“Wait here,” Father Bolden said. “I’ve just the thing in the library that will fix you up proper.” His boots flapped like clapping seals as he shuffled from the room.
“Ikiryo,” Miss Tiramaku spat out the word as soon as the priest was out of earshot. “There is one more yurei I meant to tell you about: the living ghost. Ikiryo. When a person has great anger or resentment, his spirit can separate itself from the body and haunt his tormentors. Sometimes the person has no knowledge that his ikiryo even exists, much less is seeking vengeance. I’ve been trying to remember all day.”
Holding a small noggin of whiskey, the priest returned triumphant. He poured a drop in Tim’s teacup and a larger dram in a glass for himself. Lifting it in a toast, he said, “To warm you to the core.”
“Any more and my wife will have to do the driving, but thanks just the same, padre.”
“Seems like I’ve interrupted your conspiracy,” the priest said. “What goes on here?”
Tim laughed. “No conspiracy here. Miss Tiramaku was regaling us with another one of her stories. The living ghost that leaves the body and seeks revenge.”
“Ikiryo,” Holly said.
“To get rid of the ikiryo,” Miss Tiramaku said, “the person must give up his fears and resentments.”
Father Bolden scolded Miss Tiramaku in stern Japanese, and she looked chastened. Eyes to the floor, she said, “I only want to help their boy. We are so much alike.”
Conversation halted, as though she had crossed a line without consent and embarrassed them all into silence. Holly fidgeted in her chair and tapped her fingertips against her lips. The priest stared at his empty glass, and Miss Tiramaku looked past Tim to the little window.
“Snow’s letting up,” she said at last.
“We’d better get back to the boys,” Holly said. “Miles to go before we sleep.”
“Ah, Frost. Too bad we don’t have a horse and sleigh back of the church,” Father Bolden said. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and all that.”
As he tried to get up and out of the chair, Tim moaned. “I might need that horse and sled to get me to the car.”
Quick as a cat, Miss Tiramaku caught his hand in hers and massaged it, putting pressure on the same points as she had earlier. “Let me help you,” she said, and within moments, the muscles in his back had loosened and he was able to walk from the rectory of his own accord.
Holly drove, despite his weak protest, and the Jeep plowed through the deep snow with ease. She kept her gaze fixed on the tire ruts in front of her, but he knew she would feel better if they chatted along the way, counterpoint to her concentration.
“I don’t know about that priest,” he said. “But she’s a miracle worker. I want to know her trick for the future.”
“Acupressure,” Holly said. “One of the healing arts.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if she is a ghost herself, what with that evil eye.”
“Tim.” She punched his shoulder.
“What does she mean she is a lot like Jack?”
“Same diagnosis. Different name.”
Out of habit, Tim braked as she rounded a bend. “Well, she doesn’t know him like we do. She hasn’t been around, seen what we have seen. Lot of hocus-pocus, if you ask me. Of course he’s expressing himself, but maybe he just likes a good scare. Maybe he just likes monsters.”
“Or he is acting like a monster,” she said. “Out of control.”
The tires slid out of the rut, and the car heaved to the left, and she worked hard to correct the course. She kept her eyes on the road. He stared out the passenger’s window at the landscape blank and white. They rolled homeward in the late afternoon, lost in their private disputations.
vi.