A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (10 page)

"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.

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 foyer 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.

Monju-no-Chie school stood on a
slight hill which sloped downward to the shore of Miyazu Bay. Sakura stuck
close to the line of trees at the edge of the school's property as she walked
down to the water, passing the place where — more than a year before —
students had made a different kind of shrine to remember her sister.

Akane had been murdered right
here on the shore. Sakura could not walk down to the bay — or even glance
at this spot — without picturing the savage beating that the police said
her sister had received. Akane had been forced under the water, drowned right
here. And yet it had never occurred to Sakura's parents the torment to which
they consigned her, leaving her at this school, where she would run this
hideous scenario through her mind every single day.

Not that she would have wished
to go elsewhere. Sakura felt at home here, and loved her friends. But Akane's
murder always felt fresh to her, no matter how much time had passed. She had
let go of the rage toward her sister's killer, helped by the fact that Ume was
no longer at Monju-no-Chie school, but she had not forgiven the girl, and never
would. And her sorrow remained.

Yet she alone, among all of her
friends, had not seen a ghost.

Sakura took out a cigarette and
lit it. The tip flared a bright orange and then dimmed to an ember's glow. She
drew smoke into her lungs and then exhaled, smoke mixing with the mist of her
warm breath in the cold air.

"Are you there?" she
said, speaking softly in the dark.

The only answer came from the
lapping of the bay upon the shore. No ghosts revealed themselves to her.

It didn't seem fair.

Hachiro had never been so cold.

He huddled on the ground with
his knees drawn up beneath him, his back against a thick tree trunk. Twice
during the long afternoon he had found the strength to force himself to his
feet and he had tried to run, but both times she had caught him. Her touch had
been as light as a breeze, but it froze him rigid, as though ice had formed on
his bones. In his mind he could picture ice floes forming on the surface of a
river, the water slowing and then ceasing altogether, and he knew that she
could have done the same to his blood.

Winter had such beauty, and yet
it could be fierce. Winter could kill so easily.

The Woman in White had a touch
of winter, but her gaze was far worse. It had drained his will, turned him into
little more than a puppet, a marionette held up by icicle strings. Twice he had
managed to summon enough willpower to break those strings, to attempt escape,
but now he had used the last vestiges of that will, and the last of his hope.

The tree against his back was
the only thing he trusted, now. The only thing that did not seem intent upon
making him suffer. The rest of the world was winter. Moonlight streamed through
the bare branches above, making long finger-shadows that seemed to reach for
him across the snow. His body felt stiff and if he shifted even an inch, his
bones ached so much he feared the marrow had frozen. Hachiro felt brittle, as
though a fall or a blow might shatter him.

Safer, then, to stay right here.

Hachiro's teeth chattered and
his whole body shook from the cold. When he closed his eyes, the lids and
eyelashes stuck together, threatening to freeze. His hair was frosted with ice,
his pants covered with a coating of snow that clung to the fabric, almost as
though the winter hoped to consume him, draw him down into the snow and make
him a part of it forever.

The night seemed to go on
forever.

He thought of his parents and
wondered if he would ever see them again. In his heart, he knew the answer, and
it filled him with grief, as much for them as for himself. He thought of Kara
and knew that she must be terrified for him. Hachiro would have given anything
to have been able to hold her, to touch her hair and whisper softly to her, to
tell her it would be all right.

But it wouldn't be.

Even now, he could hear Ren
crying, begging to be set free. Hachiro hated himself because he could not make
his legs work, could not make himself stand and fight, could not save Ren from
the Woman in White.

She did not want Hachiro to
watch. It had been she who placed him here, against this tree, facing into the
woods and the cross-hatching of moonshadows that spread across the snow.

Ren called his name.

Hachiro closed his eyes, wishing
he could close his ears as well, and his heart. Instead he forced himself to
try again to move, and was surprised to find that he had the power to turn his
head. A spark of hope rose within him and he took a moment to muster his
strength and his courage before twisting around to see, to help. But as he
tried to get his feet beneath him, his body would not obey him. The Woman in
White had sapped his will and the cold had sapped his strength. He realized
that he could no longer feel his feet, or his lower legs. His hands were like
clubs, no longer even connected to his body.

He lay on his side in the snow,
unable to move even to lift himself into a sitting position again. He managed
to twist his head to keep his face out of the snow, and there in the moonlight
and winter shadows, he saw the Woman in White. Her beauty stole his breath
away.

She stood just a few feet away
from Ren, who floated above the ground, tossed to and fro by the winds that she
controlled. Snow whipped at him, turning him round and round, toying with him. Hachiro
had thought of himself as a marionette, but the Woman in White had turned Ren
into a real puppet, and now she made him dance even as she caressed him with
the wind and the snow at her command.

"
Beautiful
,"
she whispered. "
So beautiful
."

Hachiro closed his eyes and the
icy grip of winter carried him down into the darkness.

On Tuesday morning, Kara woke to
the sound of the doorbell. She squinted against the sunshine that flooded
through her window as she dragged herself out of bed, and when she looked
outside and saw the lovely, gauzy blue sky, a terrible guilt descended upon
her. How could she have slept so soundly, so well, when Hachiro might be dead? He
might be frozen, like Sora, still lost upon that mountain, and she had managed
a wonderful, restorative sleep without a single nightmare.