The Waking

by Thomas Randall

  With a sigh, Kara continued on. The ancient prayer shrine to her right loomed in the shadows of the trees, damp with rain and unattended. No candles burned there today. Students had been busy this year building shrines of a different sort. The one in memory of Akane still remained down by the bay. A second one had been established for Jiro just a few yards away, with photographs and candles and T-shirts, pins and bits of school uniforms, stuffed animals and toys left as little mementos, offerings from those who missed him. At the back of the school, where Hana had struck the ground after leaping from the roof, a third shrine had been created.

  But the students were all leaving now. It appeared Chouku’s spirit would have to wait for her own shrine.

  As Kara came around the front of the school, she looked down along the tree line toward the bay and faltered. Coming to a halt, she stared at the lone figure who knelt not far from the water, just at the edge of the shrine of remembrance that students had built for Akane. For just a moment she thought it might be Akane herself, that Sakura was right. But she pushed the thought away. Death had taken Akane. It couldn’t be her.

  Narrowing her eyes, Kara realized who it was who knelt there, as though in supplication.

  Ume.

  Maybe she’s asking for forgiveness, Kara thought. If Ume believed what Sakura had said, that Akane had come back for her killers, her going down to the shrine seemed like a foolish thing to do. And if Ume wanted people to believe she had nothing to do with Akane’s death, hanging around the shrine looking guilty wasn’t going to convince anyone of her innocence.

  Kara took a step toward Ume, thinking she should try to talk to her. But whatever Ume’s role had been, Kara had come to believe that Sakura was right about her involvement in Akane’s death, and she decided that she didn’t have time to waste on sympathy for a murderer. She hoped no one else would have to die, but if Ume was haunted by guilt or fear, Kara had no interest in alleviating her torment.

  Turning away, she went up the steps and into the school. She kept her street shoes on. It felt odd not to stop in the genkan to change into uwabaki. But right now, no one would be paying much attention to the rules.

  Kara found her father in his homeroom, talking to two couples who had come to retrieve their children. He came out into the hallway to tell her he thought it would be hours before he could leave and that she should go back without him.

  “I’ll be home before dark,” he promised.

  She wondered if the words sprang from something he saw in her eyes or his own fear for his daughter.

  “I just have a few things to do with Miho, and then I’ll be headed home,” she promised. “Have you seen Miss Aritomo?”

  He shook his head, too distracted by the impatient parents waiting in his classroom to wonder why she would ask. “I assume she’s in her room.”

  Kara kissed his cheek and thanked him, then went down to the front door to wait for Miho.

  “As much as I love Noh theater,” Miss Aritomo said, giving them a curious look, “this is certainly not the time for club discussions.”

  In the art teacher’s office was a bookshelf laden with hardcover Noh plays and books on the staging of such productions. Several crude masks hung on the wall above the bookshelf, unobtrusive, as though the display itself was an apology for its own existence.

  “I’m not even in the Noh club,” Kara said. “We just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  Miss Aritomo glanced at the clock on her desk, then at Miho, who looked away a bit guiltily. The teacher settled her gaze on Kara.

  “I know you must be aware of the crisis the school faces at the moment,” the teacher said. “You girls are really not even supposed to be in the school building right now—”

  “Yeah, like it’s so much safer in the dorm,” Kara scoffed.

  Miss Aritomo flinched and then her expression went slack, closed off completely. Miho gave a sharp intake of breath.

  Kara realized her mistake immediately. She stood stiffly and executed a deep bow, not raising her eyes. “Sensei, please accept my apology for interrupting you, and for the disrespect with which I spoke. It brings dishonor to me and to my father.”

  The woman visibly relaxed, brushing the words away with a wave of her hand.

  “You are nervous and afraid and frustrated, Kara. Under the circumstances, much can be forgiven.”

  Kara gave a second, shorter bow.

  Miss Aritomo bowed in return and continued. “A staff member is working with those boarding students who are not leaving today, making certain that we know who will still be in the dormitory tonight. Miho should be there. And Kara, your father must be wondering where you are.”

  Miho bowed her head and murmured an apology, ready to leave.

  “Wait,” Kara said to her.

  Both of them looked at her in surprise.

  “Miss Aritomo, Miho and I are going to have a few days before she leaves and wanted to do something to distract ourselves. I’m not a member of the Noh club, but I’m interested. We’ve talked about taking a Noh play and trying to write it as a comic book. Miho’s roommate Sakura loves manga and she would draw it. So if we could just ask you a few, quick questions, I promise we won’t keep you for very long.”

  She had come up with the explanation on the spur of the moment, but she warmed to the lie even as it left her lips. Miho blinked, staring at her.

  Kara smiled and bowed her head briefly yet again. “Of course, if you’d rather be dealing with terrified and angry parents, I’m sure we can find some other way to occupy ourselves for the next few days.”

  Miss Aritomo’s nostrils flared as though annoyed, and Kara worried that she had miscalculated. But then the art teacher smiled.

  “All right. Five minutes. What Noh play were you interested in?”

  Miho perked up, blinking in surprise. She smiled softly and then, as though remembering the real purpose behind their visit, grew serious once more.

  “When I was younger, I remember seeing part of a Noh play about a ketsuki, a cat-demon that drank the blood of its enemies. At least, I think that was what it was about. I saw the mask once, too, at a Noh museum in Tokyo. My parents took me there three years ago.”

  Miss Aritomo began to nod even before Miho had finished her first sentence.

  “Yes, of course. I know the play you mean,” the teacher said. “And it would make a perfect manga. But I think it’s in incredibly poor taste for you to ask about it now.”

  Kara flinched in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  Miss Aritomo crossed her arms, studying them with obvious disdain. “You saw Chouku’s body, Kara—I know you did—all those little bite marks on her. And I’m sure you’ve heard that she and Jiro lost a lot of blood. So the two of you start thinking something supernatural—”

  “There’s no such thing—,” Miho began.

  “Of course there isn’t!” Miss Aritomo snapped, glaring at them. “But suddenly you’re thinking about the ketsuki and now you want to do a manga story. Students are dead, and you want to use that for manga?”

  Kara took a deep breath. Miss Aritomo had already made the connection to the ketsuki legend. Of course she had, with her knowledge of Noh theater. For a moment, Kara had thought the art teacher believed the ketsuki had killed Jiro and Chouku, but it was clear she didn’t believe the creatures were real. She considered trying to convince the teacher but suspected that would only lead to Miss Aritomo telling her father and the principal that the girls were losing their grip on reality.

  “It isn’t like that, sensei,” Kara said.

  Miss Aritomo raised an eyebrow. “No?”

  “No,” Miho said. “It’s true that what happened to Jiro and Chouku made me think about the ketsuki, but we mean no disrespect. We’ve been talking about doing a manga of a legend from Noh theater, and once I thought about the ketsuki, I knew it would make a good one. It would be a faithful retelling of the story.”

  The teacher seemed to relax a little. “Nothing to
do with what’s happening at school?”

  Kara shook her head. “We would never disrespect Chouku and the others like that. We knew them, sensei.”

  Miss Aritomo hesitated, apparently trying to decide how much she trusted them. In the end she nodded, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

  “All right. But I want to see every page as you create it.”

  “Of course,” Miho said, giving the teacher a small bow of her head.

  “The story would be perfect for a manga,” Miss Aritomo said. “But it is somewhat different from what you remember.”

  “Could you tell us, please?” Kara asked. “Different how?”

  “The story is not about a ketsuki,” Miss Aritomo said, reaching back to pull a book from her shelf. As she continued, she flipped pages, searching for something. “Well, I suppose in a way it is. In the play, a woman named Riko is murdered by her husband, who has taken a new lover. Her children mourn for her, and her parents make a shrine at her grave, and there is so much grief that the demon Kyuketsuki senses their rage and grief and comes to their village.

  “Kyuketsuki is only spirit but can work terrible evil on the world through surrogates. Kyuketsuki influenced Riko’s family, luring them to the place where her husband spilled her blood. Her father killed a cat on the spot, offering it up to Kyuketsuki. The demon takes all of the sadness and rage and collects it in a bowl, then pours it into the dead cat, transforming it into a blood-drinking monster, forged in the image of Kyuketsuki herself.”

  Miss Aritomo stopped flipping pages, then slowly went back several pages to something she had missed.

  “There,” she said, pointing to the page. She turned the book around for them both to see. “That’s the mask of Kyuketsuki.”

  Miho leaned over for a better look. Kara felt frozen in place. The pointed ears and sharp little horns, the black lips and bloody red teeth, the bright orange eyes. The feline qualities of the tengu were noticeable, from the shape of the nose to the hissing mouth and sharp, tiny fangs. But the face was distorted and gruesome.

  Kara closed her eyes so that she would have the strength to look away.

  She’d seen it before.

  “It’s a rare play, almost never performed anymore,” Miss Aritomo said, not noticing Kara’s reaction. “So many Noh plays are lost to time and become unfashionable. If you really mean to take it seriously, it would be a ser vice to the theater and to Japan for you to create a manga of this story. I’m sure I could give you credit for it in class, as well.”

  The teacher said this with a tiny smile, but the girls did not smile in return.

  Kara looked at her. “So, the Kyuketsuki legend is older than this play, right?”

  “Yes, very old. Most Noh plays are just retellings of older stories.”

  “Is it always someone sacrificing the cat? Are there other ways to call the demon? To create a ketsuki?”

  Miss Aritomo cocked her head, studying them more closely now, her prior suspicions obviously returning. “There are different versions of the story. Most of them begin with a cat walking over the grave of a murder victim and Kyuketsuki taking the cat that way. But it’s so coincidental, it would never work in the play.”

  Kara nodded slowly, mind racing.

  “Unless it’s not coincidental,” Miho said quietly. She turned to Kara. “If Kyuketsuki has a bond with cats, maybe she can summon them. Maybe they come when she calls them, and she fills them with all that hate and makes them monsters.”

  Kara’s pulse throbbed in her temples. Her chest ached with the pounding of her heart and she took a deep breath.

  Then she noticed the way Miss Aritomo was staring at them, and she knew they’d gone too far.

  “Perfect,” she said, faking a smile. “That’s just the twist we need for a manga version.”

  A look of utter disapproval replaced the confusion on the teacher’s face. “You just told me you were going to be faithful to the original. If you are going to adapt a Noh play, you should respect the material enough to tell the story the way it is meant to be told.”

  Miho bowed. “Thank you, sensei. You’re right. We will discuss it.”

  Kara bowed her head as well. “Of course. But one more thing, sensei. The play? How does it end?”

  “In tragedy,” Miss Aritomo said. “The ketsuki kills Riko’s husband and his new lover, but its bloodlust and need for vengeance are not sated. It decides that the woman’s parents and children could have prevented her murder and so kills them as well. Only the youngest daughter, a little girl, survives. She lights candles and kneels on her mother’s grave and prays for mercy. The sun rises, and the ketsuki vanishes.

  “It’s all very dramatic, if you like that sort of thing.”

  13

  Kara and Miho hurried back across the field toward the dorm. For the moment, at least, adrenaline had overridden Kara’s exhaustion. Her eyes still burned from lack of sleep, but her racing heart kept her moving.

  “Is your father going to be angry?” Miho asked.

  “I’m sure he’s not going to be able to leave school anytime soon,” Kara said. “I’ll still make it home before him.”

  Her skin prickled with foreboding. The whole world seemed to have changed around her, the slant of light somehow ominous, the air itself heavier. How had her perceptions been altered so completely that she could believe, even for a moment, that the demon out of some Noh play might really exist? The girl she’d been when she’d left the United States would never have believed such a thing.

  But she had changed since then. Japan had changed her. The dark events unfolding at Monju-no-Chie School had forced her eyes to perceive things she had never imagined.

  She and Miho had left Miss Aritomo’s room in silence, not daring to share their thoughts about what she’d said until they were on their own. Even now, walking alone across the field toward the dorm, they avoided the subject, and Kara knew why. She and Miho were both struggling with their fear.

  Kara looked up at the sky, tried to gauge how much of the day had already passed. It must still be morning, but how many hours did that give them until nightfall? And were they really safe during the day? That was a presumption they’d made based on too many vampire stories, but did it apply to demons?

  Her heart beat so fiercely that it hurt her chest. Calm down, she thought to herself, or you’ll be no good to anyone. And Kara couldn’t afford to let that happen. For whatever reason, the ketsuki had inflicted its nightmares upon her just as it had upon Akane’s killers.

  “Why . . . ,” she began, then faltered.

  “What?” Miho asked.

  Kara swallowed, her throat dry. “Why do you think it’s after me, too? I didn’t do anything.”

  “I thought about that while Miss Aritomo told the story,” Miho said, as they walked across the grassy field. In the dorm parking lot ahead, more students were packing their things into their parents’ cars. “You were there. You saw the cat disturb Akane’s shrine.”

  “But I didn’t sacrifice it!” Kara said.

  Miho shushed her. “Let’s talk about it inside.”

  Now that she’d begun the conversation, it was hard for Kara to hold her tongue. But they were coming up to the dorm where there were students and parents about, and she knew Miho was right. She took a deep breath and forced herself to wait.

  “Look who it is,” Miho whispered, nodding toward the parking lot.

  A small SUV sat at the edge of the parking lot. A father closed the tailgate while his wife looked on. But Miho had been drawing Kara’s attention to the other two people near the vehicle. Maiko, the sleepless, frayed, brittle girl who was in Mr. Matsui’s class with them, stood near her parents’ SUV, talking quietly with Ume. The two girls’ faces were pictures of worry and regret. Maiko held Ume’s hands, nodding some kind of assurance they could not hear from that distance. Ume nodded, but more slowly, and then the girls hugged.

  Maiko’s father snapped at her to get into the car. With a last look at Um
e, she obeyed her father. Ume waved and turned away, hurrying back to the front steps of the dormitory. If she’d looked up, she would have seen Miho and Kara coming toward her, but her thoughts were obviously elsewhere.

  They entered the dormitory twenty seconds after her, just as Maiko and her parents drove away.

  “Do you think the ketsuki knows they’re leaving?” Kara whispered.

  Miho looked around the foyer of the dorm to make sure they weren’t overheard. She tucked her hair behind her ears.

  “If it does, it’s going to want to hurry to get as many as it can before they’re all gone.”

  Kara turned the words over in her mind and found she didn’t like them at all. whatever they were going to do about this, if there was anything at all they really could do about it, had to be tonight. Otherwise there would be more blood, more death—and it might be her own. They had to find a way to stop the ketsuki, so she could finally rest. She badly wanted sleep, but the nightmares had to stop.

  On the stairs between the second and third floor, they encountered Ren, who was on his way down.

  “Miho, hey!” he said, smiling. “I was just looking for you.”

  “Really?” Miho asked, lowering her eyes and seeming almost to shrink into her own shyness, hiding behind her glasses. “Why?”

  Despite her tension, Kara smiled. Miho had such a curiosity about and fascination with boys, but talking to a boy she obviously liked made her squirm. Kara hadn’t had the heart to tell her Ren was gay.

  Ren shrugged. “Just wanted to say good-bye.”

  Miho’s disappointment was plain. “You’re going home, too?”

  “My parents are coming this afternoon. It’s all so weird, isn’t it? And a little scary. To be honest with you, I’m kind of glad to be going, at least until they catch whoever killed Chouku.”

  Miho seemed to be searching for something to say.

  “Hopefully it won’t be long,” Kara said, to fill the silence.

  Ren smiled. “I don’t mind missing school. Anyway, I went up to say good-bye to you and Sakura, but nobody was there. I’m glad I got to see you before I left.”