"Kara," her father said. As she turned to him, he pulled her into a tight hug. "We're going to need to talk about this later, and what it might mean. But right now —"
"I know. You have to help get everyone situated."
"And then I want to find out what's going on back at the mountain. If I can't reach Mr. Yamato, I'm sure someone will know. Hopefully they've found the boys already, but if not, I'm going to go back there."
Kara looked at the dimming sky. "Dad, by the time you get there, you might have an hour of daylight left."
The rest of the conversation went unspoken, and Kara was glad. She did not want to think about the chances of anyone surviving the night on the mountain.
"Can you stay with Sakura and Miho for now?" he asked. "I'm sure they have something warm you could put on. And when the teachers are free to go, Yuuka will come get you and take you back to the house."
Kara glanced around, surprised that he was talking about his relationship with Miss Aritomo so openly. "Are you sure that's —"
"It'll be fine," he promised. "Go ahead. And make sure your phone is on. If I learn anything at all, I'll call."
Students had been shuffling past them, streaming from the parking lot to the dorm. Kara thanked her father, told him she loved him, and then hurried over to join Sakura and Miho, who had been waiting for her. Miho's eyes had lost some of their redness and both girls looked more awake than they had while getting off the bus. Sakura stamped her feet and Kara looked at them, noticing for the first time that the girl's boots were soaked through.
"Oh, no. Are you okay?" she asked.
Sakura glanced down as though she'd forgotten her feet were even there. "I can't feel them, but I'm still standing up, so I know they still work."
"Can I stay with you guys for a while?" Kara asked.
Miho nodded. "Of course. Besides, I think we all need to talk, don't you?"
Kara swallowed the emotion that threatened to well up inside of her. She nodded. "Yeah. We do."
The three girls turned and started up toward the dormitory together. As they approached, Kara noticed that Mai and Wakana had not entered the dorm but were waiting outside, watching them approach. Mai wore an expectant look, but Wakana had the most awful haunted expression in her eyes.
"Someone wants to talk," Sakura sniffed. Her tough-girl mask had slipped during the blizzard, but now it returned.
Kara pushed aside her sour feelings toward the girls and left the path, trudging through the snow to join them. Miho and Sakura followed and the five of them faced one another beneath the tall windows of the dormitory.
"You saw something," Kara said, fixing Wakana with a hard look.
Wakana flinched, frowning. "How did you know? Did you see him too?"
Kara glanced at Mai, whose arrogance had completely vanished. She looked frightened, just as she had when they had all faced the Hannya together, and that was good. They might not be friends, but in sharing the secrets they did, they had become allies, and Mai tended to be far more ordinary and human when something had scared her.
"Him?" Miho replied. "You mean Sora?"
Mai frowned. "Sora? No. She . . ." and then she let the words trail off, glancing at her roommate. "They didn't see it."
"'It' or 'him?'" Sakura asked. "Make up your mind."
"See what?" Kara prodded, her frustration growing. She wanted to be inside, to put on warm, dry clothes, to find out what had become of Hachiro and Ren. "If you're talking about ghosts —"
"You did see him!" Wakana said.
Sakura and Miho started talking at the same time, still trying to make sense of what Wakana was telling them. Mai had just said they hadn't seen Sora, and if they had encountered his ghost, their reaction would have been entirely different. So if not Sora . . .
"Jiro?" she asked, thinking again of Hachiro's experience on the train.
"Are you just being cruel?" Mai snapped.
Wakana seemed to wonder the same thing. She wore a hurt expression as she replied. "Not Jiro. Daisuke. I saw Daisuke."
Kara stared around at the others, mind whirling. Jiro, Daisuke, and then Sora. The ghosts of dead boys.
"What the hell is going on around here?" she asked.
But nobody had an answer.
Kara followed Miho and Sakura into their dorm room, grateful to be alone with her friends. Mai and Wakana might be linked to them because of the unnatural events that had unfolded at Monju-no-Chie School over the past few seasons, but none of them were willing to pretend that their connection to each other was anything like friendship. Kara had no interest in joining forces with them to try to figure out what was going on, and she knew the feeling was mutual.
When she and Miho and Sakura reached the dorm, the foyer had been full of students who were awaiting pickup by their parents, most of them discussing the missing boys. Those who knew Kara and Hachiro were dating had fallen silent and watched her curiously as she passed, as though they expected her to break down or something. She had expected the stairs and corridors to be quieter, with most of the boarding students resting or getting warm, but instead they had walked through a gauntlet similar to what they had faced downstairs. They were all buzzing with nervous energy and needed to talk.
When Miho closed the door, shutting the rest of the world out, Kara let out a long sigh. She knew that she and her friends needed to talk, but she had no interest in discussing the day — or the fate of Hachiro and the other boys — with the girls talking behind their hands in the common area down the hall.
Once they'd all hung their jackets, Sakura stepped out of her sodden boots and stripped off her pants. Her legs were pale and dappled with white and red splotches and she rubbed them vigorously before peeling off the rest of her clothes. In seconds she stood in only her underpants, entirely unself-conscious about her body.
"I am going directly to pajamas," she said.
"What about dinner?" Miho asked, trying not to look at her.
"I can have dinner in my pajamas."
Miho gave the tiniest shake of her head to show that she didn't approve. Sakura ignored her, pulling on a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms covered with some kind of school symbol that Kara thought came from one of the manga that Sakura loved to read. She tugged a sweatshirt on over that comfortable ensemble and then turned to Kara.
"What do you want to wear?"
"Anything soft and dry."
Sakura started tossing clothes at her — t-shirt, sweatshirt, pajama pants — and she laughed as she snatched them out of the air. It was good to laugh, but immediately she felt guilty, knowing the guys were still out there on the mountain.
"Pajamas," Sakura said, arching an eyebrow at her roommate.
Miho rolled her eyes and turned away from them. She had been working on her shyness for months, but some things she could not change. Modest to a fault, she kept her back turned as she disrobed and quickly pulled on dark green pants and a beige sweater. Her hair had been made wild by the storm but she brushed it out and put a clip into it.
"You look ready to go on a date," Sakura said.
"And we look ready for a nap," Kara added, as she tugged on the borrowed pajama pants.
Sakura flopped onto her bed. "I would love a nap, almost as much as I would a cigarette."
The dorm rooms were all small. Two beds, tatami mats, two tiny desks, a small futon, built in closets and a mirror. Kara folded up her cold, damp clothes and put them in a pile under Sakura's desk and then settled onto the futon.
Miho slid into the chair at her desk. "So, are we going to talk about this?"
Sakura lay on her side, legs pulled up beneath her. "Nap first, talk later?"
Kara frowned at her. "Sakura, how can you joke? They're still up there! Sora is —"
"You don't know that."
Miho crossed her arms, almost hugging herself. "What else are we supposed to think? Hachiro saw Jiro's ghost, Wakana saw Daisuke, and on the mountain, Kara and I both saw . . . we saw him, but he
wasn't there."
A knock came at the door and they all looked up, but for several seconds, no one made a move to answer it. When the visitor knocked again and they heard a girl call "hello" from the other side of the door, Miho rose and opened it to find Reiko, from the calligraphy club, standing in the hall.
"What's wrong?" Miho asked.
"Nothing," Reiko said. "Miss Kaneda asked me to let all of the third floor residents know that dinner is going to be served an hour early tonight. They want to get something hot into us, she said."
Kara had thought she wouldn't be hungry at all — a cup of tea to warm her, perhaps — but at the prospect of imminent dinner her stomach started to growl.
"Excellent," Miho replied. "I'm sure a meal will do us all good."
"Thank you," Kara said.
"Some people are already downstairs," Reiko added. "I'll see you all down there."
When she left, Miho closed the door and leaned against it, looking at Kara and Sakura. "Don't think we're hurrying down to the cafeteria. We need to talk about this."
"I agree," Kara said.
Sakura had not moved from her fetal position on the bed. She lay there with her eyes open, but did not look at them when she spoke.
"What are we supposed to talk about?" she asked. "Okay, there are ghosts in Miyazu City. Maybe it has something to do with Kyuketsuki's curse and maybe it doesn't. How does that help the boys?"
A note of despair filled Sakura's words. Emotion she had been holding back spilled forth and she sat up, looking from Miho to Kara and back again, eyes pleading. "How do we help them?"
There came yet another knock on the door.
Sakura glared at it. "Go away!"
"Sakura? Miho? It's Miss Aritomo. Is Kara there with you?"
All three girls froze. Kara felt all of the blood draining from her face and the winter chill that she thought she had dispelled returned. Her pulse quickened and she jumped up from the futon and went to open the door.
One look in Miss Aritomo's eyes and she knew that the teacher brought only pain.
"Yuuka?" Kara whispered.
Miss Aritomo glanced over her shoulder and stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. Then she faced the girls.
"The search has been called off until morning," Miss Aritomo said. "It is too dark in the woods, now. If the boys are not conscious, the searchers could walk right by them and not know. At first light, they will begin again, with as many as four hundred people combing the mountain for any sign of Hachiro and Ren."
Kara noticed immediately what the woman had not said.
"And Sora?"
Miss Aritomo lowered her gaze a moment, then looked back up at them, eyes damp. "They found Sora a short time ago. It seems he wandered off the path and deeper into the woods during the height of the storm."
"He's dead," Miho said.
It was not a question, but Miss Aritomo nodded to confirm it.
"He froze to death that quickly?" Kara asked, grief and confusion whirling inside of her. "How can that happen?"
"That is the question we are all asking," Miss Aritomo said. "And it's why I have come to speak with you three, though the rest of the students will not learn the news until morning. There will be no school tomorrow. Most of the teachers will be out helping with the search. But Mr. Yamato wishes to speak with you three first thing in the morning."
Kara glanced at her friends and then nodded. "Of course."
"He will visit your house, Kara, to be sure that our conversation is private," Miss Aritomo said. "Miho? Sakura? You are to be at the Harpers' home by nine o'clock. We will speak of curses and of ghosts, and if this is connected to the troubles we all had last year, we will find a way to stop it before anyone else dies."
Kara had a great deal of respect for Yuuka, and she had grown very fond of the woman.
She only wished she could believe her.
Chapter Six
Sakura lay in bed, trying desperately to fall back to sleep. After dinner, with Kara gone, she and Miho had come back to their room and tried to read a while. Miho was about a hundred pages into the fattest novel she had ever seen, while Sakura had sought comfort in her favorite manga series, Cherry Blossoms. Both of them had fallen asleep reading, emotionally and physically drained, but Sakura had woken just after one o'clock and had spent the better part of the last hour attempting to drift off again.
No such luck.
Frustrated, she turned over for what felt like the hundredth time, facing the windows. The night had an uncommon brightness, moonlight reflecting off of snow to create its own illumination. Once upon a time she would have thought it magical, beautiful, but the experiences of the past year had changed her. Now what others might have seen as beauty struck her as eerie and unsettling. It seemed like the perfect weather for ghosts.
Sakura closed her eyes and let out a long breath, steadying herself. Her eyes burned and her head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton; she needed to sleep. But her brain was not cooperating, her thoughts racing ahead, not prepared to shut down again tonight.
Had her friends really seen ghosts? Whatever Hachiro had seen on the train, had it really been Jiro, or just some phantom image of him left in the world like the lights she saw behind her eyes after a camera flashed. Kara and Miho — even Wakana — had seen ghosts, too, and somehow Sakura felt cheated. But mostly she just wanted to know if they were truly the spirits of the dead, or just some . . . echo . . . of the time those people had spent in the world.
What were ghosts, really?
Sakura sighed and turned over, turning her back to the windows and burrowing deeper under her covers. Every sound seemed louder in the dark, even Miho's soft breathing. She could hear electricity humming in the walls and the steady ticking noise of the heating pipes in the old building. Instead of trying to shut the sounds out she welcomed them, attempted to make them her lullaby.
Slowly, her awareness began to blur, all of the edges of the world growing soft. Sleep coalesced around her and as Sakura began to doze at last, she felt grateful for its gift.
But then she felt a burst of warmth against the back of her neck, her skin prickling as she stiffened. Her eyelids were heavy with sleep, now, but she forced them open. Something had shifted in the room, the air itself changing and gaining a strange weight. She felt sure, suddenly, that someone was watching her, could feel the focus of attention upon her like added gravity.
She listened intently, thinking that Miho had gotten out of bed and now stood behind her, staring in silence. But she could still hear the soft almost-snore coming from her roommate's bed on the other side of the room.
Sakura turned over and sat up, eyes wide, heart pounding in her chest. Every detail in the room could be discerned in the wash of winter moonlight, but nothing was there that did not belong. Miho still slept. Everything remained in its place. The tatami mats on the floor were undisturbed.
She shivered, looking around. "Hello?" she whispered into the shadows.
But whatever she had felt there had gone, if it had ever been there at all.
That did it. She had managed to get through the entire day without a cigarette, but now she had to have one. Sakura knew it was an addiction, had never denied it, but had usually managed to keep herself from needing to smoke. Now she felt compelled as never before. She climbed out of bed, pulled on the sweatshirt she'd worn earlier, and borrowed Miho's boots, since her own were still soaked through.
Slipping her coat on, patting the pockets to make sure her cigarettes were still there, she went out into the corridor, closing the door as quietly as possible behind her. If any of the teachers caught her she would definitely be punished, unless it was a fellow smoker who would take pity on her.
None of that mattered. She needed to walk and smoke and think.
Sakura descended the stairs in silence. This was far from the first time she had encountered trouble sleeping and decided to walk the grounds, and she had learned that the small check-in desk in the foy
er tended to be abandoned between midnight and six a.m. The school relied on their students' adherence to the rules of conduct, counting on them not to want to bring dishonor to their families. Foolish, really. Sakura was far from the only student who had parents she would not mind embarrassing.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, however, she hesitated. Her mother and father had been very different over the winter break. They had first astonished her by seeming glad to see her when she arrived home. Her mother had actually embraced her, and that night when she had gone to bed, her father had kissed the top of her head. On instinct she had nearly cracked a joke about aliens replacing her real parents, but for once she had bitten her tongue. Cynical as she might be, she had not wanted to drive them away again.
They had been distant even when Akane was alive, but after her murder they had seemed intent upon forgetting they even had a second daughter, and frustrated when she did anything to remind them. Now that seemed to have changed. All three of them still grieved the loss of Akane, but she thought they might be able to do it together from now on.
Sakura found the foyer as dark and abandoned as she had expected. The school seriously needed a security upgrade, but she hoped they did not figure that out until she had graduated. Sometimes she needed to get out of there.
Patting her pockets to make sure she had keys, cigarettes, and her lighter, she slipped out, making sure the door locked behind her. The last of the storm had long since passed and, though it was quite cold, the wind had died completely. The night was crisp and cold, but so very still. Her footfalls upon the moonlit snow were the only sounds she heard as she crossed the field between the dorm and the school.
On the east side of the school, perhaps thirty feet separated the building from the tree line, and the night usually transformed it into a tunnel of darkness. Tonight, however, the moonlight shining off of the fresh snow illuminated even that dark alleyway. She passed the ancient prayer shrine tucked against the trees. On the left was a recessed doorway, long since painted over and forgotten, that had become her favorite smoking spot. But she surprised herself by walking right past it and around the front of the building.
A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) Page 7