Brave Story (32 page)

“They found the missing sixth-grader. They found Kenji Ishioka.”

He had been discovered lying down on the lawn behind his own house. Wataru’s heart thudded once in his chest, loudly.

“He was unharmed. Not a scratch. But something…apparently, something was wrong. He doesn’t respond when spoken to. I’m not sure this is the right way to describe this, but on the phone they were saying it was like his
soul
was missing.”

His soul…missing?

“But the two kids they found first are fine besides that amnesia. Maybe they’ll be able to learn more from them. Wataru, there’s been an emergency PTA meeting called for tonight, so I’ll be out. I want you to stay here, inside, okay? You should lie down. You look pale.”

His mother fretted over him a few moments, then picking up her bag, she walked outside and locked the door behind her. He could hear her calling someone on her cell phone, probably the next person on the emergency contact list.

Kenji had come back. His friends too—with only a little memory loss to show for it.

But not Kenji. He lost his soul.

No, he didn’t lose it. Balbylone ate it. That’s what it was, Mom. I know what happened. I was there.

And it was Mitsuru who did it. I know.

Mitsuru, the little boy who lost his mother and his baby sister when his dad went on a killing spree. Mitsuru Ashikawa, the little boy who’d been next in line to be murdered. Mitsuru Ashikawa, who tried to commit suicide.

Wataru curled up in a ball on the floor. He couldn’t control his shivering.

His whole body shook until the bookshelf behind him was rattling.

So long. Goodbye.

Wataru knew now why Ashikawa had gone to the other world. He didn’t have a place in this one. Vision was his home now.

Chapter 12
The Witch

A day passed, then two, then three, and Mitsuru didn’t come home.

Kenji’s friends went back to being their normal nasty selves, although they still had no memory of the night they went missing. Kenji was the same as he had been when he was found: vacant, soulless. His eyes were open but saw nothing. Shake him and he would fall over, ask him a question and he would respond with silence.

Wataru heard the news from his mother, and couldn’t help but remember Kaori Daimatsu. Just as quickly, he forced the connection from his mind. Kaori and Kenji in the same thought was just too weird.

What happened to Kenji and his friends? And where was Mitsuru? Was he even still alive? Everyone wanted to know, and everyone was worried. Only Wataru knew the answer—Wataru Mitani, the only person on earth who knew everything that had happened.

But when he went to bed that first night and then the night after that, even those vivid memories began to fade. Everything about Vision, about what really happened, was slipping away. Like before, it didn’t disappear completely or suddenly. Instead, the memories wore away like a watercolor painting abandoned in the sunlight. The pigment becomes washed out, the lines blurring into indistinct shapes. The memories were still there, but they had become slippery, elusive things, impossible to grasp.

But the emotions remained. Fear, and anxiety—as though he had to find something, or someone, before it was too late. In contrast to his failing memories, those feelings of impending doom grew stronger with each passing day.

Wataru was confused. He was quick to anger. Sometimes, he would wake with tears streaming down his face, and during the day he was turned completely inward, not caring about anyone or anything around him. During mealtimes he would only peck at his food.

But there is a limit to how much a boy Wataru’s age can take, and he reached it on a morning exactly one week after summer vacation began.

Being afraid of the dark, he had crawled under the bedcovers the night before. He made doubly sure to keep the lights on. The moment he closed his eyes, darkness pressed in around him and he plunged headlong into its dreamy depths. That nightmare was swift in arriving. A winged monster was bearing down on him. Running, he screamed, but no one came to his aid, and there was nowhere to hide.

He ran and he ran and when it felt like his chest might burst from exhaustion, he heard a voice calling his name.
Mom!
He shot out of the dream, like a shell fired from a cannon.

His mother’s face slowly came into focus. She was ghostly pale, and she was covered with scratches. Her lip was cut, and there was a bruise under one of her eyes. Her hair looked like a bird’s nest. She was wearing a short-sleeved pajama top, and her bare arms were covered with scratches.

“Mom—what happened?”

She began to cry deep sobs of relief. “Oh, Wataru, you’re back. It’s you, it’s you,” she said, rocking him in her arms. She was holding him like a baby. Wataru looked over her shoulder and gasped.

My room…

The bookshelf had fallen over, and the window was cracked. His comforter had been ripped to shreds, and there were tufts of something white floating in the air—the remnants of a feather pillow. The books and papers on his desk had been ripped and torn until they were barely recognizable. He counted at least three dents where someone had kicked or punched the walls.

But who?

Me. I did this.

“Mom? Did I do this?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“You were dreaming, Wataru. You had this horrible dream and you went wild. You didn’t do it on purpose. It’s not your fault,” his mom said, wiping away her tears. She patted him on the head, and gave him a firm hug. But then Wataru realized something else and his body went stiff.

The scratches on her arms. Her face. I did that too.

—
Wataru, you’re back.

I’m going crazy.

I’m going crazy, and I hurt my mom.

“I-I’m sorry,” Wataru whispered, and his mom sobbed again, and assured him it wasn’t his fault at all. “We’ve put you through so much—this is my fault, and your father’s too. I’m so sorry. Please forgive us.”

No, Mom. I know something, something you don’t know; something terrible. That’s why I’m going crazy.

“No, it’s not you or Dad,” Wataru said. “My friends—what happened—I got scared, that’s why I…” Wataru spoke in short, clipped half-sentences. Suddenly, he realized his whole body was in pain.
Bruises. Scrapes. I did this too.

“Of course you’re scared, after that horrible thing happened to your friends,” his mom said, sniffling. “But it was our responsibility to see you got the support you needed at home, and we could do nothing. We
did
nothing. I’m so ashamed. I let you down.”

Calming down at last, his mom went and got the first-aid kit, and treated both of their scrapes. Wataru thought she should go to the hospital, but no matter how much he pleaded, she only smiled and said they had enough medicine at home—they’d be fine.

Fine at home, with no doctor to look at her scrapes and bruises. No doctor to ask what happened, to see the truth. I did this to Mom. That’s what she’s afraid of.

Wataru left his room, and lay down on the bed where his father used to sleep.

“At night, I’ve heard you moan in your sleep,” his mom called in to him. “Did you notice?”

“Not at all.”

“You must not be sleeping well at all. You look so pale, Wataru. There, you try to sleep. I’ll be right here.”

He didn’t feel tired in the least, but he pretended to sleep for his mom’s sake.

While he lay on the bed, eyes half closed, his mom made several phone calls. One of them was to school. She was talking to his teacher. Since the incident with Kenji and the others, all the teachers had been stuck at school, summer vacation notwithstanding. He couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying, but he caught the word “counselor.”

She talked to his grandma in Odawara too. Then she cried again. The next call was to Uncle Lou. This time she didn’t cry, she was angry.

Wataru let his mind drift, and watched a dark winged thing slowly glide through the depths of his memory. A strange, pungent odor seemed to waft past his nose.

“If you won’t come, shall I go to her office? Is that what you want?!”

His mother was shouting. She was on the phone again.
Who is she talking to?
Wataru sat up and listened, but his parents’ room was farther away from the living room than his own, and not as convenient for eavesdropping.

“Come…see…yourself. I don’t…how hard…Wataru.”

From the few snippets he caught of what she was saying, it was clear his mother was furious. About thirty minutes later, the door opened, and his mother walked in. “Did you get some rest?” she asked gently.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad. Do want to eat anything? I can make you an omelet.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

His mom smiled.

“Your father’s coming this evening. We’ll have a talk, the three of us.”

Surprised, Wataru looked up and immediately saw from her expression that the questions he wanted to ask, questions like “Really?” or “Did Dad offer to come by himself?” or “Was that Dad you were yelling at on the phone?” would be ill-advised. His mom was quiet, but it wasn’t the tranquil quiet of someone calm and composed. She wasn’t at ease, or relaxed. She was wound up tightly in a ball. The brightness of her smile could only be measured on a scale with units that hadn’t been invented yet—that’s how bright it was.

His mom spent the rest of the long afternoon by herself in the kitchen. She was cooking. Wataru stuck his nose in once to find that she was making all of his and Dad’s favorite dishes.

Wataru’s chest hurt. He was short of breath. He had to stop and take deep breaths or he felt like he might collapse. His mom was cutting vegetables, frying things, and grilling chicken until a delicious smell permeated the apartment. Wataru’s feet felt cold. He knew something terrible was going to happen, and worse, he knew that half of him was actually waiting for it. Not that he wanted it to happen, but he was waiting all the same.

His heart pounded.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe nothing bad is going to happen at all.

Dad’s coming home.

But the tiny Wataru, deep inside him, lurking down at the bottom of his heart, was cupping his hands together like a megaphone and shouting:
Calling Dad now, like this, is a mistake. Nothing good will come of it. Can’t you see that? Can’t
she
see that?

No
, thought Wataru.
No, we can’t.

His mom worked furiously, her back turned to him. Wataru had been so absorbed in himself lately that he hadn’t paid any attention to her. She was so thin. While he was busy going crazy, his mom had been weeping, raging, trembling, screaming, and sinking, and he hadn’t noticed a thing.

The doorbell rang.

Wataru gulped loudly, and reflexively looked at his watch. It was exactly seven o’clock.

His mother turned off the stove and looked at Wataru. “It’s your father. Get the door for him.” Her voice had an unnaturally high pitch.

She’s nervous. Almost as nervous as I am.

Wataru made his legs move mechanically, one in front of the other, to the front door. He grabbed the doorknob and his heart throbbed in his fingertips.

He opened the door to find a woman he’d never seen before standing there.

It’s not Dad.

Maybe she was a salesperson. He breathed a sigh of relief, and then she spoke.

“You’re Wataru, aren’t you? Is your mother home? Tell her it’s Rikako. Rikako Tanaka.”

Her voice was somehow familiar.
The phone—I spoke to her on the phone.
It was the woman who thought he was his mother, who had kept on talking when he didn’t say anything.

It was her: the other woman.

She stared unblinking at Wataru. She was tall—about three inches taller than Mom, he guessed. She was wearing a light blue suit, and the collar of her blouse shone pure white. She had on a silver necklace. She smelled like perfume. It was the same smell as the women going home from work that occasionally got in the same elevator with him at the department store.

She wasn’t as young as he had imagined. She looked very pretty in her makeup, and she was very well dressed, but he guessed her age wasn’t all that different from Mom.

Wataru stood, stunned. His mother came up behind him.

“What are you doing here?”

Her voice had risen to a higher, wilder pitch than before. Wataru was too scared to turn around.

It’s Mom. How can I be scared of Mom?

“I came in Akira’s place,” said the woman. She was looking over his head, directly at his mom. Even when she stopped talking, her mouth trembled, and while he couldn’t imagine why she would smile, he caught a glimpse of white between her lips.

Like Dracula
, he thought,
or maybe a saber-toothed tiger.
He recalled an artist’s reproduction drawn from fossilized remains that he had seen once. A vicious, long-fanged tiger from the distant past, long since extinct, standing outside their apartment.