by Chris Ward
Something he didn’t like at all.
16
The cold sets in
Ogiwara smashed the cue ball, grunting as it bounced up off the green baize, struck the red ball side on, and trickled over to the cushion to where it settled. The red ball moved a few inches towards the pocket and came to rest against the pink.
‘Piece of shit stupid game,’ Ogiwara said, making the motion of breaking his snooker cue over his knee. ‘Typical of the stupid English to invent something so hard. All of their games are stupid and hard, have you noticed that? Cricket, snooker, golf … they’re all stupid games and ridiculously hard. They should have invented something like soccer, which is easy.’
‘They did invent soccer,’ Mishima said.
‘Shut up, no they didn’t. It was the Americans.’ Ogiwara lifted the bottle of Johnny Walker and took a swig, coughing most of it up over the table. ‘Ah, I don’t know how anyone can drink this piss.’
He passed it to Mishima, who took a sniff and put it back on the bar. An assortment of bottles stood on the shiny surface beside them: Smirnoff, Don Perignon, Bacardi, Suntory Whiskey, Jamesons. They’d tried them all, but while they’d managed to get pretty drunk, none of the drinks had much appeal to their teenage drinking tastes.
‘I tell you want we need,’ Ogiwara said.
‘What?’
Ogiwara tossed the snooker cue on to the table. ‘Beer.’
‘Yeah? Where are we going to get beer from?’
‘The pub, you moron.’
‘But the pub’ll be shut by now.’ Mishima peered down at his watch. ‘It shut at eleven, but students weren’t allowed in after nine. It’s half twelve now. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired.’
‘Don’t be such a pussy. Come on, let’s go break in and have ourselves a party. Perhaps we can take some to Kaede’s room and have a bit of fun.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, you can film me while I bone her.’
‘Oh, great. What if she’s got sick?’
‘Then you can do her.’
Mishima frowned and shrugged as Ogiwara pulled his jacket off a chair and swung it over his shoulders. ‘Cheap bastards have turned the heating off. You notice that?’
‘Yeah. Probably an automatic system or something.’
‘Automatic systems are stupid.’ Ogiwara twisted the metal handle of the heavy snooker room door, but it didn’t budge. ‘Huh? What the hell? Some motherfucker has locked it!’
‘Shut up, man. What do you mean?’
Ogiwara pumped the handle and tugged the door. It didn’t budge, so he pushed a shoulder against it, just in case it opened outwards and in his drunkenness he’d forgotten.
It still didn’t budge.
‘That’s it, you crazy madhouse of motherfuckers…’
Ogiwara went over to the snooker table and grabbed a handful of balls. One at a time he flung them at the door. Mishima winced at each heavy thud, but Ogiwara wasn’t done. He grabbed a snooker cue, dug the tip into the green felt, and ripped a line up the centre of the table.
‘Oh, man, you shouldn’t have done that,’ Mishima said. ‘Remember what they said in class earlier, about how much it cost to replace?’
Ogiwara stared at him. ‘You think I’m done? I’m just getting started.’
He grabbed the bottle of Johnny Walker and slammed it down on the snooker table. Mishima jumped back as the bottle shattered and bronze-coloured liquid soaked into the cloth, turning it a shade of greenish brown.
‘Fuckers,’ Ogiwara muttered. He took the cue over his knee and made to break it, but he just winced as his knee slammed into the flexible wood. Instead, he propped it against the edge of the table and stamped on it gracelessly until it finally cracked and snapped. Ogiwara jerked the two ends until it broke in two, then he flung them away across the room.
‘That’ll show them,’ Mishima said.
Ogiwara, breathing heavily, slammed his palm down on the snooker table. ‘What do we do now?’ he said. ‘The door’s locked. There’s that tiny window on the back wall, but we’re on the second floor.’
‘We can’t go out there tonight,’ Mishima said. ‘Who knows how bad the snow is. We might drown if there’s enough of it piled up outside.’
‘Or break our fucking necks.’
‘If we wait until morning at least we’ll be able to see what’s going on.’
Ogiwara slapped the table again. ‘God damn it.’
Both fell silent. Mishima started to tidy up the mess on the snooker table, but after a glare from Ogiwara he stopped. Instead, he made a show of taking a swig from the Smirnoff bottle, but winced and spat the vodka out on the floor.
Behind the little bar in the snooker room was a small stock room. Ogiwara went inside and found a sink with running water. There was a stack of fresh tea towels beside it, so he carried them back into the snooker room and dumped them down on the bar.
‘You gonna clean up?
Ogiwara shook his head. ‘Tie one round your head.’
‘Why? I’ll look like some construction worker.’
‘Just do it. It’s getting cold. We’re going to freeze our tits off.’
Mishima scrunched up his face as if he was going to cry. Ogiwara groaned. The last thing he needed was a crybaby on his hands. ‘We need to keep our asses warm,’ he said. ‘These walls look pretty thick but it’s going to get cold.’
‘Yeah, man. This sucks.’
Aside from the tea towels, the only thing they could find to act as a blanket were the thin plastic covers for each of the two snooker tables. They split the tea towels, wrapping them around their necks and hands like scarves and gloves. Ogiwara took one bench and Mishima took another. They wrapped themselves up in the plastic snooker table covers like human butterfly larvae and lay down, but even as Ogiwara tried to get comfortable, he could feel the air temperature dropping. The bench had a thin cushion, but it wasn’t even half the thickness of a futon and the wood dug into his shoulder.
‘Are you asleep yet?’ Mishima asked.
‘Shut up. I’m trying.’
‘I’m cold.’
‘Drink some more whiskey.’
‘We’d be warmer if we lay side by side.’
Ogiwara scowled. ‘You think I’m some gay bastard? I’d rather freeze to death than lie next to you.’
The minutes ticked by. Mishima started to snore. Ogiwara shifted and rolled over, feeling a little shiver as the shifting of the plastic sheet sent a chilly draft racing down his body. He tried to sleep, but it was no good.
He got up and went over to Mishima’s bench. The other boy stirred as Ogiwara put a hand on his shoulder and shook him awake.
‘If you ever tell a soul about this, I’ll gut you,’ Ogiwara said, pushing Mishima back against the wall and lying down beside him. ‘And if you get a boner I swear I’ll hack it off with a rusty saw and cauterise it with a cigarette.’
‘Sure, whatever you say,’ Mishima yawned.
Pressed together like two spring onions in a plastic packet, it wasn’t much warmer. Ogiwara still shivered, feeling a small press of heat from Mishima against his back, but not enough to push the cold away. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, ducking his head down, the tea towel tied over his eyes. Ogiwara had a jacket, so his upper body was fairly snug, but his legs and arms and face all felt the bitter chill of the cooling air.
I’ll get you, he thought, as the spirits he had drunk allowed his weariness to fight through the cold and drag him down towards sleep. Whoever locked that door, I’ll find you and I’ll cut your damn throat.
‘Are we safe?’ Kaede whispered.
Dai, wrapped in a duvet they had stolen from a second floor bedroom, stared at the barricade of chairs and tables they had piled up against the back of the lounge door. It looked well enough fortified to at least give them a warning if someone tried to break through, but he was more concerned about the windows. There was nothing they could do except draw
all the curtains and hope that the thing they had seen couldn’t climb well enough to make it to the second floor.
It had been Kaede’s forward thinking to grab some stuff from an upstairs bedroom before barricading themselves in. Naked, they had crouched by the lounge door, waiting for the thing to come up the stairs, until they had both been shivering wrecks. Aware they would probably die anyway, after a few more minutes with no sound or sign of the bird thing, Dai had watched the stairs while Kaede slipped into the nearest bedroom and grabbed whatever she could. They now wore a toweling bathrobe each and had several pillows, duvets, and blankets. As well as several tables for study, the lounge had three sofas. Two were now pushed against the door, holding up the table that was jammed under the door handle. They were sitting on the third.
‘It must have gone by now,’ Dai said. ‘I’m not keen to go and check though.’
‘What was it?’
Dai shook his head. ‘The more I think about it, the more I think it had to have been some sort of sick joke. We’re all fucked up and nervous after what happened to your friends, and our minds are playing tricks on us. Yeah, something smashed the window, and yeah, it had Ken’s guitar, but what if it was just some asshole in a mask? One of those foreign tossers they have working here or even one of your mates?’
‘Crap,’ Kaede said. ‘No way that was a mask.’
‘No way to know unless we go looking for it.’
‘I’m not going down there!’
‘I guess that settles it then.’
‘Perhaps it was of your bandmates. What about that weird bass player?’
Dai shook his head. ‘I’ll accept that he’s weird, but he’s not that type. Trust me. I’ve spent the best part of my life sitting next to that asshole. He likes to run his mouth about weird conspiracy shit, but he’s not the type to dress up and start climbing in dormitory windows. Whatever that thing was, it lives out there somewhere.’
‘What about your singer?’
‘O-Remo? He’s locked up in the Grand Mansion over there after freaking out. I’m starting to believe he saw something, though. He always manages to find something to get himself high, so we tend to take what he says with a large-ass bag of salt.’
Kaede sighed and leaned against Dai’s chest. He looked down at her, unable to stop himself feeling aroused. There was some monster bird thing out there in the snow, possibly even downstairs, but he had a hot eighteen-year-old leaning against him in nothing but a bathrobe. And, he already knew what she could do when she took it off.
‘What say we find some way to put that thing out of our minds?’ he said.
Kaede looked up at him, those lovely eyelids fluttering. ‘I thought you were never going to ask,’ she said.
Jun lowered the folded heap of curtains over Akane’s sleeping form and tucked it in around her as best he could. Then, so as not to frighten her when she woke, he pulled the armchair a little further away and sat down on it, pulling his knees up under him to keep out the cold. He then wrapped the last curtain around himself until only his face was poking out.
The thick velvet drapes were surprisingly warm. Every time he shifted a little draft would whistle down through the folds, but if he didn’t move his body slowly began to heat up. He stared at Akane as he listened to her slow breathing. He wanted to go to her and hold her, but he didn’t want to push her any further. She’d opened up to him more than she had in years. For the first time in as long as he could remember there was the chance their friendship might be rekindled.
Outside, the snow had begun to fall again, but it was lighter than before. Jun wondered whether Kirahara-sensei and the sick students were okay, or whether they’d been trapped by the snow. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Perhaps, in the morning, everything would be okay again.
17
Hell breaks out
Kirahara-sensei opened his eyes to a blinding light and a loud humming noise. Under his body everything was hard and icy cold, but the pain across his back and shoulders was enough to make the likelihood of lying in snow unimportant.
Am I dead? he wondered. Is this what it feels like?
His eyes began to adjust. He turned his head because his body wouldn’t respond, and gasped at the sight of a bloody, twisted body lying beside him, partially covered in snow.
‘Oh, Natsumi, oh no…’
Her clothes were red and stiff with frozen blood. One arm lay a few feet away from her body, covered in red frost.
The snowmobile lay behind her, upside down and with the roof ripped off, impaled on a broken tree like a piece of yakitori. Other snow-covered shapes were scattered all around, some hanging out of the remains of the snowmobile, others lying further away as if thrown there in the crash.
The treads of the snowmobile were still, its lights were off.
So what’s going on? Where are the lights and the noise coming from?
He tried to roll over but his body failed to respond. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet, and there was only a hollow gnawing feeling coming from his stomach. The nearest light was coming from behind him. Rocking his shoulder from side to side he managed to swivel around, and what he saw both surprised and alarmed him.
The hillside behind him had partially collapsed, mounds of snow-covered fresh earth with trees sticking out like breadsticks in a stew. Through a gap in two large heaps of rocky soil he saw an opening, a dark cave like a mine entrance, only with lights blinking far back in the dark. Once buried under the hillside, it had been exposed by the landside. As Kirahara-sensei watched, something huge and dark appeared far back up inside the cave and disappeared into a side tunnel.
It had been black or dark brown, and huge. Walking on all fours with a kind of languid grace.
‘Oh my, they should be hibernating by now…’
A scream came from the trees back in the direction of the snowmobile. He jerked his head and managed to get himself into a sitting position in time to see a student stagger out of the trees and collapse into the snow. It was Nakamura, one of Ogiwara’s judo mates. The boy looked pale and drawn as he bent forward and vomited on to the ground.
Behind him came a huge growl out of the trees.
‘Run, boy!’ Kirahara-sensei tried to shout, but his voice came out in a barely audible croak. The boy took a few steps closer, then stopped, staring down at Kirahara-sensei.
‘Oh my god, Sensei…’
‘What is it, boy? What—’
Kirahara-sensei looked down at his body and gasped. His legs were missing at the knees, the bloody stumps crusted over with frozen blood, around them deep gashes that looked like teeth marks.
‘How—how—how…’
Even now, seeing the remains of his legs, the pain wouldn’t come. Either the cold was a remarkable anesthetic, or his nerves were destroyed.
Or he was losing him mind.
‘It’ll be okay, Sensei…’
Something huge and dark stepped out of the trees and swiped a massive paw at Nakamura, ripping open his back like fingernails through old newspapers. Nakamura screamed, but he was helpless as the creature dragged him away into the trees.
As another growl came from behind him, so close he could practically smell the creature’s breath, Kirahara-sensei closed his eyes and hoped that, whatever it was, it would kill him quick.
Part II
Snowbound
18
Professor Crow surveys the damage
Being up before sunrise suited Kurou. He looked out of his small window in the tower room on top of the Grand Mansion’s roof and peered up at the sky, a featureless, deep winter blue that would lighten gradually as the sun rose above the mountain peaks to the east. So, the storm had cleared out, but it wasn’t all good news. There was more snow forecast for this evening, but at least the rest of the British Heights staff could enjoy what looked like being a pleasant morning. Kurou rarely went out during the day, only if he had to or if he was on official business, which was not often. He wasn’t t
he most personable of Rutherford Forbes’s many hundreds of staff.
He left the window and peered into the little hand mirror at parts of his face. It was about the size of his palm but he had smeared grease around the outside, leaving only a keyhole about a centimetre across. Under the beady little eyes, in which the slightly lighter brown of the irises could only been seen from real close up, the leathery, reptilian skin was bagged and bruised. He was tired from his exploits of the night before, but, as usual when Forbes let him out to play, he had got carried away. Forbes was as pissed as a queen with a bee up her breeches now, but spreading a little of the fear he saw whenever he was faced with his own reflection cheered Kurou up considerably. Forbes would get over it. Kurou would be grounded for a few weeks, but sooner or later he’d be let out again, when Forbes wanted to sell a few more tickets for the ghost hunting tours.
His aerie, as he thought of it, had three hundred and sixty degree views of the surrounding area. Running in a line from the south-east to the north-east, the Japan Alps ploughed an immense furrow up through the fabric of the land, dipping away and rising again to the highland area where Forbes had built British Heights. A hundred kilometres to the north, on a clear day Kurou’s sharp eyes could pick out the glittering swell of the Japan Sea. To the west the highland rose again into some minor peaks where ski runs cut arcing swathes through the trees, before dropping down into the flatland of Nagano City. To the south, the highland dropped down towards the Tokyo basin. To the south-east, on some days he could see the rising cone of Mount Fuji.
Kurou, standing back at the window now, sighed. How he longed to fly like his ancestors might once have—his true ancestors, not the ones who raised him—up over the trees and the lakes, soaring on the wind without a care in the world…
He turned away, back towards the table where a tray of breakfast waited for him, delivered by one of Forbes’s underlings in a dumbwaiter that also serviced the Queen’s Bedroom on the second floor. It was a selection of the usual dog food that the guests got, sloppy eggs, soggy cereal, microwaved sausages, and a bowl of yesterday’s rice for good measure. The staff, most of whom were rotated every three months, didn’t know about his existence beyond the legend that Forbes advertised on the website. They didn’t ask questions of who they were sending food up to at 6 a.m. every morning because they weren’t paid enough to care.
