Chapter Text
The wind spit the rain harshly at Geto’s face. The icy droplets stung his skin as he looked out over the edge of the cliff. The weather did nothing to deter his gaze from where it was fixated on the sea below him, the waves smashing themselves over and over again against the rock, sending sediment scurrying down the cliff side.
The sun had dipped below the horizon over an hour ago, any previous traces of light were long gone. Out here, there were no street lamps to illuminate the waters, no passing headlights to shine a glow, however brief, on the blanket of blue, almost black, that Geto stood before.
He watched as the lamp he’d set set earlier switched on at exactly 9 o’clock, now that the sun had fully gone down. It shone bright from the lighthouse windows, stretching out over the sea. Rocks that had previously been cast in darkness now reflected the white stream of light looming over them.
Geto turned back to the sea, now that he had seen the light turn on at the time it was supposed to. He took a moment before heading back in, ruminating under the lighthouse glow. These were his favourite times during the day, where everything was silent, working as it was supposed to, and no on else was around. Granted, he was alone most of the day, barring the times he ventured into the small coastal town nearby to replenish supplies, or carry out maintenance for the small building that stored the lamp. Today, it had been getting materials to replace the floorboards that kept breaking despite Geto making an active effort to avoid stepping on those ones any more.
It was different though, being alone at night compared to being alone in the day. In the night, Geto didn’t feel like he was pretending to be alone. Realistically, he had the option of socialising as much as he wanted to during the day. In the night, however, he was actually alone. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t talk to the people who lived nearby, couldn’t pet the cats that often wandered past during the day, couldn’t pick up the phone just to hear another human voice. No, at night he was utterly, completely in solitude. It was just him and the sea, like he wanted.
Geto had to wake every two hours to ensure the light was still working, and no ship had sailed into the rocks. Every time he woke he would take another moment to look out at the sea, appreciating the quiet again before the sun rose.
He hated when the sun rose, reminding him that there was another day to live, that society was brought back to life for the next 12 hours. It never stopped. Over and over again, he was alone and then he wasn’t. It was like a kind of addiction, almost. He experienced the overwhelming sensation, the calm in his mind from complete isolation. Then it was over, and he would crave the darkness again the whole time the sun was up, and when he was in the peaceful solitude he would fear the moment the sun began to show its face.
The cycle would drive him insane if he wasn’t so preoccupied with lighthouse maintenance, a role he chose specifically so that he wouldn’t have to be reminded of how sociable he was expected to be. How he should be interacting with people every day, how he was meant to enjoy conversations instead of suffering through them and internally pleading with everyone else to not acknowledge him.
Geto eventually turned in, breaking hos gaze from the sea, before his clothes were drenched through completely. He trudged up the circular staircase towards the bedroom tucked into the side of the upstairs floor. He left wet footprints behind, his dark hair dripping down his back, the droplets eventually falling onto the floorboards under his soaked shoes. He pulled the wet items off, dropping them in a pile by the door that he would take care of tomorrow. He only bothered drying his hair, if only to not succumb to a cold the following day.
Once the dark mop of his hair had been carefully dried by a towel, Geto climbed into his bed, setting the alarm for two hours later. As usual, the alarm was useless, seeing as Geto took more than 2 hours to fall asleep anyway. He only realised it had been that long when once again, the alarm clock beside his bed began ringing, rocking on its legs and shaking the face of the clock. He reached without looking, pressing the red button down so the thing shut up. He wondered when the alarm clock would finally wake him up the first time he set it, seeing as it never had yet.
Geto pulled himself out of bed, easily, since he hadn’t stopped being conscious since he lay down. He hadn’t bothered to dress earlier, only now pulling on a pair of loose trousers and some rumpled shirt out of the bottom of his wardrobe. Stepping into the lantern room, he ensured the light was still working correctly, exactly as it had been two hours ago, to prevent any ships winding up caught in the rocks. Geto sat himself down at the ledge by the window, jotting down the weather and the condition of the light. Once again, he enjoyed the peaceful moment of silence, well what should have been peaceful.
Lately, the presence of nothing hadn’t been as comforting as it once was. Geto wasn’t able to venture outside of his head and escape from his thoughts as easily as he usually did. There were two possible explanations for why this was. One was that his thoughts had grown too quick and panicked that even the suffocating silence that darkness provided him with could no longer hold. Or, he wasn’t actually alone and the reason for the disturbance in his peace was nothing to do with him at all.
It was only paranoia, Geto realistically knew that. He wasn’t so far gone yet to believe that someone was hiding out in his lighthouse and that was the reason why he didn’t feel as comforted as usual. He locked the doors and windows every night, and would know if someone came within 1 km of the place, let alone inside of it. Most likely it was just a rat that had inhabited a small dark corner of the building, or a bird that was building its nest on the ledge away from the light, since Geto couldn’t actually differentiate the presence of animals and people. All he knew was that something was in his lighthouse that hadn’t been there before, hopefully, or his respite from life would be cut short now that the darkness was not enough to slow his mind down.
It wasn’t a sound that gave away the fact he was no longer alone, it was the way he began to second guess his movements as he did whenever someone paid attention to him, whenever they acknowledged him as a real, living, breathing human being. Geto felt the presence in the same way that someone feels someone else’s gaze on the back of their head, or someone just about to enter a room so they stop whatever they’d been doing, no matter how innocent it had been.
Geto tugged on the dark strands of his hair, still damp from when he was standing out in the rain. He lifted his gaze from the journal, ink blots now staining the pages from where he’d been pressing his pen without actually writing anything. Geto left the book open and placed it down on the ledge he’d occupied, now getting up to try and get rid of whatever animal was likely downstairs.
Geto lit one of the matches he kept by his bedside, not wanting to waste his torch on getting rid of what was likely a rat. He used it to light the small candle that he also kept around and held it before him, slowly examining every corner of the upstairs. After a thorough inspection, Geto concluded there were definitely no rodents on this floor. He was also certain he’d be able to hear them squeaking when he moved closer, so whatever it was must be downstairs.
Making sure to avoid the particularly annoying floorboard that somehow came loose every night (also the first place he’d checked for mice or rats), Geto stepped carefully down the circular staircase, winding through the centre of the lighthouse. The flame flickered, casting a dim glow around where Geto stood. The air was colder down here, sending a shiver straight through him when he reached the last step on the stairs. Geto didn’t really think any part of his house should be cold this late in August, even if it had been dark outside for quite some time.
Geto brushed it off, continuing through the lighthouse, the small kitchen area he frequented very little, the study tucked in the corner. After another deep search, all Geto found was a small spider he carefully released back outside. He felt no different after it was gone, though. There was still something here. If Geto wasn’t practically frozen, every hair standing on his body and trembling from how damn cold it was, he would’ve stayed down here and waited for something to appear or scurry out of whatever hole it was hiding in.
Geto gave up and retreated back upstairs, sighing in relief once he laid himself down in the warm bed and the door was shut behind him, keeping that awful draught out. He’d investigate tomorrow, in between duties or something. He had to at least try to get another 2 hours of sleep before the clock rang again to check the light. Geto let the candle burn by his bed, hoping it would heat up the room slightly while he was asleep.
***
The next morning, Geto woke before sunrise once again to turn off the light and clean the windows surrounding the lantern room. The first thing he noticed when he went down the spiral stairs was that the chill that had followed him the previous night was entirely gone, which didn’t make any sense considering it was still dark as it was last night. Geto sighed, rubbing his forehead and leaning down to press his hand over the floorboards, trying to detect if there was some kind of draught which would explain it. Finding nothing, he pushed himself back up and checked the floorboard that always seemed to break nowadays. Just as he thought, the board was broken again, having come loose. Geto gave up on fixing it, if it was going to keep breaking every night, he wasn’t going to keep spending time replacing it.
Geto knew there wasn’t any food in the kitchen, considering he didn’t like to eat and preferred to just buy something from the seaside town a 30 minute walk away. The journey gave him a chance to clear his head, especially if he went early when he didn’t have to risk bumping into anyone apart from the people who worked at the bakeries and cafes that he frequented.
After a few hours, once the shops had opened, Geto began the walk from his lighthouse to the small coastal town. It seemed busier than usual when he arrived, it wasn’t that surprising considering it was a Saturday, but it was enough to take Geto a little off guard. He kept his head down, not wanting to bump into anyone or interact more than he already had to. He moved through the people dawdling on the street, into the bakery he often frequented where he ordered his usual loaf of milk bread and a green tea to go, with one sugar.
Geto sipped on the hot tea as he began to walk back towards his lighthouse. It was still crowded out, people gathering in groups along the pavements and sharing whispers, odd. Being amongst all the people, he had no choice but to hear their muttered complaints as he moved through them. Geto heard the whispered discussions of the political happenings in Japan he always had for the duration of his life. Being born right between world war 1 and 2 resulted in that kind of upbringing so he was used to ignoring it, mostly.
Something he heard, though, did catch his attention, making him stop still in the street. He pretended to look at the cover of newspapers, ignoring their headlines, while he eavesdropped on the conversation two women were having beside him. Geto could only hear glimpses, but it was enough.
“Did you hear she went missing?”… “I heard she vanished completely”… “I knew we shouldn’t have come here” … “This place always had an off feeling.”
This wasn’t the first time Geto had overheard something like that, someone going missing. Maybe it should’ve concerned him the first time, but this time he knew exactly who they were talking about. There was a young woman who’d come to speak to Geto a week earlier, taking him a little off guard and somewhat irritated as he didn’t particularly like anyone coming up to him. He didn’t think much of it at the time, assuming she was just paranoid and one of those people who relied on superstitious nonsense like astrology and card readings.
The woman (he didn’t remember her name, something beginning with an S he thought) had approached him as he made the mistake of sitting on a bench in the street rather than going straight back to his lighthouse. She’d been talking about all sorts of odd things that had Geto convinced she was going mad. The woman had clutched his arm, rambling about how uneasy she felt, like someone was watching her, and pleading with Geto to help her. He remembered her claiming she was having all sorts of strange dreams as well, waking and still feeling like someone was choking her, or something like that. Geto had tried to be sympathetic, he really had, but what did this woman expect him to do?
It wasn’t really a surprise that she had decided to approach Geto, since before he’d taken full care of the lighthouse he also worked in the town as a shamanic practitioner when he was really desperate for money. He felt a little guilty scamming people sure, but that was what they were paying for wasn’t it, some kind of solid reassurance from an outside source. Even if that outside source just desperately needed money since a lighthouse was not a very profitable source of business.
Now, he was thinking maybe he should have taken her a little more seriously. He still couldn’t have done anything, but dismissing her as mad or ill was clearly a mistake now she had actually gone missing. Geto really wasn’t one to believe in the spiritual or even paranormal side of things, but overhearing those women’s conversation, and the odd feeling of being watched the past few nights, was enough to make him sweat just a little. Considering the fact that the feeling of being observed had been plaguing his thoughts more intensely lately, maybe it was worth taking the sensation just a little more seriously. He didn’t want to think about it right now, though. Geto decided whatever investigations he was going to have to carry out could at least wait until the evening.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Geto sipped his tea again and retreated back to his lighthouse, shutting himself up in it and distracting himself by performing his routine maintenance.
***
The sun once again sank below the sea line, Geto’s lamp then switching on and illuminating the waters stretching out past the cliff. The moon rose, the stars in the sky blinking awake. Geto took his seat on the ledge in the lantern room. After hours of internal debating, pacing around his study while he considered if he really was someone who believed in the supernatural, he decided that a simple recording of his symptoms wouldn’t do any harm. The journal he used to record weather conditions, ship sightings, was now being used to document Geto’s paranormal investigations. He still didn’t believe in any of this stuff of course, not really. It just seemed like a good idea to at least keep note of the strange experiences all night, if only to realise there was some other more reasonable explanation of why Geto was convinced he was being watched. Like the hallucinations supposedly caused by gas lamps in when they were first brought into use in towns and cities, maybe it was something like that.
Geto leaned back against the cool panes of glass, lifting his gaze to the dark corners of the ceiling, and then down to the broken floorboard.
For the next two hours, nothing happened. Geto watched and waited for anything strange, not that he knew what exactly he should be looking for. It reminded him of something he might do as a kid, watch and wait for ghosts or other mythical creatures, crouched down on the stairs with notepad and pencil. Geto was tempted to just put down the journal and put this nonsense to an end so he could go to sleep. Doing this made him feel like a child again, naive and a little stupid. He almost let the pages flutter shut, hesitant to actually close the journal for some reason, when Geto felt the cold wind from last night hit him again. It felt controlled though, and slower than wind, unlike if someone opened a door and let a draught in. The cold almost felt taunting to Geto’s sleep deprived body.
Playing into it for now, Geto jotted down the occurrence in his journal:
00:06 – cold.
He’d know what he meant, not like anyone else would be looking at this anyway. Geto wouldn’t lie to himself, he couldn’t deny the sudden cold made him feel on edge. Geto leaned back, tilting his head against the glass as the chill enveloped him. He really did doubt that girl’s disappearance had any relation to how he’d been feeling the past few nights. Granted, they both felt they were being watched… but that really was it. Geto wasn’t having any strange dreams, didn’t feel like someone was choking him or coming closer when he wasn’t looking. He was being paranoid, that’s all it was. He was cooped up and the isolation was just making him lose his social reasoning skills. It was natural after all, it was what happened when you didn’t socialise, your body goes into some kind of self preservation mode. Yes, that was definitely what it was. Geto didn’t even know why he’d -
bang
...
Geto’s head snapped to the side, his stomach plummeting for a split second as he jumped in his seat. After realising nothing was actually there, Geto forced himself to breathe in, getting back the oxygen he’d lost. He would be embarrassed at how hard he’d jumped, if he wasn’t more curious to know what made that noise. The lighthouse was small, any sound from the farthest point would always reach him easily. Something had just fallen downstairs, probably, yes, that was definitely it.
After breaking out of his frozen state, Geto clutched the journal in his hands as he forced himself to continue through the lighthouse and down the stairs. Nothing seemed like it was wrong, there was no entity he could see anyway. Geto padded through the kitchen, the small study space and the living room that was so cramped it might as well have been another study.
The wind looked worse from down here, the rain pounding down against the windows. Geto was about to head to the kitchen, to see if a knife he’d forgot to put away had fallen to the floor or something like that, when the exact same noise he’d heard before repeated itself.
bang
Whipping his head around again, Geto looked just in time to see a small rock hit the window.
Oh... it actually was nothing. Just some sediment from the cliff that happened to get caught in the minor storm. Geto breathed out a sigh, and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. He really had got all worked up over absolutely nothing. He couldn’t deny feeling at least a little disappointed, all the adrenaline he’d felt had been for nothing. He needed a tea to calm himself down, or else he’d have no hope of getting through the rest of the night.
Geto prepared his usual tea, popping two sugars in rather than just the one this time. He leaned against the kitchen counter, leaving his journal there, and slowly drank from his mug. His shadow stretched along the hardwood floor of the kitchen, the dim light casting a glow along his features. Sighing, Geto turned around to face the window. The darkness looked back at him, and he could see his own reflection in the glass. His under eyes were even more prominent with the flickering kitchen light directly above him. He really should change that bulb soon.
The noises continued occasionally in the background. Geto stopped paying them any mind, though. Once the storm was over, they would quieten down. He never did stop feeling that invisible gaze on the back of his head, though. As he stood there, eyes fixed on his own reflection, the sensation gradually increased in its intensity. Something was looking closer, staring harder at him.
He straightened subconsciously, and tightened his grip on his mug. The cold that had cocooned him before reappeared, ice rooting him to the spot, freezing his spine and arms where they were.
Geto sucked in a deep breath, his lungs felt they were tightening. He could’ve sworn that door just moved.
Was something moving closer?
Was that noise a very quiet footstep?
Was the thing that just brushed Geto’s hand just his imagination?
He didn’t know when he’d closed his eyes, when he had stopped breathing completely. His body going into lockdown as he felt the cold air breathe by his ear, the ice wrapping around his wrist as his back dug into the kitchen counter. The universe seemed to stop for a single second, Geto becoming trapped in its clutches as movement whirled behind his eyelids, the blur rushing towards him, crashing and making the breath expel from his lungs and his eyes shoot open.
Something moved, before he could see it or gain any sense of what it was, it was gone. Something had been there, though. Geto knew that. He knew at that moment it wasn’t just his mind, his senses were backing him up.
Slowly working the breath back into his lungs, Geto’s grasp on his mug slowly loosened and the feeling came back into his body as the warm air replaced the ice that had been present a moment ago.
Knock.
The mug shattered. Shards of porcelain surrounding his feet and laying jagged on the wooden floor. Geto’s previous effort to gather the air back inside his lungs was futile now it had all left again.
He found himself blindly reaching back for the knife he left on the counter, gripping it tight and moving towards the door before he even realised he’d decided to open it.
He hesitated, his hand reaching out to unlock it. It could just be someone who got caught in the storm, maybe someone who wasn’t aware of how frequent they were in this part of Japan...right, that was probably it. Plus, Geto had his knife. He’d be fine.
Knock. Knock
Geto turned the key, flinging the door open before he had another moment to second guess himself. In his panic, it took a moment for him to register the figure before him.
Maybe, he should’ve been more frightened by the stark white hair and eyes that he felt were almost boring into his soul with how bright they were. This man looked the very depiction of a ghost in human form. Something about him made Geto’s grip loosen slightly on the knife. Maybe it was the way he leaned casually against the doorway, or the grin he showcased Geto while twirling a pair of sunglasses in his hand. The man didn’t seem deterred by Geto’s suspicion or the weapon he had. He stuck his hand out, flashing his teeth at Geto as he introduced himself.
“I’m Satoru Gojo, I believe you have a ghost problem.”