Chapter 13 - The First Twin: Kiryu

The bridge was empty. Yami sighed with relief at this, half-expecting to see the apparition that had grabbed hold of Yugi on the way over to the house, but there was nothing as he made his way onto the creaking wood, his eyes on the gate in the distance.

Groaning, he gripped the bridge of his nose, trying to ease his aching head. The vision had left him stunned and trembling for several minutes as he tried to get his breath back, wondering what he had seen and why. Still, it had told him two things; Mio had gone to the Twin Houses and she was in great danger. He had seen it. The bloody figure of Sae had been waiting for her, and Yami was fairly certain she wouldn't be able to fight off her Kusabi a second time.

The Kusabi...

He remembered the pale, misty spectre, bound in ropes with its mouth wide open, as though screaming in pain. The records in the house said that the Kusabi was made through a ritual. What sort of ritual? There were too many references to sacrifice and Yami was more than certain that somehow, one of these rituals had gone wrong. After all, he knew from experience that the dead held a terrible grudge when it suited them, enough to affect even the living and perhaps that was what had happened here. A sacrifice was angry because of its fate and retaliated. And the result was right in front of them.

Still... there was too much yet to be answered. As Yugi had said, he was interested to learn the fate of Yae and why her ghost did not haunt the village as Sae's did.

We promised...

Yami looked up sharply. She was standing there at the end of the bridge, pushing against the gates.

"Mio!"

He ran the last few feet of the bridge, just as it began to slide shut again. Slipping through just before they closed, Yami looked up and saw Mio disappear round the corner, going the same way she had in his vision. Ignoring the groan of the gates as they closed on him, he ran down the path, following her between the houses.

It's our fault...

"Mio! Wait! Sae's there, don't go!"

But she wouldn't listen. Walking as though in a daze, she disappeared around the corner and when Yami turned to follow her, she had gone. Determined he would not lose her again, he ran up the alley towards a glowing red lantern. At the cross-roads, he looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of the limping girl.

We shouldn't have run away...

Yami turned around, trying to see where her voice had come from, but all he saw was a pair of double doors. Frowning, he looked at the huge house, following with his eyes its 'L' shaped design, realising with a start that it led around the corner to where the bridge was.

"So... this is one of the Twin Houses."

"And Mio's inside..."

Yami nodded, walking up to the door, but as soon as he held out his hand, a blue light began to glow over it, hissing and moaning. Frowning, he looked down at the camera in his hand.

"Another seal for the camera to break. You should take over, Yugi."

"Sure."

The camera was raised as Yugi took control, his wide, innocent eyes looking through the lens that seemed to increase the bright glow of the door and he drew a sharp breath as he began to see the outlines of faces in the light, screaming and crying with wide, dark eyes. He took the picture, expecting the light to fade, but instead it shifted and showed him something within the camera. It looked like... a stone well, derelict and useless.

"Oh, no. Please tell me that's not the well in the Kurosawa basement."

"It looked like it was at the side of a building, so I don't think it can be that one," Yami replied.

"Well, let's start looking. Maybe we can ask Itsuki about it!"

"Maybe. Let's go and see him."

But when they arrived at the storehouse, the faint light above the door had gone out, leaving the whole area in darkness. Yugi turned on his torch and shone it at the small garden door, but to his dismay, it was locked.

"What?" He pulled the handle, almost ripping it clean off. "Itsuki! Can you hear me? Itsuki!" No answer. Sighing, he let go of the handle. "What's going on here? He must hear us, it's not that big a place. And who locked the door?"

Getting to his feet, he kicked the door in annoyance. He already had a pounding headache and this wasn't helping at all, when he knew that the only person who could help them was on the other side of that gate. For a moment, he was almost angry at Itsuki, as though it was his fault he was locked in, before he guiltily chided himself and walked away from the storehouse.

A sharp pain surged through his aching skull and he stopped in his tracks, gripping his temples so hard he dropped the torch. After a moment, the pain subsided and he reached down to pick up the torch, looking briefly at the place where the beam of light fell.

His heart almost left his chest. It was the well. Sitting at the side of the storehouse, covered in broken beams and debris, it was exactly how it had looked in the photo and the shimmer of blue hovering over it told Yugi that he had found the right place.

He took the picture and at once his headache was eased as the light vanished.

Smiling proudly, he stood a few minutes later before the door of the Twins Houses. Struggling to think back to the conversation he had had with Mio, he was fairly sure that this was the place she had called Kiryu House. Slowly, he pushed open the door and peered into the darkness.

"Mio?"

Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the light from the few candles and he saw the tattered entrance hall, strewn with storage pots and grungy tatami mats and faded screens. The partition wall of the next room was so damaged that it was easy to see straight into it and as he stepped up off the dirt pit, he saw that the wall along the corridor had been ripped completely open. Ignoring the door a little further on, he stepped tentatively through the broken wall.

Yugi's eyes widened in shock. This was too surreal.

The room was filled with little china dolls, hanging by their necks from little ropes that dangled from the ceiling. A few had fallen down and they lay on the ground, staring up at Yugi with blank eyes and chipped faces. Side-stepping to avoid coming too close to the grisly display, he made his way across the room to the opposite door.

As he turned, a life-sized doll stood in front of him.

He leapt back in shock, straight into the hanging dolls. Crying out in panic as he tried to swipe at the things as they knocked together, get them out of his face, he dropped to his knees, escaping them completely and looking across at the doll that had startled him.

It was not a doll. It was just a small girl, dressed in a purple kimono. He had only thought that she was a doll because of the long black hair that fell around her shoulders and covered her eyes, just as it did on all the dolls above him. She was very pale and didn't move, keeping her eyes to the ground.

"Um..." But he couldn't think what to say. What could he say to this girl? She was dead.

Why do you kill?

Then she was gone.

Yugi sat there, stunned for a few moments, before he crawled out from underneath the dolls, determined he should not get his head stuck among them again. Behind the place where the girl had stood was a door, so uncertainly getting to his feet again, he made his way across to it.

The moment his hand touched the handle, a blinding pain seared through his head and as everything turned white, he caught a glimpse of

the bridge between the houses and briefly, he saw Mio crossing to the other side, opening the door and slipping through -

Panting, a cold sweat lacing his forehead, he pulled himself back to the present moment and, more determined than ever, he opened the door.

The corridor beyond was in even worse a state than the doll room. The partition walls were crumbling, the oil paintings and sutras along the walls were faded and covered in mould, pots and urns lay in broken fragments all over the floor and the only door that wasn't so damaged it could actually be opened led into a room that was all but empty except for the small shrine in the corner. Curious, Yugi approached to examine it, but the names were scratched out and only a single, blank piece of paper sat in front of the offerings. As he picked up the paper, he was hit by another pounding headache. What was wrong? Did it want him to take a picture of the shrine? Trying to ignore the pain, he held up the camera, looking for the blue shine on the altar. Nothing.

A small sigh sounded behind him and, the camera still held to his eyes, he turned around.

This time he saw it. The walls around him had changed, covered in thick, fresh black paint that scrawled out the words

why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill? why

over and over and over again. The walls were covered with it, yet when he took the camera away, the room was completely blank and empty again. Not wanting to wait for something to happen, aware of the hidden marks glaring down at him from within the walls, he ran for the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Along the corridor, he found another room, more pleasant than the one he had just come from. It looked better preserved than the rest of the house and smelled faintly of recently burned incense and perfume. The room was decorated with red curtains that draped across the window-less room and small red cushions sat in front of what looked like a shrine, with a pretty oil painting on the wall behind it. At first, Yugi thought that it might be a woman's room, but there were more dolls in here, smaller and less frightening than the ones from before and when he saw the small purple kimono hanging on the other side of the room, he realised this place belonged to the little girl.

But there were two cushions...

The light of his torch was almost unnecessary, since the room was quite well lit by two lanterns sitting on the floor and he saw that beside one of them was a small notebook. Approaching the altar, he became wary of kneeling down in the place between the cushions to pick up the book. He could feel some presence lurking there on either side of him... kneeling down on the cushions...

He grabbed up the book and leapt back, glaring at the altar, daring it to do something. But nothing happened. Sighing, he looked down at the book in his hand and flipped it open.

"Akane has become a Remaining. To comfort her, I'll make a doll that looks like Azami. She has been emotionless since the day of the ritual. I'll make the doll look exactly like Azami, so that when they are together, no one will be able to tell them apart."

There was something calm and decided in the writer's hand, but as Yugi turned the page, the writing became more worried, as though the hand of the one who wrote it had been trembling at the time.

"Akane never leaves Azami's side for even a second, always whispering things to her. I don't know what she says, but at least she seems to be slowly returning to her former self.

"If we didn't have this ritual, Azami wouldn't have become a butterfly, and Akane wouldn't have lost her spirit."

"Weird," he muttered, flitting through the rest of the pages. "But if this guy made dolls, I guess that's what all those dolls in the other room were for."

Leaving the book on the side, he turned to try the other door, but for some reason it wouldn't open, though there was no sign of any lock. As he tugged on the handle again, the presence he had felt before became stronger. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up as he sensed the unmistakable feeling of someone staring at him... no, more than one person... from that altar.

Turning around... he found the room to be empty.

Yugi stared. The charming little room had suddenly become more sinister in his eyes and he was as glad to leave it as he had been to leave the shrine room.

The other doors that hadn't opened for him, he noticed, also didn't have any locks. Something was sealing them, but it wasn't the blue haze he had seen Mio conjure up. So what was it? The only other door that would open for him led up a set of stairs. At the top were more empty rooms, filled with broken remnants of days long since gone, and a single door, leading to...

The bridge, leading to the other door where Mio had entered... Yugi ran up to it and grabbed the handle, but it was no use. It was tightly locked.

Suddenly, something banged against the door. Yugi pulled his hands away, staring at the frame and listening as the banging continued.

"Yugi! Are you out there!?"

"Mio!" He grabbed the handle again and pulled it as she pushed from the other side. "It won't! It won't open!"

A frightened gasp sounded through the wood. "She's holding it shut!" her muffled voice shouted. "I can't get it open!"

He stepped back from the door, looking up and down the wall, back down to the ruined front door in the street below. "Isn't there another way in?"

"Yes... You have to come underground. There's a tunnel..."

"Okay! I'll be with you in a sec, Mio! Just hold on!"

He took another step back and turned to the other door.

It hurts...

Yugi froze in horror. For a moment, he was seized with an indescribable disgust and almost leaned over the banister and threw up. The woman before him had a pretty face, but deathly pale and the skin of her neck was twisted and swollen as her head hung down at an unnatural angle on her shoulder, swinging back and forth. She slowly drifted towards him, the sound of broken bone and cartilage filling the air as she tried to pull her broken neck back into place.

Author's Note: Hey-hey! Two chappies in one day, how's that for a slice of fried gold? Just so you know, Broken Neck Lady is one of the freakiest ghosts in the whole game. Between her and the ghost that crawls around like a spider, I hardly get any sleep from playing these games!

Ta-ra! xx