At first I wasn't even scared. Haunted houses? Yawn. Everybody knows that ghosts aren't real. Makoto and his stupid charms and superstitions were always good for a laugh. I thought he was winding me up for sure with the whole "trapped in a haunted school" schtick, especially right after that whole Sachiko Ever After thing he pushed on us after class. Yeah, it was funny all right...at first.

I woke up in a room, with no memory of how I got there. Wow. Talk about a cliche. It was pretty disorienting though, like the one time I passed out and gym and woke up in the nurses' office with no conscious record of the journey from there to here. I hated that feeling. Was stiff all over, too. The room was pretty dark; creaky old wooden floor, dust everywhere, lots of objects to bump into. I squinted at one, felt it out, and realized that it was an easel, for painting. Further investigation revealed a door, which led to a dimly lit hallway where the floor was torn to shit and the walls were full of holes.

An abandoned building, maybe?

The irritation in my mood lifted to be replaced by intrigue and mild admiration of whoever set this up, because it obviously took them a serious amount of effort. Also, I liked abandoned buildings. They had atmosphere. Although the "feel" wherever this was was...cold, somehow. I decided to explore some more.

A sign hanging next to the door spelled out "Art Room" in faint letters, and below a torn newsletter was tacked up-something about a murder case at "Heavenly Host elementary school". Ooh, spooky. Wasn't that one of the stories that Makoto liked to go on about?

Down the hallway, something creaked. Whatever. I wasn't falling for that crap. I headed in the opposite direction and came to a washroom that was all boarded up and covered in paper seals. I tried the door...but it was stuck, I guess. Wouldn't even budge. It almost felt like it wasn't a real door at all, but I checked for hinges and the cracks in the wall and they were there all right. Huh.

I gave up and took the stairs to the right, heading down. It was pitch black and the air smelled rotten. I tripped over something on the landing and tumbled down half a flight, swearing aloud as I picked myself off the floorboards. It did nothing to improve my mood. I hated how quiet it was; despite myself, it was putting me on edge. I wasn't about to let Makoto get the satisfaction of freaking me out with his elaborate scheme—I'd never live it down.

When I got to the bottom of the stairwell, I exited to another abandoned hallway. Another piece of paper was tacked to the wall. It looked like some kind of written announcement. "From the principal of this school, Heavenly Host..." Oh, so I guess this was supposed to be the school itself? Creepy.

For the hundreth time in so many minutes, I wondered what the hell was going on exactly. Did someone just go out and find an old abandoned elementary school just for this? Did they build it from scratch? Well, Makoto's parents were loaded, but still. Was it, like, an attraction? An overly elaborate haunted house? That seemed the most likely. As I pondered this I approached the other end of the hallway, ignoring the scattered skeleton props lurking in the shadows. A light was flickering from the next room, and as I entered I saw it was a doorway complete with wooden shoe lockers built to accommodate the outside wear of grade-schoolers. There was even some tiny shoes left abandoned on the floor...I have to admit, a chill ran down my spine. But I noticed all that later. The first thing I saw was the girl.

She was standing in the corner over by the window, facing the wall. She was younger than me, maybe in middle school, and wore a uniform that I didn't recognize. Also, she was talking to herself. Babbling, more like.

"It hurts...you promised me. You promised it wouldn't hurt anymore. It still hurts. It always hurts. Why? Whyyyyy? You lied to me. You told me. You promised. You promised! So why does it hurt? You told me you loved me..."

I stood back silently, watching. Probably an actress, but a damn good one. I had to admit, I was pretty creeped out. Eventually, I cleared my throat. "So, hey..." I tried, "you know how to get out of here? I mean, come on. You work here, right?" She completely ignored me, just kept muttering to herself, facing the wall. "Hey. You listening?"

No reply.

I threw up my hands and sighed. "Great, well, nice talking to you. Um, keep it up, I guess." I hooked my thumb at the door, not that she was looking or anything. "So yeah. I'm leaving. See ya."

The door led outside, to a covered walkway. It was raining, and all I could see were trees. I knew it wasn't going to be this easy, but really. That was a lot of trees. I mean, I lived in a city. I didn't think I had ever even seen that many trees in one place in my whole life. Where exactly was I?

After a few minutes of pondering this, I shrugged off my unease, determined not to let it get to me. I went to the door on the opposite side of the walkway and threw it open, ready to stride inside, and then—I stopped in my tracks. It was like a scene in a sitcom, where somebody walks in on an awkward moment, except the sitcom was actually a horror movie and the laugh track was replaced by screaming.

There were three children in the hallway, glowing ghostly blue and variously disfigured. There was a girl with pigtails, missing an eye; another girl who was missing the top half of her head, and a little boy with blood all down his front and dribbling out of his mouth.

They stared at me. I stared at them. The girl about my age on the floor between them thrashed and let out garbled screams. Her face was a gorefest all on its own. Where her eyes should have been were two gaping holes, like pits dug out in the sand, although instead of water gushing up there was just lots and lots of blood. The girl's legs were bent at a wrong angle, and there were dark bruise marks that looked as if they had been left by tiny fingers on her ankles. And...the childrens' hands had blood all over them. Not faint, ghostly blood, but real, red, dripping stuff. After what seemed like an eternity of being frozen in place, the headless kid raised a blood-drenched finger to point at me. "Gllh?" she said.

I stepped backwards, slammed the door, and went running hell-for-leather back down the walkway, only stopping when I had slammed the door behind me and leaned my whole weight against it as I fought to catch my breath.

Holy shit. What was that?

My heart was beating like a drumroll. I forced some air into my lungs and grabbed onto the first logical thought that I could find.

My cell phone.

Yes, of course. I hastily tipped my bag onto the floor and rifled through it, finally finding the miniature miracle buried beneath a textbook and turning it on. No signal.

Okay, okay, wait, no, they must have a jammer or something, there was no way I was far enough away from the city to be out of range. I wasn't out for that long. It had to have been part of the prank.

And what I just saw? Special effects. Damn good ones. This was the 21st century, after all. It was amazing what you could do with technology.

But no matter what I told myself, the girl's screams kept echoing in my mind.

I took a deep breath and re-oriented myself. I was in the same hall as before, cubbyholes lined up against the wall, but the creepy muttering girl from before was gone. I couldn't decide if that made me feel better or worse.

I decided I should probably explore the building a little more.

The stairs opposite the one I had come from earlier smelled rancid. There was at least one skeleton draped over a chair, bones cracked and bleached jaundice-yellow. Continuing to the upstairs hallway, I found vaguely human-shaped piles of deteriorating flesh all over the floor.

Rotting meat, I told myself, trying to keep from going into hystarics. It's rotting meat, just rotting meat, there's no way there could be dozens of corpses just lying around and nobody noticing.

There hadn't been this many reports of people going missing lately, I rationalized.

Even so, I was getting pretty fed up with this shit.

"Makoto!" I called, then unnerved with how my voice seemed to get swallowed up by the silence, louder: "Makoto! I give up, or whatever! Your haunted house is cool and all but..." I trailed off.

It was too weird. Normally in places like this, there would be an echo. But instead the halls suddenly felt too stifling, and the open rooms too exposed.

"...Please?" I finished.

There wasn't an answer. I began to search the walls for hidden cameras. "Okay I know it's got to be a lot of fun watching, but this isn't funny! I'm going to be late for supper."

Nothing.

"Seriously! Makoto, just—"

There was a noise from a nearby room, like something being knocked to the floor.

I crept up to the door, which was labeled 'Staff Room'. The door was ever so slightly ajar. I knew it was tempting fate to open it, but somehow I couldn't stop myself.

It was darker inside the Staff Room than any room had been so far, but as I peered through the crack in the door I could dimly make out the shape of a person. They appeared to be rummaging around in desks, their movements loose and disjointed. It almost suggested clumsiness, but instead of being disarming, it was creepy. Red flags rose in my mind. Logically, I knew I should back away slowly and get the hell out of here. If I were a character in a movie I were watching, I would have berated myself for even going to peek inside the room.

But there's a difference between watching something and experiencing it. The difference is, the outcome actually matters, and you really don't know what's on the other side of the door. And when you're terrified out of your mind, not knowing isn't an option. There's a point where curiousity stops being an impulse and instead becomes a need.

For the first time, I understood why, in the legend, Pandora had opened the box.

Maybe it should have been enough that knew it was a person. I could have left then. But as they staggered about the room in a zombie-like daze, the dim light from the gap in the door illuminated their face for a moment and I realized that it was the girl from earlier.

The vague relief that washed over me at this relevation made me almost lightheaded, and when that feeling went away, I was pissed.

That girl. She had to know something. Even if she wasn't in on whatever was going on...she had to know something!

I marched into the room and barked, "Hey!"

She didn't answer. She kept rifling through the papers on the desk in front of her, without even seeming to be looking at any of them. Very quietly, she was muttering under her breath—the same kind of nonsense as before.

"Where is it...where is it? It still hurts. I need to find it...I need to put it back so it won't hurt anymore..."

I was unnerved, but most of all fed up. I grabbed her shoulder and shook it. "Hey! Are you listening?"

She reacted instantly and violently, whirling around to face me.

"SHUT UP! OF COURSE I CAN PUT IT BACK ON!" she shrieked.

I took a step back, hands up defensively. "L-look, okay, all I want to ask is—"

She sucked in a rattling breath that hissed out through her teeth, and her eyes focused on me. My words died in my throat as she went abruptly still.

"You lied to me," she said.

"Wh-what?"

"You lied to me." She said it again, the same flat, accusatory tone as before. I backed up again and bumped into a desk just as she took a step towards me. "You lied. You're a liar."

"What are you talking about? I didn't say anything!" My voice jumped an octave as I shook my head desperately. I tried to tell myself that none of this was real, that this was all some kind of hoax, but looking into those dead, dull eyes, there was no way I could possibly believe that.

"You told me it wouldn't hurt anymore," she whispered. "You told me. You promised. You promised!"

"I never—"

"You're a liar. I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!" Suddenly she raised her hand, and I realized with a jolt that she was holding a pair of scissors, poised to stab me.

"What the hell are you doing?!" I shouted, scrambling out of the way as she brought them down.

Without straightening her back or raising the scissors, her head twisted towards me. "You lied to me," she hissed. "I'm going to make you hurt forever."

I turned and ran.

"YOU SAID THAT YOU LOVED ME!" her anguished wail followed me out into the hall, pursuing me down the narrow hallway, the pounding of my feet on the floor and the panicked staccato of my heartbeat doing nothing to drown out the sound. "IT STILL HURTS! YOU PROMISED IT WOULDN'T HURT ANYMORE!"

As I flew past the Art Room, another sound joined in that seared me to the soul with dread. Footsteps. Heavy, uneven footsteps coming after me.

It might have been funny in any other context to see a high-schooler running away from a girl who couldn't be older than 13. I didn't even care anymore. I just wanted to get away.

I kept running. A keening, wordless scream filled the gap between me and my pursuer, followed by those relentless crashing footsteps.

"AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHHhhhhhHHHHHHH!"

I let out a whimper. Please let it end, please let it end, please let it end, I prayed. Let me wake up, let me go home. Where the hell was Makoto? Where was anyone?!

"YOU TOLD ME WE'D ALWAYS BE TOGETHER!"

The door to the Music Room was open. Without thinking twice I veered sharply inside and shut the door behind me, hoping desperately that she would just pass me by.

The sound of screaming and feet slamming on the wooden floor gradually receded into the distance. I don't know how long I stood there, back pressed to the door. It could have been minutes, or hours. Eventually the only sound left was my breathing, quick and shallow.

I had to get out of here.

The exit was downstairs, through the main doors and into the rain-slicked walkway...and then—

Three children kneeling on the floorboards, glowing with an unearthy light, tearing a girl to pieces, pale fingers digging into the flesh like worms—

No. They—they couldn't still be there anymore, could they? They had to be gone. Whatever was going on here, there had to be a way out. I'd jump off the walkway if I had to, make my way into the woods and try to get a cellphone signal. I'd had enough.

There were two doors to the music room. I left through the one closer to the stairs, sneaking out into the shadowy corridor with much trepidation. It was damningly quiet, and even though it was dark I felt exposed, like I was being watched. Like the building itself was conspiring against me.

I crept down the hall, sticking close to the wall in the hopes that the floor would creak less. As I passed by the windows, I caught glimpses of my haggard-looking face, but beyond that, there was nothing but black. It was incredibly unnerving.

When I reached the doorway leading to the stairs, a flicker of movement in the stairwell nearly gave me a heart attack.

It was a light.

The lights were flickering on and off, harsh light flooding the stairway and then abruptly plunging into inky blackness again. I stayed put for a few minutes, suddenly on high alert. The last time I passed through here, there was no light at all.

While I stood there, hesitating, I head the short, sharp sound of a door slamming somewhere in the hallway behind me. I whirled around, ears straining for any other sounds.

There.

Footsteps.

Heavy, uneven footsteps.

I nearly choked on the terror that surged up from my chest like vomit. I didn't have time to deliberate. She was coming back!

I darted into the stairwell just as the lights went on like a spotlight broadcasting my position. Hurrying downwards, trying not to make noise in case she heard me, I finally reached the first landing. At least she wouldn't be able to see me from here.

The lights went out.

I couldn't help but freeze up, my hearing automatically straining to its limits in the pitch-darkness.

Silence. Nothing from above, and nothing from below. Then,

Schlik

Schlik

...The sound of metal sliding against metal, slowly and deliberately.

Scissors. Opening and closing.

Schlik

Schlik

Followed by a giggle.

The lights went back on.

There was a little girl sitting on the stairs going down, with long dark hair covering her face and a red dress that reached almost down to her bare feet.

She smiled at me, and in her hands she held a massive pair of scissors.

Schlik

The lights went out.

An unbearable feeling of dread pressed down upon me, suffocating my ability to reason like a plastic bag placed over my head. Every nerve my body possessed screamed "danger".

I had to get away. But where? How? The lights had effectivey killed my nightvision; I was blind and panicking.

The only thing that made sense was to go back up and get as far away from this place as possible. I didn't care anymore about the girl who was following me; all I knew was that I absolutely could not take a single step closer towards where the little girl had been.

I turned around and dashed back up the stairs. My foot just reached the final step, and—

Silhouetted in the doorframe of the door was the girl who had been chasing me.

Oh no. Oh, no no no.

"Found you," she said in a sing-song voice, the dim light casting her too-wide grin in a demonic light.

"I'm going to kill you now," she purred, opening and closing her scissors with the sharp grinding of metal against metal.

Schlick, schlik.

Schlik, schlik.

I was frozen to the spot. She was still smiling. "It's going to hurt a lot. It's going to hurt forever." And she plunged the scissors towards me.

They clamped over my upper arm with superhuman force, the dull steel blades slicing through my skin, severing the tendons like string, and cutting through the bone with a wet sickening crunch, like a person cracking chicken bones between their teeth.

I was completely in shock. I barely even had time to feel it. I just...didn't have an arm anymore. Where my brain told me there was a limb, there was simply empty space.

Then she gave me a push.

I toppled backwards down the stairs, vertigo overtaking my brain as I flailed helplessly, my one whole arm windmilling wildly as gravity pulled me inexorably down.

I could hear my bones breaking one after another as I tumbled down the stairs, the muscle and sinew tearing like wet paper while my bones splintered like kindling, lit by a bonfire of unimaginable agony.

My mind was fading in an out through a haze of pain and darkness, as the girl with the scissors decended the stairs and crouched over my broken body, giggling deliriously.

"Hahaha. Hahaha! It hurts, doesn't it? It hurts so much. But it's okay. Now we can be together, like you promised."

I could feel tangled locks of her hair falling across my face and her breath in my ear, damp and rasping as she leaned in. Even through the pain, these minute sensations seemed unbearably replusive, a feeling which was compounded by my sheer helplessness. My eyes weren't working anymore. My fingers, hands, arms, legs, lungs, voice—all of them useless. The world consisted only of measureless, endless agony and, on the very edge of what awareness I had left, a voice, whispering softly in my ear.

"I love you so much..."

Eriya Seto, 17. Amazaki West Senior High School.

Fell down stairs; died from spinal injuries.

Seiko Tanaka, 13. Aizome Junior High School.

Possessed while passing to second wing; suffered mental collapse.

Also mentioned:

Makoto Nagareyama, 17. Amaaki West Senior High School.

Died of lonliness.

A/N: A lot of this was actually written quite some time ago, but I ended up going in a different direction than I first thought. I decided to add a bit of continuity to my stories...so in a sense this is a sequel to the last chapter! Heh heh. Anyhow, I'm posting it in a bit of a hurry, so let me know if I fudged any details.

As always, thanks for reading, and I appreciate any and all feedback :)