Editing Ghost Hunt:Volume 5 Chapter 5 (section)

===6===

“Mai, wake up.”

I was jolted awake.

“Are you awake? We’re about to move to the next room.”

Ayako studied my face then stood up.

“Ayako… Masako is still alive.”

Ayako snapped her head back to look at me.

“… Mai?”

“She’s still alive. Just in the Execution Room. She told me, very scared, and very sad. But, she looks as though she still has energy.”

Tears streamed uncontrolledly down. 

Ayako studied my face, unmoving. I knew that everyone’s gazes were centered on me.

“… Really?”

“Yeah.”

Everyone wore worried expressions in response to my words. I was the same. The more, ‘that’s great’ and happiness, the less I could believe in my own abilities.

Wearing a complicated expression, Naru faced everyone and said.

“Let’s move.”

In the next room, Lin-san identified the point of opening.

“This place in the wall is thinner than the rest.”

Everyone boisterously gathered around the monitor; we could see that right in the middle of the snow white wall, there was a thin, gigantic, square shaped shadow. The image produced by the radar shows the areas where the electromagnetic waves are reflected strongly as white. That thin shadow meant that the wall at that location was comparatively thinner.

Bou-san and Yasuhara rolled up their sleeves and approached the wall, lifting a grub hoe and a hammer. Relatively easily, they made a hole in the wall. Bou-san shone the torchlight inwards and looked inside. 

All of us pooled our strength to expand the hole.

The other side of the wall was more than a meter lower than this side. Inside, there was a stone crafted staircase and a veranda. Then there was a double paneled door that faced us straight ahead. One look identified it as the front porch.

Above this was a building; there was maybe one or two or three floors above it. Thinking this, I felt it was extremely strange. Another front porch hidden in the depths of the house.

Bou-san and Yasuhara jumped in and sprinted to the door. They used the tools they held to pry open the door. Rather than destroying the lock, they destroyed the door itself. The door opened inwards.

Entering the doorway was the front hall. On the dust covered carpets, the furniture was still placed properly there. Everything was covered with dust like snowdrifts after a storm. I somehow felt like I was lost in a strange world. The corridor extended straight inwards from the hall. On the right there was a staircase towards the second floor. Using the torch to illuminate it, we could see the second floor landing was blocked off. I’m afraid it was the floor of the first floor of the north block.

“Mai, is this the hall that you saw in your dreams?”

Bou-san asked.

“It isn’t. It isn’t like this.”

Naru used his torch to illuminate the surroundings while he said.

“Is it possible that… this is the main house which Kaneyuki lived in?”

“It’s possible.”

“Then, somewhere in here there should be a room with a furnace. On the right hand side of the furnace there is a closet!”

I said while hurriedly passing through the corridor to open the doors on both sides.

At the end of the corridor we found that room.

“… This room!”

The room inside had practically the same layout as the one I had seen in my dream. A furnace. A low table in front of the furnace. Closets to the right of the furnace.

… This room really exists.

Naru opened the door of the closet. That was different from the dream: a curtain hung inside. We opened the curtain. There was still a door inside. Naru opened that door. On the other side of the door was a narrow corridor.

“Found it!”

Ayako clapped her hands once.

“Incredible, Mai!”

Naru spoke expressionlessly.

“Going in.”

The corridor ceased in only 10 meters or so. Opening the door at the end, a 3 tatami sized room appeared in front of our eyes. Opening the other door inside that room, a dark spaced appeared.

“Ai~?”

“Aah?!”

An enormous hole. The torch’s light shone all around; we couldn’t help getting shocked.

Dark, cut off from the emptiness. (tl/n: I know this doesn’t make sense. Somebody please proof this from Japanese.) A huge yet vacant space, about the size of a gymnasium. Although the floor of the upper level was repeatedly crisscrossed with uneven blocks jutting in and out, the lowest point was only as high as my crouching body, the highest point was as high as Lin-san’s fingertips with his hands raised.

Then in this space, there were the skeletal figures of wilted trees lined up.

“This is a maze…”

The trees were clearly lined up in a maze-like shape. When the trees were covered with leaves, the exit at the other side would definitely not be visible. Since the trees have now all withered and died, one could see the other side through the naked white branches.

It was very easy to walk through the maze. That was because the branches could be broken with a hard twist. While we shone the torch light at our surroundings, we broke off branches; we followed the wall inwards, where we found a door.

After comparing the compass and the floorplan, Lin-san spoke.

“Naru, we have approximately reached the edge of the enormous void.”

Was what he said.

The X-floor in the North block. The floor that protruded out in the middle. Then there was that enormous void that extended even into the second floor. We understood that all those were connected together.