance package, if you will. She’s costing me thousands a month, anyway, so I don’t mind giving her what she would’ve spent over another six month period if it’ll help her get her own apartment and have enough to live off of until she gets another job. If she blows through it and winds up homeless that would then no longer be my problem, because I didn’t abandoned her, she’d have screwed herself over and I can wash my hands of it.”

 

That he was willing to do so much for a woman who was sounding more and more like a gold digging bitch really meant a lot to Kagome. It just showed her what kind of a person he was deep down inside, just the same as he claimed to be able to tell what kind of a person she was.

 

“I suppose we better go rejoin the others,” she said then. “Being this far down this hallway is a little too creepy for me. I don’t even care about checking out the other rooms.”

 

“Agreed,” he stated.

 

Turning to exit the room, Kagome caught sight of something in the mirror above the dresser and gasped, taking a step backward, into Inuyasha, who instinctively put his arms around her in a protective gesture.

 

“What is it?!” he asked, worried, not having seen anything but of course, he couldn’t see anything at the moment unless it was practically right in front of his face.

 

“I saw...I saw a little girl, in the mirror,” Kagome explained, pointing at the offending reflective surface. “She couldn’t have been older than ten, with platinum blond hair almost as white as yours, and her eyes...her eyes were solid black. She had no expression. She was just...looking at me.”

 

“That fucking bastard,” Inuyasha growled. “They didn’t say some of the bodies Naraku got to experiment with had been children.”

 

“Let’s pray she was one of the donor cadavers, and not one of the recipients,” Kagome said. “They only said that the servants had been the first to go, the maid and cook and whoever, but if they had been the first to go...”

 

“Yeah...” he agreed. “Then that means that fucking lunatic continued to do experiments on live victims after killing everyone in his employ.”

 

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Kagome said then.

 

“I couldn’t agree more.”

 

Coming back out into the great room, then, Inuyasha and Kagome both noticed how Sango and Miroku were sitting in the living room area over by the fireplace and headed over in that direction themselves.

 

“Can’t sleep?” Kagome asked, trying to make light conversation, seeing no point in freaking them out by telling them about the little girl she’d just seen.

 

“Could you?” Sango questioned in return.

 

“I know I can’t,” Inuyasha said. “I also think we all need to stick together.”

 

Miroku and Sango both nodded their agreement.

 

“I take it Kikyou went back upstairs?” he asked them then.

 

“I asked her to join us,” Sango answered, “but she said she just wanted to get cleaned up and then go to bed.”

 

Nodding in understanding, Inuyasha told the others he’d be right back, before cringing at his poor choice of words and asking them to keep their ears open for any manly screams of terror. He was only half kidding. That said, he headed upstairs to find his still current girlfriend and invite her back downstairs with the rest of them. Safety in numbers and all that.

 

“So do you think a ghost killed Yura?” Sango asked Kagome after Inuyasha departed, her tone of voice revealing her worry, not skepticism.

 

“After what I saw on Kagewaki’s neck I think it’s more likely than just chalking it up to a random coincidence.”

 

“He really has marks on his neck like somebody choked him?” Miroku asked.

 

Kagome nodded.

 

“Just great. We’re trapped in a house full of murderous ghosts,” Sango bemoaned. “What else is gonna go wrong?”

 

ooo

 

“Kikyou?” Inuyasha addressed as he stood just outside the open doorway to the upstairs bathroom. “Miroku, Sango and Kagome are staying downstairs in the living room and I think it’s a good idea,” he said. “I think we should join them.”

 

Of course you want to be wherever Kagome is, she thought bitterly as she tried to scrub the blood off her hands and arms in the sink. She was still wearing her ruined blouse and slacks, but she hadn’t wanted to grab her night clothes out of their bag with her hands still covered in blood. She’d change her clothes next.

 

“You can do whatever you want,” she answered him, “but I’m not going anywhere except to bed, after I get myself cleaned up first, of course.”

 

“I really think you should join us downstairs,” he argued, indirectly stating that if she went to bed it would be alone.

 

She couldn’t blame him, really.

 

“I’ll think about it,” she conceded then, her tone as placating as she could make it, which still sounded bitchy, even to her own ears. She would’ve winced had her pride allowed it.

 

Nodding reluctantly, not wanting to fight with her about it, Inuyasha headed back downstairs, approaching the others just in time to witness a very large ember pop out of the fireplace and roll much farther than it should’ve been able to, landing on the Oriental rug, which immediately caught on fire.

 

“Shit!” he cursed as he ran towards them at the same time they all bolted to their feet. Their bare feet, so nobody dared to try stomping out the small but rapidly growing fire.

 

Miroku did try to roll the carpet up on itself but quickly realized it was stuck to the floor, so then it was time to come up with Plan B.

 

“Just had to ask what else could go wrong!” he exclaimed as he and Sango ran through the dining room and into the kitchen, not that he actually blamed his wife one bit for what’d happened.

 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Manten joked in poor taste as they both rushed in on him, catching the fat man in the middle of raiding the fridge.

 

“The rug’s on fire!” Miroku declared as he grabbed the water pitcher Kagura had used during dinner, grateful she’d left it lying out, and filled it from the sink as quickly as possible before handing it off to Sango and looking for another vessel.

 

Not waiting to see what he came up with, Sango darted back out towards the living room, slamming through the kitchen’s free swinging door without slowing down, running as fast as she could around the dining table without slipping as she rushed over to the rapidly growing carpet fire and poured the water on it. She got most of it, but not all, and cursed softly under her breath. Fortunately, Miroku reappeared shortly after her carrying a large cooking pot filled with water that he quickly dumped out as well, taking care of the last bit of fire that Sango hadn’t had enough water to get before it could spread to other dry parts of the rug.

 

Manten came out not long after him carrying yet another cooking pot of water, the large man not quite so cold and heartless as his more handsome sibling. Besides, if the house burned down that would be very, very bad, for all of them.

 

“Good, good,” Miroku said, seeing Manten. “I don’t care how cold the house gets. It’s not like we’re in Alaska. Toss that on the fire,” he instructed, pointing at the fireplace.

 

Manten agreed with Miroku’s logic and dumped his load of water directly onto the burning logs, dousing the entire flame.

 

“At least we won’t have to worry about that possibility again,” Kagome commented in relief.

 

ooo

 

Feeling a little more shaken up about having Yura die in her arms like that than she’d been willing to display in front of Inuyasha, although that didn’t mean she wanted to go downstairs and bask in the others’ company, Kikyou had changed into her pajamas before heading back into the bathroom to do her normal nightly rituals before bed.

 

Unfortunately, changing into her pajamas, which also consisted of a white top, this time a thin bathrobe, tucked into loose fitting red elastic waist pants, did nothing to help her feel any less dirty, still remembering the look of herself covered in Yura’s blood. Her white blouse and even her red linen pants were completely ruined and rolled up into a ball on the floor of their bedroom, and while ordinarily white and red was her favorite combination and almost always what she wore, in that moment Kikyou wished she had decided to bring something different for her sleeping attire because looking at herself in the mirror as she tried to just brush her teeth had her still seeing herself covered in blood.

 

It took her a minute to realize she really was still seeing herself covered in blood. It wasn’t her imagination.

 

Gasping and looking down at herself in shock, her robe was clean. Confused, and wondering if she was losing it, she glanced back up at her reflection again and once again saw the same image as before, the same splatter of blood that had been on her button-up blouse now appearing on her robe. Then suddenly, a dark shadowy figure appeared in the mirror standing behind her. She whirled around, but instead of there being nobody there, as one might expect, which would have been creepy in its own right, she actually saw Kagewaki standing there, wearing black clothing instead of his original outfit of blue and gray.

 

Frozen in place, Kikyou watched as his knowing grin stretched into a full blown evil smile.

 

“Hello, Kikyou.”

 

He lunged for her, and she turned and bolted from the bathroom, but not quickly enough to avoid him ‘touching’ her with his ghostly hand on her right shoulder blade, as if he’d very nearly grabbed her but just missed.

 

Searing pain ran through her back, as if she’d been sliced with claws, but that didn’t slow her down as she ran down the upstairs hallway into her and Inuyasha’s designated bedroom. Why she’d gone that way instead of downstairs, knowing that that was where the others were, she couldn’t be sure.

 

Slamming the door shut behind her, she was afraid to look at herself in the mirror hanging above the dresser but she slowly, hesitantly approached it, and was surprised to find that not only was her reflection no longer covered in Yura’s blood, but there appeared to be no blood on her shoulder, either, even though the phantom wound was still throbbing. Turning her head to look over her shoulder directly confirmed it, there was no blood.

 

“You can’t escape me, Kikyou,” ‘Kagewaki’ said smugly as he suddenly appeared in the corner of the room.

 

“Kagewaki?” she asked. “What do you want with me? Why are you doing this?” She knew she was talking to a ghost at that point, so she wouldn’t consider herself crazy. On the contrary, he seemed the mad one between the two of them.

 

He tsk’d at her, as if she should’ve realized who he was.

 

“Shame on you for not recognizing your host for the evening,” he teased. “Although I must admit, your Kagewaki fellow had a rather handsome face. That’s why I’ve chosen it for myself. Suits me well, don’t you think?”

 

Her eyes narrowed, easily putting two and two together after learning the horrible backstory to this place.

 

“Naraku,” she hissed. “Just what have you done with Kagewaki’s spirit?”

 

She’d worry about why she was suddenly feeling protective of the poor sod another time.

 

Naraku merely shrugged.

 

“Oh, he’s around here somewhere, mixed in with my many other victims. They all want their chance at revenge, you know, but since they cannot exact their revenge against me, the living will have to do.”

 

“If the others want to kill us simply as payback for them having died, then what do you want?” she asked next, while mentally trying to calculate if she could make it to the door before he could attack her again.

 

Leaning forward a little, Naraku’s eyes sparkled merrily.

 

“Why don’t you try to make a run for it and find out.”

 

Kikyou’s mind was working a mile a minute. She’d never used to believe in ghosts, not really, but now that she was having a conversation with one, and an evil one at that, everything else suddenly started to make sense. Kagewaki had been choked to death by a ghost, just like Kagome had claimed, and that ax falling on Yura had been no coincidence. But the fact that Naraku had taken Kagewaki’s face was especially troubling. That, and Naraku’s casual remark about all of the ghosts, Kagewaki included, wanting their revenge against the living. Byakuya had commented about them possibly joining the ghosts during his so-called disclaimer during dinner, not that any of them had believed him at the time, but Kikyou had seen one too many horror movies to not get the gist of what was going on here.

 

“There’s no point in me trying to run. Even if I made it out of this room you or someone else would surely kill me before sunrise.”

 

Naraku nodded, as if they were merely discussing dinner plans.

 

“That’s the plan,” he answered, as more black figures began to appear in the other corners of the room.

 

Out of the corner of her eyes she could almost make out their faces, but every time she turned her head to get a better look at them they were gone. Still, she got the feeling she was being surrounded. Probably now that they already had a couple of kills under their belts the ghosts were getting stronger. Either that, or they were gaining in strength the closer they got to midnight.

 

Sitting down slowly on the edge of the bed, trying not to make any sudden movements, Kikyou carefully pulled her overnight bag closer, reaching inside with her right hand as nonchalantly as possible. Naraku only smirked at her at the not-so-subtle move, feeling confident that there was nothing in her bag that could possibly help her escape him.

 

“There’s nowhere to run,” she said as if in agreement, just to keep talking, letting Naraku relish in her fear. She was afraid, after all. “The door’s locked, the windows can’t be broken...”

 

“Tsk tsk,” Yura’s disembodied voice chimed in suddenly, although she didn’t manifest in the room. Kikyou only flinched in surprise but didn’t otherwise make any movements. “Don’t be afraid,” Yura continued. “There’s room for one thousand and one.”

 

Kikyou snorted dryly at that.

 

Ah yes, the Haunted Mansion, how appropriate.

 

“I’m sorry I ignored you when you were just trying to be friendly, Yura,” she said, to no reply.

 

She did remember the attraction, although she’d been telling the truth when she’d said she hadn’t been on it since she was a kid. During her childhood, though, it had been her favorite ride.

 

“This room has no windows, and no doors...” she muttered to herself. “Find a way out, indeed.”

 

Picking something up out of her overnight bag, something she’d been looking for as discreetly as possible, she looked Naraku in the eye and gave him her best bitch face.

 

“Of course, there’s always my way,” she said, revealing her cuticle nippers before forcefully jabbing them into the underside of her left wrist and slicing downward as hard and fast as she could, blood spraying out like a fountain.

 

“No!” Naraku shouted before dissipating, all of the other black shadow figures fleeing the room as well.

 

Laughing somewhat deliriously as her blood poured freely, staining her nightclothes and the bedding, Kikyou looked at her wrist a moment in fascination, as if unable to believe she’d actually done it. Thanks to her adrenaline rush it hadn’t even hurt that much, and judging by Naraku’s reaction it had been the right thing to do.

 

“Inuyasha, I’m...sorry...I didn’t...get to say...goodbye...” Kikyou whispered as she stretched herself out in the bed before letting her left arm drape over the side, her blood pooling on the floor below. The clippers were still in her right hand; she wanted Inuyasha to know that she’d won, the ghosts hadn’t killed her.

 

ooo

 

Unable to sleep, Tsubaki lied wide awake in bed, her lamp still on, staring blankly up at the ceiling. She’d heard the muffled yelling from down below, and the rapid footsteps of somebody running down the hall past her room and a slamming door, but at that point she had no intention of leaving the sanctuary of her own room to see what was going on with the others. Her top priority was her own survival.

 

Suddenly seeing a shadow zip past out of the corner of her eye, she sat up swiftly but didn’t see anything. Still not truly believing the place was haunted, the play of light and shadow instantly pissed her off.

 

“These fucking idiots think it’s okay to continue running their gags after two people have died?” she cursed under her breath, no longer as content as she had previously been to keep playing the game after what she still thought was Kagewaki’s accidental choking.

 

One tragedy, she could excuse on their behalf, thinking of the caretakers for this event. Especially a man who’d apparently choked to death on a bite of food, and in front of everyone else at the table, too, so there had clearly been no foul play involved. She could see the point of view of the others who’d thought they should’ve canceled the game and called 911, and she would’ve agreed had that been an option, but after learning they couldn’t make any outgoing phone calls and they couldn’t leave the    house, she had been willing to not worry about it and get back to the game.

 

Or her version of it, at least, which was called ‘let all the other idiots scare themselves with the fake hocus pocus while she slept through it and won the prize money in the morning.’

 

But now that Yura had been killed as well? And yes, she had been killed, whether by accident or design she couldn’t be certain, but she had most certainly not stupidly cut her own hand off by leaning against the ax too hard or something. That could’ve been rigged so easily, too, if the suit of armor were actually animatronic in any way and the knight had deliberately swung at her, either at the behest of someone pushing a button or an automated motion sensor. If it were just meant to scare, though, then there was no way the ax should’ve been that sharp, or sharp at all really. The worst it should’ve done, had it accidentally hit Yura when meaning only to frighten her, was maybe give her a light bruise. And in fact, the more Tsubaki thought about it, she didn’t think an ax just falling should’ve been able to cut clean through bone like that, no matter how sharp it was. There had to have been some force behind it.

 

That realization, coupled with another zipping shadow, had her jumping out of bed.

 

“Don’t be afraid,” came a male voice from...somewhere. “Oh, on second thought, do.”

 

Turning in every direction, Tsubaki gasped when suddenly, standing in a corner she knew had been empty before, was none other than Kagewaki. She didn’t notice that he was now wearing black instead of his original outfit. Who cared what a ghost was wearing? There was a freakin’ ghost in her room!

 

With her brain screaming at her that she should’ve listened to the others, she made to dash for the closed bedroom door, but a sudden onslaught of flying shadows that seemed to peel themselves off the walls and floor before taking flight around the room had her jumping back in order to avoid running into them.

 

“Why...why are you doing this?!” she shouted at ‘Kagewaki’ then.

 

Naraku smirked. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “They’re hungry.” And they had just been denied another meal.

 

As the streaking black shadows slowly turned into gray smoke-like snake things while continuing to fly in circles around the room, Tsubaki slowly but surely inched her way closer to the door, while trying not to let any of the creepy things touch her. Fortunately, Naraku was standing in the back corner of the room, not even trying to block her exit. She should’ve realized by his look of smug confidence that he wasn’t worried about her making a break for it.

 

Trying the doorknob, it didn’t turn, as if the door was locked even though there was no lock. Eyes wide, her fear skyrocketed as she whirled around and tried to turn the knob with both hands before then yanking on the door in an attempt to force it open even though the knob still wouldn’t budge. Then the snake-like phantoms started to morph again and take even clearer shape, becoming eerily glowing demonic-looking serpents. Frozen in fear at the sight, Tsubaki’s shallow breaths began coming out in faint puffs of steam as the temperature in the room dropped by more than thirty degrees.

 

“What...what are these things?” she asked.

 

“Marvelous, aren’t they?” Naraku replied, not answering her question. “They feed off human fear, while my companions crave death. It’s a match made in Hell,” he chuckled darkly.

 

With that, one of the serpents flew straight for Tsubaki, and before she had time to react, the ghostly creature went into her right eye. She screamed, her long black hair turning white, as suddenly an entire roomful of people stood all around her, watching in twisted satisfaction.

 

ooo

 

Downstairs, Sango, Miroku, Inuyasha and Kagome were still sitting in the living room by the extinguished fireplace when they heard Tsubaki’s scream.

 

“Oh God,” Kagome gasped, bolting to her feet. “What now?!”

 

Quickly, they all ran upstairs, followed swiftly by Hiten and Manten as well.

 

“Help! Help me! Let me out! Let me out!” they all heard Tsubaki scream from within her bedroom, her doorknob jiggling, her loud pounding on the door almost muffling her cries.

 

Sango immediately tried the knob on the outside but it wouldn’t turn either. She gave the others a helpless look.

 

“Stand back!” Inuyasha shouted, his volume for Tsubaki’s benefit, as he slammed his shoulder into the door as hard as he could. “Ow, fuck,” he cursed when the door didn’t break. “Looks so much easier on TV.”

 

“Move,” Manten said then.

 

Getting out of the way, Inuyasha was grateful to the large man who put his extra weight to good use, successfully breaking down the door.

 

“Tsubaki!” Kagome cried, gasping in surprise as an elderly, wrinkled woman with white hair, wearing Tsubaki’s nightgown, fell out into the hallway.

 

Miroku somehow managed to catch her in time and then helped to ease her down onto the floor.

 

“My God, what happened to you?” he asked the woman who had to be Tsubaki even though her transformation seemed impossible.

 

“E...evil...” she wheezed, clutching the neckline of Miroku’s pajama top. She then exhaled once more and became very still.

 

“So now they’re literally scaring us to death,” Sango stated with a forced laugh. “That’s just perfect.”

 

Kagome shook her head.

 

“Fear wouldn’t cause this...” she stated slowly, as if questioning everything she knew about medical science based on the evidence before her. She knelt to get a closer look. “It’s like...it’s like something evil, like she said, must have sucked the very life force right out of her.”

 

“Who knows what a collective group of pissed off ghosts can do?” Miroku stated as he scooped Tsubaki up and brought her back into her room, laying her out gently on her bed. “Supposedly they can and do suck energy out of things, like batteries. Assuming everything we’ve ever thought was just stories is true, then I don’t see why a large enough mass of spirits each draining a person of some of their energy couldn’t accomplish this,” he added as he came back out and joined the others in the hall.

 

“But that just doesn’t make sense,” Hiten argued.

 

“And everything else we’ve witnessed thus far does?” Kagome countered.

 

“The proof is in the pudding,” Sango muttered. She really wished she had a bottle of holy water, or a proton pack, or something to help defend herself against whatever, or whomever, it was they were all up against

 

It was a good enough theory as far as Inuyasha was concerned, although looking around in that moment, he suddenly had something much more important to worry about than whether or not the ghosts could actually suck the life right out of them, a sinking feeling developing in his chest as he realized someone appeared to be missing.

 

“Where’s Kikyou?” he asked everyone worriedly, glancing around a moment in case she was just standing in the far back and he hadn’t noticed her because he still wasn’t wearing his contacts.

 

Glancing around, herself, Kagome realized with a sinking feeling of dread, “She’s not here, but she’s also not still in the bathroom, it’s empty.”

 

Without another word, Inuyasha made a mad dash for the bedroom he and Kikyou were to have shared, Kagome hot on his heels with the desperate hope that if something bad had happened to Kikyou she would be able to do something to help.

 

As Inuyasha barged into the room, the sinking feeling in his chest became a lead weight in his stomach that poisoned his dinner and had him struggling not to throw up at the sight before him. Kikyou was lying perfectly still on her side of the bed, her complexion far too pale, some blood on her robe and the cream colored bedding with the majority of it being in a huge puddle on the floor below her no longer dripping wrist. There wasn’t quite as much blood as what was still in the hallway from what’d happened to Yura, but it was close enough.

 

“Kikyou...” Inuyasha said slowly, ignoring Kagome’s quiet gasp behind him.

 

Approaching her slowly, his mind was having trouble processing what he was seeing. If he’d thought there was even the slightest chance of saving her life he would’ve immediately rushed into action, and he knew that Kagome definitely would’ve, too, so her own stillness confirmed for him what the massive amount of blood and her chalky complexion had already told him. After having dealt with Yura, it was obvious. Kikyou was already gone.

 

As Sango and Miroku came up behind Kagome in the doorway, whispering quietly to get her attention, she turned and gave them a look that let them know Kikyou was already dead. Nodding their sad understanding, they gave Kagome and Inuyasha some privacy. Kagome thought briefly that she should leave, too, that Inuyasha was the one who truly needed his privacy and she was also intruding at the moment, but she couldn’t bring herself to move and so she stayed. If he wanted her gone surely he’d ask her to leave.

 

In truth, Inuyasha wasn’t bothered by Kagome’s presence in the slightest, and in fact he felt a little comforted by the fact that she was silently standing by him, showing him with her presence that she was there for him if he needed her. Crawling into the bed and carefully pulling Kikyou into his arms, his pajamas already covered in Yura’s blood and so not caring that he now had Kikyou’s blood on himself as well, Inuyasha discovered the cuticle cutters still in her right hand and felt a morbid sense of relief to at least know that her death had been on her own terms.

 

If there was one thing he knew about Kikyou, it was that she was strong willed, and he knew there was no way in Hell she could’ve been manipulated or tricked into taking her own life. The only plausible explanation, then, was that she’d had no choice, but not in the way that depressed and suicidal people felt that they had no choice.

 

“I should’ve been here,” he stated morosely. Whatever had happened in this room, she shouldn’t have had to face it alone.

 

“If she could have escaped, she would have,” Kagome pointed out gently, not trying to rub his face in the fact that she’d been trapped. “If you had been with her then you might both be dead,” she added, which was the point she was actually trying to make. They had no way of knowing if Inuyasha could have done anything to save her.

 

He thought about it for a moment, knowing it was a legitimate possibility, since he admittedly had no idea what Kikyou had been up against although he’d seen first hand the power of whatever evil had come after Tsubaki. Would he have been willing to die with Kikyou? Die for her, so she could have escaped? He had loved her, once. While he didn’t want to die, she certainly hadn’t deserved to have her own life cut short. Bitch or not, no one deserved to face the choice she’d clearly had to make. That she had decided to rob the ghosts of their kill, however, had a feeling of pride for her stubbornness swelling up inside of him. Taunt her with the threat of death, had they? She’d sure shown them.

 

He could only pray that her suicide hadn’t still delighted the evil spirits, if all they’d needed was her death in any form. He supposed he’d never know for sure, and that thought was what troubled him the most. If he knew she was at peace, and not now also trapped in this Godforsaken nightmare, then he knew he’d be able to move on.

 

Well, he was going to move on, regardless, because he did not feel like grabbing a blade and joining her. If he had his way, he would be surviving this nightmare to escape the house alive.

 

“I still should have been here,” he stated finally. It would’ve been the honorable thing to do, for one thing, fighting the evil alongside her, but he also believed that had he been with her, while it was possible they might’ve both died, it was also equally as possible that he would have been able to save the both of them and she would still be alive.

 

Ultimately at the end of the day, though, he had asked Kikyou to come downstairs with them and while she’d said she’d think about it, she had obviously decided against it. Had she chosen to join the rest of them then she would almost definitely still be alive, as well. Her death was not his fault and he would still do everything within his power to survive the rest of the night.

 

Disentangling himself from her body, then, he laid her back down before gently brushing the hair from her face.

 

“I’m so sorry, Kikyou,” he murmured tenderly before pecking her cold lips chastely. He was apologizing for not saving her life, for every fight in which he’d said something cruel, and just generally for not being the man she had wanted him to be. “I’m so sorry.”

 

“How I longed to hear you say that when I was alive,” Kikyou’s voice said suddenly, causing Inuyasha to jump away from her body and head for Kagome the same moment Kagome ran towards him. He instinctively put his arms around her.

 

“Is that girl more important to you?” Kikyou asked, her form appearing slowly.

 

She was transparent for a moment before she became solid, looking like an exact duplicate of the woman lying on the bed, except the ghost of Kikyou actually looked more alive. Her complexion was healthy, and she was blemish free, not a drop of blood marring her person.

 

“Kikyou...” Inuyasha murmured in awe, ignoring her question, although he did release Kagome as he took a hesitant step closer to the apparition. “Are you...your soul I mean...are you...okay?” He reached out, as if to touch her, but seeing the blood on his own hand he lowered it, not wanting to taint her. “You aren’t trapped here with the others, are you? You’re free, right?” he asked hesitantly, afraid of the answer but needing to know.

 

Rather than answering him directly, though, she narrowed her eyes at him. “You no longer care about me,” she said in her usual bitchy way. “Why should you care where I end up now?”

 

“Kikyou, you know I still care about you,” he insisted. “You were the first woman I ever loved.”

 

And it was true. While he’d gone on a few casual dates during the latter years of high school, he’d never fallen head over heels in love with anyone before. Even he and his prom date had amiably gone their separate ways after graduation.

 

“And yet now that I’m dead, you’re going to go on living,” she sneered, untouched by his words about loving her. Then her eyes shifted to Kagome. “With my copy,” she added, causing Kagome to unconsciously take a step back.

 

“Are you afraid of me, Kagome?” Kikyou asked with her lips quirking up into a half smirk, clear amusement in her eyes at the idea.

 

“Should I be?” Kagome asked in turn, squaring her shoulders as she got a little bit braver, her courage driven by sympathy for this poor woman. Bitch or not, gold digger or not, she hadn’t deserved to die like this. “Did your escape attempt not work?” she asked her then. “Have you joined with Naraku’s other victims, after all?”

 

Kikyou’s eyes grew even colder at the mention of his name.

 

“Naraku is a vile beast who needs to be dragged into Hell,” she said, before her expression became eerily blank. “You better be careful if you don’t want to end up like the others,” she added before suddenly disappearing.

 

“Kikyou wait!” Kagome called out, but it was too late. She was gone.

 

For now, at least. But had Kikyou disappeared because she’d used up all her energy, or had Kagome accidentally pissed her off when she mentioned Naraku? And they still didn’t know whether or not Kikyou was now one the bad ghosts, for lack of a better term.

 

“Well this is fucked,” Kagome declared suddenly, earning a snorted laugh from Inuyasha.

 

“Thanks, I needed that,” he declared, shooting her a bittersweet smile. “I think I also need to put my contacts back in. If I’m going to have to spend the rest of the night fending off pissed off ghosts I at least want to be able to see them clearly.”

 

It was Kagome’s turn to snort a laugh, appreciating that Inuyasha shared her sense of humor, and also the fundamental idea that morbidly dire situations could be lightened up with a little well placed joke or three. Although, truth be told, he actually had a very good point. He should make sure his vision was at top capacity because frankly, they had no idea what was going to continue to happen throughout the night.

 

While he went to get cleaned up in the upstairs bathroom Kagome filled Sango and Miroku in on what’d happened with Kikyou, since they hadn’t known the part about the cuticle clippers at first. They both agreed that it was tragic, but they held out hope, since Kikyou hadn’t given them a direct answer, that perhaps, even if she were upset over the fact that she’d died, maybe she wasn’t going to turn around and come after the rest of them. Noting that Hiten and Manten were gone, Kagome asked and Miroku informed her that after he’d told them about Kikyou being dead as well they’d both gone back downstairs, Hiten saying he was going back to bed while Manten said he was going back into the kitchen.

 

“We’re getting picked off one by one and all that man can think about is food,” Kagome murmured sadly. Eating disorders were no laughing matter.

 

“If I thought I was going to die, I’d want a last meal, too,” Inuyasha said as he reemerged from the bathroom. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I plan on living.”

 

“I agree,” Kagome said, Sango and Miroku voicing their agreement as well.

 

With that, everyone also agreed that it would be best to go back downstairs into the living room area again, which they figured shouldn’t be nearly as dangerous now that the fire was out in the fireplace. There was nothing that could possibly fall on them from the couch so if they all just sat huddled together and waited it out they should be all right.

 

“Unless we can think of a way to break outta here,” Inuyasha said as they headed in that direction. “I’m all for busting my way out of this place if we can come up with a plan.”

 

“Well...I doubt using that ax to chop through the door would work,” Kagome said.

 

“Already thought of it, and yeah, those doors are super solid,” Inuyasha agreed.

 

“What about just breaking the lock somehow?” Miroku chimed in. “If we had something we could use as a battering ram…?”

 

“That lock looks pretty solid, too, but it would definitely be worth a try,” Inuyasha said. “Only problem is not getting killed while we wander the house looking for tools.”

 

“Good point,” Sango agreed. “They’ve gotta just be waiting for one of us to go wandering off alone so they can make their move.”

 

“Do you think Hiten is safe in his bedroom, then?” Miroku asked.

 

“Probably not,” Inuyasha said with a shrug. It was the other man’s choice, after all.

 

“What about Manten?” Kagome voiced worriedly.

 

“Let the man do what he wants,” Inuyasha said. “Hopefully it really won’t be his last meal.”

 

ooo

 

Personally having no desire to just go to bed and think about the people who’d died so far, while his brother Hiten went back into his room for the night after what’d happened to Tsubaki and Kikyou, Manten had only one destination in mind. He wasn’t even really hungry anymore, but now, the food was the best distraction he could come up with.

 

He wasn’t totally pigging out, he was just doing it buffet style, sampling a little bit of this and that. Their caretakers had left so much food it was unbelievable! Cookies and breads and cereals in the pantry, all sorts of fruits and cheeses in the refrigerator. True snack foods, with nothing needing to be cooked. Not that he couldn’t have cooked himself a meal if he’d found promising raw ingredients. He definitely knew his way around a kitchen, and this one was marvelous, a professional chef’s kitchen, if a bit outdated.

 

Still, considering the age of the house itself, it had been a spectacular upgrade, a few decades ago. It definitely beat an early 1900s kitchen and he was most certainly not complaining.

 

For a brief moment, when their hosts had announced their departure for the evening, he had been worried that the only food in the house would’ve been what they’d bought in order to prepare for dinner, but then Byakuya had assured him that they’d stocked up in case one or more of their ‘guests’ wanted a midnight snack, and he couldn’t have been happier.

 

Well, he could have been. If nobody had died that would’ve definitely made him a lot happier than he felt in that moment, knowing that the place really was haunted, after all, and not the stupid kind of haunting like the hotels that operate as tourist destinations. But if he was going to end up getting attacked by ghosts at some point then he wanted to spend what time he had left eating. It was his absolute favorite thing to do, after all.

 

He felt sorry for his brother. Hiten’s favorite thing to do was fuck pretty girls, but the choices were somewhat limited now. They were down to only six of them, and only two were women. While they were both attractive, they also weren’t alone, those four sticking together like glue now. Manten supposed he couldn’t blame them for being afraid, but he personally still preferred the company of pastries over other human beings.

 

Suddenly remembering what Miroku had said about the possibility of there being ice cream in the freezer, Manten shoved the last of the scone he was eating into his mouth and made his way over to the separate freezer unit that sat beside the large double-door fridge.

 

“Oh boy oh boy!” he exclaimed like a delighted child as he spotted a box of bonbons. Their hosts had been most generous, indeed.

 

A snort of disgust coming from behind him earned Manten’s full attention as he began eating the bonbons like popcorn.

 

“I’d already thought you were gross, what with you having no hair and all, but this seals the deal,” came an eerily familiar voice.

 

Turning around, Manten actually dropped the box of bonbons in his shock.

 

“Y-yura? But you’re d-dead.”

 

Yura rolled her eyes.

 

“Astute observation,” she drawled, as she floated a few feet above the ground, her right hand missing although the stump at her wrist was smooth skin rather than a bloody wound. “What part of haunted house didn’t you get?” she teased him. “Or did you still think it was only Naraku and his original victims that were the only danger?”

 

Streaks of flying shadows began moving all around the room, movement always catching in the corner of his eyes and then when he’d look, it was gone. He could feel their presence, though, somehow. Dozens, if not hundreds, of angry souls.

 

“Did you know that tonight isn’t the first time the Onigumo family has tricked people into spending the night here on Halloween so that the ghosts could kill them?” Yura stated almost conversationally. “They claim they don’t have a choice. Either give the vengeful spirits what they want, namely more victims, or else they’ll become the victims.” She snorted, as if contemplating breaking that arrangement and going after the rest of the Onigumo family, anyway. “It’s a stupid plan, since they’re just creating more of us,” she added as an afterthought.

 

“Wh-what do you want with me?” Manten asked her then as he tried to inch his way towards the door.

 

“What all of us want,” she answered with a twisted smirk. “Revenge.”

 

That said, she raised her left hand into the air, and with moves reminiscent of conducting an orchestra, the kitchen knives all began to slide from their block on the countertop and do her bidding.

 

“B-but I didn’t kill you!” Manten exclaimed frantically as he dodged the steak knife that flew at his head. “Why take revenge out on me?!”

 

Yura sighed in exasperation and began ‘juggling’ three more of the knives, although she was only moving her arms in a juggling motion and the knives were actually floating around and around in a circle in front of her without her actually touching any of them.

 

“Duh,” she exclaimed as though it were obvious. “The dead always want revenge against the living. Why should you get to live when I didn’t?” Smirking, she added, “I didn’t say it was fair.”

 

Flicking her wrist, one of the three circling knives broke formation and sailed right for Manten’s heart, but once again he managed to dodge, although he didn’t escape unscathed as the dive he took to the side had him slamming against the tile floor hard enough to jar his shoulder. Struggling through the pain to get up on his hands and knees, he scurried as quickly as a man his size could move over towards the door, but then much to his horror he couldn’t push it open, as if a large piece of furniture had been placed against it on the other side.

 

“Help!” he cried out then, getting back to his feet and frantically trying to break down the door that was supposed to swing open outwardly but still wouldn’t budge. “Somebody help me!”

 

“Somebody help me,” Yura mocked, as even more dancing and swirling shadows began to fill the room.

 

Manten turned and looked her way with large, horror-filled eyes.

 

Out in the sitting area, Inuyasha, Kagome, Sango and Miroku all heard Manten’s cries. So did Hiten, who emerged quickly from the servants’ wing. As Hiten made a mad dash through the dining hall towards the kitchen everyone else was hot on his heels.

 

“Manten!” Hiten screamed from his place inside the dining room, as he saw through the small window in the kitchen door what was going on inside the kitchen, his brother’s panicked eyes right on the other side of the window as he clearly tried and failed to open the door that was most definitely not blocked on the dining room side.

 

Grabbing the handle, Hiten yanked hard and was surprised when the door freely swung open.

 

Apparently Yura’s influence had been limited to inside the kitchen.

 

“Brother...” Manten murmured in relief as he collapsed into his brother’s arms.

 

His weight threw off Hiten’s balance and they both came crashing down to the floor in the doorway. Getting up as quickly as he could and rolling Manten onto his back, Hiten stared in unbridled horror at the large butcher knife buried deep in his brother’s chest.

 

Kagome immediate dropped to her knees at the sight to see if there was possibly any way she could assist although it didn’t look good. She and the others all glanced up in surprise as Yura laughed.

 

Seeing her floating there, Inuyasha was reminded of what’d happened to Kikyou and his blood boiled over.

 

“You bitch!” he roared as he charged.

 

Running towards the still smirking apparition, he unthinkingly swung his fist and wound up accidentally plunging his hand deeply within the center of her chest.

 

Glancing down at his arm, Yura tsk’d.

 

“How rude,” she said, “plunging your arm into a woman’s breasts like that.”

 

His eyes widened as he quickly retracted his arm, thankfully unhurt. It had just felt like putting his arm into a freezer, the limb surrounded by a feeling of cold. Suddenly, Yura’s eyes went wide in shock as well, and then before his eyes her body dispersed. Before he could wonder if it’d had something to do with him ‘touching’ her, though, Inuyasha blinked in surprise to realize that Kagome was standing behind where Yura had been, a large cast iron frying pan in her hand. He raised an eyebrow at her in silent question.

 

Setting the pan down on the nearest countertop with a loud clank, she shrugged a little, quirking a half smile.

 

“I was afraid she was going to hurt you so I had to try something,” she said. “It was just a hunch, based on old folk tales about iron,” she explained.

 

Inuyasha nodded in understanding. It actually made sense scientifically, he supposed, since ghosts were clearly real and most likely used electromagnetic fields to manifest themselves just like all the paranormal experts had always claimed. The iron skillet, then, being a good conductor of electricity, had probably just sucked all of the energy out of Yura, rendering her powerless. The bad news was that it was undoubtedly temporary. He didn’t really figure it was possible to kill a ghost. The good news, however, was that they at least now had some form of self-defense.

 

“How’s Manten?” Inuyasha asked her then, glancing towards the doorway to see Hiten still kneeling over his brother’s body, Sango and Miroku standing back in the dining room, looking relieved that Kagome had managed to save him from Yura.

 

“There...there’s nothing I can do,” she admitted unhappily. “He’s coughed up blood, and his chest is gurgling, so while pulling the knife out would surely mean he’ll bleed to death, he’s dying anyway with no way to get him to a hospital. If the knife had missed anything vital he might’ve had a chance, but...”

 

She let her words trail off, and Inuyasha understood, looking Sango and Miroku’s way before jerking his head in a way meant to usher them inside the kitchen, so that Manten and Hiten could have some privacy for their last moments.

 

Seeing Inuyasha’s summons for what it was, they tried not to listen in as they gingerly inched their way past the two brothers in order to join their friends in the kitchen.

 

“It’ll be all right, brother...” Hiten told his sibling, having heard what that bitch Kagome had said but refusing to believe it.

 

Manten could live if only she’d help him! But no, at the threat of that pretty boy Inuyasha being next she had abandoned her patient to go save her boyfriend instead. What kind of a man-whore was Inuyasha, anyway? His girlfriend had just died and already he was hooking up with another slut? Hiten’s mind wasn’t very logical as he clutched Manten’s hand and watched as the life drained out of his eyes.

 

“That was amazing,” Miroku told Kagome as he and Sango approached the others.

 

“Yeah, quick thinking,” Sango complemented.

 

“It’s nice to know we have a form of self-defense, now,” Kagome agreed.

 

“You!” Hiten roared suddenly, giving Kagome a death glare as he yanked the knife out of his diseased brother’s chest.

 

At least against the ghosts, anyway, her rapidly panicking mind provided.

 

“Hiten...?”

 

He charged, and screaming, Kagome ran around the massive center island as he came after her, knife held blade down in his raised right hand and poised for plunging downward Psycho-style. “You didn’t save him!”

 

“There was nothing I could do!” she shouted as she continued to evade him while Inuyasha, Sango and Miroku all tried to help but had to be careful as he’d slash the knife in their directions as well when they got too close.

 

“Hiten you need to calm down!” Sango said, to no avail. He was incapable of listening to reason.

 

As he continued to chase Kagome and dodge the punches Inuyasha and Miroku aimed his way, Sango quickly assessed the situation and took note of the few other knives on the floor, which she immediately picked up. As Hiten lunged she made her move, throwing one of the knives, except instead of trying to kill him she aimed for his leg.

 

Her aim was true, the knife jabbing Hiten’s right calf although it didn’t stay in due to gravity, the tip having only gone in maybe an inch. It was enough of a distraction, though, for him to drop his own knife and reach down to cup his bleeding leg in pain, and that was when Inuyasha made his move, punching Hiten hard across the jaw.

 

Miroku watched as Hiten crumpled to the floor, mentally winching, but also feeling oh so proud of his wife. She didn’t teach self-defense for nothing. As Hiten shook his disorientation free and looked up, Miroku could see that the madness in his eyes had not vacated, and without really putting much thought into it the ordinarily peaceful man rushed forward and kicked Hiten in the head. Hiten went back down, bleeding from his nose, and as Kagome watched from her place beside Inuyasha the doctor in her wanted to come to Hiten’s aid but the sane and frightened woman in her wanted Miroku to kick him again since he still hadn’t lost consciousness. He only lied there, unmoving but glaring at them all with pure hatred in his eyes.

 

Suddenly, the voice of a small child caught the others’ attentions, although they wouldn’t be foolish enough to completely forget about Hiten and turn their backs on him.

 

“Hello?” the little voice said. “Kagura, Byakuya? Is that you? Can I come out now? I’m scared!”

 

“That sounds like a child but...where is it coming from?” Kagome asked as she looked around.

 

“Kagura specifically said that we were alone in the house,” Miroku pointed out logically. “While she and Byakuya were horribly deceptive, and undoubtedly evil in their own right, they never actually lied to us.”

 

“Oh good,” Sango said, trying to make a light joke to ease some of the tension. “Then that means if the five of us survive this thing we can split a million dollars five ways.”

 

“Fuck you,” Hiten hissed from his spot still lying on the floor.

 

“Okay, then the four of us will split it four ways,” Inuyasha said, not about to let that bastard push him around. While he’d never taken a life, and wouldn’t start with Hiten, he wouldn’t be sad if one of the ghost decided to finish him off, either.

 

“Hello?” came the child’s voice again. “Is someone there? Please let me out! I’m scared!”

 

“It’s probably a trick,” Sango said.

 

“But it could be a real child,” Kagome argued.

 

She wasn’t stupid, and knew it was probably a trick, but even Sango had said probably which meant it was possible there was an actual child in trouble and there was simply no way she could live with herself if she ignored the possibility and didn’t try to help.

 

“It sounds like it’s coming from in here,” she said as she opened a small wooden door off to the side. “Stairs...” she murmured in mild surprise as she saw the stairs that went down into the...wine cellar?

 

“Oh look, you found the torture chamber,” Inuyasha said with a nod of his chin as he came up beside her, casting her an amused side glance. “Ladies first,” he teased.

 

“Oh gee thanks.”

 

With Sango and Miroku coming over to where they were, all four people kept an awareness of Hiten in their minds as they peered down the blackened staircase.

 

“Hello?” Kagome called out into the darkness. “Is somebody there?”

 

“Hello?!” replied the voice. “Help me, please! I’m trapped!”

 

“Oh bloody hell...” Inuyasha grumbled with a roll of his eyes before turning and grabbing the frying pan Kagome had used against Yura. “Well I’m sure as shit not going down there unarmed,” he declared, earning nods of agreement from the other three as they each went and got their own skillet.

 

“I really appreciate this you guys,” Kagome said to Sango and Miroku as they made it apparent they were coming with her as well.

 

“Safety in numbers, right?” Sango said, smiling.

 

“What do we do about him?” Miroku asked, gesturing to Hiten.

 

All they’d need would be for the bastard to trap them down there somehow. He’d probably find some way to set the house on fire, too, even sacrificing himself just to know he’d taken them out with him. Suddenly, though, before they could really begin to worry about it too much, Manten appeared, standing beside where Hiten was lying.

 

“Brother...?” Hiten asked, disbelief but also relief in his eyes. “Is that really you?”

 

“It’s me, brother,” Manten replied. He looked up at the others, but then whether in an act of mercy towards them, or simply having different priorities, the large ghost focused his attention back on his brother.

 

“Don’t...don’t ever leave me again,” Hiten begged, either ignoring, or unaware of, the many dark shadows that were encroaching upon them.

 

“Never,” Manten replied.

 

Reaching forward, Manten appeared to place his hand just slightly inside of Hiten’s head, the majority of his hand still visible on the outside but his palm and fingertips seeming to seep in ever so slightly. For the briefest of moments, Hiten looked as if he’d never felt happier in his entire life, but then his smile shifted into an opened mouth of shock, his eyes widening, and then he screamed and pressed his hands to the sides of his head before suddenly falling dead, as if Manten’s touch had ruptured an aneurysm or something. Manten disappeared after that, as did the shadows, and feeling unsure about how they should feel about what they’d just witnessed, the four remaining ‘contestants’ headed downstairs into what used to be the wine cellar.

 

“Hello?” Kagome called.

 

“Help me!” came the immediate reply.

 

Grateful for the light switch she found on the wall just inside the doorway, the future doctor swallowed the lump in her throat and headed down the stairs, iron skillet held protectively in front of herself like a shield. She was both relieved and worried now that Hiten had been killed by Manten. On the one hand, he had gone crazy and had been trying to kill them, or at least her, but now that he was surely going to come back as one of the ghosts, wasn’t that the biggest issue they were presently facing? That all of the ghosts, including those of their fallen comrades, wanted to kill them? The one thing they had going for them, at least, was that if a Hiten ghost tried anything they should be able to disperse him with their frying pans.

 

“While I agree we should normally all stick together, I think in this particular instance it would actually be wise if I remain here,” Miroku stated then, earning the others’ attentions as they turned and saw the way he was standing on the second step of the staircase, the opened door behind him and his body physically preventing the door from being closed.

 

Sango nodded. “Heaven forbid we stupidly get ourselves trapped down here,” she agreed. “Good thinking.”

 

“I don’t plan on going far, either,” Kagome said.

 

“You better not,” Inuyasha stated seriously.

 

“Hello?” came the child’s voice again.

 

“Can you tell us your name?” Kagome asked then.

 

“Hakudoshi,” he replied. “Who are you? Are you coming to help me? I’m scared!”

 

As Kagome, Inuyasha and Sango descended the stairs, arriving in a dank and dreary cellar that had two metal tables in the middle of the room, one of them possessing several restraints, they each tried to ignore the really creeped out feeling that being in such a room and knowing it was real was giving them as they instead looked around for a possible child.

 

“There’s nobody here,” Sango stated, the cellar fortunately being relatively small and not possessing any twists or turns. “Nobody living, at least.”

 

“So you’ll only help living people?” a boy appearing around the age of ten with shoulder length platinum blond hair said as he suddenly appeared out of nowhere. His lips quirked up into a positively wicked smile. “How unfortunately selfish of you.”

 

At the top of the stairs, shadow figures began swarming in the kitchen again, making Miroku a little nervous although he held his skillet at the ready as he quietly began saying a small prayer he hoped would help ward off evil spirits.

 

“I’m so, so sorry that your life was cut short,” Kagome said to Hakudoshi then. “Were you one of the dead that Naraku used for his experiments?”

 

“Naraku,” the child spat. “He chose me and my sister, made us what we are.” He grinned again, the look so evil it was a wonder he didn’t have fangs. “But mine was the flesh that destroyed him,” he stated with pride.

 

Kagome gasped.

 

Naraku had chosen to use the flesh of children for his own skin grafts?! Kagome had figured that he had only used whatever fresh bodies his associate at the hospital had been able to smuggle his way, be they children or otherwise. It wasn’t like he could’ve gone shopping for bodies, since the skin would’ve needed to be viable, so she knew they were talking calling the time of death, and having the body wheeled away, and then it wound up at Naraku’s house instead of the morgue a very few short minutes later.

 

Something she hadn’t previously thought of occurred to her in that moment, though. Onigumo House was in the middle of nowhere. So unless there used to be a small hospital pretty close by, he wouldn’t have been able to get any bodies in time for them to have done him any good, considering what he’d wanted them for. That meant his servants, and whomever else he’d managed to lure into his chamber of horrors after all his servants were gone, hadn’t stood a chance. But surely he would’ve realized this, being a brilliant surgeon in his own right, and would’ve known that when it came to himself, he had to use fresh skin grafts or else the procedure would be fatal. Since the end result was him working on himself, Kagome wondered, now, just how many of Naraku’s ‘donor bodies’ had gone missing while they were still alive. She shuddered at the thought.

 

Even so, surely the man had usually used the homeless, for fear of local authorities opening a missing person’s case. So that he had chosen these children – she’d bet Hakudoshi’s sister was the little girl she’d seen in that mirror earlier – then that meant that he’d been escalating, getting braver, getting crueler, and perhaps more delusional. Did he think using the skin of children would give him back his youth? Had he gone from trying to make himself scar-free to even trying to make himself wrinkle-free?

 

But these were points to worry on later, she knew, while Hakudoshi stood before them, looking absolutely wicked.

 

“Well, then,” she started as she spoke back up. “It sounds like you already got your revenge, if it was after grafting your skin onto himself that Naraku got that infection that killed him.”

 

“Yes,” Sango chimed in. “Your enemy is Naraku. There is no reason for you, or any of the other spirits, to seek revenge against innocent living persons who never did you any harm.”

 

Hakudoshi only continued to grin, and then suddenly, dozens of other people began appearing around them. Ghosts, but...they looked like dead bodies. Like zombies rather than ghosts. They were grotesque, some with large patches of missing flesh on their face or arms, others with swatches of flesh adhered to them with large black stitches that reminded Kagome of Leatherface.

 

“Would you like to see what I really look like?” Hakudoshi asked them then, in the same innocent, childlike voice one’s ten-year-old son might use to ask if you’d like to see a drawing he made.

 

Our three friends huddled together, back to back to make sure no one could sneak up on them, while Sango called out to her husband.

 

“Miroku, are you all right?”

 

Hearing her easily, even able to see some of the ghosts from his position at the top of the stairs although he couldn’t see his companions, Miroku turned back to look at the young blond girl standing before him, her expression blank, and replied, “I’ll let you know in a minute.”

 

She held up a small hand mirror, then, but not waiting to see what that was all about he took his frying pan and plunged it through her body, causing her, and the mirror, to dissipate like smoke. “That’s enough of that,” he murmured.

 

Down in the cellar, the others had also started to dispatch any ghost who got too close, as they eased their way back towards the stairs. Kagome was both appeased and distraught at the same time with the knowledge that they were not really harming them with the iron skillets. Ghosts were energy, but consciousness lived on, clearly. She’d watched enough paranormal research shows in her youth to understand how stronger ghosts could do more and weaker ghosts were powerless. She’d bet all the ghosts they ‘vanquished’ were still right there with them, but merely without the energy to manifest or move objects. On the one hand, that was fine, because she didn’t want to hurt them, and they were only acting in self-defense, but the part of her that truly felt sympathy for all these lost souls wished there was a way she knew how to end their suffering and release them to the other side.

 

“I think it would be best if we departed,” Miroku called down to the others, more of the zombie-like ghosts in the kitchen and approaching his position.

 

Then suddenly, knives and other objects were being thrown his way, but fortunately the large skillet in his hand also acted like a shield against the physical projectiles. It was getting a bit heavy, and he was switching hands or holding it up with both whenever he could, but he’d played racquetball in high school and for that he was grateful as he put his hand-eye coordination to good use.

 

Hearing the others running up the stairs behind him, he felt relieved but didn’t dare turn his attention away from the onslaught.

 

“Quickly!” Miroku stated as the others rushed past him, Sango, Inuyasha and Kagome all gaping in shock at the kitchen full of zombie-ghosts.

 

“Perhaps they had been trapped in the cellar, and us opening the door has now released them to the rest of the house,” Sango hypothesized, in no way blaming Kagome because she understood how the younger woman had just had to make sure there wasn’t an actual, living child in trouble down there.

 

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Miroku pointed out, the zombie-ghosts appearing rather harmless in comparison as he gestured to their latest adversaries.

 

“You!” Inuyasha declared as he saw the ghosts of Hiten and Manten flying suspended a few feet above the ground.

 

“Shocked to see me?” Hiten teased darkly, as he floated higher and stuck his left hand up and into the lighting fixture mounted to the ceiling. “You will be!”

 

With that said, Hiten pointed his right index finger at them and a bolt of electricity came out.

 

“Shit!” “Fuck!” Kagome and Inuyasha cursed respectively as they and the others all dived out of the way, all four of them dropping their frying pans for fear of them attracting the electricity.

 

Getting back up, Inuyasha quickly picked up his frying pan and threw it like a discus at Hiten, but the ghost of the mad man merely moved out of the way, the skillet crashing loudly into some small appliances where it landed on the back countertop.

 

Hiten laughed maniacally, while Manten rushed around and came after the four of them, and with them all remembering the very real danger that was Manten’s ghostly touch they scrambled to flee the kitchen, Miroku taking a moment to feel grateful that the door wasn’t stuck again like it had been for poor Manten when he’d died. In fact, it was Manten’s body propping it open, but none of them paid the poor man more than a passing thought as they carefully jumped over him on their way out into the dining hall.

 

“Where are you going?” taunted Hakudoshi as they ran past the dining table, the boy lying stretched out on its surface, phantom straps over his body appearing to hold him in place. “Don’t you want to play with us?”

 

Our four survivors didn’t stop to contemplate the scene as they darted through the dining hall as quickly as they could, emerging in the living room. Sango headed straight for the doused fireplace and picked up the iron poker. As more ghosts appeared in the living room all around them, some dressed in much more modern clothing than others, some appearing to have had patches of skin either removed or applied while others were clearly their predecessors, ‘guests’ of previous Halloweens whose deaths had somehow never stirred up a giant scandal for the property, Sango released a loud battle cry and charged. She ran in a large circle around the room, running the poker through each and every ghost, not caring who they were. Miroku smirked.

 

“Now there’s the warrior woman I married,” he stated proudly.

 

As strange snake-like things also began appearing, Sango paused in surprise for only a moment before running the poker through those as well, relieved when they dissipated too.

 

“What are these things?” Kagome asked as more and more kept circling, Sango doing her best to keep their numbers at bay.

 

“Marvelous, aren’t they?” a familiar female voice chimed in then.

 

They all turned and stared in surprise as Tsubaki stood before them with one of the snake things coiled around her as if it were her pet. She was dressed in her outfit from earlier, not the sleeping gown she’d died in, and while her hair was still white, the rest of her was youthful once again, the only blemish on her face being a bizarre crisscross-shaped scar pattern over her right eye.

 

“Human paranormal experts would call them demonics. They’re spirits from the underworld who were never human. They’re not truly snakes, but it is an appearance that suits them well since most humans subconsciously associate serpents with evil.”

 

That explanation was not provided by Tsubaki, but by another female apparition that had suddenly appeared. She was still dressed in her white bathrobe tucked into her billowy red cotton pajama pants, but her hair was now tied back as it had been earlier in the day rather than the loose strands she’d worn during her death.

 

“Kikyou?” Kagome questioned in surprise.

 

“You!” Tsubaki challenged suddenly, sending her serpent towards Kikyou, who completely ignored it as the eerily glowing thing flew around her in circles.

 

With a wave of her hand, the serpent flew off. She had no need to fear it since they only posed a threat to the living.

 

“Hello Tsubaki,” she greeted somewhat casually.

 

“You...” Tsubaki seethed. “Naraku came after me when he couldn’t kill you,” she declared. “How dare you take the coward’s way out?!”

 

Kikyou looked unimpressed.

 

“A true coward screams and begs for mercy instead of facing what must be done.”

 

Ooooh, burn, Kagome thought, hoping this interaction meant that Kikyou was actually on their side, or at least wasn’t one of the evil ghosts trying to kill them. She didn’t have long to think about it, though, since Tsubaki and Kikyou weren’t the only ghosts in the room.

 

“You little bitch,” Yura said as she reappeared, slashing her left hand at Kagome.

 

“Ow!” Kagome declared more in surprise than pain as a thin line of blood appeared on her right cheek.

 

“I don’t think so!” Sango said as she jabbed the poker into Yura’s stomach before she could do anything worse than scratch.

 

“Are you okay?” Inuyasha asked Kagome then, as he tenderly cupped her left cheek with his right hand, using the pad of his left thumb to gently wipe the small amount of blood away.

 

“So it’s true, then,” Kikyou said, earning their attention once again. “That girl has replaced me in your heart.”

 

“Kikyou, I did love you, once, but you turned against me and made my heart cold to you long before I met Kagome,” Inuyasha answered, unafraid to admit it.

 

Surprisingly, Kikyou’s somewhat cold countenance softened at his words, a bittersweet smile curving up her lips.

 

“I truly was a horrible person to you, wasn’t I?”

 

Sango and Miroku both thought they understood as they observed this interaction. The ghost of Kikyou, she wasn’t evil. All the bitchy things she’d said to Kagome and Inuyasha before had simply been her normal personality showing through. A bitch in life meant a bitch in death. But she was not one of Naraku’s minions, hellbent on revenge against the living, and that was most definitely a good thing. One less enemy to worry about in a house full of who knew how many tormented souls.

 

“Kagome,” Kikyou addressed then, gaining the future doctor’s full attention. “Make him happier than I could.”

 

Before Kagome could answer, Tsubaki reminded them all of her presence.

 

“None of them deserve to be happy!” she declared loudly as another demonic serpent appeared at her side.

 

With a snap of her fingers, the serpent went sailing straight for Kagome, too quickly for Sango who was on the other end of the living room ‘busting’ ghosts to react. With no time and nowhere to go to escape, Kagome did the only thing she could think of, holding out both hands in front of herself and making a cross with her two index fingers. Fortunately, it worked, and the repelled serpent went sailing right back at Tsubaki before plunging into her right eye. She screamed just like before and then vanished.

 

“We’ve gotta get out of this house,” Kagome said then, hand over her heart, which felt like it was beating a mile a minute.

 

There was no way any of them would survive until sunrise. They also didn’t even know if the ghostly activity would end at sunrise, and they would definitely still be trapped in the house until Kagura and Byakuya decided to come back, assuming they even came back at all. They definitely couldn’t rely on their captors for their rescue. They were on their own and needed to figure out a way out of that place.

 

“Don’t think you can escape me so easily, bitch!” Hiten declared suddenly, as he pulled the same trick as back in the kitchen, sticking one hand into a lighting fixture, this time the chandelier over the entryway, before channeling the power and sending bolts of electricity towards Kagome.

 

Narrowing her eyes, Kikyou’s apparition disappeared, not that anyone paid her more than a passing notice as Hiten continued firing makeshift lightning bolts at each of them.

 

Sango was quick to put down the poker, setting it on the couch so she’d know where it was before running back into the kitchen, where she also knew their skillets were waiting on the floor should she need to defend herself against any other spirits.

 

“Sango!” Miroku called after her as she ran, he and the others quick to pursue because they did not want to become separated.

 

“There’s gotta be rubber gloves around here somewhere!” she declared as she opened the cabinet underneath the sink, but it was empty.

 

“Since no one actually lives here, they probably removed any such random household items long ago,” Miroku explained. Pity, too, because that had been a good idea.

 

“Hey, you don’t suppose there’s a butane torch around here somewhere, do you?” Kagome asked the others as she began looking around as well.

 

Walking around the center island, she gasped in surprise as she came to a sudden halt when she saw Hakudoshi standing right in front of her.

 

“Don’t you want to play with me?” he asked her, sounding like one of the children from Village of the Damned or something.

 

“No,” she answered concisely before waving her frying pan through him, Kagome also having grabbed one of the pans that’d been lying on the floor in the kitchen.

 

“What do you want a torch for?” Inuyasha asked her, confused. “Do you think we can fight the ghosts with fire?” That sounded dangerous to him.

 

“No, but I think we might be able to melt our way out of here if we torched one of the acrylic windows,” she explained.

 

That sounded even more dangerous to him.

 

“If we don’t blow ourselves up in the process, but I’ll help you look,” he said.

 

“You can run but you can’t hide!” Hiten declared before materializing, except this time Miroku was ready for him, knowing he’d be manifesting near the light.

 

“That should buy us at least a few minutes,” he declared after Hiten disappeared.

 

“No! Brother!” Manten screamed, but Sango took care of the overweight ghost that had looked ready to body tackle her husband.

 

“I would say don’t turn you’re back, but it’s impossible when the enemy is literally all around us,” Sango said.

 

She and Miroku stood back to back, then, facing off against another large gathering of zombie-like ghosts that were trying, and failing, to approach them. Thank goodness for Kagome discovering the frying pan trick or they would’ve all died by now for sure.

 

Digging through every drawer, looking in every cabinet, there wasn’t a cooking torch anywhere that she or Inuyasha could find.

 

“Damn,” Kagome cursed. “Oh well, it was probably a stupid idea anyway, or too dangerous, like you said.”

 

“A stupid or dangerous idea is better than no idea,” Inuyasha conceded. “I agree that we’ve gotta think of some way to get out of this fucking death trap.”

 

“And preferably not the method Kikyou used,” Kagome added.

 

Suddenly, a pipe from underneath the sink broke, water gushing everywhere.

 

“What the-!”

 

Kagome gaped in horror as Hiten appeared in the doorway leading back out to the dining room, his body sparking with the power he was presently drawing from the dining room chandelier.

 

“Oh no, no no, this is bad,” Sango said, instantly realizing Hiten’s plan, as did everyone else, all four of them quickly climbing up on top of the center island, setting their skillets beside them without touching them.

 

They were sitting ducks, but then just as suddenly as the pipe had burst, the power also went out, plunging them all into total darkness.

 

“No!” they heard Hiten yell in anger before all grew quiet.

 

“As much as it sucks to be in the dark I’m glad we weren’t electrocuted,” Kagome said as she and the others got back down off the island, skillets in hand, their feet getting wet though they had more important things to worry about, like being able to see.

 

Her eyes had adjusted a little but there was practically no light to be had, only moonlight coming in through the window in the backdoor off to the side. It was the sound of something sliding on one of the countertops that reminded them all was not safe now that just the threat of Hiten’s electrical trick had been eliminated.

 

“Run!” Kagome declared just as objects started flying through the air again.

 

Miroku was the last one out of the kitchen, a hatchet embedding itself in the frame of the doorway right next to his head as he exited.

 

“I’m glad whoever that was had bad aim,” he murmured as they made their way back out into the living area again, Sango retrieving her log poker which she held in her right hand while she kept her skillet in her left, like a combination spear and shield.

 

At least with all of the large picture windows in the front of the house they had more light to see by if they stayed in the great room. Kagome momentarily contemplated retrieving the battle ax from the hallway but wasn’t sure if it’d be as effective against the ghosts since it was surely a modern reproduction made out of stainless steel, which might not contain enough iron, so she decided against it since it was also obviously very sharp and therefore dangerous to be swinging around in a panic in a poorly lit room.

 

“Now what do we do?” Kagome said, just to break the eerie silence. Sango had done a good job before of ridding them of the random zombie-ghosts so at the moment they at least appeared to be alone.

 

That didn’t last long.

 

“Come with me if you want to live,” Kikyou said suddenly as she rematerialized.

 

Inuyasha gave her a bland look. He just couldn’t help it. “Really?” he drawled.

 

Although Kikyou turned her back on them then, the others got the distinct impression she was probably hiding a smirk, but as she started heading down the black and spooky hallway they each reluctantly fell into step behind her.

 

“So what’s the plan?” Inuyasha asked, but Kikyou remained silent.

 

She better not be leading us to our deaths... Sango worried, although she still had her poker and they all still had their frying pans.

 

If only one of them had a flashlight.

 

If Kagome had thought about it earlier, she would’ve retrieved Tsubaki’s iPhone after the woman’s death. It would’ve sure came in handy in that moment, but she was not about to go break away from the others to run upstairs all alone, probably never to be seen or heard from again.

 

As they headed further down the hallway, past the bedroom possessing Yura’s body, the creepy feeling Kagome had felt before when down this far came back with a vengeance.

 

“Is it just me, or is this hallway way creepier than it was earlier?” Sango asked her husband quietly, since she and Miroku had explored the house when it’d still been daylight out.

 

“Most definitely,” he agreed. “I’m anxious to find out what Kikyou is planning.”

 

A part of him wanted to say plotting but he would suspend his judgment, and use of his iron skillet, until if and when she actively betrayed them.

 

Leading them all into the last door on the left, Kikyou raised her arms and two more of those eerily glowing demonics appeared, although they made no hostile move towards the humans, wrapping themselves around Kikyou the same way Tsubaki had worn one earlier. In fact, their glow helped to illuminate the room they were standing in, which was the makeshift infirmary that Yura had wanted Kikyou to join her in attempting a séance in before she’d died.

 

“Oh man, I’m not sure I want to be in here,” Kagome said when she spotted all the surgical tools sitting on the back table. She could just envision all those archaic saws and blades going flying once the other ghosts regained their strength.

 

“If you’ve got something to tell us, Kikyou, just say it,” Inuyasha insisted then, turning to face his ex-girlfriend’s spirit, his back to the curtains that covered yet another Plexiglas window. “You’ve never been one for subtly so don’t start being all vague and cryptic now just ‘cause you’re a ghost. That cliché doesn’t suit you.”

 

Smirking wickedly, Kikyou raised her arms as if she were aiming an invisible bow and arrow, one of the smaller scalpels lifting up out of its kit to levitate about where the arrowhead would’ve been, and then she fired. The entire move took only a few brief seconds and nobody had time to react, save for Inuyasha raising his hands in front of himself in self-defense, the skillet he thankfully still held protecting his face, and then the next thing Inuyasha knew, the voluminous sleeve of his nightshirt was pinned to the curtain behind him, the scalpel having gone through his shirt and into the curtain.

 

“Inuyasha!” Kagome cried out as this happened, sighing in relief when she realized he was unharmed.

 

“Just what in all the hells...” Inuyasha grumbled bitterly as he sat his skillet down before reaching over and pulling the small blade free, scraping the window on the other side of the curtain for a moment as he wrapped his fingers around the handle. “Of course!” he declared then, turning back to thank Kikyou but she was gone, as were the serpents and the light they had provided but that was nothing flinging the curtain open didn’t fix, letting the moonlight poor in.

 

“Inuyasha?” Kagome questioned then.

 

“You had a good idea before, Kagome,” he told her, “when you thought about melting our way through the Plexiglas. We can’t melt our way through, but we can cut our way through.”

 

Understanding dawned in her eyes, and the future doctor quickly looked over the circa 1900 surgical tool kits that were sitting out on the table as if display pieces in a museum. She wasn’t sure if they were actually Naraku’s or if they’d been acquired for staging the house for ‘tourists’, but she supposed it didn’t really matter since any used tools of this era would have seen their share of horrors compared to modern times, regardless. In that moment, however, she didn’t even care of the items themselves were haunted, as she found a hand drill with what looked like a bone boring bit and decided to give it a try.

 

Setting her frying pan down on the table, she took the drill and placed it against the window, holding it there as hard as she could as she started turning it.

 

“Here, let me,” Inuyasha offered, handing her his frying pan as he took over the drilling, and Kagome didn’t mind because he was physically stronger than her.

 

It was a slow going process, but Kagome, Sango and Miroku all stood guard as he worked, ready to defend their new home base with their iron skillets if necessary. It didn’t take long before the various ghosts that Sango had dispatched earlier started winking back into existence, but the three of them were able to fend them off and allow Inuyasha time to work uninterrupted.

 

It was exhausting, constantly swinging heavy cast iron frying pans around, but adrenaline kept them going when failure was not an option. One or more of the ghosts even tried levitating the other medical tools as Kagome had feared, the ghosts probably figuring they were safe so long as they didn’t show themselves, but our warriors were quick to react and waving their frying pans around the levitating tools thankfully nullified the spiritual energy that had been manipulating them. Kagome then quickly picked out the two best bone saws, one much larger than the other, and held them in her previously empty hand so they couldn’t go flying while Miroku tossed everything else out into the hallway, including the table lamp since it did them no good with the power off anyway, before closing the door. The sound of everything suddenly and continually crashing against the closed door, as if caught up in some kind of a tornado, was a little disconcerting, but they didn’t let it distract them.

 

“How’s it coming?” Kagome asked loudly over the noise.

 

“It’s coming,” Inuyasha answered.

 

With his arms growing tired after a while Inuyasha switched places with Miroku, who could see what the white-haired man was up to without even needing to be told. Inuyasha had already drilled two small holes all the way through the Plexiglas, which was over an inch thick, and the holes were practically one right on top of the other. Drilling between them would chip away the dividing barrier and make one larger, linear opening, which was what Miroku worked on in that moment. It was a little harder, the drill wanting to slip, but he’d get it in the sweet spot again and crank the handle as fast as he could before it’d slip again. Finally, they had a vertical line long enough for the smaller of the two bone saws to slip inside, and he sawed only long enough until they had a vertical slit big enough for the larger saw. Inuyasha took back over then and continued to saw downward, towards the window frame.

 

Kagome would’ve helped him, would’ve taken the drill to start on the next spot while he sawed, but it literally took three of them to protect the fourth, to keep all of the ghosts and demonic serpents at bay while one person worked on the window at any given moment. It was loud as hell, with all of the various medical instruments continually crashing against the other side of the door, and now the four hospital beds and the table were all shaking, but instead of feeling any rise of hopelessness as things got progressively more frightening they chose to channel their fear into the struggle of getting the hell out of there.

 

“I don’t think they’re too happy with us right now!” Sango called out over the ruckus as she plunged the tip of her poker right between Yura’s eyes.

 

“I know they’re not!” Miroku replied, getting his wife’s attention as one of the smaller saws they’d discarded suddenly slid underneath the door and floated up into the air.

 

Before either of them could react Kagome whacked it with the back of her frying pan, which successfully broke the ghost’s control as it went flying to crash against the wall. Miroku then quickly scooped it up before yanking the bedding off of one of the bouncing hospital beds, shoving the saw back under the door before then also stuffing the sheets under the door as one might do in a last ditch effort to keep out smoke during a house fire.

 

Thank God we put out the fireplace! Sango thought at the reminder.

 

Although she wouldn’t mind burning the place to the ground once they were safely outside of it.

 

“Fuck, this is hard,” Inuyasha grumbled, but exhaling loudly, he summoned another burst of energy and kept right on sawing, his arms killing him, but at least thankfully not literally.

 

“Here, let me take over for a while,” Kagome said then. “I work fast food and go to medical school so I definitely have a high tolerance for pain,” she joked.

 

Chuckling, Inuyasha traded places with her, watching her back as he stood protectively behind. It was hard to lift his skillet anymore, but yet every time some wispy specter got too close to Kagome he managed to lift it just fine. He knew his arms would really be hurting him tomorrow, but so long as he lived to see tomorrow then he didn’t care if he developed Tennis Elbow or even dislocated something.

 

“It’s hopeless,” Kagewaki’s voice spoke up all of a sudden, giving our four friends pause for only a moment before Kagome redoubled her efforts.

 

“Shut up, Kagewaki,” Sango snapped. “Nothing is hopeless.”

 

“That’s not Kagewaki,” came Kikyou’s voice, then. “Naraku has stolen his likeness. Kagewaki’s awareness is suppressed, as are many of his other victims.”

 

That explained the zombie-like ghosts, everyone realized, if they really were practically brainless zombies, in a way, their drive for revenge the only part of them left.

 

“Oh so now you can explain things again,” Inuyasha grumbled, earning a quiet snicker from Kagome although she tried to admonish him.

 

“Be nice,” she said, grinning a little as she glanced over her shoulder at him before quickly getting back to work.

 

Snorting, Inuyasha didn’t comment although he supposed Kagome was right. Kikyou had helped them, after all.

 

“Thank you for helping us, Kikyou, truly,” he stated then, and he really meant it.

 

“All earthbound spirits seek revenge,” Kikyou said as she slowly materialized in the corner, as if knowing she needed to give them ample warning it was her so that they wouldn’t accidentally attack. “But I will seek my revenge against Naraku,” she added as she became fully visible.

 

“How are you going to do that?” Sango asked, genuinely curious.

 

Kikyou only looked at her, unblinkingly, as though the answer were obvious.

 

“By helping us to escape, it would seem,” Miroku chimed in then.

 

Inuyasha snorted again.

 

Figures she’s not just saving us out of the goodness of her heart. What goodness?

 

But honestly, just so long as she was trying to help them escape, as opposed to trying to kill him, that was truly all that mattered.

 

“I hope you are able to find your peace,” Inuyasha told her then, and he meant that as well.

 

She looked his way, her expression blank at first, but then she smiled a little. A soft, genuine smile, unlike any of her sarcastic sneers.

 

“Live, Inuyasha,” she told him then. “You deserve to live and be happy.” She shifted her eyes to look at Kagome, who paused again in her sawing for just a moment. “All of you do,” Kikyou acknowledged. “Knowing that I have prevented Naraku from caging your souls will bring me the peace I need.”

 

“You will all die slowly and writhing in agony,” Naraku said then, but they ignored him. Even he would be susceptible to the iron if he materialized so he remained a disembodied voice in order to taunt them.

 

“It’s over, Naraku, you can’t scare us anymore,” Kagome said then, quickly getting back to her task.

 

Suddenly, though, she stopped sawing again, her free hand going to her throat, but instantly realizing what was happening Inuyasha waved his frying pan all around her and she immediately started taking in big gulping breaths, turning to look his way with gratitude.

 

“Thanks for saving me,” she said. He nodded, the look in his eyes promising her he always would.

 

“Watch yourselves guys,” Inuyasha told the others then, since it was still noisy and they’d missed seeing what’d happened to Kagome as they continued fighting off other the spirits. “Let’s not forget that they can touch without being visible. That was how Kagewaki died. But they still have to take some kind of form in order to touch, even an invisible one, so the iron still works, just like when they were moving the tools,” he explained.

 

“Got it,” Sango acknowledged.

 

“It’s only a matter of time before you tire and one of you makes a mistake,” Naraku said then, since he had not personally been the one who’d just attempted choking Kagome.

 

“It’s only a matter of time before we break outta here,” Kagome countered, pulling the saw from the Plexiglas and grabbing the drill. It was time to go sideways.

 

Inuyasha let Kagome get the drill started, which she touched just to the right of his original point, which was about halfway up the large window and only about an inch to the right of the left side of the framework. They were going to have to carve themselves an opening large enough to escape through, but they were already one third of the way finished. Like Kagome had said, it was only a matter of time. Aside from all the noise of various objects crashing into the other side of the door, and the vibrating furniture, there really didn’t appear to be much the ghosts could do to them, all thanks to Kagome’s quick thinking regarding the frying pans, of course, or they would’ve all been dead long ago. Inuyasha also thought that maybe the reason no invisible ghost had tried to harm any of them directly until finally that one ghost tried to choke Kagome was because while holding the frying pans, their entire bodies worked as good conductors, since the human body was also a pretty good conductor of electricity. If one of them stuck their finger in a socket while holding a cast iron pan in the other hand, that would probably not be a very wise thing to do.

 

At least in a house with working electricity.

 

If the power hadn’t gone out right when it had they would’ve all been turned into crispy critters.

 

“Did you kill the power?” he asked Kikyou then.

 

She didn’t answer, and perhaps she was actually conserving energy the times she grew silent, but her relatively peaceful smile morphed into a wicked smirk at his question and he knew he had his answer.

 

“Thank you.”

 

Kikyou nodded before disappearing.   

 

That was fine with him because honestly, he didn’t want the distraction while Kagome was still drilling away. If his own hypothesis about the iron was right then the only person in danger of a physical touch from an invisible ghost was Kagome, or whichever one of them was working on the window at any given time.

 

Turning the drill as fast as she could, as if her life depended on it because it did, Kagome refused to acknowledge her burning muscles and cried out in triumph when suddenly, she punched through.

 

“Good job,” Inuyasha acknowledged. “Now it’s my turn again.”

 

“No, now it’s my turn,” Sango stated, coming up to the window. “We all share the responsibility, but more importantly I haven’t tired out those particular muscles yet.”

 

“I was gonna argue that you did more than your fare share since you took care of most of the ghosts before, but you’re right about the muscles,” Inuyasha acknowledged, rubbing his sore right arm with his left hand.

 

Coming up with a neat idea to ground herself after Inuyasha warned her about the vulnerability of not touching iron, Sango gave her poker to Kagome but placed her frying pan on the ground and stood with one foot within it.

 

“Good thinking,” Kagome praised, as she told Inuyasha Sango was probably fine and just in case, she’d stay to protect her, instructing him to join Miroku in making sure the rest of the room stayed specter-free.

 

While he was reluctant to leave her side Inuyasha knew that Kagome was right, so he let her take care of guarding the back third of the room, containing Sango, while he moved himself into the central area, by the middle two of the four hospital beds, and Miroku maintained his position closest to the door.

 

Sango was right in that the particular muscles used for drilling were different and therefore the action actually felt like a relief to her poor arms that had just about had enough of waving a heavy frying pan around. She was able to punch her own hole through next to Kagome’s hole in a reasonable length of time, and then she immediately got to work making the much more difficult middle hole, to knock out that dividing barrier between the first two. A few slips of the drill and some mild cursing later and she finally got it, creating their next short line, this one horizontal, that the smaller of their two saws fit into. She then got to work sawing in a horizontal line towards the right, switching to the larger blade as soon as it would fit.

 

The entire experience tried their endurance, especially since Naraku wouldn’t shut up about how horribly they were all going to die, but at that point it really looked like there was nothing the ghosts could do to them, without electricity at least, and whatever Kikyou had done to the breaker box must have been permanent otherwise surely Hiten and Manten would’ve found a way to turn the power back on by then. The closer they got to freedom, the more desperate they could tell Naraku was getting, but they didn’t let themselves start to feel confident. Optimistic, sure, but not confident, because they knew that that would surely be their downfall. They weren’t safe until they were out of the freakin’ house.

 

And I bet neither Inuyasha nor Miroku have their keys on them, which means I get to walk down the mountain in the middle of the night, after all, and barefoot to boot, Kagome thought, not that that thought truly bothered her. Escaping was completely different than being kicked out of a contest, and at least she wouldn’t be walking down the mountain alone.

 

She also had no idea why the current owners of Onigumo House had never gotten in trouble until now, unless there had never been any survivors until now, although one would think the police could’ve still made the connection to past disappearances all having stayed in that house together, but whatever the reason, even if something supernatural was at work to make the family members that knew of Onigumo House forget its existence and have no idea what’d become of their missing loved ones, she was not going to forget and she was most definitely going to go to the police. Tomorrow. Why bring cops in tonight and risk their lives? She knew better than to state that particular threat out loud, though, and give Naraku any ideas. Perhaps in his single-minded desire for their deaths he’d forgotten about what real world consequences would arise from their escape, aside from him merely losing out on their souls. There was no sense in giving him yet another reason to want to prevent their departure.

 

“You will all die slowly and in horrible agony,” Naraku continued to ramble on. “You will be crushed by my might, suffocated by my will until you beg for mercy, and that is when the true torture will begin.”

 

Someone’s getting desperate, Inuyasha thought.

 

Doing her best to ignore their captor’s ranting, Sango worked the saw for as long as she could, switching arms as needed before switching to using both arms at the same time. She worked until her muscles burned, then changed places with her husband. Kagome also gave her back the poker since using it for the time Sango had worked the window had given her own arms enough of a rest to hold a frying pan again.

 

“Come on, Miroku, we got this,” Inuyasha said encouragingly.

 

“Yes, become hopeful. That way it will be all the sweeter when you fail and succumb to my power.”

 

“Shut up Naraku, you bastard,” Inuyasha snapped then, the specter’s taunts not succeeding in filling him with dread although they were succeeding in pissing him off. “I’ll never forgive you for what you did to Kikyou.”

 

It had been Naraku who’d forced Kikyou to kill herself, after all, so as far as Inuyasha was concerned, Naraku had killed her, although he was tremendously grateful that Kikyou had actually outsmarted the former surgeon and robbed him of her soul. But she had not deserved to die. None of them had.

 

“None of my victims forgive me,” Naraku stated matter-of-factly, clearly unconcerned about Inuyasha’s declaration. “They still do my bidding nonetheless.”

 

To know that Narkau’s victims were still his victims, even in death...it was no wonder they wanted to take their frustrations out on whomever they could. Which in turn created even more victims and so on and so forth. But the cycle would end with them, here, tonight.

 

“We’re almost there!” Miroku declared loudly over all the noise as he completed the horizontal cut, stopping at a point that would give them enough room to escape through. There was no time to waste with going all of the way to the right side of the window frame once they could make an opening wide enough for their purpose.

 

“I’ll take back over,” Inuyasha volunteered as he began drilling the next hole. Pretending the Plexiglas was Naraku’s head and that he was causing him pain made him feel much better.

 

Naraku continued to taunt them as he worked, and they continued to ignore him aside from the occasional rebuttal to let him know he still wasn’t getting their spirits down. Kagome even told him that the more he went on about how escape was impossible, the more determined they became to escape. That shut him up at least a little bit, but it also appeared to make the other ghosts even more desperate, as loud crashing sounds began coming from the wall to the adjacent room, as if they were trying to break in through the wall, which undoubtedly wasn’t as thick as the door.

 

Perhaps if the ghosts had started on that an hour ago then it might’ve actually been a stressful race against the clock, but they had such a good head start over them now that even as sounds of sawing began echoing through the wall our four companions weren’t too worried. Once again, it only succeeded in giving them another rush of adrenaline, because they knew that if they gave in to their fatigue and slowed down even a little then the ghosts just might actually get through before they got out and they did not want to deal with dodging flying blades while still trying to make their escape.

 

Bound and determined for all their efforts to not be for naught, Miroku really put his back into it, muscle power being their best advantage over the ghosts who were only moving their blades with the power of the mind. Miroku didn’t care how much collective energy All Hallows’ Eve was granting them. Unless you were freakin’ Yoda then human muscle was the stronger force. They couldn’t be too strong, after all, or else the beds and table would be doing more than just bouncing around a little like they were.

 

Not that he was complaining. Miroku was definitely glad that the ghosts couldn’t throw the table at him while he worked.

 

Finally coming all the way down on the right side, the sounds of cutting through the wall to the side of them steadily getting louder, Miroku was just about to start drilling again when Inuyasha said he had a better idea.

 

Dragging the closest bed over to the window, Inuyasha got up on top of it, waiting a moment to see if he’d get bucked off but it had completely stopped moving as he got on, again supporting the theory that the ghosts weren’t invincibly strong. Leaning against the window, then, his position up on the bed giving him much better leverage, he pushed and pushed, testing its strength. The section they’d cut was still connected along the bottom but it was bending easily under his weight.

 

“Be careful,” Kagome warned worriedly. The last thing she wanted was for him to somehow accidentally hurt himself and become the house’s last victim on accident.

 

“I don’t want to hurt myself,” he assured her, locking eyes with her tenderly, “but by the sound of things we don’t have another twenty minutes to spare.”

 

Agreeing with his assessment of the situation, Miroku got up onto the bed beside him, pushing as well. It definitely looked like the two of them together would have enough force to break it.

 

“On the count of three?” Miroku asked, earning a nod of agreement.

 

“One, two, three!”

 

Both men shoved down as hard as they could, really putting their full body weight into it, and they succeeded. The Plexiglas bent until it gave way with a loud snap and both men found themselves dumped outside, getting a little scratched and bruised as they landed in the foliage but none the worse for wear all things considered. Sango and Kagome didn’t hesitate to follow, and as both girls carefully climbed out, their men offering them helping hands, a truly demonic roar that shook the entire house sent them reeling.

 

All four survivors fell back into the bushes at that, a double-whammy for the men, but nobody cared as they got to their feet as quickly as possible and ran like the Hounds of Hell were on their heels. At one point during the sawing it had already occurred to both Inuyasha and Miroku that they did not have their car keys, but Inuyasha still wanted his phone so he headed over to where his car was parked and picked up the first rock he could find and smashed his window, careful not to cut himself on any of the broken glass because that was all he needed.

 

Getting his cell out of his glove compartment he quickly caught back up with the others, who’d slowed down for his sake, and as they continued to run down the road nobody cared that their bare feet were scraped up and bleeding. They had made it. They were alive.

 

Something shiny caught their attention after a moment, and they paused and turned only to stare with wide eyes as white balls of light floated up to them, circling around them a few times before drifting upwards to Heaven.

 

“Kikyou...” Inuyasha murmured, feeling a genuinely happy emotion regarding his girlfriend for the first time in he didn’t even know how long. She truly was free and not a prisoner of the house. For that, he was grateful.

 

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said then. “As soon as I have bars I can summon us an Uber.”

 

“Sounds good to me,” Kagome agreed.

 

“And this might be a little awkward...” Inuyasha spoke back up after a moment, earning Kagome’s full attention while Sango and Miroku smirked knowing. “But do you think you and me could maybe, exchange phone numbers?” he asked her.

 

Kagome only grinned.

 

“Sounds good to me.”

 

 

~ Fin ~