Spirits of the Noh

14

Kara and Hachiro stood just outside Miss Aritomo’s house. She cocked her head, trying to get a glimpse of her father through a window, but despite the inside light, nothing seemed to be moving within. The sickle moon cast a dim yellow gloom over the buildings and the street. Kara glanced at Hachiro, swallowed hard, and nodded.

“That should be long enough,” she whispered.

Sakura and Ren had gone around the back of the house, following Mai’s path. However she had gotten in, they would as well. Which only left the front door.

“Ready?” Hachiro asked softly.

Kara nodded, and he reached into the cloth sack that he had taken from the art room and withdrew one of the Noh masks that Miho had made, handing it to her. Kara stared at it. The visage seemed almost genderless, a white-haired, grimly pale expression permanently fixed upon it. A villager or a monk, she thought. As she watched, Hachiro pulled a second mask from the bag, this one with a thin tangle of beard marking it as male. Surely it must be one of the monks.

Hachiro donned his mask, fitting the string behind his head. Kara took a deep breath and did the same. Ren and Sakura had taken their masks with them. There were two others in the bag-the one they’d brought for Mai to wear and another that Kara feared might have been a mistake to bring along. That fear gnawed at her, but they would know soon enough.

Kara looked at Hachiro, hating the way the mask obscured his features, but his eyes were still there, soft and kind. She nodded and pointed at the door.

“Let’s go.”

Hachiro took a deep breath. He had the sack grasped in one fist and in the other he clutched a small iron bell. Kara reached into her pocket and pulled out her own bell, two fingers inside it to keep it silent until the right moment.

This is insane, she thought. They didn’t really know if any of this would work. It was all pure conjecture. But in her time in Japan, reading folklore and Noh plays-and from their brush with Kyuketsuki-she had learned that somehow, over time, the stories themselves seemed to have rejuvenated some spirits. The supernatural beings that survived in Japan were no longer worshiped, and so drew their remaining vitality from the stories and plays about them. The stories had reshaped them, in some way.

And if the stories could shape them, then wearing the masks of the monks who destroyed the Hannya in Dojoji would give them a certain power over the creature. It would almost expect them to defeat it, and that would give them an advantage.

Or so Kara now believed.

In moments, she would discover if there was any truth to that theory.

The bells, though, were different. There were so many instances in Japanese legend of the sound of bells warding off or weakening evil, even destroying it. The masks might give them an advantage, but the bells could actually be a weapon. If they were lucky. If they were right.

Hachiro stepped up to the house and slammed his foot against the door, just beside the knob. Grimacing, he launched another powerful kick, striking the same spot. In quick succession, he struck the door twice more, and the lock gave way with a splinter of wood. The door swung inward and Hachiro didn’t hesitate. He burst into the house, and Kara followed.

Her father and Miss Aritomo were standing at the bottom of the steps. It looked like they had been about to go up, belatedly responding to the scream from the attic. Rob Harper had a heavy lamp in his hand, apparently to use as a weapon, and Miss Aritomo held a long kitchen knife. They both looked startled, and if Kara had not seen the Hannya slipping into the art teacher with her own eyes, she would never have thought that Miss Aritomo was anything but terrified at that moment.

At the sight of her and Hachiro in the masks, Miss Aritomo screamed. Kara’s father came toward them, wielding the lamp.

“Dad, wait!” Kara said.

“Kara?” he muttered, too confused to be angry yet.

“Get away from her, Harper-sensei!” Hachiro barked, sliding away from Kara, watching Miss Aritomo closely.

Maybe the Hannya’s not here, Kara thought. That could be, right? It’s not in her now.

“Hachiro, it might be in the attic. That’s why Mai was screaming.”

“Mai? What is Mai doing in my attic?” Miss Aritomo asked. “What is going on here? Why are you wearing those masks? You have a lot of explaining to do!”

Sakura and Ren appeared from a hall that led toward the back of the house. They moved slowly into the living room, fanning out so that the four students had Miss Aritomo surrounded, with the stairs to the second story her only route of escape. They had also donned their masks, and clutched iron bells in their fists.

“Shut up, demon!” Sakura snarled at Miss Aritomo.

“No, Sakura,” Ren said, staring at their teacher. “Look at her. I don’t think she knows it’s in her.”

Kara thought he was right. The expression on Miss Aritomo’s face made it clear-she really didn’t know. Somehow the Hannya had gotten into her and used her body as a host. Perhaps it influenced her from within, but she had no idea she had been possessed. When it left her body to prowl the world, it somehow lulled the teacher into unconsciousness, as Kara had seen with her own eyes.

Her father put the lamp down on a small table and stared at his daughter. He spoke in low, measured tones. She had never seen him so furious. “Kara, you’ve gone much too far now. This is… it’s too much. It’s going to change everything.”

Guilt and doubt surged up in her and she started to flush, averting her eyes. For several seconds, she almost crumbled under his gaze. What could she do? Call it off and apologize? Run from the house?

No.

“I know what I saw, Dad. This is real. We’ve been to Yamato-sensei. He believes us. He’s talking to the police right now. But if you won’t believe your own daughter-if you really think I’d take it this far on some crazy whim-all you have to do is go up to the attic and find out what Mai was screaming about.”

He hesitated, obviously confused, and Kara knew she’d finally gotten through to him. Her father turned to look at Miss Aritomo, but even as he did, the art teacher’s eyelids fluttered and she began to collapse. He caught Miss Aritomo before she could fall, but she lay limp in his arms, arms akimbo, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The kitchen knife she’d been holding fell from her hand and skittered across the wood floor.

“Yuuka?” her father said, alarmed. He knelt down, laying her gently on the floor, still cradling her head and upper body. “Yuuka, what’s wrong? Wake up!”

He twisted to look at Kara. “Call an ambulance.”

“They’re not going to be able to help,” Hachiro said.

“Please, Harper-sensei,” Sakura began. “Get away from her.”

He glared at her, then at Kara.

“Move back, Dad,” she said. “You don’t understand.”

“Call an ambulance, goddammit!” he snapped, then turned back to Miss Aritomo. He slapped her lightly on the cheek. “Yuuka. Yuuka!”

With a scowl of frustration, he cradled her head with one hand while, with the other, he fished out his own cell phone.

“Dad!” Kara shouted. “Get back!”

For Miss Aritomo’s head had lolled back in his grasp. Her mouth opened wide and a darkness formed deep in her throat. Yellow eyes peered from the inside of her distended lips, and then the serpent slid out, all rippling shadows and hateful glare. It hissed, the sound filling the room until it seemed to come from every corner and from beneath every piece of furniture.

Rob Harper must have heard the noise, for he turned to look. At the sight of the Hannya emerging from its host, the woman with whom he was falling in love, he dropped his cell phone with a clatter on the floor, and yanked his hand away from Miss Aritomo. Her skull thunked down and he tried to scramble away, but too late.

The serpent darted toward him, fangs sinking into his wrist.

“Dad!” Kara cried once more.

Her father tried to stand, but already the demon’s venom began to slow him. It blossomed from horned snake to horned demon, growing in an eyeblink into the hideous visage that hung on the wall in Miss Aritomo’s classroom. But this was no mask. The Hannya wrapped its arms around Kara’s father and hauled him upward until his feet were dangling several inches above the floor.

Its tongue flickered out in a long hiss and its flesh shifted again, becoming a snake-eyed woman of exotic beauty. The Hannya whispered a hiss into Rob Harper’s ear and, staring over his shoulder from behind, grinned at Kara with the twin glint of two sharp teeth.

“Remember, later,” the demon said, in a quiet, almost dainty voice, “that he didn’t have to die. Know that I killed him because you interfered.”

Miho could still feel the effects of the Hannya’s venom. Her bones were stiff and her muscles ached and her head felt stuffed with cotton. But she was alive, and thanks to Mai-of all people-she thought she might get to stay that way. When the girl had first come through the attic door and seen the ruin of flesh and bone that had once been Daisuke, of course Mai had screamed. Miho whispering to her from the shadows only startled her into screaming louder.

But when Mai saw Wakana, she had begun to calm down, and to think. Miho had moved to block both girls’ view of Daisuke’s corpse as Mai fussed over the bruises and cuts that Wakana had acquired in the attic. Wakana had not told Miho much-she was so disoriented and weak herself-but it seemed she had hurt herself trying to force her way out of the attic, and that more than once the Hannya had bitten her, filling her blood with that paralyzing venom.

For several minutes, Wakana and Mai had embraced there in the attic, with the door yawning wide just beyond them. Miho tried to be as respectful as she could, to give them that time. It was obvious that they both had cared deeply for Daisuke, and grief shook them both as they wept quietly in each other’s arms. But then she could not wait any longer.

“We need to get out of here,” Miho said. “While the house is empty, before it-before she comes back.”

Mai kept her eyes shut and squeezed Wakana to her tightly. With a deep breath, she released her. Wakana swayed to one side, barely able to remain standing, so Mai steadied her, then turned toward Miho and nodded.

“I just want to… to say good-bye to Daisuke,” Mai said.

Miho had shaken her head. “No you don’t. Not now.”

“She’s right,” Wakana said. “Daisuke isn’t here anymore. We’ll remember him properly when all of this is done.”

Reluctantly, Mai relented. She put an arm around Wakana and helped the girl toward the door. Miho had gone ahead of them. Even as she put her foot on the landing, there came a crash from far below, on the first floor.

“What was that?” Wakana asked, eyes wide.

Miho and Mai exchanged a glance. “The front door?” Miho said.

“I think so. Your friends are all coming to help us. It must be them,” Mai replied. “But if they’re willing to break in like that-”

“The Hannya must be coming,” Miho finished. “Either that or it’s already here.”

Wakana whimpered, sagging, forcing Mai to bear even more of her weight.

“She should wait here,” Miho said. “If we have to defend ourselves-”

“What? No!” Wakana said, her words slightly slurred as though she’d been drinking.

Mai glared at Miho. “I will not leave her here. If we have to make a run for it, Wakana would be alone. We’ll make it out together, or not at all.”

All Miho could do was shrug. Voices carried from downstairs, shouting at one another. She led the way, hurrying down to the second floor, with Mai helping Wakana descend behind her. Miho hesitated only a moment, glancing around to make sure they were alone on that level of the house, and then she started down to the first floor. Now she could hear the voices more clearly-Kara’s, her father’s, Hachiro’s, and Sakura’s-and the words chilled her.

Halfway down the steps, she paused, holding her breath. Kara shouted at her father, who then began to scream at them to call for an ambulance. Something had happened to Miss Aritomo. But didn’t they know that she was the Hannya? Wasn’t that why they were here?

Miho crept down a few more steps, light from the living room spilling into the stairwell. Something touched her arm and she gasped and turned to find Mai beside her. Despite her fears for Wakana, she had left the other girl at the top of the stairs. That was good. Something awful had begun to unfold in the living room and Wakana would only be in more danger if they brought her into its midst.

Mai nodded to Miho, a signal for them to continue, and Miho obliged. They went down several more steps together, clinging to the walls, and now Miho caught sight of the Hannya wrapping itself around Professor Harper. And it spoke.

“ Remember, later, that he didn’t have to die. Know that I killed him because you interfered. ”

Miho reached out and grabbed Mai’s wrist. She stared, unable to breathe, as the Hannya opened its mouth-the dark beauty of its female guise giving way to grotesquerie as its jaws unhinged-and bent its head as though to tear out Professor Harper’s throat.

“No!” Miho cried.

She and Mai lunged as one and grabbed the Hannya’s arms, their weight and momentum helping them tear the demon away from Kara’s father. Its hiss of rage and frustration filled Miho’s ears, but she heard another noise-a shout of triumph-as Sakura threw herself at Professor Harper, practically tackling him as she forced him across the room, away from the Hannya.

As the demon hissed in their grasp it thrashed against Mai and Miho. Staggering backward, Miho stumbled over the unconscious Miss Aritomo, and then she and Mai were both falling in a tangle of limbs, dragging the Hannya down on top of them.

Mai screamed in pain and Miho flinched as tiny flecks of the other girl’s blood spattered her face. The Hannya writhed in Miho’s grip, flesh shifting as it twisted round, and once again it wore the face of the demon. This close, Miho saw it looked very little like the mask on Miss Aritomo’s wall, or the one she herself had tried to create for the staging of Dojoji. Its eyes had huge black slitted pupils, limned with sickly yellow, and nictating membranes slid over those gelatinous orbs. The demon’s wiry hair looked like dried, blackened cornsilk, and its leathern skin consisted of a million diamond-shaped scales.

“Get it off her!” someone shouted.

Sakura called her name.

Miho saw, just a few feet away, a long kitchen knife gleaming on the wooden floor where someone had dropped it. Bells began to ring, and the Hannya flinched, tensing and hissing. Miho took that moment to lunge for the knife, but the Hannya shrugged as though shaking off a blow and caught her before she could reach the blade. As it dragged Miho closer, its forked tongue darted out and struck her cheek and she cried out, but already a terrible numbness spread across her face and down her spine.

Mai wrapped an arm around the Hannya’s throat, preventing it from lunging any closer to Miho, but the demon grabbed hold of Mai’s left hand and twisted hard enough that the snap of breaking bone was clearly audible.

Mai screamed. The Hannya thrashed her off and came at Miho again. She tried to block its attack with her hands, even as she grew disoriented once more. Her palm caught on one of the Hannya’s horns, puncturing the skin and drawing her blood.

It darted in, so much like a snake, and bit her with a quick strike before pulling back. Those dreadful eyes studied her and the Hannya smiled.

As darkness began to swim in around the edges of her vision, Miho heard the ringing of the bells grow louder and more insistent. Then her senses began to fail her entirely, except that she could still smell Mai’s blood.

In the moment when the Hannya had been about to kill her father, Kara had frozen. Unable to breathe, unable to move, she could only stare as the impossible unfolded before her. It couldn’t be happening. Inside her head, she could hear herself screaming, but no sound came from her lips. The Hannya had locked eyes with her, pinning her with its gaze, but she knew that even if she hurled herself across the room she would never reach the demon in time to save him. She felt herself suffocating inside the Noh mask that covered her face.

Then Miho and Mai had surged from the shadowy stairwell and attacked the Hannya. As Kara gaped at their courage, Sakura ran at her father and practically tackled him, dragging him to the corner of the room, away from the chaos erupting at its center.

Hachiro and Ren began to shout. Mai screamed in pain. Kara saw blood. Sakura called out for Miho. Then Hachiro began to ring his bell and at last Kara snapped out of whatever momentary trance had paralyzed her.

She rang hers as well, and in a moment Ren and Sakura were doing the same. Leaving Kara’s father in the corner, Sakura moved in closer. Ren and Hachiro hurried to place themselves as evenly as possible around the Hannya and the three bodies that lay on the floor. Kara saw it all through the strange eyes of her Noh mask. Miss Aritomo remained unconscious, but Mai moaned, cradling her left arm, blood soaking into her shirt from a long gash in her face and a wound on her shoulder.

Miho fought weakly against the Hannya, beginning to go limp in its grasp. Just a few feet from them, the kitchen knife Miss Aritomo had fetched earlier lay on the floor. Kara wished she could get it and use it, but feared it might be useless against the Hannya.

“Louder!” Kara shouted.

She held the bell high and took a step closer, then another. The iron grew strangely warm in her hand and the smell of hot metal began to fill the room, and then she knew that all of their conjecture had been right-the bells were the weapon they needed.

Sakura, Ren, and Hachiro took her cue and they began to close the circle. It might only have been Kara’s imagination, but the voices of the bells seemed to join in a chorus so pure they became almost one sound, ringing together, loud and bright.

The Hannya shrank down upon itself as though to protect itself from attack. It hissed, but the sound of the bells contained the demon’s hiss, swallowed and silenced it. The shadows on the floor began to coalesce and the corners of the room grew darker, but Kara shook her bell harder, ringing it even louder, so that her fingers felt scorched by the heat of the metal. The others followed suit, and soon the shadows were only shadows, with none of the demon’s influence.

Its skin rippled, jaws opening again to reveal those needle fangs, and now its flesh seemed trapped between monster and serpent. It bulged and pulsed, shifting as if the Hannya were attempting to control its shape and failing.

The demon turned and reached for Miho, tongue darting out, jaws opening wide.

“Never!” Ren shouted, and stepped nearer.

The Hannya grinned up at him, fixing him in its yellow serpent’s gaze. But Hachiro, Sakura, and Kara matched Ren’s step, holding the circle firm, somehow caging it there.

Kara saw its gaze shift toward the prone form of Miss Aritomo and immediately she understood its intent.

“Hachiro!” she shouted. “Throw me the bag!”

Confusion filled his gaze, but he trusted her and did not hesitate. Hachiro tossed her the cloth sack that still contained two of the masks Miho had made for Dojoji. Kara dropped to her knees, still ringing her bell, and shoved her free hand into the sack. The first face she touched had horns, and she knew that wasn’t what she wanted. She yanked the other free of the cloth.

The Hannya started to move, but Kara leaped to Miss Aritomo’s side, covering her teacher’s face with the mask of Anchin, the monk who had resisted all of the Hannya’s attempts at seduction, and who had burned to death rather than surrender to it. Miss Aritomo had always said that the masks of the Noh had power, that they were imbued with such tradition that they could help transform the wearer into the character they played. Noh theater was more than just acting, it was inhabiting the legend, and letting the legend inhabit the actor. But the old demons and spirits were equally influenced. With no one left to worship them, they were controlled by the tales people still told about them-things like Noh theater.

To the Hannya, Miss Aritomo was now Anchin, and Anchin had never feared it.

It had lost its host.

The Hannya shrank back from Miss Aritomo and looked up in confusion. The demon hesitated, then shrieked in fury and lunged for Kara. She thrust the bell nearly into its face, ringing it loudly. This close to the Hannya, the metal grew so hot that she could barely stand to hold it, but she dared not drop the bell.

“Damn you!” the Hannya said, its voice a damp, slithery thing. It had become more serpent than woman or monster now, and rose up on its thick snake’s body, swaying in front of her.

It pointed at Miss Aritomo. “She summoned me here! And you dare to-”

“Liar!” Kara’s father shouted, springing away from the wall.

“Dad, stay back!” Kara snapped.

She needn’t have feared. Her father was an intelligent man. He kept well away from the circle that the four of them had created with the ringing of their bells and the power of the Noh masks-the Hannya saw the people of the temple who had destroyed it once already, heard the bells of the monks.

“It lies!” Rob Harper shouted. Then he sneered at the Hannya, pointing at Miss Aritomo himself. “Yuuka never summoned you, she honored you. And this is how you repay her?”

Its voice weak and ragged with pain, the Hannya laughed.

“You are right, of course, teacher. But this woman you love opened the window for me to enter.”

Kara watched as it diminished further, shrinking to become the ebony, horned serpent-part flesh and part smoke-that she had seen before.

“Louder!” she told her friends. “Close the circle!”

And they did. She saw the pain in their faces and knew that the iron bells must have been searing their skin just as hers did, but they did not hesitate. The serpent twisted and coiled in upon itself, then it whipped around and stared at Kara herself, those hypnotic serpent’s eyes locking with hers.

“I won’t be the last, girl. You know that. You all do. My sister Kyuketsuki put her curse upon you and it calls to the rest of us like the scent of fresh prey. Worse things than I will come for you, and you and all that you love will die.”

Movement to her left caught Kara’s attention and she risked a glance, only to see Wakana stumbling into the circle. For a heartbeat, she was too astonished at seeing the girl alive, and too busy trying to put together how she came to be there-that Mai must have freed her from the attic along with Miho-that she didn’t even have a chance to cry out to warn Wakana.

Then she saw the kitchen knife glinting in Wakana’s hand and realized she had picked it up off the floor.

“Some of us have already lost what we loved,” Wakana said, tears streaming down her face.

The serpent twisted round to face her, but too late. Wakana slashed the blade through the air and sliced the horned serpent’s head from its body.

It flopped to the floor in two pieces, a final hiss rising from it-though, this time, of steam. A horrible stench filled the house, a smell of sickness and death, and the shadows puffed up from the serpent like smoke, drifting away.

“What the hell?” Kara muttered in English.

She kept ringing her bell and the others did the same as they moved closer to it. But the iron had gone suddenly cold in her hand and the thing on the floor showed no signs of its horns. All that remained of the Hannya were the head and body of a small garden snake.

“Kara!” her father snapped.

She turned to see the cloth bag containing the final Noh mask burning up. Flames rippled across the fabric, which quickly blackened. Her father raced to it and stomped on the bag until all that remained were tattered, scorched bits of cloth. Of the mask inside-the face of the Hannya-nothing remained but a coppery-hued dust.

The bells fell silent.

Sakura and Ren pulled off their masks and ran to Miho’s side. Wakana knelt by Mai, speaking softly to her. Hachiro stomped on the snake to make sure it was dead.

Kara removed her own mask and looked up into her father’s eyes, surprised to find fear there. At first she didn’t understand, and then she realized what she saw was his fear of losing her.

“Dad…”

“Quiet,” he said, pulling her into his arms and kissing the top of her head over and over. He held her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. I should have believed you.”

Kara shook her head. “No. You shouldn’t have. How could you?”

But he wouldn’t accept her forgiveness. “I’m your father. That’s how.”

Again he kissed the top of her head, and then he turned toward Miss Aritomo. The teacher had begun to stir. Kara’s father went to her, crouched down and slid the mask of Anchin off her face, revealing once more the beauty beneath. Kara watched the way her father looked at Miss Aritomo, the gentle way he brushed the hair from her eyes, and though she wished she could have pretended otherwise, it still hurt her, even after all they had been through. She missed her mother.

But she found now that she could find room in her heart for both the sorrow of her mother’s absence and the happiness of her father’s new hope for the future. The two emotions would not sit easily together, but for now, it would be enough.

In the distance, police sirens wailed.

Otherwise, Miss Aritomo’s house had fallen silent.