The Waking

14

T he windows were closed and locked and the air in Kara’s bedroom felt stale and close. Glass would not keep the ketsuki out if it tried to come for her, but the sound of it shattering would wake her father. The demon might be pure emotion, rage and grief and dark hatred, but it had been clever thus far as well. She banked on it not coming after her first, prayed it would not. In the Noh play, the ketsuki killed the summoner last, after it had sated its lust for vengeance.

Which meant Ume would die next.

But the ketsuki had drawn Kara out of her house last night, so all bets were off. The Noh play existed only as a story, and the thing that stalked her now was real.

So she lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling, ready to scream for her father if there came so much as a scratch on the window.

Back home in Massachusetts, Kara had friends who were party girls, but she’d never been the rebellious type. When her mother was still alive, both of her parents had been open and honest with her, and after her death, Kara and her father had survived their grief by joining forces, making decisions together, and maintaining that honesty. One girl she had grown up with, Paige Traficante, had first been grounded for sneaking out of the house after hours at the age of twelve. Time hadn’t tamed her. If there was a party, Paige would be there. The previous summer, she had stayed out all night several times, making sure her parents knew she could not be controlled.

Kara could never do that to her father.

But now she lay on her bed, fully dressed under the covers. When her father had gone to sleep, she had tugged on jeans and a sweatshirt and slipped into sneakers. In her right hand she held her cell phone, which was set to vibrate.

Waiting…

Every minute that passed, she felt more awake. Her eyes still burned with that constant sandpaper feeling and her bones felt too heavy for her flesh. She felt as though she had deteriorated into a kind of empty, brittle shell of Kara, as if her real body had been swapped for some slow, aching, papiermache sculpture.

Part of her hoped the phone would never vibrate, that she would still by lying there come sunrise. But mostly she just wanted it to be over, so she wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.

She lay there, heart thrumming in her chest, imagination painting shadow-puppet shows on the ceiling, too keyed up to even consider the possibility of sleep. Yet her eyelids began to droop and she blinked in surprise, glancing down at her cell phone before once more staring at the ceiling, not daring to look at the windows, fearful of what might be outside.

And then she drifted, eddying down into a dreamless sleep. At the edges of her unconscious mind, something crept on cat feet, nightmares lying in wait, preparing for the moment when she would begin to dream.

Her brow creased and she murmured softly in her sleep. Troubled, she turned over and settled more deeply into her pillow, drawing her knees up into a fetal position.

Girlish laughter, almost a purr, infiltrated her subconscious. The flicker of a nightmare began…

Kara frowned and snapped her eyes open. Moonlight cast a gauzy glow over her bedroom, every detail of that space sharply outlined. Panic rippled through her as she feared what might have happened while she slept.

But then she felt the vibration against her ribs. With a blink, she realized the purr she thought she’d heard had been the vibrating of her cell phone. She’d rolled over on top of it while she’d slept; otherwise it would never have woken her.

She sat up in bed, flipping the phone open as she whipped the covers back. Her eyes darted around the room. She could feel her heart beat on every inch of her skin.

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

The light from the display on her cell seemed weirdly bright. The sound of her own breathing echoed back to her from the corners of the room and she wondered if her father could hear it, if he’d heard the vibrating of the phone, if the creak of her bed had disturbed him.

“She went out, Kara,” Miho said, her voice a tiny, frantic rasp over the phone. “Oh, God, she went out.”

Kara tried to picture where Miho might be now, crouched in the hall or at the top of the stairs. Hachiro would be waiting on the second floor, watching for Ume to pass by.

“You got out without waking Sakura?” she asked as she unlocked her window. With the phone clapped to her ear, she managed to ease the window up a few inches with one hand.

“What? No. I’m talking about Sakura. She got up. She left the room.”

Kara froze. “When? Just now? What about Ume?”

“I have no idea.”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Miho whispered. “I’m following Sakura.”

Kara shot a glance at her bedroom door, mind racing, fearful that she’d been too loud, made some noise that would bring her father at a run. He’d be sleeping lightly tonight, worried for her, and if she woke him, he’d come running into her room and there would be no way she could get out past him, and then Miho and Hachiro would be on their own.

“I’m coming,” she whispered.

“Don’t hang up,” Miho said. “Stay on the phone with me.”

“Hang on.”

Silently sliding the window as wide as it would open, Kara slipped one leg out. The neighborhood seemed abandoned save for the occasional light in some of the houses further down the street. In the other direction, the school loomed darkly atop the slope of its grounds. Between houses across the street, she could see the dark expanse of Miyazu Bay. It did not look beautiful tonight, but vast and forbidding.

Sitting on the windowsill, she swung her other leg out, then dropped the few inches remaining to the ground.

Then she ran, rubber soles padding on the soft earth as she fled the safety of home. She risked a glance back and only then realized that she’d neglected to lower the window. An image of her father’s face sprang into her mind, of the terror that would strike him when he saw her window open and feared the worst, that someone had stolen her from her bed.

Her heart faltered, but her feet did not. Her sneakers touched pavement and she plummeted forward, toward Monju-no-Chie School and the cruel, vengeful secrets that had been born there.

“Kara?”

“I’m here,” she said into the phone. “I didn’t want to talk until I was away from the house. Tell me what’s going on. Where are you?”

“The third floor of the dorm,” came Miho’s whispered reply. “There are still a few other girls here. I don’t want to… wait, I hear music.”

Kara ran past the corner where some of the girls at Monju-no-Chie School congregated in the morning before classes began.

“Probably just someone who can’t sleep,” she said as she ran across the road. The main street turned right here, but straight ahead was the driveway that led up to the parking lot on the west side of the school.

Kara could have run faster, but with every step she glanced around, keeping watch on the shadows. Phone clapped to her ear, she dashed up the driveway, searching the darkness for the lithe motion or glowing eyes of a cat, or the prowl of something worse.

“Keep talking,” Kara said, breathing hard. If Miho went silent, she would be too scared to go on.

“The music,” Miho said immediately. “It’s coming from Ume’s room. The door’s open. I’m going to… Hello?”

In her mind, Kara could see Miho stepping into Ume’s room. She couldn’t stop images of Chouku’s naked, scraped-up corpse filling her mind.

“Be careful-”

“Oh, God, Kara. She’s not here. The room’s empty.”

“I thought she was supposed to have a roommate for tonight. You all were,” Kara said quickly.

“Nobody would share with her,” Miho replied, her voice very small.

In frustration, Kara nearly wept for Ume. She couldn’t imagine being abandoned with her own fear that way. But the girl didn’t deserve her tears.

The line sounded like it went dead for a second, and Kara knew it had to be Hachiro, calling Miho.

“That’s the signal,” Miho said. “I’m going downstairs.”

Kara reached the small school parking lot and ran past. She glanced up at the darkened windows and felt as though they were dark eyes, watching her pass.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

Seconds passed, just a few steps, and she heard Miho say, “Hey.” Over the phone she could barely hear a whispered conversation between Hachiro and Miho. She tried to picture them together on the second floor landing, tried to make out what they were saying, but they spoke so quickly and quietly that even her Japanese wasn’t good enough to understand.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Hachiro says Sakura went out first and he was about to call when Ume came down the stairs. He was standing right there and she didn’t notice him.”

“Like she was sleepwalking,” Kara whispered, remembering the previous night. “The ketsuki’s luring her out in dreams.”

“But what’s Sakura doing?” Miho asked.

“You don’t think-”

“I can’t. I can’t think that.”

“Then there’s only one way to find out,” Kara told her. “I’m coming. But how are they going to get past Mr. Matsui?”

Kara’s father had said that her homeroom teacher had the midnight to four a.m. shift at the front doors, making sure no one entered the dormitory who wasn’t supposed to. The police were also supposed to drive by twice an hour, but she hadn’t seen any sign of them so far.

“I don’t know, but it’s very quiet downstairs. We’re going down.”

A night bird cried, startling Kara, and she nearly tripped. She passed the school, continuing up the drive toward the dormitory. But the road led to the dorm parking lot, so she left the pavement and started across the grassy field toward the front doors. The wind picked up and she could hear it rustling in the trees from all the way across the field.

Her heart pounded in rhythm with her feet.

“Miho, talk to me before I totally freak out.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just… I don’t want to be here, Kara. I want to go hide. I want to go home. Does it make me a baby if I want my mother?”

Hachiro said something that Kara could hear in the background. It sounded like he was agreeing, that he wanted his mother, too.

“We all do,” she told Miho.

“Oh, Kara,” Miho said quickly. “I wasn’t thinking-”

The dorm loomed ahead, a dark, two-dimensional silhouette against the indigo sky. Kara slowed down, studying the windows, only a few of which showed a glint of light within.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“First floor, coming up to the… Shit.”

Kara felt her throat tighten. She looked around as she strode toward the dorm’s front doors. If Ume and Sakura had come out, where were they? Why hadn’t she seen them?

Then she noticed something odd, even as, over the phone, Miho put voice to it.

“The door is open,” the girl said. “The glass is cracked.”

“Where’s Mr. Matsui?” Kara whispered, gaze darting around. The wind seemed to whisper, and suddenly she felt sure there were eyes upon her. Someone watched her, even now. She stopped short and did a slow circle, searching for some sign of her observer.

“Gone,” Miho said. “No sign of him.”

In the background, Hachiro said something that sounded like, “There’s blood here.”

“Kara,” Miho said.

“I heard,” she whispered.

Kara started for the school again, tentatively. After only a few steps, she saw something on the ground ahead, a dark, undulating shape. Two small shadows darted from it and she uttered a tiny, frightful squeak.

“What?” Miho asked, her voice sounding close in Kara’s ear.

The shadows raced low across the field, heading for the trees on the far side, first two of them and then a third and fourth. As Kara approached, slowly, dread coursing icily through her, the last two fled from the figure sprawled on the grass.

Her free hand fluttered up to cover her mouth, though to stifle a scream or attempt to prevent her from being sick, she couldn’t have said.

Mr. Matsui had been slashed badly. There were tiny scratches like the ones on Chouku’s corpse, but other claws had been at him. Deep gashes had flayed his face and chest and opened his abdomen. Through the tatters of his shirt and jacket, she saw glistening black things that had to be organs.

Cats hadn’t done this.

Ketsuki, she thought. The ketsuki killed him and left him to the cats.

Breathing through her mouth to keep from throwing up, she started to scream but cut herself off. Turning away, she clutched the phone and spun around, searching for the demon that had nearly taken her from her own house the night before.

“Kara, what-”

“He’s dead,” she whispered.

“Who?” Miho asked.

But by then she could hear them coming and turned to see Miho and Hachiro running across the grass toward her, pale in the moonlight, almost two-dimensional themselves against the black silhouette of the dorm.

Hachiro carried an aluminum baseball bat.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Miho said, running toward Mr.

Matsui.

Stupidly, both girls still had their phones against their ears.

“Don’t look,” Kara warned her.

Miho faltered, looked at her. They both closed their phones and stashed them in their pockets as they hurried toward each other.

“Are you okay?” Miho asked.

“Not even close.”

Hachiro stood by the corpse, staring down. Then he backed away as if afraid it would jump up and follow him. When he’d nearly bumped into them, he turned, and the three of them huddled together.

“Did you see anyone?” Hachiro asked.

Kara shook her head. “Just a bunch of cats.”

“Where’d they go, then?” he went on.

Miho and Kara exchanged a knowing glance.

“The shrine,” Miho said.

“Or what’s left of it,” Kara replied, nodding.

Hachiro slung his baseball bat over his shoulder as the three of them turned and started to run.

They followed a path that had become so familiar to them, diagonally across the field toward the east side of the school and the woods that bordered the grounds there. Over the years, generations of feet had worn a trail right down to bare earth, like the running path of a baseball diamond.

Instinctively, they kept off the dirt track, their footfalls quieter on the grass. Running felt good and right, and it allowed Kara to chalk her rapid-fire heartbeat up to exertion rather than the terror that had nestled inside her.

None of them spoke. Their chuffing intakes of breath sounded so loud in her ears-her own most of all. Far away, a car horn blared. Something rustled high in the trees off to the right and she glanced up, telling herself it had to be some silent night bird. Cats couldn’t climb that high. Still, she scanned the branches and the tree line for the slinking shapes.

Hachiro glanced at her and Kara picked up her pace. But when they came to the back corner of the school, Miho slowed down, and they quickly followed suit. The three of them stalked hurriedly alongside the building, wary of the woods.

Miho stopped, staring at the ancient prayer shrine that abutted the woods on the right, just ahead. Hachiro looked around, holding the bat with both hands, ready to swing.

At least a dozen white candles were burning on the altar of the ancient shrine, ringed in a carefully arranged circle and surrounded by freshly picked cherry blossoms. The smell of the flowers wafted to them on an errant breeze.

Kara peered past the old shrine into the woods, then looked ahead, toward the front lawn of the school and the bay beyond. Who had done this, and what did it have to do with the ketsuki? With Akane? With any of this?

In the darkness at the lee of the school, someone struck a match.

Kara turned to see Sakura’s face illuminated in the corona of light as she put fire to the tip of her cigarette and drew in a lungful. She shook out the match, but the cigarette glowed orange in the dark.

“Sakura-,” Miho started.

“What are you guys doing out here?”

Hachiro didn’t lower the bat. “We were worried about you,” he said.

Sakura had her fuku uniform on, the jacket inside out the way she’d worn it the first day Kara had met her. All of her patches and pins were showing. Her hair was feathered and jagged at odd angles, fresh from the pillow, and though she wore socks, she had no shoes on. She looked more than a bit crazy, like she’d been in a trance.

No, Kara thought, she looks like something out of one of my dreams. Or a nightmare.

A terrible thought occurred to her.

“You know this isn’t a dream, right? You’re awake. This is real.”

Sakura stared at her, taking a long pull from her cigarette and then exhaling, letting it plume in twin streams from her nose.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I know I’m not dreaming. I wouldn’t dream this.”

“Where’s Ume?” Hachiro asked.

“Having a chat with Akane,” Sakura replied, gesturing north toward the bay, down the slope to where they had ruined the shrine the students had built for the dead girl.

“That thing isn’t Akane,” Kara said.

“How can you be so sure?” Sakura asked.

“Because we knew her,” Miho said. “And she wouldn’t have done this. Not ever.”

“Maybe not before they killed her,” Sakura sneered. “I’m pretty sure being murdered might change your attitude.”

“Sakura, listen,” Kara said. “You can’t let this happen. It’s wrong.”

The girl curled her lips in disgust, about to argue.

“Yes, I know, she killed Akane,” Miho snapped, and Kara had never heard her speak to Sakura that way before. “Or you think she did. But if you don’t do something, you’re just as bad.”

“And when Ume’s dead,” Kara said, pleading with her to understand, “it’s going to come for us. You’re the one who brought this thing to life! Your grief, your rage. Just like in the story.”

Hachiro took a step away from them, headed down the slope for the ruined shrine to Akane.

Sakura blocked his way, flicked her lit cigarette at him.

“You’re wrong. I know you’re afraid, but you don’t need to be. She won’t hurt you, or me.” Emotion contorted her face and Sakura shook her head, looking at each of them. “Don’t you get it? What’s going to happen has to happen so Akane can finally rest.”

Miho hesitated. Kara saw in her face how difficult this was for her. They were roommates, and Miho struggled with her love for Sakura. But Kara hadn’t known them as long. She couldn’t just stand there.

“Get out of the way, Sakura,” Kara said, starting forward.

Sakura shook her head, her mouth a tight, expressionless line.

“You can’t stop us,” Hachiro warned.

Sakura swore and spit at him. Then her calm broke and she began to cry, balled her fists up and shook them like a toddler having a tantrum.

“Please,” she said, looking from Miho to Kara, ignoring Hachiro now. “Don’t interfere. This has nothing to do with you.”

Miho hesitated. Kara looked at Hachiro. She didn’t want to hurt Sakura, but she was ready to force her way past the girl.

A cry of terror rose into the night, startling all four of them and rousing an owl, which took flight from a tree and vanished over the roof of the school.

The cry became a scream.

Ume had woken from her sleepwalking dream into a nightmare.