Goth (12 page)

I took the dog that had been in my mouth and placed it on the ground, looking up at Yuka, who stared silently back at me.

I knew what she wanted. I could feel the strength of her will flowing into me.

Why had she made me kill all of these animals?

I had never known before—but now I finally understood: Yuka had been training me.

She had made me kill all these animals so I could experience death that many times, honing critical parts of me. My experience with death would prevent me from hesitating and failing when the time came.

Yuka could not fight that man, but I could become the fangs that would protect her.

Yuka nodded. She knew I understood now. She had been waiting for me to work it out.

I didn’t need any more training, I told her.

The man was sleeping over tonight. We would settle this in the morning. Yuka whispered this to me.

I tossed the dead animal in the hole, washing my mouth in the river and swallowing the animal’s fur. Now we would go home—and wait for morning.

Yuka and I turned to leave the clearing under the bridge. But just as we were about to push our way into the wall of grass, I stopped. Yuka was already in the grass; she stopped too, turning back.

“What?” I could feel her asking.

I looked at her, and then I searched the grass behind me. For a moment, I thought I had seen it move oddly.

Nothing, I thought. Let’s go. I looked back at her and ran to her side.

There may have been someone there. I was sure there had been—the same one who’d been after us, trying to catch us. And at last, he had hidden and watched what we were doing.

Until now I had been afraid of getting caught. Not anymore. I knew what I had to do now, and I was no longer anxious.

We didn’t need to kill animals again. I was done with my training. We no longer needed to fear the shadow that had chased us.

We climbed the stairs. I looked back one more time at the sea of grass, which was shrouded in darkness. I wanted to tell whoever was hiding there what Yuka and I had really been doing. I wanted him to know what had happened to Yuka and why she had decided to do this.

I still think that.

iv

“Hello … ?” Morino’s sleepy voice came from the other end of my cell phone. Her tone indicated she found it completely incomprehensible that anyone would call this early in the morning.

It was starting to get bright outside the window. I had slept only three hours, but I was able to regulate my sleeping patterns at will, so I hadn’t had much difficulty rising early.

I told Morino that I’d found the kidnapper.

“Oh,” she said, hanging up. I didn’t have time to tell her that the kidnappers had been the girl and the golden retriever we’d passed on the street. Apparently, sleep was far more important to Morino than the identity of the pet kidnapper.

My phone rang. It was Morino. I answered, and she got right to the point.

“You took pictures?”

I explained that I’d brought my digital camera the night before but had been unable to get anything usable. There wasn’t enough light under the bridge. The pictures were too dark to see anything.

“Oh,” she said, and she hung up again.

I changed clothes and left my room. My parents and sister were still asleep, and the house was quiet. At the entrance, I put on my shoes, and then I went outside. The sky was red to the east, turning the lampposts into silhouettes.

“Tomorrow morning,” I had heard the girl whisper last night under the bridge. Just after the ritual of death, that tiny little girl had whispered those words into the golden retriever’s ears.

From where I’d been hiding, I couldn’t work out the rest of the sentence. Was something going to happen that next morning, Saturday morning?

Would they do the same thing? I headed for her house, armed with my camera. I knew where she lived. I had seen her go in the gate with her dog the other day. That must be her home. My plan was to quietly follow them and then watch them as they worked.

Shortly after I left the house, I realized I’d forgotten something. I had my wallet and the camera. I checked my pockets, and then I looked up at the second-story window, my room. I’d left the knife in my room.

Was it worth going back for a knife I wouldn’t even use? Or should I head straight for the girl’s house? I didn’t want to waste any time. It would be easier not to go back.

But even as I thought this, I found myself climbing the stairs again. I took a knife from the set behind my bookcase. There was a white sheen on the blade’s surface, and I had to fight off the urge to cut the tip of my finger. When the urge passed, I slid the knife into the leather sheath.

I left the house, my fingers on the sheathed knife in my pocket. It was thirsty, I thought. The blade of the knife was as parched as the desert sand.

I looked to the east, and the sky had turned the color of blood.

†

It was morning.

Yuka and I had woken as one when the light hit us. A single beam of sunlight had slid through the curtains and then across the carpet, the bed, the futon, and our faces. For a moment, we stared at each other.

It was fun to wake up with Yuka. Kicking each other, we wondered how we would play today. I never wanted to forget this moment. Even if we were separated, I always wanted to remember her like this.

Gazing at the dust in the sunbeam, we made up our minds and got out of bed.

We opened the door and looked around.

We could hear him snoring in the room where Mama slept. He always slept in there when he came over. Mama always went to work very early, which meant he would usually sleep in there alone all morning.

Yuka and I quietly walked down the hall until we stood at the entrance to the bedroom. Mama slept in the room at the very back of the house, and there was a sliding door between the room and the hall—but that morning, Mama had forgotten to close it, so it was open wide enough for me to slip inside.

I poked my nose through the gap, checking the room.

There was a futon laid out on the tatami. There the man was sprawled on his back, sound asleep—his mouth half-open, his throat exposed. He was a giant standing up, and I could never have reached his throat to bite, but when he was asleep, the man’s throat was right under my nose.

I slid my body through the gap in the door, entering the room without a sound. The tatami creaked softly as I walked. Yuka stayed at the door, watching. She looked worried.

I was right next to his head now. He didn’t sense me coming, and it didn’t look like he was going to wake up. His eyes stayed shut. The futon was half over his belly, which rose and fell as he breathed.

Something moved in the corner of my eye. I looked and thought I saw a shadow across the window, behind the curtains.

Yuka noticed my look, and she shot me a puzzled frown.

Was there someone outside the window? Or had the curtains moved on their own? Perhaps it was simply the shadow of the tree. I shook my head and put it out of my mind. I had to concentrate on the man before me.

I looked at the man’s face, and when I remembered how he had hurt Yuka, my heart filled with rage.

I turned back to Yuka, staring into her eyes.

We did not need words. I knew what she wanted, what she wanted me to do. I could see it in her eyes.

I slowly opened my jaws.

I would not hesitate. I had done this many times under the bridge.

I bit down.

My teeth sank into the man’s throat. His skin broke, and blood came out. I intended to bite deep, to tear out his throat, but human throats were much stronger than I had expected. My teeth hit something hard, and they would not go deeper.

The man’s eyes opened and he sat up, but my teeth were still in his throat. My body was pulled upward as he moved.

The man looked at me and shrieked in surprise, but not very loudly—critical parts of his throat were already damaged. He hit me in the face with his fist, but I didn’t let go.

Now the man stood up. I hung from him by my teeth, and he shook himself, trying to knock me loose.

I fell to the tatami and rolled.

There was a moment of silence, like time had stopped.

Red drops were falling toward me where I lay at his feet. I looked up, and he was gingerly touching his throat, looking stunned. Part of his throat was torn away, and a lot of red stuff was falling away from the hole. The man clapped his hand over his throat, but the blood seeped between his fingers.

I stood up and spat out what was in my mouth. It fell into the pool of blood on the futon, the piece of flesh I’d torn from the man’s throat.

When he saw that, his eyes widened, and he fell to his knees, scooping it up. He tried pressing it to the wound, but the red stuff kept gushing out. Soon his hand began to shake, and he dropped the chunk of flesh I had bitten off. The man did not pick it up again. Instead, he looked at me, his face a wreck. He looked furious but also like he was about to cry. His mouth opened wide, and he howled. There was a strange whistling sound mixed in with the noise, but it was still loud enough to echo through the room.

Then the man attacked me. He was very strong, and I almost passed out when he kicked my belly.

Yuka screamed in the entrance, frozen there. She didn’t know what to do.

“Run!” I yelled, but she wouldn’t leave me behind.

The man wrapped his hands around my throat. He pushed me down against the bloodstained tatami, spitting horrible words. Blood and spit flew from his mouth in shocking quantities, splashing on my face.

I bit the man’s hand, and he pulled back instantly, giving me enough time to get up and slip through the gap in the door. Yuka and I ran away together.

The man was bleeding a lot, but it didn’t appear as if he was about to die. A dog would have given up by now, but the man did not crumple. Not only that—he was attacking ferociously.

As Yuka and I ran down the hall, a thunderous noise sounded behind us. The man had flung the sliding door open so hard that it had almost broken.

I was scared. There was no way I could kill him. He was so much stronger than me. I could bite him over and over, and he would just stand up and hit me. And if he killed me, then he would go for Yuka after. I didn’t know what to do.

We ran toward the entrance. The man was right behind us, his footsteps getting closer.

From Mama’s room to the entrance, there was one turn, and then the hall was straight. We could be at the entrance in no time at all—yet that time seemed so very long.

We were almost at the door when Yuka shrieked. Her feet slipped, and she went tumbling. She lay in a heap on the floor.

“Yuka!” I cried, and I tried to stop. But I was running too fast, and my body couldn’t stop so quickly. I knocked aside the shoes in the entrance, slamming into the door. Only then did I stop.

I tried to turn around and scramble back to Yuka’s side—but froze in my tracks.

He was standing next to Yuka, blood running from his throat, glaring down at me. He looked so terrifying. He was saying something, but the words were not intelligible.

He took a step toward me, both hands forward, making sure I could not get away.

I couldn’t move. I just stood there, my back against the door. I couldn’t open the door and leave Yuka there alone.

What should I do? Thinking wasn’t getting me anywhere. Rage and regret rampaged through me. He wouldn’t let me attack him again.

I began to give up.

He had hated Yuka and had done terrible things to her, but I had been too weak to save her. No matter how I went up against him, I was powerless, and things always turned out the way he wanted them to. If I had been stronger, maybe then I could have protected Yuka …

His hands were almost on me.

On the floor, Yuka looked up at me.

“Sorry,” I whispered. All I could do was hang my head, turning my eyes away from poor Yuka and waiting for the man’s hands to close around me.

The lights were off, but the morning light came in through the windows, dimly illuminating the room. My head down, I watched the shadows of the man’s hands coming toward me, down the step from the hallway into the entrance, closer and closer.

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you …

Following the shadows of his hands was a line of blood dripping from his throat. It dripped down the step and into the shoes.

I wish we could play together again …

The shadows of the man’s hands reached my shadow. I kept my head down, not moving, but the man’s palms were on either side of my face. I could see his red-stained hands out of the corners of my eyes. His shadow fell over me, like the sun had set and darkness had come.

Yuka …

Tears fell from my eyes.

As they did, I heard something behind me. There was a door behind me, and I heard the sound of shoes on the other side of it. There was a squeak, and then something metal fell onto the floor at my feet.

With my head down, I could see it clatter into view. It gleamed, even covered by the man’s shadow.

The hands on either side of me stopped, taken aback by the sudden noise. There was a silence, like time had stopped.

The sound of shoes came again, but this time, they were moving away. There was a slot in the door for newspapers, and the thing at my feet had been dropped through it. The squeak had been the slot opening.

I knew it was the one who had been following Yuka and me, the shadow I had seen through the window earlier.

I had been dimly aware of his presence, which was why I moved before the man did now. That momentary advantage determined our fates …

†

Eventually, the girl and the dog burst out of the gate and ran off, heading away from the corner where I was hiding. They never noticed me there.

When they were gone, I went back to the house. The front door wasn’t locked. Inside lay the man’s body. He was sprawled on his back, and I could clearly see the knife handle sticking out from his heart. There was a trail of blood leading down the hall, and there were red stains all over the entrance. I examined him, being careful not to touch anything. I didn’t know who he was, but I guessed he was the girl’s father. Did she have a mother? I took a photograph and left the scene. I considered taking the knife, but then I decided to leave it there—it seemed like this was where the knife belonged.