-Shadow-

Chapter 1 – The Haunted Mansion

After a hard day's investigating, the gang returned to Twilight Station in considerably lower spirits than they had started out in.

"This bites," Hayner said moodily as they exited the station. "The 'seven wonders' turned out to be more like the seven misunderstandings. Let's just go home and work on the paper. What are we gonna write though?"

"The rumors were bogus. The End."

"If you think you're helping Pence, you're not."

"Boys, knock it off," Olette chided lightly. "And hey, we can still make it sound good if we write about all the work we did."

Roxas hung back, letting his friends walk ahead of him, mulling over the day's events in his mind. Balls popping out of solid walls, a never ending flurry of Vivis, his shadow coming out of the mirror, and that weird black and white train, not to mention that white thing that stole all the photos the other day. He also felt like he was being watched all week for some reason. There was definitely something strange going down in Twilight Town, but why he was the only one who seemed to notice?

He was brought out of his musings by Hayner calling him over to discuss their next plan of action. "Good of you to finally join us," he said when Roxas had caught up to them. "Now, as I was saying, the mansion's clear on the other side of town from here, right? So I say we just go home, and work on the paper tonight. Save the searching for tomorrow."

"The mansion?" Roxas asked.

"It's the last/seventh wonder," Olette and Pence said together.

"Well if that's the case, let's go there now and save all the writing for tomorrow," Roxas replied.

"I second that," Olette said. "We're already out, so we might as well just get all the research done today."

Pence nodded. "Besides, my dad said it's supposed to rain tomorrow." Pence's father was a meteorologist.

"Bummer," Hayner said, looking around at his friends. "So, it's three against one, huh? Alright, fine then, since I'm over ruled, let's go. Troops, move out!"

He led the way down the hill to Market Street. When they reached the Tram Common, Hayner turned to his best friend and smirked. "Wanna race?" he asked.

Roxas looked at Hayner. Hayner smiled at Roxas. For the briefest of moments, blue and hazel eyes stared each other down. Then as if a gun had been fired, the two boys took off for the far side of the plaza.

Olette scowled after their retreating backs. Pence just shrugged.

-oOo-

While he waited for the others to catch up and while he caught his breath, Roxas got a good look at this so-called "haunted" house. Truth be told, it didn't look that bad to him. It was run down to boot and definitely not a place he'd want to live in without some massive renovations first, but not particularly menacing. He noticed that the upstairs window on the left was white while the one on the right looked orange, though that may have been because of the setting sun.

The sound of twigs snapping behind him disrupted his study of the edifice.

The rest of the gang had arrived, though Hayner and Olette seemed to be acting a bit odd. Roxas turned to Pence for an explanation. "Hayner's sulking 'cause you beat him and Olette told him he deserved it for challenging you in the first place. So now they're not talking to each other."

Roxas nodded thoughtfully. That did rather sound like something those two would do. Deciding to let them stew on their own for a little bit, he asked, "So, what are we looking for?"

"Well, they say there's this weird shadow thing that haunts this place. Some people think it might be a leftover from Maleficient's army."

"What, one of those Heartless things?" If Hayner wasn't skeptical about the "seven wonders" before, he was now.

Olette, however, appeared thoughtful. "It might be," she said. "They did turn up every once in a while for decades after the war."

"Yeah, but the last time that happened was when my grandmother was our age. It's probably just some animal."

Even as he spoke, however, Roxas grew wary. They may have been defeated a century ago, but the Heartless were nothing to joke about. His great grandfather had been a SOLDIER for the King during the war and stories of his encounters with them had been passed down through the generations of his family, though he was certain Grandma Marlene had greatly embellished in certain parts of the family lore. Still, it probably was just some animal….

Hayner caught the odd look in his friend's eye.

"Hey Roxas," he called.

"Hmm?"

"It's the full moon tonight."

Roxas looked at him, slightly wary of whatever his friend was talking about. So were Pence and Olette, as they had reason to be. Hayner going off on a tangent like this almost always meant he'd concocted yet another hare brained scheme of his, schemes which more often than not resulted in the rest of them being dragged along for the ride. "So?" he asked cautiously.

"So I dare you to spend the night in there tonight." Hayner jerked his head in the direction of the mansion.

Roxas stared at him. "Are you for real?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"Okay, one: I don't feel like getting arrested for breaking and entering on the second to last day of summer. Two, I also don't feel like getting rabies. Three-"

"How do you know it isn't a Heartless?"

"Easy, if it was a Heartless, there would have been an outbreak by now and we'd have a lot more to worry about than rabies. Three, you're still sore that I beat you."

Hayner looked as though Roxas had just mortally offended him. "I so am not! You just know you'll chicken out! Think about it. All alone in a big, abandoned house in the middle of the woods on the full moon. It's enough to get to anybody, man, no shame in admitting you're scared."

"Yeah, yeah. I still say you're sore.

"I second that!"

"Pence, nobody asked you!"

Olette watched bemusedly as the boys continued to get themselves worked up. Pence, however, decided to break up the argument and have a little fun while he was at it.

"Compromise!" he said. Roxas and Hayner stared at him. "Come again?"

"Compromise," he repeated. "You both spend the night all alone in the creepy abandoned house in the middle of the woods on the full moon. It'll be fun!"

Pence fought down a grin. He loved it when he got to mess with his friends like this. Oblivious to how their friend had just set them up, Hayner and Roxas were sizing each other up sideways through the corners of their eyes, daring the other to back down. For reasons she wasn't quite sure off, Olette was getting a really bad feeling about this. Experience had taught her she couldn't really stop them once they switched into stupid boy mode, but she couldn't just leave them alone this time for some reason. "Tell you what, boys, we'll all go." Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

"We will?" Pence didn't like this sudden development.

"Yeah, c'mon Pence," Hayner goaded. "It'll be fun. We all go. Deal?" he said, turning to Roxas, extending a hand. The blond considered the offered appendix for a moment, then with mock seriousness, shakes it.

And sealed his fate.

-oOo-

Midnight found Roxas, Hayner, Pence, and Olette standing once again on the front lawn of the old mansion. Each was armed with a backpack, sleeping bag, pillow, flashlight, food, a pocket knife, and in Pence's case, a camera (he never left home without one). They looked up at the ornate façade of their sleeping quarters for the next several hours.

"Are we really going to do this?" Olette asked. She was beginning to regret wanting to come along to keep an eye on the boys. The mansion looked much more menacing by moonlight than it was during the day. Every window had become a hollow eye staring down at her, the front archway was now a gaping jaw complete with fangs ready to swallow her whole. The broken columns looked eerily like tombstones.

"Oh hell yes," Hayner was grinning from ear to ear. Even Pence seemed a little excited, though he may have still been high from successfully sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. Roxas said nothing. He had a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach that he couldn't quite place. It wasn't fear or apprehension, not quite. It was more like… like he knew something was coming, but he had no idea what. Whatever it was, it sent a slight shiver down his spine.

"Scared?" Hayner goaded his friend.

"No," Roxas told him, "just cold. Let's go."

He led the way, making his way carefully through the broken columns. He was worried they'd have to walk around to the back to find a way in but luckily the front door was open, though both he and Hayner had had to throw their weight into it to get the heavily rusted lock to open.

It was pitch dark inside. "Flashlights on," Roxas whispered.

Four beams of light dimly illuminated the front hall. They swept over the banisters and stairs, casting eerie shadows on the decrepit walls. Roxas trained his flashlight on the chandelier overhead. It was covered in what Roxas guessed to be at least half a century's worth of cobwebs and dust. It occurred to him that this was probably the first time the house had been subjected to artificial lighting in a couple of decades.

He glanced over to the others who were also taking everything in. "So, how do we want to split up the search parties?"

"We're splitting up?" Olette asked.

"Yeah," Roxas told her. "We need to find a good place to sleep, but this house is huge. Finding a suitable spot would take forever if we just stayed in one big group."

"I guess that makes sense," Olette said, though she still sounded unsure.

"So it's settled, then." Hayner pulled two walkie-talkies out of his backpack. "I knew these would come in handy."

"You still have those things?" Roxas asked, incredulous. He hadn't seen them since the days when he and Hayner used to coordinate various pranking and missions of general disorderly conduct around town that often resulted in much mayhem and amusement, even if the two of them were the only ones laughing.

"Yep," Hayner chirped. Clearly he remembered those days with as much fondness as Roxas did. It was when he'd gained his reputation as a troublemaker, after all. "I thought they'd be better than just using our cell phones. One, I don't think we'd get good reception in here and two, my dad's gonna be curious as to why I have roaming charges on my bill for a 1 AM call. Since you and me are the only ones who can use these, we're gonna have to split up. You and Pence take down here while Olette and me search upstairs." He handed one of the devices to the other boy.

"If you wanted a little alone time with Olette, you could have just said so," He said shrewdly, though quietly enough so that said girl, who was looking at a display in the center of the room, couldn't hear them. Pence was busy examining a suit of armor.

Hayner pretended to be preoccupied with closing his backpack. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Uh huh, sure," Roxas responded with a knowing smile. He decided to let the matter drop, however. "Seriously, though, can Pence and I take upstairs?"

"If you want. Why?"

"Just curious."

Hayner gave his friend an odd look but shrugged it off. "Go for it. Just radio me if you find anything interesting."

"Got it."

Walking over to where Pence was now snapping a picture of the helmet, Roxas tapped him on the shoulder, motioning the other boy to follow him. When the blond started up the stairs, Pence frowned. "I thought Hayner and Olette had the second floor."

"Not anymore, we switched."

Shrugging, the brunette followed him. "Any reason why?"

"I noticed something about this place earlier. I wanted to check it out," Roxas told him over his shoulder. Then he nearly tripped on the landing and had to look forward again. Pence snickered. Roxas elbowed him.

-oOo-

They reached the second floor without further mishap.

"So, where to next?"

Roxas shined his flashlight around. To his right, were a set of double doors. "Let's try here."

Beyond was a library. Shelves of books lined three walls, the fourth being a large window covered by the orange curtain Roxas had seen earlier from outside. Three chairs clustered around a handsome oak table on the tiled, sunken portion of the floor. Pence wandered over to the window and drew back the curtain. It released a small shower of dust, but at least it let in the moonlight to illuminate the room better. 'There has to be at least a thousand books in here!' he thought, taking it all in now that he could see properly. Curious, he glanced at some of the titles. Pence even took one off the shelf and began flipping through it.

It was on the middle shelf, directly across from the window that he noticed a rather unusual ornament among the books.

It was a unicorn.

Made of white marble and about two feet tall, the statue stared sharply downward, its narrowed eyes harshly scrutinizing the floor.

Roxas didn't like it. For such a reputedly benign creature, this one seemed rather ominous. As a guy, he'd never admit it, but it kind of freaked him out.

"Hey, Pence," he called. The other boy looked up from his book, An Island in the Moon by William Blake. "Let's keep looking. There's gotta be better places than this." No way in hell was he sleeping under the gaze of that creepy statue if he could help it. Fortunately, Pence just shrugged, put the book back where he found it, and followed his blond friend out of the room.

-oOo-

The rest of the rooms in that hallway were uninteresting. They were way too dusty, blocked by debris, or in one case even, a 19th century bathroom. Not one looked to be suitable for sleeping in. Finally, they arrived at the end of the row on the exact opposite side of the mezzanine from where they'd started. "Alright," Roxas said, putting his hand on the doorknob, "last room. If this doesn't work out, we'll call Hayner and Olette, see what they've found."

"And if they haven't found anything?" Pence asked, fighting back a yawn. By now it was two-thirty in the morning.

"Then we sleep in the front hall."

The poor boy looked ready to keel over right then and there, but he allowed Roxas to lead him into the next room anyway.

They stepped into utter white. All white walls and white furniture and white linens on the white bed and white drapes and a white table and chairs on the white tiled floor. If it weren't for the lingering summer heat, Roxas would have thought he'd walked into a snowball. The now thread bare curtain did very little to keep out the moonlight, making the room seem to glow. Roxas didn't know why, but he felt oddly comfortable here.

'Definitely a girl's room,' he thought. For looking to have been from around the turn of the century, the place was in pretty good condition. It wasn't too dusty there, either. The tiniest of cracks in one of the windows had let in a breeze, preventing the dust from settling too much. Pence actually had the gusto to try the bed. "Not bad," he said kicking back.

He was snoring twenty seconds later. Roxas had to fight down a laugh. Dumping his backpack on the table, he got out the walkie-talkie. "Hey, Hayner! Can you hear me, dude?"

The voice that responded to him was a little hard to make out. These things were scratchier than he remembered. "Yeah, dude?"

"Pence and I found a good spot to hunker down for the night."

"Good. Olette 'n' me were about to give up. Where are you?"

"In the room furthest to the left upstairs. It's a big, white bedroom. Pence's already passed out."

Hayner snorted. "Nice. Seeya in a minute."

Turning the walkie-talkie off, Roxas put it back in his backpack. He then unrolled his sleeping bag and was preparing to go to sleep when a picture on the wall caught his eye. Three children, two boys and a girl, smiled down on him from behind the glass. The girl and one of the boys had dark hair while the other boy had really light hair, almost white, though it was hard to tell from the black and white photograph. Looking around, Roxas saw the three again in almost all the other pictures, always the same three children, the two boys and the girl. Their ages in the photographs varied, though, from around four or so in the first to about maybe the early teens. As he studied them, Roxas had the most bizarre feeling that he'd seen them somewhere before. But what was the likelihood of that? Maybe if he got a better look at their faces…

He reached out to wipe the dust off the oldest picture of them-

And jumped as twin screams sounded from downstairs. Over on the bed, Pence bolted upright.

"HAYNER! OLETTE!"