Into the Mystic, Volume One

by Tay LaRoi

  Her eyes were definitely not those of a child. Despite what I’d heard and read about Kappa, she was unquestionably a grown woman. But I’d also heard all Kappa were male, so apparently, the folktales had left some significant details out.

  When I reached her face she smiled, a mischievous glint slightly hardening her expression. Or maybe she was already as hot as I was and ready to go again. Her predatory gaze should have disturbed me, but I was too gone to care. Blue hair, slightly stringy as though it needed a good brushing now that it had dried, framed her beautiful face. When she licked her lips, her blue tongue captured my attention. Her smile grew, and also grew closer to my face. I opened my mouth to speak, but she stole my words by rubbing her slick fingers up onto my clit. Hanako muffled my moans with a kiss and then licked and kissed her way down to a hard nipple.

  In case I had picked up some sand, I wiped my hand on my hip and then sucked two fingers into my mouth. Turning onto my side to face her, I slipped those fingers between her legs. She gasped as she swung her top leg up and over my hip, grinding against me as I explored her sex, looking for the spots that stole her breath and made her cry out.

  We spent hours exploring each other’s bodies, languorously indulging our lust until we were unable to fight off sleep any longer.

  I woke on the beach, fully dressed, on a sheltered patch of warm sand. The sun high overhead told me it was at least noon. At first I didn’t move, and not because I was a little sore all over. I’d expected to awaken in a cave—inside Haystack Rock?

  I jolted fully awake and sat up. The rock stood where it always had, a behemoth with a mossy-green hat, birds circling its peak. Waves crashed against the side where I remembered seeing her. Hanako. I expected the images to fade, like the dream they had to be.

  Settling my back against the log that had provided shelter from the worst of the wind, I slid my hands into the pockets of my jacket. I’d thought to hug myself, to chase off the tiny bit of chill sending shivers down my back, but found something in my right pocket. It was a piece of sea glass, an oval about the size of a silver dollar, polished by countless time in the water—the blue-green color of Hanako’s skin.

  Holding the glass up to the light, I gazed through it and toward Haystack Rock. She was there, inside the rock, lounging against the rock wall and touching herself. When she looked up and grinned, I dropped the glass.

  Blinking, I stared at the rock for a good long time, my heart racing and skin tingling at the memory of the things she’d done to me, the way her fingers felt so soft and strong and sure as she brought me to orgasm again and again.

  Slowly, I picked up the glass and dusted it off against my jeans. In the light of day, it was more difficult to believe it was real, that I’d truly spent the night with a magical creature. But when I raised the glass again, I saw her. Moving the glass as though it were a camera, I panned up and down the beach a few times. Everything seemed normal, until I trained the glass on the rock. Then I was treated to the most alluring view of Hanako, nude in her little apartment, spread wide and pleasuring herself. For me.

  I watched until she got herself off, and as I lowered the glass, she blew me a kiss.

  It wasn’t easy, but I managed to return to my life—to go back to work the next day and go through the motions, to play-act normality. But I couldn’t forget my beautiful imp in the rock.

  I kept the disk of sea glass on a little stand on the table beside my bed, as though it were a tiny plate or mirror, and one week later came home from work to find it glowing. It was my Friday night, so I dressed in my sexiest clothes (with more than a passing thought to how quickly they could be removed) and brought a snack of kappamaki out to the beach.

  Once the last of the stragglers had left the beach, I wandered closer to where the gentle lapping of the waves met the land. Before I’d taken a half-dozen steps, she appeared in the water just as she had the last time.

  Just as she has every evening since, when the sea glass beckons.

  About Charli Coty

  Charli Coty is the pseudonym of the author also known as Charley Descoteaux. She has always believed in magic, aliens, and things that go bump in the night. When forced to venture out into the “real world” she can be found in a cramped cubicle surrounded by far too much light, erasing bisexual erasure, or knitting something naughty. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area during a drought and found her true home in the soggy Pacific Northwest. Charli has survived droughts, earthquakes, and floods, but couldn’t make it through one day without stories.

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  Other books by this author

  The Visionary

  Smile Like You Mean It

  Tay LaRoi

  One

  Ingrid’s phone hated Sendai. Between the narrow roads, footpaths that taxi drivers thought were roads, and businesses stacked on businesses, the poor GPS hardly knew which way was up. Thankfully, Ingrid spoke a fair amount of Japanese and plenty of people were out for Halloween.

  Too bad no one knew where Blue Star Night Club was. After asking two witches, three cats, and one vampire, Ingrid felt more lost than ever. With a defeated sigh, she took off her top hat and dialed her friend. A cacophony of blasting music and drunken cheers nearly blew her eardrum before she heard his voice.

  “Where are you?” Thomas shouted over the racket. “You said you’d be here by eleven.”

  “I’m lost,” Ingrid grumbled. “I’m standing outside the Family Mart near Clis Road. The one by the bank.”

  Thomas chuckled on the other end. “You really suck with directions, huh?”

  “Just get me to the club.”

  “Okay, okay. Get back on Clis Road and take a left. Go through the light and take the first right. Then take a left. The club’s three buildings down.”

  “Thanks. See you soon.”

  Ingrid went back the way she came, embarrassed by the fact that she had lived in Sendai for a year and still had trouble getting around. But she got to strut around in a cape for a while. That was cool. Judging by the occasional double take from men and women alike, a lot of people agreed. The glances and whispers made her stand a little taller and puff out her chest. Her bright-red hair usually drew gawks of wonder, but this felt different. It felt like being cool for once.

  Too bad it went to her head and caused her to miss her turn.

  With a frustrated groan, Ingrid weighed her options. She could go back, but there was a diagonal alley to her right that no doubt led to the same road. Convinced that would work well enough, she set off again, determined not to be distracted, especially considering how dim her route turned out to be. Ingrid had never seen a road this dark within Sendai’s city limits. Not until the early hours of the morning, at least.

  Weird or not, it was only a few steps until she’d be back in the light.

  “Excuse me.”

  Ingrid nearly jumped out of her skin as a pale hand snatched her wrist. Before she could scream, she realized the fright had been for nothing.

  Ingrid’s captor let go and lowered the hood of a long black fur-like coat to reveal a feminine face hidden by a white surgical mask. Ingrid saw thousands of women like her on her commute to work, especially now that flu season had set in.

  Judging by the way the woman’s eyes widened at the sight of Ingrid, she had made a mistake. “I’m sorry,” she muttered in a soft, timid voice. “Please excuse me.”

  Ingrid smiled down at the woman and tried to look untroubled. “It’s okay, but you should be careful. This doesn’t look like a safe place to hang out.”

  A glint came to the woman’s eye. “You speak Japanese?”

  Ingrid shrugged. “Well enough.”

  The woman’s eyes crinkled, giv
ing Ingrid the only sign of her smile. “I have a question for you, then. Am I pretty?”

  Ingrid’s stomach dropped at the question. Why did she have to tell her that she spoke Japanese? There was no right way to answer this question. Her ex-girlfriends had proven that.

  “I’d say you’re pretty,” Ingrid answered hesitantly. “I think everyone’s pretty in their own way.”

  The woman’s eyes lit up with glee. For some reason, that just made Ingrid more uneasy. The woman reached up to pull down her mask, and Ingrid’s blood turned to ice. She knew she had to stop the woman, but she couldn’t say why. When the woman revealed her face, Ingrid got her answer, and it shook her to her very core.

  The woman’s smile ran from ear to ear.

  Literally.

  Identical ragged scars ran from the corner of the woman’s mouth up to the far sides of her cheekbones as if her face had been split in two. It didn’t look as though the ghastly wound had healed properly either, given the way her mouth spread past the corners of her lips when she spoke. Forget speaking. She shouldn’t even be alive.

  “How about now?” the woman asked, slipping a pair of long scissors from her coat pocket. “Am I pretty?”

  Ingrid couldn’t gather the breath to speak. It was frozen in her chest along with the rest of her muscles. The only thing that still worked were her eyes. They darted down to the scissors and calculated the likelihood of the woman using them. Something told Ingrid it would depend on her answer.

  The woman’s smile spread wider. “Well?”

  Ingrid forced herself to inhale. “You have beautiful eyes.”

  The woman’s grin faltered, and her eyebrows pulled together. “What?”

  “I said you have beautiful eyes. And your hair’s really pretty. It has a nice wave to it. You have a cute nose too—”

  “Stop dodging the question,” the woman barked as her eyes narrowed into a sharp glare. “What about my mouth?”

  Ingrid eyed the gnarly gashes again, trying to stop her stomach from churning at the sight. “What happened to you? Doesn’t it hurt?”

  The woman blinked and lowered the scissors. For a spine-chilling moment, she studied Ingrid’s face and then opened her mouth to speak.

  A sudden shout cut her off. “Ingrid, is that you?”

  Ingrid’s heart jumped into her throat at the sight of her friend, Sam, coming toward her and the monster.

  “Sam, no,” she ordered. “Go back.”

  Sam approached her with a newfound sense of urgency. “What? Why? Are you okay?”

  Ingrid held her hands out to stop him. “Sam, don’t! She’ll hurt us both.”

  Sam came to a halt with his face pale with worry. His green eyes darted over Ingrid’s shoulder as his hand reached cautiously for his cell phone. “Who will?”

  Ingrid turned to find nothing more than an empty alleyway. There wasn’t even the sound of departing footsteps. With Sam close behind, Ingrid jogged back to Clis Road, afraid for the woman’s next victim. The black fur-trimmed coat was nowhere in sight in either direction, nor down the narrow road across from them.

  “She couldn’t have just disappeared,” Ingrid exclaimed, making her way down the street. After a panicked moment, she turned around and went the other way.

  Sam caught her by the shoulders before she could go any farther. “Slow down, Ingrid. Breathe. What exactly did you see?”

  Ingrid removed her top hat and ran her hands over her hair, trying to calm herself and process what had happened. “A woman grabbed me on my way to the club,” she explained between deep breaths. “Long hair, big eyes, black coat. She was wearing a mask and asked if I thought she was pretty; then she took off the mask and…” Ingrid’s chest knotted at the memory of the woman’s disfigured face “She had these giant cuts across her cheeks, Sam. They were horrible, like someone split her face wide open.”

  Sam let out a deep sigh that ended in a chuckle. “God, Ingrid. Don’t scare me like that.”

  “Don’t scare you like that?” Ingrid snapped, voice shrill with panic. “Some psycho is out here with a messed-up face chasing people with scissors!”

  “It’s just a lady in a Kuchisake-Onna costume messing with people.”

  “The what now?”

  “Kuchisake-Onna, the Split-Mouthed Woman. It’s a Japanese urban legend. She asks you if she’s pretty, and if you say no, she kills you. If you say yes, she cuts your face to look like hers.” Sam studied the panic he most likely saw on Ingrid’s face. “You’ve seriously never heard that story?”

  Ingrid retraced her memory. Sakura, her childhood best friend, never mentioned such a tale. Nor had any of her Japanese teachers growing up. All of her independent studies had focused on the country’s society, history, and occasionally, religion. She had never bothered with ghost stories.

  “So what if she’s in a costume, Sam? She’s still dangerous,” Ingrid concluded. “We need to at least tell the police what I saw.”

  Sam sighed and looked around. “You’re probably right. I actually passed a police car when Thomas sent me to look for you. We’ll tell them and then head to the club. Deal?”

  Ingrid followed Sam back the way they came. “You’re seriously not freaked out?”

  “She was five hundred feet away from the most crowded street in Sendai on Halloween,” Sam replied. “If she wanted to hurt someone, she wouldn’t do it here.”

  That didn’t stop Ingrid from eyeing the crowds as they made their way to the nightclub.

  A cop car sat on the corner of the opposite road, just like Sam had said. They listened to Ingrid in earnest, but something in their smiles told her that they didn’t believe her. Nonetheless, they took down the woman’s description and assured her they would put out a message for people to be on the alert.

  With that taken care of, and Ingrid’s nerves slightly more at ease, she finally let Sam drag her down the street and up three flights of stairs to the club.

  “What are you supposed to be, anyway?” Sam asked over the music pounding from above.

  Ingrid held out her cape. “I’m Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember,” Sam replied, rolling his eyes, “I also remember telling you to just be Sailor Moon.”

  “And have guys hitting on me all night? No, thanks,” Ingrid scoffed.

  “You like free booze, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not actually free. I have to pay attention to them and I’m not in the mood. I’d rather just pay for my drinks and dance with you guys.” Ingrid looked over Sam’s T-shirt, featuring a cartoon slice of bread, and the toast earrings dangling from his ears. “What are you supposed to be?”

  Sam pointed to his hair, which was a deeper red than Ingrid’s, and his bread-related clothing, with a sneaky grin. “I’m a gingerbread man.”

  Ingrid groaned, paid the man at the door, and wove through the dancing crowd in search of Thomas, with Sam close behind. As she did, she couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder, waiting for the strange woman to suddenly appear.

  A slap on her back startled her out of her worry.

  “There you two are. I was starting to worry you both got lost,” Thomas chuckled, handing Ingrid a drink. “Where have you been?”

  Ingrid took in her friend’s tall muscular frame sparkling under the flashing lights. The sequins of his merman pants glimmered as he bobbed to the music, as did the cheap plastic trident in his free hand. From their first training session together a year before, Ingrid knew Thomas had a taste for the theatrical and eccentric.

  “Ingrid got held up by a Kuchisake-Onna,” Sam chimed in.

  Thomas craned his neck to survey the crowd. “There were a few here earlier, I think.”

  “How do both of you know what that is?” Ingrid demanded, taking a sip of her drink.

  “My girlfriend told me about it,” Sam explained. “She’s big into horror flicks.”

  “Some students told me,” Thomas added. “They had to write about their ideal
Halloween costume last week.”

  “So, if I told you I thought the woman was actually dangerous, you wouldn’t believe me?” Ingrid sighed.

  “I would believe that whoever you saw shouldn’t be messing with people like that,” Thomas answered. “But it’s over and you’re safe, so enjoy yourself.”

  Given that the woman had disappeared, the police were aware, and she’d most likely be in the club until morning, Ingrid decided to try to take her friends’ advice. Even if she left and searched Sendai for the rest of the weekend, Ingrid knew she’d never find her. The city was too big, and the woman probably didn’t want to be found.

  So, Ingrid finished her drink, ordered another, and tried to focus on her friends instead of strange women in alleyways. It proved to be easier than she expected when the alcohol kicked in. Once the boys got tipsy, the party really got started and ran until the sun began to rise.

  After a quick breakfast at McDonald’s with the guys, she hopped on the first subway car heading for her neighborhood and stood the whole way in fear of falling asleep. First trains were always fun to watch on the weekends. They were an interesting blend of businessmen with loose ties and limp jackets sprawled across their seats, recovering from a night of drinking with coworkers, hung over college students napping against each other, and a few poor tired souls on their way to work.

  Once home, Ingrid stumbled up the steps to her apartment, missed the lock to her door several times before getting inside, undressed as she stumbled through her narrow kitchen, into her cozy living room, and up the ladder to where her futon lay.

  The second her head hit the pillow, it was early afternoon. Outside, children shouted and cheered as they played baseball, while cars zoomed through the crowded streets, and someone hummed as they worked in Ingrid’s kitchen.

  Her blood ran cold as she sat up and tried to remember if she had locked the door. The kitchen led to the only way out. Trying to escape off her porch would draw too much attention with the noise and no doubt end in broken bones. She’d have to fight.