Legends by Wunderberry

The Other World

Prompt: She never believed in ghosts - Grandiose - Embracing the dark. Please don't forget to review!

~'~

She never believed in ghosts. She simply wasn't the type. She was the rational type, the skeptical. Back in elementary school, when all the girls would scream about someone seeing a disembodied white hand in the bathroom, she had rolled her eyes and returned to her books. In middle school, when the other girls would tell ghost stories at sleep overs, she would preface who scary story with a 'this is fiction' disclaimer. And this year, when the other students would whisper about Room 214, she would sigh and slip ear buds in her ears.

Room 214…

She never believed in ghosts, or the legends regarding them, but that didn't mean she was impervious to the chilling air the empty science room emitted. She knew why there were the ghost stories, that a science teacher had been killed in a chemistry mistake, or that a student had taken her own life with a concoction she had whipped up. Didn't mean she believed in them because, well, stuff like that didn't happen and the 'souls' of those make believe people didn't haunt the place where they died. It just didn't happen.

She seemed to be the only one who knew this though. The only person's who's brain was actually on the biology quiz they had coming up rather than the inane ghost stories. Today, Yamasaki Arisu had gone into fetch something for Tomoto-sensei and one of the vials had raised into the air and started spinning around the room. Yesterday, Sano Chizuru had been dared by one of her friends to go in there and her skirt had blown up to reveal her panties. The thing was, the windows were shut tightly with rust and the door had been slammed behind her by her friends. Last week it had been Obara Akihito, who had accidentally opened the door to 214 and had been pushed inside when no one else had been in the hallway. The door had been locked behind, and one of the staff had to unlock it to get him out when someone finally heard his screaming thirty minutes later.

It was all baloney to her. There were no ghosts. Yamasaki Arisu was lying. Sano Chizuru had been mistaken, a window had been open. Obara Akihito was just oblivious, there had been someone else there that had pushed him in and locked it behind them. It wasn't a ghost, no, nothing of the sort.

"Oh my god," said Yuka beside her. Her friends had their elbows on her desk, Ayume having turned around in her seat, Yuka sitting to her left, and Eri to her right. "You are not going to believe what just happened today."

Kagome bit back her sigh as Yuka told them all about the incident that happened to Chizuru. She remained silent, hiding her book under her desk as she discreetly read from it. She didn't need to hear the same ghost story repeated. She didn't need to hear their theories of why there were ghosts. She didn't need to hear their ghost stories. And for the love of god, she didn't need to hear about Room 214.

"Kagome, you skepticism is going to bite you in the rear one day," said Ayume. Kagome glanced up from her book and leveled her a disbelieving glare.

"And I'm surprised you know that word."

~'~

Great. Just what she needed. After a very trying day this was the cherry on the cake, the crowning moment of her day.

She was locked inside the school.

Guess that's what she got for a being bookworm, neh? Getting lost in the musty, grandiose stacks, reading tome after tome, devouring word after word, it was just fitting that the timer on the lights ran out, and when she glanced down at her digital watch, it was ten in the evening. She had checked her phone, curious why her mother hadn't called her, and then she remembered she forgot to charge it the night before. Spectacular.

Walking outside of the library, Kagome had glanced around. The moonlight spilled in from the tall window panes, but besides that, there was no light. The library was silent, she would say eerily so. Not a peep. The books were shelved away neatly, the tables were cleared from their usual backpacks, water bottles, papers, pencils, and binders. There was no librarian to shush the rowdy students, and there were no rowdy students for her to turn sharp glares on.

Strolling through the empty halls had also been an eerie experience. She saw the edges of plastic bags and lined notebook paper peeking out from underneath the green-grey metal lockers. On a set of lockers, in white spray paint, was painted an expletive that made the bookworm blush a bright cherry red. A garbage can was knocked over, WacDonald's wrappers and crinkled up plastic bottles spilling out on the tile floors.

When she had finally gotten to the front hallway, she peered in to the office. No one. The lights in the office were turned off, the computers dark, the papers filed away. She tried the handle to the office, but it didn't budge. Locked. Great, again. Pulling away from the door, she walked over to the two doors of the entrance and tried their handles. Locked, again. Also, great. Well wasn't this just dandy, no one in the office, and the doors were locked.

She sighed, hoping and praying that somewhere in the building was a nighttime custodian, but not putting much faith in it. The school had done its best to cut back on costs that weren't related directly to the education, and she was pretty certain that somewhere in one of those budget revisions, the nighttime custodian had been cut from the list.

Heading back into the main hallway, she continued walking down it, rubbing her arms through her uniform sleeves. Damn, it was kind of getting cold in the school. Of course, just like the nighttime custodian, heating the school at night had probably been taken off the budget. Hey, if they didn't have a nighttime custodian, then they had no use for it. Well, at least it wouldn't appear that they hadn't any use for it. Kagome, on the other hand, really saw a use for it and wished to high heaven she had it, or at least a jacket.

Creak.

Kagome's head snapped to the side. Her eyes were greeted with the sight of the open archway into the lady's room. She shrugged her shoulders, pushed up her book bag, and started walking towards it, her loafers clopping against the tile floor.

The smell of unflushed toilets greeted her nostrils. That was right, there was a reason she avoided using the school restroom. Unruly teenagers had a habit to think it was funny to have other people walk in to a room with walls decorated in sopping paper towels, and go to use stalls that needed to be flushed and mopped from human by-products. How… lovely.

However, her eyes weren't greeted with the sight of paper towel strewn walls, or even bathroom stall doors open. No, she was greeted with a running sink.

Well how did that get turned on?

With a shrug, and a frown, she walked over to the sink and pushed back the silver handle. Except, the water didn't turn off. She gulped, feeling a lump start to form in her throat as she pressed the silver handle again. Still, the water ran at full power. She blinked twice and pushed on the other silver handle. The water kept running. Suddenly, the stopper was pressed down and a pool started to form in the white porcelain sink. She jerked for it to come up, but it would not move.

Shit, she needed to get out of here.

She backed up, eyes locked on the running sink. Her feet sloshed into water, and instantly she spun around to face the stall doors. One of them was now open, and water was pouring from the toilet. She shook her head, eyes closed, and opened them again but found that it had failed. The water didn't disappear, it wasn't a trick of her mind.

Panicking, she made a break for it, ran out of the bathroom, loafers squeaking and squelching against the tile floor. When she got back into the hallway, she looked both ways. One way would take her back to the library and where she had just been. The other way would take her to the stairs and up to the second and third floors. She opted for the latter.

She practically took the stairs two at a time, heart pounding in her chest as she did so. Okay, she was overreacting, she knew it. Yeah, what happened in the bathroom was totally freaky, and completely out of the ordinary, but there was a logical reason behind it. The piping was backed up, or something like that. It had to do with the pipes though, that was reason. There was no other explanation. Ghosts? Yeah right, they didn't exist, and if they did, they wouldn't be able to make the toilet flood and the sink to not stop running.

It was turning out to be quite the interesting night though.

Kagome stopped at the top of the stairs, bending to grasp her knees as she wheezed. Wow was she ever out of shape. No wonder her Gym grade was so bad, she really needed to work out more. Note to self, stop walking the tack and attempt to run the mile. Certainly it would help with the fact she couldn't run down a hallway and up a flight of stairs without being out of breath.

Standing up straight she glanced around. Well, she didn't hear any freaky sounds, or see anything peculiar. It was just a piping problem downstairs though, why was she acting like it was anything else? All she was going to find up here was darkness, and classrooms. She'd spend one of the nights in one of the classrooms, and then come morning, as soon as someone first showed up, she'd go downstairs, tell them what happened and go home. Everything would be fine and dandy, and a week from then, she wouldn't even remember what had happened that night.

She walked over to the first door she saw and tugged at the handle. It didn't budge. Okay. She peered in the window, and saw moonlight. What was she expecting, for Ozawa-sensei to have stayed until ten in the evening grading papers? If that was not a laugh out loud-worthy moment as her friends called it, she didn't know what it was.

Kagome headed for the next door and tugged on it. It too was locked. Well, that was great. For some reason the teachers locked up before the left each day. Weird, but okay. Maybe one of the teachers would've forgotten today, so she went and tugged on more handles. Nope, all of them were locked. Not a single one of them budged.

This was really starting to get on Kagome's nerves. She had been planning to spend the night in one of the classrooms, maybe catch a little shut-eye at one of the desks, but no, locked doors were ruining her plans. They seemed to just love to ruin her plans. If it hadn't been for the locked front door, she'd be back at home laughing this off with her family. If it weren't for the locked door to the office, she would be trying to snooze on the school nurse's bed or whatever that thing was. And now if it weren't for the locked classroom doors, she would've been trying to snooze at a desk.

She was starting to get desperate. She knew she could just go back down to the library, which she probably should've been doing anyway, but she kept pulling at handles. How many classrooms could there be? You'd think with the many doors she'd tried to open, at least thirty of them, she would've found one unlocked. Nope, all of them were locked. She sighed. This was ridiculous. She was turning back, she'd nap on the ground in the library and used her bag as a pillow. Sounded comfier anyhow.

She started walking in the direction of the stairs, which were by this time out of sight. Why did they have a third floor when they had so many classrooms? She couldn't help but wonder that as she walked back to the stairs, passing locked door after locked door.

The thing was, she realized as she stopped dead in her tracks, how many doors had she just passed? She glanced back. Then she glanced forward. Finally she glanced at the window. It didn't seem like she had gone anywhere. She walked towards the windows and peered out, but didn't see the familiar red dirt of the kickball court, and black top of the track. Instead she saw a field, a lone willow tree standing tall and proud in the distance. She gulped.

What in all of the seven levels of hell, was going on?

Okay, she had to be dreaming. This wasn't happening, this wasn't real. She had fallen asleep on the bus on her ride home and started dreaming about being locked in the school. Eri would reach over and pinch her soon when she started snoring, and ask her if she hadn't been sleeping well, studying too much. She'll answer yes, go home, and take a proper nap where she'll dream of kittens and rainbows.

In the meantime, she was just left waiting for Eri to do that. Which meant she was stuck in this demonic version of high school, staring at a willow tree that… hadn't it just been over there?!

She started panting. Shit. That wasn't right. She rubbed her eyes. No, no, no. It had been over there, not, like, right below the window. Okay, that's enough sneaking coffees at lunchtime because damn, this dream was getting freakier by the moment.

Tap.

She was running. That had not just happened, that tree was not the tree from Hogwarts, it didn't have conscious, it couldn't whip up one of vines and hit it against the window pane. It just couldn't. Even in her dreams, that was a stretch. And holy crap, a vine or whatever coming at you super-fast, in the dark of night, was the scariest thing ever.

Her feet pounded against the tile floor, her heart in her chest mimicking the sound. Thump-thump, thump-thump. Her breathing was ragged as she ran, running in the direction of God knows what. Who knew, she could be running right into the waiting maw of a blue, fuzzy yet slimy monster with one hundred million teeth and acid that would kill her immediately. She actually kind of hoped for that, at least she would wake up then, right?

But no, she didn't run into a monster. She didn't run into the beast she described, or the Cookie Monster. She ran into a wall, or rather, a door. A door that was supposed to be on the third floor, and not at the very end of the hallway.

214.

Oh wasn't this the perfect icing on the cake of this dream she was having? Wasn't that just perfect? The haunted room for the haunted dream. She couldn't even gasp in surprise over this, it wasn't surprising at all. No, thinking back, she should've just kept looking for 214 when she was jiggling on all those handles earlier because if there is one door that would be unlocked in this dream, that would be the door to Room 214.

And what do you know? When she pulled on the handle, the door slid open.

She stepped in and the door slammed shut behind her. She snapped around to look at the doors, hands instinctively reaching out to grab the handle and pull the door back open, but like every other door in the building, it would not budge. But unlike any other door, with the exception of the doors outside, this one was keeping her in a room, not out.

"Hello?" she called out, her voice shaky with fear she couldn't help. She knew she was stupid for calling out to someone who was not going to be there, but it was a dream, so hey, maybe her mind would conjure up her favorite anime character.

The man who appeared, was most certainly not her favorite anime character. Clad in a pair of white hakama and a white haori, silver hair flowed from his head to his ankles. His skin was pale, his cheek bones high, his nose perfectly sculpted. His eyes were narrowed at her, nostrils flared, as the golden orbs took in every centimeter of her body. She gulped. It wasn't like he wasn't handsome with all his aristocratic features, maroon stripes on his cheeks, and indigo crescent moon on his forehead, but uh… Why was this happening to her? Why was her dreaming making men like this? He looked kind of… well… like a flaming homosexual.

He approached her, more liked stalked over to her from the way he walked. It was like he was a hunter, and she was the deer. And it probably helped that analogy that she stood there like a deer in the headlights as he approached her.

"Higurashi Kagome," he finally said, his voice practically making her turn into a puddle of goo. Bad Kagome, this guy had to be evil. "You don't believe in ghosts."

She stared at him like he had grown a second head, and since it was a dream after all, she was kind of expecting him to. But as the silence stretched, and his head didn't tilt over as another one popped through his skin, she realized she probably should answer that.

"So?"

"It has come to my attention that you don't," he said, stalking closer. She gulped again. "You are on my domain though, and I won't have anyone who doesn't believe in me here."

She stared at him, one word repeating in her mind. What? Seriously, what? He went through all that trouble, for she was assuming it was him that messed with the sink and toilet, and he was the one that locked the doors, and made the hallway unending, and that he was the one that changed the scenery and created the demon willow, just to tell her to believe in ghosts? Okay… Again, no more sneaking coffee at lunch if these are the dreams she's having.

He sighed. "I am a ghost, yes, and you are not dreaming. I made sure you were locked in this school so that I could, convince you out of your ideas."

A thought struck her.

"Okay, hypothetically speaking," she began, "I'm really not dreaming, you really locked me in a school to tell me to believe in ghosts, and you're actually a ghost. Here's what I don't get though. Why do you care?"

He did not answer, golden eyes narrowed at her. She reached out, she didn't know why, but she felt that if he cared so much to prove that he was a ghost, she'd affirm it to herself the only way she knew how. She reached to caress his cheek and her hand went right through him.

He glared at her, and then it all went black.

~'~

When she returned to conscious, she was in the library again, back in the stacks, her head resting on her book bag. At first, she assumed she was dreaming. There was no silver-haired ghost, there was no demon willow, and the school was not flooding. But then she saw it, the little white origami dog, and somehow, she knew she wasn't dreaming.

She scrambled through the books to find what she was looking for, and eventually found it. What was it? It was a book on the history of the area.

Fifty years ago, when the school was being built, there was quite a bit of controversy regarding the project. The locals, an indigenous tribe, did not want the school. They had been happy untouched by the modern and Western world. When the site had been decided upon, they had started protesting for supposedly their God, his human wife, and his most faithful servant had been buried here. The God was described as having long silver hair, golden eyes, and an indigo moon on his forehead.

And that was how Kagome came to believe in ghosts.