The Waking

11

I don’t know the whole legend of the ketsuki,” Miho went on. “It’s some kind of demon spirit, I think. There’s an old Noh play about it. But from what I remember, it takes the form of a cat and it drinks blood.”

Kara couldn’t breathe, staring at her. The memory of the bite marks all over Chouku’s naked body remained vivid in her mind, but somehow even worse was the memory of the cat standing in the open third-story window the night before. Her skin prickled.

“You saw it last night,” Kara said. “Where could it have gone? The door was locked.”

Miho rubbed the back of her neck, head bowed, hair spilling around her face like she wanted to hide but had nowhere to run. “The window was open, though.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Kara whispered, walking over to the window. She searched the sill for any sign that what they’d seen had been real-a few shed hairs, some paw prints-but found nothing. Still, they had both seen it. “If you saw it, too, then it couldn’t be a dream.”

A long silence ensued, the girls lost in their thoughts, until their reverie was broken by a knock on the door.

Miho shot a quick, frightened look at Kara. But it was morning, and there were so many people around-if all of this wasn’t their imaginations running wild, some kind of evil cat spirit wasn’t about to come knocking on the door.

Kara nodded to her. Miho took a breath and opened the door.

Rob Harper stood on the other side, worry lining his face. When he spotted Kara, he let out a relieved breath and walked in, snatching her up in his arms. She hadn’t been picked up in a long time and it felt simultaneously wonderful and humiliating.

“Dad, I’m okay,” she said.

He gave a soft chuckle and put her down, the relief draining from his face, replaced by a deep frown.

“When Miss Aritomo called, I had all kinds of awful thoughts,” he said in English. “But then she said she’d seen you. I came right away.”

“So it was you she was talking to before?”

Her father nodded. “When you came into the… into the dead girl’s room? Yes. I wish you hadn’t seen that.”

Kara sighed. “Me too.”

They’d been speaking English, but now her father looked over at Miho. “I’m sorry,” he said in Japanese. “I didn’t mean to ignore you. I was just-”

“I understand, sensei,” Miho said, executing a polite bow.

Kara’s father had completely forgotten such formalities, but now he returned the bow. Then he looked at his daughter.

“The police are here. They want to talk to everyone-”

“They can’t claim this one is a suicide,” Kara said, also in Japanese, not wanting to be rude to Miho, though a flash of anger sparked in her.

“No, they can’t,” Rob Harper agreed. “I spoke to them, gave them our information, so if they want to talk to you later, they can come find you at home. Right now, I’m taking you out of here.”

Kara hesitated, glancing at Miho.

“I’ll be fine,” Miho said. “Sakura will be back soon.”

But Kara wasn’t worried about Miho talking to police. She was worried about later, when night fell again. Sakura had gone over the edge with her obsession and her grief, and she had been having the nightmares, just like all of the dead kids. Maybe Miho was safe because she hadn’t had the dreams, but maybe not. What the hell did any of them really know about the demon that preyed on Monju-no-Chie School?

Demon? Kara thought. Seriously?

But she found that she was serious. The word had sounded faintly ridiculous when Miho had spoken it out loud, but in Kara’s head it sounded all too real and plausible. Her nightmares had leaked out into reality, or at least that was how it felt. The cat had been real. It had been there, looking at them, perhaps trying to choose its next victim. For some reason it had moved on to another room, another girl.

How close did we come to dying? Kara pictured Sakura’s body sprawled facedown with all of those bite marks on her flesh and felt panic rising. She thought of claws in her own skin, teeth puncturing her.

“Stay at our house tonight,” she said to Miho.

Her father shot her a curious, confused look. But Kara pressed on.

“You and Sakura should stay with us tonight,” she said. “It isn’t safe in the dorm, Miho. We were lucky last night. It could have been any of us.”

But maybe not you. Why not you? Why don’t you have nightmares? Kara thought Sakura’s certainty that it was her dead sister Akane back from the dead to take revenge was crazy. But she’d already established a connection between everyone who had been plagued by nightmares and all of those who had died. If Ume really had killed Akane, and her friends had helped-or at least known about it-then they were being targeted. Jiro had been indirectly responsible because he’d spurned Ume and fallen in love with Akane. And Sakura might be visited by the dreams because she was Akane’s sister.

Which explained why Miho didn’t have the nightmares.

But it didn’t explain why Kara did have them.

“Dad,” Kara said, “just one night. I don’t want to leave them here.”

“What about the rest of the students?” her father asked.

Kara tried a smile but knew it must look broken and desperate. “We can’t fit them all in our house.”

Her father relented. “If Mr. Yamato doesn’t object, it’s fine with me. I’ll find out.”

She hugged him and kissed his stubbly, unshaven cheek. He must have thrown on his clothes after Miss Aritomo called, no shower, no shave. But he’d never looked better as far as his daughter was concerned. Her dad had come to the rescue.

Miho and Mr. Harper bowed to each other again.

“I’ll call you later,” Kara told her. The girls shared a short embrace.

“I’ll see if I can find that Noh play,” Miho said.

Kara nodded. “Good.”

Her father led her out of the room. In the corridor, some of the girls had retreated into their rooms, though most of the doors were open at least a fraction. Police and EMTs crowded the third floor, along with teachers and several school administrators. Ume had closed her door.

Kara followed her father to the landing, but voices from the common room off to her left drew her attention and she looked over to see Sakura seated in a wooden chair, being questioned by two policemen. The girl wore torn pajama pants and a T-shirt upon which she had painted some kind of calligraphic message. One of the cops stood, arms folded, glaring down at her and the other sat in a chair opposite Sakura, sleeves rolled up, leaning forward and speaking to her quietly. To Kara, they looked absurdly cliche, the living embodiment of every movie’s good-cop/bad-cop routine. But if she’d been sitting in that chair, she suspected she’d have fallen for it completely. Under the intense gaze of the cross-armed detective, the kind tones of the other would have been welcome.

Sakura seemed unfazed. She sat rigidly, back straight, chin up, studiously ignoring them both. As Kara paused to stare into the room, Sakura spoke quietly, a perfunctory reply to one of the questions that Kara couldn’t hear.

“Kara, come on,” her father said, in curt Japanese.

Hearing this, the detectives both turned toward them. The intimidating one scowled, strode over, and shut the door with a bang.

“Kara,” her father said, taking her by the arm.

“Dad, they don’t really think Sakura could have killed Chouku, do they?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell you what they think. I just know I need to get my daughter out of here and home safe.”

His tone made her look up at his face. He brushed the hair away from Kara’s eyes and cupped her cheek in his hand. She wanted to ask him what he meant by “home” but knew that was a conversation for later.

“All right. Let’s go.”

They started toward the top of the steps, only to be halted by Miss Aritomo, who came down the corridor after them. Kara assumed she’d been in Chouku’s room talking to the police.

The dynamic chemistry between her father and the art teacher crackled in the air, an unmistakable energy. As Miss Aritomo closed the distance between them, both of them wearing looks of profound concern, Kara had the impression they were about to embrace. But then Miss Aritomo brought herself up short.

“Harper-sensei, Yamato-san would like to speak with you for a moment before you leave,” she said.

Kara felt her father hesitate; he glanced at her.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Are you sure? I really just want you to get home.”

“I could go-”

“No. I want you with me,” he interrupted. “Would you mind waiting just a few minutes? I promise I’ll be right back.”

“It’s fine,” Kara said. “But I don’t want to stand around here. Can I wait out front?”

Her father frowned, weighing the request. But with so many cops and teachers going in and out of the building, there wasn’t much chance of anything happening to her.

“Stay by the stairs,” he said, then threaded back down the jammed corridor with Miss Aritomo.

The second floor buzzed with chattering students, some of whom were visibly upset, even weeping, but others who seemed only morbidly curious. A trio of boys stood on the steps, daring one another to go up. Kara passed them without meeting their eyes and hurried down to the lobby, longing for the sun’s warmth and a breath of fresh air.

As she strode across the foyer, someone called her name and she turned to see Hachiro coming down the steps after her.

Kara waited for him. “Hi.”

The sadness in his eyes broke her heart. He had known Chouku well, and his face showed all of his pain. Jiro had been his best friend, and now this. Today the sweetness that usually lit up his face had been replaced by a grim expression that made him seem far older.

“Hello, bonsai,” he said, trying to keep a light tone between them.

Kara reached for his hand. “I told my father I would wait outside. And I feel so cold, I need the sun. Would you walk with me?”

Hachiro nodded, clutching her hand, and accompanied her, holding the door for her. When they stepped into the sun, Kara felt some of the tightness in her shoulders relax and the ice in her gut began to thaw.

Side by side, they looked out across the green field that separated the dorm from the school. Though the air was very chilly, the vivid blue sky spoke of another perfect spring day.

“I can’t believe it,” Hachiro said.

Kara looked at him, squeezing his hand. “It’s true. I… I saw her.”

Without warning, her hands began to tremble. She took a long, quavering breath and tried to say more, but no words would come. Hachiro looked at her, his eyes very old suddenly, and instead of asking the questions that he must have had, he took her into his arms and held her while she shook.

“Something awful is here,” Kara whispered against his broad, strong chest. “Something evil. I know that sounds crazy-”

“No,” Hachiro said flatly. “It doesn’t. Not at all. I think you may be right.”

On a huge wicker chair in the corner of her father’s bedroom, Kara curled up and delved into the pages of Sense and Sensibility, desperate to lose herself. The era conjured by Jane Austen’s writing had always been the most effective retreat from thoughts she wanted to avoid and emotions she hoped would go away. The words lulled her, wrapped her in cleverness and longing and the concerns of another age.

Her father had been back to the school twice that day and on the phone half a dozen times in between. Even now he was in his office with the door closed, and though she could hear the occasional muted tones from the other room, she could not make out any specifics.

When he came out of the office and down the hall, pausing to regard her from the open doorway to his bedroom, Kara kept reading to the end of the paragraph before she looked up. The real world-and the surreal world that had begun to intrude upon it-was not welcome. She tried to communicate that to him silently, to let him know that for just a while she wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong. But he was too preoccupied with the panic at school to notice her wordless pleading.

“The board of directors has closed the school until further notice,” he said.

Kara held her page with a finger. “Good. I don’t know if… I mean, hopefully they’ll catch whoever did it. But it’s all just too much now. They can’t expect the students to be able to focus.”

“I’d like to think that was part of the decision,” her father said, “but I’m sure it was mostly pressure from the parents. The day students won’t be coming in tomorrow, and a lot of the boarding students are going home, at least for now. Some parents have apparently already begun to take their children out of here.”

“Already?” Kara said, glancing quickly at her clock. An hour or so to go before dinner. If Miho’s or Sakura’s parents came to get them, would they even stop to tell her they were leaving?

“People are afraid.”

They have reason to be, she thought. Or some of them do.

“What about us? What are we going to do?” Kara asked, curious but grateful that she had her father. She could survive just about anything as long as he was around. Her mother’s death had shattered her, but she still felt fortunate to have one parent who loved her instead of two living parents who barely remembered she was alive, like Sakura’s and Miho’s parents.

“I’m not sure yet. Tomorrow I’m going to talk to Mr. Yamato and find out how long he thinks the school will be closed. If it’s more than a couple of days, I thought I’d take you down to Kyoto, get us both out of here for a while.”

“That sounds nice.”

But her father’s eyes were troubled. “I don’t want you over at the school after dark.”

Kara frowned. “What about the other kids, the ones whose parents won’t come for them right away?”

“The other kids aren’t my daughter.”

They both recognized how grim the conversation had become. Kara could see that her father wished he could take it back, or at least lighten his words with some humor.

“I didn’t mean that as harsh as it sounded,” he started.

Kara shook her head. “No, Dad. It’s okay. You don’t have to worry about whether or not I’ll take all this seriously. I take it wicked seriously. I’m not going to be hanging around the school much, even during the day. At least not on my own.”

This time, he really did smile.

“What?”

“You said ‘wicked.’ Speaking Japanese so much, it’s been a while since I’ve heard that. Makes me a little homesick.”

“Right now, what wouldn’t make you homesick? But Harpers aren’t the type to run away, are we? You always say that.”

Her father came to crouch by the chair, one hand on her knee, locking her gaze with his own. “If it means keeping you safe, I’ll run as fast and far as our legs can carry us.”

Kara smiled and her father kissed her forehead before he rose and left the room. She dipped back into Jane Austen but had only read a couple of pages when she heard someone knocking at the front door.

“I’ve got it!” Kara called, unfolding herself from the wicker chair and hurrying out through the living room,

She opened the door to find Miho, alone, on the stoop. In black pants and a dark gray jacket, she seemed almost swallowed by the dark. She’d pulled her hair back into a hasty ponytail and carried a backpack, which Kara figured contained her pajamas and a change of clothes for tomorrow. Night had fallen, and Miho cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at the darkness behind her.

“Hey, where’s Sakura?” Kara asked, switching back to Japanese.

Miho flinched, brows knitting, and Kara felt an immediate flush of guilt. The question had to have made it sound like she was less interested in Miho’s presence than Sakura’s absence.

“Sorry. Come in,” she said, stepping aside. “I’m just worried about her, you know?”

“You should be,” Miho said, entering the house and immediately removing her shoes, setting them by the door.

Professor Harper came out of his office, summoning up a welcoming smile. “Miho. I’m pleased you could make it.”

The girl bowed stiffly. “I am honored to be invited, sensei,” she said in English. “And I hope you will speak English with me. I would like more practice.”

“You seem to be doing very well, but as you wish.” Kara’s father frowned and looked first at the shoes Miho had just left by the door and then at the door itself. “What happened to your roommate? You didn’t walk here alone, did you?”

Miho gave a slight bow. “I did, sensei. Sakura is”-she paused to find the right phrasing-“not in the mood.”

Kara started to ask for an elaboration, but Miho gave her a look that suggested she might want to hold off until they were alone. Her father waited a moment, but when it became plain their greetings were over, he put his hands up.

“Well, I wish you hadn’t come by yourself after dark, but I’m glad to have you here. Why don’t you girls go talk about boys or whatever it is you do while I make dinner?”

Miho blushed, but Kara laughed.

“Are you sure you don’t want help, Dad?”

“No. Go ahead, honey.”

With a look of quiet conspiracy, Kara and Miho went into Kara’s bedroom. Any other time, what ensued would have been exactly as her father predicted, yet another conversation about boys. But Miho’s obsession with American boys seemed to have waned in the shadow of murder and the terrifying notion that something inhuman might be lurking in the dark.

An awful feeling had been brewing inside Kara from the moment she opened the door to find Miho alone. As soon as she closed the door, she turned to the other girl.

“What’s going on?”

“The police take Sakura…,” Miho began, then shook her head in frustration and switched once more to Japanese.

“The police talked to her for over an hour, and then took her to Miyazu City, to the police station. They brought her back only a little while ago, and she won’t talk to me about what happened there. I’m sure they must have accused her, but-”

“If they can’t explain how Chouku died, they can’t charge Sakura with anything,” Kara interrupted.

“Exactly. And now she is acting so strangely.”

Kara raised her eyebrows. “More strangely than this morning?”

“Yes. She barely spoke to me. She wanted the lights off in our room and stood by the window, like she was waiting for something. I wish we hadn’t told her about seeing the cat last night.”

Kara thought about that. If Sakura really thought the cat was Akane, or had anything to do with her, it seemed all too plausible that she was waiting for her sister to come back.

“I was afraid to stay there tonight, but also afraid to leave her alone,” Miho went on. “But then she told me I should go.

It… hurt me. She’s my best friend, Kara, and she doesn’t want my help. It’s as if some other girl who looks just like Sakura has moved in and is sleeping in her bed. She is so cold now.”

Kara went to her window. The chill of the spring night made her shiver and she closed the window all but an inch or two. She stared out at the night. Off to the left, across the street, lights burned in a small house where there lived an old couple who always smiled when they saw her. It made her feel a little better knowing they were awake and alive in there, living their lives.

Which led her mind down a narrow lane to a hidden corner, where there lurked a terrible thought.

“What if it’s just a cat?” she asked without turning.

“How could it be?” Miho said.

Now Kara did turn. She lifted her hands to her mouth and chewed on the tip of her left thumbnail, thinking. Then she dropped her hands.

“There’s a little ledge out there. Not much, but I guess it could be possible that the thing came from another room, or another part of the building. I’m not sure I believe it, but let’s just say that’s all it is. If we’re going to believe something crazy, wouldn’t you rather believe that a cat could walk around out there than that there’s something… that it isn’t a cat at all?”

Miho stared at her, eyes hard behind her glasses. “I believe in ghosts, Kara. I always have. But I never even considered that there might really be evil spirits or demons or anything like that. I wish I’d never seen that cat. I wish I’d stayed asleep. I wish Chouku and the others were still alive. But let me ask you this, if that thing is just a cat, then who killed Chouku?”

Kara took a deep breath. She slid her hands into her pockets. “Well, it wasn’t Akane.”

Miho narrowed her eyes in sudden understanding. “You’re saying you think the police are right?” she asked, face clouded with anger. “That Sakura-”

“No!” Kara said, hands becoming fists in her pockets. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really believe that. I mean, how would it be done, bleeding her like that, and with her roommate sleeping right there? And she’d have to have gotten out of your room without waking either of us, which we both know didn’t happen. But the way Sakura’s acting… look, you know you’ve considered it, too. I just thought one of us should say it out loud, just once.”

Miho swallowed her anger, averting her eyes for a moment. The shy, giggly, boy-obsessed girl seemed someone else entirely now.

“All right. But let’s not say it again.”

“Deal.”

Miho sat on the edge of Kara’s bed. “There’s more bad news. I’m going home.”

Kara blinked. “Your parents are coming to get you?”

Miho nodded, forlorn. “In three days. My father can’t get away from work until then.”

Sadness and a bit of disgust tinged her voice. Other students had parents who were showing up tonight, and many more would be gone tomorrow. But with three students dead, at least one of them murdered, her parents couldn’t make the trip for three days.

“Yeah, but they’re coming,” Kara said.

Miho glanced up in surprise. “You want me to go?”

“No way. I’m terrified. I want you here with me. But I’m happy that your parents are coming. What about Sakura’s parents?”

Miho gave a slow shake of her head. “Out of the country.

Sakura said the school hasn’t even been able to reach them.”

Kara sighed. “They’re disgusting. Don’t they care at all?”

“Maybe they don’t.”

The ugliness of the statement gave both girls pause, but then Kara sighed and flopped down on the bed beside Miho.

“I’m really glad you’re here.”

“Me too. It’s strange to be in a teacher’s house, though.”

“When you’re here, he’s not a teacher, he’s my father. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Kara propped herself up on one elbow. “Well, we can’t talk about this stuff all night. We need distractions. Why don’t you let me fix your hair?”

Miho looked horrified. “Fix? What’s wrong with my hair?”

“No, it’s just an expression. Let me do something different with it. Just for fun. And after dinner, we can watch a movie. Something with explosions. Always a good distraction.”

Miho touched her hair and gave her a doubtful look.

Kara got up and grabbed her hand. “Trust me.”

A sound sweeps into Kara’s bedroom on the chilly air, a tinkling noise like wind chimes, but there are no wind chimes hanging outside the little house.

The chimes become cries, and at first she thinks it is a baby, but then she knows the sound is adult. Sobs of grief, carried on the breeze, slipping through the gap between window and frame.

Her eyes flutter open. She shivers, so cold, and for a moment she only wants to burrow deeper under the covers, but the cries grow more plaintive, tugging at her heart.

Kara climbs out of bed, listing like a drunken sailor, feeling as though the thinnest sheet separates her from total wakefulness. She staggers to the window and peers out. The moon is limned with an icy white corona, as though it has frozen over. Its gleam illuminates a lonely figure, naked, seated on the ground with her legs drawn up to her chest, hugging her knees.

She knows that figure. Knows the knife-edge cut of her hair.

Sakura.

Kara blinks. It feels like a dream, and yet her room is her room, just the same as always. In a dream, she knows, you’re not supposed to be able to see your hands. But there’s another kind… lucid dreaming, where you can control the outcome. If she can see her hands, either she’s not really dreaming, or it’s a lucid dream, and she can change things. She can be in control.

She tries to look down, but her body will not obey her mind.

She leans her forehead against the glass, squinting to get a better look out there, and the glass is cold and damp with condensation and solid against her skin. So real.

Sakura… if that is Sakura… weeps outside her window. Kara blinks. The little house where the sweet old people live is not there. Instead, her view is of the slope leading down to the bay. She can see the ancient prayer shrine and the modern shrine of anguish, the one created in Akane’s memory. The place where she died.

Sakura rocks back and forth, hugging her knees against her chest. Is she cold?

Go out there, Kara tells herself. Hold her. Comfort her.

But fear skitters down her spine and her body flinches backward. She needs to pee. Needs to pee and then get back to bed. Needs to turn away from the window.

She knows that hair, though, and she knows it is Sakura out there on the bay shore, crying-there is something very wrong.

Sakura’s back is to the window. And though Kara tries hard to will the girl to turn toward her, to give her a glimpse so she can know it really is Sakura, the girl does not turn.

The cries grow louder. Guilt squeezes Kara’s heart. But fear closes her throat, and slowly, she begins to turn her head away.

She turns from the window, taking shallow breaths. Kara closes her eyes and presses the heels of her hands against them. When she opens them again, she is staring at her bed.

Only then does she remember, in the shifting reality of dreams, that Miho is in her bed. The girl lays there, just at the edge of the bed, not wanting to take up more space than she requires. Her back is to Kara, and that gives Kara pause.

Another back. Another face she cannot see.

But she smiles, forcing the serpent of fright that twists in her gut to uncoil. For a moment, Miho’s hair was straight, silken black. But now Kara blinks and sees the girl’s hair is done in a thick braid, and laced through the braid is a bright red ribbon. Kara had spent over an hour working on it, and Miho had laughed and posed like a model in front of the mirror.

Miho.

The room feels fluid… liquid… and Kara wades through it, the edges of her perception melting as she climbs onto the bed.

“Miho,” she says. Or thinks. Loudly.

She kneels on the bed and reaches for the girl.

Miho lolls toward her, tipping toward the weight Kara has added to the mattress like a corpse disturbed. Her head tilts, turns-

She has no face.

Kara jerks away, stumbles, and bangs her knee, and for a moment her vision clears. But then she glances up and sees the no-face girl, and in her bedroom there comes a soft, chuffing, insinuating laughter, like two girls sharing secrets, sweet and innocent and yet cruel all at the same time. And Kara opens her mouth to scream-

Only nothing comes out, and she knows why. She’s been here before. Doesn’t even have to reach up to feel the smooth skin covering the place her mouth ought to be. She has no mouth, no face, no scream. No voice.

Her heart races, searing its own scream into her. Her chest burns as she tries to find air.

She can only stare at the no-face girl, whose hair is braided with a red ribbon the way Miho’s should be, and she wants to scream more than she has ever wanted anything in her life. Her whole body tenses, heaves, tries to scream, and her eyes burn with tears of frustration and terror.

In the moonlit shadows of her bedroom, she hears a cat begin to purr.

Kara runs, shaking, out into the short corridor.

The cats are black and white, ginger and gray, fat and starved. They sit on tables, on chairs, on tatami mats. One sits so still beside a lamp that it looks carved from wood. She wants her father, wants to go into his room and wake him, but three of them sit, barring his door.

As one, they follow her with their eyes as Kara weaves through the living room.

As one, they hiss.

As one, they begin to follow, stalking her.

Kara backs up to the front door, reaches behind her and finds the knob, fumbles it open, and then she is running.

Outside, the bay is gone. Her street has returned. The lights are off in the sweet old couple’s home, and for a moment she wonders if they are dead.

On the sidewalk, the naked girl moans and sobs, her face still turned away. Kara’s stomach churns. She moves to one side, takes three steps closer. Moves the other direction, trying to get a look at the girl’s face, but cannot. The air seems to shift around her, obscuring her features, turning her at the last second, always only the back of her head.

The cats hiss, and again she hears the secret laughter of faceless girls, and she turns and sees that she’s left the door to her house open. Figures move inside, and at first she thinks they are cats, but she blinks and they are dark silhouettes, tall figures with long, black hair, faces lost in darkness.

And then another laugh, just beside her, in her ear.

Kara squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t see, but she knows-the girl she thought was Sakura is so close. She can feel the weight of her attention, knows that she has turned to look, and all Kara has to do to see her face is turn…

And suddenly it is the last thing, the worst thing, that she should ever do.

A soft purr in her ear. A laugh. A mewling hiss.

Pain stabs her palms and Kara looks down. In her fear she clutches her hands into fists so tight that her fingernails slice bloody crescents into the flesh of her palms.

Her hands.

She can see her hands.

No. I don’t want to see, she thinks. But the presence is there, and then she feels something soft, a cat’s tail, brush her leg.

A glimpse is enough. The jaws, open wide, the eyes glittering like flame, lithe and hunched, claws reaching for her.

She had no face, but now, at last, she screams…

… feels fur against her bare arms…

… feels claws puncture the skin of her back…

“Kara! Kara, stop!”

She felt herself shaking, felt the grip on her arms and then a light slap on her face.

Blinking rapidly, she drew a deep breath, as though she’d forgotten for a moment how to breathe. Kara found herself staring into her father’s eyes and took a step back.

He let her go, but reluctantly. Miho stood beside him in her pajamas, shivering in the cold night air. They both stared at Kara, fear in their eyes. Or just concern. The three of them stood in the small yard in front of the house, pale in the moonlight.

“Dad?” Kara managed.

“Jesus, honey, you scared the crap out of me. You were breathing so fast, and you looked… you were having a nightmare. Sleepwalking and having a nightmare at the same time. You’ve never sleepwalked before. What if Miho hadn’t woken me up?”

Kara stared at him. “I don’t know.” She still felt the tug of sleep. Of dreams. But she knew that wasn’t the only thing pulling at her. She hadn’t been sleepwalking. She’d been drawn out here in her dream. Lured with nightmare.

The night air hung heavy with the scent of cherry blossoms. Kara shuddered.

“I don’t know,” she repeated. Then she looked at Miho. The braid remained in her hair, and the red ribbon, but her face was crinkled with concern. “Thank you.”

Kara put as much feeling into those words as she could, wanted Miho to know she meant them.

Miho pointed at her hands. “You were hurting yourself.”

Kara looked down, but even as she did, she knew what she would see. The night air stung her skin badly where her nails had dug crescent wounds into her palms.

“Dad,” she said, looking up at him. “This isn’t normal. There’s something bad here. The place is poisoned somehow, and… there’s this evil spirit…”

It sounded foolish when she said it aloud. Crazy. What did she expect her father to say?

He pulled her into his arms. “Sssh. I know it feels like it can’t be real, honey, and I understand why it all feels wrong to you now, here. Seeing you like this, well, I guess I didn’t realize just how much it was affecting you. I’ll fix it. We’ll figure it out, I swear. But you’ve been having nightmares for a long time, and now this, and I think what you really need more than anything else is real sleep. Do you think you want to take something to help you?”

By something, he meant Ambien. Kara was tempted by the thought of unbroken, dreamless sleep, but what had happened tonight had been more than just a nightmare, and it scared her to think about how vulnerable she would be if she took drugs to keep her asleep. Chouku hadn’t been lured outside by nightmares. She’d been killed in her bed, in her own room.

“I’m okay, Dad. The nightmares never come twice in one night,” she lied. “You’re right, I think. I really just need sleep.”

“All right, honey,” her father said. “Just… I know it’s hard, but try to get some sleep. We have a lot to talk about tomorrow.” He looked at her, sensing that something remained unsaid, but when she did not elaborate, he kissed her on top of the head and escorted her back inside.

Kara locked her bedroom window while her father stood in the open doorway. As the two girls were climbing into bed again, he thanked Miho.

“I’m glad I was here,” Miho said.

“So am I,” Kara’s father said.

When he left, the two girls looked at each other, sharing their fear without a single word, wide awake, unsure of what it all meant or what would come next.