<div class="floatright">(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p121/Mab_faerie/Elliquiy/b36a2cbe-7ec2-4a0f-83c1-80b5a9177b34_zps94ff6f9e.jpg)</div><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: GranthamLight;">Aislin McCarthy<br/>Childrens Room, West Wing<br/>Current Inventory: Messenger Bag, Simple Polaroid Camera, Cell Phone, KeyRing, Wallet, Odd Diary, Notebook and Pens</span></strong><hr/><br/>Rising slowly from her knelt position, with the diary tucked delicately in her bag, Aislin looked around, peering at the impenetrable darkness, straining her eyes as she tried to make sense of exactly where she was and what she was surrounded by.<br/>From the looks of it, she appeared to be located within the confines of a dimly lit room, pitch black save for the bits of light that flooded the room at floor level from the cracks beneath the lone door ahead of her.<br/><br/>To her right was a forgotten dresser, some of its drawers missing and a few of its handles broken off, it was covered in a thick layer of dust and at a glance seemed to to be growing some form of mold along its outer rim. To her left was a small childs bed, with a ratty, moth-eaten blanket tossed over it. In the corner was a folding screen, but it was too dark to make out the pattern on it. Figuring that standing around would be of no use, Aislin moved forward, trying the handle on the door but surprisingly finding it was locked.<br/><br/>"I'm... locked in?" She murmured aloud, rather confused. Did the kimono woman lure her in here just to lock her away? That seemed odd, even for her.<br/>"Maybe I can find something to pry the door open with." She said softly to herself, turning around to look at the dresser and see if there was any weak wooden bits that could be broken off and used to force the door ajar.<br/>Straining her eyes in the dark would be useless if she planned to be able to spot which bit of wood looked weak. Instead, she snagged her camera from her bag and took a few photos, letting the flash of light from the camera light up the dresser for her to see it properly.<br/>Despite it's old appearance, the wood of the dresser looked reasonably undamaged. Could the mold have grown recently? Why wasn't it warping the wood and making it brittle or fragmented? There was no way Aislin would be able to damage solid wood on her own, she didn't have the strength.<br/><br/>As she lowered her camera, a flicker of light not from her own source caught her attention. Something in one of the square spaced where a drawer was missing had reflected the light from her camera. For the brief second it was lit, it had looked long and round, with glinting glass at its tip. Confused, Aislin leaned in close, trying to get a better look.<br/><br/>Reaching one hand out, she picked it up and brought it close to her eyes, to better examine it. Surprised and pleased, she found it to be a small, flower adored flashlight, seemingly something that would belong to a little girl. Pushing the center switch on it upwards, she was even more delighted to find that it still worked! Turning it over in her hands, she found the bottom was engraved with a single word: 'Nishimura'.<br/><br/>"Huh... Nishumura? That sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before?"<br/>Before she had time to think it over, the audible creaking of footsteps on wood sounded nearby, followed by a soft and high pitched laughter that seemingly belonged to a child. The sounds occurred not more than a few feet from where she stood, causing her to turn, startled, her camera going off in her hand and snapping a useless shot of the nearby wall, while she fumbled, trying to properly aiming her flashlight in front of her.<br/><br/>"What was that?" She whispered, the heat of her breath fogging up the now eerily cold air.<br/>The laughter sounded again, this time even closer, the footsteps rushing towards her backside. Instinctively, she whirled around, shining the light on the door now, again finding no one, not even a child, there.<br/><br/>All of a sudden the air around her seemed to still, the flashlight flickered and went out, leaving her alone in the dark, surrounded by maddening silence. As she flicked the flashlights switch off and on again, she felt the panic rising in her chest, squeezing and tightening around her heart and urging her to give in to the fear and anxiety welling up inside her.<br/>In the midst of this, she barely noticed the quiet footsteps on wood, creaking up behind her, or the sway of cold wind against the fabric of her clothes, hinting that something sinister was near.<br/><br/>The first tug on her jacket sleeve made her inhale sharply, frozen in place, to terrified to even look down.<br/><br/>The tug that followed it, more insistent than the last, was enough to jolt her back to reality.<br/><br/>Pulling her arm away, Aislin spun sharply, her back to the door once more, to face what awaited her, finding nothing yet again.<br/>In a panic, she began giving the flashlight a few firm smacks, somehow against all odds it flickered to life again, its beam of light landing squarely on the little girl, translucent yet semisolid, standing not more than a few inches away from Aislin, smiling bright from ear to ear.<br/>No, not smiling. The smile was too wide, curving upwards almost jaggedly so, it was far too round for the little girls face, and oddly too... red.<br/>Aislin wasn't sure her mind could properly understand what she was seeing and as the horror of the image sunk in, she could just barely suppress a scream.<br/>The little girl lunged towards her first thing, arms wide, as if asking for a hug, only for Aislin to stumble backwards, the knob of the door slamming into her backside, pain shooting through her upper half and causing her to fumble with the camera and flashlight again. The flashlight slipped from her grip and rolled towards the right wall, near the folding screen, while the camera went off in a blast of bright white light, causing a scream to erupt from the smiling girl.<br/><br/>The girl backed off, glaring at the camera angrily as if it had insulted her. Aislin didn't take any chances and steadied her aim, taking another shot of the girl, assuming that the bright light was what had upset her, daring to add logic and reason to this strange place.<br/>With a second and third shot, the girl screamed in a furious rage, shaking her head at Aislin and backing away, casting one final glance to Aislin before turning and running straight through the wall behind her.<br/>Straight through it.<br/><br/>"The hell was that?!" Aislin spat, horrified by the realization that, as much as she didn't want to admit it, she'd just seen a ghost. Or rather, she'd just pissed off a ghost. Great. As if this day could get any worse.<br/><br/>With trembling hands, Aislin gathered her flashlight from where it had fallen, taking care to make sure everything was still tightened in place and the bulb hadn't been damaged. When all appeared to be in order, she flicked it back on and noticed as the beam landed on a shining silver object near the wall the ghost had run through.<br/><br/>Approaching the object, Aislin knelt down to find it was a long, black iron key, the base of which had been shaped to look like the face of a doll, with carved button eyes and a permanent smile smeared with red ink.<br/>Creepy.<br/><br/>Slipping the Key onto the keychain in her bag where all her other various keys, such as car, locker and house keys waited, she turned, wondering how she was going to get out of this room.<br/>Naturally, she tried the key on the door, but it seemed like the door wasn't locked so much as it was stuck, no amount of keys, even if they were the right ones, would get it open.<br/><br/>As she stood still, pondering what she could do, the laughter floated back, rushing towards her all at once.<br/>"Again?" She exclaimed, angling herself aside so the strange ghost girl could dart past her, exiting out through the door instead of the wall this time.<br/>The laughter faded away as quickly as it came, leaving Aislin to wonder if that was the girls way of saying goodbye, but the creaking sound of a door inching out of its initial place bit by bit that followed that fading laughter caught her attention even more.<br/>The door was opening.<br/><br/>Wasting no time at all, she pushed the door all the way opened and stepped past it, out into a long, dark corridor that seemed to go on for ages. There were windows along the left side wall of the corridor, outside them she could see a small garden and a door that appeared to lead off to somewhere else, possibly a library or study from the vast bookshelf she could just barely make out, but there was no door out to it on her side, as far as she could tell. At the end of the hallway, there appeared to be a room, but it was so far away that Aislin didn't really wish to bother with it at the moment.<br/>Immediately to her right upon leaving the Childs Room was another door. When she tried the handle, it jiggled a bit and turned, reluctantly, but when she moved to push the door, it wouldn't yield. Something was blocking it and she wasn't strong enough to push it out of the way from this end, alone.<br/><br/>With no other doors available, Aislin begrudgingly set out down the long hallway, feeling uneasy and cold as she passed the too-small windows, wishing they were just a little bigger for her to fit through so she could make her way towards the room she saw across from the garden.<br/>Aislin knew it was likely that she wouldn't find anything in there but musty old books, but even if that was the case, any decent library would likely have a section devoted to its own personal grounds. If not for its own knowledge, but for impressing visitors.<br/>If she could find information on where she was, maybe even a blueprint of such the place, then maybe could find an easier path around it that didn't involve so much unsettling silence and guesswork.<br/><br/>Alas, it didn't seem like that was going to be her option right then, and as she neared the far end door, surprised to find it was much smaller up close, she knelt, crouching down on all fours to crawl through its opening into the room. Once she was through the door, it swung shut behind her, seeming to be made of a heavier wood than she'd anticipated.<br/>Once she was standing upright, she looked around, greeted by an array of very old, eerily well kept and strikingly pretty dolls. The room was even lit by small doll-shaped candle holders in varying spots, offering her a well-lit showcase of the rooms contents.<br/>There were more traditional Japanese dolls wearing kimonos or ceremonial garb that lined many of the rooms shelves, as well as a supply of more simple button-eyed ragdolls, or tiny wooden dolls with painted on faces and clothes. Any type of doll she could think of seemed to be represented there and she wondered if perhaps collecting dolls was the owner of this houses hobby.<br/>All of the dolls seemed to be small and lightweight, with the exception of a few heavier porcelain dolls that were barred off from the other by ropes or glass cases mounted high above the chest-height shelves of the other dolls.<br/>As Aislin moved further into the Doll Room, something off in the corner caught her eye. Something big, as big as Aislin herself was, but crouched and clad in white.<br/>It took her a moment to realize just what she was looking at. Another ghost?!<br/><br/>Raising her camera to take a shot, Aislin stopped. This girl was huddled up into herself, clinging to her own frame in what Aislin assumed must have been fright. She lacked the unsettling translucent quality that the odd little girl had possessed. This figure looked very solid and, justifiably so, very scared.<br/>"Uhm... Hello?" Aislin called out cautiously. "I... I'm Aislin... who... are you?"