Other than the lack of heads, nothing is out of place in the photo. Amid the trees, I can make out what is probably a temple, with the curved roofs common in Japan’s traditional architecture. Further in the distance, I can see what I think is Mount Fuji. Otherwise, there’s only foliage.
I peer closer at the screen, trying to find something, anything, that might give me a clue. “What did you get yourself into, Kagura?” I whisper, acknowledging the hypocrisy of my words. “Where are you? Damn it, couldn’t you at least have waited until we got there to protect you like you’ve always protected us?” I focus my attention on Kagura’s face, trying to envision what her expression might have been before something twisted her features.
As I do, something moves behind Kagura.
It opens its eyes and looks at me.
I leap back, nearly tripping over the fallen chair in my haste.
Crap, crap, crap, crap.
“It wanders,” Okiku says quietly. She is standing beside me with her hands folded in front of her and her head bent.
“What…what is this?”
“A spirit. It is not happy. Something has happened to Kagura.”
I swallow. “She’s…they’re not dead, are they?”
“I do not know. But she lingers close to the spirit world.”
“I have to find her.” The shadow has retreated behind Kagura. It was a black silhouette with no clear form or shape, but I know instinctively that it’s a woman. And that it has Kagura.
And that it wants to play.
I stare hard at the photo for a long time, but the creature does not reappear.
“If Kagura’s in trouble… I owe Kagura a lot, Ki. I practically ruined her career, forced her to relocate… Obaasan and Amaya died because of me. I need to know what’s going on. If this…thing has her, then the police won’t be much help.”
“Are you still angry at me?” Okiku whispers.
I glance back at her. Her face is lowered. I sigh.
“Okiku.” I abandon the laptop for the moment to sit on the bed, patting at the empty space beside me. “Come here.”
She complies, eyes still downcast. Once she’s within reach, I tilt her chin up and make her look back at me. Her expression gives nothing away, but I can feel the unease rolling inside her. For all her bloodthirsty antipathy, Okiku is just a girl who never really got the chance to be one.
“When we’re angry at each other, we have to sit down and talk it over. If we don’t, our hurt will stay between us and cause us pain when we least expect it. It’s normal to sometimes be angry at me, in the same way it is normal for me to sometimes be angry at you. But that doesn’t mean I hate you or anything close to it. Do you understand?”
She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes tell me she does.
“Good. Now we’re going to talk like I promised we would. I’ll start first, all right?” I take a deep breath. “I was angry at you because you killed that boy after I asked you not to. It’s…it’s not right. You can’t punish someone for something he hasn’t done yet.”
“He hurt many girls.”
“That isn’t enough to kill him. Jailed for as long as possible? Yes. But not killed.”
“I cannot prevent his crimes if I let him live. His desires twist the longer he remains unpunished. He will kill next time.”
“You know the rules, Okiku. You can’t kill him for thinking about committing a murder. I mean, had you noticed anything odd about him before?”
“The girls opened something inside him. Violence excited him after that. He would do it again, and he would be worse each time.”
“People think about murdering people all the time, and they never do.”
“He wished to kill you.”
I stop. “Me?”
“I saw it, after you hit him. He would kill you, even with witnesses. Had he been stopped that night, he would have found you alone someday and beaten you until you could no longer move. I saw this in his head. I refused to wait for him to act on his urges.” Okiku closes her eyes. “I am sorry that I did not listen. But he was going to kill you.”
I am silent for a few minutes. If Okiku says McNeil was going to kill me, then McNeil was going to kill me. Knowing this makes me feel all the more terrible that I haven’t been nice to her the last couple of days.
“Okiku, I’m sorry. But you still need to tell me before you act—even when someone wants to kick my ass. I feel bad enough about this whole mess—”
“But you do not feel bad he is dead.”
“That’s not the point! It doesn’t matter whether I feel bad about it or not. It isn’t right! That’s why we only do this to murderers that the legal system can’t touch. If you’re going to run around killing people you just don’t like, then what makes you any different from—”
I blurt out the words before thinking my way through them, and immediately I clamp my mouth shut. But the problem with a being having access to my thoughts is that Okiku is quick to pick up on what I don’t say. Her eyes narrow.
“I am nothing like her.”
“I didn’t mean to insinuate that you—”
“I am nothing like her.” She rises from the bed. Before I can stop her, she disappears into the wall, leaving me half rising from my seat, hand reaching out to where she was moments before.