Then the train doors closed with an irritating pinging noise, and started to pull out of the station, airflow gusting around it. She and Ren waited until the train had departed, and then Miho felt him exhale beside her.
“That’s all we can do tonight, I guess.”
When Miho spoke, it came as a surprise to her. She hadn’t even been aware of intending to do so until she heard her own voice.
“Ren,” she said.
Something in her tone alarmed him and he turned, stepping in close, holding her shoulders and studying her face. “What’s wrong?”
Miho could not reply. She stared past him, at the broad, open space where the train had just passed. Down on the tracks, something stirred, perhaps nothing more than discarded newspapers eddying on the breeze. Yet the sound whispered up to her, insinuating itself in her mind, and it seemed so much like a hiss.
With the train gone, and the station now empty, the sense of presence ought to have departed as well. But it hadn’t. Miho could feel something else there with them, and just as this thought began to form into a coherent belief, and her fear started to crystallize, she saw the shadows bunch and gather in the space between platforms, down on the tracks.
“Miho!” Ren said, his voice urgent. He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes, and then she knew she had been mesmerized, for she could not turn away.
Somewhere far off, she heard a church bell toll heavily, as though a funeral procession had passed by.
Then Miho saw her, on the other side of the tracks: a female figure in the shadows. She strode forward, picking up speed, nearly at a run, and when she reached the space between the platforms she stepped right onto the shadows and walked across as though no gap existed.
A tear ran down Miho’s cheek.
Ren twisted and swore under his breath when he saw the dark figure gliding toward them. He slammed Miho in the chest with his open palm and shoved her away.
“Run!” he told her.
She started to. Wanted to. But after four steps, she could only stop and watch as Ren tried to play the hero. He stood in the path of that beautiful, ethereal creature, and the Hannya changed. She opened her mouth in a hiss that unhinged her jaws, spraying venom from glistening fangs. Horns pushed up through the flesh and bone of her forehead and she became, in an instant, the monstrous countenance that the Noh mask could only hint at.
Miho screamed for Ren.
The Hannya picked him up and hurled him into the coalescing shadows. He slammed against the platform and rolled off, onto the tracks below. Miho heard him grunt, and then silence.
The darkness came alive around her. She stared at the place where the Hannya had been a moment before and thought she saw an afterimage of its dreadful eyes hanging in the night air, but it had vanished.
She took a step, ready to run, mouth open to scream, and then a loud hiss filled the darkness around her like static. No, she thought, as she looked down and saw the thick, serpentine coils around her legs, felt the weight of the creature twisting around her body, tugging her arms tight against her sides, suffocating her. Miho cried out, but then the breath left her as the shadow serpent tightened her grip.
Teeth pricked her neck, she felt pressure there, suction, and a deep ache. Then the darkness crashed in at the edges of her vision and oblivion swallowed her whole.
Even before Ren reached consciousness, he felt the pain. Knives jabbed his back and twisted in the ribs under his right arm, and an iron grip clamped around the rear of his skull. Moaning, he woke and drew quick, sharp breaths, panic setting in. How badly had he hurt himself?
He lay on his side, afraid to move, each breath making his injuries throb with fresh spikes of pain. Low voices muttered nearby and he blinked to focus his eyes. At first he had thought himself lost in darkness, but now he saw that he had fallen at an angle that gave him a view of the shadows beneath an overhanging part of the train platform.
I’m on the tracks.
In the back of his mind, he had known it, but now the reality struck him. He would have to move, and soon. A sorrowful sort of fear clutched at him. If his injuries were really bad, wouldn’t he only hurt himself worse by moving?
Those voices.
“Hello? Is someone there?” he said, trying to call out but managing only a painful rasp. “Hello!”
The voices up on the platform seemed to pause a moment, but then they went on. Ren took a breath. It hurt, but he realized that some of the worst pain had retreated. Perhaps he had wrenched his back, even cracked some ribs, without actually breaking anything.
Gingerly, he reached his left hand up to probe at the back of his skull. His fingers came away damp and sticky with what could only be blood, and his hair felt matted. Ren squeezed his eyes closed, pulse racing, but forced himself to continue his investigation. As he pushed his fingers through his hair, he found the cut on his scalp, but only that. His head throbbed with pain from striking it against the ground or the metal rail, but he realized he probably didn’t have anything worse than a concussion.
Okay, he thought.
“Hello!” he called again, starting to sit up. The pain that shot up his back made him suck air in through his teeth, but once he’d gotten into a sitting position it wasn’t as bad.
Why hadn’t the people on the platform heard him? Why hadn’t they come over to see where his voice was coming from?
Ren froze. His left leg lay across one of the tracks and he could feel it begin to vibrate, thrumming with the tremor and weight of an oncoming train. Only then did he hear the low groan of the train approaching. The people on the platform hadn’t heard him over the rising rumble, and he could no longer hear them.
He twisted around to get onto his knees, and now he could see the lights coming around the long curve toward the station. Pain seized him, lancing into his back, but a rush of adrenaline got him up onto his feet. Cursing, frantic, Ren crossed the tracks to the platform’s edge.
Air blasted past him, pushed ahead of the incoming train. Ren cried out in fear as the train thundered into the station, its roar obliterating his voice. Seven or eight people were scattered on the platform. One little girl, holding her mother’s hand, turned and spotted him, pointed and said something to her mother, but her words, too, were stolen by the guttural snarl of the train.
Brakes squealed, echoing off the walls of the station.
Ren raised his hands, pain shooting through him, nearly making him falter, but then boosted himself up onto the platform, rolling out of the way with seconds to spare. The train lumbered to a hissing stop beside him. He lay on his back, still racked with throbbing pain, and stared at the ceiling of the station.
Two men in business suits bent over to look down at him. One of them asked if he was all right, but the other went off on a tirade about how stupid he’d been. Didn’t he know that he could have been killed?
Ren laughed at them for a few seconds, until the adrenaline began to subside and he felt the jolts of pain that the laughter cost him. The men shook their heads and boarded the train. Moments later, it began to move again, straining to roll along its tracks like a sled dog in its traces, picking up speed.
He lay there, catching his breath, heart pounding inside his chest, and as the fear and pain subsided, he remembered how he had gotten there in the first place.
“Miho! Oh, no.”
Ren reached into his pocket and plucked out his cell phone. Its face had been cracked in the fall, but the crystal display still showed a signal. Praying, he called Kara.
Kara ended the call with Ren and turned to stare at Hachiro, clutching her phone in her hand. Her eyes welled up but she bit her lip, not allowing the tears to fall. She didn’t have time to cry.
“What is it?” Hachiro said, his gaze urgent. “Talk to me, Kara. What did Ren say?”
They stood in the genkan, surrounded by cubbyholes filled with blue and pink slippers. The lights in the genkan were bright, but they only made the night outside the glass doors seem even darker. Kara reached up with her free hand and pushed her hair away from her face, fingers fluttering.
“You’re trembling,” Hachiro said.
Kara steadied herself and reached out to grip his shoulder, taking strength from him. “The Hannya came after Ren and Miho. It threw him onto the train tracks. He’s hurt, but not badly. But Miho…”
