Takeshita Demons (8 page)

I checked in Mum and Dad's room, where we
were never allowed to go. "Kazu-chan?"

But we couldn't find him.

"Come on," Cait said. "Downstairs, that guy, my
dad. He's still down there."

We took the stairs two at a time, nearly falling
in the rush to get down. When we reached the front
door, Mr O'Neill was still waiting in the hallway.
He had his back turned to us, still kicking at the
loose bit of carpet.

"Who are you?" Cait cried. "Where's Kazu?"

For a moment the Mr O'Neill didn't turn around,
didn't look up.

"Where's my little brother?" I hissed. "What have
you done with him?"

"Dad?" Cait asked, hesitating. "What have you
done with Kazu?"

The Mr O'Neill made a strange sighing noise,
then kicked again at the rough carpet seam before
turning to look at us.

Cait screamed. I screamed. We both screamed so
loud I was sure Mrs Williams would come running.
Then we doubled back into the house, slamming and
locking the door behind us. I pushed the chair up
against the door for added protection, then climbed
up on it to look through the peephole. Cait was too
scared even to peek.

"What was that?" she panted. "What was that
thing?"

I looked through the hole. "It's still out there,"
I said. "No, hang on, it's leaving."

Whatever it was, it wasn't Mr O'Neill.

When the thing had turned around, its face had
been a perfect blank, smooth as an eggshell, with no
eyes, no nose, no mouth. No nothing, just a blank
sheet of skin, covering everything that had been
there before. All trace of Mr O'Neill had been
smoothed away from that face.

I watched the thing as it escaped into the snow,
closing the outside door behind it.

"It's gone," I said.

Cait was shaking. "What was it?"

At first I had no idea, then something my Baba
had told me came tumbling back from my darkest
memories. "A noppera-bo," I said, feeling angry at
myself for getting so scared. "I should've known."

"A noppera-what? Why did it look like
my dad?"

"A noppera-bo. Baba told me about them once.
They're mostly harmless."

Cait snorted. "Harmless? I nearly had a heart
attack. What was it doing?"

"I did say mostly." I almost grinned. "They really
don't do much except scare people. I don't know
what one was doing here... Unless..."

Why would a noppera-bo come to our house?
What business did such a demon have here?

And then I remembered my brother. "Kazu?
Where is he?"

I jumped off the chair and tried to run down
the hall, but Cait stopped me, grabbing my arm.
"Hang on. He has to be in here somewhere.
He can't have just disappeared. Let's do a proper
search."

Cait was right. We shouldn't panic. We had to
do a thorough search of the whole apartment. And
we did.

But she was also wrong. She said Kazu couldn't
have just disappeared. But as far as we could tell,
he wasn't anywhere. He had gone. There was no sign
of him, just a place on the sofa still warm from where
he'd been watching TV.

I sat down, touching the warm spot and fighting
back tears. "Where can he be? I just know she's
taken him."

"She who?" Cait asked. "No one could've got
in here."

"Mrs Okuda," I said, hopeless tears sitting heavy
in my eyes. "The nukekubi. She can go anywhere.
I just know she's got him."

Cait sat down next to me, stroking my hair.
"Then we'll get him back, that's all," she said. "We'll
get him back tonight. We'll stop all this. Your brother
missing, some freaky spirit pretending to be my dad,
this bizarre snowstorm, Mr Lloyd with chicken pox.
There's too much weird stuff happening and it's
got to stop. We'll get Kazu back tonight, Miku,
I promise."

"First things first," Cait said. "We eat a pizza. And
you tell me everything you know about these
nukekubi. None of these other demon things we've
seen seem to eat people, so I think Mrs Okuda should
be our biggest priority. She might even be their leader.
Somehow, she must be the key."

I had to agree. Even the crazy snow situation
seemed to have been triggered by Okuda's arrival.
"OK." I walked to the kitchen. "But one thing:
they're not people. They just look like people.
They're exactly like that noppera-bo. Nukekubi
are demons, but they take the shape of ordinary
people."

"OK," said Cait, following me into the kitchen.
"So they're demons. What next? How do we know
if we're looking at a nukekubi or a real person?"

"Easy. The red marks on their necks when
it's daytime. And airborne screaming heads if
it's not."

We both laughed, but it really wasn't funny.
I pulled a pepperoni pizza from the freezer and stuck
it in the oven, turning the dial to 180 like I'd seen
Mum do stacks of times before. It was a Sunday night
favourite.

"Screaming?" Cait asked. We both watched the
yellow oven light, waiting for the first smell of cheese
to float through the oven door.

"Yep. They scream so they can scare you more,
freak you out and make you do something stupid.
Then they swoop down and tear chunks from your
throat with their teeth."

"Right," said Cait. "Don't panic if I see a
man-eating flying head. Good. This is going well.
Is there anything useful?"

And then I remembered something Baba had told
me, many years before. For the first time since Kazu
got sick, I began to feel that maybe we had a chance.

"Their bodies," I said. "While their heads
are out screaming and flying around, their
bodies are asleep, just waiting for their heads to
come back."

"That," said Cait, "is disgusting."

"Yeah, but think about it. If we can find her
body while her head is away, we can destroy it,
or move it or something, and then she'd be stuck.
She'd be banished, or finished, or whatever happens
to nukekubi when they die."

I opened the oven to check on the pizza.

"Still ages to go," said Cait. "So is that our
plan?"

"What?" I closed the oven door.

"We pick a time when her head will be flying
around..." Cait said.

"Tonight," I interrupted. "It's always at night,
and Kazu can't wait till tomorrow."

"Tonight," Cait agreed. "And then we find where
she's hidden her body. And then we destroy it,
defeating her and all the other demons."

It sounded so simple when Cait said it. I was so
glad her real dad had let her stay.

"Cool," I said, nodding. "That's our plan."

"So where do we start?"

"Where do you reckon her body is?"

"Where do you reckon?" Cait asked. "Where do
they usually hang out?"

"Well," I said, thinking hard. "She can't have an
ordinary home, cos she won't have any real money.
But she'd have to be somewhere safe, where no one would find her. Somewhere where there's hardly any
people wandering around at night."

"School," Cait said. "We saw her there first.
It's easy for her to be there during the day, and it's
empty at night. She could leave her body under
a desk or in a broom cupboard or something."

"School," I agreed. Cait was brilliant. "That's got
to be it. But we have to get there now. Kazu's already
in trouble."

"We'll go tonight," Cait said. "But first, let's eat
pizza. We can't fight demons when we're starving."

While the pizza cooked we ran round the house,
finding hats and jackets to protect us from the
snow. I put a handful of cedar leaves in each of our
pockets, just in case. Unlike my mum, Cait didn't
scoff or laugh. Then we swallowed the pizza so fast
I hardly chewed, and I burnt the roof of my mouth
on the cheese.

"Right," Cait said, wiping tomato sauce from her
chin. "Is there anything else we need?"

She looked set for an Antarctic expedition, all
trussed up in Mum's old jacket with one of Dad's
beanies. I knew I must look the same, although my
jacket probably looked a little better.

"Nope," I said. "We're ready."

"OK."

We were standing just inside our front door,
next to the pile of shoes we'd left earlier.

"I guess this is it." I slipped out of my slippers
and put on my shoes.

Cait did the same, arranging her green cat slippers
neatly on the rack, just how Mum always left them.
"I guess so."

I climbed up one last time on the chair, peering
out of our door into the hallway. "It's all clear."

The hallway was still empty when we locked the
front door behind us.

We made it to the outside door without meeting
anyone, but almost at once our troubles began.
The door wouldn't open. I tried again and again,
but it hardly budged. Were we trapped in our own
building?

"The snow?" Cait suggested. This time she helped
me push on the door, and it swung a bit further
open.

She was right. Outside it was still snowing and
the snow was piling up, almost blocking our front
door.

"Again," I said. "One, two, three."

We both heaved and the door edged open enough
for us to get through. Outside the snowy day had
turned to dark, dark night, and the snow was still coming down. The streets were completely empty.
Even the street lamps seemed to have lost their
colour. The entire world was cloaked in white snow,
turned eerie gray by the darkness. I shivered.

"Come on," Cait said. "Let's make this quick."