Your Story

[Tea House, ending]
Sam left the doors propped open to allow moonlight to spill through. Additional light seeped through the loosely boarded windows. Ayako pulled out her flashlight.
“We’ll use yours for now,” Sam said. “I’ll keep mine for backup.”
The beam of Ayako’s flashlight picked out a scattered tatami, bamboo mats, covering the floor of a large area just inside the doors. Beyond was a long hall. Rooms or various sizes, with only shreds of doorway curtains, opened off both sides, letting a faint ghostly moonglow leak through. In some of the rooms low tables were scattered about on tatami. The damp, rotting rice straw smelled of mildew. Each room was really a small alcove–some holding wall scrolls, kakemonos, on which Ayako could glimpse faint traces of calligraphy or brush painting. But the artwork was so blackened and rotted for the most part it was impossible to guess what each had looked like when t was new.
The place was silent, except for the sound of their shoes on the squishy matting–and the sound of beetles in the woodwork, relentlessly destroying the place from the inside out. 𝘛𝘶𝘤-𝘵𝘶𝘤-𝘵𝘶𝘤.
At the end of the hall was a large kitchen area. Here the beetles’ clicking was–to Ayako’s ears–incredibly loud. Sam, pulling open the oven door of a big, old-fashioned stove, didn’t seem to notice. The raw wood floors were swollen with damp and very uneven. There wasn’t much else to see in the kitchen–just some shelving with a few filthy bowls and a rusty, Western-style teakettle missing its lid. A small door at the back, probably a closet or cupboard, was swollen shut by the dampness, which seemed much worse on that side of the building.
The sound of wood-boring beetles continued to grow in volume. Ayako suddenly remembered a movie she’d seen at her friend Ada’s house, where cockroaches swarmed out of the walls and heater vents and light fixtures to smother a guy in a whirring, chittering, gold-brown tidal wave. The scene had horrified her then; now just the memory made her skin crawl.
“Seen enough?” she asked Sam.
She closed the oven door and shrugged. “I guess.”
“I wonder what happened to old Mrs. Jirohei? I thought there might be a clue. But she just locked herself inside here and–poof!–no one ever saw her again.”
“Unless the ghost stories you told me were true,” said Sam. She was far more interested in testing the narrow, closed door in the back wall.
Ayako shrugged. “People tell them like they’re true. Who knows?” Then she asked, “What are you doing?”
“This is the only place we haven’t looked,” she replied, digging her fingernails into the crack between the door and the jamb.
The beetles were suddenly silent. The unexpected quiet startled Ayako. Even Sam paused, her eyes raking the walls and ceiling, as if seeking a clue to the silence. Then, unable to spot anything, she returned her attention to the door, giving it a sharp yank.
“I don’t think we should–”
“Well, 𝘐 think we should. Give me a hand.”
The rusted hinges gave under their joint tugging. They managed to pull the door a little way open. A smell–𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦–rushed out.
The door resisted a minute more and then popped all the way open, nearly throwing Sam onto her backside. Ayako grabbed the girl, steadying her, but kept her eye on the pitch-black space Sam had revealed.
Something moved–pale, slithering–in the dark. Ayako thought of the imagined ghost koi in the shadow-pool outside.
Sam pushed her away, clearly annoyed to have to rely on her for support. But Ayako barely noticed as she shone her flashlight into the closet.
She could see the head, shoulders, and arms of a woman who was, impossibly, climbing up out of the solid floor like a swimmer emerging poolside. Her face was framed by black flowing hair; her eyes were red, her mouth twisted into a snarl. She was clad in a white kimono. When she opened her mouth as if to scream, all that came out was the hideous sound of deathwatch beetles amplified a thousand times.
Sam, her back to the closet, was searching for something she had in her backpack and was unaware of the thing that was trying to pull itself up and out of the floor. For the moment, the boards seemed to hold the form back like an insect in glue. Ayako’s head churned with ideas as she tried to imagine what elsewhere she was climbing out of–the past, another dimension, some underworld? Possibilities crowded into her mind from all she had learned from books, television, her computer, and talking to people like Mrs. Ozaki about such a nightmare visitation. The only thing Ayako was sure of was that she was looking at the ghost of Mrs. Jirohei. And she was one very scary spirit.
She made a strangulated sound and punched Sam’s shoulder, forcing her to turn around.
“Hey!” Sam cried, and then looked where her friend was pointing. “Oh.” She stepped back, clutching Ayako’s wrist.
The ghostly figure had extracted herself up to her midriff. The remains of her white silk kimono clung to the figure like a diseased layer of outer skin.
𝘐𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬, chittered the ghost. Its long, curved fingernails–claws, really–dug into the wooden floor, gaining purchase, allowing her to haul herself partway into the room while she struggled to free the lower part of her legs.
“We need to leave now,” said Ayako, who’d finally found her voice. Sam, never releasing her wrist, just nodded, following as the girl backed away from the writhing figure that chattered and grabbed at them, then dug nails into the floor again, and, lurching forward, left only her ankles buried in the flooring.
Hauling Sam after her, Ayako fled down the hall. She had the impression of strange glowing things moving in the tea rooms opening to the right and left off the passage. Her only thought was to reach the doors and escape into the night beyond.
“Woah!” cried Ayako, stopping so suddenly that Sam, who was looking back into the darkened hall, slammed into her.
The front doors were closed.
“We left them open!” cried Sam. She shook free of Ayako’s hand and grabbed hold of the twin doorknobs, pulling with all her might. Neither of the doors budged.
“Let me help!” said Ayako. She tugged at one side while Sam gave her full attention to the other. Nothing yielded.
𝘐𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬, chattered the dark figure inching along the hall.
The 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘦-𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘥𝘦 sound of the body hauling itself through the shadows was totally unnerving. Ayako and Sam tore more frantically at the doors.
“Use the crowbar!” Ayako hissed.
“Oh, yeah,” said Sam, whose self-assurance seemed to have melted away and taken some of her wits with it. She pulled out the tool–but found there was no longer space enough between the doors to insert the chisel blade. The thin opening between the matching doors seemed to have healed like cut flesh.
𝘐𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬𝘪𝘬.
It was close, Ayako realized. She yanked the crowbar from Sam’s hands and between gouging the woods. Chips flew, but the wood resisted her desperate blows as if it were now made of material far harder than natural wood.
𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒!
Sam was banging her fists against the wood.
“We’ve got to find another way,” said Ayako.
“Oh…” said Sam, who had suddenly stopped pounding on the door.
Something in her voice compelled Ayako to turn and look to where she was staring, letting her flashlight beam follow.
Sam was facing the darkened hall. At first Ayako couldn’t see anything. Then she followed her sight up.
The ghost–the nightmare version of Mrs. Jirohei–was crawling toward them 𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨, spiderlike. But her head was twisted around so that was regarding them dead-on with her blazing eyes as she scuttled across the sagging panels. Now one arm snaked down toward them. The fingers flexed. The claws glowed in the flashlight beam.
“Window!” Ayako shouted. She pulled Sam toward the nearest one, where the still-intact rice-paper-covered glass revealed the boards beyond, moonlight gleaming between the warped slats.
𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒–the spider ghost was above them now. Ayako couldn’t tell what that twisted face showed more of–hatred, rage, eagerness–but it frightened her beyond anything she’d felt before. Escape was now or never, she knew.
“Follow me,” she shouted. She put her arms over her face, started running, and smashed into the window. There was a jolting pain her left shoulder, which took most of the impact, then papered glass and boards exploded out onto the veranda, and Ayako went sprawling on the deck amid debris, getting jabbed with nails and cut with glass fragments. Dazed and groaning, she twisted around to look at the window gap in the wall above him. A moment later Sam appeared in the space, scrabbling over the jagged remains of the window frame and barricading slats. She quickly worked herself partway over the sill, ignoring the splinter ends that snagged her clothes and dug into her stomach.
Ayako, still shell-shocked, struggled uncertainly to her feet, stretching out her shaking arms toward Sam. She felt like she was moving in slow motion when all her nerves were screaming, Haul it! But she moved quickly enough when Sam screamed, “She’s got me! By the ankles!” Sam began to squirm frantically. Ayako grabbed her flailing wrists.
“It hurts!” Sam sobbed.
Still holding her wrists, Ayako threw herself backward. Sam flew through the ruined window. An instant later, the ghost hopped froglike into the window frame, hands and feet bracing her crouching figure at the window’s four corners, clearly unmindful of the glass and splinters. Hardly pausing, the horror leapt after the kids, who were already fleeing down the stepping-stone path.
Near the lifeless cherry tree, Ayako snagged her foot on a displaced stepping stone, stumbled suddenly, and sprawled onto the ground. She screamed as her chin struck another stone. For a moment she was too stunned to catch her breath or focus her eyes. Her head just kept spinning.
𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒𝘐𝘒.
She felt the woman-creature spring onto her back, felt her claws dig into her. She saw Sam stop, stare, gasp, pick up a stone, and start forward, ready to do battle with the ghost, though raw terror flooded her eyes.
Then there was a sound, as if someone was playing a flute, from her left, where the dead cherry tree remained.
The talons digging into her side loosened mercifully.
The music played.
The weight lifted from Ayako’s back.
She raised her head. Her blurred vision swam from triple, to double, to clear focus. But she was quite sure she believed what she was seeing: an old man, in a shining white robe, playing a bamboo flute. He was seated on the roots of the cherry tree, which appeared to be in full bloom, the masses of blossoms shining pale pink in the moonlight.
But it must be true–clearly Sam was seeing it, too. She let the stone in her hand fall to the ground with a soft tunk.
As they both watched, the old man abruptly broke off his playing. He looked very unhappy–angry, even. He pointed at the flute, as if it were a magician’s wand, at the pursuing ghost.
The spirit woman was frozen in a half-crouch a few feet from Ayako and Sam. Her eyes were fixed on the old man’s face. Her head jerked from side to side in puzzlement, reminding Ayako of a dog given two conflicting commands. She took a tentative step forward, but stopped when the old man gestured angrily with his flute.
A warm cherry-scented wind began to blow toward the woman from behind Ayako and Sam. Abruptly, with the power of a gale, it picked up the woman, spun her around, and hurtled her through the now-windowless opening back into the darkened interior of the tea house.
The old man raised the flute to his lips and resumed his soft playing. He began to melt like mist into the air; in a moment, his music had faded, too.
“Is it over?” Sam asked, casting a nervous glance at the spot where the ghostly woman had been lost to sight. Nothing stirred in the empty window.
“I think we’re safe now,” said Ayako. But she and Sam continued to hug each other as though it was the only way they could keep from shaking apart after all they’d witnessed.
“I thought they loved each other,” Sam said suddenly. “That must have been Mr. Jirohei. And the ghost had to have been his wife.”
Ayako, digging deep into what she could know or guess, said thoughtfully, “Yes and no.”
“I don’t get it,” said Sam, sounding more like her old self.
“Their real souls may be in heaven, or wherever,” Ayako said, recalling a discussion she had once heard on the Discovery Channel. “What we saw tonight was leftover anger and a need for revenge from her. And he was some kind of echo of his one-time love for this place. Maybe those are things that have no place in the next life. But hate and love are such different kinds of energy, I guess they cancel each other out. I think that’s what just happened.”
Sam gave her a long look. “You sure have a lot of strange ideas,” she said. Then she smiled. “That’s okay. I’ve got plenty of unusual ideas of my own.”
Bone-weary, Ayako turned toward the way out. “I just want to get home. I could sleep for a week,” she said.
“A month for me,” Sam agreed.
“I think–” she suddenly froze, her words chopped off in mid-thought, as a sound like a cross between a sigh and a moan reached her ears. Seeing Sam go rigid with tension, she knew she had heard it, too.
Together, they turned and looked back at the tea house.
To their dismay, they saw a clutching hand, the fingers twisted like a knot of pale worms at the end of a skeletal arm, reach shakily over the windowsill from the darkness inside.
“She’s not gone,” croaked Sam.
“She’s weak, but some part of her is still there,” said Ayako. Renewed fear hardened to a lump of ice in the pit of her stomach.
A second clutching hand gripped the sill. As if this was a signal, the two spun around and fled, hand-in-hand. Unhesitatingly, Ayako kicked out the rotting gate, no longer caring who or what had heard.
The park was unnaturally quiet around them. They ran faster, nearly losing their balance in their haste. They didn’t dare pause to catch their breath until they stood in the comforting glow of a streetlight outside the park entrance. To their mutual relief, a few moments later a bus came lumbering along.
With nervous glances at the shadowed park, they clambered aboard, flashing their passes at the driver.
“You all right?” the man asked, genuinely concerned. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
To his surprise, the two burst out in hysterical laughter. They were still laughing when they took their seats.
“Kids,” the driver muttered, shaking his head. “Everything’s a laugh to them. Must be nice to not have any real worries.”
He popped the bus into gear and pulled away from the curb, the sound of the engine muffling the nervous laughter from his only riders.

Sorry the story was SO DANG LONG, I just had this idea floating around in my head. I really hope it gets posted, but I kinda doubt it because, well, IT’S SO DANG LONG. I would also love feedback, I’m hoping this story even gets read. :I

~Kagamine 9S

[Tea House, continued]
In time, the for sale signs were replaced with no trespassing warnings. To these were added danger signs. Shakes had fallen from the roof; much of the wooden decking was rotten and unsafe; weeds choked the gardens that Mrs. Jirohei had once lovingly tended. The old man’s beloved cherry tree withered and died. Many said it had died of sadness, just like a person. Some late-evening passerby claimed to hear ghostly flute music on the breeze. One or two said they glimpsed the form of the elderly flutist, sitting on the roots of the tree, in the twilight. Now the city had reclaimed the property, though there were no plans to do anything with it.
Still, something drew Ayako again and again to the old building. Part of it, he knew, was simply a young person’s fascination with the mysterious and frightening–especially when such matters clearly unnerved her parents, who were visibly reluctant to answer her persistent questions about the tea house and what had (or might have) happened there.
Other adults she asked were just as reluctant to talk–though one old neighbor woman, who had come from Japan when she was just a girl, told him that she was sure the place was haunted by the spirit of Mrs. Jirohei. “Surely she died there,” Mrs. Ozaki said, “and when people die troubled and grieving and angry, they become vengeful ghosts who will make all who encounter them suffer greatly. If the ghost is a woman, she is the most terrifying of all. Female ghosts are as relentless as the blade of a steel sword. Most horrible of all was the ghost of Oiwa. She never gave her faithless husband any peace. No matter where the man went, he would see her face in a paper lantern, her form in a folding screen, or her shape in a tangle of ivy vines. She finally drove him to madness and death.”
Mrs. Ozaki’s words gave Ayako a fresh mix of the wondrous and fearful to ponder. But she gradually came to realize that if she was to find out the truth about the tea house–or some part of it, at any rate–she was going to have to find out for herself. Yet, as much as the mystery drew her, the old stories of shadows, strange shapes, curious lights, and eerie sounds that were repeated (mostly by kids) kept her from going too close to the tea house. She never attempted to go closer than the tipsy remains of a bamboo fence that was barely visible in the choking mass of rangy rhododendrons marking what was left of the once-charming gardens.
Even the taunts and dares from her friends–with whom she had made the mistake of confiding her interest in the old place–couldn’t nudge her to go.
It wasn’t ’till she met Samantha Nguyen, a transfer student from Seattle, that seeking answers became a possibility.
Sam and Ayako complemented each other perfectly. Ayako was overly cautious; Sam had a reckless streak. They liked the same Xbox games and scary movies; they disliked their seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Sun; edaname and sashimi; and Helena Harper and Tony Santucci–the class beauty and the class bully.
“I’ve heard about the tea house,” Sam said to her one day at recess when they were sitting beside each other. This was shortly after her arrival at Uchida Middle School. “What have you heard?”
By the time the bell ending recess rang, she had told her everything she knew “for a fact”, and a lot of things she had worked out on her own.
“Let’s go look,” Sam said, getting up from the bench. “I want to see for myself.”

Again, that’s all I have for now, but I’ll keep working on it! Please give me feedback, and thank you!