Behind her, back at the entry doors, something moves and Kara flinches. She doesn’t want to be here, but going out that way seems a terrible idea, so she walks deeper into the school. The lights are off, and yet she can see. On the stairs is an arrangement of candles and flowers, as though someone has set them up to create an atmosphere of romance, but all she can think is that it’s a shrine.
To what, or whom, she doesn’t know.
Something shifts at the far end of the hall to her left, in the shadows. For a long moment she watches, trying to make out what it is, and then, just as she turns her attention once more to the candles-which are in a new arrangement now, a new pattern spread all across the stairs-something darts across her peripheral vision, dark and low to the ground.
Kara stumbles up several steps, knocking over a candle. Eyes wide, she stares down at the melted wax as it pools on the step. Flame licks the wood and begins to spread. She reaches down to snuff it with her fingers, but when she touches the step, the wax and flame are gone. Instead, she touches something sticky and warm and red. Blood.
Soft laughter comes from behind her and Kara turns. A small parade of girls shuffle through the genkan. It must be them laughing-the sound comes from that direction-but still it seems unlikely, for they have no faces. No eyes. No mouths.
Trapped, for a moment Kara doesn’t dare move up or down the stairs. Then a breeze flutters the candlelight and she glances around to find that the blood is gone and only a single, large candle burns at the top of the steps, as though to light her way.
With the rustle of laughter below, she starts up, away from those no-face girls. Her own breathing is strangely loud, echoing off the walls as though to smother her, and she can’t stand being in the stairwell anymore.
At the top of the steps, she finds herself in the hallway of the house where she’d grown up, back in Medford, half the world away. This feels right, natural, and her fear abates. Down the hall, the door to her parents’ bedroom is open and a butterfly of hope flutters in her chest.
Kara runs for that open door, not wanting to admit to herself what-or who-she believes she’ll find in her parents’ bedroom. The hall feels longer than it should, and at the end is a window she doesn’t remember, with candles of various sizes and colors arranged on the sill, flames dancing.
She reaches the bedroom, grabs the frame, and turns to look inside.
It isn’t her parents’ bedroom at all. It’s her homeroom, back at her old school. Lying across the desk is the body of a Japanese girl, her sailor fuku plastered against her body, hair matted with blood. But she has no face.
Kara screams and no sound comes out. A sudden terrible certainty fills her and she reaches up, fingers searching, to find that her own features are smooth and dry. No mouth. No nose. She no longer has eyes, yet still, somehow, she sees.
On a desk in the far corner, by the windows, sits a cat with eyes that flicker like candle flames. It watches her, arches its back, and then leaps to the floor. The cat begins to pad toward her, or so she thinks, until it stops at the teacher’s desk and begins to lap at the blood that pools on the floor there.
Still silently screaming, Kara staggers backward, breath coming in gasps. Everything around her shifts, changing. Now the inner wall of the classroom is comprised of sliding doors, like in Monju-no-Chie School. She bumps into one, shoves it aside, and stumbles into the corridor. It isn’t her home anymore. She’s back at her new school, outside Class 2-C, and all she can think of is getting out.
Kara runs. She passes one classroom, but through the sliding doors she can see the shore of Miyazu Bay, water lapping over the legs of the desks, though this is the second floor. Quaking, she passes another classroom, and its walls and windows and desks are spattered with blood. No-face girls are collapsed on the floor and over desks like abandoned marionettes. A dead boy hangs from the ceiling.
She can’t breathe and turns to run, but now there are cats at the top of the stairs. Too many of them. They move from the shadows, out of classrooms, and down the hall behind her, and then she is surrounded. Their feet leave bloodied red paw prints on the floor as they close the circle around her.
Again, she screams…
And wakes.
Kara drew in a gasp of air, as though she’d stopped breathing while asleep. Her heart hammered in her chest and she sat up, clutching fistfuls of her sheets as she stared around her bedroom. In the corners, shadows lingered. The light that filtered through the shutters over her windows cast only gloom into the room. Early morning, then, barely dawn. Too early to be awake, but she didn’t dare lie down for fear she might fall back to sleep and back into that dream.
“God,” she whispered, and swung her legs out of bed. “Not again.”
Three days since school began, and she’d had the same nightmare for three nights in a row, disturbing her sleep. She ought to have been glad it was morning, but she still felt so tired that it might be worth risking more bad dreams if she could sleep a little longer. Or maybe not. The nightmare was awful.
She ran her hands over her face and got up, sliding back the shutters to have a look outside. Despite the gloomy light, there were very few clouds in the sky. When the sun stopped peeking at morning and came fully over the horizon, it would be a crystal clear day, warm and blue.
Kara stayed by the window, waiting for dawn to break and for the cobwebs of her dream to burn away. Already, only fragments of it remained, but it left her with the sensation that she’d been lost in the dream all night. Details changed, but certain elements had been consistent all three nights-the blood and the candles and the cats. The presence of her parents’ bedroom and the feeling of expectation, like she might see her mother again, had been new this time, and it lingered with her. It felt like she’d lost something, though of course even if she had seen her mother, it would only have been a dream.
With a deep breath, she wrapped her arms around herself and watched the sun climb over the horizon. The morning light spread, and she began to feel better.
Then she remembered that it was Saturday, and a smile touched her lips, as though sunrise had spread within her. Yes, she had a few hours of school this morning, but the afternoon would be free. Miho and Sakura were taking her shopping in Miyazu City. After hearing about Akane’s murder and the creepy thing with the cat earlier in the week-added to the stress of trying to adjust to her new life-no wonder she’d been so troubled. The dream had been haunting her all week, but her friends from home were fond of saying there was nothing a little retail therapy couldn’t cure. Shopping was just what the doctor ordered. They’d walk all afternoon, get completely exhausted, and if she was lucky, there would be no dreams tonight.
No dreams tonight. She made it her mantra.
Or perhaps it was more like a prayer.
Pink lanterns were strung from the trees in Takinoue Park, where spring had just begun to blossom. Kara took a bunch of pictures, framing some of them diagonally because she liked her photos off-kilter. At home she would take pictures of her friends because they’d bug her until she relented, but Sakura and Miho seemed to understand that the camera meant something to her beyond just snapping tourist shots, and so they posed only when she asked them to get into the picture.
After school they’d taken the Tankai bus to Sanno-bashi, where only a few minutes’ walk brought them to the park. Kara loved the Turning Bridge and Ama-no-Hashidate and had already photographed them endlessly, not to mention beautiful shots across Miyazu Bay, framing some of the islands in her shots, especially the misty rise of Mount Oidake on Kami Island. One day, she hoped to explore those places with friends. But today wasn’t for sightseeing. It was a day just to be with the girls.
“Can I ask you something?” Miho said, adjusting her round glasses.
Kara lowered her camera. “Sure.”
“We always hear about how much more time we spend in school than American students. Is that really true?”
“Well,” Kara said, “back home, we don’t have school on Saturdays, that’s for sure. And the school days here are definitely longer. But in Japan, there are longer breaks between classes, and more art and physical education classes. We’re probably not actually in class with a teacher that much more than in America, if you add it all up.”
Miho nodded as though this satisfied some suspicion she’d already had. Kara had to know.
