#Deadbonessinderellaton

[ro-visiting-the-bureau]

So, You Summoned the Ghosts of Your Ancestors... - TCR Secret Santa 2019

@deadbonessinderhellaton, I was your Secret Santa this year! I decided to go for your prompt “Ghosts are like relatives. Once you let them in, they never leave.” Enjoy, and a very Merry Christmas to you!

Haru didn’t quite burst through the door of the cafe, but she did push it harder than she usually would and was through it before it open all the way. She swiveled her head and spotted Hiromi sitting at a table by the cafe’s fake fireplace, a mug of hot chocolate cradled in her hands. The strawberry blonde looked up as Haru approached and smiled. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

“You left me a message saying ‘We screwed up’ and asked to meet me here asap,” Haru said, taking off her gloves, scarf and hat as a waitress came over to take her order. He asked for a hot chocolate and a small plate of pastries and then turned back to Hiromi when she left. “What happened?”

“Well, you know Tsuge and I have been clearing out his grandmother’s old house so we can move in after the wedding.” Hiromi played with the sapphire engagement ring on her hand. “We found a old journal in the attic, and flipped through it. It was written by Tsuge’s great-great grandfather, and he was a big paranormal-supernatural nut. Wrote down all these rituals that supposedly let you communicate with the dead.”

Haru didn’t need to hear another word to know exactly where this was going. She rested her elbows on the table and put her head in her hands. “You didn’t…”

“Well, we didn’t think they were really real, and Tsuge thought it’d be funny to try it.”

“You’re best friends with a paranormal investigator and you didn’t think there was a chance it was real?” Haru shot Hiromi a glare, making her curl up a bit and give a weak smile. 

“Well…”

Haru sighed and folded her arms on the table. “What happened?”

“Well, we found one that was supposed to bring up a old homeowner, and figured, ��you know what, let’s see if we can learn home more history about this place that Grandma didn’t know’. So we grabbed some old playground chalk, drew one of the sigils on the ground, lit some candles…

~

“Is that the right shape?” Tsuge asked, kneeling over the circle and checking the sigil drawn on the inside.

“I think so,” Hiromi said, looking from the book to the shape. IT was mostly straight lines, with a few circles, and had particular instruction on how to draw it. Next to her was a old compass and a motley collection of candles, from from the same trunk as the book and compass, the rest dug out from closets and cabinets in the house. “Do you think it’ll be effected by us using the scented candles?”

“I’m not running out to grab tea lights in this weather.” He pointed out the window, where the snow was flying, not storming, but enough to encourage people to stay indoors unless you had to go out, or were a kid wanting to play. “Besides, it’s not like it will actually do anything.”

“Yeah, guess you’re right.” Hiromi shrugged and picked up the compass, holding it over the center of the circle. She took the two white ritual candles and put them at the north and east-northeast positions, which were the most important for the communication aspect they were looking for. Then they placed a small cinnamon candle at southeast, a large pine candle at south west, and a rose-scented tea light at west-northwest. Then Tsuge struck a match and used it to light a stick of incense, which he then used to light the candles in the same order they had been placed, before blowing it out and placing it in the center of the circle with a stand. He and Hiromi stood on opposite sides of the circle, holding the book in both hands over the center of the circle. Tsuge cleared his throat and started to speak. 

“Mortuus pacificus invocabo. Siquid erit vobis dicerem nobiscum hac nocte nos sacri.” His pronunciation was not too bad, but any Ancient Romans who might have heard it would find his accent horribly thick and-

( “Well, it wasn’t your first mistake, but your biggest is that you never do an incantation without practicing the correct pronunciation until you can be clearly understood. You’re lucky you didn’t summon a demon with that.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure…” )

The couple watched in shock as the ritual circles actually began to glow, a blue-white light that started softly, then grew until it almost hurt to look at. Then a breeze started tickling their ankles, flowing into the center of the circle. Streams of light spun with the breeze, creating a vortex over the sigil. Hiromi gasped as it started to rise and grow up, spinning faster and faster and it climbed past their knees, and almost to their waists. Tsuge quickly read the book, and recited the next line of the spell. “Mortuus: venite, et locutus est ad nos, sic fiat semper.”

The vortex stopped growing, but increased in speed, it’s light almost blinding. Then a low note, separate from the whipping wind, started to grow, louder and louder, until it was recognizable as a scream. Another joined it, soft and then louder, then another, and another, until the strident calls was so loud it was hurting their ears. Then, something slingshotted out of the vortex, just missing Tsuge’s nose, then another buzzed Hiromi’s ear, and more flew out around them and the room before impacting the walls and seeming to disappear. The vortex slowly lost power and sank down to the floor, sending out one last whip of wind which blew out the candles before disappearing completely, and the glow dimmed to nothing. 

Hiromi and Tsuge stared at each other for a long moment, before stepping back and letting the book fall to the floor. 

"That was…" Tsuge trailed off, completely flabergasted. 

"It worked. That was an actual spell." Hiromi raised her hands to her face. "Harry is gonna be so mad." ( "You're darn right I'm mad!" ) "She always says this is not something to take lightly."

"Hey now," Tsuge said, coming over and placing his hands on her arms and rubbing them soothingly. "Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe it's Grandpa, and he'll go away once we have a pleasant conversation with him."

Hiromi sighed and was about to speak when a man's voice behind her cut her off. "Kami, what are you wearing!?"

Hiromi and Tsuge turned and saw a figure by the wall. It was a man, maybe in his mid fifties, hair in a topknot and wearing an old fashioned kimono. "This is not a bathhouse, put some clothes on!"

Hiromi looked down at her sweater and jeans that covered her from neck to wrist and ankle, and then Tsuge's t-shirt and jeans (he always ran warmer than her). They were even wearing socks, so you couldn't see their feet. "Um, sorry, but these are perfectly modest clothes for these days. Can I ask your name, honored ancestor?"

"Modest indeed,” the ghost huffed, coming into the room. “I am Kaneda Fujimaro, and these are the lands of my family. We have lived here for over a hundred years, and I now ask what you are doing here?”

“Can’t you see, you old man,” a new voice said, and a woman came through the wall, maybe a few years younger than Fujimaro, holding a cane, and wearing the same style of kimono. “They’re obviously our descendants, or can you not see your jaw on that young man’s face?”

“Of course I can see it, woman, I’m not blind!” 

“Well, you could have fooled me.” The woman floated - actually floated ( “Well of course she did, she’s a ghost!” ) - over to the couple, and reached a hand to touch Tsuge’s face. Tsuge flinched, but turned his head as the woman directed him to, and she gave him a critical eye. 

“Yes, you have my husbands jaw, but these cheekbones… they look just like the Yasui family. And I had hoped Naozane was not fool enough to go through with that betrothal.” She patted his cheek and stepped back.

“Now see here, Etsuko” Fujimaro said, “Yasui Sozui was a fine man, and his son was just like him.”

“A fine thief, you mean,” Etsuko turned, raising her cane a little at her husband. “The whole village knows he only got to rich from those ‘trips’ he took to Edo and yet no one has ever gotten a straight answer as to what he did there.”

“A man’s financials are not the business of other men.”

“They are when your granddaughter will marry into that man’s family!” 

Etsuko and Fujimaro started bickering, and Hiromi and Tsuge glanced at each other, growing more uncomfortable and awkward by the second. The movement in the doorway caught Hiromi’s eye, and she looked to see another ghost, a younger man maybe in his thirties, waving from the doorway. He made a “come here” motion, and with the only other option being to remain next to the old couple until they remembered they had an audience, the young couple quickly did so. 

Once they were in the other room - the younger ghost having moved back to give them room to enter - the ghost breathed a sigh of relief. “I am so sorry you had to deal with my grandparent’s first. They love each other, and the family, but in their old age they constantly got on each other’s nerves. Or at least, I was told by my father, I was only a child when they both died.”

“And who was your father, honorable ancestor?” Tsuge asked. 

“Yasui Taroemon, his father was Yasui Sozui. I am Yasui Norio.” He turned and a woman about his age seemed to just appear at his elbow. “And this is my wife, Kaneda Hisae. We’re your… four times  great-grandparents?”

“Six times,” Hisae said, and when she smiled, Hiromi could see her fiance in it. “Tetsuo told us he’d had a newborn great-grandson the last time we talked. Tsuge, right?”

“Y-Yes, Nashito Tsuge. And this is my fiance, Takanori Hiromi.” He and Hiromi both bowed, and Norio and Hisae bowed back. 

“It is lovely to meet you both,” Norio said. “Though it could have been under better circumstances.”

“I’ll say,” Hiromi said. “You two don’t seem surprised by this.”

“Oh, we’ve done this plenty of times,” Hisae said. “Tsuge’s great grandfather Kentaro loved to talk with us all the time. We had several visits with him, sharing family stories and such. He wrote quite a lot of them down, they should all be in his journals.”

“Mother always wondered about that,” Tsuge said. “She and everyone else assumed he was transcribing for another family, but kept the journals for some reason.”

“Well, you see, when our son Sotan was a baby, we were all here visiting my family when a fire broke out. We were all trapped, but we managed to hand Sotan to his sister and the two managed to escape. Unfortunately, Naoko died from her burns a few days later, and Sotan was adopted by a lovely couple who you know as your ancestors.”

Hiromi suddenly remembered. “Wait, there are four of you here right now, you two, Etsuko and Fijumaro. But I know at least five ghosts were thrown past me from the vortex, and more past Tusge so where are they?”

“Scattered over the neighborhood, probably,” Norio said. “Most of this valley used to belong to either the Yasui or Kaneda families, so they could appear anywhere on the lands. But they’ll all come back here soon, since this is where the summoning happened.” He narrowed his gaze. “Though with how you messed it up, I don’t know the state they’ll be in. The ritual is supposed to only bring back those who were at peace when they died, like Hisae and I, but the different candles might have causes a change to it. They might even be stuck here.”

Hiromi and Tsuge paled at the thought of over a dozen potentially angry ghosts appearing in the house they were going to move into, and the couple looked to each other. 

“Call Haru.” 

“Right.”

~

“...And here we are,” Hiromi said, giving a very strained smile. “Tsuge is trying to hold down the fort with Norio and Hisae, but I don’t know how well that’s going.”

Haru pinched the bridge of her nose between her hands, taking a deep breath. “Okay, this is going to be way too big a job for just me. I need to call in the whole team.”

Hiromi’s eyes widened. “You think it’s that bad?” 

“Ghosts are like relatives, Hiromi. Once you let them in, they never leave. And you have the unfortunate case of them being actual relatives.” Haru drained the last of her hot chocolate and stood, putting her coat back on. “Come on. You’re gonna be the one to explain to Baron why we need to pull Sephie and Louise off the Osaki case.”

Hiromi gulped, and Haru felt a little pity for her best friend, but it was overruled by irritation. This was not how she wanted to spend her winter vacation.