Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

Bonnie looked at Meredith and knew that they were both thinking the same thing: and somewhere in there, both Caroline and Tami propositioned Matt, too.

“Caroline must have told her everything.” Jim gulped. “Isa-chan and I haven’t — we were waiting, you know? But all Isa-chan would say to me was that I was going to be sorry. ‘You’ll be sorry; just wait and see,’ over and over and over. And, God, I am sorry.”

“Well, now you can stop being sorry and start calling the doctor. Right now, Jimmy.” Meredith gave him a swat on the behind. “And then you need to call your parents. Don’t give me those big brown puppy-dog eyes. You’re over eighteen; I don’t know what they can do to you for leaving Tami alone all this time.”

“But—”

“But me no buts. I mean it, Jimmy.”

Then she did what Bonnie knew she would, but was dreading. She approached Isobel again. Isobel’s head was down; she was pinching her navel with one hand. In the other, she held a long, shining nail.

Before Meredith could even speak, Isobel said, “So you’re in on it, too. I heard the way you called him ‘Jimmy.’ You’re all trying to take him away from me. All you bitches are trying to hurt me.Yurusenai! Zettai yurusenai! ”

“Isobel! Don’t! Can’t you see that you’re hurting yourself?”

“I’m only hurting myself to take away the pain. You’re the one who’s really doing it, you know. You’re pricking me with needles inside.”

Bonnie jumped inside her own skin, but not just because Isobel suddenly gave a vicious thrust of the nail. She felt heat sweep up into her cheeks. Her heart began to pound even faster than it was already going.

Trying to keep one eye on Meredith, she pulled her mobile phone out of her back pocket where she’d stashed it after the visit to Caroline’s house.

Still with half her attention on Meredith, she went on the Internet and rapidly entered just two search words. Then, as she made a couple of selections from her hits, she realized that she could never absorb all the information in a week, much less a few minutes. But at least she had a start.

Just now, Meredith was backing away from Isobel. She put her mouth close to Bonnie’s ear and whispered, “I think we’re just antagonizing her. Did you get a good look at her aura?”

Bonnie nodded.

“Then we probably should leave the room, at least.”

Bonnie nodded again.

“Were you trying to call Matt and Elena?” Meredith was eyeing the mobile phone.

Bonnie shook her head and turned the phone so Meredith could see her two search words. Meredith stared, then lifted dark eyes to Bonnie’s in a kind of horrified recognition.

Salem witches.

“It actually makes a horrible kind of sense,” Meredith said. They were in Isobel’s family room, waiting for Dr. Alpert. Meredith was at a beautiful desk made of some black wood ornamented with designs in gilt, working at a computer that had been left on. “The Salem girls accused people of hurting them — witches, of course. They said they were pinching them and ‘pricking them with pins.’”

“Like Isobel blaming us,” Bonnie said, nodding.

“And they had seizures and contorted their bodies into ‘impossible positions.’”

“Caroline looked as if she were having seizures in Stefan’s room,” said Bonnie. “And if crawling like a lizard isn’t contorting your body into an impossible position…here, I’ll try it.” She got down on the Saitous’ floor and tried to stick her elbows and knees out the way Caroline had. She couldn’t do it.

“See?”

“Oh, my God!” It was Jim at the doorway of the kitchen, holding — almost dropping — a tray of food. The smell of miso soup was sharp in the air, and Bonnie wasn’t sure if it made her feel hungry or if she was too sick to ever be hungry again.

“It’s okay,” she told him hastily, standing up. “I was just…trying something out.”

Meredith stood up too. “Is that for Isobel?”

“No, it’s for Obaasan — I mean Isa-chan’s grandma — Grandma Saitou—”

“I told you to call everybody whatever comes out naturally. Obaasan is fine, just like Isa-chan,” Meredith said softly and firmly to him.

Jim relaxed a hair. “I tried to get Isa-chan to eat, but she just throws the trays at the wall. She says that she can’t eat; that somebody’s choking her.”

Meredith glanced significantly at Bonnie. Then she turned back to Jim. “Why don’t you let me take it? You’ve been through a lot. Where is she?”

“Upstairs, second door on the left. If — if she says anything weird, just ignore it.”

“All right. Stay near Bonnie.”

“Oh, no,” Bonnie said hastily. “Bonnie is going with.” She didn’t know if it was for her own protection or Meredith’s, but she was going to stick like glue.

Upstairs, Meredith turned the hall light on carefully with her elbow. Then they found the second door on the left, which turned out to have a doll-like old lady in it. She was in the exact center of the room, lying on the exact center of a futon. She sat up and smiled when they came in. The smile turned a wrinkled face almost into the face of a happy child.

“Megumi-chan, Beniko-chan, you came to see me!” she exclaimed, bowing where she sat.

“Yes,” Meredith said carefully. She put the tray down beside the old lady. “We came to see you — Ms. Saitou.”

“Don’t play games with me! It’s Inari-chan! Or are you mad at me?”

“All the sechans. I thought ‘Chan’ was a Chinese name. Isn’t Isobel Japanese?” whispered Bonnie from behind Meredith.

One thing, the doll-like old woman was not, was deaf. She burst into laughter, bringing up both hands to cover her mouth girlishly. “Oh, don’t tease me before I eat.It a dakimasu! ” She picked up the bowl of miso soup and began to drink it.

“I think chan is something you put at the end of someone’s name when you’re friends, the way Jimmy was saying Isa-chan,” Meredith said aloud. “And Eeta-daki-mass-u is something you say when you start eating. And that’s all I know.”

Part of Bonnie’s mind noted that the “friends” Grandma Saitou had just happened to have names starting with M and B. Another part was calculating where this room was with relation to the rooms below it, Isobel’s room in particular.

It was directly above it.

The tiny old woman had stopped eating and was watching her intently. “No, no, you’re not Beniko-chan and Megumi-chan. I know it. But they do visit me sometimes, and so does my dear Nobuhiro. Other things do, too, unpleasant things, but I was raised a shrine maiden — I know how to take care of them.” A brief look of knowing satisfaction passed over the innocent old face. “This house is possessed, you know.” She added,“Kore ni wa kitsune ga karande isou da ne.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Saitou — what was that?” Meredith asked.

“I said, there’s a kitsune involved in this somehow.”

“A kit-su-nay?” Meredith repeated, quiz-zically.

“A fox, silly girl,” the old woman said cheerfully. “They can turn into anything they like, don’t you know? Even humans. Why, one could turn into you and your best friend wouldn’t know the difference.”

“So — a sort of were-fox, then?” Meredith asked, but Grandma Saitou was rocking back and forth now, her gaze on the wall behind Bonnie. “We used to play a circle game,” she said. “All of us in a circle and one in the middle, blindfolded. And we would sing a song.Ushiro no shounen daare? Who is standing behind you? I taught it to my children, but I made up a little song in English to go with it.”

And she sang, in the voice of the very old or the very young, with her eyes fixed innocently on Bonnie all the while.