A Brief History Of The Costiel Family

It was said that the Costiel name was cursed with bad luck. It was, according to legend, a curse that dated back to when the family was headed by Helgi Costiel, who had had a reputation as a womaniser. Back in that day, the family had been a wealthy and noble pureblood family, one considered to be full of talent and intellect, and overall treated with the utmost respect. Helgi, supposedly, had earned the ire of a young witch who was adept with curses, and even known to design her own. Essentially, the young woman was of exceptional talent, far more so than Helgi himself, or his siblings. The legend went that he had scorned her, some tellings even said he left the woman carrying his child, marrying a woman of higher social standing and ignoring his firstborn and its mother. So curses were weaved against the Costiel line, against those baring the noble Costiel name.

After Helgi, it was noted that every first born, every true heir to the Costiel family, was a son. There were no families of just daughters, so the name was assured to hold strong for longer.

It began with Creole Costiel, the illnesses that swept across the family. The crushing ill health that plagued him, his siblings and his own children. Frequent and incurable illnesses. Creole himself suffered for years with breathing difficulties, fits, blackouts and fever severe enough to send him into delirium. He was known, during these episodes of delirium, to become deeply distressed, and to even cause harm to his family, much to his own horror. He died young, but not before marrying and producing an heir, Farkis.

It was Farkis who lost the family their entire fortune. Through debt, gambling and poor choices, most said, but it really did seem to just...slip away from him. Suddenly everything was gone, and with no siblings to have taken a share of the initial fortune, nor a share of his debts and responsibilities, Farkis found himself destitute, and far from the top where he had started.

Tobias was born into wealth as the eldest child of Farkis, and was there when they were dumped into poverty. Starving and struggling to support his family, in a time when assistance would not be there for him to turn to, Tobias thought to do the unthinkable. In a moment of desperation, he throttled his youngest son and fed the meat to the family. As he seared the meat, he made a promise to himself that he would not think to do the same thing again. Not three months later, Tobias killed his eldest son, Erasmus. Once again, he ate the remains, finding it far more satisfying than before. The next year, he and his wife were blessed with a new child, a daughter, and he smothered her before they even registered her birth, before she had time to become thin and weak from deprivation. In the end, he was known to have murdered three of his children, his wife, and his only sister.

Hephaestus, taking over as heir upon the death of his elder brother, found his nights plagued by nightmares of the horrors he had seen growing up, and his days of flashbacks to being forced to eat members of his own family, of the constant fear that he would be the next one killed to satiate his father's insane desires. His mental state spiralled down continually, until he was left in an irreparable state. In the end, he lived out his days at the mercy of asylum doctors, treated as no longer human for the absence of rational thought within his mind. He died screaming.

Columbus Costiel was the one who decided to try and implement arranged marriage to improve their family's standing. Their reputation had been destroyed from generations of murder, insanity, illness and the like, but if they could join with families of higher repute, they in turn would find their condition improving. Columbus and his brothers worked hard to find a way to undo this curse believed to be upon them, and it was the youngest, Aenas, who found he could confirm without a shadow of a doubt that there was indeed some form of magic affecting their lives. Without a full knowledge of the original curse cast, however, he could not undo or dismantle it.

It was Columbus' great grandson, Genesius Costiel, who discovered that his cousins did not seem to suffer from the curse. His seven sisters were all murdered, some for being discovered as witches, others for finding love with a psychopath, and others still for angering the wrong person or even just being in the wrong place in the wrong time. His cousins, however, all born to his father's sisters, lived normal, fulfilling lives, and ones without illness, insanity or the overhang on various disaster. It was Genesius, therefore, who wrote of the belief that offspring of the Costiel line who did not hold the Costiel name were not afflicted by the curse. After this discovery, many of the younger sons chose to change their name at marriage and disappear into a safer family line, their cursed heritage eventually forgotten.

Fursey Costiel, a further few generations down, was known to suffer from a great paranoia. He believed his younger brother, Viti, to be having dealings with what he referred to as unnatural creatures. Werewolves, vampires, veela and the like - this wasn't entirely false in and of itself, as Viti did in the end have a child with a veela woman. The true paranoia came in the form of Fursey's increasing belief that Viti wished to kill him and become the heir to the family himself. Nothing could quell his intense fear and distrust building toward his dear brother, especially not once Fursey had it in his head that his brother had allowed himself to become a vampire. In the end, Fursey turned to a good friend of his, Orestes Lang, whose family were strict in tradition and well trained in the art of vampire hunting. He begged Lang to take care of his brother, and Lang conceded. Viti was then abducted by Lang and three others, and despite the four agreeing he was most certainly not a vampire, they tortured the man to death without a second thought.

Fursey's second son, Garridan, was then formally executed by Lang, alongside his lover, after they tried to elope together. Garridan's lover, Ebony Lang, had disobeyed her family's traditions, and had chosen to elope after becoming pregnant with Garridan's child, knowing she and her child would likely be killed anyway simply for the pregnancy, or for having any relations with a man not chosen for her by her father.

Gundulf Costiel was publicly scorned for his own child born out of wedlock. An illegitimate baby boy whose birth killed the mother. His resultant wedding to a miss Gardenia Hubbard, said to be of exquisite beauty, a wedding arranged by the parents of the two, was known to be terse and unfriendly. They never shared a room, and never produced a child. Gundulf's family did not wish for his illegitimate son to become head of the family, but that is exactly what happened.

By the time Scipio Costiel was head of the family, the arranged marriages once suggested by Columbus had began to bring good fortune once more to the family, if only by a slim margin. Scipio lived within comfort enough that he felt no undue stress over his survival, his lack of finance or the idea his family might starve. Scipio also was known to believe that naming his children names intended to bring good luck would protect them from the curse.

He was wrong.

In the end, all but two of his children died in childhood. Fortunato and Prospero, the surviving brothers, did extensive research into curse protection during their lifetime, and wrote that they believed that actively naming one's child after a place, a city or a street in which they once set foot, would form some sort of protection from the curse. A Costiel would not be fully protected, and would still suffer the effects, but it was thought to drastically reduce the severity. Much of their research was later destroyed in a flood. All that remained for the next few generations to work off was that if they used street names for their children, words on road signs they had seen in passing, their children would be safe.

By the time Woodbine Costiel was leader of the family, things were really looking up. He needed only to marry his eldest son into the right family, and they would be back to the wealth they once held. Ruxley had always been rather rebellious, in all honesty, but he was in good health and had a good head on his shoulders. If he could stand still and do as he was told long enough, he would undoubtedly be a very successful man, and potentially the saving grace of a family once thought to be doomed. Alas, his rebellious nature won over when he eloped with a woman named Mel, who was not only not of a noble and illustrious family, she was not even of magical blood.

Ruxley had run off with a muggle woman, much to the disgust of his family. And it was Ruxley whose family experienced the worst run of luck in many generations, because he'd heard the stories of how the children would suffer if not given the 'protected' names, and though he thought it silly, he still named his eldest son for a street. Only after that, the husband and wife decided that they should be able to name their children as they wished, no curse could stop them.

Ruxley's second son, Lexius, fell ill in childhood, was often kept inside for his health, and was known to cling to his elder brother for his own lack of social skills. The one time he ventured out without permission, he was attacked. It seemed the worse his luck became, the more he dragged down the wellbeing of his siblings. It was no wonder his family withdrew from him. He lived the rest of his life often feeling hunted and alone. The drag down on the other sons of Ruxley slowly pulled them into illness, fear and distrust of each other. The home would become stained red with the family's blood all too quickly.

The next heir would be Rosebury's first born. He too would be cursed.

Luck was overall a very fickle thing, and difficult to grasp hold of. The curse would rage on many generations more, attempting to overcome any barrier the Costiels put to it to protect themselves, before one day someone might find a way to lift it.

Perhaps the secret to undoing the curse lay with the descendants of the witch who first cast it.

Thunderstruck

The machine made an unpleasant sound. A warning blare that sounded over and over, which couldn't possibly be a good sign. Tarquin's understanding of the machine wasn't great, but he figured it was some sort of energy generator. The exact medium was a mystery to him, but he knew electricity was involved, and he knew the villain they'd been after had been tampering with the machine with the goal in mind of causing an explosion.

Tarquin never did understand bad guys who wanted to just destroy, especially if that destruction endangered the bad guy as well. His own drive for causing trouble had never been just 'break shit', and he'd never seen damaging property as a primary objective. His own motives had mostly been survival and revenge, and revenge was usually directed at a single person with limited crossfire where possible. Hex had liked to cause random chaos and damage back when he'd been a criminal, but that had mostly been out of anger and confusion, which Tarquin could sympathise with, he supposed. But when a person destroyed with intent to trigger mass genocide, now that he couldn't quite understand. Even coming from a land where torture was a regular occurrence, it seemed weird to just slaughter hundreds upon hundreds of innocents for whatever reason. He didn't even approve of the mass cullings of his homeland performed to prevent further spread of plague. Not that such measures had worked in the first place.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. To an extent, the man's sabotage attempts had failed, but to an extent, they had also succeeded. Again, he wasn't quite sure about the exact specifics of the thing, his area of expertise was definitely not electronics. He couldn't even figure out how the basic communications devices his team leader had provided him with worked. But he understood the basics of what was happening here, because it had been explained to him.

Elsewhere in the building, whatever sort of place this was, Shard and Hex were running to shut down the whole system before disaster could strike and the overload or misdirection or whatever it was caused an explosion large enough to take out all of...where were they again? Whatever. It would be difficult, and if they couldn't figure out how to shut the whole energy system down in time, it would be down to the team holding the bad guy captive near the explody thing to stop the explosion.

What he did know about his part in all this was that the machine had some major electrical charges firing through it. Some things had been moved out of place, but couldn't be put back safely while everything was live, which was what was causing the overload, if he understood correctly. No human could touch that thing right now and survive.

But then, Tarquin was no human.

He'd seen it before it had been tampered with. He could see which parts were out of place, and where the missing connector was. Flesh conducted electricity, so he himself would work as a connector until the thing was switched off, and he could delay total meltdown. At least, that was what he hoped.

With that thought in mind, Tarquin had stepped closer to the exposed parts of the machine, startling slightly when someone grabbed his wrist to stop him.
"Stay back." Whisper warned him.
"It's broken. They're taking too long. If I just move that wire and plug that back in, it gives them more time, right?"
"Tarq, no, you can't touch it. It'll electrocute you to death."
He gave her a scathing look. "You know my powers, right?"
The grip around his wrist tightened. "You can direct electricity."
"A Shadow Meister can conduct and direct electricity. It's a form of energy that agrees with us. I am not human, what may kill you will not kill me. But if that thing blows, it won't just take us out, it'll take a lot of innocents out as well."
She thought it over for only a moment, weighing up the pros and cons, the possible dangers. Tarquin was right, of course. The electricity wouldn't kill him, and neither would the other things this thing was doing. "Be careful."
"Plug the thing in, move the wire back in place and bridge the gap where the other thing was meant to be. I can do it."

Of course, while it was absolutely true that there was no way that this action would kill him, he did have to admit he didn't have total immunity against electricity. While a normal Shadow Meister would think nothing of 200 volts shot through the body for an extended amount of time, regardless of how the current was acting, Tarquin was not a normal Shadow Meister. He was a halfbreed, and he had his limits. He gave one last glance back to the members of the team still watching him - he was pretty sure Zhen was in charge of the prisoner, Viahar and Astral were in charge of evacuation, or being evacuated, one or the other, and that Crayon had decided to draw something that could potentially contain the blast - and offered a cocky smile before reaching out to grab the wires.

Electricity always looked for the fastest path to the ground, and once his skin touched the uncovered wire, he became the fastest path. While the charge would not kill him, it sure would hurt. His muscles spasmed and he felt flesh burn at the entry and exit points - his palms and feet. It was a bit more intense than he'd expected, he'd have to admit. Regardless, he had a job to do, so he tried to grit his teeth against the pain, tried to stop screaming, tried to keep his eyes open just long enough that he could reroute the wire in his hand. Somewhere vague in the back of his head, he thought he heard Whisper call out to him, but for the time being he ignored it. It was just a burn. Or four. Or more. It was just his muscles going a little too tense and really not wanting to move. It was just an outside stimulus irritating all those old wounds that would never heal quite right. It was a body he knew acting in a way he expected that would not be too badly damaged by this. It would hurt, but he would be fine. He would feel every part of the path that electricity took, and he would be fine.

The wire was back where it needed to be. He stepped back, taking a deep breath, and reached for the plug.
"Tarquin, stop!" He heard Whisper approaching. Her powers were electricity-based as well, but she was still human. He didn't know if she could survive touching this thing, especially since he didn't know what else could be leaking out of it, so he did the only sensible thing he could think of. He threw his shadows out behind him to push her back, and picked up the next bit. The plug. If he was correct, it went...there!

The sound that came from the thing, accompanied by the bright flash, was one he would describe as a mini-explosion. It also earned him some more burns, which hurt like a bitch, but that was inconsequential. He shook it off with a few nasty words in his native tongue, tried to ignore his team leader's attempts to force her way through his shadow shield, and went to bridge the gap. Connect part A to part B and break the feedback loop. Use himself as a conductor. It would hurt until Hex and Shard succeeded in switching it off (or it exploded after all) but he figured he could manage it.

At some point after that, he must have blacked out, or been really stunned, because the next thing he knew, he was flat on his back on the floor, looking up at a completely dark room with all the power off, and with someone sat by his head. Whisper, most likely. He could still acutely feel the burns, and an unpleasant urge to vomit, though that could have been the lunch he'd eaten earlier - it had had leaves or something in it and he'd almost immediately thrown it up again, but it was entirely possible that some of that was still in there, unable to be digested.
"I take it...we all lived?" He managed, squinting through the darkness.
"Just about..." He tilted his head back so he could see her. She looked angry. "What were you thinking?"
"'Prevent unnecessary death'. I think I did. I told you I wouldn't die. I never said it wouldn't hurt or make me sick." Using his elbows rather than his hands, Tarquin tried to push himself up to a sitting position. The wave of queasiness quickly pushed him down again. He heard Whisper heave a sigh.
"We've had the 'full disclosure' talk before, haven't we?" It was an understandable situation, but..."You nearly gave me a heart attack there. Are you okay?"
"...Just need some rest. Already feeling better." Again, it wasn't a lie. With no electricity coursing through him, nothing was being irritated by that path. He was just tired and nauseous now, which was normal when he'd overexerted himself, and any of his powers could cause him to overexert himself. Not that his health had ever been great since he'd met Whisper, but potato potato. He felt her take his hands and examine the burns, wondering how good her night vision was.
"We'll get Viahar to look at you. There's bound to be something for burns back at the tower, too, so you should be fine...just..."
She went quiet, and he pushed himself up again, managing to stay mostly upright this time. "Just?" He echoed, peering through the dark curiously.
"Just...don't scare me like that again, okay?"
He offered a smile he hoped she could see. "No promises. But I'll do my absolute best."

A Lesson In Self-Defence

It happened at the same time every Wednesday night, like clockwork. Like some sick ritual Mr Cura always had to stick to.

It had been this way ever since he'd been moved here. Ever since the courts had ruled Mr and Mrs Bergameschi incapable of caring for their own children, because that was why he was here. A vulnerable and neglected child, with only his big sister to rely on.

Big sister wasn't with him here. It was just the boy, and a few other children from bad homes moved to here for their own 'safety'. Supposedly Mr and Mrs Cura would take good care of them, keep them safe and ensure no further harm could come to them. They'd gotten Bergameschi a tutor who wouldn't ask too many questions, changed his entire wardrobe to clean and crisp outfits of their own choosing (and certainly not something he would have chosen for himself), and picked and chose who he could spend time with. At first, he questioned none of it. It didn't seem bad, or sinister, not then. They seemed like ordinary people, and the government trusted them to care for children already in a vulnerable place, so surely they had to be good people, right?

But if that were the case, then Bergameschi wouldn't need to stay awake all night, watching the clock like a hawk, waiting for Cura to make his way to his room. Sometimes he would just sit on the bed and talk. Never nice things, though. Always things that made his skin crawl. Other times, Cura would get physical. It was something he never wanted to relive.

He was sure the other children stuck here were suffering abuse as well. He could hear screams and cries. He was suffering more than he ever had been before, and nothing he could say to any authorities seemed to help. Every case meeting, he would say the same thing. "The Cura's are abusing me and the other kids. I want to live with my big sister instead."
And every time, he would hear back "We'll look into it" or "Your foster carers are here to help" or "You must have been really traumatised by what happened before, but it will be okay now" and they would never do anything to help. There had been so many custody hearings as well, where his sister had tried to get her brother transferred to her house, but the boy remained firmly at the Cura household.

He'd tried to run before, as well. The police had found him pretty quickly. He'd ended up right back where he started, and the officer he'd spoken to had even laughed at him when he'd tried to explain why he ran.

Exhausting all his other options, Bergameschi lay awake, staring at his clock, hand curled under his pillow and around the handle of the kitchen knife he'd managed to sneak upstairs when no-one was looking. He wasn't crazy and he wasn't lying, and if he had to use violence to protect himself then he would. He refused to be a victim any longer.

The clock ticked over. 2:34. 2:45. 2:46.
Creeaak
He hated the door. It gave the slightest creak when it opened, and he winced, tightening his hold on the knife. Cura stepped in, humming something ever so softly. Some Duran Duran song from however long ago. The bed dipped beneath his weight as he sat beside the boy, and Bergameschi felt him hesitate.

It had to be obvious that he had no intention of going to sleep that night. He lay there fully dressed with his glasses still on, body tense and eyes wide. He heard Cura tut.
"Now why are you still awake?" He leaned over, close to him. A hand was near his head, unpleasant-smelling breath tickling his skin. "It's two in the morning, you know. You'll be exhausted if you don't get your sleep." This was followed by a slight chuckle, as if he didn't wake Bergameschi up every Week at half two anyway. Cura braced his hand against the boy's pillow, moving so he was practically straddling him. His hands were positioned to support him and touch the boy's head. Nothing free to protect him from a single strike. With his head that close, it wouldn't be that hard.

Without a moment's hesitation, he'd pulled the knife from its hiding place and plunged it upward, into Cura's throat.

What happened next was by no means quick, nor was it pretty. There was a lot of blood. He recalled Cura thrashing as he plunged the knife in a few more times for good measure, never quite sure where he was hitting, not able to clearly see his target in the darkness. He kept stabbing upward against the struggling and gurgling, kept going until Cura fell still and silent and slumped down against the boy. After a moment, making sure his ex carer was no longer breathing, Bergameschi pushed the body off to the floor and inflicted a few more stabs. Just to be sure. He had to be sure.

It took a couple of minutes to calm down. He felt across the wall for the light switch, wincing when the light burned his eyes and grimacing further when he removed his glasses and saw the blurred remains of the man he'd just killed. He pulled a shirt from his wardrobe to wipe his glasses clean, the wipe that came with them having gone missing a while back, and slotted them back into place.

Odd. Murder was easier than he'd expected. He didn't feel any guilt, or like he'd done anything wrong. This was to protect himself and the other kids, after all. Mr Cura was a dangerous predator, and he was sure the bastard had abused all the children in the house in this manner. As one of the eldest in the house, at 14, Bergameschi felt he ought to protect the others from such monsters. And Mr Cura wasn't the only one to subject the already vulnerable youth to such cruelty. Sure, Mrs Cura's violence and deprivation never went to sexual levels, thank god, but it wasn't by any means any less serious. She would wake up in a few hours, find her husband dead and never pay for her crimes herself.

Well, he couldn't have that.

He wasn't sure if the struggle against his foster father would have woken the others up or not. Even so, he was quiet as he could be as he slipped through the door and tiptoed down the hall, to the door at the end where the Cura's normally slept. Mr Cura had left the door slightly open when he'd left his wife to sleep. This meant minimal noise involved in slipping through to her bedside.

Bergameschi stood stock still by Mrs Cura's bedside for several minutes, paranoid she would waken and he would be caught. Or that she was pretending to sleep, only to catch his arm when he tried to stab her. The time stretched on, crawling at an impossibly slow pace before Bergameschi steeled his resolve and struck.

Afraid she might wake later if he didn't kill her quick, he kept his blade flat and stabbed at the chest. Repeatedly. And when he was done, he backed off and sat against the dressing table, breathing hard and watching her for any sign of movement. He stayed there, watching, feeling the blood coating him dry and cool. When the sun came up, and he heard the shuffle of the other children in the house waking up, he stood again. Mrs Cura hadn't moved an inch, and when he went over to check the body, he was relieved that he could find no sign of life.

He closed the bedroom door behind him and returned to his own room, ensuring the man was dead as well before shutting his door. The least he could do was keep the others in the house from seeing the bodies. They'd been told it was an absolute rule that no-one was allowed in any bedroom but their own, after all, and Bergameschi's door had even had the doorknob removed a while back, so that he wouldn't be able to completely close it. It was just another way they wanted to take away his privacy and sense of self.

He did his very best to be quiet as he descended the stairs, creeping toward the front door, not wanting the kids to see him as he slipped out into the mild morning. Still blood-drenched, he made his way down to the local police station, followed by stares and whispers. Running. Running faster and faster, not wanting anyone to stop him and ask him any questions. Not wanting to explain what happened, not wanting to deal with their looks of disgust.

Murder was wrong, but he didn't feel wrong for what he did. He felt justified. He felt, if there was no other way to protect himself and the others, it had to happen. Even so, as he got to the station and walked up to the front desk, he was fully prepared for the consequences as he told the man sitting there "I've just committed a murder".

Victims With Numbers Part 9

After discovering he couldn't just leave the building, Liang decided to try exploring again. It was far smaller and easier to navigate than the main building, so it wouldn't take long, and he hadn't really taken a proper look into any of the rooms he'd passed. There would be some trace of Rock and Tsukumo somewhere if he just looked. The only problem was that the ghost girl was trapped in here with him, so he couldn't be careless. If she was still following him, she would be getting to the bottom of the stairs on the left side now, so he went back to the right side.

Ah. There she was, descending the stairs at the end of the hall. Evidently, she'd decided to loop back around in order to cut him off. She hadn't seen him yet, though, so he could loop back around himself, or duck into the nearest room to hide. If she truly lost him, if he hid successfully, she may well leave the building in search of either him or a new victim. Or just keep wandering around this one until she killed him, but what was life without taking a risk here or there?

He opened and shut the door as quietly as he could, and leaned against it, taking in the room he'd entered. It was the downstairs bathroom. The cubicles stood, but between them and him was a large hole in the floor. The distance was one he thought he could cross, but there wasn't enough floor next to the cubicles for him to land on, so even if he made it, he wouldn't be able to stay there or get back. That crossed them off as hiding places. The only other things in the room were the sinks and mirrors, which weren't much help. Slowly and quietly, he walked across the room, crouching by the hole and trying to gauge how far down it went. In the darkness, he couldn't see the bottom. There wasn't really anything he could drop down there to try and figure it out either, unless he wanted to use his shoe. Or an earring. That wouldn't make a big enough sound, though. As he stood again, he heard the door open and close behind him. Already figuring the girl had followed him in, Liang turned to face her.

As before, the ghost girl advanced slowly, hands outstretched, repeating the same question and the same demand. Her movements were like those of a monster movie zombie, a mindless lurch that could be skirted around with relative ease, though of course it would have been better were the space not so small nor full of holes. Being a child, she would not be able to keep up with Liang even at a fast paced walk, so he was quite calm as he walked by her, keeping to the walls and walking straight to the exit. Perhaps he could find a way to block her in somewhere, find a way to trap a door closed. She seemed to need to open the doors to pass through them, after all, even though she had walked through the railing without difficulty. He reached out to open the door, and frowned when it didn't open.

On closer inspection, the door was locked. That wasn't good. Glancing over his shoulder, Liang noted that the little girl was drawing nearer faster than he would have liked. It looked like his only way out would be down the hole, but he had no idea if he would survive the fall or not. The only thing he could throw down to check that he could be sure to hear would be...one of the dead bodies in the room. He couldn't stay pressed against the door.

It occurred to him, as he looped back around the girl, that he wouldn't have been in this predicament if he had listened to Rock and not separated from the others. He wouldn't have encountered the ghost girl outside, and he would still be in the company of living people, however he was still quite sure they were there somewhere. They wouldn't have just disappeared from the entire building, after all.

He passed the hole again, and pushed a nearby body down with his foot. It seemed like a cold and callous thing to do, but once he realised how deep the hole really was, he knew using his shoe or earring to gauge the depth would indeed have been useless. He'd done three more circuits of the room to evade the ghost's grabbing hands and tried to open the door at least five more times before he heard a very distant 'splash' signifying the end of the body's fall. He definitely did not fancy his chances of survival if he jumped down there. Jumping across to conceal himself in the cubicles was not an option either. Even if it was possible to land safely, the girl would know exactly where he was. The door wouldn't open. There wasn't any way out and away from the child. Against his better judgement, he tried one last thing. "Rock! You said yell if there's a ghost! I'm yelling!"

Of course, he received no response for that. The ghost came within reach, and he could see the blood stains across her form, trailing from the wounds on her face, down across her tattered clothes. He shifted his weight, changing his stance, ready to fight if he needed to. Would trying to kick a ghost in the face work at all? Only one way to find out. He swung his leg out defensively

and his attack never connected. Against his back, the door opened with force, and he felt something pull hard at the back of his jumpsuit, hard enough to yank the cloth tight against his throat. For the third or fourth time today, he was falling onto his backside gracelessly, coughing as the pressure waned. The ghost girl made some strange, mournful noise as she tried to cross the threshold, only for the door to slam itself shut in her face. It jolted a few times as she tried to open it, but whatever force had just saved him seemed to be holding it closed. Then he heard the voice, presumably the voice of his saviour. It seemed to echo from an uncertain position, and he found himself looking for its source.

"I'll hold Yuki here. I can keep her distracted."

The voice sounded so...familiar. Almost exactly like "Qi?"

It didn't respond for a moment, and then "Go to the art room upstairs. Someone will come for you. A friend. Trust me."

He got to his feet, frowning. "Who are you? Why are you helping?"

The spirit hesitated. "I died here. I saw you...Please..."

Liang found himself reluctant to move. That voice was so familiar, but couldn't be Qi. Liang had no evidence to suggest Qi had lost his life during this time, and he wasn't sure Qi would talk like that anyway. That meant this had to be a mystery spirit who had randomly decided to help, and who refused to identify itself. He had questions, and misgivings, and a very bad feeling he couldn't quite place.

"Don't be reckless." The voice warned, apparently realising he wasn't about to move. "You can't fight the ghosts here. They're powerful, and untouchable. They can hurt you, but you can't hurt them. I need you to think before you act."

Deciding not to point out that he was thinking his actions through this time, and not just looking for a fight against a dead child because it was there, Liang nodded.

"Okay. Thank you for your help." He left the ghost girl to the mysterious spirit

Liang waited obediently, perched on the edge of a desk and wondering what the spirit had meant when he'd said a friend would be arriving. He'd thought to give them a time limit, a time before he got up and explored again. He could not wait forever, after all. Long before he reached that limit, however, the door to the art room opened. He saw a flash of purple and brown as someone ran in and hid behind an easel. It wasn't a very good hiding place.

The person was a child, he could tell that much. A purple-haired girl in her early teens, in a brown school uniform. Liang walked round to get a better look at her, and she spotted him and dropped into a crouch with a squeal of fear. He stopped, holding up his hands to show he meant no harm. "It's okay. I'm a friend."

She hesitated, looked up at him with tearful eyes. "Help me..."

"It's okay. You're not alone." She was small for her age, he would say. Smaller than the ghost girl from before. "How did you get here?"

"I..." The girl shrugged, reaching up to wring her ponytail with her hands. "I was with my big brother and our friends...and then there was an earthquake...and now we're here...except it's just me!" She began to sob, and Liang came forward, crouching before her and placing a hand on her head.

"The others will be here somewhere. You just have to find them. I'll help, if you want."

She blinked, looking up at him hopefully. "You...you'll help me find big brother?"

"I will. We can keep an eye out for our friends, too. How does that sound?"

The girl nodded. "Yes. Okay."

"What's your name?"

"Keiko."

"Keiko. My name is Liang."

"It's nice to meet you, Mister."

He helped her up with a nod and she dusted herself off before wiping her eyes on her sleeves and forcing a determined expression on her face.

"We'll find them, right Mister?"

"Right." He nodded. "What does your brother look like? What's his name?"

"Motomu. He's really tall, and popular with the girls!"

He nodded, though that didn't help. "Where did you last see him?"

"In the classroom."

"...Which classroom?"

"Oh...the one at his school, not this one..."

"Have you been stuck in this building the whole time? Or have you been to the main building too?"

"There's another building?" Keiko seemed shocked by this, which answered his question. "The door by the shoe lockers has been locked the whole time! It...it's so scary here..." She raised a hand to her face as she began to cry again.

"Your brother might be there then." He mused, not sure how to calm her down. "If the front door is locked, there might be a key somewhere." He went to the nearest cabinet and looked through the glass, trying to see if there was anything of use. Sculpting tools stained in red.

"Is that blood?" Keiko asked from beside him.

"No, I think it's paint." He lied before taking her hand. "Let's go."

Whimpering, she clung to his hand and let him lead her away.

As he walked with Keiko, he tried to get more out of her about what her brother looked like. She didn't seem to speak much, and kept her face hidden against him. She was, understandably, terrified while trapped in this place. She didn't want to see any more dead bodies, and so kept close to this kind stranger. All he managed to get out of her was that Motomu had darker hair than her, and was wearing a different coloured uniform. She didn't specify what colour. Liang just asked her if their uniform was the same, and she shook her head no. That was how most of their conversation was going as they walked into the music room.

"Rock? Tsukumo? Mutomu?" Liang called as he opened the door. The last time he'd looked in there, it had been silent and empty. When they approached the door this time, they could hear the piano playing, but as he stepped in, he couldn't see anyone at the keys.

"Motomu." Keiko corrected softly behind him. "He doesn't play. Do your friends play?"

"I...don't know. I've never asked." He answered honestly. Perhaps if he saw them again, he would ask. Once the danger was over.

Keiko pulled away from him to look at the room, and found her eyes drawn to a particular body - a young teen girl in a similar uniform. She walked toward it, and crouched by it, while Liang walked closer to the piano. As he drew close, all the keys played at once, as if someone had slammed their hands down, and then the lid closed itself. He found himself staring at the piano for a moment longer, as if he would be able to see the player if he looked hard enough, and he only looked away when he felt Keiko tug at his sleeve.

"I...I want to go now."

"Okay. Just a little longer." He took her hand again and gave it a squeeze, hoping he was being comforting. He wasn't good with kids. Sure, this girl was probably in her early teens, but she was much more badly affected by all of this. She wasn't desensitised like Liang was. She was still a minor, while he was an adult, and the only other kids he had really dealt with since his own childhood were Upa and the two from Building 13. The kids who happened to be interned in the same prison as him. Pulling her along with him, he tried to open the lid to the piano, and found, like many other things that had shut behind him, it would not open. He tried the desks next. Those that opened had nothing of use in them. The first had a pair of shoes that undoubtedly belonged to an elementary school girl, and the second one's interior was covered in bloody hand prints, again belonging to children. A few empty desks or desks filled with rubbish later, and Liang opened one to discover someone had tried to cram a human head into one of them. It was thoroughly decayed, and must have been there a long time. Space not taken up by the crushed in remains held bugs. Maggots and blowflies crawling and flying every which way as their nest and feeding frenzy was disturbed. No sign of any key, or clue. Keiko was shivering beside him, staring into the desk, so he shut it and led her out. As they left, he found his eyes drawn to the portraits above the chalk board. He didn't recognise any of the people, but he assumed they were composers or something like that. Something seemed off about the pictures, and when he tore his eyes away, one of them fell to the floor. He didn't look back.

A few steps away from the music room, Keiko began crying again, gripping her skirt instead of him.

"Are you okay, Keiko?" Liang asked after a moment, not sure how to comfort her. She shook her head.

"That...the girl in there...she's from my school..."

Ah. The body she was looking at. "...Your friend?"

She nodded.

"Ah...I'm sorry..."

Keiko merely whimpered in response. Liang took her arm and led her along, and she kept her eyes on the floor until they passed the door with the charms on it.

"Mister Liang...I need to go toilet."

He looked at the taped up door and frowned. "The one downstairs is out of order. This one might be usable if we just-" He reached out to peel one of the paper charms away from the door.

A moment and one cry of pain later, and he was cradling his now burnt hand to his chest. It looked like removing the charms wasn't all that simple. A glance to his thumb and forefinger told him it wasn't a mild burn either - at the very least it would certainly blister.

"It didn't come off..." Keiko mumbled, staring at the door.

It may not have, but some of Liang’s skin certainly did. He cast a quick look around, looking for something he could use to peel or scratch away the paper charms without burning himself again. Nothing really jumped out at him, so he supposed it would have to be another thing to search for.

Victims with Numbers Part 8

Liang gave a slow nod, and hesitantly left, leaving Rock alone with the ghost of the weeping girl, crouched just by her own body.

Well, okay, they weren't really alone if Rock was honest. There were other ghosts in the room, but none of them were as expressive. None of them paid anyone or anything else any mind. The weeping girl, however, caught his eye for some reason. Most likely because she wasn't wandering aimlessly with a dull look in her eyes. He couldn't actually see her face from here, as she was curled over, face buried against her legs as she sobbed and mourned her own passing.

Before anything else, Rock decided to be true to his word, and write a message. He tore a small piece from one of the class notices and picked up a pen that someone had left on the teacher's desk - some cutesy purple thing with a bear head on the end and pink hearts all over it, he didn't know how long it had been there, but after a test scribble or two, it wrote with no difficulty - and simply wrote 'We'll spread the word if we see anyone. See you here later. Rock and Liang.' That was good enough. It was enough to just say 'someone else is here, someone else has seen this'. He wouldn't be sure if the others knew about the whole closed spaces and different dimensions thing. He didn't think he could explain it himself anyway, so he turned away from the desk, and from the notes, and found himself approaching the ghost girl.

As if she could sense his approach, the girl tensed, then looked up, seemingly frightened of the man approaching her. Rock carefully walked around the body on the floor, and crouched down beside the ghost.

"Hey..." He didn't ask if she was okay. It was clear she'd been stabbed to death, and it was very clear that she wasn't ever going to be okay again. The girl stared at him for a long time, and then said

"You can see me."

"I can see all the ghosts here." He answered honestly.

"They stole my pen."

Huh? "Who did?"

"Those two boys from before. They took my favourite pen. It was a gift, and they took it!"

"The...the purple one with the bear on it?"

The girl gave a slight nod.

"Well, it's still on the desk, they just wanted to borrow it to-"

"They didn't borrow it, they didn't give it back! They didn't think they had to, because I'm not alive like they are. Living people can be so selfish..."

"Everyone here is scared. Sometimes, we don't think about people who are dead when we might die too." He got up and fetched the pen, bringing it back to the girl. "I'm sorry they didn't bring it back to you. Here you go."

The ghost stared at him, and he frowned before pressing the pen into the corpse's hand, careful not to touch the body with his own skin. The ghost now stared at the pen, and Rock began to think he should just leave, and then the girl said, in a quiet voice "Thank you."

"Don't worry." He stood up and raised a hand to wave goodbye.

"You're nice."

"...Yeah. Sorry."

The girl watched him, and then said "I don't want anyone else to see me like this."

He looked down at the body. He wouldn't want to be seen like that either. "Can I...do anything?"

"...Hide my body..."

Okay, no. Not if it involved moving the body. No way. "I...I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you. I know it's not a nice thing to ask, but you're the only one who can hear me, and you're nice..."

"...It's okay, I...I understand." And if he thought about it, he guessed he did understand. The body wasn't pleasant to look at, and he wouldn't want random people staring at his body if he were to die...

Bad thought. Rock should not think about the possibility of his own death. "I'll see what I can do." He promised again, looking around as if something he could cover the body with would just suddenly appear.

"Are you lost?" It was the sound of Liang's voice, somewhat muffled through the door, asking that question that pulled Rock's attention away from the ghost. He slowly walked over and opened the door.

"Liang?"

Liang barely spared him a glance. "Wait! Um...young lady?"

Young lady? Rock moved to stand beside him, trying to see who he was talking to. Again, ghosts milling around the room blocked his view. Despite this, he did see one of the especially young figures in the distance, not milling around aimlessly like the others. A little girl in a tattered red dress. Standing there, looking around with her back to them, like she wasn't sure where she was.

"Why don't you just go up to her?" Rock asked.

"I don't want to scare her. We're strangers to her, and much bigger than she is. She turned away from me when I called out to her. I think she's wary of me."

The girl glanced back. Her dark hair covered her face, but Liang could see one eye peeking through the greasy curtain. She looked him straight in the eye, then turned and ran down the corridor. Not as if she were scared of them, but more like..."She wants us to follow her." Liang took off after the girl before Rock could say or do anything. With a sigh, he followed.

The little girl didn't once look back to check they were following, or respond to them calling out to her. Rock assumed she was a normal little girl, trapped here just as the two of them were. She was probably leading them to someone who was hurt or stuck, hoping they'd help her. Why she wouldn't talk to them, though, was another point entirely. Rock supposed it was because she was shy or afraid. She looked no older than eight or nine, if he had to guess, so he could understand her being terrified. The little girl led them around a few corners, and with one more turn, the girl disappeared from sight.

Instead of the girl, they found themselves in a thin, foul smelling corridor. Of course, the whole place smelled foul, but something about this place smelled of fresh death, a smell Liang could, unfortunately, distinguish. At the end of the corridor, at another turn, someone was crouched, peeking around the corner.

"Tsukumo!" Rock called out, running to the other inmate, who jolted to attention before turning and placing a finger over his mouth, a universal signal for 'shut the hell up'. Frowning, Rock crouched next to him. "What's up?"

Tsukumo wasn't quite sure how to respond. He was naturally very tense, and after a moment he turned back to the corner, to whatever he was looking at before. "They're...playing with it." He managed to choke out.

"Playing with what?" He moved forward just enough to see around the corner, and saw what Tsukumo was staring at. Three children, stood by a red splat on the wall. Two of them were playing a game of tug of war with some kind of rope, while the third was dipping her hands in the red and then smearing them on the one clean patch of wall. Finger painting.

"What's that they're pulling on?" Rock asked, still not entirely sure what he was looking at.

"Intestines." Liang replied softly from somewhere over his shoulder. And as soon as he said it, Rock began to make sense of the scene. The red was blood, the unidentifiable lumps were bones and organs, and indeed the thing the children were tugging between them was the intestine of whoever that person used to be. For a brief moment, among the milling ghosts, he thought he saw someone he knew, but before he could be sure, he had turned away from the scene to vomit over the opposite wall. Of course, he'd seen the other dead bodies there, and they'd been horrific - he'd felt quite ill earlier as well - but there was something about this one, it being so much fresher, and so unrecognisable as a person, that really made reality crash down on him. They were in a place where people had died, where people were dying. It wasn't just haunted with old spirits who had died long ago, people were dying here and now, as they spoke. They were in a situation where they themselves could die at any moment, and finally accepting that as the truth was a cold and maddening thing.

Behind him, he heard Tsukumo and Liang talking. They kept their voices low.

"I...I don't want to see it, but I can't look away."

"It might be for the best to keep the spirits in view. Did they do that?"

"I don't know. It wasn't there before, and then it was...I didn't see it happen, but..."

"...Have you seen anyone else from Nanba?"

"Other than you two?" He heard a shuffle as Tsukumo moved away from the corner of death. "I haven't seen anyone. No-one alive, anyway...and no-one from Nanba."

"I see. Same with us. Well, we've seen a note from Upa." He heard more movement, and then there was a hand on his back, and another brushing his hair away from his face. Liang's next words were spoken from right by his ear. "He said we should meet him in the classroom...um...which one was it? 2-A?"

"1-A." Rock corrected. Then frowned. "I think. Did we go up or down after there?"

"No, no, I think you're right. It was on the first floor. Are you okay?"

Rock took a deep breath through his mouth, made sure he wasn't going to vomit again, and nodded.

On their way back to 1-A, they discovered that Tsukumo hadn't really learned much about where they were. He couldn't find a way out, or any windows that opened. Liang did his best to explain the multiple dimensions thing in a way Tsukumo would understand, and stated that it was a good sign they'd found each other, considering they'd been told they were in a different dimension to anyone they knew to begin with. As long as they stuck together and kept moving, kept looking, they'd figure it out. He was still trying to be optimistic, at least for the others. Rock had to try the same.

No-one new had been in 1-A, and nothing else was added to the messages. They collectively considered waiting there for a moment, but decided against it. They needed more information about this place. They didn't feel comfortable waiting around. They needed to be sure no-one was in any danger.

Also, Liang needed to use the bathroom.

After a little bit of pretty aimless wandering, the three of them found themselves on the top floor, stood outside the bathrooms. The door on the right was boarded up and sported an 'out of order' sign. The door on the left opened with no resistance, and Liang didn't bat an eye as he stepped inside.

"Uh...Liang?"

He looked back over his shoulder. Neither Rock nor Tsukumo seemed willing to enter the room.

"What?"

"...That's the girl's bathroom."

"It's also the only bathroom. It doesn't matter anyway - this place is abandoned, aside from the people who trapped us here and their victims. People might be hiding in here. We might find someone we know. Especially those two perverts from Building 3."

The others seemed to agree, but still didn't follow him in, and he shut the door behind him before walking to the stalls.

There were five cubicles. Three were smashed in, and under the rubble of the second, he could see an arm. The remaining two, the doors had been torn off, and over the toilets lay piles of bodies. Teenage girls, mostly, in varying stages of decay, flies and maggots crawling across their flesh and buzzing in the air nearby. A quick look over confirmed that it was very unlikely that anyone Liang knew was among the deceased here, and he decided to walk out again, not wanting to spend more time than he had to in the presence of all that death.

"That was quick." Rock commented when his friend came back into view.

"Is there something wrong?" Tsukumo asked, taking in the expression on Liang's face.

"...No. It's fine. These ones are out of order as well, though." He doubted those two would react well to 'there were hundreds of corpses in there and I'm pretty sure the one with no face was a kindergartener'.

"So where do we go now?" Asked Rock

That was a good question. With the exception of the hallway with the splattered body, and things otherwise inaccessible without going through there, they'd explored just about every part of that school they could get to, or at least Rock and Liang had. It seemed their only real options were to wait at the classroom for someone else to turn up or walk down that path, provided the ghost children were gone. Wandering aimlessly wouldn't be much help any more. Perhaps it was time to come up with a plan. "Back to the classroom. We'll try and figure out a proper action plan from there, think properly about our options and priorities."

"What are our options?" Tsukumo asked as the three hesitantly walked to the stairs.

"...Not great. Our options are not great."

As they reached the top of the stairs, another earthquake shook them. Liang, already taking a step down, overbalanced and barely avoided tumbling headlong down. Behind him, Rock and Tsukumo also had trouble keeping their balance, and the former found himself falling against the latter hard. They landed in a tangled heap on the floor and stayed there until the shaking stopped.

"Damn earthquakes..." Liang muttered as he got to his feet. The last time there had been one like that, they'd been shunted into a different dimension.

Wait.

"It's over..." Rock sat up.

"Rock, does anything look different up there to you?"

He cast a look around. "There's a flyer on the wall now...

"We've jumped dimensions again. We may need to check around old places again."

Rock groaned. "So where are we going now?"

"We should stick to the plan of going back to 1-A."

Tsukumo tapped Rock on the shoulder. "You can get off me any time."

When the group made their way back to classroom 1-A, they found the biggest difference between this dimension and the previous one. Where there had previously been a solid wall was now a hallway ending in a door. "That wasn't there before, was it?"

It was a moment before Liang responded. "That first ghost said there was a second wing."

"You think that's the second wing?" Rock asked, walking toward the door.

"It must be. Question is, why is it only visible now?"

Rock pushed the door open with a shrug. "You think it might be a trap?"

"I think here, everything could be a trap."

As the door opened, the sound of the rain became all that clearer. Beyond the door was a walkway leading to another building. The second wing. The walkway had high rails either side, presumably to keep the children from straying into the forest. The rails came up to Liang's chest, and were connected to a canopy or roofing above them, keeping the rain mostly off the walkway, but for a leak or two.

"We're outside..." Tsukumo muttered, sounding surprised and relieved. "There's a way out of here."

"The ghost we spoke to said there was no escape. He also knew about the second walkway though..."

"Guess he wasn't right about everything, then."

Rock slid open the door to the second wing and let Tsukumo enter before him before glancing back and realising Liang had stopped about halfway across the walkway. "Uh, Liang? You coming?"

"I'll join you in a moment." He was stood at the rail, looking out at the forest.

"Why? You see something?"

"Nothing useful." He shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable. "I still have to go, is all."

"There's...there's probably a bathroom in the second wing."

"...I...can't hold it. I'll go out here and join you in a moment."

Rock looked out at the forest, and ghosts of people who had died out there glared back at him. "Don't go into the forest."

"Hmm? Why not?"

"I just...I think it would be bad."

"What can you see?"

"...More ghosts. They look really angry."

Liang nodded. "I'll stay close to the building." He would rather have been able to find somewhere a bit more secluded than by the school walls, considering he would have to remove almost his entire jumpsuit, but it honestly didn't matter that much. Plus he hadn't really wanted to go into the forest to begin with. He could see some of the corpses on the edge, and certainly didn't trust it. "You two see if you can find anything. I'll join you in a moment."

"Okay. Yell if you run into any murderers. Or ghosts. Or murder ghosts."

"I will."

With that, despite not feeling okay with it, Rock went inside and the door shut behind him. Liang took another look at the railing. A more normal person, a person who hadn't undergone such intense physical training, would have had a lot of difficulty climbing over it, but for him it was an easy vault. He landed without difficulty on the grass on the other side, then something caught his eye. Movement. When he looked, he saw a figure at the edge of the forest. A little girl with her hair in pigtails. She had a sort of blue light around her, and it didn't take a genius to realise what that was. She sported some brutal-looking injuries, most notably the complete absence of her right eye, and was almost certainly not actually alive. She had been one of the children playing tug of war with someone's entrails before.

He hesitated. Took his eyes off the girl for a second, and suddenly, they were nose to nose. She'd covered all that distance in the blink of an eye, her small hands reaching for his shoulders as she screamed something at him. A question he couldn't work out.

She didn't have a tongue, he noted as he saw her mouth open. He stepped back, thinking the best thing to do would be to get back inside, and his foot slipped against the wet mud. He fell back, hitting his head hard against the railing. He reached up blindly, grabbing part of the rail and using it to haul himself up as the ghost watched him and reached for him again. He was pretty sure he'd let out an involuntary yell when he'd fallen, and wondered if that had alerted Rock and Tsukumo or not. The girl repeated her mournful question as he pulled himself back over the railing. It was garbled, presumably because of her missing tongue, but the more she repeated it, the more he could understand.

'Where is my eye? Give me back my eye'

She was reaching for his eye. That was what she wanted. He observed her for a moment as she stood just beyond the rail. And then she stepped forward, and stepped through the rail as if it wasn't there.

Of course. She was a ghost, after all.

Liang walked calmly to the second wing, shutting the door behind him. The entryway of the building was empty. "Rock? Tsukumo?" He walked to the middle of the room, trying to figure out where they might have gone. There were two doors leading out, one to the left, one to the right. "Guys?" They had to be in earshot. Rock had said to call out if he needed help, so he needed to be able to hear. Unless he was too stupid to think about that. Sighing, he decided he would just have to go looking for them. He went to the right, and heard the front door open and shut behind him. Logically, that was most likely the ghost girl giving chase. He picked up the pace a little. He couldn't exactly drop-kick the ghost kid in the face if she presented a real threat to him or anyone else.

The second wing was three storeys high. The bottom floor held nothing special. Shoe cubbies, a girls' toilet (unusable, of course), a few cabinets, and some dead bodies. The second had some classrooms and the boys' toilet, though that was also blocked up, this time with protective charms. The other doors, he opened long enough to see if the others were in there, then moved on. The third floor was nothing but a locked door that claimed to be the principal's office. No sign of the others. They can't have gone back to the main building, though. They would have had to have passed him to do that. He found that walking through the second floor allowed him to loop around to the left door from the entryway. He'd not seen the ghost girl, but he was sure he'd heard footsteps behind him the whole time. Feeling nervous, he walked to the door again, startling when a cabinet fell behind him. Shaking away the nerves, he tugged at the door, and it didn't budge. Frowning, he pulled again. Nothing.

Unusual. That door opened without any issue before. With a sigh, he took a step back, aimed a kick at the door, and cursed when all that achieved was a sore foot. 

It looked like he was trapped.