AN: I've had the idea for the story in my mind already for quite a while. To distract me from stress, I decided to write it down now. It will only be a short story of two chapters. It plays in Cornwall... dunno why... just popped in my mind.

Disclaimers: Chrno Crusade and characters (c) Daisuke Moriyama

Poltergeist

Chapter 1:

It was a day like every day else. The spring weather was getting warmer and warmer and the plants started to bloom. The fresh and sweet scent of spring filled the air. It was mixed with the salty smell of the sea close by.

The surge crashed against the shores of Cornwall and made the usual noise.

It was a nice weather with only a few clouds in the sky.

Blonde locks swirled through the air as the girl was riding her bike on a path. About ten meters to her left there were the cliffs, to her right there were some nice green fields with little hills.

Rosette enjoyed the nice afternoon sun. This morning when she had gone to school it had been really cold still. Now she wore her jacket around her waist, so it wouldn't be too warm. Soon the house came into her sight. It was a big one right next to the cliffs. There was a big veranda with Hollywood swings on it. The house had several storeys and was already really old.

Rosette had lived there for her whole life with her family. Her family that were her father Vinsent and her brother Joshua. Her mother had deceased some months ago due to an illness. Unfortunately her brother had inherited that illness. Recently he had been really sick and they had all been worried about him. But then suddenly he gained new strength and managed to get well again. Though it was not to know when the next attack came. At least he could leave the house and go to town from time to time again at the moment.

The next town was about 20 minutes with the bike away. Because their house was on a little hill, they had a nice view over it.

Although Rosette would have preferred to live closer to the town, she would never want to leave this house. Here she had grown up. When she had been younger the sounds of the waves had been her lullabies and she missed them when those sounds were missing. How often had she thought of stories about mermaids with Joshua when they couldn't sleep at night…

Now the blonde drove down the way to the veranda. She got off her bike and leaned it against some wooden pillars. Then she hurried up the small staircase and entered the house. As soon as the front door was opened, the wind streamed in and some doors inside slammed shut. That happened often. There was almost always a strong wind and you couldn't open any window or door that led outside without making other doors inside slamming shut.

"I'm home!" Rosette called loudly and threw her school bag into the corner. While she was undoing the knot of her jacket around her waist, steps could be heard from the kitchen and another blonde head peeked out from the door. "Welcome back, sis!" Joshua called happily.

A smile found its way on Rosette's lips. She was so happy because Joshua wasn't sick at the moment. She went over to him and ruffled his hair. Then they had lunch together.

The house looked old inside too. Some of the furniture was still from the one who had lived there before them. Rosette had been told that before them a captain lived in there. It was said that he had belonged to some pirates and that somewhere he had hidden a treasure. Though Rosette and Joshua hadn't been able to find it, no matter how often they had searched for it.

There was some older ship stuff as deco in the house as well. Some was hanging on the walls other hang down from the ceiling.

Rosette's room was directly under the roof. After lunch she went there to do homework – or not. She felt lazy at the moment and listening to some music seemed better to her right now. After a few minutes though, the music was suddenly turned out. Annoyed Rosette got off her bed. The stupid thing had done that more often during the last time. Perhaps one of the tiny wires within it was broken or so.

The girl went over to switch it off again. Stretching her arms over her head, she went back to the bed again. It didn't take a long time for the music to turn off again.

Angrily Rosette stomped over to it and had to realize that the plug was pulled out. "Hu?" Confused she scratched her head. Had her foot gotten caught in the cable and she plugged it out while going away? She hadn't felt anything. She just shrugged it off and decided to finally start her homework since the stupid CD player didn't seem to work anyways.

Two days later it was finally weekend. Although noon had already passed by, Rosette hadn't thought it was necessary to get out of her bed yet. Though she woke by the sounds of some doors. Already awaken, she got up and went downstairs to greet her family. While walking downstairs she looked on the big clock in the corridor. According to the time Vinsent and Joshua should still be at the doctor's for Joshua's regular check-up. Perhaps they came home earlier today.

In the house there was no body.

Next thing Rosette thought was that they left a window open and the wind coming through it made some doors slam. After a while of looking she found the evil window and closed it again.

Next thing she did was eating breakfast and afterwards getting the post inside. She went into the living room because they always placed the post on the table there. Before placing it there, she skipped through the different kinds of envelopes.

All of a sudden, her attention was caught by something in the corner of her eye. She looked up, but there was nothing. Rosette could have sworn to have seen a movement over there though… Plus she also had a slight feeling of being watched.

All of a sudden she felt a breath right next to her ear and someone gripped her shoulders.

Screaming the blonde threw the letters away, so they lay scattered on the floor later.

"BOOO!" Joshua called and let go of his sister. Afterwards he laughed and held his stomach.

Rosette on the other hand was fuming and going to punish Joshua with a noogie attack.

Vinsent who just entered the house too shook his head about his children. It was a typical situation between them.

Later on that day, Rosette asked her dad to have a look at the CD player. He was good with technical stuff and so. Surely he could repair it.

Afterwards Rosette drove to the town to meet with some of her friends.

On Sunday during dinner Vinsent told Rosette that he hadn't found anything wrong with her CD player.

On Monday morning, Rosette got a wake up call by some very loud heavy metal coming out of her CD player. It had been such a shock for her that she jumped out of the bed, tangled herself in the duvet and fell down onto the floor. Fighting with the duvet, she crawled over to the device to turn it off. Finally she found the right button. Panting she sat there for a while. "Goddamnit… stupid thing…" The blonde hair was brushed back with one of her hands and she untangled herself from the duvet before going to the bathroom.

Today she was the first one to be up – a real world wonder. She went downstairs to the kitchen to get some breakfast. Like usually she opened the cupboard to get some stuff out of there. Blinking with her eyes she stopped in her movement. Then she checked some other cupboards. At the end she had to realize that all stuff had been put to a different place.

An angermark popped out of Rosette's head.

Just in that moment Joshua and Vinsent came downstairs too. Both were as surprised as Rosette had been at first. Nobody of them knew anything about it.

Grumbling something, Rosette changed it all back again. Because she had to do that, she got to school too late. Later in recess Rosette huffed and told her friends what had happened. They only raised their eyebrows and didn't really want to believe her.

"You've got ghosts in your house~~~" Anna, one of Rosette's friends, suddenly spoke with a low mysterious voice.

"EEEK! No ghosts!" A younger albino girl called Azmaria exclaimed. She was as anxious as always and easy to scare with ghost stories.

"Yes, yes!" Anna told her and smirked. "The Captain has come back to the house and wants his treasure back!" She put her hands at her hips and held her head high.

Azzy let out a scream and hid behind Rosette.

"Oh, come on. You don't really believe that stuff, do you?" Rosette asked and glanced over her shoulder.

Though, it made her think. All the way home, she thought about it.

There were so many stories about the house, the treasure and the Captain. Furthermore strange things like the food in the cupboards or her CD player hadn't been the only things happening. Sometimes it had seemed to her that she heard something. Especially during the afternoons and nights… but there wasn't anything when she went to check it.

One time there was lots of water running out of the water tap and into the sink even though no one had opened it. Also, one time pictures had changed their places.

Then windows and doors had opened by themselves. Until now Rosette had always blamed the wind for that. But sometimes it seemed impossible to be the wind. That counted for example for her own window. Several time ago it started to open during the night and then it got terribly cold inside. Rosette had even made sure that she locked it every time before going to bed. And she pulled on it to make sure it wouldn't open, but sometimes it did.

At today's lunch, she brought the topic up too. She knew Joshua was interested in such stuff and thus he could know more about it than her.

When she mentioned it, Joshua's face stayed emotionless for a while before he nodded. "I hear things too. But it's only in the late afternoon or evening." The boy admitted. "I'm not sure what to think of it though… I mean of course I like ghost stories and such, but that they exist in reality… I have some doubts…"

During the next days, Rosette paid special attention to anything supernatural. She had all her senses open and couldn't help, but feel another presence from time to time. Sometimes it even was as if she saw a movement in the corner of her eyes, but when she looked closely there was nothing. Also, that feeling and the other strange happenings like doors and windows opening and oh, chairs had started to move too – all that only happened in the time of around 5pm to midnight. Then it started in the morning again and ended at 7:30am.

The siblings' father hadn't believed them at first. He had to work in the afternoon and evening and wasn't there when the most things happened.

Though when the happenings started in the morning, he grew alert too. But he tried to explain everything with rational thinking. For example he told that the old pipes were at fault when the water started running in shower or sink again.

Soon it was Easter break, being freed from homework, Rosette decided to take action and ask some experts for advice because the happenings occurred not only from 5 to midnight, but over the whole day and half of the night. There wasn't any close by, but she found the phone number of a hobby ghost hunter in the internet. He claimed to be an expert in exorcism. Rosette decided to call him and explain to him what had happened.

Silently he listened to her when she spoke. Afterwards there was a little silence. Then his voice began to speak in a calm tune to calm Rosette down. He told her that that was the regular case. Most people called him due to such things. According to Rosette's description it was highest likely a poltergeist. Poltergeists, so he explained furthermore, were ghost which caused things to move or noise. They wanted attention by that. Therefore the first step should be to ignore them. Then they'd get bored and go away. If that didn't work, salt should be used. Salt was used in many cultures and was said to have a purifying effect. It could build a barrier. If that also didn't work, then Rosette should call again.

Rosette thanked him and ended the call. Later in the evening Joshua came to Rosette's room too and talked with her about it. They agreed in following the guy's advice for a while to see what would happen.

During the first time nothing at all happened and the things moved like before too.

After one week, Rosette decided that they should use the salt. She had done some researches in the internet to know how and where to place the salt.

Their father was not really amused about the mess they had made. He still didn't believe in the ghost theory. Only after lots of begging, Rosette and Joshua were allowed to continue their work.

The happenings lessened a bit during the next hours.

It actually surprised Rosette herself. Actually she had hoped that her father was right somewhere in the back of her mind. But now it really was something supernatural and that scared her terribly. During the night she couldn't sleep at all.

The next evening, Joshua and their dad went on a men's evening because Vinsent thought Joshua needed to get out more now that he was feeling better.

Rosette didn't like staying alone at home at all. She had called her friends and asked them to come over, but no one had time. The blonde girl huffed and hugged herself. Then she switched the TV on and reclined on the couch in the living room.

A storm was said to come and it also came, the TV lost connection.

Rosette cursed. That only scared her more.

Out of the blue a noise was heard again and Rosette jumped to her feet. She listened for a while. "Not the stupid shower again…" She grumbled. The shower ran every day without a reason. She had already grown used to that by now. Still it was scary.

She let out various curses and reached her hand in the shower to turn the hot water off. Having done so, she cursed even more because the whole floor in front of the shower was wet now. Fortunately there were still enough towels in the closet which she could use to clean the floor.

When she turned away from the closet, her eyes went wide and the towels landed with a little PLOP on the floor. With a louder PLOP Rosette landed on the floor too and she let out a blood freezing scream.

The steamy mirror said: "Are you there?"

And that had definitely not been there when she had entered the room. And there had been no one else in the room.

With shaking hands and feet Rosette crawled away from the mirror and pulled herself up on the wall. "Y-y-yes…" She cried in answer to the words of the mirror. "Yes!" She cried louder again in fear. She didn't know if that creature could hear her. But despite her fear… she felt something like curiosity too.

The steam which had blurred the mirror had gone now, so she went over to the mirror and breathed against it. The mirror steamed up where her breath hit the cold surface and she wrote "yes" in it.

Then she waited. After a little while there was another spot of the mirror being steamed up. This time saying "Nice to know."