Just One Player
Just One Player
Don't let it find you.
‘Where-are-you?’
The TV flipped between channels, each word delivered in a different cadence by a different voice, so it really came out like ‘Where-ah-YOU!’ than anything. Back to static again after that.
Mari stayed put. The spirit was trying to scare her, make her leave her hiding place. She knew better than to run. Same reason you didn't run in any other game of hide-and-seek; if you ran, you'd be found. Normally being tagged by whoever was it just meant that you were out of the game, and that was still technically true here.
It’s just that when you were playing with a spirit, being out of the game might mean being dead. Or possessed. Neither option sounded all that appealing to her.
To an outsider her situation might not look all that dangerous, hiding from nothing. All there was in the house besides her was a damp cat plushie wound in red thread, possibly scattering a few grains of uncooked rice here and there.
Of course, if there were anyone else in the house, they’d pay the price for getting caught. Whether or not they realized it, they’d be a player in the game. That’s why she’d waited until her parents were away for the weekend in order to do this.
Another burst of static from the TV, followed by two disjointed ‘sentences’.
‘I-know-where-you-are’
‘I-see-you’
‘Sure you do’, she thought. ‘That’s why you haven’t come for me yet, right?’
As long as she stayed in her closet, silent, with a glass of salt water at the ready she was good. Eventually she’d have to venture out and deal with what she’d summoned, but the problem was working up the nerve to actually do it.
This was the last time she’d try anything Aya suggested. Her best friend had a deep interest in the occult, always looking up strange new games to play and creatures to talk about. Last week it had been Kokkuri-san, and before that the Midnight Man. Even before then it was Sara Sarita, and the Spirit of the Pen. The ghosts you could encounter playing the Stairway Game, or the mysterious woman of the Elevator Game.
Her current obsession was something called One Man Hide-and-Seek, and that had been the only thing she talked about at lunch the other day.
“So what you do is give the ghost a doll body to use, but not one that looks too human. Something like a teddy bear or another stuffed animal’s fine. You cut it open and fill it with rice, then you sew that up with red thread—”
“What’s the point? What do you get out of it? I mean, does the ghost grant wishes or tell you some secrets or anything like that?” Mari had interrupted.
“No, but you get to say you did it. I mean come on Mari, how often do you get to play hide and seek with a ghost?”
Aya nattered on about how she’d played the game four times already and yeah, it was scary, but she’d survived. It really wasn’t a big deal, and the worst of it was that you were out whatever doll you used as a vessel for the spirit, plus a cup or two of rice and some thread.
“And also you have to add a bit of you into the doll, which is weird, but just fingernail or hair clippings should do. Don’t use blood.”
In the end she agreed to play the game, if only to shut Aya up.
Not wanting to use anything she might have been attached to, Mari bought a pink cat plushie for the game. It wasn’t human-shaped and had two arms and two legs, so it fit the requirement. She sliced open the cat and removed the cottony stuffing, replacing it with uncooked rice and fingernail clippings before sewing it back up with red thread. The end result looked deflated, like the toy was sagging under the weight of its new ‘stuffing’.
“Not going to lie, I kind of feel bad for you,” she said to it. “You were cute before, but now you just look like a sad beanbag.” She paused a moment and laughed. “Bean! That’s gonna be your name, since you need one for this.”
After the doll was ready she mixed a glass of saltwater and left it in her bedroom closet for later. Aya told her she’d need it, just in case the ghost inhabiting the doll found her. Further preparations involved filling up the bathtub, finding a sharp object, turning on the TV and turning off all the lights.
The only light she was allowed was her phone. Truth be told she was glad she even got that, because she’d hate to be stumbling her way back to the bathroom in the dark with a knife in hand.
Under her phone’s flashlight, the toy submerged in the tub looked ominous. Too much like something dead for her liking. Mari thought about just emptying out the water, throwing away the toy and going to bed. Aya wasn’t there; she wouldn’t know if she really went through with this weird game or not. She could just say she did and leave it at that.
But no, she knew Aya. She’d ask her all kinds of questions about it, and she’d know if she was lying. Best to just do it and get it out of the way. Taking a deep breath, she began the game.
“First, Mari’s it!”
Mari could have sworn the bathroom felt a little chilly, but it always seemed colder in the middle of the night. That was really the worst part if you had to get up; coming out from under the nice warm covers and dealing with the cold. She repeated herself twice more, then ran off to the bedroom to close her eyes and count to ten.
Once she was done, she loudly called “Ready or not, here I come!” to Bean. Did Aya say to do that? She couldn’t remember, but that was just what you did when playing hide-and-seek. Couldn’t hurt.
It was a relief to see the doll still in the water when she returned to the bathroom. Not that Mari really thought it wouldn’t be there, but if it wasn’t, she’d be out of the house in a heartbeat. Probably angrily texting her best friend for talking her into releasing an undead horror in her home too.
“I found you, Bean!” she said, plunging the knife into the doll. Some of the rice floated to the surface, but that was all. No blood, no screaming, nothing else creepy.
“Now, Bean is it!”
Mari repeated it twice more, stabbing the doll every time before leaving the knife in and running to her hiding place, ticking off a silent count to ten in her head.
At first she didn’t think anything was going to happen and was just about to go get Bean, drain the tub and go back to bed when the TV started flipping channels back and forth to form a sentence.
‘Ready-or-not-here-I-come!’
And that’s what brought her to where she was now, hiding in the closet while a possessed plushie stalked her around the house with a knife. The doll had been taunting her and teasing her for what felt like ages, tapping the knife along the walls throughout the house. Occasionally she heard laughter and whispering that was most definitely not coming from the TV and sounded like it was right in her ear.
‘Tick-tock-tick-tock-time-is-short. Act-now!’
It had been 3 AM when she started, and according to her phone it was two minutes to 5. The game couldn’t go on for longer than two hours, or else there’d be problems. Either Bean was warning her about the timeframe or mocking her, and given the way it had acted up until now she doubted it was the first one.
That meant she had to go find it. Ideally she’d jump it when it came into the room, dousing it with the salt water before it had time to react, but unless it showed up in the next minute or so that wasn’t happening.
Ignoring how her heart was pounding in her chest, Mari peeked out of the closet, ready to slam the door shut if she saw anything pink. Nothing there but a trail of rice leading in and out of the room, which meant at some point Bean had been in there but she hadn’t noticed. Probably too busy regretting her choices to realize the doll ever came in.
Taking a deep breath she stepped out, using her phone’s light to find her way.
A trail of rice and wet footprints led her through the house all the way to the front door where Bean sat waiting, the knife at its side. Mari glanced at her phone; only five minutes past, not too bad. She went to throw the salt water over the toy only to realize that she’d made a terrible mistake.
She didn’t have the glass. It was still sitting on the floor in the closet, right where she’d put it.
Too late, Mari remembered the last thing Aya had told her: ‘Don’t ever leave your hiding spot without your salt water. Do that and you’re screwed.’
Bean lunged at her, knife held high.
This story was inspired by Hitori Kakurenbo, or One Man Hide and Seek, which you can read about here: https://hideandgokill.fandom.com/wiki/Hide_and_Go_Seek_Alone