The Waking

by Thomas Randall

  “You seem to be doing very well, but as you wish.” Kara’s father frowned and looked first at the shoes Miho had just left by the door and then at the door itself. “What happened to your roommate? You didn’t walk here alone, did you?”

  Miho gave a slight bow. “I did, sensei. Sakura is”—she paused to find the right phrasing—“not in the mood.”

  Kara started to ask for an elaboration, but Miho gave her a look that suggested she might want to hold off until they were alone. Her father waited a moment, but when it became plain their greetings were over, he put his hands up.

  “Well, I wish you hadn’t come by yourself after dark, but I’m glad to have you here. Why don’t you girls go talk about boys or whatever it is you do while I make dinner?”

  Miho blushed, but Kara laughed.

  “Are you sure you don’t want help, Dad?”

  “No. Go ahead, honey.”

  With a look of quiet conspiracy, Kara and Miho went into Kara’s bedroom. Any other time, what ensued would have been exactly as her father predicted, yet another conversation about boys. But Miho’s obsession with American boys seemed to have waned in the shadow of murder and the terrifying notion that something inhuman might be lurking in the dark.

  An awful feeling had been brewing inside Kara from the moment she opened the door to find Miho alone. As soon as she closed the door, she turned to the other girl.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The police take Sakura . . . ,” Miho began, then shook her head in frustration and switched once more to Japanese.

  “The police talked to her for over an hour, and then took her to Miyazu City, to the police station. They brought her back only a little while ago, and she won’t talk to me about what happened there. I’m sure they must have accused her, but—”

  “If they can’t explain how Chouku died, they can’t charge Sakura with anything,” Kara interrupted.

  “Exactly. And now she is acting so strangely.”

  Kara raised her eyebrows. “More strangely than this morning?”

  “Yes. She barely spoke to me. She wanted the lights off in our room and stood by the window, like she was waiting for something. I wish we hadn’t told her about seeing the cat last night.”

  Kara thought about that. If Sakura really thought the cat was Akane, or had anything to do with her, it seemed all too plausible that she was waiting for her sister to come back.

  “I was afraid to stay there tonight, but also afraid to leave her alone,” Miho went on. “But then she told me I should go.

  It . . . hurt me. She’s my best friend, Kara, and she doesn’t want my help. It’s as if some other girl who looks just like Sakura has moved in and is sleeping in her bed. She is so cold now.”

  Kara went to her window. The chill of the spring night made her shiver and she closed the window all but an inch or two. She stared out at the night. Off to the left, across the street, lights burned in a small house where there lived an old couple who always smiled when they saw her. It made her feel a little better knowing they were awake and alive in there, living their lives.

  Which led her mind down a narrow lane to a hidden corner, where there lurked a terrible thought.

  “What if it’s just a cat?” she asked without turning.

  “How could it be?” Miho said.

  Now Kara did turn. She lifted her hands to her mouth and chewed on the tip of her left thumbnail, thinking. Then she dropped her hands.

  “There’s a little ledge out there. Not much, but I guess it could be possible that the thing came from another room, or another part of the building. I’m not sure I believe it, but let’s just say that’s all it is. If we’re going to believe something crazy, wouldn’t you rather believe that a cat could walk around out there than that there’s something . . . that it isn’t a cat at all?”

  Miho stared at her, eyes hard behind her glasses. “I believe in ghosts, Kara. I always have. But I never even considered that there might really be evil spirits or demons or anything like that. I wish I’d never seen that cat. I wish I’d stayed asleep. I wish Chouku and the others were still alive. But let me ask you this, if that thing is just a cat, then who killed Chouku?”

  Kara took a deep breath. She slid her hands into her pockets. “Well, it wasn’t Akane.”

  Miho narrowed her eyes in sudden understanding. “You’re saying you think the police are right?” she asked, face clouded with anger. “That Sakura—”

  “No!” Kara said, hands becoming fists in her pockets. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really believe that. I mean, how would it be done, bleeding her like that, and with her roommate sleeping right there? And she’d have to have gotten out of your room without waking either of us, which we both know didn’t happen. But the way Sakura’s acting . . . look, you know you’ve considered it, too. I just thought one of us should say it out loud, just once.”

  Miho swallowed her anger, averting her eyes for a moment. The shy, giggly, boy-obsessed girl seemed someone else entirely now.

  “All right. But let’s not say it again.”

  “Deal.”

  Miho sat on the edge of Kara’s bed. “There’s more bad news. I’m going home.”

  Kara blinked. “Your parents are coming to get you?”

  Miho nodded, forlorn. “In three days. My father can’t get away from work until then.”

  Sadness and a bit of disgust tinged her voice. Other students had parents who were showing up tonight, and many more would be gone tomorrow. But with three students dead, at least one of them murdered, her parents couldn’t make the trip for three days.

  “Yeah, but they’re coming,” Kara said.

  Miho glanced up in surprise. “You want me to go?”

  “No way. I’m terrified. I want you here with me. But I’m happy that your parents are coming. What about Sakura’s parents?”

  Miho gave a slow shake of her head. “Out of the country.

  Sakura said the school hasn’t even been able to reach them.”

  Kara sighed. “They’re disgusting. Don’t they care at all?”

  “Maybe they don’t.”

  The ugliness of the statement gave both girls pause, but then Kara sighed and flopped down on the bed beside Miho.

  “I’m really glad you’re here.”

  “Me too. It’s strange to be in a teacher’s house, though.”

  “When you’re here, he’s not a teacher, he’s my father. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Kara propped herself up on one elbow. “Well, we can’t talk about this stuff all night. We need distractions. Why don’t you let me fix your hair?”

  Miho looked horrified. “Fix? What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “No, it’s just an expression. Let me do something different with it. Just for fun. And after dinner, we can watch a movie. Something with explosions. Always a good distraction.”

  Miho touched her hair and gave her a doubtful look.

  Kara got up and grabbed her hand. “Trust me.”

  A sound sweeps into Kara’s bedroom on the chilly air, a tinkling noise like wind chimes, but there are no wind chimes hanging outside the little house.

  The chimes become cries, and at first she thinks it is a baby, but then she knows the sound is adult. Sobs of grief, carried on the breeze, slipping through the gap between window and frame.

  Her eyes flutter open. She shivers, so cold, and for a moment she only wants to burrow deeper under the covers, but the cries grow more plaintive, tugging at her heart.

  Kara climbs out of bed, listing like a drunken sailor, feeling as though the thinnest sheet separates her from total wakefulness. She staggers to the window and peers out. The moon is limned with an icy white corona, as though it has frozen over. Its gleam illuminates a lonely figure, naked, seated on the ground with her legs drawn up to her chest, hugging her knees.

  She knows that figure. Knows the knife-edge cut of her hair.

  Sakura.

  Kara blinks. It
feels like a dream, and yet her room is her room, just the same as always. In a dream, she knows, you’re not supposed to be able to see your hands. But there’s another kind . . . lucid dreaming, where you can control the outcome. If she can see her hands, either she’s not really dreaming, or it’s a lucid dream, and she can change things. She can be in control.

  She tries to look down, but her body will not obey her mind.

  She leans her forehead against the glass, squinting to get a better look out there, and the glass is cold and damp with condensation and solid against her skin. So real.

  Sakura . . . if that is Sakura . . . weeps outside her window. Kara blinks. The little house where the sweet old people live is not there. Instead, her view is of the slope leading down to the bay. She can see the ancient prayer shrine and the modern shrine of anguish, the one created in Akane’s memory. The place where she died.

  Sakura rocks back and forth, hugging her knees against her chest. Is she cold?

  Go out there, Kara tells herself. Hold her. Comfort her.

  But fear skitters down her spine and her body flinches backward. She needs to pee. Needs to pee and then get back to bed. Needs to turn away from the window.

  She knows that hair, though, and she knows it is Sakura out there on the bay shore, crying—there is something very wrong.

  Sakura’s back is to the window. And though Kara tries hard to will the girl to turn toward her, to give her a glimpse so she can know it really is Sakura, the girl does not turn.

  The cries grow louder. Guilt squeezes Kara’s heart. But fear closes her throat, and slowly, she begins to turn her head away.

  She turns from the window, taking shallow breaths. Kara closes her eyes and presses the heels of her hands against them. When she opens them again, she is staring at her bed.

  Only then does she remember, in the shifting reality of dreams, that Miho is in her bed. The girl lays there, just at the edge of the bed, not wanting to take up more space than she requires. Her back is to Kara, and that gives Kara pause.

  Another back. Another face she cannot see.

  But she smiles, forcing the serpent of fright that twists in her gut to uncoil. For a moment, Miho’s hair was straight, silken black. But now Kara blinks and sees the girl’s hair is done in a thick braid, and laced through the braid is a bright red ribbon. Kara had spent over an hour working on it, and Miho had laughed and posed like a model in front of the mirror.

  Miho.

  The room feels fluid . . . liquid . . . and Kara wades through it, the edges of her perception melting as she climbs onto the bed.

  “Miho,” she says. Or thinks. Loudly.

  She kneels on the bed and reaches for the girl.

  Miho lolls toward her, tipping toward the weight Kara has added to the mattress like a corpse disturbed. Her head tilts, turns—

  She has no face.

  Kara jerks away, stumbles, and bangs her knee, and for a moment her vision clears. But then she glances up and sees the no-face girl, and in her bedroom there comes a soft, chuffing, insinuating laughter, like two girls sharing secrets, sweet and innocent and yet cruel all at the same time. And Kara opens her mouth to scream—

  Only nothing comes out, and she knows why. She’s been here before. Doesn’t even have to reach up to feel the smooth skin covering the place her mouth ought to be. She has no mouth, no face, no scream. No voice.

  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

  Monday 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.