Title: Halloween Special (temporary until I think of a decent title) Pairing: none Rating/Warnings: PG-15 for swearing/general horror. Warnings:[SPOILERS]- ghosts, character death Summary: Yamada and Yuto are sent to explore a haunted mansion for the Halloween ItaJump special. Word Count: 1885 Author's Note: Ok this is barely in time to be a Halloween fic but it's still Halloween somewhere right now. Pretty rushed and totally unoriginal/cliche.
The torchlight is shining up at Yuto's face, casting creepy shadows and Yamada tells him as much as he reluctantly turns and walks away. This whole place is fucking creepy. He shines his own torchlight back and forth in front of him, sweeping from wall to wall of the wide corridor until he reaches the Grandfather clock at the end of it.
He turns back to Yuto and shines the light out. The air is so thick with dust that the light barely reaches over the twenty metres between them. He can see Yuto's torch clearly enough though, and Yuto has the video camera with the night-vision on it so Yuto will be able to see him well enough too.
“Yutti...” he calls out all the same, because the quiet is getting under his skin, making it pimple, the stairs beside him creak and Yamada jumps out of his skin when Yuto's torch falls to the floor. “Yuto?” he calls more urgently and then he lets out a long breath when Yuto finally answers.
“That's enough, I got a good shot, come back now.” there's something odd in his voice, like it's shaking just a little too much. Yamada smiles smugly to himself, Yuto is just as scared as he is after all. He jogs back, and he tells himself it's just because they need to get moving on and find more footage, but the place really does give Yamada the creeps.
“So which way should we go now? Up again?” he's close enough now to see Yuto's face, it's a little pale and there are beads of sweat along his forehead despite the fact that they can see their own breath. He points back at the stairs beside the clock he'd been standing by. “We can get up that way.”
Yuto shakes his head quickly. “Maybe we should just leave already.”
Yamada raises an eyebrow. “Now who is the chicken? We don't have enough video yet for an hour long Halloween special.”
“We've got at least twenty minutes.” Yuto argues. “We can tell each other ghost stories on the van ride back to make up the rest of the time. I don't like it in here.”
“The task was about haunted houses, not ghost stories.” Yamada argues, and then wonders why he's arguing so hard, it's not like he wants to go any deeper into this terrifying place. “All right then, yeah...this is pretty messed up anyway...there's stairs to get back down to the ground floor this way too...” he turns back around and casts his light along the hall, he can barely see the grandfather clock from here.
“No, let's go this way.” Yuto says, his voice a little shaky and when Yamada turns he's holding up the camera in Yamada's direction.
“I thought you just said you didn't want to take any more foo...” Yamada starts but he's cut off by Yuto.
“Ryosuke, please!” he says, his voice strangely urgent. “Will you please just come this way!”
Yamada tuts but follows after him as Yuto starts backing away down the hallway. When they reach the huge foyer that they'd just left a few minutes earlier, Yamada shines his torch around the doors. “I think we came up that way” he says, shining his torch at one of the doors. We came up the main stairs and through a library...I think...or was the library downstairs. Fuck, we've only been here half an hour and I'm already lost.”
“Ryosuke, this way.” Yuto calls from a few metres away, and Yamada turns his torchlight around. Yuto is looking through the viewfinder at one of the doors, it's in the complete opposite direction to where Yamada thought they should go but he figures Yuto has a much better idea of where they are through the night-vision on the camera.
He follows Yuto as he slips through a set of grandiose double doors and, if possible, it's even darker in the next room. He shines his torchlight around but he can't see any walls. When he asks “Where are we?” his voice echoes.
“Shhh!” Yuto hisses and Yamada tuts again.
“You're being a real asshole you know?” Yamada snaps and Yuto turns the camera onto him.
“I'm sorry.” he says, but it's quick and insincere. “I'm just scared, I want to get out of here alright?”
“I want to get out too, but you brought us the wrong way.” Yamada says testily. “Maybe I should take the video camera for a while?”
“No.” Yuto shouts quickly and Yamada has had about enough of his attitude, Yamada is just as scared, he just wants to help, but more than that he wants to get out of the stupid haunted mansion and get home.
“Fine.” he snorts, Yuto and fucking cameras. “Enjoy your directorial début or whatever.” and he turns back towards the foyer and starts walking.
“Ryosuke!” Yuto hisses, and Yamada feels a hand around his wrist, tugging him back. “Please, just come this way, I'll give you the camera soon.”
Yuto doesn't. Every time they reach a new door or a new hallway, Yuto nudges Yamada behind him and walks ahead, the camera held up in front of him. Every now and then he tugs Yamada quickly in one direction or another, or slams down Yamada's suggestions of 'What about this way?'
It's late, it was after midnight when they started recording and Yamada feels like they've been wandering around aimlessly for hours looking for a way out. He's tired, he's sick of it, so he lets Yuto have his fun. But then he spots the emergency stairwell and and he tugs on Yuto's sleeve. “Stairs.” he says, pointing ahead and Yuto lets out a relieved breath.
They walk quickly along the corridor towards it, but with only one more hallway to cross Yuto stops suddenly and jumps back. Yamada doesn't have chance to ask what's wrong before Yuto grabs his hand. “Ryosuke, can you run?” he asks shakily.
“Yeah.” Yamada answers in confusion but he doesn't get much more than that out before Yuto shouts.
“Run.”
They do, they run across the hallway and down the stairs, twisting and turning and then through another door before they find themselves outside in a courtyard. Yuto keeps running, pulling Yamada along with him and then they're around the side of the house and running down the drive to the minivan.
Yamada is out of breath as they crash against the side of it, but Yuto is looking back at the house, still recording, shaking with what sounds like exhilarated laughter.
They were lost for long enough that they don't need to tell ghost stories on the way back and instead they both sleep, but it can't have been more than half an hour before Yamada wakes up with a start. He thought he'd heard somebody coughing but when he looks over at Yuto he's still sleeping soundly. The van feels strangely draughty, and the cold keeps Yamada from drifting back to sleep so he reaches under the seat for a blanket and wraps it around him. He sits watching Yuto for a few moments before he notices the camera still in Yuto's hand.
He takes it and rewinds the tape to the beginning, before pressing play. The first ten minutes or so is a few different tries of them introducing the house, they're standing in the entrance hall, Yamada filming Yuto's chilling introduction about the horrors in it's past. Listening to the story makes him shudder all over again. It was a rich family that had lived in it once, happily, or so the story goes until one morning they'd been found by the maid, mother, father and three sons all strangled to death in their beds. Only the eldest child was different, a girl of thirteen, plagued by mental problems who was found hanging in the very entrance hall that they were filming in.
He skips ahead a little, through the entrance hall, up some stairs, through the library. It's at this point that Yuto takes over filming and Yamada walks ahead, up another set of stairs and along a hallway with a large grandfather clock at the end of it. Yuto on the video tells Yamada to go ahead and he'll get some arty shots of Yamada walking towards it. He hears himself faintly calling “Yutti”, and then the stairs creek and his blood freezes in his veins. Walking down the stairs beside him is a young girl wearing a white nightdress.
There's a clatter and Yuto whispers “Shit.” under his breath before calling out for Yamada to come back. He sees himself jogging forward and the young girl vanishes as he and Yuto discuss which way to go next only to reappear moments later, just a few metres behind Yamada. She raises her head as she steps slowly closer, her long black hair parting to reveal dark eyes that stare right into the camera. “Ryosuke, please!” Yuto says urgently, and the frame is shaking. “Will you please just come this way!”
He hears his own tut as he starts walking towards the camera and then Yuto backs up, keeping the camera focused on the girl until she disappears again. They're back in the foyer. He sees various doors and walls lighting up from the combined light of their torches and then he hears his voice on the camera calling out. “I think we came up that way.” but when the camera turns in the direction of his voice his heart skips a beat again. She's there in the doorway he's pointing towards.
The camera turns away before Yuto beckons him, looking down a long hallway that appears empty, and they walk that way. He speeds the film up, like this he can't understand their high-pitched voices, but he doesn't miss the small, nightdress-clad figure that plagues them at every turn, that tries to block their way to the emergency stairs.
He understands Yuto's relief as the camera wobbles and shakes, the night sky, the gravelled driveway, the minivan coming into view. Every now and then he pans back to the house and Yamada sees himself running after Yuto, and then he hears the thud of them running right into the side of the minivan, and Yuto's light laughter.
He lowers the camera when the footage ends and looks at Yuto, he's just thinking how incredible Yuto is, for being as brave as he was after seeing what he saw, when something strikes him as strange. It takes a few moments more for him to realise what it is, it's like time has stopped, everything is still, too still, Yuto isn't breathing.
Yamada lets out a noise that's part way between a sob and a gasp, and his breath hangs in the air like fog on it's way back out. Thin purple lines are starting to materialise on Yuto's neck, like bruises caused by little hands.
His vision goes blurry and he feels moisture dripping onto his cheeks, freezing there in the icy chill as he shakily looks back down at the camera in his hands and switches it onto record mode. The last thing he sees as he raises it in front of him, is long black hair and a pair of dark, dead eyes.