Thomas Randall - The Waking

And then another laugh, just beside her, in her ear.

Kara squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t see, but she knows-the girl she thought was Sakura is so close. She can feel the weight of her attention, knows that she has turned to look, and all Kara has to do to see her face is turn…

And suddenly it is the last thing, the worst thing, that she should ever do.

A soft purr in her ear. A laugh. A mewling hiss.

Pain stabs her palms and Kara looks down. In her fear she clutches her hands into fists so tight that her fingernails slice bloody crescents into the flesh of her palms.

Her hands.

She can see her hands.

No. I don’t want to see, she thinks. But the presence is there, and then she feels something soft, a cat’s tail, brush her leg.

A glimpse is enough. The jaws, open wide, the eyes glittering like flame, lithe and hunched, claws reaching for her.

She had no face, but now, at last, she screams…

… feels fur against her bare arms…

… feels claws puncture the skin of her back…

“Kara! Kara, stop!”

She felt herself shaking, felt the grip on her arms and then a light slap on her face.

Blinking rapidly, she drew a deep breath, as though she’d forgotten for a moment how to breathe. Kara found herself staring into her father’s eyes and took a step back.

He let her go, but reluctantly. Miho stood beside him in her pajamas, shivering in the cold night air. They both stared at Kara, fear in their eyes. Or just concern. The three of them stood in the small yard in front of the house, pale in the moonlight.

“Dad?” Kara managed.

“Jesus, honey, you scared the crap out of me. You were breathing so fast, and you looked… you were having a nightmare. Sleepwalking and having a nightmare at the same time. You’ve never sleepwalked before. What if Miho hadn’t woken me up?”

Kara stared at him. “I don’t know.” She still felt the tug of sleep. Of dreams. But she knew that wasn’t the only thing pulling at her. She hadn’t been sleepwalking. She’d been drawn out here in her dream. Lured with nightmare.

The night air hung heavy with the scent of cherry blossoms. Kara shuddered.

“I don’t know,” she repeated. Then she looked at Miho. The braid remained in her hair, and the red ribbon, but her face was crinkled with concern. “Thank you.”

Kara put as much feeling into those words as she could, wanted Miho to know she meant them.

Miho pointed at her hands. “You were hurting yourself.”

Kara looked down, but even as she did, she knew what she would see. The night air stung her skin badly where her nails had dug crescent wounds into her palms.

“Dad,” she said, looking up at him. “This isn’t normal. There’s something bad here. The place is poisoned somehow, and… there’s this evil spirit…”

It sounded foolish when she said it aloud. Crazy. What did she expect her father to say?

He pulled her into his arms. “Sssh. I know it feels like it can’t be real, honey, and I understand why it all feels wrong to you now, here. Seeing you like this, well, I guess I didn’t realize just how much it was affecting you. I’ll fix it. We’ll figure it out, I swear. But you’ve been having nightmares for a long time, and now this, and I think what you really need more than anything else is real sleep. Do you think you want to take something to help you?”

By something, he meant Ambien. Kara was tempted by the thought of unbroken, dreamless sleep, but what had happened tonight had been more than just a nightmare, and it scared her to think about how vulnerable she would be if she took drugs to keep her asleep. Chouku hadn’t been lured outside by nightmares. She’d been killed in her bed, in her own room.

“I’m okay, Dad. The nightmares never come twice in one night,” she lied. “You’re right, I think. I really just need sleep.”

“All right, honey,” her father said. “Just… I know it’s hard, but try to get some sleep. We have a lot to talk about tomorrow.” He looked at her, sensing that something remained unsaid, but when she did not elaborate, he kissed her on top of the head and escorted her back inside.

Kara locked her bedroom window while her father stood in the open doorway. As the two girls were climbing into bed again, he thanked Miho.

“I’m glad I was here,” Miho said.

“So am I,” Kara’s father said.

When he left, the two girls looked at each other, sharing their fear without a single word, wide awake, unsure of what it all meant or what would come next.

M onday morning, a light rain began to fall shortly after dawn, the sun struggling to peek through a thin layer of clouds. Miho had fallen asleep first, and might have gotten three hours of sleep after the sleepwalking incident. Kara had managed less than two-perhaps four hours total, separated by the most terrifying experience of her life.

By mid-morning, the rain slowed to barely a trickle, with shafts of sunlight reaching down through breaks in the clouds. It looked like the gloom would burn off, delivering another picturesque spring day on Miyazu Bay, perfect for the tourists visiting Ama-no-Hashidate. But it felt as though all of that existed in some parallel world now, a busy, happy reality blind to the dread and death that stalked the halls of Monju-no-Chie School.

“Dad, Miho wants to get back to the dorm. I’m going to walk her, all right?” Kara asked, standing framed in his office doorway.

He looked at her, eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want to go over there?”

Kara had shrugged. “There’ll be plenty of people around. And I want to check on Sakura.”

At his desk, Rob Harper stared at her, tapping a pen against his computer keyboard. “How do you feel? Did you get up again last night?”

His nerves were frayed. When she laughed, she knew she sounded frayed as well. There was no hiding it.

“Not as far as I know. If I did, I didn’t go anywhere.” But Kara knew she hadn’t gotten up again. “And I’m okay,” she went on. “Just really, really tired. If there’s not going to be school, I think I’m going to try to sleep a little after lunch.”

Miho came out of the bathroom then, lost in a hooded sweatshirt much too large for her. Kara’s father glanced at Miho, then back at his daughter. “All right, go ahead. But unless you’re coming back right away, after you go to the dorm, come by the school. I’m headed there shortly to help deal with the parents. There’ll be a lot of activity later today with so many people coming to collect their kids.”

Moments later, the girls were out the front door and walking briskly toward school, a silent but mutual urgency propelling them. Kara had brought her camera, but she uncapped it only once for a quick picture of the school in the distance, shafts of sunlight dappling the pagoda-style roof in splashes of golden light and gray storm shadow.

“Why did you bring that?” Miho asked in English.

Kara glanced at her. They’d spoken very little this morning, each keeping to her own thoughts. Kara’s eyes burned with exhaustion and her head felt stuffed with cotton, the way she’d felt the one and only time she’d ever drunk enough beer to wake up with a hangover. And Miho might not have been suffering from nightmares, but she had to be exhausted this morning as well.

“When I’m upset or freaked out,” Kara explained in English, “there are two things that make me feel better, taking pictures and playing guitar. I’m not some strolling troubadour, and I figured we didn’t have time to hang out and sing Jack Johnson surf tunes. So, the camera.”

Miho nodded slowly as they walked, listening, trying to take it all in. Her English was decent, but not as accomplished as Kara’s Japanese. Miho didn’t have a father who’d been teaching her a foreign language basically since birth.