by Mick Jackson
She still can’t understand why her mother would take a photograph of the water without it meaning something to her. The wind-bent tree … the open window … the flat, still water – they must all have some significance.
They continue to stare out of the window. Then Yuki suddenly brightens and raises a finger, as if she’s just had a great idea.
She pours more Coke into her glass, drops another pinch of snow in after it and closes the window. Tops her drink up with whiskey, wanders round the room till she finds her notebook. Then takes it up onto the bed and flicks through it till she comes to a blank page. Denny climbs up beside her. Yuki has a pen in her hand and is writing out a dozen or so columns of Japanese letters. She’s shaking her head, saying she can’t believe she didn’t think of this sooner. Then, when she’s practically filled the page, she draws one last symbol at the top, which is a little larger than the others.
Kokkuri-san, Yuki says. We used to play it when we were girls.
She assures Denny that there’s nothing to be scared of. She just has to remember that Kokkuri-san is the spirit of an old fox and must be treated respectfully. Also, not to stop in the middle of a session. Otherwise, Kokkuri-san won’t be able to get back home and will be forced to haunt you. And nobody, except a crazy person, would want that.
Denny’s not sure. Says that she doesn’t really like this sort of thing. But Yuki glowers at her again and sees her flinch this time. This is what it must be like to have a kid sister, she thinks. You get to boss them around all day long.
She pulls a handful of change out of her pocket and picks out a pound coin. Then slips off the bed to fetch her precious envelope. She takes her headtorch from the top of the set of drawers, turns the main light out, flicks her torch on and climbs back up onto the bed.
She’s still adjusting the torch as she settles. She smoothes the notebook flat, arranges the photographs around it and places the pound coin on the symbol at the top of the page.
All Denny has to do, she tells her, is put her fingers on the coin. Kokkuri-san will take care of everything else. And when Denny again tries to explain how she finds this kind of thing disturbing Yuki looks up, says that this is important, and the light from the torch hits Denny right in the eyes, blinding her.
She checks over the board she’s made. Oh man, she thinks, when she and her friends used to do this round at Hikari’s garage they would get each other in such a state. One of the girls had so many nightmares Yuki became convinced that she’d suffered some lasting psychological damage and would wind up in an institution of some sort.
She takes Denny’s hands and places the tips of her forefingers on the coin’s edge. Then rests her own fingers on the other side.
She whispers to Denny, OK, so we say, Kokkuri-san … Kokkuri-san … then wait until he joins us. Once he’s here we can ask him whatever we like.
Denny doesn’t answer, so Yuki looks up, blinding her again. And Denny says, OK, OK.
Yuki swings the light back down onto the notebook. And, slowly, something like silence establishes itself. In time, the rest of the room beyond that small pool of light is lost to the darkness and it’s as if Yuki and Denny are drifting out in space.
Yukiko says, Kokkuri-san, and the second time Denny joins her, in a whisper. Yuki says some more words in Japanese. Then she and Denny both focus their attention on the coin.
At last Yuki says, Are you here?
The coin remains where it is. Then Denny feels a tiny twitch beneath her fingers. And slowly, very slowly, the coin slides across the paper and settles on a symbol.
Yukiko nods. He’s here, she says.
The coin returns to its original position. There’s another period of silence. Then Yuki lifts her head so that the torchlight swings over to the photograph of her mother outside the B & B.
My mother, Yukiko says. Is she dead?
The light returns to the notebook – another moment or two, then the coin follows the same path as before.
Yes, Yuki says, emphatically. She is dead.
Denny looks up, but can’t make out Yuki’s face now. There’s just her voice and the torchlight, pinning their fingers to the coin. Then the light sweeps off the notebook and goes from one photograph to another, as if trying to draw them all together, before settling on the photo of Yuki’s mother outside the parsonage.
And how did she die? Yukiko asks.
The light swings back to the coin, which, for a moment, shows no sign of moving. Then Denny feels it pull and slowly move away. It pauses over one symbol, then slides on to another.
In the snow, says Yukiko. That’s right, she died in the snow.
Denny really does wish she could make this stop now, but doesn’t want to annoy Yukiko. She sees how the torchlight is on the move again – how it settles on the photograph of the reservoir’s flat dead surface, catching its emulsion, so that the water almost seems to glitter in the sun.
Yuki asks aloud what her mother was doing at the water.
The torchlight swings back to the coin and, buried deep in it, there seems to Denny to be some sense of intention, but it fails to move.
Did she see something, Yukiko says. What was she looking for?
Then finally the coin sets off and slides swiftly between three letters.
The girl, says Yukiko. She saw the girl.
Denny is beginning to feel sick. She’d get up and leave, if it weren’t for the dreadful fox – and the fact that her fingers are fused to the coin.
When she was here, says Yuki. Did she find what she was looking for?
Another pause. And, again, the coin appears to be deliberating.
When, finally, it moves, Yuki seems genuinely surprised.
Wrong question, she says – to Denny, to herself.
She thinks for a while. Then finally says, In the snow back home …
Another pause.
Did she mean to do it?
And now Yuki and Denny can both see her out in the snow, lost and frightened.
Please don’t, says Denny.
But Yuki ignores her.
Did she kill herself? she says.
Then they both sit and wait, until at last the coin slowly draws their hands across the notebook. They watch it gain momentum. Land on one of the letters – the one on which Yukiko knew it would land.
That’s right, she says.
She sees her mother walking – leaving the car behind her. Then stopping. Allowing the snow to slowly settle on her.
Yukiko wonders if she’s finally there. She sits in silence. Until she feels Denny’s fingers trembling against hers. She can hear her sobbing now. Yuki looks up, again blinding her with the torchlight, and as Denny turns away, her fingers still fixed to the coin, Yuki sees how her cheek is streaked with tears.
Yuki says another few words in Japanese. The coin slides back to its original position.
OK, she says, We can let go now.
Denny pulls her hand back and breathes hard for a couple of moments. Then jumps off the bed, grabs her coat and heads for the door.
Yukiko barely has the chance to call after her. Denny’s down the stairs and over at the front door before Yuki manages to catch up with her. And crying in great gulps now, shaking.
I’m sorry, says Yuki.
Denny refuses to even look at her.
What a horrible thing to do, she says.
And Yuki thinks, She’s right. I’m like some sort of witch. I can barely believe it myself sometimes.
I’m sorry, she says again.
She waits. Then asks Denny to come back upstairs, but Denny still has hold of the door.
Please, she says.
It takes a while, but when, at last, the two of them go back up to Yuki’s room they climb the stairs wearily, as if they’ve been out half the night. Yuki opens another beer and pours herself another whiskey. Then she digs down into her rucksack for her pipe. Shows Denny how to hold it, how to nip it in the side of your mouth and stare off into the distance, as if conte
mplating something significant. How to take it apart.
They talk a little about Eanie Talbot and her visit from Mr Hope and Mr Fukurai, when she was such a young girl. Then they lie on their backs with the main light out and Yuki slowly moves the light from the headtorch around the ceiling, and tells Denny about Koichi Mita and how he and Tomokichi Fukurai claimed to have produced photographs of the far side of the moon, by having Koichi Mita reach out for it with his imagination and Fukurai catch it on a photographic plate.
She holds the light steady on a crack in the ceiling, then turns the torch off. So that the crack seems to burn there in the dark, before slowly fading away. Does this three or four times, at different points around the ceiling. And thinks, If an image can burn itself into your mind like that, why can’t a thought be strong enough to be caught in a photograph?
Then she turns the torch on and off, on and off another few times – as if quietly mesmerising herself and Denny. Until finally she turns the torch off, the darkness moves in around them, and she fails to turn it on again.
When you’re out in the cold the moment you stop moving, your body adjusts its settings from that of a machine intent on action to one in something close to repose. The heartbeat slackens, slowing the tides of blood out to your extremities so that, in severely cold conditions, your fingers and toes will start to go numb. Pretty soon your mental faculties will lose their sharpness. If you speak you’ll find yourself slurring. Worse, you’ll be more inclined to make bad decisions.
Early on you’ll be shivering, and this is a good thing, since shivering denotes a body still capable of retrieval – of being dragged back into a fully functioning state. In fact, all the above are simply the natural consequences of a body losing heat faster than the rate it produces it. When you quit shivering you really are in trouble, because suddenly it’s not just your limbs that have succumbed to the cold but your torso – that treasure chest of prized possessions – and once the cold sets to work on your heart, your lungs and liver there really is no going back.
Yukiko has read how bats and bears are able to reduce their pulse and metabolic rate to such a degree that they can drift through the winter months in a sort of torpor. They’ll have taken care to tuck themselves away out of the wind beforehand, but significantly they have a mechanism which allows their temperature to fall to a survivable slumber, which we humans lack. If our temperature starts to drop without impediment it will just keep on dropping. Our pulse will subside, along with our breathing. We’ll feel confused and profoundly sleepy, which segues easily into loss of consciousness. Then the body is given over to the elements, which know no better and so are merciless.
It is not uncommon that, in the latter stages of hypothermia, the victim’s blood vessels dilate through sheer exhaustion, allowing warm blood to rush from the body’s core. They will suddenly feel as if they’re roasting and be inclined to rip away their clothes. Yukiko has been assured this didn’t happen with her mother, which is some comfort to her. Knowing that the last short while of her life wasn’t beset with that particular torment. It allows her to imagine her mother hunched and quiet. Allows for some sort of dignified cessation. Although in the end, it is still her mother. Her mother, all alone out in the snow.
Something strange has been working its way into Yukiko’s dreams, without her quite being able to comprehend it. Something musical, mechanical.
Then Denny’s voice saying, OK. And, I said OK.
The middle of the night still, but the lamp on the bedside table has been turned on – is blinding. Denny makes her way round the room, pulling on her jacket, tucking her phone in her pocket. I’ve got to go, she says.
And she suddenly looks so very young, so deeply aggrieved at the world. The power it wields over her.
You’ll still be here tomorrow, won’t you?
Yes, says Yukiko.
Denny insists that she mustn’t leave town without first talking to her. Makes her promise. We need to go and get my shoe, she says.
She’s over at the door now, faltering, as if she’s forgotten something. Until finally she walks back over to Yukiko, leans in and kisses her on her forehead. Then the light goes out on the bedside table. The door opens, closes. And Yuki is on her own again.
For a while, Yukiko lies in the dark, her stomach burning again from the beer and whiskey. Then she kicks back the sheets and creeps across the corridor to the bathroom, where she sits, shielding her eyes from the impossible whiteness of the enamel and porcelain. She puts her head under the tap and takes three or four gulps of water. Slips back to her bedroom, up into bed, still fully clothed. Then lies there, waiting for sleep to move back in on her. But within a minute knows that it’s not about to come anywhere near her any time soon.
She puts a little more thought into her preparation for this expedition. Digs out a fleece. Pulls on a second pair of trousers. Checks the route two or three times before stepping out into the cold.
Once I’ve seen it, she thinks. Once I’ve gone right up and touched it, then I’ll be done.
As she leaves town and walks back out onto the moor the air is still and clear around her. The temperature’s dropped way down but the snow on the ground gives out a steady glow, as if charged with daylight as it fell and now slowly releasing that light back into the atmosphere.
She finds she doesn’t worry about getting lost. If she misses her target, she thinks, she’ll just keep on walking. Sooner or later she’ll end up back in Japan. But she does worry about wolves – tucked under the snow or creeping low across it. She wonders whether the dog that bit her in the ass was ever retrieved by its owner. What if she and Denny made the dog so angry that it reverted to savagery? What if, rather than return to a fireside rug and food in a bowl, it chose a life out here on the moors, in the ice-cold air? A dog like that, in that sort of state, would be a handful – would be able to smell Yukiko and her wound a mile away.
The streetlights are way behind her before she turns her torch on. She walks along holding it up like a tiny searchlight. Then stops and pulls it over her head. It seems to slot right back into the circular groove it left there earlier. I’m like some half-human/half-robotic being, she thinks. I should just wire the thing straight into my brain.
For the first half hour or so the landscape looks pretty familiar, despite it being buried beneath the snow. The stile over the wall where Yukiko crouched and waited for the Elders to go on without her. Then up onto the ridge, before the path drops down towards the stream. Yuki had a good look at the map back at the B & B, so she’s reasonably confident where she should leave the path. After a while she stops and watches her breath before her. There’s a faint breeze now, cold on her face. She turns, climbs up onto the bank of the path and out into the open snow. It’s a little deeper here and the ground beneath it a little more perilous. And Yuki knows that there’s practically no significant feature between here and the wind-bent tree.
After ten minutes or so she reaches the end of the ridge, pulls the map out and squints down at it – at the mark Denny made on it. Trying to gauge at what sort of angle she should leave the ridge to find it. And it’s in that stillness that she first senses something else out on the moors with her. She looks up and sweeps the snow with her headtorch – and catches something – but when she swings her head back, it’s gone.
She does her best to calm herself down, but that brief blur of movement now burrows away into her. She’s already retracing her steps in her mind, calculating how far it is back to the path, the stile, the streetlights – and how likely it is she’d be able to cover that distance before something else intervenes.
She looks around again. Then forces herself forward. The darkness feels deeper now, disturbed. She manages another eight or so steps before there’s another sound, she looks up and, way off in the darkness, sees a pair of green eyes.
This is my punishment, she thinks, for being so determined to scare poor Denny.
She watches those green eyes and knows that they’re no
t of this world. And now Yukiko fears not just for her physical being but her mind, her soul.
Then the luminous eyes blink – once, twice. And a plaintive Baa comes rolling over the snow towards her.
Wild dogs and wolves don’t make a Baa sound, she thinks. And a malevolent spirit would let out some guttural howl – or no sound at all, till it was on top of you. She takes a couple of shuffled steps in the eyes’ direction. Then a couple more. The eyes slowly acquire a face, a body. She’s about ten metres from the creature now, which stares squarely back at her, a pair of knotty horns sprouting up from the wool on its head.
They eye each other up for a moment, then Yukiko goes round to one side, to give it plenty of room, and is almost right alongside it before she notices the thick lintel of snow along the sheep’s back. Well, that would drive me insane, she thinks, and is tempted to try and sweep it off, to make life a little more bearable for it. But then wonders if the snow might actually provide some extra insulation. Whether, perhaps, it is a traditional thing.
In Yuki’s experience sheep tend to stand in your way, rock-solid, up to the very last moment when they go skittering away. But she’s right beside it now with still no sign of it moving. Maybe it imagines I’ve come out here to feed it, she thinks. Maybe the farmer wears a headtorch and the sheep is hoping for some late-night snack.
Then, when Yukiko is close enough to see the tiny ridges and fissures on its horns – is considering reaching out and even touching it – the sheep suddenly jolts and turns. It drives its hooves at the snow, but barely moves. And as it heaves away Yukiko sees several lengths of barbed wire tangled in the wool around its backside. And, at the other end of the wire, a large chunk of fencepost dragging along the ground.
Now that it’s finally making a little progress the sheep shows no sign of stopping. It struggles on, as if trying to plough its own rough furrow in the snow. Yuki follows it for a while, horrified. Mentally riffles through the contents of her pockets, her rucksack, but comes up with nothing that will cut through wire, or even wool.