Thomas Randall - The Waking

“Nobody would share with her,” Miho replied, her voice very small.

In frustration, Kara nearly wept for Ume. She couldn’t imagine being abandoned with her own fear that way. But the girl didn’t deserve her tears.

The line sounded like it went dead for a second, and Kara knew it had to be Hachiro, calling Miho.

“That’s the signal,” Miho said. “I’m going downstairs.”

Kara reached the small school parking lot and ran past. She glanced up at the darkened windows and felt as though they were dark eyes, watching her pass.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

Seconds passed, just a few steps, and she heard Miho say, “Hey.” Over the phone she could barely hear a whispered conversation between Hachiro and Miho. She tried to picture them together on the second floor landing, tried to make out what they were saying, but they spoke so quickly and quietly that even her Japanese wasn’t good enough to understand.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Hachiro says Sakura went out first and he was about to call when Ume came down the stairs. He was standing right there and she didn’t notice him.”

“Like she was sleepwalking,” Kara whispered, remembering the previous night. “The ketsuki’s luring her out in dreams.”

“But what’s Sakura doing?” Miho asked.

“You don’t think-”

“I can’t. I can’t think that.”

“Then there’s only one way to find out,” Kara told her. “I’m coming. But how are they going to get past Mr. Matsui?”

Kara’s father had said that her homeroom teacher had the midnight to four a.m. shift at the front doors, making sure no one entered the dormitory who wasn’t supposed to. The police were also supposed to drive by twice an hour, but she hadn’t seen any sign of them so far.

“I don’t know, but it’s very quiet downstairs. We’re going down.”

A night bird cried, startling Kara, and she nearly tripped. She passed the school, continuing up the drive toward the dormitory. But the road led to the dorm parking lot, so she left the pavement and started across the grassy field toward the front doors. The wind picked up and she could hear it rustling in the trees from all the way across the field.

Her heart pounded in rhythm with her feet.

“Miho, talk to me before I totally freak out.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just… I don’t want to be here, Kara. I want to go hide. I want to go home. Does it make me a baby if I want my mother?”

Hachiro said something that Kara could hear in the background. It sounded like he was agreeing, that he wanted his mother, too.

“We all do,” she told Miho.

“Oh, Kara,” Miho said quickly. “I wasn’t thinking-”

The dorm loomed ahead, a dark, two-dimensional silhouette against the indigo sky. Kara slowed down, studying the windows, only a few of which showed a glint of light within.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“First floor, coming up to the… Shit.”

Kara felt her throat tighten. She looked around as she strode toward the dorm’s front doors. If Ume and Sakura had come out, where were they? Why hadn’t she seen them?

Then she noticed something odd, even as, over the phone, Miho put voice to it.

“The door is open,” the girl said. “The glass is cracked.”

“Where’s Mr. Matsui?” Kara whispered, gaze darting around. The wind seemed to whisper, and suddenly she felt sure there were eyes upon her. Someone watched her, even now. She stopped short and did a slow circle, searching for some sign of her observer.

“Gone,” Miho said. “No sign of him.”

In the background, Hachiro said something that sounded like, “There’s blood here.”

“Kara,” Miho said.

“I heard,” she whispered.

Kara started for the school again, tentatively. After only a few steps, she saw something on the ground ahead, a dark, undulating shape. Two small shadows darted from it and she uttered a tiny, frightful squeak.

“What?” Miho asked, her voice sounding close in Kara’s ear.

The shadows raced low across the field, heading for the trees on the far side, first two of them and then a third and fourth. As Kara approached, slowly, dread coursing icily through her, the last two fled from the figure sprawled on the grass.

Her free hand fluttered up to cover her mouth, though to stifle a scream or attempt to prevent her from being sick, she couldn’t have said.

Mr. Matsui had been slashed badly. There were tiny scratches like the ones on Chouku’s corpse, but other claws had been at him. Deep gashes had flayed his face and chest and opened his abdomen. Through the tatters of his shirt and jacket, she saw glistening black things that had to be organs.

Cats hadn’t done this.

Ketsuki, she thought. The ketsuki killed him and left him to the cats.

Breathing through her mouth to keep from throwing up, she started to scream but cut herself off. Turning away, she clutched the phone and spun around, searching for the demon that had nearly taken her from her own house the night before.

“Kara, what-”

“He’s dead,” she whispered.

“Who?” Miho asked.

But by then she could hear them coming and turned to see Miho and Hachiro running across the grass toward her, pale in the moonlight, almost two-dimensional themselves against the black silhouette of the dorm.

Hachiro carried an aluminum baseball bat.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Miho said, running toward Mr.

Matsui.

Stupidly, both girls still had their phones against their ears.

“Don’t look,” Kara warned her.

Miho faltered, looked at her. They both closed their phones and stashed them in their pockets as they hurried toward each other.

“Are you okay?” Miho asked.

“Not even close.”

Hachiro stood by the corpse, staring down. Then he backed away as if afraid it would jump up and follow him. When he’d nearly bumped into them, he turned, and the three of them huddled together.

“Did you see anyone?” Hachiro asked.

Kara shook her head. “Just a bunch of cats.”

“Where’d they go, then?” he went on.

Miho and Kara exchanged a knowing glance.

“The shrine,” Miho said.

“Or what’s left of it,” Kara replied, nodding.

Hachiro slung his baseball bat over his shoulder as the three of them turned and started to run.

They followed a path that had become so familiar to them, diagonally across the field toward the east side of the school and the woods that bordered the grounds there. Over the years, generations of feet had worn a trail right down to bare earth, like the running path of a baseball diamond.

Instinctively, they kept off the dirt track, their footfalls quieter on the grass. Running felt good and right, and it allowed Kara to chalk her rapid-fire heartbeat up to exertion rather than the terror that had nestled inside her.

None of them spoke. Their chuffing intakes of breath sounded so loud in her ears-her own most of all. Far away, a car horn blared. Something rustled high in the trees off to the right and she glanced up, telling herself it had to be some silent night bird. Cats couldn’t climb that high. Still, she scanned the branches and the tree line for the slinking shapes.

Hachiro glanced at her and Kara picked up her pace. But when they came to the back corner of the school, Miho slowed down, and they quickly followed suit. The three of them stalked hurriedly alongside the building, wary of the woods.

Miho stopped, staring at the ancient prayer shrine that abutted the woods on the right, just ahead. Hachiro looked around, holding the bat with both hands, ready to swing.

At least a dozen white candles were burning on the altar of the ancient shrine, ringed in a carefully arranged circle and surrounded by freshly picked cherry blossoms. The smell of the flowers wafted to them on an errant breeze.