Hachiro was already out there in the blizzard. Now that she had her father back, the idea of leaving him behind up there on the mountain made her frantic. She didn't even want to go back down without Hachiro, but she knew that they all risked frostbite if they stayed up here much longer.
"Kara, Mr. Yamato and I are going to —"
"Harper-san," Mr. Sato said, his big glasses spider-webbed with ice, "please go with Kara. I will search with Mr. Yamato.
Kara's father hesitated and she grabbed his hand, silently pleading with him. Then he nodded.
"All right," he said, looking up at Miss Aritomo. "Let's get these girls off the mountain."
Hachiro's throat was raw from shouting. His head pounded, the cold like a vise on his skull. His gloved hands were stuffed into his pockets and he could no longer feel much at all in his feet. He thought he might have to stop and take his boots off, use his hands to rub some life back into his feet, but didn't know if that would help or if the exposure would only make it worse.
"Sora!" Ren shouted at his side. "Where are you? Can you hear us? Sora!"
They struggled along together side by side, Ren peering into the trees to the right of the path and Hachiro scanning the woods to the left. Another thirty yards and they would be out of the woods and back at the rocky overlook whose allure had gotten them all into such trouble in the first place.
"Sora!" Hachiro screamed into the storm.
He opened his mouth to yell again, but paused, thinking he'd heard some kind of reply from the thickness of the snow-covered woods. It might have been the wind, or the creak of a tree felled by the blizzard, but he did not think it had been either.
"So —" Ren began.
Hachiro clamped a hand on his shoulder, shushing him. "Quiet. Listen."
They stood still and silent for the count of ten, but heard nothing but the cry of the wind. Hachiro glanced at Ren and nodded and the two of them shouted again, this time in one voice, calling Sora's name into the storm, into the woods.
A voice cried out in reply.
"Tell me you heard that!" Hachiro said, turning to Ren.
Ren nodded. "I heard it. I don't know what I heard, but something. Someone."
"Who else would it be?" Hachiro snapped, but he understood. The cry he had heard might have belonged to an animal. He'd been unable to make out any words, only a voice, calling out.
He stepped off the trail, glancing back at Ren, who swore and set off after him. The two boys crashed through the trees, snapping branches and tramping in snow that seemed somehow deeper. The pines brushed against them as though attempting to hold them back and Hachiro tore his coat on the sharp hook of a thin, bare branch, but they rushed onward, shouting Sora's name.
That cry came twice more, still wordless, and Hachiro faltered slightly at the realization that it sounded more like pain than panic. But further shouts received no reply and soon they began to slow and finally came to a halt.
"Sora!" Hachiro roared one last time in frustration.
Regret filled him, weighing him down, and he turned to Ren, whose eyes revealed that he had come to the same decision that Hachiro had.
"We have to go back," Hachiro said.
Ren nodded. "I agree. That might've been him, or it could've been a bird. Sora might have gone back to that cliff and used the right path. He might already be with the others in the clearing. We have no way of knowing."
Hachiro felt sick, but he knew it was the truth. Sora might have made it back to the group already, but if not, Mr. Yamato would tell the authorities and they would get a search party onto the mountain. He and Ren had done all they could do.
"Sora!" he shouted one, final time. Then, hating the feeling of helplessness that filled him, he turned to Ren. "Let's go."
Together they made their way back the way they had come, retracing their steps in the snow, snapping off more branches, the storm raging even there amongst the trees. Hachiro had taken half a dozen steps when he looked up and saw a figure standing between twin pines off to his left.
"Ren, look."
"Sora?" Ren said, quietly at first, and then louder. "Sora!"
The boys barreled through the snow, running toward those twin black pines, but when they reached the snow-dusted figure they were brought up short. Hachiro tried to halt but his left boot slid out from under him and he fell, tumbling in several inches of fresh snow.
Ren had started to pray.
Hachiro rolled to his knees, staring up in disbelief at the statue, there in the midst of the woods and the storm. Only it wasn't a statue. Somehow, in the short span of time since they had seen him last, Sora had frozen to death, his entire body covered in a coat of glistening ice and frosted with snow.
"How is this possible?" Hachiro whispered, though the wind stole his voice so that even he could not hear his own words.
And yet he received an answer.
"All things," said a voice in his ear, a cold breeze that carried words, as though the wind itself were speaking to him. "All things are possible."
Ren spun around in terror, back to one of the pine trees, gazing about wide-eyed for the source of the whispery, insinuating voice. Hachiro watched him with a fresh jolt of fear. Ren had heard it, too. It had not been his imagination, nor was it the voice of some ghost. Something was here with them.
"Show yourself!" he cried.
And it did. Gusts of wind came together, spinning the snow into a white, swirling vortex. Hachiro and Ren stared as the snow began to sculpt itself into a figure, and when at last the wind subsided for a moment, the snow drifting lazily in the lull, neither of them could speak.
She floated atop the snow, leaving no impression. Hachiro could barely breathe. In all of his life he had never seen a woman so beautiful. She wore a white kimono, her long hair matching its color, as though both were made of the snow itself.
"I know this story," Ren whispered, stepping up beside him. "Hachiro, run!"
They turned to bolt but the wind blew up so hard that it knocked them both off of their feet, tossing them into the snow. Hachiro struck the trunk of a bare, skeletal tree. He started to rise, saw Ren doing the same, and then they both glanced up at the Woman in White.
Hachiro stared into her eyes, inhumanly black and bottomless, like holes torn in the fabric of the world. His heart filled with such terror that he could not move. Her gaze alone had frozen him with fear.
And then she smiled, her teeth sharpened pearls.
Chapter Five
By the time they had reached the observatory and started down the long trail to where the bus waited in Takigami Park below, the intensity of the storm had begun to wane. The snow slowed and the wind began to relent at last. By the time they were halfway down, the mountainside and the park below had been transformed into an idyllic winter scene. Any other day it would have been beautiful. The heart of the storm had come and gone, and the aftermath was white silence. But until she knew Hachiro and the others were safe, Kara could see only menace in the snow.
Her father walked beside her, grabbing her arm when she stumbled but otherwise not trying to hard to protect her. He didn't baby her, and Kara felt grateful for that. She wondered about frostbite, but until they reached the heated bus there was nothing any of them could do for themselves or for each other. They were in this together and her father knew that.
Miho and Sakura walked ahead of them, accompanied by Miss Aritomo and two other teachers who had been chaperoning the ensoku. The roommates huddled together, trying to share a modicum of body heat as they hurried down the mountain. From time to time Miss Aritomo glanced back at Kara and her father, worry etched into her face.
They talked very little, focused on their descent and conserving energy. Kara's legs had started to feel like lead weights. She felt strangely sleepy, and soon the white silence around her became a kind of dreamlike blur.
She trudged downward, one foot in front of the other, and the veil of snow thinned even more, so that soon she could make out the
bus waiting below. The others had already departed, heading back to Monju-no-Chie school. Yet now she slowed a little, staggering to a stop, seeing the bus as the enemy.
"Kara, what's wrong?" her father asked.
In his eyes she saw all of the fear for her that he had been keeping bottled up during their trek. He must have been half-frozen himself, but he took her arm to steady her and seemed about to pick her up into his arms, as though to carry her the rest of the way down the mountain. Love for him filled her up, but it could not drive away the terrible, icy certainty that had spread through her.
"I can't leave without Hachiro," she said.
Miss Aritomo and the others had halted as well and Kara saw Miho and Sakura staring back at her in concern, though their teeth chattered and their lips had turned blue.
"Go on, Yuuka!" Kara's father called. "We'll be right there."
Miss Aritomo nodded and reluctantly got the rest of them moving again. Kara's father held on to her, forced her to meet his gaze.
"What are you doing, honey? The exposure you've already suffered could be dangerous. We've got to get —"
Kara searched his eyes, frantic and filled with growing desperation. "Dad, I can't. I just . . . I can't leave without him. I look down at that bus and all I can think — I can't get it out of my mind — is that if I get on board, if I let them close the doors behind me, then I'll never see him again. He's going to die up there."
Her father held her face in his hands, his gloves rimed with half-melted snow. "No, he's not. They're going to find him, Kara. And it will do him no good if you end up losing fingers or toes from frostbite. The storm is already starting to slow and there'll be a couple of hours of daylight left for people to search . . . people who are better equipped and prepared for the elements than we are."
She took a deep breath, taking that in, and stared at the bus waiting ominously below before meeting her father's gaze once again.
"How does something like this happen?" she asked. "What Mr. Yamato said about the forecast . . . I mean, it was nothing, not much more than flurries at first, and then . . ."
Overwhelmed, Kara could not finish the sentence.
"A squall," her father said. He took her by the arm and guided her down the trail, getting her walking again. "I've read about freak weather before. It happens. Like 'thunder snow' and things like that. When weather fronts collide the weather is always wild."
As he spoke, police cars began to pull into the parking lot of Takigami Park below, their lights spinning, reflecting off of the snow. They were followed by an ambulance and two SUVs. When Kara saw police officers and other people start to pile out of the vehicles, relief swept over her. The snow was subsiding. Mr. Sato and Mr. Yamato were still up there, and soon the search would expand. There might not be more than a couple of hours before dark, but maybe that would be enough. It was possible that they had already found Hachiro and the other boys and that none of this would turn out to be necessary.
She turned to say as much to her father, and saw Sora standing beyond him, perhaps fifty feet from the path. He stood amidst a copse of cherry trees, their bare branches interwoven like a spider's web. His red jacket had turned pale, bleached of color the same way the winter storm had turned the whole world gray, but Kara could see him clearly enough.
"Oh, my God," she said, a laugh bubbling out of her.
"What is it?" her father asked.
But Kara started running, boots sinking into four inches of fresh snow. A grin spread across her face and she glanced past Sora, searching for Hachiro and Ren, putting it all together in an instant — they must have found some other path that led them to a place where they could see the bus waiting in Takigami Park and started down toward it.
"Sora!"
"Kara, wait!" her father called.
She glanced back at him for only an instant, but when she looked toward the cherry grove again, Sora had vanished. There were only the bare trees and contorted interweaving of branches.
All of the air went out of her in a single breath and she faltered, staggering to a stop. Suddenly she felt more exhausted than ever. Falling to her knees in the snow, she felt all of her fear and worry overflowing, rushing out of her. Somehow it became a laugh, even as tears began to spill down her cheeks.
She heard footsteps crunching in the snow and a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"Kara?" her father ventured, so softly.
She wiped at her eyes and looked up at him. "I saw Sora. He was right over there."
But there was nowhere around those bare trees where anyone could have hidden themselves — even if Sora had some reason to do so — and they were close enough now to see one additional detail that filled the hollow place inside Kara with dread and grief. There were no footprints in the snow beneath the cherry trees.
"Did you see him?" she asked.
"I was watching you," her father said. "I'm sorry."
Kara turned to see Sakura and Miho approaching them. Miss Aritomo and the other teachers waited back on the path, watching curiously.
"You saw Sora?"
Kara couldn't answer. She swallowed hard. All she could think of in that moment was the story Hachiro had told her about seeing Jiro's barefoot ghost on the train into Miyazu Station.
"Hey," Miho whispered, kneeling beside her in the snow, neither of them paying any attention to the dampness soaking through the knees of their pants — they couldn't feel it anymore.
"I think I saw him, too. Just for a second," Miho went on.
Kara stared up at her, then glanced at Sakura and her father. "He's dead."
"You don't know that," her father said quickly, brows sternly knitted.
But she did. What she had seen could only have been a ghost. She bit her lip, took Miho's hand, and the two of them stood. They exchanged silent glances with Sakura and then, as one, the three girls started back toward the path.
"Come on, Dad. I'm freezing."
Her father followed, but she saw him glancing back at the cherry grove, although there was no longer anything there to see.
All through the rest of the walk down to Takigami Park, where they boarded the bus, Kara felt torn by warring emotions. She grieved for Sora, whom she'd liked very much, but she also nurtured a flickering, guilty hope that Hachiro and Ren would be all right. She had not seen their ghosts, after all, only Sora's.
On the bus, she sat with her father. Miho and Sakura had each other, so Kara did not feel like she was abandoning them. Miss Aritomo busied herself with the grim business of making sure there weren't any other students unaccounted for and then got off the bus to talk quietly with a police officer for several minutes. When she boarded again, she sat behind the driver and told him to take them home.
Kara turned to look up at her father. "We can't leave them up there."
"We aren't. I promise you, honey. The police are heading up onto the mountain now with a bunch of volunteers, and more on the way. But my first responsibility is to you. Let's get you into something warm and dry, and by then, the boys will be down off that mountain."
Not all, she thought.
As the bus rattled out of the parking lot and back toward school, feeling began to return to her feet and her body started to warm up at last, but inside she felt more numb than ever. She huddled against her father, taking comfort from the solidity of his presence. He spoke to her with quiet strength that soothed her far more than the words he chose. Any other day she would have been embarrassed at such a display, a girl her age being so dependent upon her father, especially in Japan. But she could not bring herself to care.
Kara opened her eyes, jostled as the bus went over a pothole, and was surprised to see the outline of Monju-no-Chie school through the window. The snow had stopped falling and the sky had lightened somewhat, though cloud cover still blotted out the sun. Moments later, they turned into the drive that ran alongside the school and led to the dormitory beyond.
"Did I fall asleep?" she asked.
"Maybe fo
r a minute or two," her father said.
Fresh anguish filled her. "How could I do that? Hachiro and Ren are —"
"Kara," he replied, taking her hand and squeezing it. "Rest is good. You're not going to be any help to your friends if you're falling apart."
She took a long, shuddery breath and then nodded. "Okay. You're right."
"Honey . . ."
If any sleep lingered in her, his tentative, almost secretive tone banished it. "What?"
He glanced around as though to see who might be listening and when he spoke again, he had lowered his voice. For a moment she thought he would speak in English, but then she realized that doing so might draw more attention rather than less.
"What did you see while we were coming down the mountain?"
Kara understood what her father was asking her. Once upon a time, she had been afraid to talk to him about the supernatural things she had encountered since they had moved to Japan, fearful that he would think she was losing her mind. And for a time, after she had told him, he had believed she was making up stories as a way to interfere with his relationship with Miss Aritomo. It had put a wedge between them.
But all that was in the past, now. Rob Harper had seen things that he could not deny, and nearly paid the price for that epiphany with his life. Any tension between them had been burned away by the danger they'd faced together. They were a team now.
None of which meant that he really wanted to know the answer to the question he'd just asked.
"You know what I saw," she whispered.
Something flickered in his eyes, and then he nodded. "I guess I do."
The bus's brakes screeched to a halt. When the doors opened, Kara stood up first, stepping into the aisle. Miho and Sakura had been sitting right behind her and both of them looked as drained as she felt. Behind her glasses, Miho's eyes were red from crying.
They filed off one by one, the students gathering in small clusters in the parking lot. All but one of the other buses had already departed, the last one standing empty just a few yards away, the driver talking on his cell phone outside the door. He seemed agitated and Kara noticed that he kept looking at a paint-scraped dent on the side of the bus, which she assumed was new. The parking lot had not been cleared of snow, and her feet grew cold again immediately.
A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) Page 6