InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Haunted ❯ Introductions ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

AN: guess who got Office for Mac! I did! Whee!

On another note, Hayao Miyazaki has made a film out of one of my favorite books, "Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones! Yay! It came out on January 12, 2005 for France. I don't know about any other countries, but I'm assuming that the rest of us could be seeing it about the same time roughly. Saw a French preview, and it looks wonderful! (It's times like these in which I'm glad I take French. Hee hee!) And the soundtrack is by Joe Hisaishi! Yay! He does great music. This makes me very happy.

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, or Kagome, or Miroku, or Shippo, or Sango, or Naraku, Kagura, Kikyo, Kanna, Entei, Totosai, Myouga, Jakotsu, Bankotsu, Juromaru, Sesshoumaru, Rin, Jaken, Kaede, Kohaku, Koharu, Kouga or anybody else!

Haunted

Chapter Two: Introductions

If anyone asked him what poltergeists did in their spare time, he would've shrugged. What was he supposed to do, anyway? All he did was wander around his domain, sleep and think, in a vague use of the word. In short, he had nothing to do, at all. Ever.

That warm Sunday afternoon found him idly floating in the air and speculating on the arrival of new people. With a lazy shrug, he watched the young boy run up the walk and into the house. The poltergeist wandered through the house, following the child's errant progress with his sensitive ears. Suddenly the boy stopped abruptly. "Oh! Hey, Kagome! Look at this!" Looks like the kid had discovered the ballroom in all it's faded glory. With a drawn-out sigh, he drifted to the floor and through it, emerging on the ceiling above the boy's head.

"Coming!" A light female voice called out above him. The poltergeist drifted through the wall and into the ballroom. He came to a stop on the large bookshelf and rested on top of it. Over the many years, he'd discovered that he could become slightly corporeal if he tried at it, but it was exhausting and required strong emotions, something that he rarely experienced now.

The boy had gotten impatient. "Hurry up, Kagome! You gotta see this!" The poltergeist could hear the kid's foot tapping anxiously on the floor as he waited for "Kagome". "Come ON, hurry up!" He snorted at the kid's impatience, and one of the poltergeist's ears twitched towards the creaking footsteps above as the said girl as she increased her pace.

"Yeah?" The girl called. A moment later, the tall double-doors opened. Standing in the large doorway was the little boy, and familiar face. A sudden burst of anger and hate shot through him. His fists clenched, nails digging into ghostly flesh as a low growl emanated from his throat. Waves of disorienting and painful emotion engulfed him; hate, fury, betrayal. Oh, but how he hated her! Pale grey eyes flashed as he watched her every move. A single phrase echoed through his mind, like some terrible mantra. "How dare she, how could she, how dare she, how could she…" He sat, stock still and tense for anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, and when he finally moved, it was only to spit out a single word.

"Kikyo."

Looking back, he realized how completely and utterly ridiculous the whole charade had been. After his initial shock, the angry and upset poltergeist fled the big old room and rushed blindly towards his shed. Trees, bushes and the white walls of the house became one big blur and he fled blindly for his sanctuary, confused at his reaction, yet at the same time perversely… happy. He altered his flight path slightly, narrowly avoiding the old grave marker. Happy…? He furiously buried the strange notion under the waves of hurt as he hurled into the shed. His urn shook as he shot into it with a rattle.

There he stayed for several hours, unwilling to come out and trying to sort out everything that had happened. Slowly, painstakingly, memories began to surface slowly, memories from when he was truly alive. He shook his head furiously inside the urn. Not memories, precisely. Fragments of memories. The sun, warm on his skin. Damp earth, compact underneath his bare feet. He shook his head again. This was ridiculous. Nostalgia would get him nowhere. "Who was she? Who is she…?" He questioned his memories. But they had nothing more to offer.

And that was how he'd ended up in her room. He'd thought that by seeing her or her possessions, he would somehow wake his memory, and he would understand. And it was a perfect opportunity. The family was eating dinner, and all he had to do was float into her room and do a little investigating. But when he'd heard her footsteps, he'd panicked. Froze. Like a deer caught in the blinding headlights of a car. And she walked in, pushing a cardboard box wearily into the dark room. Her back was to him. "Escape! Escape!" Some small portion of his mind screamed. The rest had been inconveniently stuck in paralysis, as was his body. She turned on the light. If he had a pulse, blood would've been pounding in his ears. All he could hear was her breathing. And then, she turned. He flinched instinctively, but nothing could prepare him for the noise.

"IEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-" A thunderous screech erupted from her throat as she fell back against the wall. He'd probably never know how someone so small could make such a loud noise. It was deafening, powerful. It grated on his ears and immediately he clapped his hands over the sensitive organs.

Desperately he roared out, "SHUT UP!" Big mistake, apparently.

Regaining some of her sanity, the terrified girl babbled out, "BURGULAR! THEIF! RAPE! RAPE, RAPEEIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" She cowered in obvious terror on the ground in front of him as if expecting an attack. He was about to open his mouth and scream back, but the noise was just too much.

And, to his utter embarrassment, he fled. But the noise followed him, chasing him through walls and furniture. It hounded him past a surprised cat and unobservant child as he raced for an exit. Suddenly, he burst out of the white walls and into the cool night air, gasping for breath that he didn't need or use. But what puzzled him the most was his reaction to her. Why didn't he run? What was keeping him there? Instead of getting answers, he'd just gotten more questions.

Never in her life could Kagome recount any instance in which she'd been more terrified. But not because a stranger was in her bedroom. Not because it was dark, and she was all alone. It wasn't even because he was mysteriously drained of color, almost as it had all been sucked out of him. It was because he was floating 3 or 4 feet off the ground. Naturally, she screamed.

…And kept screaming, until he'd fled through the wall, at which point she screamed even louder, even when her lungs where out of air, when she desperately needed air. The world narrowed to that one spot where he'd floated, shocked and almost afraid. A ghost. She'd had a run- in with a ghost. She stared hard at that spot in the air for a moment, and then even that faded from her perception. The blood- curdling scream died on her lips, and she relaxed against the wall in a faint.

"Kagome! Kagome!" Someone was tugging on her sleeve. "Kagome!" Souta made it sound as if she'd died, or something. Kagome squinted up at the bright light on the ceiling. Of course, if she her splitting headache was anything to go by, maybe she had. She sat up wearily, only to be knocked over immediately by her anxious younger sibling.

"Don't DO that!" He reprimanded through tears. "I thought you were DEAD!" His grip on her arm tightened, accentuating the last word he'd said.

Kagome frowned slightly as she remembered the cause of her panic attack. "Of course not."

"Well, you screamed out 'RAPE' several times," Her mother, equally worried kneeled next to her. "What happened?"

Kagome laughed nervously. "Oh, I just saw a weird shape. I'm fine, really." She smiled weakly. Mrs. Higurashi's otherwise smooth brow crinkled in a slight frown, but she accepted her daughter's excuse.

"Are you sure you're alright?" The older woman confirmed. "Just holler if you need anything." She stood up and moved towards the door. Souta clung to his sister's arm a moment longer before scrambling up and tugging on his mother's sleeve.

"Can I sleep with you?" He implored. "Kagome scared me." His mother patted him on the head.

"Of course, Souta." She smiled at her youngest child as they made their exit, Souta still clinging to her sleeve as if it was a lifeline.

"Like you need me to get scared." Kagome muttered darkly after them. With a remarkable show of good hearing, her little brother turned around and glowered at her. She rolled her eyes and waved him away.

She was just about to turn the lights off and try to sleep again when her grandfather burst in, wheezing slightly. "Kagome! What's wrong?!" He gasped for breath. "I heard you scream!"

Kagome's smile was wry as she replied, "You're a little late, Grandpa." The senior looked at his granddaughter reproachfully. So that's where Souta got that look… "I got a little… lost." He admitted.

Kagome smiled slightly. "Pretty easy to do in the dark, isn't it?" She mused more to herself then her grandfather. "Why do we have such a big house, anyway?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Mr. Higurashi, having recovered his breath, replied, "Well, your mother thought that we could rent out some of the extra rooms. We're a bit short on money at the moment." He admitted. "After the fire, and all the traveling. We're going to need to buy a car while we're living here." The old man frowned in distaste. "Those guys said that the shrine should be repaired sometime next year."

Kagome sighed unhappily and the family's obese feline sauntered through the doorway. He sat heavily next to Kagome, and she rubbed his head absently. Not only was she going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, far from her friends and anything remotely interesting, but there would also be a bunch of possibly strange people living with her.

Her grandfather interrupted Kagome's musings. "Are you alright, then?" He asked, suddenly remembering how he'd ended up so far away from his bedroom. "What happened?"

Kagome looked up at him and smiled slightly. "It was nothing. I thought that there was someone else here, but there wasn't." She didn't try to elaborate and describe the floating boy with long white hair who was drained of color. It was just too weird.

"Spirits…" The senior muttered darkly. "I'll set up some wards tomorrow." He decided. "Goodnight." He said abruptly to Kagome before wandering down the dark hall to his own room.

With a frustrated sigh, Kagome sat up on the futon, rubbing her eyes. It was no good. She couldn't sleep. Her eyes frantically scanned her dark room for the umpteenth time, searching for some sign of the ghost that had been in her room before. Nothing. She sighed again and fell against her pillow with a gentle "whumpf". Her mind kept playing the event over and over again, and it refused to let her sleep.

Kagome had never been one to believe in ghosts or aliens, but now she had her doubts. He was there. She was sure of it. She'd seen it with her own eyes. He'd even yelled at her before fleeing through the walls. Kagome winced slightly. He throat was sore from that scream, and she couldn't blame him for running away. It must've been awful on his ears.

His ears. That one puzzled her. In all the stories she'd read or heard of, ghosts were human spirits. They wandered around and sought vengeance on the person who'd murdered them, or whatever. The most definitely did not have little triangular dog ears on the tops of their heads. And unless they were really old, they normally didn't have white hair. But then again, what was normal for a ghost…? And what had he been doing in her room, anyway?

Kagome tossed and turned for the remainder of the night, her thoughts occupied by the strange ghost that appeared in her room.

Whoever she was, she was definitely not Kikyo. He didn't know how he knew this, only that he was sure. Kikyo was different, but how he knew was a mystery. The poltergeist snorted. Great, more questions and still no answers. Feeling slightly forlorn and more that a little confused, he wandered back in the general direction of his sanctuary to try and puzzle things out.

He slowly passed through the garden and down the hill, eyes flickering over the grave marker uneasily. Yet another mystery. The grave marker had always been unsettling for him. He couldn't stand the thought of touching it or even being near it. He didn't know why.

He entered the forest on the edge of the property and drifted down the slope towards the shed. He was going to spend several days in his urn, he decided, and then he'd get some answers.

Several days had gone by without a single speck of paranormal activity. Frankly, Kagome was disappointed. As she suspected, her "new home" was about as dull as sitting in a car for six hours straight with Souta had been. In other words, it was horribly boring to the point of agony. Souta's screams, injected at regular intervals through the otherwise silent house, were evidence of this.

"I'M! SO! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-" The boy took a deep breath and continued. "-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-" and another one, "-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORED!" he finished from his seat on the floor in the living room. His flopped back down onto the floor again, spread-eagled in a patch of sunlight. "There's nothing to do…" He groaned. "I'm so bored… so… BOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"

Kagome clapped a hand against her brother's mouth. "Shut up." She said flatly. "Nobody cares."

Souta sat up and looked at her in disbelief. "How can you not be bored?!" He asked her incredulously.

His sister rolled her eyes at him. "I am bored, stupid!" She shook her head. "But at least I'm gonna do something besides sit here all day." Souta looked at her questioningly. "I'm going for a walk." She said shortly.

Souta collapsed on the floor again and dug his fingers into the cream-colored carpet beneath him. Kagome made her way around her sloth-brother thing and to the back door that led to the garden where her mom was working. "Preparing for house guests," as she had put it. The door clicked behind her as she made her exit. Souta gingerly poked his arm. He winced and rolled out of the patch of light. Sunburn.

The day was hot. Just as it had been the day before, and the day before that. Probably the day before that day had been exactly the same. Kagome's thoughts wandered as her feet took her around their property. She had yet to properly explore and that was exactly what she was going to do. It wasn't like she had anything better to do…

She passed by her mother, crouching next to a persistent weed and tugging on it. Cicadas buzzed and the air smell of plants. The sun was becoming unbearable, and Kagome wandered towards the forest, idly speculating on whether or not it was a part of their property. "Did it matter?" She asked herself.

Stepping into the cool shade provided by the towering trees, Kagome sighed in relief. She'd only been out in the sun for about five minutes, but it was enough. As Souta had done a few minutes before, she delicately pressed on her arm and winced. Sunburned already.

She gingerly stepped over a fallen branch and carefully made her way through the underbrush and deeper into the forest. The air was warm and dust motes drifted through shafts of golden sunlight as she maneuvered through the forest. The dull drone of cicadas was a comfortable background noise to the crunching of leaves underneath her shoes. Looking up from her path, Kagome noticed a small shed not too far ahead. Altering her course slightly, she headed straight for it. She slid open the warped wooden door with difficulty and stepped inside.

The shed was obviously old and dimly lit, much older than the house. There were no windows and the walls were covered in shelves. Cautiously, Kagome stepped over some broken pottery and towards a shelf filled with curious objects. There was a lot of pottery in evidence. Kagome picked up an ancient large-bellied pot and dusted it off with her hands. Dust motes swirled in the air and she coughed, putting the ancient pottery back on the shelf and waving the dust aside. She picked up a curling and yellowed scrap of parchment. The brush marks had almost completely faded and it looked like an incomplete scroll. She put it back carefully. Something caught her eye, and she turned. There, sitting on a desk of sorts, was an urn. It was plain glazed earthenware with nothing particularly remarkable about it. The odd thing was that it was shiny and new in appearance, starkly contrasting everything else. Gingerly, she picked it up and grey smoke exploded from its lips.

Two days. Two days he'd sat, brooding and looking for an answer to his inexplicable emotions and fragmented memory. It hadn't helped in the slightest. Naturally, he was grumpy and irritable. So when someone picked up his urn, he instinctively popped out and furiously yelled out, "GO AWAY!"

It was her. The girl. She screamed again, nearly dropping his precious vessel. Hastily she put it back on the table and backed away. Abruptly she stopped. "Sorry!" She yelped, her back to the wall as her fingers frantically searched for the doorway through which she'd entered. "I'm so terribly sorry I didn't mean to disturb you sir please forgive me and I'll be on my way now bye!" She panicked and shot out of the door and crashed through the woods.

His poltergeist nature crowed in triumph and he couldn't repress the small smirk that had shown up on his face. It turned down into an irritated frown. "Serves her right." He huffed. "Meddling in other people's business…" He muttered and slid into his urn again, with no small feeling of relief.

It had been very close. She'd almost dropped his urn. Instinctively, he knew that his urn was to be protected. It was his… base, for lack of a better word. It was his support, his hold on life. A poor substitute for life, but better than death, he assumed. But then again, what did he know? He moved into a more comfortable position inside his urn and started to doze.

Well, if she wasn't convinced that ghosts were real, she most definitely was now. Kagome sat on the couch in the living room, running over her second encounter with "The Ghost", as she had labeled him. Now more than ever, she was determined to find out more about him. Souta tossed the tennis ball against the wall again, the incessant banging disrupting her thoughts. It wasn't like she had anything else to do…

The next day, against her better judgment, she headed back into the forest towards the shed. If she'd find him anywhere, she decided, he'd be in there. But did she really want to find him? What if he tried to kill her or something? "Curiosity killed the cat…" She murmured to herself. "Fortunately, I'm not a cat."

Kagome cautiously stepped over the broken pottery again and glanced furtively around the small shelter. Through the gloom, she could make out the same shelves, the same desk. The same urn that The Ghost had popped out from gleamed slightly on it. Maybe he wasn't a ghost, but a Genie. After all, it was genies and such that were supposed to live inside things like lamps and kettles. An urn wouldn't be too much different.

Hesitantly, she picked up the urn and rubbed it. That was what people did in the movies, and then they went on spectacular adventures. As she had suspected, grey smoke started to vent from the opening.

"I thought I told you to go away." A sour masculine voice echoed from the depths of the urn. "So why are you bothering me again?" It snarled, and out popped The Ghost, or was it Genie?

"Hi…" Kagome said awkwardly. She put the vessel down carefully on the desk and stepped back.

"Go away." The Ghost/ Genie replied curtly. He floated in the air, slightly transparent.

"Nice to meet you." Kagome smiled nervously at him. "I'm Kagome." This wasn't going as planned.

"Go away." He repeated flatly. He sat cross-legged in the air and tapped his long fingernails- they were more like claws than fingernails- against his knee impatiently.

She ignored his request and asked, "Are you a ghost?"

"No."

"Umm…" Kagome began hesitantly. "Then what are you?" She pushed her hair behind her ear, a nervous habit.

"Does it matter?" He asked impatiently. Bright grey eyes flashed in the gloom, and Kagome found herself backing away.

"Please tell me?" She asked timidly. She had a feeling that he was going to hurt her…

"I'm a poltergeist." He replied shortly. "A very angry poltergeist, and if you don't leave, I'm going to kill you." He lied blatantly. Poltergeists were mischief-makers. He was incapable of touching her, let alone killing her.

"Oh." Kagome replied dumbly. She pushed her hair behind her ear again. " Then I guess I'll be going now…" She stepped backwards and stumbled over a piece of broken pottery. "Ow!" She picked herself up slowly, wincing and temporarily forgetting the matter at hand. The sharp fragments dug into her hands and they were smeared with blood.

His nose twitched uncomfortably. He could smell the sharp tang of her blood. For a moment, a brief flash of guilt pushed its way into his mind before he shoved it away. Unsure of what to do or how to act, he just sat there in the air and watched as she tried to remove all the little shards in her hand, hissing in pain every once in a while. Suddenly, she spoke.

"You haven't killed me yet." She observed calmly. He stiffened slightly, searching for a reply, but before he could say anything Kagome spoke again. "What's your name?" She asked curiously.

"I don't remember." He replied coldly. Why did she care? Why did he tell her? Oh well…

"Oh…" her attention was still focused on her hand. She looked up suddenly. "Do all ghosts- I mean, poltergeists look like you?"

"No." He was pretty sure of that. After all, not all poltergeists were half-demons when they were alive. Wow, he remembered something. Again, he searched his memory for anything else that he might've missed.

Kagome found the silence unnerving, but at least he wasn't threatening to kill her anymore. She winced slightly as she pulled out yet another piece of ancient pottery, slick with her blood. She dropped it on the floor and it hit the floor with a quiet tinkling sound. The silence was pressing down, uncomfortable. "Why do you look like that?" She asked, rather rudely. She blushed slightly.

The poltergeist halted his memory hunt and replied briefly, "I was- am half-demon."

"What do you mean by that?" Kagome asked, her hands temporarily forgotten. "How long have you been around?"

"Why do you care?" He asked again. He paused for a moment, and then said begrudgingly. "Go away." He never really realized how lonely he was…

Kagome nodded wordlessly and hurried away, cradling her more injured hand and leaving and bemused poltergeist behind her.

"Kagome!" Said girl's mother gasped. "What on earth happened to your hands?!" She rushed over from behind the counter where she was preparing dinner to inspect the cuts.

"I fell on some broken pottery." Kagome admitted, wincing slightly as her mother touched one of the more painful cuts.

"Where on earth did you find broken pottery?" Her mother asked. "Never mind that, I'll go get some bandages." Mrs. Higurashi hurried away and Kagome sat down on a chair, going over all that had happened.

"Here we are." Ever the concerned mother, Mrs. Higurashi briskly entered the room toting an excessively large first aid kit. "Did you get all the pottery out?" Kagome's mother asked.

"I think so…" She replied. "I'm not sure." Mrs. Higurashi pulled out a pair of glasses and leaned closer towards Kagome's hand.

"I don't think you did." She assessed. She rummaged it the kit and pulled out a pair of tweezers. Kagome winced in anticipation. "You should be more careful." Her mother admonished after noticing Kagome's reaction.

"I know." She flinched slightly as Mrs. Higurashi pulled out a sliver and deposited it on the table.

"There you go." The older woman pulled out some cotton swabs and bottle of iodine. "This'll sting a bit…" She swabbed gently at Kagome's hand. "So, where did you find broken pottery?"

Kagome had never been one to lie to her mother. "It's pretty unbelievable, actually." Kagome admitted. "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I know I wouldn't believe it. Anyway, I was looking around in the forest and I found this shed…"

"I knew it!" Mr. Higurashi exclaimed triumphantly. "I knew I felt the presence of evil in this vicinity!"

Kagome's mother looked at him uncertainly. "But Dad, do you believe her? Could she have really seen a ghost?"

"Not a ghost, a poltergeist!" Souta bounced on the couch impatiently. "This is so awesome! Our house is haunted!" Things were about to get interesting…

Kagome hurried down the stairs, both hand wrapped in neatly in clean white bandages. She was just in time to hear her younger sibling's last comment. "I don't think he haunts the house, Souta." She frowned slightly. "Just the shed."

"It's better than nothing!" Souta replied stoically. "We've got a haunted shed, at least!"

"Is the shed ours?" Kagome directed the question at her mother. "I didn't think that the forest was a part of our property."

"Only a bit of it is." Mrs. Higurashi tossed the comment over her shoulder as she went into the kitchen. "But I'm pretty sure that the shed is included."

The others followed her into the kitchen to grab utensils and bowls for dinner.

After she left, the poltergeist wandered about the shed, agitated by the smell of blood that she'd left after cutting herself on the broken pottery. He left the shed, escaping the disturbing odor and seeking refuge in the concealing branches of a large tree on the edge of the forest. For a while he just floated in between the foliage of the tree, staring into space with an empty mind.

The sun was going down and the sky was a brilliant spectrum of faded colors, casting all in an orange glow. The grass waved a sighed as a warm breeze swept through the garden. All else was silent.

His nose twitched as a new smell entered his perceptions: food. Although he didn't need to and was incapable of eating, He nonetheless felt drawn to the smell, to the human company inside. He found himself leaving the tree and hovering over the grass, and the next thing he knew, he was by the window. He glanced in for a moment, just watching the family as they talked and ate. His sensitive ears twitched as they caught the conversation.

"I'll banish it!" The old, apparently eccentric old man exclaimed with force. "We'll see no trouble from him!"

"Gramps…" The kid said, shaking his head. He looked at his sister, Kagome. The girl who'd invaded his sanctuary and messed with his urn. He still wasn't sure how he felt about her. She was annoying and rather stupid, but tolerable, he decided. But only slightly tolerable. "Isn't it cool though?" Her younger brother asked excitedly. "A ghost! Haunting our property!"

The poltergeist- not ghost! - looked at the girl again in annoyance. She'd gotten her facts messed up. And what gave her the right to tell them all about him? Before you'd know it there'd be people from all over popping up in his shed and trying to poke him. And it wasn't like he could go away and find someplace else. His urn was here. He needed to be near it. He growled slightly.

As if reading his thoughts, the girl told her brother, "I told you, poltergeist. And I don't think he likes to be bothered…" She said vaguely. Damn right. Suddenly she looked out towards the window and saw him standing there.

If he could, he wouldn't blushed in embarrassment. How humiliating! Getting caught staring at him while they were eating dinner, like some poor vagabond in search of company or a bowl of soup. But why did he care what they thought?

"Oh, look! There he is now!" Kagome said nervously. Maybe he was coming back to kill her like he said he would… "Hello!" She tapped on the window and waved. No harm in being friendly, right? "Umm, would you like to come in?" She asked with a smile.

"No."

He sure was an odd one, Kagome thought. His eyes flickered with indecision for a moment. Then wordlessly, he turned around and shot up into the sky and out of view. Kagome shrugged. "Oh, well." She turned around to see the rest of her family- besides Buyo, who was calmly eating some of her grandpa's food- staring at her in shock.

"Cool!" Souta exclaimed eagerly. "I just saw a ghost! I mean, poltergeist!" He disregarded his food to bombard Kagome with questions. "Is a poltergeist a kind of ghost? What's his name? Why does he have those weird ears? Is he nice? Is he-"

Kagome interrupted him. "I don't know." She said flatly, and continued to eat her dinner.

"Well that settles it." Mr. Higurashi rose heavily from the table. "I'm going to go exorcise this shed." He moved away from the table, plate in hand.

"Grandpa, don't!" Souta protested. "That's like killing him! He hasn't done anything bad!"

"Except threaten to kill Kagome!" The senior shot back. "How do we know he won't actually try to?" The old man deposited his plate in the sink and slid open the back door to the garden.

"Grandpa!" Souta tried again. "If he wanted to, don't you think he could've killed Kagome by now or something?" He tried frantically to defend the poltergeist. But Mr. Higurashi had already shut the door behind him and was moving towards the forest. "It's not fair! Souta told the others. "I'm not going to let him!"

His mother sighed. "It's okay, Souta. I don't think that anything is going to happen. Remember when Grandpa tried to exorcise that old mask?" Souta nodded slowly. "Nothing happened, remember?" Souta nodded again, a little more cheerfully this time. "Nothing's going to happen to our ghost, either."

"Poltergeist, Mom." He corrected and got up from the floor with his plate in his hand.

"Ah, yes." Mrs. Higurashi replied quickly. "Poltergeist." She frowned when she saw her father hurrying back up through the grass towards the house, a small bundle in his arms. She quickly got up and slid open the door. "What's wrong?" She asked, concern leaking into her voice. "What's tha-" She gasped. "Oh, my." She hurried out of the door and delicately took the small bundle from her father.

"Found 'im." The senior wheezed. "Near the edge of the forest. I'll bet you anything it was that poltergeist!"

Kagome took one look at the poor child in her mother's arms and hurried upstairs for the first aid kit.

"Let's not worry about that now." Mrs. Higurashi admonished tersely. "Let's get him some help." Kagome rushed back down the stairs, kit flying out behind her and banging off the wall as she turned a sharp corner.

"Here we go." She quickly opened the kit and put it down on the table. Kagome hovered anxiously over her mother's shoulder. "Is he gonna be all right?" She asked worredly.

"I hope so." Her mother replied grimly. She tenderly brushed the ginger hair away from the small child's forehead. "I hope so…" She murmured again, and began to rummage through the first aid kit.

AN: I'm sure that you know who "The poltergeist" is by now. Don't worry, he'll bet his name back in the next chapter…