Spirits of the Noh (18 page)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Though Miyazu City is a real place, and I certainly recommend that you visit it someday and take in the beauty of Ama-no-Hashidate, I have taken certain liberties in creating its fictional counterpart for The Waking. Shh. I won’t tell if you won’t.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank super-editor Margaret Miller, as well as Melanie Cecka and the whole Bloomsbury team. Thanks to Allie Costa for all of her work on behalf of these books, both in making sure I don’t screw them up and in helping to get the word out. Thanks again to Jack Haringa for his keen eye and helpful feedback, and, as ever, to my family for their love and laughter.

1

W
inter had come to Miyazu City, yet instead of the silence and darkness it so often promised, it had brought Kara Harper happiness and renewal. Most people making their way through the shop-lined streets of downtown Miyazu seemed trapped in a long, grim hangover now that the holidays were over. The city had to return to business as usual. In two days, school would start again and Kara would have to do the same, but she was looking forward to it.

A new year. After the nightmares come to life that had plagued her first two terms at Monju-no-Chie school, she relished the idea of a fresh start.

“Hey, lovebirds, wait up!” she called in English, hurrying to match stride with her father, Rob, and his girlfriend, Yuuka Aritomo.

Her dad and Miss Aritomo were both teachers at Monju-no-Chie, a private school on the outskirts of Miyazu City, where he taught English and American Studies, and she taught art. Their relationship had taken Kara a lot of getting used to—her mother, Annette, had been dead only two years—but she had come to accept it.

It helped that Kara had also fallen for someone. After all that they had endured, it seemed so improbable that she and her father would both be so happy at the same time, but she never spoke about that unlikeliness of their good fortune because she did not want to jinx it. Kara had definitely had enough of curses to last her a lifetime.

“Here we are,” Kara said, guiding them into the shop.

“How much are these boots, anyway?” her father finally thought to ask.

Kara gave him an innocent look. “Dad, they’re lined and waterproof. Can you put a price tag on keeping your loving daughter’s feet warm and dry?”

He gave a good-natured sigh. “That much, huh?”

Inside the shop, where several customers were lined up at the register and others milled about trying on winter coats and boots, Kara stopped and batted her lashes at him.

“Not that much, but …”

“But?”

“There’s this jacket you’re going to love just as much as I do. White and gold and puffy—”

Her father turned to Miss Aritomo and hung his head. “Save me.”

The art teacher laughed and nodded to Kara. “Go on. Show us these boots.”

After persuading her father that the white coat with the fake fur around the hood was an absolute necessity—with a little help from Miss Aritomo—Kara waited in line with him to pay. Someone had apparently gone on a break and left an old woman with a cranky, pinched face as the only clerk. Kara dared not complain about the wait. Instead, she leaned her head on her father’s shoulder.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t want my little girl’s toes freezing off.”

“Yuck. Me either.”

“So everyone’s due back tomorrow, right?” he asked.

Kara smiled. By “everyone,” he meant her two best friends, Miho and Sakura, and Hachiro, but he tried not to pry too much into her feelings for her boyfriend. She didn’t mind talking about Hachiro with her father, actually, but he seemed very wary about seeming too curious, which was probably for the best. As long as she was happy and Hachiro was treating her well, he didn’t need to know any more than that.

Despite what her mother had always said, boyfriends were the one area where fathers didn’t always indulge their daughters.

“… That’s terrible,” Miss Aritomo said. “How did she die?”

Kara and her father both turned to see the teacher talking to a short, fiftyish man whose glasses were too big for his face. His expression was grim.

“She got lost on the mountain during the first snowstorm we had last month,” the man said, shaking his head slowly, mouth set in a thin line. “They searched for her after the storm, but two days passed before they found her. She had frozen.”

Kara flinched at the word. “God,” she whispered, in English.

Miss Aritomo expressed her sorrow at the news and the man with the big glasses—who Kara now realized was an employee here, but also someone the teacher knew—nodded again. Or perhaps they were small bows, accepting her condolences.

The conversation went on, but Kara had had enough.

“I’m going to look at gloves,” she said, forcing a smile.

“You already have gloves,” her father said.

“I didn’t say ‘buy.’ I’m just looking,” she replied, and then she was off, heading over to a circular display where what seemed hundreds of pairs of gloves hung.

Things had been going so well. They were happy. Kara had had enough of death and ugliness and did not want to hear about any more of it.

As she searched for a pair of gloves that would match her new jacket, not really intending to ask her father to buy them, but curious, she heard soft voices whispering behind her, and then one of them spoke up.

“Well, hello,
bonsai
. Happy New Year.”

Mai Genji had seemed like her nemesis for a while. She had inherited the position of queen of the soccer bitches when the reigning queen, a girl named Ume, had been expelled during the spring term. Ume had told Mai about the impossible, awful things that had happened in April of last year—about the curse that the demon Kyuketsuki had put on Kara and Sakura and Miho—and for a time Mai had blamed Kara for Ume’s expulsion and for the horrible things that had followed it, during the autumn term.

Now Mai knew better, and she had a long, thin white scar on her right cheek that would remind her every time she looked in the mirror. It had all started with Ume, whom they suspected of having murdered Sakura’s sister, Akane.

Kara’s first year in Japan had been long and strange and sometimes awful. And though the curse still lingered, and she worried that it would draw even more evil to her and her friends, she wanted to focus on the new beginning that the winter term offered.

So she smiled at the queen of the soccer bitches, and at her roommate, Wakana, who had nearly been killed herself back in the fall.

“Happy New Year,” Kara said.

“Your father and Aritomo-sensei look very happy,” Mai said, an edge to the words that seemed on the verge of mockery.

Kara bristled. No way would she put up with anyone saying anything about her dad and Miss Aritomo.

“They
are
,” she said.

To her surprise, both girls smiled. They looked at each other and then back at Kara.

“They’re really cute together,” Wakana said.

“We’re glad for them,” Mai added, and then her smile vanished. “I’ll see you in homeroom.”

“Yeah,” Kara said. “I’ll see you.”

The two girls turned and meandered off through the racks, whispering to each other in a way that she should have assumed meant they were gossiping about her. But she didn’t think they were. They had lives, just like she did. Families. They had probably enjoyed the holidays with the people they loved, and now it was a new year.

No, they would never be friends.

But maybe it really was a new beginning for all of them.

Hachiro had seen a lot of impossible things since Kara had come into his life, but never a ghost. The one on the train back to Miyazu City to begin the winter term was his first.

Late that Monday night, just a couple of days after New Year’s, he sat aboard the busy train, head lolled against the window, lights strobing across the dark glass as the express shot through some commuter station without slowing down. His parents had struggled trying to decide when to drive him back to school and who would take him, so Hachiro had suggested they let him take the train back to Miyazu. At first they had balked, but he had appealed to reason. He knew they loved him, but they both worked and he could take care of himself. Logic triumphed, and now he found himself returning to Monju-no-Chie school a day earlier than he’d planned.

The early return would be a pleasant surprise for Kara, so he had not told her. And Hachiro had quickly discovered that he did not mind traveling alone. A couple of hours on a train had offered myriad options. He could have played a video game or read baseball magazines or manga. Instead, he listened to music and read from
To Kill a Mockingbird
in English. Professor Harper had assigned it over break, and explained that the subject matter would be addressed in his American Studies classes and that it would be a challenge for his English-language students. Hachiro had read it twice. Kara’s Japanese was excellent, and he wanted to surprise her by improving his command of her language.

Now, though, as nine o’clock came and went and the long winter night was well under way, he could not help closing his eyes. He drifted in and out of wakefulness, barely aware of the murmured conversations around him, of the old couple attempting to retain their composure while their granddaughter exhibited a wild imagination and bursts of laughing energy, of the rock star–cool university guy with two giggling girlfriends fawning over him. They were all just vague background as he dozed.

The train slowed a bit as it rattled onto older tracks, and so he knew they were not far from Miyazu City. The ride would not be as smooth from here on in, but still he rested his head against the window, skull juddering against the glass. Sleepy as he was, Hachiro could not fall into a full slumber because he knew that once he arrived in Miyazu he would have to change to the local train that would take him out along the bay to the station just down the street from Monju-no-Chie school.

The little girl let out a mischievous squeal, forcing her grandmother to snap at her. Drifting, Hachiro listened, and felt badly for both the girl, who only wanted to play, and the old woman, who could not help being embarrassed by what she would see as improper behavior.

Eyes closed, head jouncing against the window, he listened. The too-cool university guy whispered things to his female companions that were doubtless far more improper than anything the little girl’s grandmother could even imagine. There were giggles and more whispers, and Hachiro began to drift off again.

A cold draft caressed his face and slipped like a scarf of silk and snow around his neck. He opened his eyes, wondering where the breeze had come from. Had someone opened a door that let the winter in?

He glanced around at the windows, then at the doors at either end of the car, but saw nothing that could have been the source of the draft. Only when he lowered his gaze, shifting in his seat, did his mind process what he had just seen. A familiar face, spiky black hair, bright eyes. A face he knew very well.

Hachiro’s heart raced and a tentative smile touched his lips. Impossible. He was sleepy, half in a dream. There were plenty of teenaged boys with spiky hair, and the kid was half-turned away from him anyway. He could be anyone.

Curiosity driving him, that chill caress running up the back of his neck, he turned again and looked toward the back of the car. The kid had his chin down, almost as if he were dozing off as well, but his eyes were open and he stared at the floor. The lights in the train car flickered, and in each lightless moment it almost seemed that the darkness outside the windows was trying to get in.

Jiro
.

But it couldn’t be Jiro, of course. Jiro had been murdered on the shore of Miyazu Bay, his body found drained of blood, his shoes missing. Hachiro had been there when they hauled his corpse out of the water. He could still feel the hollow place inside where his friendship with Jiro had once been.

The resemblance was uncanny. Hachiro wanted to look away, but he couldn’t stop staring. The train rumbled over a rough section of track and outside the windows he saw the lights of shops and offices—they would be arriving at Miyazu station in moments.

The wan, yellow luminescence inside the train car flickered again, off and on, off and on, off for several long seconds, and then on again. The kid had not moved.

Hachiro leaned forward to get a fuller view of the kid, slid almost off his seat so he could see past briefcases and small suitcases and outstretched legs. Then he froze, ice racing through his veins. His breath came in tiny, hitching gasps and he slowly shook his head.

The kid had no shoes on. His feet were so pale.

He turned to look at Hachiro, not in some random fashion but in a slow, sad glance that said he had been aware all along of being watched. And when he smiled wistfully and gave a tiny nod of acknowledgment, Hachiro could not lie to himself anymore.

Jiro
.

The train began to slow. Hachiro could not breathe. He locked eyes with the ghost—for what else could it be?—and felt all of the sadness of his friend’s death return. He wanted to speak, to ask questions, to say that Jiro had been missed. He wanted to run, to hide, to nurture the fear that rose in him. The lights flickered again, and now, for the first time, he realized that Jiro had faded, his presence thin as delicate parchment, the shapes and shadows of the floor and the seat and even the window visible through him.

The conductor’s voice filled the air. The train lurched three times in quick succession, but the third was the worst, rocking Hachiro forward, breaking his eye contact with Jiro. He had to put a hand out to keep from being thrown from his seat as the train came to an abrupt halt.

As he turned, the doors shushed open and people rose, grabbing their bags, chatter erupting as they began to herd out.

“No,” Hachiro said, grabbing his bag and standing.

He thrust himself into the flow of disembarking passengers, searching the crowd for that spiky hair, that familiar face. He caught a glimpse of a silhouette he thought might be that of the ghost.

“Jiro!” he called.

Several people gave him disapproving looks, but most simply pretended not to hear him. Hachiro called out again, fear and confusion warring within him, and he pushed through the crowd and stepped off the train.

On the station platform he stopped and looked around. Hachiro was tall and broad shouldered, so he stood his ground and peered over the heads of the other passengers. He called Jiro’s name again, but already his hopes were fading. Someone bumped him from behind and he staggered two steps forward.

People streamed away, reuniting with family and friends and lovers and then vanishing from the platform. Only stragglers were left when the train hissed loudly and the doors closed and it began to glide away.