Detective Yamamoto and the Haunted House Part 2

Nearly three hours had passed. In that time, Satoshi had taken the liberty of looking around the house, taking notes, and drawing up a rough floor plan. If there truly was a ghost, it was a rather bashful ghost that hadn't yet deigned to show itself. When Satoshi returned to the guest room, he was met with the mixed blessing of Detective Yamamoto wrapped entirely in the covers and snoring gently. The addition of an empty beer can on the floor indicated to Satoshi that the detective had used a sleep aid to help herself drift off.

Satoshi returned once again to the chair in the corner of the room. The way he saw it, the rest of the night could go one of two ways, both of which didn't appeal to him. On the one hand, nothing would happen. Satoshi would effectively pull an all-nighter for naught, looking for a ghost where one didn't exist. On the other hand, the ghost might actually exist, and the detective would be soundly asleep, leaving Satoshi to deal with it alone. On balance, he preferred boredom to terror, but spending an entire night in an unfamiliar, eerie house, awake and alone wasn't all that great even if there wasn't a ghost.

In spite of his obligation to see things through, Satoshi felt himself starting to drift. He might have fallen asleep sitting upright in the chair, but the glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye had him jolt upright. To his drowsy mind, it almost appeared to be a humanoid figure, although it appeared there only for an instant, and neither of the other two residents of the house could have been what he saw. Instantly, he jumped to the conclusion that the ghost had finally made an entrance.

“Show yourself!” Satoshi said, trying to inject a tone of authority into his voice. There was no response. Satoshi settled back into the chair, but resolved to be more watchful lest more paranormal activity occur.

Despite his resolution, sleep began to take hold on Satoshi. Again his eyelids became heavy and in some quiet corner of his mind, he was vaguely aware that his eyes were shut more than they were open. It wasn't quite clear to him when exactly he fell asleep, but he was keenly aware of when he woke up again, as the blood-curdling scream of a woman awoke him.

Satoshi thrashed and flailed in the chair as he immediately feared the worst. Surprisingly, the person who screamed was not the detective. She continued sleeping on the bed with the covers drawn up to her chin. The scream, so far as Satoshi could tell, had been emitted by a woman, but no one he knew of could have done it.

Although, the more Satoshi considered the situation, the more he noticed that he felt incredibly dizzy. At first, he thought it might have just been being woken suddenly accompanied by a burst of adrenaline from hearing the shriek, but as he looked around the room, he found that his movements became increasingly sluggish and that the walls appeared as though they were melting.

Surely they couldn't be, Satoshi thought, but even as he thought to himself, he couldn't be sure.

The haunting only became more and more potent as the wallpapered walls of the guest bedroom seemed to run like melted wax down a candle. From the exterior wall opposite of where Satoshi sat, a figure began to emerge. First a head poked through the wall, and it was bowed as though the person it belonged to was bent at the waist and looking down. Then two gnarled, arthritic-looking hands poked through as well. Suddenly, the figure's head snapped upright, revealing a face that lacked much of its flesh, missing even eyes or a nose. Wordlessly, the apparition wailed like a damned soul, moving inexorably towards Satoshi. He screamed in unison with it and waved his arms in a vain attempt to ward off the ghost. At the sound of Satoshi's scream, Detective Yamamoto drowsily lifted her head off the pillow and looked around with squinting eyes.

“Keep it down, assistant,” she mumbled, but Satoshi was far too captivated to take notice of her immediately. Detective Yamamoto took a moment to assess the situation in greater detail, and it clicked in her mind that there must be something supernatural going on. Fearfully, she looked around the room, but to her, everything seemed normal. Tentatively, she kicked off the heavy blanket and swung her feet off the edge of the bed.

Satoshi, meanwhile, clumsily stood out of his chair and moved to the far side of the room, hugging the wall to avoid the specter.

“Detective, it's real! The ghost is real!” he shouted. Detective Yamamoto felt perverse satisfaction to find that, for once, Satoshi was more freaked out about a potential ghost than she was, but the more she thought about it, the more things didn't add up. Satoshi slurred his words in a manner that was most unusual for him. Furthermore, and more importantly, there was no sign of a ghost.

“Where's the ghost?” she asked fearfully. Just because she couldn't see the ghost didn't necessarily mean that it wasn't there lurking. Satoshi made a clumsy gesture, pointing in the vague direction of the center of the room, where the detective could see nothing but open space.

“Is right there,” said Satoshi. The slur in his speech became more pronounced. Satoshi then seemed to sway unsteadily on his feet. He put one hand to his forehead as he held out the other hand to balance himself. “I don't feel so good,” he said before crumpling to the ground.

To her credit, Detective Yamamoto acted immediately. Even if there was no ghost, and in her mind this seemed to be increasingly and gratifyingly the case, something nefarious was still going on and the best course of action would be to get out of this accursed house.

“I'm the detective,” declared Detective Yamamoto, “and I say we're getting out of here!” With a strength lent to her by fear and adrenaline, she grabbed Satoshi's arms by the wrists and began to drag him out of the room. She progressed slowly, and Satoshi suffered more bumps than he probably would have liked, but the detective's heart remained in the right place, even if she could have taken more care.

The staircase proved to be a uniquely challenging obstacle in the abstract, and one that was solved rather quickly and crudely by sliding Satoshi's recumbent form down the stairs. The detective thought to herself that if ever she and Satoshi were to discuss the events of what happened in this so-called haunted house while he was passed out, the detective would tactfully omit essentially tossing him down the stairs and letting gravity sort out the rest.

Only when Satoshi's body had tumbled to the bottom of the staircase did the supposed owner of the house stumble out of his room. It came as little surprise to the detective that the frightful man was dressed little different than he had been when he first shambled into her office.

“What was that dreadful noise?” he asked, leaning over the banister.

“My assistant slipped,” lied the detective. “I hate to abandon this case, but he'll need medical attention.” The man looked like he wanted to protest, but common sense prevented him from arguing against getting an injured man medical help.

“I see. No doubt it was the work of the pernicious phantom that haunts this house.”

“No doubt,” replied the detective, although in truth, there was more than a little doubt in her mind regarding what truly caused everything. Without so much as another word to the cadaverous man, Detective Yamamoto dragged Satoshi outside into the cool night air. She may have been exaggerating about Satoshi requiring medical attention, or at least she hoped she was exaggerating, but at any rate, the best she could presently do was lay him out flat on the ground and try and wake him up.

“Assistant,” she said while gently jostling him. “Assistant, wake up.” It had little immediate effect, so she pivoted to shaking him more violently. When that failed, she drew back her hand and prepared to slap him, but before she could, Satoshi's eyes shot open. So suddenly did this happen that Detective Yamamoto, who had been kneeling over his prone form, sprang back in alarm.

“Assistant?” she asked, as though there were some remote possibility that he had been possessed by whatever ghost was haunting the house. At first Satoshi only groaned in response.

“Detective? What happened?” he asked.

“I'll tell you back at the office. Get up, let's get out of here.” Defying her expectations, Satoshi managed to slowly get to his feet, albeit with much groaning and a little complaining, mainly about a sudden headache.

~~~

Now safely back at the agency, and with the door and windows locked and barred for safe measure, Detective Yamamoto decided to divulge everything, both what happened and her suspicions, to Satoshi. Once Satoshi got up to speed, he was understandably dubious of the detective's account, but the fact that she hadn't so much as seen the ghost certainly caught his interest, especially given how utterly terrified she had been prior.

“You mean to tell me that you didn't see the ghost at all?” Satoshi asked. He wanted to get things scrupulously correct, especially if they intended to tell the client that his house wasn't truly haunted as the detective was suggesting.

“If I saw a ghost, you would have had to drag me out,” replied the detective. For Satoshi, that answer satisfied him, as he practically had to drag the detective into the house in the first place. However, this raised more questions than it answered.

“So then what caused all the paranormal activity?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the detective shrugged. It seemed pretty clear that Detective Yamamoto had had about as much contact with the house, haunted or not, as she would willingly tolerate. After everything that had happened with the ghost, the dizziness and nausea, the loss of consciousness, and the wicked headache he woke up to, Satoshi agreed with the detective that the less they had to do with this haunted house, the better.

“So what do we tell the guy?” asked Satoshi.

“We could tell him to move,” said the detective derisively.

At any rate, it was now that peculiar time in the early morning where it's just too late to go back to sleep and just too early to get started on the day's business. Both Satoshi and the detective were all too familiar with this time of the early morning, due to excessive writing binges and excessive drinking binges respectfully. Figuring that he would eventually return to the agency at some point today, Satoshi decided to cut out the middle man and stick around.

Naturally, the inclusion of Satoshi would throw off all of Detective Yamamoto's usual morning routines, but if it was truly a big deal, she didn't show it outwardly. She went about her business, stripping down to a more comfortable level of dress and acquiring some liquid nourishment. For noise, she turned on a beat-up old television she had and tuned it to the local news. She wasn't paying it much attention, as reclining in her chair at her desk was of a far higher priority. Satoshi, likewise, only partially listened, just for the novelty of the experience, as he sat to ponder the events of the previous night.

There really seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what had happened. An actual ghost seemed like a ludicrous prospect in its own right, but an actual ghost that only Satoshi had been able to see was even more ridiculous. Even so, there was no other explanation that Satoshi could conceive of. He almost considered just letting the matter lie for a while when a peculiar turn of phrase coming from one of the anchors caught his ear.

“Remember,” said the newscaster. “This month is carbon monoxide awareness month. Carbon monoxide is a colorless odorless gas produced by combustion that can cause dizziness, hallucination, and death by suffocation in sufficient quantities. Please take extreme care and ensure proper ventilation when using devices such as kerosene lamps and heaters. In other news...” Satoshi looked up and saw that the detective was also now listening to the news broadcast.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking, assistant?” asked the detective.

“That the ghost was a hallucination?” replied Satoshi. Detective Yamamoto nodded.

“I propose we tell the client the good news and tell him to get rid of his stupid gaslights!” Perhaps the detective was being a bit harsh with that last bit, but Satoshi certainly agreed in principle.

~~~

Now at the allegedly haunted house, Detective Yamamoto took the initiative to knock on the door. As before, the detective couldn't even make a second rap on the door with her knuckles before it swung open. The man looked no better or worse than he did before, but the return of the Yamamoto and Satoshi to his home appeared to hearten him.

“Welcome back detective,” he croaked. “Am I to interpret your visit as a sign that you have solved the mystery?”

“You could say that,” replied the detective. “Your house isn't haunted, it's just your stupid gaslights putting out carbon monoxide and making you hallucinate.” The man seemed to deflate visibly.

“My house isn't haunted?” he said with more than a little disbelief. The detective shook her head and the man seemed to become enraged.

“What did I buy this forsaken house for if it wasn't haunted?” he roared. “That damnable realtor lied to me!”
“Wait,” cut in Satoshi. “You wanted your house to be haunted? I thought you wanted us to find the ghost!” Detective Yamamoto was incredulous, as was Satoshi. Neither of them could quite wrap their minds around the idea of explicitly wanting to live in a haunted house.

“Yes, I wanted to you to find the ghost! I wanted to enjoy the experience of real hauntings and I was assured this house was haunted!” Satoshi and Yamamoto were at an absolute lose for words.

“What kind of an idiot wants to live in a haunted house?” Satoshi asked before he could stop himself. The man bristled.

“Evidently, I am that kind of idiot. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must resume my search for a haunted house!” The man promptly stepped back inside and slammed the door behind him. Detective Yamamoto looked bewildered by the sudden turn of events. Satoshi cleared his throat.

“Well, it seems like we won't have to worry about dealing with him again.”

The detective nodded. Belatedly, it occurred to Satoshi that they hadn't actually been paid for their work, but he ultimately decided to let it go, as the client seemed to have a lot on his mind and didn't seem particularly charitable. It was only the detective's finances after all, and she didn't seem overly concerned. There would be other cases, and no doubt cases that wouldn't involve the supernatural.

 “I guess you were right, assistant,” said the detective as they were walking back to the office, and Satoshi noticed a note of smugness entering her voice. “Maybe there really is no such thing as ghosts.”