The Waking

15

A s they started to run toward the sound of that scream, Sakura grabbed Miho’s arm.

“Leave her alone, please!” Sakura said. “This has to happen!”

Miho struggled, and Kara and Hachiro both faltered, starting to go back for her.

“You’re hurting me!” Miho snapped.

Sakura must have seen something in her eyes then that jolted her out of her grief and obsession, must have remembered this was Miho, her roommate and best friend, who’d always stood by her. She let go, pulling her hands back as though burned.

“I’m sorry,” Sakura said. “But-”

“No,” Miho said. “Wake up! It’s not Akane!”

Then she ran to catch up to Kara and Hachiro and they raced down the slope toward the bay and the ruin they’d made of Akane’s memorial.

More screams tore at the darkness, cries for help and for forgiveness. Kara’s thoughts grew darker. For Sakura’s sake, they’d been fighting the idea that the bloodthirsty thing killing their classmates could be Akane. But maybe it is, she thought now. In a way .

Maybe part of what Kyuketsuki used to create the ketsuki was the murdered spirit of the dead girl, weaving Akane’s anguished ghost into the fabric of a nightmare, right along with her sister’s grief. The story from the Noh play was just a version of the tale, like all legends. The reality might be more complex. Kara knew it was only a theory, but if it held any truth, that meant Akane might be part of the ketsuki, but a tainted, awful version of herself that the dead girl never would have wanted.

But Sakura had tortured herself enough over her sister’s death. Kara wouldn’t make it worse by suggesting such a thing.

Sakura hesitated only a second before sprinting after them.

“Kara, stop,” she begged, in English.

“You helped create this thing, Sakura. You have to let go of your hate and grief or more people are going to die.” She stopped and spun to face Sakura, who nearly collided with her. “And I’m going to be one of them.”

Sakura only gaped at her, shaking her head in denial.

Kara swore in frustration and turned to run. The screaming had stopped and that frightened her. Hachiro and Miho had gotten ahead of her, and as she looked past her friends, down the slope toward the bay, she saw two moonlit figures at the water’s edge.

The ketsuki stood like a tiger on two legs, seven feet tall at least, even with its back arched. Its tail rose up from the bay, casting off diamond droplets of water as it dragged Ume along beside it, one clawed hand hooked through her clothes. It had the face of the Noh mask Miss Aritomo had shown them, but terrifyingly real.

The grief-forged thing threw back its head and cried out, and its voice reminded Kara of the terrible sounds she’d heard sometimes at night, when animals had fought in the woods behind her house. It was a scream, but nothing like Ume’s.

The air was thick with the scent of cherry blossoms.

“Do you smell it?” Kara called to Miho.

Wide-eyed, staring at the demon, the other girl only nodded.

“Be careful. Don’t all approach at once,” Hachiro said, waving her and Miho back with one hand as he raised the bat.

“We destroyed the shrine and that did nothing,” Miho said. “How do we fight it?”

As she spoke, Kara glanced over at the memorial the students had built for Akane. Her eyes widened. “Look.”

The shrine had been restored, but only partially. Bits of letters and photos had been carefully arranged. A single red candle burned in the center. Rain-soaked stuffed animals and moldy beanies sat together the way they might on a little girl’s pillow.

Kara shook her head. Had the ketsuki done that?

“Akane, it’s all right,” Sakura called, walking past them, headed for the revenant, the monster. “You can rest now.”

It yowled that terrible, spine-raking noise again and tossed Ume onto the shore. The girl lay there, unmoving, and Kara hated herself in that moment. They were too late. Sakura had slowed them just enough that it had cost Ume her life. The ketsuki had drowned her. Kara wondered if Ume had done the same to Akane.

And then it hit her.

The rebuilt shrine. The candles at the ancient prayer site.

“Jesus, Sakura, you did this!” Kara said. “We took its power away, and you gave it back, on purpose!”

Sakura ignored her, not even turning now. She kept walking toward the ketsuki, hands out as though the thing might embrace her. But Kara didn’t need a reply; she knew it was true. You can rest now, Sakura had said. She thought she was doing this for her sister.

“No more,” Miho said, running for the rearranged shrine. “It has to stop now.”

Kara bolted after her, knowing what she meant to do.

The ketsuki cocked its head, long ears perked up, and it hissed at them. In that moment, jaws wide, lips curled back from its gleaming red teeth, Kara thought it looked nothing like a cat, except for the green, feline eyes.

“It’s okay, sister,” Sakura said softly, in a small, little-girl voice. “She was the worst one, and she’s gone now.”

Kara and Miho tore into the shrine, first with their hands and then kicking and shouting and dragging their shoes through the wreckage of it. Miho cried out prayers to God and her ancestors and Kara could hear in her voice that she was weeping with fear and panic.

The ketsuki lunged across the ground, dropping onto all fours and springing toward them. Sakura shouted at it, tried to grab for its tail, but missed and was left staring at her empty hand.

“No, Akane, stop!” Sakura shouted. But she didn’t move, only stood there, such a strange figure in the moonlight, almost like a ghost herself.

It would have barreled into Kara, ripped her open like it had Mr. Matsui, but Hachiro took three sure, firm steps to intercept it, cocked his arms, and swung the bat with such force that he let out a yell. Kara could hear the aluminum whistling through the humid air.

The ketsuki tried to dodge, but not quickly enough. Hachiro struck it in the side of the head with a terrible crack and the dream-walker, the vampire, lost its footing. Its momentum drove it forward, tumbling into a mass of limbs and flashing claws.

Miho screamed, paused, and then kept kicking at the ruins of Akane’s shrine. If the ketsuki wanted to stop them, their instincts must have been correct. Kara felt something soft underfoot and looked down. There was the Hello Kitty she’d seen before. She picked it up and tugged at it, fingers searching for the seams.

Sakura still shouted for her sister. But if the beast had anything of Akane within it, she ignored Sakura’s pleas.

The ketsuki rose, shook its head, and hissed at Hachiro, stalking toward him.

Kara tore the head off the Hello Kitty beanie.

The ketsuki flinched, staggered, and turned to glare at her.

Kara blinked. The whole world seemed to tilt beneath her and she found herself looking not at the feline vampire but at a slender girl with long, silken hair and no face. Soft laughter came from the faceless girl.

Hachiro swung the bat.

When it struck, Kara blinked again, and the illusion had gone. The bat cracked into the thing’s shoulder and it staggered backward again.

The night wavered. The air shifted.

The ketsuki yowled again, but now a different sound came from its throat, a hiss like the breath of hell that made Kara remember all of the hurtful words she’d ever overheard, made her feel the pain and humiliation accumulated in a lifetime, and made her relive the crippling heartsickness that had destroyed her on the day her mother died and on so many days thereafter.

That, too, passed, and then her skin prickled with revulsion and fear and she could barely breathe. Tears slipped down her cheeks and a sliver of vision passed through her mind, an image of her imminent death, the ketsuki on top of her, fetid breath in her nostrils, its tongue darting into the cavity where her heart had been before it had torn open her chest and gnawed her bones.

She saw it so clearly.

Knew she’d join her mother in the grave.

And Kara screamed.

A shadow moved behind the ketsuki, in and around and enveloping it, much larger than the vampire-thing, the essence of its bloodlust and insidious heart.

The demon. Kara felt the truth of it, knew what she saw. Kyuketsuki.

“I see you,” Kara whispered to the night.

Down by the water, someone began to scream. At first she thought it was Sakura, but a quick glance revealed Ume, rising unsteadily to her feet. A choking cough interrupted her scream and she began to shake, walked two steps and collapsed. But she still lived.

The ketsuki turned toward her now, confused and torn by too many distractions. But vengeance had molded it from rage and pain and vengeance commanded it. It took a step toward Ume.

Sakura stood in the way, studying it, searching its cat eyes.

“Akane?” she asked, pleading and pitiful, hopeful and heartbroken.

Hachiro, breathing quick, terrified breaths, steadied himself and went after the dream-killer again. The ketsuki did not like to be hurt. It had learned. As he swung the bat, it shifted so that it seemed almost to flow around the bat, and then it leaped at him.

With a cry of fear, Hachiro swung again, but too late. The ketsuki lashed out, talons raking his chest. If Hachiro hadn’t pitched himself backward, attempting to escape the attack, the ketsuki’s claws would have flayed him open to the bone.

Swiftly, it stalked after him, picked him up, and flung him toward the trees. Branches snapped and leaves shook as Hachiro fell among them.

A dozen sleek, stealthy cats darted from the woods, scattered by the intrusion. They kept a distance from the ketsuki, prowling at the edges of the unfolding scene like vultures waiting for a meal.

Miho and Kara moved as quickly as they could, scattering bits of the shrine far from the spot where Akane had died. Kara picked up a small poster of some J-pop band and began to shred it in her hands, then scattered the pieces on the light breeze, making sure they were strewn across the grass away from the memorial. Once again the shrine was ruined, but they continued to drag their feet through the debris, kicking and spreading the pieces.

The ketsuki seemed smaller as it turned to them. In the woods, Hachiro did not stir, and so step-by-step, almost wary, it started toward Miho and Kara. It picked up speed, beginning to lope.

“Miho!” Kara shouted.

Both girls screamed. But Kara knew who it came for. She had been here to see it born. Her dreams had been poisoned by it, tainted by its hideous intentions.

When it lunged, she tried to move, to hide behind a tree, but was too late. It snatched her, claws puncturing her clothes and flesh, drawing blood and screams. Terror ripped through her like nothing a nightmare could inspire. Every breath came out a scream and she wailed, blind with fear, and beat at its arms as it lifted her toward its face. Those slit cat eyes gleamed with pure hatred and anguish, and it opened its jaws wide, breath stinking of rot and death.

Kara heard the laughter of faceless girls.

The ketsuki let out that bestial, primal cry of pain and rage it had yowled before, and there among the trees it drove her to the ground so hard that her screams went silent. The breath went out of her. Sakura had summoned it unknowingly, and the ketsuki had made Kara its witness. Now she couldn’t even speak. She tried to breathe, tried to scream, and as it pressed its weight on her chest she knew she was going to die.

The baseball bat smashed into its feline snout. Someone screamed. The ketsuki whipped its head around to see its attacker when the bat struck again, crashing down on its neck.

Hachiro! Kara thought.

But as the vampire-thing shifted atop her, she saw Miho holding the bat, terror contorting her features but determination in her eyes.

A nighttime shadow moved in the darkness of the trees, and Hachiro appeared. With a strength driven by fear, he thrust forward a thick, splintered branch, jabbing it into the ketsuki’s chest like a spear.

The ketsuki shrieked, faltered, staggering away from them. It shook itself and stood up on two legs. Its cat eyes locked on Kara, and for a moment she sensed the presence she had seen before, the rotted, voracious aura of evil that lingered behind it.

Then it took one hate-filled step toward her.

“Akane, stop!”

It whipped its head around. When it saw Sakura coming toward it-and two steps behind, a limping, wounded Ume following her-it lay back its head and let out the most hideous, sorrowful wail yet.

Kara studied it, waiting for another glimpse of the demon that had created the vampire-thing, that had let it insinuate itself into dreams. But of Kyuketsuki, there was no sign.

“Why would you hurt them?” Sakura asked, shaking her head. Her tears glistened in the moonlight. She held something in her hand, some scrap that had blown away from the ruined shrine. “I don’t understand.”

In her uniform, with her jacket reversed and badges showing and with her edgy, jagged haircut, she didn’t look like a rebel anymore. She looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her sister’s clothes.

The ketsuki started toward Sakura and Ume.

“Sakura!” Kara yelled. “You’ve got to let it go. Ume murdered Akane, but your hate’s going to kill us all.”

Ume fell to her knees and hung her head. “Please, no. I hated her so much. Nobody meant for her to… I did not come out here to kill her. Things just got out of hand.”

Her wet, matted hair hung in curtains that blocked the moonlight, so it almost seemed that Ume had no face. The illusion made Kara shiver.

“I’m sorry!” Ume wailed, lowering her head further as though waiting for the executioner. “Please, I’m so sorry.”

Miho and Kara’s destruction of the shrine had scattered scraps of letters and photos all over the place, and the breeze had blown them across the slope, down toward the water. The ketsuki stalked toward Sakura and Ume, carefully choosing its path so that it did not step on a single scrap.

“Sakura, please!” Miho cried.

Kara and Hachiro and Miho all fell silent then, staring as Sakura stood defiantly in the path of her own heart’s vengeance.

Sakura closed her eyes and raised up the scrap she had been holding. Its glimmer revealed it as a photograph, but they were too far away to see the image.

“I can’t forgive Ume,” Sakura said. “I never will. I do wish she would die, and if you were Akane, I would not stand in your way.” She sobbed and her hand shook, but she did not lower the picture. “But my sister would never hurt the people who care about me. I knew the truth when Jiro died. She didn’t want to be his girlfriend, but he meant so much to her. She would never have hurt him. But I didn’t want to know it. I wanted so badly for you to be her.”

The ketsuki took another step toward her but then only crouched, watching her, shivering. It seemed much smaller than before.

Kara thought Sakura would destroy the photo, tear it in half and cast the pieces to the wind again. Instead, she turned and walked the few steps back to Ume. Sakura reached down and picked up Ume’s hand, forced the girl to take the photo from her.

“You gave me this pain, Ume. Now I give it back to you, and you can live with it. I’ll go on, for my sister, and I’ll have her with me always. And you go on with your guilt, and I hope it’s with you always. I pity you.”

The ketsuki screamed and collapsed. It struggled to stand, limping back toward the place where the shrine had been but was no longer. It fell in the spot where Akane had died, mewling and writhing.

When at last it went still, all that remained of it was the cold, dead body of the red and copper cat that Kara had watched die there weeks before-Kyuketsuki’s first victim at Monju-no-Chie School, and its last.

Hachiro limped up beside Kara, blood weeping from a scratch on his face, one hand clutched against the slashes on his chest, and put an arm around her.

“You all right?” he asked.

She nodded, amazed by this guy who’d been brutalized but who seemed concerned only about her own welfare. Kara stood on her tiptoes and gave him a quick, soft kiss. The punctures in her side and back bled, but she’d live.

Miho went to Sakura. They’d been best friends, but just watching them now, Kara could see the distance all of this had put between them. And yet, with just a few steps and open arms, Miho closed that distance. She put her arms around Sakura-the shy girl now strong, the rebel now tender and broken-and hugged her close.

Just a few feet away, Ume still knelt on the ground, sobbing quietly. She had her arms wrapped around her knees and her face buried there, hidden. In one hand she still clutched the photograph that Sakura had given her, tilted in the moonlight so that at last, Kara could make out the image. The picture was a shot of Akane and Sakura in their school uniforms, arms around each other, heads leaning together. The sisters had the same smile.

“Is it over?” Sakura asked, hopeful.

“Yes. It’s over,” Miho said.

As one, Miho and Sakura, and Kara and Hachiro, turned their backs on Ume and started to walk toward the school and the dormitory beyond. The police would drive by soon. Twice an hour, they’d said. They would notice the open door of the dormitory and find Mr. Matsui’s body. Eventually they would find Ume, crying, and the girl would confess.. . or Kara and her friends would tell them of her confession.

What would happen then, she had no idea. But for the moment, Miho was right. It was over.

Yet even as the thought entered Kara’s mind, the wind picked up.

The breeze eddied and swirled and whipped at her clothes and tugged at her hair, and the torn bits of notes and pictures danced and skittered across the grass, moving in tighter and tighter circles. It grew stronger still, dragging pieces of cotton and the cloth skins of stuffed animals into its inexorable pull, and the gathering fragments began to build something.

A silhouette. A shape. An effigy.

At first Kara thought the fragments were constructing the image of the ketsuki, but then a sick feeling clenched in her gut and she felt the wave of grief that she’d felt before, and terror stole her breath away. She felt the presence of the demon, even as the wind finished sculpting it out of the remnants of Akane’s life.

“Oh my God,” Sakura whispered.

Miho said its name. “Kyuketsuki.”

Its hideous face looked very much like the Noh mask they had seen, but uglier, more massive, and when it opened its papiermache mouth, the long knifelike fangs within did not look like paper at all.

Nor did its eyes, when they opened. They were cat’s eyes, like the ketsuki’s, but they gleamed a sickly, putrid green.

Hachiro held Kara tightly, braced as if to run, to carry her away if need be.

And the demon spoke.

“Fortune has smiled upon you,” it said, voice a flutter of torn paper in the breeze. “I can only reach my hands into the world by chance, on those rare occasions when a window is opened. You have closed that window. I swear to you that if I should ever find a door, you would all suffer such agonies as even your nightmares cannot contain.

“But the doors have all been closed since the world was young, and I cannot touch you as I would like. Still, you must be punished for your interference, so I put my curse upon you. Little remains in the world now of the darkness of ancient days… but what there is will come to you, and to this place. All the evil of the ages will plague you, until my thirst for vengeance is sated.”

And the air went still, and the debris fell and fluttered to the ground. A moment later, the wind kicked up again, but it was only the natural breeze from across the bay, and the torn pages and photos began to disperse again.

But the scent of cherry blossoms lingered.