Chapter Text
The balcony at the front of the house is the only place Killua ever feels like he can breathe.
It’s a strange little structure, really. Sort of tucked into the second level of the house with walls enclosing three out of the four sides--it doesn’t ever get much sun, but Killua loves it all the same. It’s his own little space in this truly massive mansion, his private corner from which he can think and observe and be free.
He’s almost dozed off in the cool afternoon breeze when he hears the sound of a car approaching the main gates. A sense of dread strikes at his core, he had hoped the last time would be just that: the last time.
The sound of the old metal gate sighing as it is slowly pushed open draws out a soft sigh of his own, he supposes he’ll just have to make them leave again.
The car starts up again, the engine turning over a few times before he hears the gravel crunching beneath its tires. The family exiting the car elicits another sigh, they just look so nice. They are the picture-perfect model of a 1950s family: a tall, handsome father dressed in a slick navy suit; a slender mother with perfectly curled locks and lips painted red; an older son and a younger daughter, both dressed in their Sunday best; a dog with a spot over one eye--all packed neatly into a shiny green station wagon.
“You’ll have to do something about that gate dear,” he hears the wife say. “It looks a little unkempt.”
Killua leans forward to get a better look. “No,” he whispers, “you won’t have the time. It isn’t safe.” He knows they can’t hear him either way, but he always gives an initial warning just the same.
The husband probably says something back, but Killua is already moving through the house, steeling himself to greet the new family in his usual style. It’s never really enough to get them to leave on the first night, but it plants a little seed of discomfort that he nurtures until it fully blooms like the begonias he tends to by the front door. He hears the wife comment on them, actually, as he makes it to the front door.
“Begonias,” she says. “How lovely.”
Killua squares his shoulders and opens the front door slowly. It creaks as it moves, just like the gate. A warning, please go.
“Mother!” the daughter shouts. “Look! The door is opening, the house is welcoming us!” She snatches her doll from the backseat of the car and runs up the steps of the house, unknowingly pushing through Killua as she crosses the threshold and does a little spin.
“Oh, how strange.” The mother looks at the doorway quizzically, as if trying to rationalize the way it opened on its own. She puts a hand on her husband’s arm to draw his attention to it but he seems unfazed, buttoning his jacket and gently pushing her aside so he can stride confidently through the entrance.
Killua steps to the side so he won’t have to feel them cutting through him as the rest of the family joins the little girl in the foyer. They each comment on something in the exact way Killua expects them to.
The husband comments on the windows that need fixing.
The wife comments on the dust coating the banisters.
The daughter comments on the pattern of the tiles.
The son thinks the house is creepy.
It’s always the middle or older sibling that notices the faint aura of the house, the sinister energy that festers beyond the front door. The animals too. The dog with the spot over his eye lingers in the doorway, staring at Killua with his hackles raised.
“Oh Ranger, what is it now?” calls the husband exasperatedly. “Come here. Behave.” The dog growls once and obediently crosses the room to stand beside his owner, purposefully giving Killua a wide berth.
“You have the right idea,” Killua whispers to Ranger. “Tell them, make them go.”
The family makes quick work of settling into the house. They don’t have enough furniture to fill its multitudes of empty rooms and the husband isn’t around a lot of the time, but suddenly the house is filled with children’s laughter and the smell of home-cooked meals.
Despite the cheerful demeanor of the family, each day that passes fills Killua with more and more anxiety. None of his lesser tricks have worked to scare them off, they’re either too stupid to notice him or are simply out of better options. It’s been years since the last family, so Killua can guess that behind the smart navy suit and the red lipstick, much like all the others, these people have nothing left.
Every slammed or mysteriously opening door is shrugged off as shoddy air circulation. The things that have gone missing or fallen off of shelves are attributed to the pet or careless play. He’s even pestered the dog, blocking his path and making him bristle, but each time he is simply put into the yard and the situation is forgotten.
He keeps the basement door locked at all times, which is something that has become the family’s new favorite pastime to work around. Every key they have been given by the realtor has failed and the crowbar they tried when they ran out of other options bent in half. Killua doesn’t understand how this doesn’t deter them, they are even more hellbent to find the mysterious key to unlock the secret door with each failed attempt to get inside.
But Killua can’t have them unlocking that door. Behind that door is where the root of the house’s evil stems from--a dark, sinister energy leftover from when he was still alive… But these are memories he would rather leave in the darkness, so he will try his damndest to keep them from stumbling around in the place of his nightmares.
Still, though, the family is unbothered. They are, of course, a little annoyed at the mystery behind the basement door; the husband is worried there may be rot in the cellar and the wife is afraid of the kids getting hurt should they unlock the door when nobody’s looking. Neither of them are wrong, entirely.
So, Killua ups the ante.
He begins knocking on windows in the middle of the night. He turns the crucifix they’ve hung above the mantle upside down like he’d read in a book once. He tugs at blankets and pulls the dog’s tail and still the family shrugs it off.
He tries a little harder.
The husband is plagued by vivid nightmares, scenes of his perfect family being taken, tied up, and tortured now fill his mind as he sleeps. The wife feels scorching pains on her back beneath her nightdress and scrubs away her own blood when she does the laundry. The daughter wakes in the dead of night, paralyzed, with a heavy pressure on her chest, and only finds her doll splayed on top of her. The son complains of sore wrists and angry red marks that appear all over his body.
And still, to Killua’s profound agony and disbelief, they refuse to leave. He watches from the balcony as a priest comes to bless the house and “exorcise” whatever demons or spirits he believes to be causing all the terror. Killua has lost count of the number of times he’s been exorcised, well-versed by now with the scripture readings and terrible-smelling incense that the priests use. He knows that these rituals are performed more so to bring peace of mind to those that call on them rather than to actually solve the issue.
He feels bad about this, he really does. He wishes they’d just take the many, many hints he’s been dropping and leave. Seal up the entrance and make sure nobody ever comes back to this evil, wretched house. But for some god-forsaken reason--he is sure the husband is a class-A idiot by now--they just won’t go.
Killua is simply out of ideas. He can think of no other ghostly trick that can make them leave short of actually killing someone, which is something he absolutely refuses to actually do.
He is reminded one evening, watching the husband try to pick the lock on the basement door for the umpteenth time, that he does still have one card up his sleeve. A terrible card, a joker with a murderous smile. He wrestles with his conscience as he decides what to do, ultimately giving in to the fear that lives within his heart as he lets the lock click softly.
Killua flinches at the bellowing whoop the husband lets out. “Don’t be so excited about this,” he pleads. The moment the door swings open, Killua’s mind is flooded by his worst memories, his most painful moments. He steps into the basement ahead of the husband and is absolutely stricken with fear--despite his hazy memories, he knows, in chilling detail, what happens in this basement.
The illusion that sprawls out before them is enough to shake Killua to his core. He’s fundamentally aware that this is his own doing, that this is a projection of those memories he keeps locked away so far in the recesses of his mind, but he still feels it all as raw and real as if he were transported back to his childhood.
The door slams shut behind them both, engulfing the room in complete darkness as Killua finishes crafting the illusion. The husband, simple as he is, pays no mind to the door and begins to feel around for a light switch or a breaker box, cursing as he hits his head on low beams. He kicks something that clatters and stoops down to feel at the ground, falling silent as cool, damp chains greet his fingertips.
A dim light begins to glow across the room, beckoning the husband to come closer, to come toward the comforting light. He does, of course, and is spirited away into a room with a single flickering torch and more chains hanging from the ceiling.
“You’ve finally returned home, Kil.” A voice echoes through the room. The husband is visibly sweating, eyes darting across the room in search of the owner of the voice. “You’ve been a terrible, ungrateful child.”
Killua has chosen a particularly painful memory, unable to control his fear now that he’s started.
The scene shifts. The husband is now hanging from his wrists in the middle of the room. A tall figure stands just out of sight, tucked neatly away in the dancing shadows cast by the torch, but the whip they hold in one hand trails a little too close for comfort. Killua closes his eyes, ready for what comes next, and tries to control his fear and tune out the horrible sounds the husband is making. He feels every hit, every gash that oozes blood, and suffers along with the husband as though he were the one hanging from the ceiling this time.
A soft voice, that of a little girl, breaks through his ink-black fear. Enough. Let him go.
At once Killua’s eyes snap open and the illusion is undone, the husband is dropped unceremoniously in a heap on the ground. He wastes no time, running to the door and up the stairs, screaming wildly. Killua lags behind, guilt consuming him as he listens to the family’s confused, then horrified, reactions to the husband’s theatrics.
He had to, he tells himself. There was nothing more he could’ve done to convey the evil that is this house.
Killua watches from the balcony as they drive off into the misty morning. The sun is starting to come up but the day is cloudy and grey, trapping the light of the sun behind a thick shroud, as it will for the rest of the rainy season. He is alone and that’s okay, because that’s how this house is meant to be. Empty, save for the ghost trapped within its walls.
Gon glances at the envelope that sits in the passenger seat as he pulls into the parking lot of a small cafe. The envelope--a mission from his father--contains a letter, a map, and a set of skeleton keys that look like they’d belong to a haunted house. Which, he supposes, is the whole point.
His father, the great ghost hunter Ging Freecss, has sent him to Padokea with a mission to investigate a house that nobody’s been able to stay at for decades. It stands alone at the top of a winding mountain that overlooks the town below it, separate in both distance and time.
They say there’s been instances of the classic poltergeist activity: things moving, doors slamming, dogs staring at walls with their hackles raised. That’s not why he’s here though. The last residents of the house were reported to have been driven out in the earliest hours of the morning after the man of the house had been chained and tortured by a dark figure in the basement. A basement that nobody has been able to enter before, or since. It’s been thirty years since then, and the house has remained empty all this time.
Gon has never really believed in ghosts in the same way that the people around him have. He thinks that people do have spirits and that they must go somewhere when they die, but he can’t find it within himself to believe that someone would stay behind and purposefully cause trouble, or even suffering, once they’ve died. He does believe in his father, though, despite his absence and the lack of any real relationship with him, though sometimes he thinks Ging is the ghost, and what he studies are the real people.
Either way, when he received a letter with the Freecss watermark sending him to investigate the Zoldyck Mansion, Gon couldn’t get his car to start fast enough. Any opportunity to prove his worth to Ging is a good one, and quite frankly he was getting a little bored of his hometown. He wants an adventure, and this is probably the biggest one he’ll ever get.
Ging had written in his letter a warning: Don’t stop in town to ask for directions or mention the Zoldyck Mansion. Apparently, the house’s history precedes it because nobody in the town at the foot of Kukuroo Mountain is willing to talk about it or takes kindly to strangers who do.
Well, he just won’t ask for directions then! He already has the map, and it’s kind of hard to miss the mountain looming over the town itself, so he won’t even need to mention where he’s going. He’s just passing through. Stopping in for some company, and maybe some coffee because he’s been driving for way too long. The heat radiating off his car indicates that it probably wouldn’t make it up the mountain at this rate anyway, so it’s time they both take a break before the final climb up to the house.
A bell jingles overhead as he steps through the doorway, the comforting smell of coffee and baked goods wrapping him in a soft hug. He’s never been one for sweets, but he’ll never say no to a good cup of coffee.
He finds himself seated at a small table in the corner of the room that affords him a good view of the rest of the cafe. It’s not really bustling, but he can’t call it deserted either. There’s a tall man with glasses at the register that sees him and waves a hand to let him know he’ll be with him soon. A blonde works behind the counter, shiny red earrings dangling from their earlobes as they dust cinnamon atop a warm drink. Across the room, there is a thin man with dark hair and a wrinkled shirt speaking quietly with a kid who can’t look much older than he is right now. A young woman in a frilly pink dress sips her drink in a window seat.
From Ging’s letter and the brief view he’d gotten of the town driving in, he’d formed an idea in his head of what the town at the foot of the mountain would be like. Gon is a little surprised at how mundane it all is. Ging had made it sound like the town would be inhabited by few people with shifty eyes and a nervous demeanor. He’d imagined, pulling up to the cafe, that the lighting would be dingy and there would be fake pies covered in dust in the display case. Driving through the town to get here he’d seen few cars and even fewer houses, so he’d assumed the town itself would be, well, a ghost town.
“What can I do you for?” Gon looks up abruptly from the woman across the room and his eyes land on the man with the glasses, who smiles warmly down at him. He quickly scans the menu card that’s propped up beside a vase that holds a small bundle of white hydrangeas and asks for something simple. Before he can make even an ounce of conversation, the man is back behind the counter, murmuring his order to the blonde with the earrings in a way that seems too intimate for him to be watching. He peels his eyes away from them with a slight blush.
As he waits, he watches. Too quiet for Gon to hear, the man with the glasses speaks amiably with the man that wears the rumpled shirt as he pays. He wonders if his status as an outsider bars him from making such conversation too. The young woman still hasn’t moved, she’s flipping through a magazine and glancing out the window periodically, as though she’s watching for something.
“Leorio!”
Once more, Gon has his attention sharply re-tuned from the dainty pink bows on the young woman’s dress to the man with the glasses, who is looking sheepishly at the blonde whose eyes themselves seem to match their earrings. A trick of the light, he’s sure. So that must be his name.
“Sorry, sorry,” Leorio mumbles, waving goodbye to the rumpled shirt and reaching to grab what Gon assumes must be his drink. He smiles when he sees he’s right and takes the mug from Leorio’s big hands.
“Your name’s Leorio?” He inhales the deep, rich aroma of his coffee and instantly feels more awake. “I’m Gon.” A hand reaches down gingerly to shake his own, cautious yet friendly.
“Sourpuss behind the counter is Kurapika,” Leorio says with a wink toward the blonde. “Don’t see too many folks from out of town around here, I hope you’re just passing through.” There’s a clatter from where Kurapika stands, and Gon can see them watching intently from behind the counter. He can’t mistake it now, meeting those eyes--they’re bright red as they land on him. He shifts his gaze back to Leorio’s stubble, curious to see how much information he can get from this man without being blatantly obvious about what he’s up to.
“I might be,” he says noncommittally. “What can you tell me about this place?”
Leorio’s eyes dart around the room. “Only that people never come here, and those lucky enough to get out do it as soon as they can.” Gon takes a sip of his drink, it’s heavenly. “‘Pika and I have been saving up for years but… I think we’re stuck here.”
“Stuck?” Gon asks, eyes wide with curiosity. “But it seems like such a nice place to live, with the trees and the view of the mountain--” He’s cut off by a second, louder clatter of dishes and Leorio takes that as his cue to mumble a quick apology and retreat back behind the counter. If Gon didn’t know any better, he’d say they were hiding something.
He looks back up at the young woman and sees her poking her head from behind her magazine, something about gemstones but with a scantily clad man on the cover. She quickly hides back behind her reading, like an ostrich. Yeah, the residents of this town all remind him of ostriches, hiding their eyes and avoiding discomfort by simply not seeing it.
Oh well.
He finishes his drink and deposits money on the table. He leaves enough to cover the drink and over-tips, feeling a little bad about how simply his presence in the cafe has caused everyone to be on edge.
Gon wasn’t going to ask about the house, or about the ghosts, but he really did want to learn a little more about the place he’ll be spending his summer. He knows he’s signed up to essentially spend three months locked away in a house by himself, but it still would’ve been nice to have a friendly face at the base of the mountain.
Gon doesn’t turn off the engine when he steps out of his car to open the giant iron gate that guards the house. He knows that if he does, he’s trudging the rest of the way up the driveway and returning to push the car once it’s cooled off.
The chain on the gate is rusted, much like the rest of the structure, but it seems sturdy and durable. The lock groans as he turns one of the three skeleton keys he’s been given and he’s pleased that he guessed right on the first try. The gate also groans, and Gon chuckles.
“Is this the ghost trying to tell me to turn back now?” he says with a soft smile. He wipes the rust and lichen that have rubbed off on his hands onto his pants and remembers he should be respectful. “I’m not here to make fun of you, I just want to get to know you.”
His car complains all the way up the rest of the driveway but, thankfully, Gon makes it to the house in one piece.
Gon can’t help but stare up at the looming house and let out a low whistle, the rumors about the outward appearance of it were all true. The gravel driveway has weeds growing from every crevice between the rocks, and the grass and hedges that cover the grounds have been left to grow wild and unruly.
The house itself doesn’t look as haunted as he had expected. There are some broken windows and the elegant front door has deep gashes in the dark wood, but to him, it just looks like what was once an elegant, stately home. Gon steps up to the dirty porch to find that the gashes are graffiti carved into the door, nasty words about how the house is evil and cursed. He rubs his thumb over the words, “It can’t be that bad.”
He’ll admit it, the moment he pried open the grand gate, he felt an overwhelming sense of sadness rush over him, as if he’d stepped through some invisible barrier. He can’t help but feel the same pang in his chest as he sees the words on the door and takes in the whole of the house as it stands, alone, in ruin.
Curiously, the only thing that looks well taken care of is a beautiful begonia plant that sits beside the door in a stone pot. It’s only the beginning of summer, but Gon can already see buds popping up between the leaves and knows it’s only a matter of time before the plant is fully blooming. He carefully rubs a leaf between his thumb and forefinger, admiring it before turning his attention back to the door.
Gon pulls out the keyring again, wondering which one might unlock the house and begin his haunted adventure. He thumbs past the key that he used for the gate and confidently tries the most ornate one, letting out a little cheer when it clicks almost instantly. He takes half a step back when the door begins to open on its own, without his hand ever turning the knob.
“I’m coming in,” he calls softly, poking his head through the doorway before fully stepping in. He wants to at least give whoever might be inside a warning, though he assumes if there are any spirits here, that they’ve already seen him. His aunt raised him to be nothing if not polite, though, so he calls out all the same. “You have a lovely home!”
His heart is beating a little faster and his brain is working overtime to decide if it was a ghost that opened the door for him or if it was just that the lock was the only thing keeping it shut, so it opened once it was let free. Either way, he passes through the doorway and lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
The entryway is exactly as he would have expected from the way the house looks from the outside, everything looks expensive and the space exudes a regal aura. There’s a massive main staircase that almost swallows him whole, its presence enough to pull Gon toward it unconsciously. He places a hand on the ornately carved banister, craning his neck to look up at the chandelier that hangs from the ceiling and the great, sweeping arches of the dark trim that outlines the whole space.
He sees what could have been a shadow, or a trick of the light, out of the corner of his eye behind him.
“Hello?” he calls, excited that he might already be seeing a real ghost at the same time that he’s a little unsettled that there might really, actually be a spirit dwelling inside this mansion. “Is anyone there?” As quickly as he’d registered the shadow, it’s gone. It’s enough to make him wonder if he’s seen it at all, or if Ging’s letter and the tight-lipped barista have gotten his hopes up a little too high.
“That’s fine,” he says, running a finger down the banister to examine the dust, “you can stay hidden until you feel comfortable. I’m not going anywhere.” He really wants whoever is here, if there’s anyone at all, to grow to trust him and to be his friend. He thinks it’s incredibly lonely up here, isolated from town and any other living soul, so he can imagine if there were to be a ghost here, that it hasn’t seen people in forever. That it hasn’t had a friend in far too long.
He waits a moment, hoping for some other signs of life (or lack thereof) before he turns back to the entrance to bring in his suitcase and start settling in. Gon throws back his head and laughs the moment he turns around, finding with glee that the front door has quietly closed behind him as he stood and admired the staircase.
“Incredible,” he breathes, walking forward to place a flat palm against the wood. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to feel, but he presses his hand and forehead against the sturdy door and waits, focusing wholly on what’s in front of him and what could be floating nearby. He lets out another chuckle. “It’s not going to be this easy, is it?” he calls out to the person who, by now, he’s sure is listening.
Gon pulls the door back open swiftly and light floods the entrance, he’s really looking forward to getting to know the spirit responsible for all the scary stories surrounding this place. He knows he should probably be a little more worried, but his father wouldn’t have sent him here if it were truly that dangerous, right?
He takes another glance at the whole of the house, standing next to his shitty car as he takes in the grandeur of the thing. He notices something he hadn’t before, a little balcony nestled at the front of the second floor, beneath two large windows he assumes belong to the attic. It looks cozy and inviting, a little pocket of peace in the center of the foreboding face of the house. It almost looks like it could be a smile, had he not already assigned the anthropomorphic role of the mouth to the front door. He smiles, it’s the nose of the house. A cute little button of a feature that he can’t wait to explore.