by Cristy Burne
"Come on," I said, grabbing her arm. "Come upstairs. I'll show you."
We rushed up the stairs to the door of our flat. I buzzed the doorbell and knocked twice for good measure.
Cait bent down to unlace her shoes. She'd been round often enough to know that we had a shoes-off policy for our home. Your toes sometimes got cold in winter, but we kept pairs of slippers at the door, even a special pair of guest slippers for Cait. They were moss green and had cartoon kittens on them, but Cait didn't seem to mind.
"So what's the big deal then?" she asked, her shoes loosened and ready to kick off. "Why the big fuss about Okuda's neck?"
"Did you see her marks?" I asked, indicating my own throat.
"No, I already told you."
I buzzed the door again. What was keeping Mum so long?
"Red marks," I said. "Little ones, kind of like mosquito bites, but all in a line."
"Oh, yeah. I did see something like that. I thought they were mozzy bites. She was itching a lot."
"Yes, that's it." Cait had seen them too! I could have hugged her, but just then the lock on our door clicked open.
"Hello?" said a voice behind the door, but it wasn't Mum's.
"Hello?" I echoed, stepping back as the door swung wider. Who was this? Where was Mum?
"Miku!" The voice sounded pleased. "What are you doing home so early? And it's Cait, isn't it? Come in, come in. You must be freezing." It was my neighbour, Mrs Williams, the one with the cute son and the noisy scooter. She looked a bit frazzled, with bits of brown hair sticking up out of place and no make-up. "I came as soon as I could. Your poor mother."
My poor mother? What was going on?
Cait and I kicked off our shoes and scuffed our way into a pair of slippers each.
"What about my mum? Where's Kazu?"
"He's right here, on the sofa," said Mrs Williams, walking ahead of us down the hall. "Still sick, the poor little blighter. I guess your mum will take him to the doctor's when she gets back."
"Gets back from where?" I asked. I rushed past Mrs Williams into the living room, scared of what I might find.
But I found Kazu sitting happily on the sofa, just like Mrs Williams had said. I tried to gather him in my arms, but he whinged and pushed me away, more interested in watching the TV. So that, at least, was normal.
"Your teacher didn't tell you?" Mrs Williams waddled into the living room with Cait following close behind.
"Tell me what?"
"I left a message with the school. They must've forgotten. Your mother's in the hospital, dear. She was putting out the rubbish and she slipped on some ice. It's been so unusually cold..."
The news made me shiver. "But..."
"Don't worry, dear." Mrs Williams patted me on the shoulder. "It's nothing too serious. She'll be back tomorrow, I expect. She's asked me to look after Kazu till your father gets back."
Back tomorrow? But that could be too late! I realised I'd been counting on Mum. She might not believe in cedar leaves or amazaki-baba, but she couldn't just stand back and do nothing if I told her our supply teacher was a nukekubi. She would have to make a plan. She would know what to do. She was Japanese after all.
"Can I get you a cup of something warm, dears?" Mrs Williams asked, hovering while I scrubbed my hands together with anxiety and the cold.
What to do? We couldn't count on Mum. That meant we were alone till Dad got back. We were going to need a plan of our own.
"Um, no thanks," I said, thinking fast. "We've got homework. They sent us home early cos of the snow, but we've still got heaps of work."
"Ah." Mrs Williams looked relieved. I guess she wanted to hang out with us about as much as we wanted to hang out with her. "Well, have fun. I'll let you know when your father calls."
I nodded. Cait and I zoomed up the stairs as fast as our slippers would climb, heading straight for my bedroom. We burst through the door and I made sure to close it behind us.
"What?" Cait had run out of patience. She sat down and glared at me. "I don't want to do homework. Will you just tell me what's going on?"
At last we were safe, and alone. I sat cross-legged on one end of my bed, kicking off my slippers. "Are you ready for something truly strange?"
"OK," she said, looking wary. "Try me. What's so weird about Mrs Okuda's neck?"
And so I told her. About the Red Cross woman, disappeared or invisible at our door. The icy breeze that had swept into our house. My brother's strange coughing. The meaning of the marks we'd seen on Mrs Okuda's neck. But I didn't stop there. I told her about the way a nukekubi could leave its body to fly screaming through the night, searching for human flesh. And I told her of my darkest fear: that something had found us, travelled all the way from Japan, to wreak evil upon me and my family. Cait listened the whole time without interrupting, which was something of a miracle for her. Then it finally got too much.
"Whoah." She held up her hands in two stop signs. "I get all the other stuff, about the flying head people and Mrs Okuda, however creepy that might be. But I don't get why she'd come all the way from Japan just to haunt you. Why wouldn't she haunt some other family, back in Japan? She didn't need to travel this far."
Cait had a point. And I didn't have an answer. Why would she leave Japan and come to England? What was so special about us, the Takeshitas? We were just another ordinary family, as far as I was concerned.
"I don't know." I looked across at my friend. She had a thoughtful look on her freckled face.
"Well," she said at last. "I guess that's not important. What we have to do is figure out how to stop her. We can figure out why she's here later on."
"Then you'll help?" I asked, hardly daring to hope.
"Sure." Cait grinned. "It's gotta be better than doing homework."
"All right!" We were a team! Partners against crime! I reached across to high-five her, and she nearly tipped over the chair.
"So now what do we do?"
"Now we..."
But I didn't know. The nukekubi could be anywhere. She could be watching our house right this minute. She could be planning something for tomorrow at school, or worse, for this very night. We had to keep our doors and windows shut tight.
"Maybe we should wait for my dad to get back," I said, feeling very small. "He might suggest something."
"He knows about these cut-throat demon things?"
"Well, yes." Anyone Japanese knew about nukekubi. But only some, like my Baba, actually believed. What about my dad? Which was he?
We were both silent for a bit, thinking. Cait got up and walked across to my window, pulling aside the cream curtains. "It's still snowing," she said. "Look at it! I'm glad we're not walking home in that."
"Careful, Cait," I said. "She could be out there, watching." I slipped back into my slippers and padded across to the window. Cait was right. Outside it was getting dark and the street lamps were turning the falling snow into a yellow glow. The street was empty: no people, no moving cars. Just car-shaped blobs of snow parked on both sides of the road.
"Maybe we should wait till tomorrow," Cait said. "Take another look at Okuda, in the light. It's kind of dark to be thinking that flesh-eating monsters could be out there right now." She tried to laugh, but I could tell she was scared.
I was scared too. I moved away from the window, back to the bed. I was thinking of my mum, alone in the hospital, and of Kazu, his little cough still audible from below.
"What the...?" Cait exclaimed. She sounded excited. "Come and look at this, Miku. It's like a giant face, in the sky. It's like one of those cloud shapes on a sunny day, only this is a snow shape. It looks just like someone's massive head."
I scrambled back to the window, dreading what might be there. But it wasn't Okuda's head. Instead, hanging in the sky like a giant moon, was the murky shape of someone else's head. I could see its heavy eyebrows, the dark shadow of its eyes, the coil and wave of its hair. I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, but it definitely wasn't Mrs Okuda. It just hung the
re, with the wind blowing its ghostly black hair into the snow. It seemed to be right outside our window.
I held Cait's arm tight and we watched it in silence. It didn't move, it didn't try to speak. It just floated in the dusk, as big as a hundred heads all bunched together.
"Maybe it's just the snow clouds?" Cait whispered. But we both knew it wasn't.
We watched it for maybe a minute, then there was the scream of an ambulance in the main street, and the hanging face vanished. It just faded away, folding back into the dark and the falling snow.
"What. Was. That?" Cait asked, speaking each word very slowly.
"I dunno. But I don't think we can wait till morning to find out. We have to ask my dad, and tonight."
A sharp rap at the door startled both of us.
"Girls. Can I come in?"
I looked across at Cait, and she nodded. It certainly sounded like Mrs Williams at the door, and all the doors and windows had been locked. You'd have to think we were safe in our own house.
"Sure," I called out. "Come in."
The door opened and Mrs Williams walked in. She looked around, searching for somewhere to sit. Cait and I moved quickly from the window to sit on the bed, leaving Mrs Williams the chair.
"Thank you, dears," she said. "I just thought I should come up. We need to have a talk."
I looked down at the stitching on my bedspread. I loved having a bed, a real bed, that you could sit on and be tucked into. In Japan we'd only ever had futons, rolling them out each night to sleep on the tatami floor. Sometimes I missed the smell of straw and the cosy feel of sleeping in a sandwich of thick futon mattress and puffy futon quilt. But I never missed having to fold it all away the next morning.
"I've just had a call from your father," Mrs Williams said. "He's stuck at work. His train isn't running and the buses are all cancelled because of the snow. He and some colleagues are going to stay at a hotel tonight, the roads just aren't safe..."
I sneaked a look at Cait. Already the bottom was falling out of our plan. Dad would be no help tonight.
"I told your mother I'd watch Kazu till your dad came home," Mrs Williams said, "but it's just that Andrew will be home tonight and I'd really like to keep an eye on him too. I know you must think he's all grown up, but to me he's still just a little boy. I don't like to leave him alone on a night like this..."
"That's OK, Mrs Williams." I knew what she was getting at. "I can look after Kazu by myself. I've done it heaps of times." This last bit wasn't exactly true, but I had looked after him once while Mum had nipped out to the shops. Although that was before my supply teacher had turned out to be a nukekubi demon.
"Oh no, dear," Mrs Williams said, shocked. "I don't think that would be right at all. I couldn't leave you and little Kazu alone, especially when he's ill. That would never do. Perhaps you should come over to our place for the night..."
"Don't worry, Mrs Williams," Cait piped up. "I'll be here too. I don't expect my dad will be able to pick me up either, so I'll have to stay here or at yours, and I think all of us sleeping at yours might be a bit of a crowd, don't you?"
Mrs Williams looked uncertain. "Well..."
"We'd only be next door," Cait added. "You could call us any time to check we were OK."
"I suppose," said Mrs Williams.
"OK then," said Cait, getting up from the bed. "I guess we can heat some leftovers for dinner, hey Miku?"
"Sure," I mumbled. "I'll put some rice in the cooker. There's some veggies left from last night. Mum's got all the dressings and stuff. Plus there's always toast if we get hungry later on."
"Well..." said Mrs Williams again.
Cait knew we were winning. "OK then," she said. "We better head downstairs if we're to take care of little Kazu and get dinner started. You've got our number then, Mrs Williams?"
Mrs Williams nodded, and followed Cait and me downstairs. Kazu was still on the sofa, coughing and watching TV. He hardly looked up when Mrs Williams gathered her things and leaned over to give him a hug goodbye.
"Well, if you're sure you're OK..."
"We're sure. Thanks for your help so far. We'll call if we need anything."
We bustled Mrs Williams towards the door. This time I was careful to pull a chair across so I could climb up and peek through the peephole.
"What are you doing, dear?" Mrs Williams asked. "Are you sure you'll be all right?"
"Better safe than sorry," Cait chimed.
The corridor was clear.
"Thanks, Mrs Williams," we chorused. "Say hi to Andrew."
She was out in a jiffy, and we were careful to shut and lock the door behind her.
It was suddenly quiet. We were alone: me, Cait, and my little brother, still coughing on the sofa.
"Wow," I said. "I guess that's that."
"Yep." Cait looked determined. "Now we're free to work on this Okuda problem. Let's heat a pizza and get started on a plan."
We headed to the kitchen. I felt so lucky, I couldn't believe it. Cait was seriously into all this. She was going to help. "You really believe me, all this stuff?"
"Sure," she said. "Why not? We have our own demons here, vampires and werewolves and leprechauns and kelpies. There's no reason why your demons wouldn't be just as real as ours."
I was confused. Vampires and werewolves I'd heard of, but leprechauns and kelpies?
Cait saw my look. "Not now," she grinned. "Let's deal with one set of demons at a time."
I grinned back, then opened the freezer. "Hawaiian or pepperoni?"
Just then there was another knock at the door.
Cait and I shared a cautious glance. There'd been no one out there just seconds ago. I was getting a bit sick of all these surprises.
"Probably Mrs Williams," I mouthed.
She nodded, and together we headed to the front door. I climbed back on the chair to look through the peephole. There was someone out there all right. But it wasn't Mrs Williams.
Through the warped glass I could see a man, dressed in a suit. His brown hair was thin on top and he kept checking his watch, as if he was in a rush.
Could it be? He was very early.
"I think it's your dad," I whispered, getting down so Cait could climb up to confirm.
She took a quick peek. "Hey, Dad," she yelled through the door, getting down from the chair nearly as quickly as she'd climbed up. When she opened the door, sure enough, Mr O'Neill was standing there, dusting the snow off his clothes and stamping his feet against the cold.
"Gait," he said, pulling his daughter into a hug. "Hello, Miku."
I nodded, not wanting a hug. My family weren't as big on hugging as the O'Neills.
"Isn't the weather dreadful?" he said. "I didn't think I'd make it. The roads are a mess. Have you got your things? We shouldn't stick around too long. The snow's still coming down out there."
"OK," said Cait, looking at me uncertainly. "It's just that..."
Then the phone rang. Perfect timing.
"I'll get it," I said, leaving Cait and her dad alone to figure out whether she'd be able to stay the night. I was really hoping he'd say yes. I didn't like the idea of me and Kazu alone all night with who knew what kind of demons lurking around outside. The way this day had been going, there could be almost anything out there. And Cait was always a good person to have on your side.
Together we'd figure out a way to defeat the nukekubi, cure my brother of his sudden illness and protect the house from any other supernatural guests.
I reached the phone on the fifth ring. Kazu hadn't moved, he was still glued to the box. One day he'd be old enough to be useful, but not yet, and not with that awful cough.
"Hello?" I said, picking up the phone. Mum had taught me never to answer the phone with my name, just in case it was a lunatic kidnapper on the other end. If only she'd been more careful about lunatic demons. But this time it wasn't a kidnapper. I even recognised the voice.
"Miku," the voice said. "How's it going?"
My heart stopped. I
felt as if I was trapped in some sort of scary movie, the kind Mum would never let me watch on a Friday night.
"Hello?" I whispered. "Mr O'Neill?"
"Miku." The voice sounded relieved. "I don't suppose Cait's with you, is she? I've only just heard that school was let out early, so I'm hoping she went home with you. It's just that the buses and trains are all down and I can't find a way to pick her up tonight. I think it might be safer if she stays the night with you. Would that be OK?"
I tried to speak but couldn't make my tongue and mouth work together properly.
"Miku? Is everything OK?" Mr O'Neill's voice sounded worried. "Gait is with you, isn't she? Is she OK?"
Dazed, I began walking down the hall towards the front door. On the phone, Mr O'Neill was getting anxious. I had to make my voice work.
"Yes," I stammered. "Yes, everything's OK. She's right here."
And she was. When I reached the front door, Cait was standing there, with Mr O'Neill and her schoolbag. She didn't look happy.
"Dad says we have to go," she said. "Sorry."
The Mr O'Neill standing at our door nodded. "It'll be best if we get going now, Miku. Thanks for looking after Cait."
The Mr O'Neill on the phone spoke again. "Are you sure everything's OK? Can I speak to Cait please?"
"Who's on the phone?" Cait asked, catching the look on my face. "What's wrong, Miku? Is it your mum?"
I couldn't speak. I just stared at the Mr O'Neill at our door. Then I stared at the phone, now bleating with Mr O'Neill's concern.
"Miku? Miku? Can I speak to Cait please?"
Whatever was happening, it couldn't be good. I had to think fast. "Can we have a minute, Mr O'Neill?" I asked, talking to the man standing in the door.
"Sure," he said. "But make it quick, please, girls. I'll wait for you in the hallway."
He stepped outside and Cait pounced on me.
"What is it?" she asked. "Who's on the phone?"
I took a deep breath, then I told her.
"It's your dad."
"What?" I could tell she didn't believe me.
There was only one way to convince her. "Here," I said, passing her the phone. "It's your dad."