Fic, kind of.
Aug. 17th, 2004 05:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhSo, see, I was reading my flist, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
boniblithe rec'd this incredibly creepy Ring vid, and when I watched it I was a little freaked out. You know, kept jumping to look over my shoulder and such. So I wrote a paragraph, and then a little more, and then it was six pages long and five am, and this whole thing is unbeta'd and probably could way use a rewrite, but since I don't really care about it enough for that, consider it my own personal amnesty day.
And I am going to have many, many nightmares tonight.
Tsuzuki/Hisoka, horror, creepiness, death.
Entering the house was like a scream of rage and pain and betrayal, and Hisoka winced, hesitating just over the doorstep. Tsuzuki noticed, and glanced worriedly over his shoulder. Even he seemed to feel something, and he shifted nervously, eyes shooting to corners and shadows. “What? Is someone in here?”
“I don’t know.” Hisoka curled his hands into fists to keep himself from covering his ears. He wasn’t hearing it, not really, not with anything physical. “It’s not a presence- I don’t think- it’s just a solid roar of- of hurt.” His breath was starting to come in gasps from the effort of holding all that emotion away, and he resisted the urge to shout, as if Tsuzuki would have trouble hearing him over the roar and tumble the house seemed to seep out from its very walls. He stepped back over the threshold, and the sudden quiet felt almost like he’d lost a sense.
And then Tsuzuki was there, crowding him farther back from the house, using his body as a solid shield against anything that might suddenly appear. His concern and affection hissed through, soft as whispers after that scream. Hisoka tripped over one of the front steps as he was pushed away from the door, and he shoved at Tsuzuki in annoyance. “Stop it! We’re not in any danger. At least, not intentionally.” He glanced up at the house, the windows shuttered and dark. It was all still, except for a faint, flickering light that shone around the edges of one lopsided curtain on an upper floor, like a far away candle. “I don’t think she can even tell we’re here.”
Tsuzuki followed his gaze. There was something slightly creepy about the house, nothing definable but a clear-cut feeling that kept people from wanting to go in. Hisoka figured it was residue from the fury that raged inside; you couldn’t get that kind of energy build up without some kind of leakage. “What do you think it is?” Tsuzuki asked.
“A ghost.” Hisoka shrugged. “Nothing special.”
“Then what was all that?” Tsuzuki waved towards the front door vaguely. “You looked like you were going to faint.” He pressed the back of his hand to Hisoka’s forehead as if checking for fever.
Hisoka slapped his hand away, exasperated. “I did not. I lost my breath for a second, that’s all. Anyway, whatever’s in there, I’m not sure it’s even sentient. It felt too… simple. Big emotions, but no thought.”
Tsuzuki frowned. “You shouldn’t press yourself too hard, Hisoka.”
“I’m not!” Hisoka rolled his eyes. “Did you hear what I said?” Tsuzuki nodded, but looked like he was about to start another protest. Hisoka brushed past him and stormed through the door, hitting the anger like a wall. It was stronger this time, not just a scream but a horrible light, like bright blackness, and a feeling, like a thouasand fingernails clawing at his skin, and he could taste something horrible, something burnt, and not fingernails but spikes, hot spikes, and something was smoldering, something that had once been alive, and it was burning and screaming and choking him, and gods, his skin was coming off-
Tsuzuki picked him up bodily, simply grabbed him up by the waist and hauled him back outside. It took Hisoka a moment to realize the pain had stopped, had never been real in the first place. He had fallen into a tense ball without realizing it, and he uncurled himself slowly. Tsuzuki was watching him, and Hisoka looked away, ashamed.
“You were screaming,” Tsuzuki said accusingly. He knelt by Hisoka in the grass of the front lawn, leaning over him as if he might need to suddenly carry him off again.
Hisoka sighed and peeked at Tsuzuki from the corner of his eye. “I should be able to do this. Shit. I know I can.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Tsuzuki slapped a hand on his back. “Tonight we’ll go take advantage of the hotel Tatsumi reserved, and tomorrow we’ll give the GuShoShin a wonderful new project to research. Besides, it’s not like it’s an emergency. No one’s in any danger. Except maybe us.”
“It’s just a ghost,” Hisoka said. “I know it.”
“Give it up.” Tsuzuki turned to look at the house. The single lit window darkened briefly, as if someone had walked in front of it. “She’s been dead since before you were born,” he said, his voice gone quiet and strange.
“So’ve you,” Hisoka pointed out. He sat up and bumped into Tsuzuki, who was still staring at the house and hadn’t noticed his movement.
“That’s true,” Tsuzuki said with a laugh that died quickly. “It seems different, though.” He stood, brushing dust off his knees. “Should we try one more time?”
“I thought you wanted to leave.” Hisoka stood more slowly, uncertain.
“Yeah. But- I thought I saw something move in there. Tatsumi’ll have our pay for a month if we run off scared of a ghost. And besides, I trust you. You said you didn’t feel anything else.”
“Since when do you actually listen to me?” Hisoka muttered.
“Since now!” Tsuzuki grinned at him, but it was distracted, and he turned quickly back to the house, lifting his face to it like he did sometimes in the early morning, greeting the sunlight. It was disconcerting to see that look on him in the middle of the night, directed towards a slightly rundown house.
Hisoka followed him, willingly if hesitant, to the doorstep. They both paused, Tsuzuki peering in as if he could pierce the darkness, Hisoka held back by radiating waves of a hatred and a fierce need to cause pain. Hisoka stepped back out of reach. “Tsuzuki… this doesn’t feel right. We should come back later.”
Tsuzuki leaned on the doorframe, one hand on the wall to hold himself while he swayed into the house itself. He seemed fascinated by something inside. “What if she’s trapped in there?” The words seemed to propel him, and he took one step in.
Hisoka crossed his arms. “Then she’s been there for half a century and won’t notice another night. Let’s go.”
“No.” Tsuzuki took another step in, and turned slightly to speak back to Hisoka. The shadows didn’t seem to fall right, distorting his face. He looked much farther away than he could really be. “That’s not right. I have to help her.” It was something Tsuzuki would do, but the words were so calm and unemotional. He sounded like an accountant reciting form-numbers, not Hisoka’s idiot partner racing off to risk himself and save someone who didn’t deserve it.
“Tsuzuki-”
“You can stay here. I’ll be right back. I hear. Something.” Another step, and Tsuzuki disappeared into shadows that were far too thick, vanishing solidly. Hisoka could make out the opposite wall, the faint shape of a bookcase in the corner, the dim, parallel lines of stairs behind a half-open door, but Tsuzuki, who should have been right in front of him, was nowhere.
“Tsuzuki! Damnit, you’re not supposed to go in there without me!” Hisoka hesitated on the step, the house reaching out for him with a vicious eagerness. He held his breath and crossed the doorway like jumping into deep water.
And it was like that- like a flood- like heavy, rushing water- and it swept him straight out of himself, scattered everything that was Kurosaki Hisoka, and he reached out to catch it before it was gone, but it was like holding sand underwater, and he caught other things instead, memories that were his and not his and something dark and living circled around and pressed the air out of his chest. She stood in a kitchen and recited a recipe for her daughter. The ordered words were a spell, a chant, and they were tied somehow to the cuts all over his body, the deepening ache, and the moon made everything look blood-drenched and then he screamed and couldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop, he didn’t know why they’d started but now they wouldn’t stop and he couldn’t run fast enough to get away, he wasn’t big like them and there was nowhere to hide and the rocks were sharp. It was there and not there, solid when it tripped him, but when he fell it was like smoke and he went straight through it to jar his hands on the floor. She scrubbed the floor, and dusted, and cleaned, and swept, and straightened the corners of the magazines on the tables, and she did it every day, even though no one came, until once she stopped and began to scream and never stopped. Someone was screaming and it wasn’t him, but it was his fault, and he would never be forgiven for this. Never. His father never looked at him anymore, not really, not more than a surprised glance when he entered the room or a cursory sweep of a dismissal. He couldn’t see it. She could. It was in the shadows. No one else saw it, no one believed her. No one believed him, he knew what they were thinking but they didn’t believe him. She watched it each day when it started to move. It was faster than him. He didn’t know which way to go. He didn’t have anywhere to go. They screamed in pain. He’d made them scream. She’d make them scream. It was ripping him, pulling him to pieces, tearing away his arms and legs- no that was them, not her. No- if he could only find the door. Only find Tsuzuki. Only find her daughter. It all hurt. It hurt too much. He couldn’t do it; he was tired. Someone came and stopped him. He threw himself at someone. Hisoka and Tsuzuki embraced in flames at Kyoto and cried. He shivered wildly, freezing in the black roar all around them. It hadn’t worked, she’d miscalculated, and now it was everywhere, now it was in everything, dripping out of the walls and growing from the floor, spreading like a disease, like mold, like rot in a fast-motion movie, and she fled, up the stairs, away from the darkness, away from the shadows, up the stairs, raced upwards, watching her feet to make sure she didn’t fall, pulled open the door and used his hands to crawl, he held on tightly as he dragged someone up the stairs.
Hisoka came back to himself suddenly, with the impact of a fall, but someone’s arm was around his chest, holding him in place, and a hand was forced solidly over his mouth, and he fought instinctively, terrified beyond thought of who it could be. He tried to kick or twist away, but they were stronger than him, and he was caught in an awkward position, lying on a jagged slope. He pulled at the hand covering his mouth, starting to scream wordlessly into it, nearly drowning out the whispered mantra in his ear: “Hisoka, Hisoka, Hisoka, please, Hisoka, Hisoka, please, please, Hisoka, shhhhh, please!” Tsuzuki’s voice. Hisoka stopped abruptly in relief, and Tsuzuki’s grip loosened, letting Hisoka pull away. He turned to Tsuzuki, wanting to yell at him, ask just what the hell he thought he was doing, but even in the darkness he could see the tears that glittered in his eyes, and it was enough to stop him.
“Shhhh,” Tsuzuki said, his voice so low Hisoka could barely hear it, even though they were pressed on top of one another. “Don’t let them hear us.” The words caught on a sob. Tsuzuki still had an arm around his chest, and he clung to Hisoka, trembling. His fear was so strong it coated Hisoka’s tongue and hummed in his head, but the feelings of the house- the rage and the pain- were gone. Nothing at all was left, except for Hisoka himself, and Tsuzuki’s desperate terror. This wasn’t right, Hisoka thought. Tsuzuki wasn’t afraid. Angry, maybe, and definitely sad or grieving or hyper or ecstatic or worried or kind, but not afraid. Hisoka looked around- they were on the stairs, that was the jagged slope- and above them, behind a door, was the dancing light of a distant candle. Below them was the empty room they’d just passed through, looking almost bright now with the moonlight streaming through the windows and front door.
Hisoka caught his breath. Something moved down there, though he could feel nothing. Its shadow passed in front of the doorway, and unconsciously he froze, waiting for someone to appear. The shadow moved on and was gone, and nothing stood before the stairs. Something else moved in a far corner, and Hisoka understood. Nothing was casting the shadows; they were moving by themselves. They were somehow alive. A thick stream of shadows started to spill from the ceiling like oil, hitting the floor in a fountain as they splashed, coating the floor and spreading out. It was so dark that it hurt to look at, and colors danced in Hisoka’s eyes as they tried to compensate for the nothingness, but there was nothing, no shape, no light, not in that shadow, darker than night in a locked basement and darker than the spaces between the stars and darker than anything could ever be. Tsuzuki curled tighter around him, his grip beginning to hurt. Hisoka felt very much like burying his face in Tsuzuki’s shoulder, in hiding from that horrible darkness that looked like a rip through time, a gap to an eternity of falling. And it was somehow alive. It lapped over the first stair, transforming it into a hole without a bottom, and yet it was moving.
“Do something!” Hisoka whispered.
Tsuzuki shook his head wildly. “No- No- No-” He stared at Hisoka as if just seeing him. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
“Idiot,” Hisoka said, turning to climb the stairs, shoving Tsuzuki before him. The shadows crept over the second stair, steady as a rising tide. “Call Suzaku, or Byakko, or someone. Gods, just make a little light so it’s not so dark.”
They spilled out into the second floor, tripping over each other and falling. They raised a cloud of dust from the floor of the empty hallway. It stretched out before them, no doors or windows until it reached a turn at the opposite end of the house. “I won’t,” Tsuzuki said, in a little boy’s whine.
“This is not the time to do this!” Hisoka shoved the door shut behind them. He didn’t expect it to do anything, but at least he didn’t have to see the shadows, still climbing the stairs. “What the hell is wrong with you? Pull it together or we’re going to get killed!”
Tsuzuki whimpered and buried his face in his hands. Hisoka groaned and pulled him to his feet, supporting him as they sprinted down the hallway. Tsuzuki dragged his feet, stumbled, and made little animal noises of fear, and finally stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway. Hisoka tried to drag him along, but he was too large, too solid to budge him if he really didn’t want to be moved. Tsuzuki covered his face again. The dread rolling off of him was so great Hisoka couldn’t feel anything else, and his own body reacted to it, adrenaline flooding him as he shuddered with the need to fight or flee. “Come on!”
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” Tsuzuki said, his voice hissing as he whispered.
Hisoka threw all of his weight into trying to force Tsuzuki to move. “What are you doing?”
“Shhhh,” Tsuzuki’s voice was tearful. “Don’t let them hear us.” The words choked and stopped in the exact same places they had before.
Hisoka swallowed hard. “Tsuzuki?”
Tsuzuki raised his head. Drying tears shone on his cheeks, but his eyes were black. Not dark, like they sometimes were when it was dim, but black, a horrible, soulless black that covered even the whites of his eyes. He had no pupils, no iris, but Hisoka could feel it staring at him, feel the sucking emptiness of its unblinking gaze. He shoved it away, falling back a few steps. The need to scream was paralyzing.
It lifted its arms, searching blindly for him. Something seemed to shift deep in the darkness of its eyes, as if things moved in the depths. The rest of its face was perfectly still, insectile in its hardness. “Hisoka,” it said. When its mouth opened, shadows vomited forth, running down its chin and chest like blood. It didn’t seem to notice as its shirt soaked up the darkness, turning it into a pit of nothingness. “Hisoka, Hisoka, please, Hisoka, Hisoka, please, please, Hisoka-”
Hisoka turned and ran. His breath tore at his throat, and he couldn’t control his feet, skidding and sliding. He collided into a wall, and clutched at it to keep from falling, one hand shoving himself off it to keep running. He took the corner without slowing, looked behind himself without meaning to and caught one glimpse of Tsuzuki’s face melting, or the shadows bubbling up from beneath, all the features twisting and distorting and destroyed. A sound escaped from Hisoka, too thin and high to be a scream, more like the screech of some trapped animal. He almost didn’t recognize his own voice. After that he kept his eyes closed tight even as he ran. He slammed head first into the closed door at the end of the hallway, and bounced off, fingers slipping and sliding off the doorknob as he tried to pull it open, for one brief moment certain that it was locked.
And then he managed to get a firmer grip and pulled it open, slamming it behind him as he raced up another stairs and through another door. Another empty hallway. Where was he going- and how many floors had this house had? This was too many, more than it had looked like from the outside. And where was Tsuzuki? The real Tsuzuki, because that thing hadn’t been him, Hisoka told himself, couldn’t have been. He was just lost somewhere else in this house.
He hadn’t filled up with shadows until they spilled out and covered him and left nothing. Couldn’t have, couldn’t have, Hisoka’s breath said in his ears. Couldn’t have.
This hallway just led to another door, identical to all the previous ones. Hisoka slowed to a stop before it. There had to be somewhere else to go. There were no other doors, no windows, not even any furniture. Here and there on the wall, a patch of wallpaper slightly brighter than the rest marked the former spot of a picture. Over his breath, and the pulse that pounded in his ears, Hisoka could hear something faint, something that sucked and sighed, like the sound made when he stepped into deep mud and it covered his foot, clinging to it and drawing it back when he tried to step out. His courage failed him and he fled again, through the door and up the stairs.
And it was finally something different. Hisoka stumbled through the door, tripping on the rough wood floor and falling to his knees. It was an unfinished attic, walls and ceiling and floor all the same bare lumber. In the floor, patches of fluffy pink insulation poked through, areas to thin to walk on. In the center of the room- which must have covered the entire top of the house, it stretched away in every direction- sat an old woman, more ancient than Hisoka could guess. Her yellowing hair was so thin that strands of it floated in a breeze he couldn’t even feel, and it fell past her waist to pool around her. Her skin sagged in wrinkles, bunching at the swollen knuckles of her hands and hiding her eyes. She was stick-thin, looked like loose grey cloth draped on a fragile frame.
She turned her head slowly to regard Hisoka. It was a stiff movement, and nothing else stirred, except for the slight drag of some hair to a new position on the floor. “No need to kneel to me, boy,” she said, her voice deeper than he would have imagined. “That was long ago.”
Hisoka scrambled to his feet. “Where’s Tsuzuki?” She stared at him for a long time, until he wondered if she had chosen that moment to die. “Tsuzuki-“
“I don’t know that name.” She began the slow movement back to facing forward.
“Tsuzuki!” Hisoka closed in on her, grabbing her arms to forced her to face him. “The man I followed in here. I know you know him.” She was brittle and soft beneath her hands, and he tightened his grip. “Tell me where he is!”
She laughed at him, a terrible rattling sound that might have been a cough. “You threaten me? I have been here for fifty two years, waiting for the shadows to finally climb the stairs, and now you come to shout in my face because you lost your lover? As if you could scare me, you shaking, trembling, little shinigami. You fearful once-mortal.” She laughed again, and it shook her body like a seizure. “I have lost everything that I might fear for. Years ago I sold it, for power, and now it comes back, climbing the stairs to come for the rest of me, and you think I might fear your violence?”
Hisoka shook her. “Shut up!”
“You called them out.” She stretched her hand to him, and it trembled in the air, weak and unsteady, then rested on his cheek. The dark skin was leathery and tissue-thin, and he imagined it tearing, ripping open to release something infinitely worse that hid beneath. He turned his face away in disgust. “They’d slept until you two fools broke my borders and brought them up here, trailing them all the way behind you like breadcrumbs.”
“Give him back to me.” Hisoka closed his hands over her shoulders, digging in hard. He didn’t mean to hurt her, but there wasn’t much time. She truly wasn’t afraid of him, he could feel it, but he had to make her, had to make her tell him where Tsuzuki was. “Tell me. Please!”
“He’s dead, boy,” she said, leaning into Hisoka. She smelled like dust and old books. The wrinkles in her skin were graven deep as rock cravings. “I could’ve been safe. But you led them here.”
Shadows leaked through the bottom of the door. “No,” he said. Darkness dripped towards them, circled them. The shadows built in speed and thickness, flowing in, quicker and quicker, until they roiled around them like thunderclouds. “No!”
He shoved her into them, and they collapsed in a sudden burst, covering her. She screamed, a sound that went louder and higher and wider than any human throat could produce. Hisoka dropped to the floor and covered his ears, but it didn’t block the sound, which crept past human into animal and then metal and then was the scream of the wind in a typhoon and then was nothing.
The shadows dissolved, revealing the space at their center where a moment ago a woman had stood. For a brief second, Hisoka thought they might be ordinary shadows again, falling back to the floor and walls, back to where they belonged. And then the first ones started to circle him.
boniblithe rec'd this incredibly creepy Ring vid, and when I watched it I was a little freaked out. You know, kept jumping to look over my shoulder and such. So I wrote a paragraph, and then a little more, and then it was six pages long and five am, and this whole thing is unbeta'd and probably could way use a rewrite, but since I don't really care about it enough for that, consider it my own personal amnesty day. And I am going to have many, many nightmares tonight.
Tsuzuki/Hisoka, horror, creepiness, death.
Entering the house was like a scream of rage and pain and betrayal, and Hisoka winced, hesitating just over the doorstep. Tsuzuki noticed, and glanced worriedly over his shoulder. Even he seemed to feel something, and he shifted nervously, eyes shooting to corners and shadows. “What? Is someone in here?”
“I don’t know.” Hisoka curled his hands into fists to keep himself from covering his ears. He wasn’t hearing it, not really, not with anything physical. “It’s not a presence- I don’t think- it’s just a solid roar of- of hurt.” His breath was starting to come in gasps from the effort of holding all that emotion away, and he resisted the urge to shout, as if Tsuzuki would have trouble hearing him over the roar and tumble the house seemed to seep out from its very walls. He stepped back over the threshold, and the sudden quiet felt almost like he’d lost a sense.
And then Tsuzuki was there, crowding him farther back from the house, using his body as a solid shield against anything that might suddenly appear. His concern and affection hissed through, soft as whispers after that scream. Hisoka tripped over one of the front steps as he was pushed away from the door, and he shoved at Tsuzuki in annoyance. “Stop it! We’re not in any danger. At least, not intentionally.” He glanced up at the house, the windows shuttered and dark. It was all still, except for a faint, flickering light that shone around the edges of one lopsided curtain on an upper floor, like a far away candle. “I don’t think she can even tell we’re here.”
Tsuzuki followed his gaze. There was something slightly creepy about the house, nothing definable but a clear-cut feeling that kept people from wanting to go in. Hisoka figured it was residue from the fury that raged inside; you couldn’t get that kind of energy build up without some kind of leakage. “What do you think it is?” Tsuzuki asked.
“A ghost.” Hisoka shrugged. “Nothing special.”
“Then what was all that?” Tsuzuki waved towards the front door vaguely. “You looked like you were going to faint.” He pressed the back of his hand to Hisoka’s forehead as if checking for fever.
Hisoka slapped his hand away, exasperated. “I did not. I lost my breath for a second, that’s all. Anyway, whatever’s in there, I’m not sure it’s even sentient. It felt too… simple. Big emotions, but no thought.”
Tsuzuki frowned. “You shouldn’t press yourself too hard, Hisoka.”
“I’m not!” Hisoka rolled his eyes. “Did you hear what I said?” Tsuzuki nodded, but looked like he was about to start another protest. Hisoka brushed past him and stormed through the door, hitting the anger like a wall. It was stronger this time, not just a scream but a horrible light, like bright blackness, and a feeling, like a thouasand fingernails clawing at his skin, and he could taste something horrible, something burnt, and not fingernails but spikes, hot spikes, and something was smoldering, something that had once been alive, and it was burning and screaming and choking him, and gods, his skin was coming off-
Tsuzuki picked him up bodily, simply grabbed him up by the waist and hauled him back outside. It took Hisoka a moment to realize the pain had stopped, had never been real in the first place. He had fallen into a tense ball without realizing it, and he uncurled himself slowly. Tsuzuki was watching him, and Hisoka looked away, ashamed.
“You were screaming,” Tsuzuki said accusingly. He knelt by Hisoka in the grass of the front lawn, leaning over him as if he might need to suddenly carry him off again.
Hisoka sighed and peeked at Tsuzuki from the corner of his eye. “I should be able to do this. Shit. I know I can.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Tsuzuki slapped a hand on his back. “Tonight we’ll go take advantage of the hotel Tatsumi reserved, and tomorrow we’ll give the GuShoShin a wonderful new project to research. Besides, it’s not like it’s an emergency. No one’s in any danger. Except maybe us.”
“It’s just a ghost,” Hisoka said. “I know it.”
“Give it up.” Tsuzuki turned to look at the house. The single lit window darkened briefly, as if someone had walked in front of it. “She’s been dead since before you were born,” he said, his voice gone quiet and strange.
“So’ve you,” Hisoka pointed out. He sat up and bumped into Tsuzuki, who was still staring at the house and hadn’t noticed his movement.
“That’s true,” Tsuzuki said with a laugh that died quickly. “It seems different, though.” He stood, brushing dust off his knees. “Should we try one more time?”
“I thought you wanted to leave.” Hisoka stood more slowly, uncertain.
“Yeah. But- I thought I saw something move in there. Tatsumi’ll have our pay for a month if we run off scared of a ghost. And besides, I trust you. You said you didn’t feel anything else.”
“Since when do you actually listen to me?” Hisoka muttered.
“Since now!” Tsuzuki grinned at him, but it was distracted, and he turned quickly back to the house, lifting his face to it like he did sometimes in the early morning, greeting the sunlight. It was disconcerting to see that look on him in the middle of the night, directed towards a slightly rundown house.
Hisoka followed him, willingly if hesitant, to the doorstep. They both paused, Tsuzuki peering in as if he could pierce the darkness, Hisoka held back by radiating waves of a hatred and a fierce need to cause pain. Hisoka stepped back out of reach. “Tsuzuki… this doesn’t feel right. We should come back later.”
Tsuzuki leaned on the doorframe, one hand on the wall to hold himself while he swayed into the house itself. He seemed fascinated by something inside. “What if she’s trapped in there?” The words seemed to propel him, and he took one step in.
Hisoka crossed his arms. “Then she’s been there for half a century and won’t notice another night. Let’s go.”
“No.” Tsuzuki took another step in, and turned slightly to speak back to Hisoka. The shadows didn’t seem to fall right, distorting his face. He looked much farther away than he could really be. “That’s not right. I have to help her.” It was something Tsuzuki would do, but the words were so calm and unemotional. He sounded like an accountant reciting form-numbers, not Hisoka’s idiot partner racing off to risk himself and save someone who didn’t deserve it.
“Tsuzuki-”
“You can stay here. I’ll be right back. I hear. Something.” Another step, and Tsuzuki disappeared into shadows that were far too thick, vanishing solidly. Hisoka could make out the opposite wall, the faint shape of a bookcase in the corner, the dim, parallel lines of stairs behind a half-open door, but Tsuzuki, who should have been right in front of him, was nowhere.
“Tsuzuki! Damnit, you’re not supposed to go in there without me!” Hisoka hesitated on the step, the house reaching out for him with a vicious eagerness. He held his breath and crossed the doorway like jumping into deep water.
And it was like that- like a flood- like heavy, rushing water- and it swept him straight out of himself, scattered everything that was Kurosaki Hisoka, and he reached out to catch it before it was gone, but it was like holding sand underwater, and he caught other things instead, memories that were his and not his and something dark and living circled around and pressed the air out of his chest. She stood in a kitchen and recited a recipe for her daughter. The ordered words were a spell, a chant, and they were tied somehow to the cuts all over his body, the deepening ache, and the moon made everything look blood-drenched and then he screamed and couldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stop, he didn’t know why they’d started but now they wouldn’t stop and he couldn’t run fast enough to get away, he wasn’t big like them and there was nowhere to hide and the rocks were sharp. It was there and not there, solid when it tripped him, but when he fell it was like smoke and he went straight through it to jar his hands on the floor. She scrubbed the floor, and dusted, and cleaned, and swept, and straightened the corners of the magazines on the tables, and she did it every day, even though no one came, until once she stopped and began to scream and never stopped. Someone was screaming and it wasn’t him, but it was his fault, and he would never be forgiven for this. Never. His father never looked at him anymore, not really, not more than a surprised glance when he entered the room or a cursory sweep of a dismissal. He couldn’t see it. She could. It was in the shadows. No one else saw it, no one believed her. No one believed him, he knew what they were thinking but they didn’t believe him. She watched it each day when it started to move. It was faster than him. He didn’t know which way to go. He didn’t have anywhere to go. They screamed in pain. He’d made them scream. She’d make them scream. It was ripping him, pulling him to pieces, tearing away his arms and legs- no that was them, not her. No- if he could only find the door. Only find Tsuzuki. Only find her daughter. It all hurt. It hurt too much. He couldn’t do it; he was tired. Someone came and stopped him. He threw himself at someone. Hisoka and Tsuzuki embraced in flames at Kyoto and cried. He shivered wildly, freezing in the black roar all around them. It hadn’t worked, she’d miscalculated, and now it was everywhere, now it was in everything, dripping out of the walls and growing from the floor, spreading like a disease, like mold, like rot in a fast-motion movie, and she fled, up the stairs, away from the darkness, away from the shadows, up the stairs, raced upwards, watching her feet to make sure she didn’t fall, pulled open the door and used his hands to crawl, he held on tightly as he dragged someone up the stairs.
Hisoka came back to himself suddenly, with the impact of a fall, but someone’s arm was around his chest, holding him in place, and a hand was forced solidly over his mouth, and he fought instinctively, terrified beyond thought of who it could be. He tried to kick or twist away, but they were stronger than him, and he was caught in an awkward position, lying on a jagged slope. He pulled at the hand covering his mouth, starting to scream wordlessly into it, nearly drowning out the whispered mantra in his ear: “Hisoka, Hisoka, Hisoka, please, Hisoka, Hisoka, please, please, Hisoka, shhhhh, please!” Tsuzuki’s voice. Hisoka stopped abruptly in relief, and Tsuzuki’s grip loosened, letting Hisoka pull away. He turned to Tsuzuki, wanting to yell at him, ask just what the hell he thought he was doing, but even in the darkness he could see the tears that glittered in his eyes, and it was enough to stop him.
“Shhhh,” Tsuzuki said, his voice so low Hisoka could barely hear it, even though they were pressed on top of one another. “Don’t let them hear us.” The words caught on a sob. Tsuzuki still had an arm around his chest, and he clung to Hisoka, trembling. His fear was so strong it coated Hisoka’s tongue and hummed in his head, but the feelings of the house- the rage and the pain- were gone. Nothing at all was left, except for Hisoka himself, and Tsuzuki’s desperate terror. This wasn’t right, Hisoka thought. Tsuzuki wasn’t afraid. Angry, maybe, and definitely sad or grieving or hyper or ecstatic or worried or kind, but not afraid. Hisoka looked around- they were on the stairs, that was the jagged slope- and above them, behind a door, was the dancing light of a distant candle. Below them was the empty room they’d just passed through, looking almost bright now with the moonlight streaming through the windows and front door.
Hisoka caught his breath. Something moved down there, though he could feel nothing. Its shadow passed in front of the doorway, and unconsciously he froze, waiting for someone to appear. The shadow moved on and was gone, and nothing stood before the stairs. Something else moved in a far corner, and Hisoka understood. Nothing was casting the shadows; they were moving by themselves. They were somehow alive. A thick stream of shadows started to spill from the ceiling like oil, hitting the floor in a fountain as they splashed, coating the floor and spreading out. It was so dark that it hurt to look at, and colors danced in Hisoka’s eyes as they tried to compensate for the nothingness, but there was nothing, no shape, no light, not in that shadow, darker than night in a locked basement and darker than the spaces between the stars and darker than anything could ever be. Tsuzuki curled tighter around him, his grip beginning to hurt. Hisoka felt very much like burying his face in Tsuzuki’s shoulder, in hiding from that horrible darkness that looked like a rip through time, a gap to an eternity of falling. And it was somehow alive. It lapped over the first stair, transforming it into a hole without a bottom, and yet it was moving.
“Do something!” Hisoka whispered.
Tsuzuki shook his head wildly. “No- No- No-” He stared at Hisoka as if just seeing him. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
“Idiot,” Hisoka said, turning to climb the stairs, shoving Tsuzuki before him. The shadows crept over the second stair, steady as a rising tide. “Call Suzaku, or Byakko, or someone. Gods, just make a little light so it’s not so dark.”
They spilled out into the second floor, tripping over each other and falling. They raised a cloud of dust from the floor of the empty hallway. It stretched out before them, no doors or windows until it reached a turn at the opposite end of the house. “I won’t,” Tsuzuki said, in a little boy’s whine.
“This is not the time to do this!” Hisoka shoved the door shut behind them. He didn’t expect it to do anything, but at least he didn’t have to see the shadows, still climbing the stairs. “What the hell is wrong with you? Pull it together or we’re going to get killed!”
Tsuzuki whimpered and buried his face in his hands. Hisoka groaned and pulled him to his feet, supporting him as they sprinted down the hallway. Tsuzuki dragged his feet, stumbled, and made little animal noises of fear, and finally stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway. Hisoka tried to drag him along, but he was too large, too solid to budge him if he really didn’t want to be moved. Tsuzuki covered his face again. The dread rolling off of him was so great Hisoka couldn’t feel anything else, and his own body reacted to it, adrenaline flooding him as he shuddered with the need to fight or flee. “Come on!”
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” Tsuzuki said, his voice hissing as he whispered.
Hisoka threw all of his weight into trying to force Tsuzuki to move. “What are you doing?”
“Shhhh,” Tsuzuki’s voice was tearful. “Don’t let them hear us.” The words choked and stopped in the exact same places they had before.
Hisoka swallowed hard. “Tsuzuki?”
Tsuzuki raised his head. Drying tears shone on his cheeks, but his eyes were black. Not dark, like they sometimes were when it was dim, but black, a horrible, soulless black that covered even the whites of his eyes. He had no pupils, no iris, but Hisoka could feel it staring at him, feel the sucking emptiness of its unblinking gaze. He shoved it away, falling back a few steps. The need to scream was paralyzing.
It lifted its arms, searching blindly for him. Something seemed to shift deep in the darkness of its eyes, as if things moved in the depths. The rest of its face was perfectly still, insectile in its hardness. “Hisoka,” it said. When its mouth opened, shadows vomited forth, running down its chin and chest like blood. It didn’t seem to notice as its shirt soaked up the darkness, turning it into a pit of nothingness. “Hisoka, Hisoka, please, Hisoka, Hisoka, please, please, Hisoka-”
Hisoka turned and ran. His breath tore at his throat, and he couldn’t control his feet, skidding and sliding. He collided into a wall, and clutched at it to keep from falling, one hand shoving himself off it to keep running. He took the corner without slowing, looked behind himself without meaning to and caught one glimpse of Tsuzuki’s face melting, or the shadows bubbling up from beneath, all the features twisting and distorting and destroyed. A sound escaped from Hisoka, too thin and high to be a scream, more like the screech of some trapped animal. He almost didn’t recognize his own voice. After that he kept his eyes closed tight even as he ran. He slammed head first into the closed door at the end of the hallway, and bounced off, fingers slipping and sliding off the doorknob as he tried to pull it open, for one brief moment certain that it was locked.
And then he managed to get a firmer grip and pulled it open, slamming it behind him as he raced up another stairs and through another door. Another empty hallway. Where was he going- and how many floors had this house had? This was too many, more than it had looked like from the outside. And where was Tsuzuki? The real Tsuzuki, because that thing hadn’t been him, Hisoka told himself, couldn’t have been. He was just lost somewhere else in this house.
He hadn’t filled up with shadows until they spilled out and covered him and left nothing. Couldn’t have, couldn’t have, Hisoka’s breath said in his ears. Couldn’t have.
This hallway just led to another door, identical to all the previous ones. Hisoka slowed to a stop before it. There had to be somewhere else to go. There were no other doors, no windows, not even any furniture. Here and there on the wall, a patch of wallpaper slightly brighter than the rest marked the former spot of a picture. Over his breath, and the pulse that pounded in his ears, Hisoka could hear something faint, something that sucked and sighed, like the sound made when he stepped into deep mud and it covered his foot, clinging to it and drawing it back when he tried to step out. His courage failed him and he fled again, through the door and up the stairs.
And it was finally something different. Hisoka stumbled through the door, tripping on the rough wood floor and falling to his knees. It was an unfinished attic, walls and ceiling and floor all the same bare lumber. In the floor, patches of fluffy pink insulation poked through, areas to thin to walk on. In the center of the room- which must have covered the entire top of the house, it stretched away in every direction- sat an old woman, more ancient than Hisoka could guess. Her yellowing hair was so thin that strands of it floated in a breeze he couldn’t even feel, and it fell past her waist to pool around her. Her skin sagged in wrinkles, bunching at the swollen knuckles of her hands and hiding her eyes. She was stick-thin, looked like loose grey cloth draped on a fragile frame.
She turned her head slowly to regard Hisoka. It was a stiff movement, and nothing else stirred, except for the slight drag of some hair to a new position on the floor. “No need to kneel to me, boy,” she said, her voice deeper than he would have imagined. “That was long ago.”
Hisoka scrambled to his feet. “Where’s Tsuzuki?” She stared at him for a long time, until he wondered if she had chosen that moment to die. “Tsuzuki-“
“I don’t know that name.” She began the slow movement back to facing forward.
“Tsuzuki!” Hisoka closed in on her, grabbing her arms to forced her to face him. “The man I followed in here. I know you know him.” She was brittle and soft beneath her hands, and he tightened his grip. “Tell me where he is!”
She laughed at him, a terrible rattling sound that might have been a cough. “You threaten me? I have been here for fifty two years, waiting for the shadows to finally climb the stairs, and now you come to shout in my face because you lost your lover? As if you could scare me, you shaking, trembling, little shinigami. You fearful once-mortal.” She laughed again, and it shook her body like a seizure. “I have lost everything that I might fear for. Years ago I sold it, for power, and now it comes back, climbing the stairs to come for the rest of me, and you think I might fear your violence?”
Hisoka shook her. “Shut up!”
“You called them out.” She stretched her hand to him, and it trembled in the air, weak and unsteady, then rested on his cheek. The dark skin was leathery and tissue-thin, and he imagined it tearing, ripping open to release something infinitely worse that hid beneath. He turned his face away in disgust. “They’d slept until you two fools broke my borders and brought them up here, trailing them all the way behind you like breadcrumbs.”
“Give him back to me.” Hisoka closed his hands over her shoulders, digging in hard. He didn’t mean to hurt her, but there wasn’t much time. She truly wasn’t afraid of him, he could feel it, but he had to make her, had to make her tell him where Tsuzuki was. “Tell me. Please!”
“He’s dead, boy,” she said, leaning into Hisoka. She smelled like dust and old books. The wrinkles in her skin were graven deep as rock cravings. “I could’ve been safe. But you led them here.”
Shadows leaked through the bottom of the door. “No,” he said. Darkness dripped towards them, circled them. The shadows built in speed and thickness, flowing in, quicker and quicker, until they roiled around them like thunderclouds. “No!”
He shoved her into them, and they collapsed in a sudden burst, covering her. She screamed, a sound that went louder and higher and wider than any human throat could produce. Hisoka dropped to the floor and covered his ears, but it didn’t block the sound, which crept past human into animal and then metal and then was the scream of the wind in a typhoon and then was nothing.
The shadows dissolved, revealing the space at their center where a moment ago a woman had stood. For a brief second, Hisoka thought they might be ordinary shadows again, falling back to the floor and walls, back to where they belonged. And then the first ones started to circle him.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2004-08-17 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 10:38 am (UTC)See, and now I need my 'I am eeeevil' icon. Just after I'd gotten rid of it.
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Date: 2004-08-17 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 04:24 am (UTC)have you ever played Ico?
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Date: 2004-08-17 10:43 am (UTC)And then everybody died. My poor boys. ;_;
Nope, never played it. The shadows-that-move thing came from a story that traumatized me as a small child. It sounds good though- I really liked your drabble of it over on
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Date: 2004-08-17 12:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 08:26 pm (UTC)I am going to have to rent this game now.
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Date: 2004-08-17 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 05:43 am (UTC)Now I am shuddering
Do you want an after-the-fact beta? Because it's very good, but I think it can be cleaned up a bit, especially in the beginning, where you have some unnecessary repetitions of information/scene-setting and some adverbs you could stand to lose.
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Date: 2004-08-17 10:57 am (UTC)And wow- I hadn't even thought of it. This just sorta happened, and I figured that since I'd finished it, I may as well post it rather than letting it languish on my harddrive. But if you think there's actually something here, and I'd love a beta.
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Date: 2004-08-18 07:22 pm (UTC)I'm going to be working late all week, but I can send you comments Saturday, if you don't mind waiting.
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Date: 2004-08-18 10:39 pm (UTC)And just take as long as you want, truely. I didn't expect to write it; I'm in no hurry to redo it.
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Date: 2004-08-17 07:43 am (UTC)Thank you for making me flashback to all of the fucking scary Japanese horror movies I have ever seen. I'd cry, but I'm too busy trying keep my feet on my chair and away from the underside of my desk.
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Date: 2004-08-17 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 10:55 am (UTC)*sneaks a look under her desk*
Augh.
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Date: 2004-08-17 11:17 am (UTC)And I'd probably want to see Dark Water too, if I'd ever heard of it before. I <3 horror. I blame this whole story on a story I read as a little kid that SCARRED me. So of course I've never forgotten it.
*looks under the desk with you* Did that shadow just move?
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Date: 2004-08-17 11:48 am (UTC)... you know, my great-uncle was a witch doctor. I may be an atheist, but I shall NEVER EVER EVER forget some of the stories I heard as a kid.
Dark Water is wonderful and bloody scary -- it's by the same director who did Ringu. I saw that and Ju-On in the Melbourne International Film Festival, both theatres packed with excitable movie-goers.
Of course, what was worse was walking home afterwards. LATE AT NIGHT.
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Date: 2004-08-17 08:08 pm (UTC)Dude. *shudders* That reminds me of the first time I saw The Ring- my roommate and I refused to answer the phone the rest of the night, and squeaked each time it rang.
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Date: 2004-08-17 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 11:53 am (UTC)*crawls back under her rock*
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Date: 2004-08-17 08:11 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for the feedback. Although sadly, I don't think the JuOhCho site worked for you. At least, I haven't gotten anything from them yet. I'm still new to the site, though, so maybe it takes a day or two to be sent.
But thanks again!
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Date: 2004-08-17 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 08:16 pm (UTC)I was just on my way to send feedback to you! (Which I, um, forgot to do last night after I first downloaded the vid. But it was dark and I was alone and it was all scary and THE LITTLE GIRL WAS GOING TO EAT ME.)
So, um, yes. Beautiful vid. And the song choice was perfect- I know a few Deftone songs, though I'd never heard this one before, and while I was waiting for it to download I was wondering if it would work. But it did, amazingly so, so creepy and... GAH. And the movements on screen fit so well with the beat and rhythm of the song.
And I'm not really all that good at giving feedback for vids, but I loved it. Like woah.
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Date: 2004-08-17 08:28 pm (UTC)but yeah, the little girl *is* really...something, ain't she? And Deftones is usually very scream-y but I downloaded this by chance (heh, I was 'lucky' to download the song) and I loved it and was trying to find a fandom for it and then got smacked upside the head with the idea. I internally screamed "HELLTHEFUCKNO!!" and cringed, but the idea nagged at me; and really, who else is nuts enough to do this?
=) I'm really glad you liked it, thank you for the feedback.
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Date: 2004-08-17 12:51 pm (UTC)That was creepy and depressing and WAHH!!!!!
But I liked it. Reminded me of my house when the lights are off and the sun just set...and when I used to have nightmares that the shadows were coming after me.
Course, it got to a point I told them to 'f-off' and 'come get me you *bleeps*' and they stopped. Oddly enough. :)
*hugs you* YAY! I loves it! *memories*
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Date: 2004-08-17 08:18 pm (UTC)*hugs*
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Date: 2004-08-17 02:25 pm (UTC)....
!!!
*dies*
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Date: 2004-08-17 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-18 12:51 am (UTC)Holy. Shit.
Jeebus, today's the day for creeping me out or someting. That was a seriously powerful bit of creepiness, dear. Ow. Whoa. holy shit, yeah. It killed me.
*eyes the shadows nervously* >___< This is why I don't watch scary movies!
**Wolf**
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Date: 2004-08-18 08:27 pm (UTC)And you don't watch scary movies? :o I'm addicted to the things. And there's nothing more fun than making an easily-scared friend sit through the most terrifying ones. ^^; Which obviously is why I end up writing things like this.
But thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked it.
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Date: 2005-10-16 05:27 am (UTC)Because this is brillant.
Mind if I friend you?
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Date: 2005-10-16 09:19 pm (UTC)And thank you- though it's so ironic that you happened to read this fic just now. I'd been planning on getting it beta'd and rewriting it for Halloween at the end of this month, and thought I'd pulled down the copy of it I posted to LJ. No worries- just warning that you might see this again in a few weeks. ;)
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Date: 2005-10-16 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-17 02:58 am (UTC)