[1] HOUSE OF CROWS | Haikyuu!! (Murder of Crows) ✓

HOUSE OF CROWS | 06

Shadows snapped hungrily at your feet as you followed Kuroo down the darkened hallway. "Hello?" He called, his voice echoing coldly. "Anyone here?" He stopped and stared straight ahead into the gloom, the torch glowering down at his feet, and you realised he was listening. For a response, for a sign that there was something living in the house, that you weren't alone.

The silence that followed was thick and stifling. You couldn't hear the wind anymore.

Without speaking, Kuroo moved forward again, finally raising his flashlight to reveal the empty hallway. As you got further into the house, the first thing you noticed was the smell. It reminded you of the forest, of damp earth and rotting shadows. Something unnatural and grotesque. When you opened your mouth, you could taste it too, sticking to the back of your throat. Cloying. Tsukishima gagged. "It stinks," he muttered.

The walls were mottled with the remains of wallpaper, but most of it had fallen away, revealing the yellowing plaster beneath, and the floorboards were thick with dust and mud and powdered leaves. 

A rickety set of stairs twisted out of view ahead, and the hallway branched on both sides. The door on the right was barely hanging onto its hinges, spilling shadows across your feet, and the one on the left was missing completely, a gaping maw of darkness.

Kuroo considered them both for a moment, then went left, his light swinging absently as he went, flashing over broken furniture and cobwebs and mould. They entered a room with a low-slung ceiling, from which a naked bulb was suspended. Dead flies filled the glass inside, and you thought you saw one twitch before quickly lowering your eyes. The room was almost empty, except for a dining table with two broken legs, a sheet half-covering it. There was a window behind you, which you spared only a brief glance, and two more doors. One was hanging ajar, and through it, you glimpsed the raised counters of a kitchen unit. Kuroo cocked his head towards you, pointing towards the other one. "Take your camera and explore down there. We'll wait in here for you."

You narrowed your eyes at him. "You're not all going to run away and leave me here, are you?"

Amusement flickered over Kuroo's face, before he hooked a thumb at Akaashi. "Akaashi will go with you - since you're too scared to go on your own."

Dismissing the taunt, you went across to the door and pulled it open, bracing yourself against the overwhelming smell on the other side. Ignoring the tightness that grew in your chest, you refused to look behind you as you shuffled forward, making sure your camera was switched to record. Akaashi was a step behind you, and you tried not to flinch too much when Kuroo closed the door, his snigger fading into silence as the darkness thickened around you.

"Uhm, would you mind holding the flashlight," you said, reaching through the dark to find Akaashi's outstretched fingers. The warm prickle of his skin against yours was a brief, welcoming comfort before the light flickered on and illuminated your way through the narrow passage. You experienced a brief, undulating fear of being trapped in a tunnel, but the soft murmur of voices from the other side of the door and Akaashi's even breathing reminded you that you weren't alone.

The room at the end was in no better condition than the rest of the house. The walls were dripping with damp and the bitter smell of mildew clung to every surface of the windowless room. Most of the floorboards had rotted through, creating a mesh of chewed-up wood and exposing the copper pipes that ran beneath the house. Thick swathes of cobwebs were strung from the rafters, brushing the top of your head as you tried to duck beneath them.

The camera in your hands felt heavy as you swept it around the room, the dim grey light of your companion's torch struggling to illuminate through the thick shadows that coalesced at your feet.

You sidestepped the remains of what appeared to be a dead rat, nothing but grey bones and clumps of rotting flesh. "Nothing here," you mumbled, your voice quickly swallowed up by the shadows as you panned the camera once more around the room, capturing nothing but cobwebs and dust mites drifting solemnly from the rafters. A splintered piece of wood cracked sharply beneath your heel as you stepped back onto it, listening to the noise echo around the small room with a grimace. "Let's just go back to the others," you said, switching off the camera to preserve the battery. "The sooner we're done here, the sooner we can go home."

Akaashi nodded silently, his face appearing lucid in the darkness, all pale skin and dark hair matted down with sweat. You imagined you didn't look much better. The house had that same strange humidity to it, the air feeling damp and sticky against your skin. 

As you followed him out of the room, your attention fixed on tightening your camera strap, you almost walked right into the back of him as he stopped suddenly in his tracks. The air abruptly stilled around you, as if the room had taken a collective breath, and you felt gooseflesh break out across the back of your neck. "What is it?" You whispered, standing so close to the boy that your voice stirred the back of his hair. The passage ahead of you was doused in shadow, the flashlight pointing down at Akaashi's feet. Nothing stirred.

Akaashi ignored your question, standing in silence with his head cocked as if listening out for something. After a moment, he shrugged. "Nothing. Just thought I heard something," he mumbled, flashing you a sideways glance. There was a shadow between his brows that had not been there before.

"Probably just the others," you said with a shrug. "Come on. It stinks in here and I'd rather not stay any longer than I have to."

"Me either," Akaashi agreed, lifting the torch once more to illuminate the way back down the low-ceilinged corridor. The door was still closed at the end, but you felt something was off before you even reached it. The corridor felt impossibly long, as if the door kept stretching further away the closer you got. When Akaashi finally pushed it open, you followed him into the room where the others were supposed to be waiting for you. Only now it was empty.

"Ugh, those idiots. They were supposed to wait here for us," you grumbled, pinching the bridge of your nose in annoyance. "I knew they'd do something like this." But something still didn't feel right. The other door, which still hung ajar, revealed no movement within, and you couldn't hear them further on in the house either. That's when you noticed Akaashi's silence too. When you turned to face him, you realised he was stood a short distance away from you, unmoving. His head was angled downwards, as if he was staring at something by his feet. You swallowed past the lump that had formed in your throat. "Akaashi?"

When he didn't respond, you moved closer. Sweat had begun to accumulate in your palms and you wiped your hands absently down the front of your jeans. "Akaashi? You okay?"

His silence was unnerving, and you felt your steps falter as you approached him, squinting to see what he was staring at. It wasn't until you drew level with his shoulder did you finally see what it was.

A black mass was flattened to the ground by his feet, all inky feathers and wide eyes, blood and shattered glass still coalescing around an invisible wound.

A dead crow.