4Summary: The Ryonan, Shohoku, and Shoyo basketball teams have been invited to Kainan High for several nights of fun and games. Except it turns out that Maki might be hiding something. A rewrite of Nights at Kainan. Ongoing.
A/N: Originally published between May 17, 2008 and August 30, 2008 as Nights at Kainan. I was reluctant to publish this under the original name, even though I like it better, just because I've changed so much. To be sure, I'm practically rewriting it from scratch. If you've read Nights at Kainan, let me assure you that this is a whole 'nother fic that bears little resemblance to it.
A Haunting at Kainan
Chapter 1
"What's this?" Akagi's eyes narrowed as he perused the letter in his hand. "Kainan has invited us over for the week. Looks like some kind of a camp."
"A basketball camp?" Mitsui plucked the letter out of Akagi's hand without asking and passed his eyes over its contents. The pretentious frayed-edged parchment on which the missive was written in an elegant cursive should have raised red flags immediately. "No, it's not a basketball camp. It appears to be a party."
"A party?" Sakuragi laughed loudly. "So that Old Geezer has finally come around to accepting me as a genius, huh?"
"Yeah, right." Rukawa rolled his eyes.
"Well, it would be rude to decline," said Ayako. "And we've got a couple of weeks of summer vacation left anyway."
"Aya-chan!" It was the honeymoon Miyagi had always dreamt of.
"I guess we're all going, then," said Akagi without enthusiasm.
The only reason Rukawa's voice didn't go up in protest—aside from the fact that he didn't do such vulgar things—was that he didn't want to not go and then find out afterwards that it had turned out to be a basketball camp after all.
It was almost midnight when they reached Kainan, as per the invitation. The wrought-iron gates were locked, and the main school building loomed over them in the darkness like a slumbering beast in its enclosure. Not a car passed through the upscale suburban neighborhood at this hour, and the only sound was the breeze that whistled occasionally through the leaves of the surrounding Sakura trees.
"Is this some kind of a joke?" Akagi muttered at length. He hated practical jokes.
Just then a cheerful voice pierced through the night.
"Hey, everyone!"
The Shohoku team turned in the direction of the exuberant greeting.
It was Fujima, followed closely by Hanagata.
"It looks like you guys were invited, too," said Fujima.
"Fujima," Akagi grunted by way of a greeting. "Do you have any idea what this is all about?"
"Fuck if I know," Fujima said cheerfully and with a touch of his old prep-school raffishness, which tended to startle people who didn't expect someone with such angelic looks to be possessed of such a foul mouth. "Maki called, and I came."
"Hey, guys!"
They turned in the opposite direction to behold Sendoh and Uozumi ambling up the sidewalk. Sendoh, as usual, carried himself like someone who was lost, but just didn't care.
"Do you know if this is supposed to be a basketball camp or something?" said Sendoh.
"No clue," Akagi muttered. "Uozumi," he said with a grunt and a nod.
"Akagi."
A few uncomfortable minutes passed in silence. The wrought-iron gates did not so much as sway in the wind.
"Well, this is awkward," said Mitsui, who was carrying an illicit six-pack of beer in his duffel bag. "I genuinely thought there was going to be a party."
A distant clock tower began chiming to indicate that it was now midnight. The group was about to give up hope and head back home, when they heard subdued whispers on the other side of the gates; then a flashlight scattered some of the darkness as its owner shined the light in his own face.
It was Maki.
"Glad you could all make it." He grinned.
"Nyahahahaha! You look so much older with the light in your face!"
The light went out, but not before Maki's scowl was imprinted in everyone's eyes.
"Come on in," said Maki. "Kiyota."
Kiyota emerged from behind Maki, and opened the gates dutifully.
Rukawa smacked him in the face as he passed him, because he thought he'd caught the glimmer of teeth grinning smugly at him in the darkness. He had been right.
"'A week of fun and games'?" Mitsui quoted Maki's letter as they headed down the walkway toward what they assumed was Kainan's gym. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means we figured that we could all use a little more camaraderie around Kanagawa, and Kainan, as usual, decided to take the initiative—"
"Cut the crap, Maki," said Fujima. "We all know this is just another attempt at making all the other schools in town look ungenerous and small-minded, so what's this really about?"
Maki sighed deeply.
"It's a long story," he said. "I'll tell you more when we're inside, but you have to promise me that you won't back out. Please, guys." He had never sounded more earnest. "I could really use your help."
"You don't have to degrade yourself in front of these losers, Maki-san," said Kiyota. He let out a bark of a laugh as he prepared to launch into a speech about Kainan's virtues, but Maki silenced him mid-rant with a blow to the head.
Fujima decided that Maki sounded desperate enough to owe him favors later on, and bit back the smartass retort that was on the tip of his tongue.
"All right, Maki," he said. "You can count on us to hide your stash of porn DVDs or whatever."
Maki ignored him and pushed open the gym doors. The only light in the gym was a single floodlight up on the mezzanine, and everything around the perimeter of the basketball court was pitch black. The other Kainan starters stood at the center of the court, looking like film noir characters. Maki locked the gym doors behind them as the group entered. The soft click of the lock rang out eerily in the silence.
No one spoke for a few minutes.
Then Jin, whose gaze had hitherto been directed serenely at his shoes, looked up at Maki. He looked strangely hieratical.
"Is this everyone?"
"This is everyone," said Maki.
"I was hoping more people would show up."
"Me, too. Shall we get on with it?"
Jin nodded.
"Okay." Maki took a deep breath and turned to his guests. "I'm going to go over this as fast as I can, so try to keep up. As the captain of the Kainan basketball team and a high-ranking member of the student council, it has been brought to my attention that the future of Kainan High might be in jeopardy. A former student recently came out and claimed that he had been traumatized during his time here by a series of hauntings, which affected his mental health to such an extent that it ruined his career. Since then several other former students have come out of the woodwork with similar stories. They're threatening to sue us big time. The school doesn't want to conduct an official investigation, because any publicity in this kind of a matter is bad publicity. Also, lawyers are a whole different Pandora's box. But anyway, we decided to invite students from other schools to spend a few nights here, so that we could prove to them and everyone else that Kainan really is a safe place."
Silence.
"It seems to me," said Hanagata at length, adjusting his glasses as he reflected on what Maki had just said, "that, if there is in fact something terrible going on at Kainan, then offering up students from other schools as bait is a pretty douchey thing to do. And if there is indeed nothing to fear, then Kainan could just call out those ex-students for being idiots and opportunists."
"It's not that simple," said Maki. He exchanged a nervous look with Jin. "Because Kainan sort of has a past that not a lot of people know about."
"Go on," said Kogure. He had a feeling he would enjoy what came next.
"There were a few unexplained deaths in the on-campus residence hall many years ago—as you know, Kainan is very generous to kids who have had to come a long way to go here—and they might reopen investigation into them, if they took these students' claims seriously. And that is something that Kainan certainly wouldn't be able to weather."
"Tell me more about these unexplained deaths," said Kogure, who had a morbid fascination for such things.
"The official verdict on those deaths was that they were just a series of simple tragedies, but a lot of the students thought otherwise. A few of the residents died in their sleep for reasons that the medical examiner wasn't able to establish; a few hanged themselves in their rooms from the ceiling, even though they seemed perfectly normal and happy before; one student just straight up disappeared. His body was discovered in the sewers weeks later, decomposed almost beyond recognition."
"Simple tragedies?" said Kogure with a twinkle in his eye. "I think not. This was definitely the work of a disgruntled spirit or spirits."
"There were sightings of a strange woman around campus at night in the days preceding the first of these deaths, but no one other than the residents ever saw her."
"And you think there may have been something paranormal about her?" said Mitsui.
Maki closed his eyes.
"When I was freshman here, my parents were working in Osaka, so I had to live in the residence hall. There was a time when my roommate went home for the weekend, and I was left all by myself. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to someone knocking on the door. When I opened the door I saw that it was a maid. I guess that should have been the first sign that something wasn't right. She asked me if I needed clean towels. I said no, and shut the door. I thought it was weird that a maid should go around asking residents in the middle of the night if they needed towels, but I didn't think too much of it. The next day I told the resident advisor about it, and he said they didn't employ maids at the residence hall. And then he told me the stories. So yeah." He opened his eyes and looked sharply at Mitsui. "I do think there's something weird going on here."
An uncomfortable silence followed.
"I did not sign up for this shit," said Mitsui, beer bottles rattling inside his duffel bag.
"Me neither."
"Me neither."
"Nuh-uh."
"Please, guys," said Maki for the second time in his life, voice choked with emotion. "You have no idea how much this means to me. And we will make it up to you, I promise. I didn't lie when I said this would be a fun week."
"So there is going to be a party?" said Mitsui.
"Without a doubt."
"All right!" Mitsui broke out the beer without further ado.
Maki eyed the bottles suspiciously. He would undoubtedly get into hot water with the student council, if word got out that he had permitted people to get drunk at Kainan, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
"So what do we do first?" said Kogure, whose definition of a party was slightly different from Mitsui's. "How about board games? I love board games. You wouldn't happen to have a Ouija board around here, would you?"
Maki wondered whether Kogure was always this borderline deranged at parties.
"I think we should head to bed now," he said. "It's almost one o'clock."
"Good idea," said Akagi with an approbatory nod at Maki. "The last thing we need to do is to disrupt our sleep cycles."
"Where are we sleeping?" said Sendoh.
"At the residence hall, of course," said Maki.
"You mean the one—" Sakuragi stammered.
"Yeah."
"With the ghost nurse—"
"Maid."
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Sakuragi bellowed. "Do you have Alzheimer's or something?"
"Shut your stupid mouth," Kiyota snapped. "Maki-san's only seventeen." Then he broke into a mischievous grin. "I think you're just scared."
"Forget it." Sakuragi crossed his arms defiantly. "We geniuses have a very delicate nervous system, and ghosts tend to interfere with our brainwaves."
"Come to think of it," said Miyagi thoughtfully, "during the Nationals, Hanamichi was too scared to go to the bathroom all by himself at night. He'd always wake me up and make me stand outside the door."
"You promised you wouldn't tell, Ryo-chin!" Sakuragi looked hurt and betrayed.
Miyagi only smirked. In reality he, too, was nervous about sleeping in a building that teemed with ghostly maids who knocked on doors at odd hours, but he had to keep up the appearance of strength and fearlessness in front of Ayako. Girls liked fearless guys.
"Anyway," said Maki, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He reached for his reading glasses, but thought the better of it. "We don't have a whole lot of rooms to spare. A lot of residents go home over the summer, but the rooms are still technically theirs. So we've decided to pair you guys off with roommates. See if this works: Sakuragi—"
"I pick Ryo-chin," Sakuragi declared before Maki could go any further.
"Don't be stupid," said Miyagi. He glanced surreptitiously at Ayako. Could he perhaps…? No, that would be coming off too strong. Failing that, the next best thing was… "I'm going to sleep alone." He was pleased to see that Ayako had taken notice of his courage, and was regarding him with a mixture of surprise and admiration.
"Well, there happens to be one single," said Maki, glancing down at the list, "apart from Ayako's and the Kainan team's, of course, and I was originally going to give that to Akagi. But if Akagi doesn't mind rooming with Uozumi…"
"Forget it," said Uozumi.
Akagi nodded his agreement.
"Sorry, Miyagi." Maki cast him an apologetic look. "Looks like you're stuck with Sakuragi in Room 202. Anyway: Mitsui and Kogure—Room 212; Akagi—202; Uozumi—204… Sendoh and Rukawa—207…"
Everyone was assigned a room and a roommate in this manner.
"Great," said Maki. "Now let's go over to the residence hall."
Maki led them into the main school building, where they passed through a series of narrow dimly lit corridors. The darkened classrooms on either side made the corridors look more claustrophobic than they probably did during the day.
"This looks like the start of a great slasher movie," said Kogure cheerfully, peering into each classroom they passed, as if expecting a seven-foot psychopath who had freshly broken out of prison to be hiding in one of them with an assortment of psychopathic surgical tools.
"There are no great slasher movies," said Mitsui with a hint of sententiousness.
"I'm getting a bad vibe from this place already," Sendoh whispered to Rukawa. "I sure am glad you're going to be there tonight to protect me, in case things go downhill." He was only half joking.
Rukawa said nothing.
Maki pushed open a glass door with a flickering green exit sign over it and led the group out into a courtyard. The residence hall stood on the other side like an old abandoned asylum, with its rows of tiny windows cut like embrasures into an unpainted wall.
The interior of the building was no better. The walls were painted a uniform shade of light gray, and the ceiling was lined with little white lights that gave the building the appearance of being designed by lunatics rather than for them.
"I'm not surprised there are ghost stories associated with this place," said Fujima. "I feel like I'm going crazy already. How can anyone possibly live here?"
"It's not so bad," said Maki encouragingly as he led the group up the stairs to the second floor and started handing out keys. "The bathrooms are at the end of the hall. Good night." He promptly disappeared into his room.
Sendoh and Rukawa entered Room 207. There were two twin-size beds on opposite sides of the narrow rectangular room, with a tiny embrasure between them.
"This isn't so bad," said Sendoh.
He put his duffel bag down next to one of the beds and walked up to the window. His first thought when looked outside was that it was, in fact, pretty bad. The window afforded him a decent view of the classrooms in the main school building, and the light in the one directly across from their room was on. Even worse, there was a woman leaning out of the window. Her elbows rested on the windowsill, and her black hair billowed serenely in the wind.
tbc.
A/N: Now that I've re-uploaded When the Clock Strikes One, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I uploaded my other Horror/Humor fics. I was reluctant to upload this one for the longest time, because its sheer length made it such a pain to edit into something marginally worth reading. I've finally decided to bite the bullet and upload it.
This fic spanned seventeen chapters originally, but this is subject to change, now that I have undertaken to give it a total makeover and turn it from a stupid fic into a not-so-stupid fic.
The original fic was written during a time in my life when I was deeply addicted to Agatha Christie, so it was originally supposed to be more of a mystery story, but I think it deserves to be supernatural.