Takeshita Demons (3 page)

A sakabashira pillar is basically a mix-up. Ours
happened more than a hundred years ago, when
the men who were building our living room
accidentally stuck the top end of a huge wooden
column into the ground, so that its bottom end
was pointing at the roof. It didn't change the shape
of our house, and we couldn't tell that the pillar
was upside-down, but none of that mattered.
The damage was done. Our house was doomed
to be haunted.

You can never tell what sort of ghost a
sakabashira pillar will attract. Luckily, my Baba's
Baba was as wise as my Baba; she managed to
attract the attention of a zashiki-warashi, a childghost. Ours was a little girl, about five years old,
and Baba called her Zashiko. I never saw her, but
sometimes I'd wake in the night to find my pillow
down by my feet instead of under my head. Other
times I'd wake to see the light above me swaying
in the ceiling, silent and watching, gently rocking,
like a swing. But I was never scared. Being haunted
by Zashiko was the best thing that could have
happened to our family. She played tricks, but she also brought good luck and kept us safe from the
other spirits and demons, the ones Baba always
warned me about.

When we left our house, we left Zashiko behind.
With Baba gone and Zashiko back in Japan, we were
truly alone when we arrived in England. I thought
we'd be safe, that the spirits wouldn't find us. I was
wrong.

The woman knocked on our apartment door just
before dinner on Monday night.

"Miku, can you get that?" Mum called from the
kitchen.

I don't know why she even asked. Dad wasn't
home yet and it wasn't as if Kazu could get it.
He couldn't even reach the door handle.

I should have been studying for a maths test,
but all those numbers and equations were doing my
head in. I was glad for any interruption. Perhaps
it was Dad, back early but forgotten his keys. Or it
might be our neighbour, the cute one with the noisy
scooter that Mum always complained about.

"Miku?" Mum called again.

"I'm going," I said, getting up from the table and
heading down the hall.

I was only a few paces from the door when a
strange feeling came over me. Baba had always
taught me to be careful about opening our front door,
and this time especially, I knew she was right.

"Who is it?" I asked, speaking through the
wood.

"Red Cross," a woman's sweet voice replied.

It wasn't Dad or our cute neighbour. It was a
stranger. She sounded OK. Certainly no maniac
kidnapper, like Mum was always warning about.
But how did she get into the building?

I rested my hand on the door handle, ready to
open the door. But then I stopped. Something wasn't
right. I could feel it.

"Red Cross," the woman's voice repeated, a little
muffled through the door. "Would you like to make
a donation?"

I'd seen Mum make donations before, for the
Salvation Army and the RSPCA, but something about
this woman's voice was making me feel strange.
I wished I could see through the little peephole
in our door, but it was too high up, and I'd left it
too late to drag over a chair.

"Red Cross," the woman's voice said. "Red Cross.
Would you like to make a donation?"

Still I hesitated. Was something wrong here?

I didn't know what to do.

The door sounded again.

Knock... Knock... Knock...

"Red Cross," the woman droned. "Would you
like to make a donation?"

She was beginning to freak me out. I took
a step away from the door.

"Miku," Mum called from the kitchen, sounding
annoyed. "Could you please get the door?"

But I didn't yell back an answer. I was already
backing away from the door. My stomach was starting
to fold in on itself. Something was very wrong.

"Red Cross," the voice said. "Would you like to
make a donation?"

Knock... Knock...

"Red Cross. Would you like to make a
donation?"

I kept backing away from the voice, keeping my
eyes on the door handle, watching for a sign.

Suddenly I bumped into something behind me.
I gasped, nearly swallowing my tongue.

"Miku."

"Mum..."

"Nani shiteruno, Miku? What are you doing?"
she complained. "Couldn't you at least get the door?"
She had a tea towel over one shoulder and Kazu on one hip. She did not look happy. Kazu didn't
seem to notice. He was smiling and trying to stick
a partly chewed carrot stick in her ear.

"But Mum..."

I had to explain. Stop her. Do something.

"Who is it?" Mum asked through the door.

"Red Cross," the woman's voice replied.
"Would you like to make a donation?"

"But Mum..."

I tried to get between her and the door, to tell her
that something was very wrong with whatever was
waiting outside.

But Mum just looked at me and sighed, then she
turned the handle.

I was too late.

The door swung open. A gust of frozen air came
sweeping into the house. It felt like a wind straight
from the arctic. Kazu's soft black hair flared up
as if someone had blown a hairdryer in his face.
But there was no one in the hallway. The entire area
was empty.

"Hello?" Mum asked, poking her head out of the
door to check the vacant hallway.

There was nobody there.

"Really, Miku," Mum grumbled, pulling the door
shut with a bang. "That poor woman. She probably got tired of waiting and now she's outside in the cold.
Kondo wa ne. Next time..." She didn't need to finish
her sentence. She just looked at me as if I was a failed
cooking project. Kazu seemed to agree. He threw his
carrot stick on the floor, whimpering.

Mum turned the door lock into place. Her
silence meant disapproval. But how could I explain?
I grabbed Kazu's slimy carrot stick from the floor.

"Mum," I began. "I think that woman was..."
What? An evil spirit? A demon? Mum didn't believe
all the stuff Baba had taught me. She didn't even
believe in placing a cedar leaf over the door.

The cedar leaf! My heart sank. Surely not.

"Mum, did you move the cedar leaf?"

Mum looked away. "Not now, Miku," she said,
moving back down the hall to the kitchen, Kazu
still on one hip. He coughed a little and then started
crying.

I followed them into the kitchen, dumping
the slimed carrot in the bin. This was urgent. "The
cedar leaf. The one over the front door. Did you
move it?"

Kazu coughed again and then started screaming
like the fire alarm at school. Mum ignored my
question, jiggling him up and down on her hip,
then sitting down with him on a kitchen chair.

"Shhhh," she crooned, still bouncing him on
her lap. "You're OK, Kazu-chan, you're all right."

But I had an awful feeling my brother wasn't
OK at all.

I raced back to the front door, dragging a chair
over so I could search the top of the door frame with
my fingertips. I had a whole shoebox of cedar leaves
under my bed. I'd brought them all the way from
Kawanishi to London, pretending it was a shoebox
of calligraphy paper so Mum wouldn't take them
off me. For nearly a year I'd worked to keep a cedar
leaf stuck over our front door at all times, replacing
the leaves that Mum would sweep or dust away.
But this time my fingers came up bare. I hadn't
replaced this one fast enough. And now it was
too late.

I'd never seen an amazake-baba. I'd heard my
own Baba speak of them many times. They were old
women, with honey-sweet voices. She said they came
knocking on your door late at night, bringing illness
and disease to all who answered. But there was,
of course, one easy way to keep amazake-baba away.
A cedar leaf, stuck over the front door. But we hadn't
had a leaf stuck there tonight.

From the kitchen I could hear Kazu still coughing.
Coughing. Crying. I kept remembering the cold wind that had blown into our house when Mum
had opened the door. The way Kazu's hair had shifted
in the breeze. All that my Baba had told me. I stuck
a new cedar leaf over our door, but I knew the
damage had already been done.

Kazu coughed all night, keeping Mum awake
with worry so her eyes looked tired and bruised the
next morning. And he coughed all through breakfast,
his little face red with the effort.

"I'm taking him to the doctor," Mum announced,
not touching her morning rice. "He's not getting any
better."

Dad nodded, slurping coffee as he looked through
his paper. "So da ne - I agree," he said, looking up
briefly. "You better try for an early appointment.
The forecast's not good. They're predicting snow."

It was the first sign that bad things were coming
our way. The spirits had discovered us. And they'd
found a way in.

I nearly froze as soon as I stepped outside our door
on Tuesday morning. The wind was blowing and
it was starting to sleet. By the time I got to school
my shoes and socks were soaked through. My feet
and fingers felt like blocks of ice. And worse, when
I walked into class, everyone turned to stare at me.
I probably looked like a drowned cat. But I soon
figured out they weren't staring at that.