They saw her exactly as they should see her, a thing to be afraid of. But now they were to see her as a thing to respect. They would respect her, and she was going to make them. She advanced on them in wide, graceful steps as they backed up. Like stupid, scared animals, they backed themselves into an alley. Their faces twisted, and she fed into her fear. Yukiyo raised her scissors and swiped at the girls. She would make them smile. She slashed at their faces, ripping their flesh, making the color red mingle with the colors on their lips. The girls fought this attacker as best they could. While she stood there, panting, holding her bloody scissors against her jacket, they got away. They ran as far as they could, holding onto their bleeding faces. They didn’t dare turn around much, but when they did, they saw that Slit-Mouthed Woman still standing there, panting, watching them go.
Her smile was bigger than theirs.
All the girls gathered in the gym, sitting in the bleachers according to class. When Yukiyo’s class filtered in, she noticed the principal and upper faculty standing solemnly near the podium. Most of the students had an inkling of what was going on. Yukiyo showed nothing to betray her knowledge and instead sat straight and poised, smiling innocently with the newly applied rose lipstick. It looked good on her. That shade was better on her than it was on Asumi. She wondered if she noticed.
The principal, Mrs. Ikeda, went to the podium and tapped the mike. “Ladies, we have gathered for this assembly this morning to address a very serious topic. As you may know, there have been some attacks in town. A woman dressed in a long coat has been attacking students with scissors. She is said to be cutting her victims in the face, as she has a terrible scar across her own face. We are taking extreme measures to make sure all students are safe until this individual is caught. You will be monitored on school grounds at all times, and there will be extra faculty supervisors available to escort you all to your homes. Letters to your parents have been mailed out, and there is also talk of a curfew to be effective immediately in the town. No students will be allowed on the streets after school hours unless with family until the culprit is caught.”
Of course, there were protests and complaints among the girls, declaring the curfew to be unfair. Yukiyo felt the sting of annoyance as well but for a different reason.
After the assembly, they resumed their class schedules, and Yukiyo felt the sting of suspicion when she passed through the halls. There was a buzz in her ear that sounded like her name, like she was topic of passing conversations. She heard Asumi’s name too and knew the connection. She went to her locker just as Asumi and her posse walked by, and Asumi turned to stare at her before hastily looking away. Yukiyo tried not to think too much of it until after school.
Ms. Tanaka stuck her head out of the classroom just as the students were scattering at the sound of the dismissal bell. “Yukiyo, I need to see you for a moment.”
Yukiyo’s heart jumped, as would any other student’s being summoned by a teacher for a one-on-one talk. She went into the room, and the teacher shut the door behind her, guiding her over to her desk and motioning her to sit down.
“I know you’ve heard about the events in the news, and everyone is concerned. It is no light matter and should not be treated as such.”
Yukiyo nodded like she agreed, but she was also a little confused.
“I had a student tell me you may have had something to do with it.”
Yukiyo jerked forward in her seat. “What?! Me? Had something to do with—”
“No one is saying you hurt anyone, Yukiyo, but due to your obsession with that ghost legend of The Slit-Mouthed Woman, it was brought up that you have been pretending to be her to play a prank.”
“No!” Yukiyo cried, making her face as open into protest as she could. “Someone is saying I did that?” She placed an open palm on her chest for effect. “How could they!”
“They insisted it was you and that you took it too far. If you only intended to play a little prank, it is something you need to stop. There is someone out there who is seriously attacking and hurting others, and we cannot have that right now.”
“I didn’t attack anyone! Who said that? That’s just—”
Ms. Tanaka held up a hand. “I am not saying that you did. Did you play a prank on some of your classmates to try to scare them?”
Yukiyo knew she had to choose her words wisely. “Well, no. But I do believe in The Slit-Mouthed Woman; that’s why I did my paper on it. I was out shopping with some girls from class, and I wanted to see if I could find her. I wanted other people to believe me too, but they turned it into a joke and tried to scare me! They are the ones who played a prank on me. That’s what really happened.” She folded her arms.
“I see,” Ms. Tanaka said. “I know you wouldn’t hurt anyone, but people are unpredictable when they get scared. So please be careful, okay?”
Yukiyo smiled. “I will, Ms. Tanaka. Thank you. Especially since this means that The Slit-Mouthed Woman is really out there, and now would be the time to be on the lookout. We all need to be extremely careful.”
She left the room with an appreciative smile and let it sink into a scorned scowl the moment she was alone. Ms. Tanaka hadn’t said who told on her, but she didn’t have to. Yukiyo already knew.
Back home, her parents were already bent over the letter from the school, as well as the notice from the county. Yukiyo immediately took on the role of the complaining teenager.
“It’s not fair!” she exclaimed. “We’re basically going to be prisoners!”
“Would you rather be cut up by a scissors-slinging psycho?” demanded her dad. Yukiyo held back a chuckle and folded her arms. “Let the police find this madwoman.”
“It’s The Slit-Mouthed Woman,” Yukiyo declared. “She’s real.”
“No,” her mother said, “there are no ghosts! Someone is just dressing up like her to make people think she’s real.”
“Well, I think she’s real,” she stated. “I think she is real and nothing to be messed with. An angry spirit can appear out of nowhere, and everyone needs to watch out.” She went up to her room with her chin up, and once she was alone, she could hardly contain herself. They were all talking about her, and they were all afraid of her. They were afraid of her. They were starting to believe, and she was going to make everyone believe it.
First things first, Yukiyo had to come up with a plan. This new town curfew was going to be challenging. She would have to be sneaky and swift, especially when it came to acquiring her target, because there was no doubt who her next target was.
Yukiyo lingered by her locker a moment longer, pretending to look for books. Her locker door was open to act as a shield for her to occasionally peek out. She watched Asumi walk down the halls to her locker with her friends, smiling and talking and acting like they were the most important people in the school. The girls parted ways at their lockers, and Asumi went to hers, briefly thrown off by the bright pink-colored paper that was folded up in the crack. She took the paper out and unfolded it, her eyes scanning its contents and growing wide. She erupted in squeals of delight and ran to the other side of the hall to her friends.
“Look! Look! I just got an invite for a modeling shoot! It’s at a studio near that shoe store!”
Asumi jumped up and down in excitement, and her friends did the same, but only to hide their envy. Asumi was already practicing some poses for them.
“Mom, I need to go to the library to work on a research paper. Chiyo and I are going together. We'll be fine.”
“Will Chiyo's mother be there?”
“Yes, she will drop us off at the library.”
“All right, but be careful, Yukiyo. I mean it. Do not go wandering off anywhere!”
“It’s not late, and that’s not where The Slit-Mouthed Woman hangs out anyway.”
Her mother cringed at the name, as most people did. It gave Yukiyo a sick little pleasure.
Her backpack was more full than usual, her schoolbooks having some company in the form of cosmetics thro
wn into a small bag, along with a long coat rolled up into a tight sushi. To the world, she was just Yukiyo, an innocent schoolgirl going to the library to study. But she was about to become something else. She held her head up high as she left the house, imagining that power she craved filling her veins and her head. It was becoming easier and easier. And of course, it was easier the darker it was. The daytime sky was on its way to retire for the night, and Yukiyo would retire with it. She would be Kuchisake-onna when the night came.
She found the abandoned gas station, the one kids would go to smoke and conduct other private activities. The curfew kept it abandoned, and it was perfect for her own private activities. The bathroom door was wide open. She went in and shut it, and if any living soul were around, they would not hear anything at all, not the rehearsal snipping of scissors nor the gleeful giggling that followed it. If anyone were around, they would merely see a young woman coming out of the bathroom wearing a long coat and a surgical mask to protect her face, probably due to a cold.
She went about her way, hands deep in both pockets and hair trailing down her shoulders, draping over her backpack. She was smiling so wide her bright eyes were smiling too, but it was the kind of smile a tiger would give to trapped prey. It was a smile not to be trusted. The streets clear and quiet just for her, she made her way to the designated location and opened the door.
She was early, and that was how she wanted it. The dance room was empty. Her footsteps across the hard floor echoed down the room of wall-to-wall mirrors. She saw multiple clones of herself making their way across the room together, all of them the same mysterious figure. One of her reflections came to a bright orange note on the mirror, indicating the dance class for that evening was cancelled. It was such a shame it fit in perfectly. Her head jerked around at the sound of the door opening, and within seconds, those clones vanished.
“Hello?” Asumi was wearing that pink frilly shirt and a skirt to match, the one that everyone thought made her look like a ballerina, but she actually looked like a cupcake left out in the sun too long.
“Hello?” Asumi asked again. She waved her hand at the wall for a light switch she couldn’t find. The room was dim enough to see where she walked across the smooth floor, but all she could see was that and the mirrors that took up all the walls. She furrowed her brow. Was she in the right place? Of course she was. She turned in every direction. The mirrors surrounded her so that she was standing on a pivot and every angle of her could be seen. It made her feel exposed all of a sudden, but that was what the performance arts were about. She pulled out the paper for her pocket. Yes, the address was correct. She might have been early.
Asumi turned abruptly at the noise she heard. It was quick, and it was sharp. It sounded again, something sharp scraping down the walls.
“Someone there?” she asked, feeling dumb for asking it, although an uneasy feeling churning in her stomach made her think she was not alone. She felt she was being watched and not for the reasons she expected. She started to back up as that churning sunk into quicksand and told her that this was not, in fact, what she thought it was.
All she saw was her own reflection multiplied in mirror panels, and everywhere she turned, she caught her own frightened face. She was almost trapped by it. She backed up, inching her way toward the door she came in, when she heard the scratching again, louder and more pronounced. Asumi’s reflection was soon joined by another, a darker reflection appearing out of the shadows. She could not see what it was or who it was. All she knew was that it could not be human the way it glided across the mirrors. She jerked her head around, seeing nothing but the bare floors and her own self, spinning at every direction. She would catch a glimpse of a partial human face, one barely seen in a mess of long hair and masked face. She made eye contact and spun at every mirrored wall, watching it disappear. Asumi heard the scraping noise and turned around, face to face with the reflection now personified.
It was a woman, shorter than the reflection, so it could easily be a girl. It was too dark to make out a face, but it was covered mostly by curtains of long hair and what looked like a mask. Asumi tried not to make her voice quiver.
“Who are you?”
The figure said nothing, instead reaching an arm out to reveal something she was holding, long and sharp and casting shiny points around the room of mirrors. They were a large pair of scissors, and she was opening and closing them in promise.
“This isn’t funny!” Her voice went up a pitch. “Yukiyo…? Is that you? Stop it, Yukiyo! It was my joke first, and you’ve taken it too far!”
The figure moved closer, and Asumi realized it was blocking the door…and moving in on her. Even though the room was not completely dark, she still could not completely see her pursuer, but she did not need to. Asumi moved quickly to skirt around her and run out the door, only to be blocked by her extended arm and opened scissors. The figure pointed them at Asumi and advanced on her.
“Stop! Why are you doing this?”
The figure said nothing, not until Asumi was almost backed up to a mirror.
“Do you think I am pretty?”
Asumi heard the question, spoken so softly the words sounded like they were already carried away with the wind, the words of a ghost. Asumi, for lack of thought or even other options, nodded.
Sure enough, she saw the figure remove something over her face, shaking the curtains of hair out of the way so she could see. The chunky red gashes stretched all the way across her face, looking fresh enough to drip down her chin. Asumi screamed as her pursuer waved the scissors in front of her gaping smile.
“Do you think I am pretty…now?”
“Yes, yes!” Asumi cried. “Yes, you are, no matter what!”
“I am,” the woman said, advancing on Asumi until she was finally backed up against the wall. “I am pretty.”
Before Asumi could say anything else, the scissors swiped across her face, the stinging pain spreading onto her cheeks. She was so shocked her eyes opened wider than the erupting wounds, and she fell to her knees.
“I am the pretty one.”
The scissors slashed Asumi once more across the face, and the figure did not stop there. She graduated to stabbing, ripping into Asumi, her head, neck, chest, arms, and legs turning to ribbons of torn clothing and flesh. The figure did not stop until Asumi was a shaking, sobbing, blood-erupting mess on the floor, and the louder Asumi cried, the more she made her bleed.
“I am the pretty one I am the pretty one I am the pretty one I am the pretty one.”
She kept stabbing Asumi over and over, even when her sobbing and shaking slowed down and even when it stopped altogether and Asumi lay completely still. The figure stood up to admire her job done. That precocious ballerina was stiff in a puddle of her own blood, frozen in the spotlight she always wanted.
She flipped on the light in that gas station bathroom, hoping her reflection would be just as satisfying as the one in the dance room that surrounded the entire room. The first thing she noticed was the aftermath splashed across her jacket. The real thing was actually darker than she thought, and it did not match the current color she had painted across her cheeks. The surgical mask still hung from one ear, and she put it in her pocket. Yes, the color on her cheeks was definitely brighter. A candy apple makeup that did not do justice to the dark crimson that was seeping into her jacket. She still had the scissors in her pocket, still chock full of fresh product, which she helped herself to and applied to her cheeks. It was slick on her finger, and when it touched her skin, she felt a little tingle. She smiled so wide her teeth were showing, and then she laughed. She laughed the more she stroked her finger across the scissors blades and painted her face, this time with the real stuff, smearing it as much as she could all the way up to her eyes.
She stared at herself as the glee bubbled up in her throat and more chuckles escaped. She never blinked. She did not want to miss a single detail.
Girls huddled together in the hallways in groups, mostly three or more, ad
hering to the strength in numbers theory. They kept their heads down as they went about their ways, stopping only to get books and continue to hug and comfort each other. Some had already made flyers with Asumi’s face on them, taping them to lockers and walls and bulletin boards and even in the bathrooms. She was beautiful even in pictures. She was going to be a model, and now, in a way, she was one, a thing of beauty to be looked at and cherished always.
Her locker was turned into a memorial shrine, covered in pictures and trinkets of her life. Girls left beauty products all around it, new things, and even those sacrificed from their own collections. The school’s service to honor Asumi was moving and beautiful, but it did not do justice to the way she was honored by her friends and peers.
The girls collected as many pictures as they could, calling for more to fill up any extra spaces on her locker and on poster boards. They wanted her to be remembered for what she actually looked like, not for the way she was found.
Everyone saw the last pictures of Asumi, heavily censored but still leaked around the internet. Everyone saw that dance studio covered in crime tape. And everyone noticed the increase of police around the town and the even more strictly enforced curfew. The hallways were quiet without the chatter and complaints of high school girls. They understood. Their bones chilled with what happened to their peer and could easily happen to any of them. The school knew how Asumi was found. Everyone knew how she was found, and the way she looked, barely recognizable the way her face was slashed open. The one who continued to remind them was Yukiyo.
“Do you believe me now?” Yukiyo proclaimed to them. “Kuchisake-onna is real.”
Yukiyo relaxed with her family after dinner. Her dad turned on the television to their favorite game shows. They watched one where contestants had to run through an obstacle course full of dogs all while wearing meat suits. She was amused at the absurdity of it but mostly felt satisfied whenever one of the dogs tore off a chunk of meat. There was nothing more pure than genuine fear. Her parents had wanted to watch TV together more often lately, thinking about the severity of current events and feeling the need to be overly comforting.
13 Night Terrors Page 33