Part 53: Blood Drive, Part 3
Video: The Shinozaki Estate


Music: Dread
There, where the Shinozaki estate once stood, in what was nothing more than an abandoned lot only a few hours earlier...an old, humble residence now rose above us. It seemed almost to be floating in the air...but it was very clearly an actual, corporeal building.
The two of us stood there staring at it for several minutes, completely dumbfounded.




I had goosebumps all over my body. And a cold sweat had begun tracing lines down my back.

Aside from its more ethereal qualities, it was just an old, beat-up two-story farmhouse. But sure enough, the name plate by the door read 'Shinozaki.' This was, without a doubt, the house where Yoshie and Sachiko Shinozaki lived.


The class rep raised a hand to stop me from intervening.







Gazing at the imposing structure, she took a deep breath. Then, after collecting herself, she walked right up to the front door and tried sliding it open.
Sound Effect: Door

It gave no resistance at all.


Music: None

Sound Effect: Click

The phantom estate house had no power, it seemed.

Fortunately, there was a flashlight on a nearby table. The class rep picked it up and switched it on, illuminating the wall across from the entrance. Not that there was much to see. The entranceway itself was extremely small, breaking off to the right at a solid wooden door just a few steps in. A quick pan to the left, then, revealed a steep, hardwood staircase leading up. And that was pretty much the entire room.

She'd gone completely pale. I could tell just by looking at her that she'd sensed something. Her eyes shone with a mixture of terror and determination.



Thinking back, our first steps into this house were basically the start of it all. It was at that point that we'd left the world of the ordinary far behind. Simply being able to see these walls, these floors, these ceilings with our naked eyes directly defied the laws of nature. The house itself was a ghost. Literally anything could happen in here.
I knew that, and was doing everything I could to brace myself for the trials ahead...but the fear was still there, and the shaking wouldn't stop.


Video: The Shinozaki Estate ends here.
Music: Chapter 4's Theme

We're put into control and set about exploring the Shinozaki estate.
I'm gonna be honest here for a second. Few things in either of the Corpse Party games scare me; I honestly just don't think they're very frightening games at all. But something about this house puts me on edge.

There are a couple framed photographs of Sachiko here, dressed in a formal kimono. It looks like they were taken during the Shinto "Shichi-Go-San" festival, where children of ages 7, 5 and 3 gather to pray for longevity. A small plaque is placed below them with embossed letter that read, "Sachiko, just before her seventh birthday. Best wishes for a long, happy life!"

It's a landscape painting of a lake somewhere. It's hard to tell in this light, but it looks almost like the lake's surface is comprised entirely of outstretched hands reaching up from below. It couldn't be much more unsettling.










The shoe shelves are full of dead rats. And each of them, without exception, has had its stomach dug out. Maybe they ate each other. ...Hopefully they ate each other!

The door isn't locked, nor is it sealed shut like in the school, but it still won't open. There seems to be something heavy blocking it from the other side.

Finished in the entranceway, we set about exploring the rest of the first floor. There's no way into the ??? room.
For now, we head next door to the water closet.

It's a Japanese-style floor toilet. Every part of it is distressingly filthy, and there are spider webs strung up all along the inside.


The drain is packed tightly with what look to be thousands of bodies of unidentifiable insects.

There are white objects stuck to the wall here that look kind of like Go pieces. Each one is protected behind a thick barrier of spider webs. They're probably spider eggs. Eww.

We head next door to the bath, now.

It's an old-fashioned wooden bathtub cover. It looks extremely brittle and has rotted through completely, sporting numerous holes and missing or warped beams.

It's an old soaking tub with a water heater feeding into it. The heater is clearly broken and the tub is half-filled with green, stagnant water and bugs.





We head down the hall to the living room next.
Video: Living Room

If you cross your eyes a bit, the holes in the shoji door kind of look like a person's face. Once you see it, however, you can't unsee it, and the whole room becomes exponentially creepier. It's probably best not to look at all...

Pieces of cloth have been haphazardly tossed into this box. There also seem to be a few rolled-up newspapers, but they're absolutely crawling with assorted bugs. Probably best not to touch them.

"Please wait here for your name to be called. Please help yourself to some tea."







The spirit vanishes, and our time in the living room comes to an end.
Video: Living Room ends here.

We head into the kitchen next.

It's a gas-burning hot water heater. Every part of it is rusted, perfectly illustrating its age. There's absolutely no chance it still works.

It's an old model refrigerator -- post-icebox era, but very definitely not modern in any way. It seems to be completely empty inside.

The handles to these cabinet doors and drawers are all missing. Sounds of skittering bugs can be heard from within. Probably best to leave them closed.

The cabinet is filled with small dished and utensils intended for use by young children. Each one is printed with cutesy bunny or cat designs.

We've been in every room on the first floor (aside from the ??? room, of course), so we head back to the entranceway and go upstairs.







Floor 2 is sporting two ??? rooms. We begin our search by entering the south bedroom.
Video: Bedroom (South)
Music: None

This appears to be a bedroom. The sliding door to the closet is off its tracks, however, and the dresser has been knocked over. The floor is littered with junk, including a desk lamp and numerous bottles with unknown contents, and the closet is packed with old beat-up boxes.
...? This room also seems suspiciously noisy, with creaks and bangs and pops audible throughout. "Rapping, rapping at my chamber door..."



The class rep began calling out for her parents, totally out of the blue. I had no idea what was going on.


She was grabbing her head in both hands, and her face was white as a sheet. She must have been the target of spiritual possession again, like in Heavenly Host. Fortunately, she seemed to have been ready for it this time, and was able to collect herself in short order. And once she did, our search resumed.
Music: Chapter 4's Theme

For some reason, the wooden dresser won't budge even the slightest bit. It's as if it were made of solid steel.

It's a Japanese-style sliding screen, or "fusuma." There's a crude crayon drawing visible on it. Did Sachiko do this?
It's very abstract, but it looks like something a happy, well-adjusted little kid would draw -- not at all disturbing like the pictures in Heavenly Host.

There's some sort of stain on the back wall of the closet. It kind of looks like it's in the shape of a person, but...that's probably just an optical illusion, right?
Video: Bedroom (South) ends here.

Finished in the south bedroom, we head to the northeast bedroom.

There must be a key to this room somewhere in the house, though...

That bedroom is a bust, so we head next door instead.
Video: Bedroom (Northwest)

This particular bedroom looks like it's been converted into...a study? Seems out of place, considering the family. Whose study was it?

The bookshelf is full of old books that have been thoroughly wrecked with age. Every one of them is yellowed, musty and falling apart.

It's the frame to an old mirror that's long since been busted out. Where the looking glass once stood, there's now a creepy drawing of an old woman. It's just a rough sketch, but it looks absolutely realistic, as if it could just up and jump out of the frame at any moment.

Sound Effect: Click
...Well, it was worth a shot.

The desk is piled high with dust, but the items situated on it are neat and tidy. Whoever used it was very organized.

Right in the middle of the desk sits a lone key, completely covered in dried blood. Take it?
Take the key
Sound Effect: Item

Music: None

Sound Effect
It sounded like footsteps echoing through the wooden frame of the house. Specifically, like someone with leather shoes walking around on the first floor. The class rep and I looked at one another and shuddered. After a moment, the footsteps then began loudly stomping up the stairs...



Sound Effect



The constant, unrelenting pressure of this search was beginning to take its toll on me. The class rep, sensing my agitation, took my hand in hers.


Video: Bedroom (Northwest) ends here.
Music: Chapter 4's Theme

We're put back in control, and head back to the locked bedroom.

But it looks like the key from the other room fits!

There were pictures of Sachiko all over the room, virtually everywhere there was space for them. Her mother clearly held her very dear.
Video: Yoshie's Room
This video covers the remainder of the update.

Pictures of Sachiko are sprawled out all across the surface of the desk. However, like so many objects in Heavenly Host, they're affixed to its surface as if they were mere decoration. They can't be picked up or even moved.

There's a tiny kimono in the box, sized for a young girl. The style looks similar to the ones worn in the "Shichi-Go-San" festival, which would make this Sachiko's for sure.

Picture after picture, each depicting some happy moment in the Shinozaki family's life. Yoshie's overwhelming love of Sachiko came through in every shot.


The photographs depicting the Shinozaki women were all fine, but those that showed Sachiko with both her parents were a bit...different. In each of them, the man who was presumably Yoshie's husband had had his face completely blacked out with a ball-point pen.

Looking around the room, it really was every single photograph that depicted this man. His face was inked out in literally every picture.





Apparently, the class rep's parting in Heavenly Host with her former role model, Naho, had not been a pleasant one. She looked momentarily distraught. In front of the enshrined doll, there was a square sheet of yellowed paper containing hand-inked instructions on performing an all-too-familiar ritual:





It appeared to be an embedded wall safe with a circular padlock and a panel of buttons comprised of the digits 0 through 9.



Following the 'spin clockwise' indicator etched into the steel safe, we tried spinning the lock itself as well, but had no luck with that either. In fact, as soon as the lock made one full rotation, all the buttons we'd pressed in suddenly popped back out.





But every time, we'd just spin the lock, hear a metallic thunk and watch as the numbers reset on us.

What had we actually learned about Sachiko, though? Number-wise, all I could come up with was an approximate height. (And that didn't work.) What was it that plaque in the stairwell said? 'Sachiko, just before her seventh birthday'? The kimono she was wearing in that picture was an exact match for the one we'd found in that box in the middle of this room.
It seemed as if Yoshie were really fixated on Sachiko turning seven. So what about just the number 7, by itself? It was a long shot, but...
Music: None

When I got to this spot, I was like "Oh, I get it! Sachiko and Yoshie died in 1953. So subtract 7 from that and you get 1946, Sachiko's birth year!"
The actual solution is really stupid. Yoshie is terrible at coming up with passwords.

The area of the wall all around the safe opened up like a secret door, with the combination lock holding in place and serving as a doorknob.

Beyond the tiny door -- a door so small that we had to crawl to fit through it -- was a long staircase stretching down into a hidden underground room.



Music: Discomfort


Even if all that awaited us down here was an unimaginably horrific end...we were standing at the source of the answers we so desperately sought. We were poised to uncover the truth behind the curse of Sachiko Shinozaki.
This was the gate to a new world. If we turned back, we'd regret it for the rest of our lives. So the two of us just looked one another in the eyes...and nodded. We were ready to descend this staircase into whatever abyss lurked below.

She'd begun descending the stairs ahead of me, but stopped and looked back after only a few steps to issue me this one last warning. I nodded again.
Music: None
Sound Effect


They were extremely close. It sounded as if they were poised just outside the door to Yoshie's room. Just a few feet away...


