GH: THE MISSING ARCHIVES II

I never thought I would see season II actually coming to life (my bad). Honestly, being here makes me really happy.

Following the tradition, this ´´season´´ will have cases that are both made from my own ideas and based on some popular horror games out there ;P.

That's how this story came to life and I don't wish to change it since that's pretty much that magic of it.

Hope you guys enjoy it!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the characters from Ghost Hunt, or any concept of the games mentioned before.

File#001 Can you see me in the dark? : PROLOGUE

A group of children was standing in front of a shabby house. It was obvious that the house had been uninhabited for many, many years. The structure was overrun with weeds and plants, and some parts seemed to be on the verge of falling apart.

"Scary…" a small girl said, hugging her friend's arm.

"Don't be such a coward. It is your fault for kicking the ball badly." the taller boy said.

"It wasn't my intention," the girl said sadly.

"We'll have to go in and find it," another boy said.

"Are you crazy? Everyone knows that the house is haunted! I don't want to go in."

"But the ball!" another boy cried, "Yuriko should go for it! She was the one who caused this in the first place!"

"But…" the girl called Yuriko cried.

"Yeah, you should go. It is your fault."

Yuriko seemed about to cry. She did not want to enter the alleged haunted house, but the rest of the group was looking at her with animosity. It had not been her intention to kick the ball over the fence, but there was nothing to do. Her friends had decided that it was her responsibility to get it back.

The place was worse inside than it looked from the outside. The garden, if it could still be called that, was a chaos of weeds and other things that Yuriko could not and did not want to recognize.

The girl made her way through the plants, looking for the ball. Where could that stupid ball be?

The girl looked around nervously until she finally found what she was looking for. The ball was on the porch of the house. At least she had found it. The only thing she had to do was take it and get out of there. Not wanting to waste any more time, Yuriko reached out to pick up the ball, but ...

The ball rolled a couple of inches away from her grasp. Strange, Yuriko thought, moving closer to try again. However, once again, the ball moved a couple of centimeters before the girl could catch it.

Yuriko looked at her hands nervously. The ball had crossed the threshold of what had once been a sliding door and now rested quietly inside the house. The girl swallowed in fear, but took a deep breath and reached into the hole, trying to reach the ball.

Suddenly a jerk! Without warning, Yuriko let out a cry of pain as something inside the house jerked her little arm away. The girl screamed, cried, and kicked. But her captor did not release her, instead, it pulled her harder, to the point where the girl's shoulder slammed into the remains of the door. Finally, the small body of the little girl was dragged inside the house. Disappearing in the dark.

oooooo000oooooo

I snapped my eyes open, feeling a little queasy. It took me a couple of minutes to finish waking up and remember where I was: a train. The soft pounding of the moving train was impossible to confuse, and above the sound of the vehicle, I could hear familiar voices speaking and laughing.

"Ah! Cheater!" Rei snapped.

"All are valid in war…" Kei smirked. "Besides cheating is the point of the game, sis."

I heard a general laugh.

"You are an ace in this game, Kei-san," John laughed.

"That's because he's a trickster fox," Rei groaned.

"It's called being cunning."

I smiled. It was so typical of Kei to bring card games to long train trips.

My name is Taniyama Mai, I am in the second year of the career of cultural and humanistic sciences at Tokyo Gakuden University, and I work part-time as a paranormal researcher and a spiritualist. I am currently the head of the archives department of the paranormal investigation society of the university and I am also the second assistant in the office of Shibuya Psychic Research (SPR). My boss is Shibuya Kazuya, better known as Oliver Davis or Naru the narcissist, as I prefer to call him. There is also Lin Koujo, a Ying-Yang Master from China who, despite his cold looks, is actually a very kind man. He's Naru's main assistant.

In addition to these two, we also have a very peculiar group of spiritualists. Starting with Bou-san, no Takigawa Houshou, a rebellious monk from Mt. Kouya; Matsuzaki Ayako, a doctor and self-proclaimed miko; John Brown, an exorcist priest from Australia; the twins Abeno Rei and Kei, heirs of the Abeno Clan; Sasaki Aki, a demon slayer; Momoka Hikaru an itako and Yasuhara Osamu, a law student from my University and also one of our researchers. Sporadically, we also get help from Hara Masako, a popular medium. All in all, we are like a big dysfunctional family.

"HA! Got you again!"

"Why do I even bother playing with you? You're such a good cheater, that I should be worried. "

"Deception is an art after all…"

"Scary…" I heard John say.

"Mental note, never trust anything, Kei-san says…" Yasuhara laughed.

"Awww, that is mean…"

"Sometimes I wonder why you studied electromechanics. You should be a businessman…." Aki said.

"Ah, I feel flattered."

"Don't feel flattered about being a frigging cheater, dork."

"You two sure get along as siblings, huh?" Ayako laughed.

"I dow she doves me doo…."

Judging by Kei's voice, I figured Rei was pulling his cheeks as he spoke. I looked around and saw the only two people that weren't with the group. Naru and Lin were sitting in the seats across from mine. Naru was reading, while Lin was, as usual, doing something on his laptop.

We were heading towards Tome, north of Japan. SPR had received a request from a man named Shinzo Takashi, asking to investigate a haunted house in a small town on the outskirts of the city. The case seemed simple, so I thought Naru would reject it, but surprisingly, he took it right away.

"Sometimes it amazes how easily you fall asleep, Mai. It might be a clinical issue,"

Naru had looked up from her book, and her blue eyes were staring at me.

"Ah-ah!" I said, surprised, that he had addressed me so directly. "I've been staying up late the past several days, so I haven't gotten enough sleep."

Naru looked at me, expecting me to elaborate on the subject.

"A lot of work to do. It wasn't anything ghost related." I said.

"You're pretty useless when you are sleep deprived. Make sure to get some sleep before we begin to work." Naru said, returning to his reading.

I chuckled. That was Naru's way of saying he was worried about me.

"Hai, hai…" I smiled. "I think I got enough sleep for now. Are you reviewing the data for the case?"

"There's not much to review. The house isn't that old, and there are no records of any tragedy happening in the place."

"Uh, that's weird," I said. "Why is it rumored to be haunted, then?"

"The building might not be the source of the haunting, and there is also the possibility that it isn't, the house, but the ground that is haunted," Nauru said, without looking away from his notes.

"You mean… like a jibakurei?" I asked. Ayako would be happy.

"It's too early to say," Naru replied, simply. "What do you think, Mai?"

"Eh? You are asking me?" I said surprised.

Ever since the case in Roguetsu island, some months ago, Naru's attitude towards me had switched a little. He was the usual workaholic, jerk, and abusive, tea-obsessed narcissist, but he had started asking for my opinion in some cases. Yasuhara had pinpointed that now that I had proved that my psychic abilities were more than just some weird animal instincts, Naru was taking me more seriously.

"Usually you have precognitive dreams before the case even starts. Have you dreamt of anything lately?"

I thought about it. Well, I had just had an unpleasant dream, but whether it was related to the case or just the result of me doing too much research on urban legends for my report, I wasn't sure. Naru was once again looking at me, expectantly. After some bumps in the road, in the past few cases in which I had not commented about my dreams, because I thought them irrelevant, Naru had made clear that he would decide whether it was relevant or not, so I was supposed to tell him if I had any odd dream.

"Well, I had a weird dream just now," I said, hesitantly.

"Oh?"

Naru's attention was fully on me now. He had lowered his book and was now staring at me, making me feel a little flushed.

"Eh… well… there was this group of kids. I think they were playing, but their ball fell into this creepy old house, so they sent a girl to retrieve it. When she tried to pick the ball, it kept rolling away. Little by little it entered the house, and then when she tried to pick, something caught her and pulled her inside. After that, I just woke up."

Naru looked pensive, but he didn't say anything. I was sure that this dream was irrelevant to the case, I just needed Naru to confirm it.

"There was a disappearance in the area 50 years ago. It was a child; a 10-year-old girl named Kawai Yoriko. She was never found alive nor dead, however, it was declared as an abduction, so there was no correlation with the house." Naru said, flipping some pages in his notebook.

"But Shinzo-san didn't mention anything about disappearances," I said surprised.

Shinzo-san had only described normal poltergeist phenomena: rapping sounds, moving objects, shadow images, and the usual cliche stuff. That was why I was surprised when Naru had accepted the case.

"He didn't. I only stumbled with this news while I was looking for the property's history," Naru said. "I didn't consider it relevant either,"

"Uh, yeah. I mean, it could be a random dream. Don't mind about it." I said, leaning back into my seat.

"What do you think about it, Lin?"

I turned to him, surprised. Lin had been helping the twins with my spiritual training. Surprisingly, compared to Rei and Kei, Lin turned out to be a pretty spoiling teacher, but as one of my masters, Lin had a pretty good picture of my abilities, so Naru trusted his judgment.

Lin raised his look from the laptop and tilted his head.

"Taniyama-san's psychic abilities have improved considerably. Even though they're still a little raw, and need more polishing before she can call herself a true spiritualist, I consider her natural skills trustful." Lin replied simply.

I smiled. That was a nice compliment.

"It is too soon to confirm or deny, but we might keep the subject of the disappearance in mind, just in case." Naru nodded. He turned to his book once more, and I sighed.

"Ah! I give up. Honestly, after 22 years going through this, I should have learned already that I should never play this stupid game with you," I heard Rei say.

"You hurt me, sis. Will you deny your cute little brother a chance of fun with his sweet sister?"

"Cute little brother my socks. In 25 years of life, you've never been cute even once…"

"Ah, so you want cuteness? Come here, my sweet sister… let me show some baby brother fluff."

"No… stay away, no!"

Naru and Lin looked up to see the group laughing at a few seats from them. Naru didn't seem to make much sense of the laughter, but I saw Lin smile in amusement at the twins' interaction.

This was the part I liked about the cases when no ghosts or scary things were stalking us. It was just us, as a family.

It wouldn't last long, but it was a little rest before the horrors of the upcoming case.