She got off the chair with a lighthearted look and walked toward the door.
Ugh, am I going to be forced to stay with her tonight, too? The fact that she had been shaking over Shirayuki’s appearance last night seemed to be beyond forgotten.
“Right. In the suspense movies, they always get murdered when they go to take a shower,” I muttered, and Tohko leaped into the air.
“Ack! Th-that’s just a superstition!”
She was instantly blubbering and left the room trembling.
I knew that she would be worried beyond belief of what was behind her while she was showering. I wanted her to get scared good.
I imagined how it would be and was feeling a little gratified when a scream came from the hallway.
It was Tohko’s voice!
Had she run into a ghost right away?!
I opened the door and rushed down the hall.
“Tohko!”
I ran as I called her name.
I heard the sounds of other doors banging open and several footsteps approaching.
“Uggggh, wh-what is this?”
I heard Tohko’s voice again.
She was around that corner!
The instant I got there, my feet slipped out from under me—“Ack!”
“Konoha!”
A concussion hit my hips abruptly. I’d fallen unceremoniously to my butt. I felt a cool liquid on the palms of my hands. There was a big puddle in the hallway, and it was making a stain on the carpet.
What was it doing in a place like this? Was there a leak in the roof?
“Konoha, are you okay?!”
Crawling along the floor, Tohko peered into my face worriedly.
At that point, the people who staffed the mansion came in. The butler and the housekeeper and the gardener and the cook, plus the maid Uotani—all of them in a line.
They saw the stain spreading on the floor and apparently thought it was blood because a big commotion started.
“Eee! Th-there’s blood—”
“It’s the ghoul’s curse!”
A hint of madness colored the air and seized hold of normal thought. Tohko stood up and calmed everyone down.
“No, it’s not. This isn’t blood, it’s just water!”
I touched the liquid again, too. It was soaking into the carpet so it was hard to tell what color it was, but it was definitely not blood. It didn’t feel sticky.
Tohko was right. This was water…wait, what?
Looking closer, I saw something like grass was scattered around. When I realized what it was, all the heat was sucked out of my body in one pulse.
“Hey, are these rushes?”
The old gardener picked up a thin, limp weed with his fingertips and held it at the end of his nose to look hard at it, and then his expression turned horrified.
“It is!”
“You don’t think they’re from the pond, do you?!”
“Shirayuki really has been here!”
Tense shouts rose up all over. Uotani put her hands over her mouth, staring in horror at the rushes scattered like the corpses of insects over the dark stain.
Just then, the lights went out.
Darkness fell over us and several screams pierced my ears. People ran into each other, their voices mixed together, and my heart began to shudder with fear. Even when someone plugged in a lamp, it wouldn’t turn on, and the chaos intensified.
“Hey! Do you hear something?” someone shouted. Everyone gasped and there was utter silence for a moment.
In the taut, cool air, our ears pricked fearfully, and there came the sound of water flowing from a faucet.
“It’s in the kitchen,” the housekeeper murmured in a choked-off voice.
Who had turned the water on? Maki? No, she should have been on the second floor…Had someone else snuck into the house?
I recalled that eighty years ago there had been a mass murder over the course of one night, and a shudder ran up my spine.
And then we heard the sound of running water from another direction, as well.
“It’s the first-floor washroom!”
The cook’s voice was shaking. The bath on the first floor was next. And then the second-floor washroom, the second-floor bath…We heard the sound of raging water all over, as if there was a cascade besieging us.
Every faucet in the house was open probably. It was suffocating, just like being shut inside a cage of water. What would I do if I had an attack right now?
“W-we have to stop the water anyway. The water bill will be outrageous,” Tohko said pragmatically, pressed close up against my back. I didn’t mind, but I wished she would quit trying to nudge me forward. Was she telling me to go investigate?
A cold hand brushed along my ribs all of a sudden, and I was struck with terror. When I looked to the side, Uotani was gripping the hem of my shirt in one hand.
She was probably scared. She was shaking.
We all formed into a clump and held our breath as we headed toward the second-floor washroom. It felt as if something was lurking in the darkness, and we moved forward step-by-step, terrified.
Someone shouted, “Augh!”
“H-hey! Don’t make any weird noises!”
“Th-th-th-there’s another puddle.”
On the pitch-black floor, water shone slickly. This hadn’t overflowed from a faucet; there was a trail of water, as if someone soaking wet had passed through here.
Tohko whispered over my shoulder breathily.
“Let’s see where the water goes.”
Uotani, still holding my shirt, jumped.
Someone voiced the opinion that it might be dangerous, but Tohko said that it would be fine since we were all together, and we moved in the direction of the water trail.
If someone slipped now, all of us would fall down. That’s how closely packed we were. We walked on, stuck together, picking out our next step.
The air was filled with a clinging humidity, and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead.
Everyone had fallen silent along the way, so the sound of the water gushing out of the faucet felt even louder.
I wondered what Maki was doing. The atrocity she’d told us about before came to mind.