Day 245

As the two teenagers made their way up the front garden of the abandoned house, one was significantly more eager about the prospect of breaking into it than the other. He shone his torch at the boarded-up windows, trying to find a possible entry route, while his friend cowered behind him. “I'm telling you, Taro,” he said, “we really shouldn't be doing this-”

“And I'm telling you, quit being such a wimp,” said Taro. “We're here for a reason, remember?”

“But… if the ghost is real, then-”

Taro rolled his eyes. “For the last time, Souji,” he insisted, “there is no ghost. That's why we're here: to prove to all the gullible idiots like you that this whole ghost story is just a bunch of baloney.” Having found a promising-looking window, he held the torch out to his friend. “Here, hold the torch for me.”

While Souji held the torch, Taro pulled out a crowbar and began ripping off the wooden boards covering the windows. “Even if the ghost isn't real, isn't this still breaking and entering?” Souji pointed out.

“Sometimes, when you're doing investigative work, you gotta take a few risks,” said Taro.

With the boards removed, Taro put away the crowbar, took the torch back from Souji, and climbed in through the broken window. The room he found himself in was thick with dust, muffling his footprints; the beam of the torch illuminated the particles as they drifted lazily through the air. Shining the torch around, he saw that the room was almost entirely bare, with only a faded, moth-eaten rug and a few dusty pieces of wooden furniture scattered around.

Taro looked back to see Souji still standing outside, staring through the window with some trepidation. Taro shone the torch at his face, causing him to flinch and cover his eyes. “You coming in or what?” he asked.

Reluctantly, Souji climbed in through the window to join his friend. The two briefly explored the room, but it was clear that there was nothing of interest within it. Souji, however, was still uneasy. “Seems empty to me,” he said. “Can we go now?”

“Don't be stupid,” said Taro. “We're gonna search the entire house, just to make sure that-”

“Leave this place!”

A girl's voice suddenly echoed through the darkness, catching the two friends off-guard. The voice somehow seemed both timid and fierce at the same time, and though Taro was not intimidated, Souji certainly was. “Wh-what was that?!” he said.

“Leave this place at once!” the voice insisted. “You are not welcome here!”

Taro was still unfazed. “Relax,” he said. “It's probably just being played over speakers or something, as someone's idea of a practical joke. Come on.” He gestured to Souji to follow him, then proceeded through a nearby doorway in the direction of the voice.

Taro and Souji found themselves in a narrow, dingy corridor. Here, too, the air hung thick with dust. To their left, the corridor led to the front door. A pair of abandoned shoes still sat near the boarded-up door, a spider web stretched across the foot hole of one of them. To their right, the corridor branched into two, with one path leading upstairs and the other leading to another doorway. As far as they could tell, the corridor was deserted. “I don't like this...” said Souji.

“Please!” the voice called out, a measure of panic starting to creep into its tone. “For your own safety, you must leave at once!”

Taro, still undaunted, continued sweeping the corridor with the torch beam, in search of the source of the voice. Suddenly, the beam fell upon the figure of a teenage girl standing at the foot of the stairs, which had been empty just a moment before. The girl was thin, almost emaciated, and her skin was almost deathly white. She wore nothing but a stained white gown that hung loosely from her skeletal frame, and her long, matted purple hair hung down over her entire face, shielding it from view. She looked as though she had walked right out of a horror movie.

Souji let out a loud cry of terror, jumping behind his friend and trembling from head to foot. “If that's not a ghost, then what the hell is it?!” he cried out.

“I told you,” said Taro, staying rational. “It's just someone playing a practical joke. It's some chick in a costume, nothing more.”

The myserious girl dramatically raised a hand. “I am not 'some chick',” she declared, though her voice still wavered slightly. “You must leave now, for your own good!”

“I-I think we should do what she says-” said Souji.

“No way,” said Taro. “We came here to prove that that ghost is a phony, and that's exactly what I'm about to do.”

With that, Taro began to advance towards the girl. Strangely, the girl seemed to become more terrified with every step he took, and soon she began slowly backing away from him. “No, please… you must get away from here!” As Taro continued to advance, the girl's voice grew more and more frantic. “Al… alright, it's true! I-I'm just a girl in a costume! Please, you don't need to- NO!!”

But it was too late. Taro had reached forward and seized the girl's wrist. In an instant, his eyes shot open in pain and terror, his pupils rapidly dilating. Letting out a rattling gasp, he tried to pull away, but his body refused to move. An invisible force was coursing through him, stripping him of every last ounce of energy. The girl looked away, ashamed. There was nothing she could do now. There was nothing anyone could do.

The hand holding the torch grew limp, and it fell from Taro's grasp and clattered down the stairway, landing on the floor of the corridor below. A moment later, there was a loud thump, and Taro followed behind, collapsing down the stairs. His face fell into the torchlight, and Souji could see that his eyes were still wide open, unblinking, a look of agony and horror frozen on his face. Taro was dead.

As Souji gradually realized what had happened, his expression turned to one of abject terror, his entire body trembling. He let out a horrified gasp, taking a step backwards. “T… Taro...”

The girl also took a step backwards, flinching away from Taro's corpse. “I… I'm so sorry...” Her voice began to crack, as though she were starting to cry. “I… I tried to warn him...”

Souji continued to slowly back away, growing ever more terrified until his fear eventually consumed him. Letting out a horrified scream, he turned and fled as fast as his legs could carry him. “Demon!” he cried out. “Demon!”

Souji scrambled out of the broken window, and as he sprinted from the house, his screams gradually faded away. The girl sat down on the stairs and hugged her knees to her chest, her thin shoulders shaking violently as she began to sob. “I'm sorry,” she whispered, her once-powerful voice reduced to a pitiful whine. “I'm so sorry… so sorry...”