Thomas Randall - The Waking

…” She looked around for a clock and instead stared at Miho. “Tell me you didn’t really watch Nausicaa.”

Miho tried to keep a serious face, which must have been difficult enough in her flannel Hello Kitty pajamas. But the girl was a terrible liar. She smirked.

“No. Kiki just ended. So much for our Miyazaki marathon.”

“We got through two movies,” Sakura said. “Tonight, that’s a marathon.”

They’d wanted to watch movies tonight, just to clear their minds, and had agreed on nothing violent. All three of them loved the films of Miyazaki, who had become perhaps the most successful director in Japan while making only animated films. Kara had vetoed Howl’s Moving Castle because she’d seen it too recently, and they had all seen My Neighbor Totoro far too many times, so they had started with Spirited Away.

In truth, Kara had exaggerated for how much of Kiki’s Delivery Service she’d been awake. She had to have missed at least the last half hour. But the upside was that in that time, nothing unpleasant had visited her dreams.

“We are such party girls,” she said.

Miho nodded in mock seriousness. “We are troublesome. All the drugs and sex. We’re bound to end up in jail.”

“Or dead by eighteen,” Sakura muttered with her usual sarcasm.

Kara and Miho blinked at each other. Another time, that might have been funny. But not now.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Sakura said, looking up. She set the manga on her bed, a stricken expression on her face. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“You didn’t mean it like that,” Kara said.

Sakura smiled, grateful for the instant forgiveness. Laughter came through the walls from the room next door. Kara returned the smile.

“Thanks for letting me sleep over.”

Miho slid the DVD onto a shelf. “Thanks for coming. We’ll do it again, too. Sometime when there aren’t clouds hanging over our heads.”

That made all of their smiles falter.

“Time for lights out, you think?” Sakura asked. “Or should we put something else on? Maybe something with cute American boys to send Miho off to dreamland.”

“I think I’m too tired,” Miho said. “But I can sleep through anything, so I don’t mind if you two want to put on something else.”

Kara looked at Sakura. There were dark circles under her eyes and a wildness in them that seemed different from the rebellious nature she’d recognized the first time they’d met. Sakura smiled thinly, and an understanding passed between her and Kara-neither of them expected to sleep well tonight. Yet Sakura almost seemed eager.

“It’s all right. We’ll have all day tomorrow,” Sakura said. “Let’s go to sleep.”

“Should I turn out the lights, then?” Miho asked.

Kara looked at Sakura again, and then nodded. “Sure.”

And then they lay in the dark. The girls slept with a window open, and the night air crept across the floor, making Kara nestle under the blanket they’d given her.

She’d fallen asleep during the movie, but now she couldn’t even close her eyes. In the darkness, she stared up at the ceiling. She had told the girls about her walk with Hachiro but had been waiting for the right moment to broach the subject of their conversation. The moment had never come, unfortunately, and now-even though Sakura and Miho had both avoided talking about Hana or Jiro or Akane or even Ume- Kara couldn’t go to sleep with her questions unanswered.

“Jiro was having the dreams, too.”

“What?” Miho asked, turning on her side.

Sakura raised her head from the pillow, her brass-colored eyes gleaming in the dark, hair spikier and wilder than ever. “What dreams?”

Kara searched for her eyes in the dark. “Hachiro told me Jiro had nightmares about Akane, but in them, Akane had no face.”

Sakura flinched and glanced at Miho.

“I’ve had dreams like that, too,” Kara went on. “Girls with no faces. And Akane coming up out of the bay,” she said, relieved to be speaking the words aloud. “And one night, I was down at the water, near the… the shrine people made for her, and I saw this cat.”

As she told the story of watching the cat walk over the shrine and drop dead, only to stand up again a moment later like nothing had happened, she watched both girls’ eyes widen.

“Akane,” Sakura whispered. “I told you guys.”

Sakura seemed almost pleased, and the thought made Kara shiver.

Miho stared at her, then turned to Kara. “It might just have stumbled. It might have laid down. I know I wasn’t there, but if it got up again, Kara, it wasn’t dead. I’ve been trying to tell Sakura that Akane’s not haunting anybody, and that story doesn’t help. Anyway, I haven’t had any dreams like that.”

“I know,” Kara told her. “But Sakura has.”

Sakura hesitated but finally nodded. “Ever since school began,” she confessed. “And they keep getting worse. When I wake up, I’m not just afraid, I’m angry, and all I can think about is Akane, and missing her and grieving for her starts all over. Every night.”

Miho shot her a look of heartbreaking sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

“But why am I having them?” Kara asked. “I wasn’t even here.”

“I don’t know,” Sakura said. “Maybe because of that night with the cat. But I do know why Ume is having them.”

Kara didn’t have to ask. Sakura had made it clear that she suspected Ume knew more about Akane’s death than she was telling.

“Do you really think your sister is haunting us?” Kara asked, thinking of all of the no-face girls in her dreams and the terror she felt when she awoke from them.

“Not just haunting.”

Miho stared at her. “No, Sakura.”

Kara turned to Miho. Suddenly she looked far too old to be wearing Hello Kitty pajamas. “ ‘No’ what? You think Akane’s doing more than haunting?”

Miho exhaled, seeming to deflate into surrender. “Sakura thinks it is Akane’s spirit, taking revenge. She thinks a ghost killed Jiro and drove Hana off the roof.”

Kara stared at her, then looked at Sakura again. “I’m sorry. Dreams or no dreams, I can’t believe that. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Sakura laughed. “You’re in the wrong country, then. Japan is full of all sorts of ghosts.”

“I don’t mean to be cold, but Akane can’t come back and take revenge. She can’t come back at all. She’s dead, Sakura. Dead and gone,” Kara said, wondering at the emphasis in her own voice, and at the fear.

Sakura lay her head back on the pillow, staring up, and from that angle Kara could no longer see her eyes.

“Then how do you explain all of this?” Sakura asked.

“I can’t,” Kara replied.

“That’s right. You can’t.”

Kara still had questions, but the conversation clearly seemed over. The other girls lay in the dark, not speaking, waiting for sleep to arrive. While Kara felt trepidation at the thought, she realized now that, nightmares or not, Sakura looked forward to her bad dreams, for in them, however briefly, she could be reunited with her sister.

Within just a few minutes, she heard Sakura’s breathing deepen and the slow rhythm of sleep overtaking her. Perhaps ten minutes passed, and then she glanced at Miho, who lay on her side with her eyes closed and seemed also to have fallen asleep easily.

How they could simply shut off the conversation and not want to talk it over, try to figure out what was really going on, Kara did not understand. Perhaps they were simply afraid and in denial.

Kara frowned, noticing an odd, sweet smell in the room. A flower smell. It took her a moment to place it-cherry blossoms.

The scent grew quickly until it was almost overpowering, like hugging an old aunt who wore far too much perfume. She glanced around to see from where the odor might have come. In the dark, gleaming with moonlight, the Noh masks on the walls were hideous and unsettling. Kara felt like they were watching her, laughing at her. She rolled onto her side, turning toward Miho…