TONFA
The Original Naruto Fanfic Archive

Main Categories

Het Romance [1092]
Any Naruto fanfiction with the main plot orientating around different sex couples.
Alternate Universe & Crossovers [651]
Where cast of the Naruto Universe are inserted into an alternate universe.
Essays & Tutorials [17]
An area to submit intelligent essays debating topics about the Naruto Universe and writing tutorial submissions.
 
General Fiction [1739]
Any Naruto fanfiction focused without romantic orientation, on a canon character in the current Naruto Universe.
OC-centric [865]
Any Naruto fanfic that has the major inclusion of a fan-made character.
Non-Naruto Fiction [291]
Self-evident
 
Shonen-ai/Yaoi Romance [1575]
Any Naruto fanfiction with the main plot orientating around male same sex couples.
MadFic [194]
Any fic with no real plot and humor based. Doesn't require correct spelling, paragraphing or punctuation but it's a very good idea.
 
Shojo-ai/Yuri Romance [106]
Any Naruto fanfiction with the main plot orientating around female same sex couples.
Fan Ninja Bingo Book [125]
An area to store fanfic information, such as bios, maps, political histories. No stories.
 
 

Site Info

Members: 11985
Series: 261
Stories: 5884
Chapters: 25418
Word count: 47689150
Authors: 2162
Reviews: 40828
Reviewers: 1750
Newest Member: Redxkenny
Challenges: 255
Challengers: 193
 


Tradewinds 21: Unreal Estate by shadesmaclean

[Reviews - 1]   Printer Chapter or Story
Table of Contents

- Text Size +
Chapter notes: Phantom Stranger: Eleanor
Justin stood for a long moment in front of that painting of Eleanor and her two kittens, trying to pull himself back together.

Wandering this place was nerve-wracking enough with Max by his side, and even some chance of catching up with Shades. To find himself all alone in here, with all he had learned of Vineholdt’s horrid history and experienced thus far, it threatened to trample reason in a panicked stampede for the door. Wild eyes casting about, hardly even noticing the lit hallway sconces and newer-looking wallpaper all around him.

“Max!” he called out, turning one way, then the other, having no clue which way his friend went. “Shades! Can anyone hear me!?”

At first wondering why they hadn’t thought to do that in the first place, until it occurred to him that shouting like that was also a dead giveaway to anything else that might haunt these halls, and he clammed up as sharply as he cried out.

It was in the midst of his fearful silence, ears straining for any hint of a threat, that he heard a jangled ringing sound emanating from a nearby door.

He nearly bolted at that, yet curiosity held him back in spite of himself, and he instead turned to the door with renewed determination to figure out what the hell was going on around here.

Inside, he found a handsomely appointed office den, of a sort he could all too easily picture in the estates of any of the Board of Directors back in the Triangle State. The ringing was coming from a device sitting atop a massive, ornately carved wooden desk. An object of slick black plastic, with a small number pad, similar to things he had seen used in various places as a type of intercom.

Still, he hesitated for a moment before finally picking up the handset.

There was a long moment of staticky silence before a man’s voice hesitantly piped up.

“Hello?…”

“Hello, Michael!” the stern, raspy voice of an old woman crowed, but there was no hint of warmth in that voice. “So how are things up in Hawthorne these days?”

“Veronica?” There was no mistaking the trepidation in the man’s voice as he stammered, “Where did you get this number?”

“Such disrespect. That’s Miss Rigby to you, boy. And as for your little hiding place, you know I have my ways,” Veronica reminded him. “You also know what I want, traitor. The only thing you gave this family of any worth. I have a train waiting, just for you…”

“We’re free of you now,” Michael shot back, though his attempt at confidence didn’t sound very convincing, “and so is Eleanor.”

“Are you, now?…” Veronica chided, bemused at first, then simply amused as she added, “Let this persuade you…”

“Oh, Michael!” a young woman sobbed, “I’m so sorry! They caught me at the train station just before it arrived! Please! Whatever you do, don’t let her take our little””

Her pleas were cut off in muffled whimpering.

“Elise!” Michael called out.

“Now you listen to me,” Veronica cut back in, “You’re going to bring my granddaughter back today, or there will be hell to pay. Your little scheme failed, but I’m willing to let you go, cut you both loose, even, if you bring her back. You have until moonrise. If you don’t, then I’ll just use her instead. After all, I’m not getting any younger…”

Then she hung up with a loud bang.

“Wait! Veronica!” Michael pleaded on an empty line. “…Use her for what?”

With that, the handset went silent.

Justin stood there, for how long he wasn’t sure, before putting the phone very carefully back in its cradle, that desperate conversation still ringing in his ears.

If he understood that grim exchange correctly, Eleanor had been taken from her home as a little girl, by her own parents, in an attempt to prevent her grandmother, the very owner of this haunted house, from doing… something.

He was about to resume his search for Max, or Shades, or even Melissa, when he saw a young girl cross the hall outside into a another room.

Nearly blurted the name Melissa, but even that brief glimpse was enough to jog his memory, as it was already wandering through those parts anyway. Dressed exactly as she was in the painting, which was not much different from how she tended to dress during her time aboard the Skerry, as well, now that he thought about it. Had no description of this Melissa, but also doubted, based on his own experience, that she would find any clothing fit to wear in place as long-abandoned as this.

Unsure if he was seeing things, and quite possibly hearing things earlier, he paused for a moment before shrugging his shoulders and following this strange new turn of events.

On the far side of the room, she faced away from him, looking out the windows, in spite of the thin, cobwebby curtains drawn over them. Shifting, along with her dress, in a gentle breeze that carried the scent of the high seas. The cries of gulls, as well, and a buoy bell echoing to him somewhere beyond a shifting strip of grey sky.

At last, she turned around, and he saw that it was indeed her, the painting come to life, just as he remembered her.

“Eleanor?” Justin mumbled, struggling to wrap his head around this most recent development, as it was nothing he ever would have dreamed of finding in here. “Is it really you? How can this be?”

“Does it really matter?” she asked in return. “You’re here, and so am I…”

“But didn’t your father…”

“Yes, he took me away from home,” she replied, “but I’m back now. I’ve even found you again, so you have a second chance to fulfill your promise.”

“Promise?” Justin stammered, turning his mind over and shaking out its pockets trying to recall if he ever made any such thing to her. “What promise?”

“You promised to travel the world with me, remember?” She walked up and put her hands in his, and he found only a brief moment to wonder when he holstered his disrupter pistol as he gazed down at her fingers. Of course, he had always had small hands, but he was still surprised to find that hers were about the same, despite no apparent change in her age. He looked up to find himself eye to eye with her as she carried on. “But then we stopped over in Benton and you went off without me…”

Justin stumbled back against the tide of memories washing over him, mind flailing for something to anchor him against it all.

At last he found it, in the sight of the Skerry’s empty berth at Benton harbor, the cold realization that he was once again an orphan, and he turned for the door, saying, “If you want to travel with me now, we’re going to have some company. Let’s go find my friends.”

Wondering, even as he spoke, why his voice sounded so strange, even to his own ears, since he started talking to her.

“Justin, I forgive you,” she said, still refusing to move any further out of the room. “I forgive you for abandoning me…”

“I didn’t abandon you…” Justin told her as he pulled open a door he had no memory of closing, with only a passing flicker of annoyance that the doorknob seemed higher than he recalled, as he walked away. “Don’t you get it? The crew of the Skerry abandoned me!”

He didn’t even turn to see what her expression may have been, somehow certain it would be a carefully crafted look of hurt and confusion, his mind still echoing back his fresh recollections of the last dwindling days of his short childhood. Though the decision to depart may not have been hers to make, the decision to guilt-trip and blame him for it most certainly was. That he should ever need to be forgiven for surviving the Triangle State…

On some impulse, he turned to glare at her portrait as he stomped past, and froze in mid step at what he beheld.

Any doubts about the painting’s earlier changes in facial expressions were obliterated at the sight before him. Poe hung suspended in mid-leap out of Eleanor’s lap, feline fright written all over the poor kitten’s face. Lydia arched on her other knee, hissing at him, eyes glaring. Eleanor’s mouth agape in wide-eyed terror.

Looming over all of them, a ghastly old woman dressed all in black, her eyes ablaze, her teeth gleaming fangs, her outstretched arms ending in steely-clawed fingers.

Even as it dawned on him that he had been seeing all of these things from a child’s eye level the whole time” and still was” he could hear, in the back of his mind, Eleanor’s horrified whisper: She’s coming!

Justin’s neck popped as he turned his head back to that room, as if his eyes were pulled in that direction of their own accord.

Sure enough, standing in the hallway was the same old woman he remembered seeing paintings and photos of all throughout the place, come to lurid life. Her eyes seemed to glow with their own inner light, and it took a desperate act of will to pull his gaze away from them as she raised a very solid-looking cane with a heavy silver knob, hissing at him as she lurched into pursuit with uncanny speed.

For one dangerous moment, Justin struggled with uncommonly frozen feet, but once he got them moving, he bolted.

For its part, the hallway seemed to telescope, stretching out and revealing more side doors than he remembered, and that only made him run harder.
You must login (register) to review.