by Cristy Burne
"But," Cait stammered, looking from the phone to the man waiting in the hallway. She put the phone to her ear.
"Hello?"
"Oh, thank God," Mr O'Neill's voice sounded loud with relief. "What's going on, Cait? Are you in trouble?"
Cait paled for a moment. Her freckles drained of all colour and her eyes grew wide. Then she took a deep breath.
"No," she said, her voice airy and light. "Everything's fine. Sorry, it's just that we're distracted. Miku's little brother is sick. You remember Keiji?"
"Keiji," I heard Mr O'Neill stop. "Keiji?" Cait and I both held our breath. "I thought it was Kazu," he said.
"That's what I said," Cait covered. "Kazu. So yeah, he's ill and Miku's a bit worried. Would it be OK if I stayed here tonight?"
I waited for Mr O'Neill's answer, keeping an eye on the Mr O'Neill in the hallway. He was facing the outer door, kicking at a bit of loose carpet. He had Cait's bag and looked ready to leave at any moment. My stomach churned. Something was very wrong.
"OK, thanks, Dad," Cait was finishing up. "Thanks, take care. I love you too."
She hung up the phone, raised an eyebrow at me, then turned to look at the Mr O'Neill in our hallway.
"Dad," she said.
"Yes, love?"
"I'm ready to go now..."
"Great," said Mr O'Neill. "We're parked just outside."
"...But," Cait continued, "do you mind if I say a quick goodbye to Miku's little brother before we go? You remember Keiji?"
"Oh yes, Keiji," the Mr O'Neill replied. "I hear he's not well, poor little boy. Say a quick goodbye, and then we really have to hit the road."
Cait and I exchanged glances, then ran off down the hall towards the living room.
"Keiji," Cait hissed. "He said Keiji, not Kazu. And how did he know Kazu was sick? And how'd he get into the building anyway? He doesn't have a key. I don't think he's the real thing, Miku."
"Then what is he?" I asked. "And what's he doing in our hallway?"
The TV was still on when we reached the living room, but Kazu was nowhere to be seen.
"Kazu," I called, hunting in the kitchen and under the table. "Kazu? Perhaps he went upstairs?"
We raced upstairs, running through rooms and searching under beds. "Kazu?" I cried. "Kazu?"
I checked in Mum and Dad's room, where we were never allowed to go. "Kazu-chan?"
But we couldn't find him.
"Come on," Cait said. "Downstairs, that guy, my dad. He's still down there."
We took the stairs two at a time, nearly falling in the rush to get down. When we reached the front door, Mr O'Neill was still waiting in the hallway. He had his back turned to us, still kicking at the loose bit of carpet.
"Who are you?" Cait cried. "Where's Kazu?"
For a moment the Mr O'Neill didn't turn around, didn't look up.
"Where's my little brother?" I hissed. "What have you done with him?"
"Dad?" Cait asked, hesitating. "What have you done with Kazu?"
The Mr O'Neill made a strange sighing noise, then kicked again at the rough carpet seam before turning to look at us.
Cait screamed. I screamed. We both screamed so loud I was sure Mrs Williams would come running. Then we doubled back into the house, slamming and locking the door behind us. I pushed the chair up against the door for added protection, then climbed up on it to look through the peephole. Cait was too scared even to peek.
"What was that?" she panted. "What was that thing?"
I looked through the hole. "It's still out there," I said. "No, hang on, it's leaving."
Whatever it was, it wasn't Mr O'Neill.
When the thing had turned around, its face had been a perfect blank, smooth as an eggshell, with no eyes, no nose, no mouth. No nothing, just a blank sheet of skin, covering everything that had been there before. All trace of Mr O'Neill had been smoothed away from that face.
I watched the thing as it escaped into the snow, closing the outside door behind it.
"It's gone," I said.
Cait was shaking. "What was it?"
At first I had no idea, then something my Baba had told me came tumbling back from my darkest memories. "A noppera-bo," I said, feeling angry at myself for getting so scared. "I should've known."
"A noppera-what? Why did it look like my dad?"
"A noppera-bo. Baba told me about them once. They're mostly harmless."
Cait snorted. "Harmless? I nearly had a heart attack. What was it doing?"
"I did say mostly." I almost grinned. "They really don't do much except scare people. I don't know what one was doing here... Unless..."
Why would a noppera-bo come to our house? What business did such a demon have here?
And then I remembered my brother. "Kazu? Where is he?"
I jumped off the chair and tried to run down the hall, but Cait stopped me, grabbing my arm. "Hang on. He has to be in here somewhere. He can't have just disappeared. Let's do a proper search."
Cait was right. We shouldn't panic. We had to do a thorough search of the whole apartment. And we did.
But she was also wrong. She said Kazu couldn't have just disappeared. But as far as we could tell, he wasn't anywhere. He had gone. There was no sign of him, just a place on the sofa still warm from where he'd been watching TV.
I sat down, touching the warm spot and fighting back tears. "Where can he be? I just know she's taken him."
"She who?" Cait asked. "No one could've got in here."
"Mrs Okuda," I said, hopeless tears sitting heavy in my eyes. "The nukekubi. She can go anywhere. I just know she's got him."
Cait sat down next to me, stroking my hair. "Then we'll get him back, that's all," she said. "We'll get him back tonight. We'll stop all this. Your brother missing, some freaky spirit pretending to be my dad, this bizarre snowstorm, Mr Lloyd with chicken pox. There's too much weird stuff happening and it's got to stop. We'll get Kazu back tonight, Miku, I promise."
"First things first," Cait said. "We eat a pizza. And you tell me everything you know about these nukekubi. None of these other demon things we've seen seem to eat people, so I think Mrs Okuda should be our biggest priority. She might even be their leader. Somehow, she must be the key."
I had to agree. Even the crazy snow situation seemed to have been triggered by Okuda's arrival. "OK." I walked to the kitchen. "But one thing: they're not people. They just look like people. They're exactly like that noppera-bo. Nukekubi are demons, but they take the shape of ordinary people."
"OK," said Cait, following me into the kitchen. "So they're demons. What next? How do we know if we're looking at a nukekubi or a real person?"
"Easy. The red marks on their necks when it's daytime. And airborne screaming heads if it's not."
We both laughed, but it really wasn't funny. I pulled a pepperoni pizza from the freezer and stuck it in the oven, turning the dial to 180 like I'd seen Mum do stacks of times before. It was a Sunday night favourite.
"Screaming?" Cait asked. We both watched the yellow oven light, waiting for the first smell of cheese to float through the oven door.
"Yep. They scream so they can scare you more, freak you out and make you do something stupid. Then they swoop down and tear chunks from your throat with their teeth."
"Right," said Cait. "Don't panic if I see a man-eating flying head. Good. This is going well. Is there anything useful?"
And then I remembered something Baba had told me, many years before. For the first time since Kazu got sick, I began to feel that maybe we had a chance.
"Their bodies," I said. "While their heads are out screaming and flying around, their bodies are asleep, just waiting for their heads to come back."
"That," said Cait, "is disgusting."
"Yeah, but think about it. If we can find her body while her head is away, we can destroy it, or move it or something, and then she'd be stuck. She'd be banished, or finished, or whatever happens to nukekubi when they die."
I opened the oven to check on the piz
za.
"Still ages to go," said Cait. "So is that our plan?"
"What?" I closed the oven door.
"We pick a time when her head will be flying around..." Cait said.
"Tonight," I interrupted. "It's always at night, and Kazu can't wait till tomorrow."
"Tonight," Cait agreed. "And then we find where she's hidden her body. And then we destroy it, defeating her and all the other demons."
It sounded so simple when Cait said it. I was so glad her real dad had let her stay.
"Cool," I said, nodding. "That's our plan."
"So where do we start?"
"Where do you reckon her body is?"
"Where do you reckon?" Cait asked. "Where do they usually hang out?"
"Well," I said, thinking hard. "She can't have an ordinary home, cos she won't have any real money. But she'd have to be somewhere safe, where no one would find her. Somewhere where there's hardly any people wandering around at night."
"School," Cait said. "We saw her there first. It's easy for her to be there during the day, and it's empty at night. She could leave her body under a desk or in a broom cupboard or something."
"School," I agreed. Cait was brilliant. "That's got to be it. But we have to get there now. Kazu's already in trouble."
"We'll go tonight," Cait said. "But first, let's eat pizza. We can't fight demons when we're starving."
While the pizza cooked we ran round the house, finding hats and jackets to protect us from the snow. I put a handful of cedar leaves in each of our pockets, just in case. Unlike my mum, Cait didn't scoff or laugh. Then we swallowed the pizza so fast I hardly chewed, and I burnt the roof of my mouth on the cheese.
"Right," Cait said, wiping tomato sauce from her chin. "Is there anything else we need?"
She looked set for an Antarctic expedition, all trussed up in Mum's old jacket with one of Dad's beanies. I knew I must look the same, although my jacket probably looked a little better.
"Nope," I said. "We're ready."
"OK."
We were standing just inside our front door, next to the pile of shoes we'd left earlier.
"I guess this is it." I slipped out of my slippers and put on my shoes.
Cait did the same, arranging her green cat slippers neatly on the rack, just how Mum always left them. "I guess so."
I climbed up one last time on the chair, peering out of our door into the hallway. "It's all clear."
The hallway was still empty when we locked the front door behind us.
We made it to the outside door without meeting anyone, but almost at once our troubles began. The door wouldn't open. I tried again and again, but it hardly budged. Were we trapped in our own building?
"The snow?" Cait suggested. This time she helped me push on the door, and it swung a bit further open.
She was right. Outside it was still snowing and the snow was piling up, almost blocking our front door.
"Again," I said. "One, two, three."
We both heaved and the door edged open enough for us to get through. Outside the snowy day had turned to dark, dark night, and the snow was still coming down. The streets were completely empty. Even the street lamps seemed to have lost their colour. The entire world was cloaked in white snow, turned eerie gray by the darkness. I shivered.
"Come on," Cait said. "Let's make this quick."
Ten minutes later we were creeping through the school grounds, two lines of footprints trailing behind us in the snow. The cold was biting at my nose and draining my hands, but the rest of me was warm with excitement and action. We didn't bother trying to open the front door to the school. It would almost certainly be locked.
"She won't be using doors," I guessed. "It's too obvious. She'd be scared someone will see her. Plus nukekubi don't need doors."
"So how does she get in and out?" Cait asked. "What should we be looking for?"
"Dunno. But we'll know it when we see it."
And then we did. Through the falling snow we spotted a window, a few rooms down from our classroom. It was propped open when it should have been firmly closed.
"A window," we both said, heading for the telltale opening.
"But no one's been in or out of here since the snow started," Cait hissed, pointing at the unmarked snow beneath the window. She was right. There were no marks or imprints in the snow, but I hadn't been expecting any.
"Flying heads don't leave footprints," I said, trying to sound brave. "The rest of her body will be in here somewhere." I peered through the gap to check the room beyond. No sign of a headless nukekubi. It was deserted, filled with empty desks and chairs and paintings hanging on a clothes-line.
Together, Cait and I forced the window open a bit further. My frozen fingers were starting to hurt in the cold.
"You go first." Cait scanned the empty playground. "I'll keep an eye out for the flying head."
"It won't be back for hours yet," I said. "Not till morning." But I scrambled through the window all the same. It was freezing out there.
Inside the dark classroom it was just as cold, and deathly silent. The falling snow seemed to suck out any noise.
"You in?" Cait hissed from outside the window.
"Yep, coast is clear." I looked around, rubbing my hands together to get the blood back into them. A few seconds later, Cait tumbled in through the window. "Anything out there?" I asked.
"Nope, no one followed us." Cait stood up and dusted the snow from her jacket. "Let's get moving though." She slid the window back and clicked the lock. "Even if her head does fly back early, it won't be getting in through this window."
I grinned. We were actually doing it. We were hunting the nukekubi.
"Where to?" Cait whispered.
"Our classroom?" I wasn't sure, but it was the place we'd last seen her, and as good a place as any to start looking.
Cait nodded, and together we headed across the empty classroom to the hallway door. I could hear my heart beating so loudly I was sure Cait could hear it too. I peered around the door, searching the darkness for what lay beyond.
Nothing moved. The whole corridor was silent, empty.
"Come on," I whispered.
We sneaked out, scurrying with shoes squeaking to our classroom. It was freezing in the corridor and our breath made little clouds as we moved. I half expected them to turn to ice and fall cracking to the floor as we walked. We went straight to our classroom without stopping, just like when the corridors were full of kids and teachers and schoolbags. Except now the whole place was empty, as silent and frozen as the moon.
The doorknob of our classroom door was frosted with tiny ice crystals. Cait turned it slowly, with such care that it didn't even squeak. She edged the door open, peeking one eye around to see inside the room.
I waited in the freezing corridor while Cait checked the room. After what seemed like forever, Cait swung the door completely open.
"I don't think she's here," she said, puffing a cloud of white with her breath.
We tiptoed into our classroom. It was like a graveyard - rows of empty desks, some with lonely pencils or forgotten books left on top, like sad offerings at a shrine. Mr Lloyd's desk was just like all the others: empty of life. And there was no sign of the nukekubi.
"Where would she be?" Cait asked, shivering.
I was shivering too. My frozen fingers were aching, and the cold seemed to be spreading. What were we doing here? Maybe I had imagined the red markings on Mrs Okuda's neck. Or maybe they were just mosquito bites, or a tattoo. She might be just an ordinary person who happened to like unusual bright red neck tattoos. I opened my mouth to ask Cait what she thought, but no sound came out. Instead, an awful wailing echoed from the corridor.
Cait jumped to attention, as if she'd been shot in some scene from an old Western movie. Then we both ran for the door, peering outside. I felt sick. This was it. There had to be something out there. The nukekubi was hunting.
But the corridor was empty and quiet once again.
"Was th
at her?" Cait hissed.
"Dunno. Maybe." I'd never heard one before. What did a nukekubi's hunting call sound like? Had we really thought this through before we came here all alone in the middle of the night to hunt a flying demon head?
The wail echoed again, this time a piercing scream that seemed to move up and down the corridor like a wave.
I grabbed Cait's arm and hung on. "It's a ghost. There's nothing out there to make that noise. It's got to be a ghost."
I'd heard Baba talk of ghosts. Yurei, 'faint spirits' in English, usually someone who'd died horribly, who couldn't make it to the afterlife.
A shot of cold passed through me. There had to be a ghost walking with us. An angry ghost by the sound of it. I wanted to run but the cold had frozen me to the spot. My nose began to tingle and burn and I could feel my blood cooling, sending icy messages to my heart.
The screaming came once again, but it changed mid-way, becoming a cracking sound instead, metallic and ringing like a bell. Suddenly it didn't sound like any ghost I'd ever heard of. But it still didn't sound friendly. And if it wasn't a ghost, what was it?
More loud gonging sounds echoed along the corridor, seeming to come from the walls themselves. It was as if we were trapped inside a massive temple bell on New Year's Eve. The sounds kept getting louder until something seemed to break. A crash like thunderclaps exploded all around us, up and down the corridor and, horror of horrors, even from the classroom behind us.
I swung round to see what was coming up behind us, but could see nothing that could have caused the noise.
"That's no ghost," Cait guessed. "I think it's gunshots. Someone's in here with a gun."
Just then the noises stopped. And, just as suddenly, the cold lifted. My blood started flowing again.
"The pipes," I guessed. "There's no ghost, and no gun. It's the pipes. They've frozen. They've burst with the cold."
"What?"
It felt like a better idea than gunshots and ghosts, but I still wasn't sure. "The cold," I said. "It can freeze water in the pipes. Like when you freeze a Coke can in the fridge. The water expands and the pipe explodes. There's water pipes all through the school."
"Exploding pipes?" Cait didn't sound convinced. She unzipped her jacket as her face flushed in the growing warmth.