Spirits of the Noh (11 page)

Air. Please.

She had been there in the crowd beside him, so beautiful and slender, her hair gleaming blacker than black, her eyes green. She wore a gossamer dress the same ebony as her hair, the moonlight hinting at delights beneath. When he had first caught sight of her, he had inhaled sharply at encountering so fine and delicate a girl. Only a few years older than himself, she had tilted her head back and thrust out her tongue as if tasting the night, and then she’d swiveled her head to return his stare, as though she’d been aware of his attention all along. When she smiled, he lost any sense of himself. In that moment, he would have been whatever kind of fool she wished.

“Come,” she’d whispered, lips brushing past his ear as she took his hand.

Yasu gave no thought to his friends, or the fireworks that were about to start. He had followed her through the crowd. Somewhere, he heard the low, sonorous bong of a bell, and then they had reached the part of Ama-no-Hashidate where the beach gave way to the thick tangle of black pines that ran down the center of the sandbar.

The first of the fireworks had exploded behind them, finally breaking whatever trance Yasu had been in. He turned to look up at the beauty of the colors shooting through the night sky, and behind him, he’d heard a hiss.

The hands that grabbed him could not have been
her
hands. One folded over his mouth and nose and one wrapped around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. But then something thick and cold and rough coiled around him, squeezing, and now he felt something crack inside of him, the darkness at the edges of his vision rushing in.

Someone came into the trees, calling his name. Other voices shouted for him as well. The fireworks popped and thundered, throwing multicolored ghost lights among the pines.

Half-conscious, he felt himself being carried. Branches scratched his face and arms, but suddenly he could breathe again. Air rushed into his lungs. Still, he felt barely aware of his surroundings. His body swayed from side to side, still clutched by cold flesh. The touch was cold and rough at the same time. It flexed and shifted, and as awareness filtered back into his brain along with oxygen, he tried to turn his head, to get a look at the thing that had grabbed him. A single glimpse showed him red scales and dreadful yellow eyes, small black horns, wisps of white hair, and jaws opened so wide that they seemed capable of swallowing him whole. And teeth. He saw its teeth.

Yasu’s first instinct was to fight, but even as he bucked his body, trying to get loose, his gaze caught on a half-dead pine tree. He thrust his arms out and grabbed hold of a branch, gouging his left wrist but adrenaline overcoming all pain. His fingers closed tightly and he tore free of the creature’s grasp.

Breathing in ragged gasps, heart drumming hard, he snapped a branch off the dead pine and spun to face the thing with the yellow eyes. The woods were empty. Nothing moved. He scanned from shadow to shadow, strange colors still filtering through the branches from the fireworks high above. That single glimpse of the creature flashed in his mind and he twitched, whipped around, thought he’d seen it just out of the corner of his eye.

“Help!” he screamed. “I’m here! Help me! Anyone!”

Two seconds passed, maybe three, before he heard shouts in reply. People were looking for him. His friends, and others. After the other kids had vanished, everyone was on guard, paying extra attention. He would be—

The hiss came from his left. He twisted, wielding the branch. Soft and low, as if just beside him, he heard the slow bong of an old bell; a church bell, a funeral bell. Something darted across his field of vision, darkness against darkness, low to the ground, and the hiss came again, to his right.

The voices were coming closer, from either side now, surrounding him. They would find him. But too late.

It rose up behind him and he felt the chill of its breath like the cold of the grave, and then its rough tongue against the back of his neck.

Yasu screamed.

Fool, it said.

Kara glanced through the trees back at the beach. Many people had come up near the tree line now, peering in from the sand, wondering what the hell was going on, or knowing, but without any idea what they could do to help. Others truly had no clue, and weren’t about to be distracted from enjoying the Toro Nagashi Festival by the scrambling panic of a bunch of high school students and various adults who were lending a hand. They kept their backs turned to the trees, their eyes glued to the lanterns or the spectacle of the fireworks, and they grinned with childlike pleasure or sighed with solemn appreciation of the ritual of the lanterns.

In the woods, shouts of “Yasu!” drifted here and there, drowned out by the boom of fireworks, people yelling to be heard over one another’s voices. Kara and her friends had split up. She and Hachiro picked their way among the trees, forced too many times to back up and find a new path when the pines grew thick enough to create an obstacle. Ren and Mai were a little ways off. At first she’d heard the soccer queen wincing and complaining about the scratches, but she’d quieted down quickly, and now joined the chorus of anxious searchers calling Yasu’s name. Miho and Sakura were near enough that Kara could make out their voices from time to time, but she couldn’t see them. There were so many people picking their way through the pines that she felt sure if Yasu was still there to be found, they would find him.

Yet Kara couldn’t shake the feeling that they would find nothing, that Yasu had vanished as completely as the others. If this was the Hannya, or a Hannya, whatever serpentine spirit had been summoned up by their attempt to perform
Dojoji
, it left no trace of its victims. Either it abducted them and took them somewhere else, like a spider binding its prey to eat later, or it consumed them all without leaving a drop of blood behind.

She stopped yelling his name. Hachiro, caught up in the moment, didn’t seem to notice, but Kara gave up on Yasu. She kept moving through the pines, kept searching the shadows, but she did not believe they had any hope of finding him.

And then she heard the shouting from up ahead.

“What?” she said, pushing through a scrabble of pine branches that raked her skin in order to reach Hachiro. “What was that?”

Even as he reached for her hand, he picked up the pace, pulling her behind him as they weaved among the pines.

“Someone heard him. He’s calling out up ahead, or something,” Hachiro said.

Kara listened carefully and thought that she could actually hear a voice crying out for help. But by then the frantic shouts for Yasu had increased to a fervent cacophony that drowned out everything but the staccato explosions of fireworks.

They ran, dodging trees, whipping through the pines, and then there were many others around them, the circle closing. She saw Mai and Ren, and behind them Sakura and Miho, and others on her left side as well.

A scream tore through the pines, rising up, louder even than the fireworks’ finale, so close must they have been to its origin. They all went faster, harder, rushing, snapping branches, calling to one another now, trying to pinpoint Yasu’s location.

Kara’s steps faltered and she slowed. Ahead, a dozen or more searchers had come to a complete stop, forming a strange kind of half circle. An audience.

She let go of Hachiro’s hand and padded forward, finding a narrow gap between two others who had participated in the search. In between them, she had a view of a small clearing in the pine woods, and of the twisted, broken, bleeding human wreckage that had been left there, a rag doll cast aside by some giant, monstrous child.

She’d been wrong, after all. They had found Yasu.

And now she wished they had not.

10

Kara is drowning.

She cannot breathe, and blackness swims at the edges of her vision. Angry red spots flash in her brain. Her hearing is muffled, and as she lashes out, struggling, she feels as though she moves in slow motion. Water. I’m under water.

The realization is an epiphany. Disoriented, chest aching for air, she pushes herself in a direction she believes is upward, and her arms burst from the water. She sips at sweet relief, the air like magic in her lungs.

All around her, bobbing on the surface, paper lanterns float. Yet these don’t have the variety of hues of the festival lanterns. These come only in white—white lanterns, the spirits of the recent dead, eddying around her, floating closer as though drawn to her.

Something tugs her from below the water. She tries to cry out, but no sound escapes her lips as she is dragged under once more.

No, no, no. I don’t want to—

Her thoughts fall apart. The last of the air inside her struggles to be exhaled. Kara knows that if she opens her mouth she will drown. She will die. But her lungs demand air, and her thoughts are losing coherence, and she cannot stop herself.

She opens her mouth in a scream … but this time it is not silent.

With a gasp, she looks around. No longer in the water, she finds herself in a thick tangle of pines, and recognizes the place immediately. The black woods of Ama-no-Hashidate. Without the water muffling her hearing, the silence is gone. The air is filled with a loud hiss, layers of sound, the voices of serpents.

They hold her arms and legs, their coiled bodies emerging from the branches of the trees, more and more snakes reaching for her, tongues darting, eyes unblinking. Her throat is torn apart by her scream, her chest clenched by utter panic.

Please! she cries. Please!

She does not know to whom she appeals for mercy, only that mercy is her only hope.

Something grips her wrist, colder even than the skin of snakes, but not rough like the serpents. Soft. Gentle. Kara spins to see the hand on her wrist, peers into the thick bristle of darkness between two trees, and her eyes widen. Hope grows.

“Mom?”

The woman smiles. The serpents fall from Kara as though fleeing her touch, driven away. Kara blinks in astonishment and gratitude. Her mother has protected her.

Then the terrible truth crashes in from a part of her mind that cannot be deceived by dreams.

“But you’re dead,” she says before she can stop herself.

The sadness in her mother’s face breaks her heart. The serpents return, but not for Kara. They coil around her mother’s arms and legs, drape over her shoulders, and begin to pull her deeper into the trees.

“No!” Kara shouts. “Stop!”

Her mother hangs her head, hair obscuring her features, as the snakes pull her into the black nothing, and in a moment, she is gone. Kara hurls herself into the dark crush of branches that tear and scratch and jab her, lunging for her mother, but her hands close only on pine branches and shadows.

With a cry of anguish, she wakes …

Kara sat up, and for a moment, wasn’t sure if she had really called out in her sleep. The wan light of Sunday morning came through the window, carried on a warm breeze, but though she listened for his footfalls, her father did not come to check on her. She must have cried out only in the dream.

With a deep breath, she let go of much of the fear that lingered after the nightmare. It dissipated with each passing moment. But the melancholy did not depart so quickly. Parts of the dream were already fading in her mind, but she knew it would be a long time before she forgot the worst of it. Not the snakes, though those were nightmarish. What Kara would not be able to scour from her mind was the look on her dream-mother’s face when she told her that she was dead.

It had felt like a betrayal. The dream—the illusion—could have been sweet. Her mother had come to protect her, to hold Kara, to guide her, and Kara had dismissed her.

It was only a dream,
she told herself now. But somehow that reassurance wasn’t enough to relieve her of the strange guilt that she felt. If she had not spoken, if she had not broken the illusion, the darkness would never have claimed her mom. As foolish as it was—Kara knew dreams could not be controlled—the guilt remained.

After the events at the Toro Nagashi Festival the night before, she was exhausted. Her bedside clock revealed the time to be just before eight a.m. She could sneak in a couple more hours of sleep and she knew her father would not wake her. But Kara stretched and sat up, forcing herself to leave the comfort of her bed. Better to be awake now. If she went back to sleep right away, she might return to the same dream. It happened sometimes. This morning, she could not bear the thought.

As she’d fallen asleep the night before she had struggled with the temptation to tell her father everything, to explain what she and her friends believed was really going on. She had played out various scenarios in her mind, imagining that he would go with her to Mr. Yamato—they could bring all of the others, even Mai, in with them—and the principal would listen. She believed that part, at least, was true. The last time she’d been in Mr. Yamato’s office, it had been clear that he already half-believed that something unnatural was going on at Monju-no-Chie school.

But that was where her imaginary scenario fell apart. She simply could not escape the feeling that her father, always a practical man, would think she had lost her marbles. Even when she woke up this morning, that version of events seemed so much more likely to her. He would think that fear or stress had made her snap, or that she was having some kind of breakdown, or he would think she was a liar, and that was the worst scenario of all.

Things had been tense, and Kara had felt the distance growing between them. It scared her to even consider doing something that might push him further away.

She pulled on a pair of shorts and padded quietly to her door, not wanting to wake him. But when she stepped into the hallway, she paused, brows knitting, as she heard voices in the living room. Her father, yes, but he wasn’t alone.

“I feel like I should be doing something,” a woman’s voice said.

Kara blinked. Miss Aritomo? She glanced back into her room to confirm the time. Still five minutes before eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. What the hell was the woman doing here so early in the morning?

She took a sharp breath. Had her art teacher spent the night? Had Miss Aritomo come over after Kara had gone to bed? She couldn’t believe her father would do such a thing. He’d be horrified by how it might look, both to his daughter and to the school administration.

Still, Kara couldn’t rule it out. Otherwise, when had Miss Aritomo arrived? Seven a.m.? Six? She couldn’t imagine that, but she wouldn’t let herself imagine the alternative, either. Her father was an adult, but the idea of him sleeping with any woman both disturbed and disappointed her.

“Yasu had such enthusiasm and he was so kind,” Miss Aritomo said, her voice cracking. “I can’t … even if I were to choose someone else to take his role in the play, I don’t know if I could continue. I don’t know if I should. Three of my students, Rob. My Noh club kids.”

Kara held her breath. Miss Aritomo sounded so torn up inside that she couldn’t help feeling badly. She had never given any consideration to how all of this might affect Miss Aritomo, the grief it would bring her. Could Kara really blame her for seeking some solace in her father’s company?

“Yuuka,” her father said, his voice soft and kind. “Look at me. You don’t know what happened to those other two. It’s completely possible that they really did run away together.”

A few seconds passed in silence before Miss Aritomo spoke. “You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t,” her father admitted. “But that doesn’t change anything. It’s possible.”

Kara walked into the living room. “Good morning.”

The two of them looked up, her father in a T-shirt and pajama pants—much too comfortable dressed that way in front of this woman, his colleague—and Miss Aritomo looking tired in a pair of pants and a baggy cotton sweater. She usually looked immaculate, but this morning her hair was wild and unkempt as though she’d just rolled out of bed. And she was barefoot.

Kara checked the floor near the front door, but if Miss Aritomo had taken her shoes off upon entering, she’d tucked them away somewhere.
Yeah, like under Dad’s bed
.

The thought put ice in her veins. No. He wouldn’t do that. Not after the argument they had already had.

But a teapot sat on the table and it looked to have been there for some time. Their teacups were empty. Kara’s father sat up straighter, a hundred thoughts flashing behind his eyes, like he was trying to find a way to explain the cozy scenario.

“Good morning, Kara,” Miss Aritomo said.

Realizing he’d not responded, Kara’s father smiled sadly, apologetically. “Good morning, honey.”

“Bonsai,” she corrected. “It’s what some of the kids call me at school. You know this. I’ve told you.”

“Why would I call you that?” her father asked, frowning.

Miss Aritomo shifted awkwardly in her seat but continued to smile.

“It’s what I am,” Kara told him. She pulled out a chair and sat with them, reaching out for the teapot. A small amount of tea sloshed inside.

“Would you like me to make some more?” Miss Aritomo asked politely, beginning to rise.

“No!” Kara snapped.

Her father and her teacher stared at her. Miss Aritomo had actually flinched. Kara didn’t care. This was her house, and her father’s house, not the house of this woman. Wasn’t she Japanese? Didn’t she give a damn about propriety? Who the hell did she think she was, wanting to make tea in a place she didn’t belong?

“Kara—” her father began.

She sighed. “So last night, you said you thought school would be closed for a while. Any idea how long?”

Her father hesitated, as though he wanted to go back and address what had just happened, but then he let it go. “At least three days. A lot depends on what the police are able to find out about this boy Yasu.”

“About his murder, you mean?” Kara asked.

That broke Miss Aritomo’s composure and her sadness returned. She lowered her head and wiped at one eye. Kara’s father reached out and covered her hand with his own, and that was enough.

Kara stood up. She knew she was being a bitch, but couldn’t bring herself to care. Rob Harper was her father. He should have been comforting his daughter, not this woman they’d known for only six months. Kara had been there, on the beach, helping to search for Yasu. Where was
her
comforting hand?

“I guess the police will be working overtime now, huh?” Kara said as she rose from the table and turned to go back to her room. “After what happened in April, maybe they’ll need to do their jobs. With all the people who were at the festival, I don’t think anyone’s going to believe that ‘bear attack’ story again, do you?”

“What do you mean by that?” her father called after her. “Kara?”

She went into her room, closed the door, and crawled into her bed, hoping that she could fall back to sleep. Bad dreams be damned.

Shortly after one p.m., Kara walked up the street toward Monju-no-Chie school and under the archway that led onto the grounds. She had slept for several hours and woken to find the house empty. A note from her father on the kitchen table explained that the teachers were going to be at school all day, phoning parents and answering questions from the boarding students.

Her cell phone had been off while she slept, but she found two voice messages and half a dozen texts from her friends. Apparently grief counselors were coming the next day, Monday, but for this afternoon the teachers and principal would be available in their classrooms for any students who wanted to talk to them about Yasu’s death or the school closure. Sakura’s text messages were amusing in their fury—according to her, all outstanding assignments would be due on the first day that classes resumed. That meant Kara had to go over to the school to pick up some of her books.

Miho had left her a voice message telling her that Miss Aritomo had scheduled a special meeting of the Noh club and volunteers for 2:30 p.m., and suggested they all meet at her room in advance to discuss their next step.

Kara followed a stone path at first, then diverted from the path onto the grass. Instead of going up to the front steps of the school, where the doors were open and a uniformed security guard—a startling new addition to the campus—stood just inside, she stayed to the right of the building. Despite the sunshine and the August heat, she shivered at the thought that this was the same patch of grass—between school and parking lot—where the Hannya had come after Miho.

Picking up her pace, she crossed the field that separated the school from the dorm. On an ordinary Sunday, the field would have been full of students hanging out, studying in the sun, or playing baseball, but today there were only a handful. One or two were alone, listening to music on their headphones while they studied or read, but the rest were in small, anxious groups, like people gathered outside a funeral home, waiting to attend a wake.

At the door, she had to show her identification to a second security guard who had been posted at the dormitory entrance. The man seemed dubious, narrowing his gaze as he studied her and then her ID.
Yes, I’m white and American!
she wanted to shout, but managed to fight the temptation. Everyone connected to the school would be tense and frightened today, and these new security guys were no exception.

Still, the seconds ticked by. He didn’t ask any questions, almost as if she weren’t standing there. Just when Kara had started to think she ought to have been wearing her school uniform instead of blue jeans and a tank top, the guard handed her ID back and asked her to sign in.