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.
12
M onday morning, a light rain began to fall shortly after dawn, the sun struggling to peek through a thin layer of clouds. Miho had fallen asleep first, and might have gotten three hours of sleep after the sleepwalking incident. Kara had managed less than two-perhaps four hours total, separated by the most terrifying experience of her life.
By mid-morning, the rain slowed to barely a trickle, with shafts of sunlight reaching down through breaks in the clouds. It looked like the gloom would burn off, delivering another picturesque spring day on Miyazu Bay, perfect for the tourists visiting Ama-no-Hashidate. But it felt as though all of that existed in some parallel world now, a busy, happy reality blind to the dread and death that stalked the halls of Monju-no-Chie School.
“Dad, Miho wants to get back to the dorm. I’m going to walk her, all right?” Kara asked, standing framed in his office doorway.
He looked at her, eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want to go over there?”
