by Cristy Burne
Cait struggled to release the last latch on the window. "Well, the snow lady can't be worse than the water lady. She was just plain scary. I vote these dragon people and snow demons fight their own battles from now on. Let's just get out of here." She flicked the last latch free with a solid click.
Cait swung the window wide. A gust of cold air raced into the humid classroom and we were staring out across a snowy white winterland. It was still night and everything was silent. Deathly still.
"Wow."
"Come on," Cait said, and she started to climb up into the window.
"Wait!" A flash of darkness, blacker than black, had caught my eye. It was outside. In the sky, in the treetops. I grabbed Cait's shoulder with my spare hand and she froze.
"She's out there, isn't she?"
"You saw it too?"
"Something flashed. In the sky."
"Could it be more snow?" I tried to think. "A bird?"
The black thing burst from the treetops and came whirling in a vacuum of light towards us.
"No!" Cait screamed and slammed the window shut, flicking the latches and backing away.
Something slammed teeth-first into the window. The glass shrieked like fingernails down a blackboard, but it didn't break. It was Mrs Okuda, or more correctly, Mrs Okuda's flying demon head.
I jumped backwards, following Cait in an attempt to get as far from the windows as possible.
"Now what?" Cait asked, her face white.
"I dunno." It was still dark, she'd come back too early. We were alone now, us against her. Unless... "We could find the nure-onna?" Maybe she was telling the truth about dealing with the yuki-onna, and the nukekubi. Maybe she could do the fighting for us?
Mrs Okuda's head smashed again into the glass, eyes rolling back in her head and teeth gnashing. Her shiny hair flew around her like a cape, and I could see the red marks at the bottom of her neck, the place where her head would reconnect to her body when she returned to wherever it was hidden.
"No way," Cait said. "All these demon people will have to sort themselves out. That water woman was half-dragon, Miku. Disgusting. And dangerous. Isn't there something else? Some other way to deal with this thing?"
The flying head shot again in our direction, a black comet through the white sky. This time it slammed so hard into the glass that the whole window shuddered. When it whirled away for another attack, it left a smear of red blood on the glass.
"Her body," I remembered. "She has a human body. We just need to find it, before her head does. If we can move or destroy the body, the nukekubi's power is gone."
"Right." Cait sprang into action. "Find the body. It's a plan. Let's get moving and get out of here."
I nodded, jumping down from the window on to the still-wet floor.
"We should split up," Cait said. "Save time. You take Kazu and go left, I'll go right. Let's check every classroom, every cupboard. The body's got to be in here somewhere."
"Split up?" I didn't like the idea of going alone, not with so many demons and spirits on the loose.
Okuda's head smashed again at the classroom window. In the moment of collision I could see everything, her skin pressed flat against the glass, the gnashing of her teeth, her dark eyes watching, always watching. And this time, the glass cracked.
"We don't have a choice," Cait said. "We need to find the body, and quickly."
A jagged crack spread through the glass, but the window didn't break. We were still safe, but for how much longer? The head whirled away, trailing long black hair behind it, then it turned in mid-air to attack again.
"OK then," I had to agree. "Let's go."
We raced to the classroom door. The corridors were empty but still shining and wet. "Good luck," I said. "We'll meet up again once the body's gone. Here, OK?"
"OK," Cait nodded. "One thing. You said 'move or destroy'. I won't be able to move a body on my own. So how do I destroy it?"
I hadn't thought that far ahead. "Fire? Drowning? I dunno. I think it's just like an ordinary body."
"You mean we have to kill it?" Cait looked horrified.
The sound of shattering glass prevented my answer. The classroom window was broken. The nukekubi had smashed a fist-sized hole in the glass, not yet big enough for a head, but nearly.
"Go on! Good luck!"
Cait ran right. I ran left, cradling Kazu, still sleeping, in my arms. My footsteps splattered and boomed through the wet corridor and I could hear Cait's echoing as she ran the other way. I looked down at Kazu's trusting little face. Now we were truly alone. And I had no idea where to look for the body.
I ducked into the nearest classroom, jamming the door shut with a chair before starting the search. I checked under and behind desks, opened the wooden cupboard at the back of the class, the wooden cabinets along the side of the room. Nothing. No sign of Mrs Okuda's sleeping body. I could hear my heart pumping faster, drumming like the rhythm of a taiko drum.
"This is ridiculous," I said, talking more to myself than my sleeping brother. "There are dozens of classrooms just like this. We'll never find it this way. We need a plan."
I took a deep breath, tried to quiet the drumming in my chest. "We need a plan, Kazu."
But what was I expecting? Kazu wasn't going to answer. Even if he was awake and actually understood the danger, he wasn't going to say anything sensible. He was just a kid. A baby really. And he'd been so ill. He should be at home watching TV, giggling at the cartoons. Not being carried through a flooded school like a trussed-up radish. He just needed a place to sleep. Somewhere quiet and safe where he'd be protected from all this mess.
And that's when I had the idea.
"Come on, Kazu!"
I listened for a second at the door, then, with Kazu wrapped in one arm, I removed the chair I'd used to jam it shut and listened again. Silence. Then, slowly and ever so carefully, I turned the door handle and opened the door a crack and looked out. The corridor was still empty, still wet. I expected to see Okuda's purple-lipped head flying at me any second. But I had no time to imagine the worst. I had to get to Okuda's body, and fast.
Taking a careful hold of Kazu's little body, I slipped out of the classroom and headed down the corridor, towards the staff room, the school reception, the sick bay. I don't know why we hadn't thought of it earlier. The sick bay. With its calm, soft darkness, and the full-length bed. It even had pillows and sheets and a blanket. It had to be. Where else would a demon supply teacher choose to sleep?
I splashed my way down the corridor, checking behind me every few seconds for the teeth and hair I imagined could be flying towards my back. Rooms and doors began to whirl past. I remember passing a dozen doors, the music room, the drama centre, others that blurred into the beating of my heart and my panic. I only slowed when the end of the corridor was in sight. The staff room. The deputy head's office. School reception. And there, right next to the headmaster's office, was the room I'd been searching for.
SICK BAY. I felt as though the sign was lit up in neon and fireworks. "We made it, Kazu," I said, giving his head a little kiss.
She had to be here. Sleeping, and headless, behind this door. But what if I was wrong and the sick bay was empty? "Get a grip, Miku," I lectured myself. Because what if I was right?
Just then I heard an explosion of smashing glass from down the hall. At once the air filled with a supernatural scream. The nukekubi had made it inside the school.
I gulped. I grabbed the handle on the sick bay door, turning it oh so slowly, edging it around until I heard its inner mechanism click. The door was unlocked. I'd guessed it might be. Okuda wouldn't want to lock herself in, not without a head to think her way out again. So this was it. I gulped again, then turned the handle all the way, and opened the door.
Inside, the room was completely dark. The smell was overpowering, all the hospital smells I hate, disinfectant, bleach. But there was something else, a strange flowery smell.
Jasmine. Okuda's perfume.
I peeked around t
he door, but couldn't see a thing. Someone must have pulled the curtains shut across the back window. It was darker in this room than anywhere else in the school. I screwed up my eyes, squinting against the dark, and gradually, as my eyes adjusted, I began to see shapes, shadows. The cabinet along the right hand side. The chair on the left. And the bed, smack bang in the middle. I couldn't be sure, it might just be pillows, or a blanket laid strangely on the mattress, but it looked as if there was something on the bed. Something in the shape of a person. A body.
Had we found it? I needed to be sure.
Outside, a long way down the corridor, the head's undeathly scream echoed again. It seemed further away now, and I felt my skin tingle with relief. So far, so good.
I opened the door wider, creeping into the sick bay, trying not to breathe in its stink of jasmine and cleaning ammonia. It certainly looked like a body on the bed, but the part where the head should be was covered in darkest shadow. If I could get to the curtain, somehow let in some more light. Then we could be really sure.
I crept around on the left hand side, as far from the bed as I could get. If that was Mrs Okuda lying there, I didn't want her somehow to sense me. Who knew how these demons worked? She might not have her ears, but she still had the rest of her body.
I made it as far as the curtain, but as I pulled the blind aside several things happened all at once. First, a strange cold came over me, moving from the window to my hand and up my arm. I swear I could see ice crystals cracking and forming across my skin. As I moved the curtain aside I saw her, outside in the snow. The yuki-onna. And she was watching me.
She was tall, incredibly beautiful but pale as a ghost, and she was looking right at me, wearing a long white kimono, all alone outside in the snow. And in the next instant, she was gone, dissolved into a frosted mist. Just disappeared.
In that same instant, another blood-curdling scream echoed through the school. It was the nukekubi, and it was getting closer.
I jumped away from the window. And I fell right back into the furniture, bumping a low table with a screech and knocking into a water jug. The jug teetered, then smashed to the floor in a cataclysm of noise, exploding into sheets of water and shards of glass. The body, for I could see it was a body now, sat bolt upright on the bed, its headless neck glowing in the crack of moonlight that shone from where I'd opened the curtain.
It was her, but I didn't wait to see what else she could do, head or no head.
I ran, rushing to the door of the sick bay, hardly checking the corridor before sprinting down and across the hall to another room. This one was a classroom, and empty by the look of it. I spun around, grabbing for a chair I could use to jam the door shut.
But the handle of the door started turning before I even got close.
"Takeshita-san..." came Mrs Okuda's sickly sweet voice. "I know you're in there."
I stepped backwards, away from the door and that awful voice. My whole body convulsed in fear, and I thought I might choke. But I still had Kazu. I couldn't just give up. I looked around for a weapon, some kind of broom or baseball bat I could use to smash her flying head. But there was nothing.
The door clicked open and began to swing inwards.
"Takeshita-san..."
I soon realised even a baseball bat wouldn't have helped. Mrs Okuda's purple painted fingernails curled around the wooden door seconds before her purple-lipped face appeared. The head had found the body. The nukekubi was whole.
"There you are," Okuda smiled, baring her teeth. A front tooth was chipped and her gum was bleeding. I guess smashing through a classroom window is difficult, even for a flying demon head.
She was still wearing her awful shiny caramel skirt and jacket, but her hair was loose, no longer wrapped around her head like a piece of fine art. And she'd forgotten to put her pearls back on. Her collar stood open, revealing the fiery red marks where her head had re-attached only moments earlier.
"And what have we here?" Okuda advanced slowly. "A baby, is it? No." She smiled, her eyes on Kazu and her teeth like an angry fox. "No, it's better than that. It's your brother, isn't it? Another Takeshita child. Shall I eat two in one day?"
"Get away from him," I warned, backing away.
She just laughed, an awful sound that grated inside my head. "Your Baba can't help you now, Takeshita-san."
I backed further away, thinking desperately. There had to be something I could do, some way to protect us. And then I remembered the cedar leaves. My jacket pocket was full of them.
I reached with my spare hand into my pocket, closing my fingers around the dry crispness of the leaves. At once I felt powerful. This should do it.
"Hah!" I shouted, flinging the handful of leaves right in Mrs Okuda's face.
But nothing happened. She just laughed again. "Those leaves might work against lesser demons," she sneered. "But I'm no amazake-baba, foolish child. Did your Baba teach you nothing? Do you even know what I am?"
I pulled Kazu closer and backed into another desk. "Stay away from us."
"Ah, but I've stayed away for so long already," Okuda crowed. "For hundreds of years I have hunted the Takeshitas, but always your Babas have protected you. And always that stupid child ghost has kept your family safe."
"Zashiko?" I echoed. Again? Baba had always been careful to keep Zashiko happy in our house, leaving her toys and games and food, but had Zashiko really been so important?
"I don't know what you called your ghost." Okuda advanced slowly, pushing desks aside with a screeching slide. "But she's not here any more. You are alone now. You are far from that house, and your Baba is dead. Nothing can help you here."
I backed further away, bumping into something harder than a desk. The classroom wall. There was nowhere else to go.
"Give me the child," Okuda demanded, reaching for Kazu with two toffee-coloured arms. "Give me the child and perhaps I will let him live. Perhaps I will not be hungry for such a tiny morsel after I have finished with you."
The red marks around her neck grew angry, glowing like new scars. I watched in horror as they began to unwind, untying bits of her skin as they curled and uncurled in a line around her neck.
I tried to scream for help, but my voice came out as tiny as a bird's. Instead I clutched Kazu closer to me and shook my head.
"Leave us alone."
"Leave you alone?" Okuda cackled. "When I have hunted the Takeshitas for so long? When I have followed you here across the oceans? Never! I will sup from the famous Takeshita blood, and then I will grow stronger than ever before. Your powers will transfer to me."
"But I don't have any powers..."
"No powers?" Okuda laughed again. "Your Baba and her Baba before that, all the Takeshita women have spiritual powers. Why do you think the child ghost stuck around for so many years? You are too young to know your powers, but not too young to share them with me. Now come, give me the boy."
The red marks around her neck wriggled as if worms were digging through her flesh. There was no way I was giving Kazu up, and never in a million years to her.
I screamed and dodged left, hoping to avoid her reaching arms. For a second it seemed to work, then her head came fully detached and she screamed even louder, zooming around the room in wild circles.
The scream slashed inside my brain, a katana sword ripping terror right through me. I dodged and ducked and ran, darting between desks in an attempt to get to the door. But Okuda's head kept between me and freedom, swooping back and forth like a black and hungry hawk. Her headless body just stood there, motionless and waiting, still as a statue.
"Give me the child!" the head screamed. "Give me the child!"
Fist-sized fireballs started dropping from the ceiling and the desklids began banging up and down by themselves. The purple-lipped head whipped up a wind, causing papers to whirl and jump in a frenzy. Even the curtains came to life, reaching for me in wild waves and banging against the glass of the window.
All I could think was to run. And I tried, dashing betw
een desks, dodging fireballs, trying to steer clear of the head. Once it got so close that its black hair whipped my skin as it flew by in a rage.
But all at once I found myself back where I started, up against the wall, staring again at Okuda's headless body. And then, all too quickly, something grabbed me from behind.
I tried to fight but got nowhere. This thing seemed to have a dozen hands, to be made of rope itself. In seconds it had wrapped me up, coils of fabric holding me tight as an Egyptian mummy.
I struggled to get away, and then to cry out, but more fabric wrapped itself around my mouth, leaving only my nose free. I could hardly breathe as I twisted around, trying to see my attacker. But there was no one behind me - only the curtains, animated into evil life.
Panic growing, I watched Okuda's head fly back to her waiting body, the red marks swimming through her skin like living needles and thread, re-stitching body to head. At once the fireballs stopped falling and the desklids stopped banging. Everything was silent, but for her. In the distance I could hear a steady dripping. The water pipes. Perhaps we'd drown before she could eat us.
"Give me the child," she said, body reunited with head, arms reaching again for Kazu.
I struggled against the curtains, but I was completely trapped. Only one arm was free, and that was the arm that held my brother. I couldn't fight her without dropping him.
I was beaten. I couldn't do anything to stop her. Tears began falling from my tired eyes. We'd been up all night, tackled a faceless demon, a flooded school, a shiny-skinned dragon woman, and all for nothing.
Okuda's purple-nailed hands curled around my sleeping brother, plucking him from my arm. I tried to fight her as soon as my arm was free, to punch her or rip my way out of the curtain prison. But it was hopeless. She was soon out of range of my punches, and the curtains didn't budge. I was totally trapped. And now she had Kazu.
"What a beautiful boy," the nukekubi sneered. "You must be very proud." She held him up, admiring him like a delicious doll. And for the first time that night, he woke up. He took one look at her and began to cry.
