“This is crazy,” she said. “We need to go to Yamato-sensei. He’ll call the police. He had no proof before, because Kara lied to him. But if you come with me now, and back up what I’ve told him, he’ll have to believe us, just a little.”
That got Sakura’s attention: she turned and glared at Mai with open hostility, and Mai knew Sakura had understood the part of her argument that she had not said aloud. Mr. Yamato knew that Mai was among the group of girls Sakura had blamed for her sister’s murder. If she said Mai was telling the truth, how could Mr. Yamato argue?
“Just wait until we hear from Kara,” Sakura said.
Mai sighed. “Why? Why are we waiting? Just call her and tell her we’re going over to see Yamato-sensei.”
Sakura’s upper lip curled in distaste. Any possibility that Mai might have one day become friends with her had evaporated, but Mai didn’t care.
“I understand. You don’t like me,” she told Sakura. “I’m not going to cry about it. I’ve never liked you or any of your friends very much, either. Except Hachiro, and that’s only because he’s cute and can play baseball.”
“This is you being persuasive?” Sakura sniffed.
Mai pushed away from the wall, throwing up her hands. “This is me wanting to do something before someone else dies! Or have you forgotten the Hannya took your roommate?”
Sakura strode over, shaking her head as though ready to argue, and then slapped Mai across the face so hard that she staggered back to the steps, stumbled, and sat down.
“You bitch!” Mai snarled, one hand clapped to her cheek.
Sakura ignored her, turning away as she pulled out her cell phone. Mai’s cheek stung, but her pride had been hurt even worse. Still, all she cared about right now was Wakana and Daisuke, and Sakura was making the phone call. Nothing else mattered. If she hadn’t been afraid to go out after dark alone, she would have gone to Mr. Yamato’s by herself. But this was better. These girls knew something, at least, about what they were facing, and something was better than nothing.
“Kara, what’s going on?” Sakura asked.
Mai wished she could hear Kara’s side of the conversation. After a moment, Sakura went on.
“Listen, we’ve got to go to Yamato-sensei. It’s the only choice now. You said before you thought he believed Mai a little bit-”
Mai raised her eyebrows. That was the first she’d heard of it.
“-and we need him to believe us now, and to call the police.”
Sakura paused, and it was obvious that on the other end of the line Kara was arguing with her.
“No, stop. Quiet, Kara. Listen. Mai and I are going over there, and if we have any hope of him believing us, you three have to come as well. He has to see Ren. He has to hear it from all of us. Two of us, he might think it’s some kind of prank. But not all five, and not if Ren is hurt and Miho is gone… I know, I know, but we can’t do this alone! We need help! Just meet us there!”
Sakura snapped her phone shut and put it away. She took a deep breath and started for the door without waiting for Mai.
“What did she say?” Mai said, following her out the door. “What’s going on? Why was she fighting with you?”
“Kara didn’t want to leave her house because Aritomo-sensei is there. The Hannya is there with her father.”
A chill ran up Mai’s spine and all her anger vanished. “But she’s going to meet us at Yamato-sensei’s?”
“She’ll be there.”
Mai nodded once, turned, and headed across the field with Sakura matching her stride for stride.
Miho woke to the copper scent of blood and the awful, rotting stench of death. As she grew conscious of her surroundings, eyes flickering open in the dark, the smells overwhelmed her, filling her nostrils and her throat. Her stomach convulsed and she rolled to one side, a thin stream of vomit erupting from her mouth.
Panic and revulsion brought her fully awake. She forced herself to breathe through her mouth, the stink of the room too much to take. Disoriented, she looked around, trying to make sense of what she saw.
The low ceiling above her head had a peak in the middle, and there were boxes and two old traveling chests stacked to one side. In the gloom-slices of moonlight gleaming between shutters or boards that blocked two small windows-she could make out a metal rack hung with what appeared to be old Noh or Kabuki theatrical costumes. A bare dressmaker’s dummy stood beside the costume rack like some headless, limbless spectator.
The smell. Where did the smell come from?
Miho sat up and her stomach convulsed again. Bile burned in the back of her throat, but this time she managed to suppress the urge to vomit. It wasn’t just the smell, she realized. The nausea and disorientation were symptoms of something else. Flashes of the conflict on the train platform came back to her. Fear flooded through her as she remembered the Hannya, its intimate hiss, and what it had done to Ren.
Oh, Ren. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, terrible sadness gnawing at her. Please don’t be dead.
A fresh wave of nausea hit her gut and she thought again of the Hannya. One hand fluttered up to her neck and she gave a tiny yelp at the pain as she touched the bruised, punctured skin there. Some of the blood she smelled might be her own.
It had bitten her, and the bite had poisoned her or something. It had made her sleep as if she’d been drugged, and now the effects were starting to wear off. But the Hannya would be back.
Miho took a breath, still through her mouth, but now she could taste the stink of dead flesh on her tongue. Chills shuddered through her and she looked around, eyes at last beginning to adjust to the gloom.
In a dark corner to the right of the window she saw an antique dollhouse. In the black shadows behind it lay what was left of a human body. Torn and broken, bones showing, from what she could see in the dark it looked as though wild animals had gotten to it. Hungry animals. The darker stains on the wall and on the roof of the dollhouse must have been blood.
Miho began to shake. Her eyes swam with tears.
“No,” she whispered. “No, please. I haven’t done anything.”
Lurching to her feet, she banged her head on the low ceiling and then staggered toward the boarded window. Her fingers found purchase but she could not tear the wood away.
Miho dropped to her knees, threw back her head, and began to scream for help. She cried and she beat her fists on the boards and screamed until her throat hurt. Minutes passed before she paused to breathe, and to think.
And then a voice, little more than a dry rasp, came from behind the costume rack.
“You shouldn’t bother,” said the voice. “No one will hear. I’ve been trying for days.”
13
M r. Yamato sat in a rigid wooden chair, his back straight. As he listened to Kara and Sakura tell the story from the beginning, with Mai reinforcing their tale by relating again what Ume had told her and Ren showing his injuries and detailing the attack at the train station, the principal’s expression did not waver. So often stern, Kara thought his face must have settled comfortably into those grim lines over the years.
“And then we came here,” Kara told him. “Please, Yamato-sensei. You must believe us. I’m afraid for Miho, and for my father. More people will die if we don’t do something.”
The principal took a deep breath, but still his expression did not change. He shifted his gaze from student to student, studying each of them as though searching for a weak link in the story. Kara could not blame him if he thought they were all liars or lunatics, but she did not think that was the case at all. If he had, wouldn’t he have thrown them out of his house minutes after they’d begun their tale? Instead, he had listened to every word, asking only clarifications.
“Please, Yamato-sensei,” Mai said.