“You… You weren’t?” Haruka stares at me in confusion.
“What? No.”
“Then why?”
“It wasn’t me. It was …” I cut myself off realising how stupid it’d sound. No, officer, I didn’t mean to chug that bottle of pills. It was the one-armed fox. Yeah, that won’t make me sound crazy. “Listen, I don’t know what happened, but I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I swear.”
Haruka opens her mouth like she’s about to argue, but closes it again without saying a word. We just sit in uncomfortable silence, staring at each other.
“What exactly happened? I don’t remember much and no one seems to want to tell me.” I don’t particularly want to continue down this conversation path, but I need to know.
I see Haruka visibly try to pull herself together before she starts talking. “I’m not sure. You went into Grandfather’s room even though he was still in the dining room with Miki and Grandmother, then several minutes later I heard someone pounding on the front door. When I opened it, Matt shoved his way in screaming that you were in danger, he barged past me and into Grandfather’s room. I… I tried to stop him, that’s… that’s when we found you. You were lying on the floor. You weren’t moving… I was so scared. I just stood there until the ambulance came.”
“I need to speak to Matt.” He has some serious explaining to do. I start reaching for my bag, then I remember I don’t have it with me. “Haruka, can I borrow your phone?”
After giving me a look that says she still despises Matt but won’t argue with it, Haruka hands me her phone and I realise the second issue with my master plan. I don’t have his number. I don’t even know where he is. Okay, okay, new plan. It’s a school day—the one upside to this mess—and it should be end of lunch around now. I’ll improvise.
I flip through Haruka’s contact list until I find the one I want and press dial. The phone rings for about half a second before a very energetic voice picks up. “Haroooo~, Haruuu~chan.”
“Miki, it’s me. I need t—” I’m cut off by an ear-splitting squee. I have to hold the phone away in the hopes that I’ll be able to hear again someday. Even Haruka winces at the volume of the scream.
“Rin-chan! I’m so glad you’re okay! Are you out of the hospital yet? We should go out to celebrate! I’ll buy you a cake! Do you like chocolate or strawberry? Ooh! Why not both!” I don’t think she took a single breath since she picked up.
“Miki. Miki! Please listen to me.” She manages to quiet her excitement to bubbly squealing. “I need you to, and follow me on this, find Matt. I have to talk to him.”
“Matt-san?”
“Please. It’s very important.”
“Okay, I’ll go get him.”
I listen as Miki goes skipping over to wherever Matt is, followed by a very confusing exchange where she goes on about celebration cakes for awhile before finally handing the phone to Matt. “Rin? Are you okay?”
“What the hell, Matt! Why didn’t you warn me? I almost died,” I say, trying to keep the anger out of my voice, I didn’t even know I was angry until he spoke. Haruka gives me a look demanding answers. I ignore her.
“It’s complicated.”
“Simplify it.” If I could reach down this phone, I’d strangle him right about now.
“Your story leaves out on a cliffhanger. Just you lying on the floor with an empty bottle of pills. I had no idea when it would happen or what would trigger it, so I was waiting to figure out a plan before making you panic. I didn’t work it out until it was almost too late. I’m sorry. I thought we had more time.” Something sounds off about his hurried explanation, but I can tell his apology is genuine. “I didn’t want to tell you this, not yet at least, but we may have bigger problems on hand.”
“Bigger than me dying?” I hiss bitterly.
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“That’s the end of the manga. It finishes right on your cliffhanger, and the new issue doesn’t come out ‘til Friday. For the next four days we’re flying blind.”
It takes me a few seconds to work out what he’s getting at. When I do, I feel a chill slice through me. We won’t have the manga for the rest of the week. Which means we won’t know the future. Which means we won’t have any warning if the kitsune decides to come at us again. Which means we’re as good as dead.
Chapter 23
“Mum, I’m fine, I promise,” I say for the twelfth time.
After spending half the week lying in the hospital, drinking black goop, and being forced to answer prying questions like: ‘Have you had problems for longer than a month?’ ‘Did you plan the overdose more than three hours in advance?’ and ‘Are you feeling hopeless for the future?’—As well as a whole slew of things I really couldn’t answer honestly without them ordering me an extra-strength straitjacket—I finally got to go home. But still, Grandfather refused to let me go anywhere, wanting to make sure I was completely rested and better.
As soon as I got home, I received a phone call from a very anxious mother.
“You should know better than to take too many,” she blurts into the phone. “This had better not have been an attempt to get yourself sent home. If I find out you did this on purpose, so help me.”
“I swear I didn’t do it on purpose.” She’s been this way the entire phone call, yo-yoing between concerned mother and angry parental figure. Who’d have thought one near-fatal quasi-suicide attempt would stir her up so much?
“Then why did you do it?” she asks, her tone raising an octave.
“I don’t know. It just happened.”
“It just happened? What does that… Your hallucinations have come back, haven’t they?”
“No, Mum.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? I’ll be on the first flight over there.”
“I’m fine. You don’t have to do that.” I get the feeling that if Mum had to walk out on her job to come be with her suicidal daughter, I’d never hear the end of it. “It’s over. You have nothing to worry about.”
“You know we love you, Rin. When we were told you were in the hospital, from an overdose of all things, we didn’t know what to do. I want you to promise me you won’t do anything like that again.”
“I promise.” I don’t know how well I can keep that promise when I have something out there that obviously wants me dead, but I’ll try. I just need to figure out a way to stop a supernatural death fox from murdering me and everyone I hold dear before anything else can happen. Piece of cake.
I say a quick goodbye to Mum and hang up the phone. With Haruka off at school, I have absolutely nothing to do. I feel bored. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d want to go to school.
Starting towards Haruka’s room, I stop in my tracks when I see the little old woman sprinkling ash along the hallway. Ever since I got back, I’ve been going around breaking as many of those lines as I can to ensure Misa can get to me if I need her, and here is Grandmother laying out fresh ones like nothing happened.
This might be the only chance I get where I still have enough sympathy to get away with breaking the rules. I watch the old woman busily spread her ash—where does she keep getting it from anyway?—while I try and think up a way to approach her without getting a face full of the dark powder. Maybe if I put my hair up she’ll think I’m somebody else.
“Grandmother.” I kneel down beside her, trying to act as respectful as possible.
“Norowaretako?” She looks up at me and I see the moment where she considers pelting me in the face just for the hell of it.
I take a deep breath. “Why are you doing this?”
She places her box of ashes on the ground and stares at it. “I’d thought the little one had come back, but she will not show herself to me. Was I wrong?”
“No, she has come back. She won’t show herself because she doesn’t like the ash,” I say, which is technically true. “She can’t walk through it. It hurts her.”
“The ashes hurt her?” Grandmother gives
a look of horror. “I thought a piece of the old house would make the little one happy. Am I driving her away?”
“A piece of the old house?”
She lets out a long breath before turning to face me, a sad look in her eyes. “There was a fire, the night the little one left. These are the ashes of that fire. I thought they’d welcome her home. I thought she’d be happy.”
“What fire?” I insist. “Please, Grandmother, I have to know.”
She remains silent for a few minutes and I start to think she’s not going to tell me. When she opens her mouth, her words come out barely above a whisper, “It was your birthday.”
I stagger back stunned.
Her eyes glaze over like she’s chasing a distant memory. “No one heard the screaming until it was too late. We tried our best, but we couldn’t save you all. Oh that poor little girl. We never should have left you girls alone like that.”
She falls silent again, and the look of sadness on her face is one I’d never have expected from the dotty old woman I’ve come to know. A question suddenly burns through my mind and I force my leaden tongue to move. “What girl? Did someone die?”
Grandmother opens her mouth to say something, blinks, then shakes her head. “Funny, I can’t seem to remember. What were we talking about?”
She looks at me in confusion before picking up her box of ashes and shuffling off down the hallway. What just happened? I feel a lump form in my throat. She goes and drops a bombshell like that then walks away like we weren’t even talking. I storm into Haruka’s room and slam the door. I’m so sick of being kept in the dark all the time.
I slump down and drag my drumsticks from my bag. Tapping a beat against the floor, I try and organise my thoughts. Something happened on my seventh birthday. Something major. Why can’t I remember it? Why is it that anytime I ask someone about it they refuse to give me a straight answer?
I let the beat pick up as I think. I know there was a fire. I know Haruka’s mother was hospitalised not long afterwards. I know the kitsune is after us because of what happened. Now Grandmother is saying that someone died. That a little girl died. But Matt said the manga only shows the seven of us.
I stop drumming and pull out the birthday card just to be sure. Haruka, Miki, Satomi, Yuki, two girls named Natsumi and Nanako, and me. No one else. Was Grandmother lying to me? Why would she? None of this makes any sense. If only I could remember.
Feeling the gritty black surface of the card, I force myself to try and remember, but the more I try the fuzzier it becomes. It’s like trying to remember a dream after waking up. Like there’s something blocking me. I need to remember. There has to be a way to trigger those memories. Something I’m overlooking. Something I’m missing. Something connected to those nightmares I keep having. Something like…
The closet.
I feel a shudder run through me as I gaze at those menacing doors. Ever since I got here my nightmares have been tied up with that loset. For some reason I’m haunted by it. If there is anything that’ll make me remember it’s that. It’s worth a try. What’s the worst that could happen?
Moving my suddenly sluggish body over to the doors, I grip the handles. From somewhere deep inside my mind a tiny frightened voice screams that something is going to jump out at me when I open it. I take a deep breathe, preparing myself to run if need be, and open the doors. It’s empty.
Haruka left my bed unrolled today in case I might need it, making the empty closet look absurdly spacious. Large enough for me to stand in. Steeling myself, I step into the closet and shut the doors. With Haruka’s clothes hanging in my face, I hold the burnt birthday card out in front of me and try to remember.
It’s so dark and cramped in this closet and the longer I stand here the more idiotic this whole idea seems. Why am I even bothering with this stupid thing? It’s clearly not going to work. After several minutes of foolishly standing in the closet, I consider just giving up and walking out, but if I do everyone will laugh at me.
Huh?
Feeling ridiculous I reach out to slide open the doors when whispers, too low for me to make out, start brushing past my ears. Faintly, outside the closet doors, I can hear giggling voices telling me to light a match. Moving like I’m in a dream, I reach down and open the box of matches—matches?—in my hands. Shaking a match out, I take a deep breath and mumble, “Give me the light or keep me in darkness.”
I strike my match against the box. Blue sparks jump in the darkness, but the flame doesn’t catch. The taunting whispers grow louder in my ears, as I fumble with the match. The voices suddenly stop and a single growling voice rises up behind me as the unlit match goes tumbling from my shaking fingers. ‘Keep you in darkness.’
Feeling an icy hand pulling my shoulder, I start to turn. I struggle to draw a new match as my panic builds. I can already see the hulking beast crouching in the darkness behind me. I don’t want to face it, but I can’t stop turning. I pound the match against the box desperate for light. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pray that this is all just a nightmare but I can still feel the beast’s icy breath against my face.
Pop!
A patch of bright glowing whiteness appears against my eyes. Prying them open I watch as warm golden light fills my tiny world when the flame finally catches. Nothing there. No monsters, no beasties, no looming evil waiting to gobble me up. Nothing.
I’m alone in this tiny closet, and I’m safe. The flame glows brightly on its slim wooden stick, and I let out a small frightened laugh. Without taking my eyes off the back wall I reach out to slide open the doors. Not wanting to stay in this closet for one second more, I yank at the doors as a chilling gust of wind blows out of the darkness.
My flimsy light dies, and a pair of jagged red slits erupt from the gloom, glaring at me with desperate need. I struggle against the doors but they won’t budge. Dropping the charred and blackened match, I start banging on the doors as I scream.
The doors slide open and I stumble backwards, tripping over the edge of the frame. Someone switches on a lamp and gales of laughter erupt as I desperately crawl across the tatami trying to get away from the thing in the closet. Six young faces watch me like I’m the funniest thing in the world. The girl holding the closet doors turns to me and smirks. “It’s okay, you big baby. There’s nothing in th—”
A massive set of dog-like jaws snap down on the girl dragging her back into the closet. I hear the sickening crunch as something warm splashes across my face. Everyone starts screaming around me, and all I can see are the greedy red eyes of the thing in the closet. It opens its mouth in a jagged red Cheshire grin, and runs a slimy grey tongue over its dripping red lips.
“Keep you in darkness,” it hisses as it takes its first lumbering step over the mangled form crumpled at its feet and into the room.
I fumble with my matches, striking wildly. The flame blazes to life and I see the terrible thing clearly for the first time. Its monstrous fox-like features stretched over its enormous frame look jagged and unreal. Several long curvy tails whip the air over its massive shoulders like angry snakes. It opens its cavernous red maw and I can smell its icy rotted breath. Its blazing red eyes peer down at me with ravenous hunger as the thing prepares to pounce.
I start screaming and everything stops. Like a film reel broken mid-scene. Harsh daylight blinds me as the closet doors swing open and I tumble out panting. I toss my head about looking for the fox but there’s no sign of it. Misa stands over me looking worried and all I can do is shake my head. That was too intense to be a simple memory. Glancing back at the closet, I don’t think I want to remember any more. I think remembering what happened might wind up killing me.
Chapter 24
“Grandfather said you don’t need to worry about club or Juku until you’re better, but you should still come to the music room if you feel up to it,” Haruka says as soon as final bell sounds. “Sakura-sempai has been tearing her hair out with worry. With you in the hospital and Satomi-san not coming anymore, it’s all get
ting to be too much for her.”
“Yeah, I might.” With everything that has been going on lately, I really couldn’t give a rat’s about Sakura and her ego, but it’ll be nice to just chill and play some music.
Haruka’s been dogging me all day, refusing to leave my side, likes she’s worried I might relapse if she’s not watching me. I haven’t told her anything yet. She probably wouldn’t believe me if I did. Hell, I’m not even sure I believe me. There is a demonic fox picking us off one by one, not to mention the possibility that one of us might already be dead, and I have absolutely no idea what to do. There are only three of us left and without the manga we have no way of knowing when the kitsune might strike. I need to speak to Matt.
I spot him putting away a broom and signal for Haruka to go on ahead. “I’ll see you up there.”
Haruka looks like she’s about to argue before reconsidering. She tips Matt a curt nod of acknowledgement before making her way out of the room. At least she seems to have gotten over her hatred of him. Somewhat. Matt grabs his bag and leads me out to our usual tree, keeping quiet like he’s been doing all day.
“I thought you said that thing was useless?” I say as Matt pulls the manga from his bag.
“I said it was finished, I didn’t say it was useless. There might still be some foreshadowing we can use, but it’s going to be a lot harder to find. How are you feeling, Rin?”
“Better, I guess. Thanks to you. I’m sorry I yelled at you the other day.”
“No, I should have told you about it as soon as I found out. That was too close.” He lowers his head and I can see that this has been bothering him.
“So, what do we do now?”
“There is one thing we do still know. We just need to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
He holds the book open to the final page and hands it to me. A character, who looks an awful lot like me, holding a baseball bat, standing over a broken and bloodied silhouette with a look of murderous rage on her face. Her shadowy victim is completely unrecognisable. Watching in horror is a tiny girl in a worn kimono. It’s the preview for the next issue. The preview of my future.