A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) (25 page)

"Mr. Yamato threatened to
send the police," Ume replied.

"But it wasn't just that,
was it?" Mai asked.

Ume pushed her hair back again. She
seemed to want to speak, but to be struggling with the words. Had she come back
to face what she had done? Mai believed so.

"You might feel better if
you tell her you're sorry," Mai suggested.

Ume glared at her. "Who? Akane?
Don't be stupid, girl. Akane Murakami is dead."

"Not Akane," Mai said,
nodding toward the hospital bed. "Sakura. You took her sister from her. Your
crime and her rage and grief brought Kyuketsuki here. She and her friends are
cursed because of you."

Ume's face contorted with
clashing emotions. Her eyes began to fill with tears.

"I am cursed!
I
am!"
Ume said.

"By guilt," Mai said,
her voice low.

"Yes, by guilt! I never . .
. it wasn't my . . ." Ume said, but she could not find the words to
express the emotion welling up within her. She wiped her tears away even as her
anger drained away. Her breath hitched and she let out a terrible sigh of
surrender.

Surrender to the truth.

Ume turned her back on Mai and
reached down to take Sakura's hand.

"I'm sorry," she said
quietly, shoulders quaking as she wept.

And then she stiffened, a small
noise coming from her throat. Mai frowned, wondering what had happened to her. Ume
had frozen as though something had frightened her. But then Sakura began to
shift on the hospital bed, the beeping on the machines began to speed up, and
Mai saw that the comatose girl had gripped Ume's hand and started to pull her
down.

"Is she —" Mai
began.

But then Sakura's eyes fluttered
open and Mai fell silent. The injured girl had bleary eyes, but she blinked a
few times and she came fully awake. Something shone in those eyes, a
tranquility and happiness that seemed incredible in that moment.

"Sakura's friends are in
trouble," Sakura herself whispered, but her voice sounded so strange, not
unlike her at all.

"What?" Ume asked,
trying to step back but unable to break the girl's grip. "What do you
mean, 'Sakura's friends?'"

Sakura smiled weakly, then
nodded. "A small mistake. My friends, of course." She shifted her
gaze toward Mai. "Kara and Miho and all of those with them . . . they are
not going to be able to make it back for the ritual."

Mai shook her head. "How do
you . . . how could you know that? You've been unconscious."

Sakura blinked and for a moment
she seemed disoriented again, and then that strange light inside her eyes had
gone.

"I dreamed it," she
said, sounding as surprised as Mai felt. "But it's true. We have to go to
them."

Sakura threw back her covers,
reached over and pulled out her IV needle.

"What are you doing?"
Ume demanded. "You were dying!"

That gave Sakura pause. "Dying?"
she asked, sounding sad and afraid. She looked down at her body. "Maybe I
was, but not anymore."

Mai stared at the girl, shaking
her head. "But how is that possible?"

Sakura smiled. "You've all
been seeing ghosts. I finally saw one, too. The one I've been waiting for."
She turned to look at Ume. "She doesn't like you very much."

Ume began to back away, hugging
herself as if she were cold, looking around the room. "Akane?"

Sakura tapped her chest. "She's
in here." Then she put a hand across her forehead. "And in here."

"And you're . . . better?"
Mai asked, wondering if Sakura might actually be losing her mind. But she
dismissed the thought immediately. Her sudden strength and healing were no
hallucination.

Sakura glanced from Mai to Ume.
"The ghosts are here to help. But Kubo was right. I hate you, Ume. You
need to pay for what you've done. But if we're to break Kyuketsuki's curse, the
Unsui is going to need us both there. We need to go now!"

Kara ran, snow crunching
underfoot, arms up to protect her face from branches whipping by. Her heart
hammered in her chest and her skin felt flush with terror, not for herself, but
for her friends. Behind her she heard a grunt and glanced back to see Miss
Aritomo stumble and fall, sprawling across a bush. Without a thought she darted
back, grabbed Yuuka's upraised hand and hauled her to her feet, and Miss
Aritomo fell into step behind her again.

"Where are we going?"
Miss Aritomo asked, struggling to catch her breath.

"I don't know exactly,"
Kara told her, not for the first time.

She expected Miss Aritomo to
argue, but the woman said nothing more. They ran through a clearing amongst a
circle of pines where the snow was deeper and it slowed them down, but moments
later they emerged into the open area of the Takigami Mountain Observatory. The
snow had started to come down hard, driven by the wind.

"Okay, we're here,"
Kara huffed.

They had gotten off the path but
she had not wanted to spare even the few moments it would have taken for them
to find it again. Now they sprinted past snowpacked picnic tables and reached
the far side of the observatory area, and Kara could not believe it had been
only days since they were here last, days since the field trip that had ended
with Sora dead and Hachiro and Ren missing.

Wiping snow from her eyes, Kara
whipped out her phone, hit the button to dial Miho, and was answered instantly.

"Hey," Miho said,
breathing hard but trying to be quiet just the same.

"We're at the observatory. Where
to now?"

"Head northwest. Kubo says
there's an old trail. You'll find it, he says. It leads down at an angle. We'll
meet you on the west face. There's a cave there —"

"A cave! We should be
headed for the car!" Kara said. "This is crazy!"

She started into the trees,
searching for the trail Miho mentioned. Yuuka Aritomo followed, and Kara couldn't
believe she did not speak up. They'd spent precious seconds arguing after
Yuki-Onna had left them behind on the southern slope of the mountain. Miss
Aritomo was right, Kara knew. They should have headed back down to the parking
lot right then. But when Kara had called to warn Miho and Kubo and Mr. Yamato
that the witch had figured out their plan and was on her way, Kubo had insisted
they all be together.

Kara had hesitated, but then she
heard Hachiro's voice in the background and her heart leapt. "Is that him?
He's alive?"

When Miho confirmed that both
Hachiro and Ren were alive, Kara had started running up the mountain toward the
observatory. She hadn't given Miss Aritomo another second to argue. Whatever
happened, she and Hachiro needed to be together.

But now . . . a cave?

"Kubo says not to worry,"
Miho said.

"How can he say that?"
Kara demanded. She pushed a branch out of the way and saw a kind of natural
path through the trees that must have been the trail the old monk wanted them
to take.

The line crackled. The wind
where Miho was must be blowing hard. Kara could hear it roaring loudly now. Miho
said something else, but Kara had trouble making out the words.

"What?" Kara said.
"What was that?"
"The storm . . . Yuki-Onna . . ."

"She's there?"

Kara started down the trail,
barely aware of Miss Aritomo following. The snow had started to pick up around
them as well, the wind gusting, trees swaying.

"Not yet. But she's near. We
have to hide. Just get to that cave. The ghosts will show you the way."

"What do you mean?"
Kara asked.

But all she heard was the hiss
of static. She shoved the phone in her pocket, picking up her pace, rushing
along the old trail, ducking branches that were weighted down low with snow. The
world had turned to a white blur around her.

Over the wind, she almost didn't
hear Miss Aritomo calling her name. But then Yuuka shouted louder and Kara
turned to see the teacher, buried inside her thick winter coat, running to
catch up to her, eyes wide.

"What is it?" Kara
asked, stopping to wait for her. A ripple of fear went through her. "Yuki-Onna?"

Miss Aritomo shook her head. She
tried to speak but had been running so hard that she did not have the breath
for it. Instead she pointed into the trees on the side of the path. Kara looked
over and caught a glimpse of a figure in the woods, but with the wind and the
snow turning everything a ghostly white, it took her a moment to realize that
the elderly woman she saw amongst the trees was not alive.

The ghosts will show you the
way.

Another stepped up beside the
first, this one the spirit of a young man. She did not recognize either of
them, but stared in fascination at the way the snow passed right through them.

As one, they pointed along the
path. Kara looked at Miss Aritomo, saw an expression of astonishment that she
knew must match her own, and then they both looked toward where the ghosts were
pointing.

"I know that girl,"
Miss Aritomo said, her voice like a whisper in the roar of the storm.

"Chouku," Kara said. Once,
the girl had been one of Ume's soccer club friends, but that was before her
blood had been drained from her body by the creature Kyuketsuki had sent to
prey on Monju-no-Chie school.

In life, Chouku had been a
pretty girl with a full, round face and intelligent eyes. Now she had no
substance at all. As gusts of wind swept curtains of snow across the path, she
seemed to fade in and out of the world.

The ghost gave Kara a meaningful
glance and then turned, leaving the trail and hurrying through the trees. Kara
started to follow and Miss Aritomo grabbed her arm.

"What are you doing?"

Kara took her hand. "The
ghosts will show us the way."

"The way to what?"

There were a dozen answers to
that, but Kara did not feel certain of any of them. She pretended that the wind
had stolen the words away and ran along the trail and into the woods, chasing
ghosts.

Miho tripped on a snow-covered
stone and nearly fell. Mr. Yamato caught her by the arm and they ran together. Her
face stung with the cold and the speed of the snow pelting down around them. The
storm had kicked up only seconds after Kara had first called her to say that
Yuki-Onna had figured them out and was on her way back, and they'd been running
ever since. Now it raged around them, the wind so strong that it had knocked
her over twice.

They bent against the storm, all
of them fringed with snow and ice, their hair crested white. The cold bit deep
into Miho's bones and her teeth chattered and her eyes watered, tears freezing
on her cheeks.

Ren and Hachiro straggled
behind, both of them weak. The storm beat at them but they kept running,
practically stumbling down the mountain. Hachiro held Ren by the arm, but Miho
wasn't sure if this was to maintain his own balance or to keep the smaller boy
from behind swept off into the trees by the screaming wind.

"Look out!" Mr. Yamato
yelled.

Soundless, a huge tree fell
across their path, branches snapping off, shards tossed into the maelstrom and
whipped up into the storm. The gale was roaring so loudly that they had not
even heard the crack of the old tree giving way.

Up ahead, Kubo climbed over the
fallen tree without slowing. When Miho and Mr. Yamato tried to follow, the principal
slipped and scraped his knee on the bark.

"I can't see anything in
this!" he said, reaching up to tear away the mask Kubo had insisted he
wear once they knew the witch had discovered their ruse. Miho and the boys had
the wards the monk had given them, and Kubo had whatever mystical defenses he
had mustered, but Mr. Yamato had only the mask.

"No!" Miho shouted,
grabbing his wrist. "The Unsui said you cannot remove it!"

Mr. Yamato swore, shocking her,
but he kept the mask on as they scrambled over the tree. By then, Ren and
Hachiro had caught up and came right behind them, and then they were all
following Kubo down into a thicket of dense brush. They forged their way
through, the sky growing darker.

"I'm so cold," Miho
said, too quietly for any of the others to hear over the storm. She especially
did not want Ren and Hachiro to hear her, knowing that however cold she might
be, it would be nothing compared to what they had endured at the hands of the
Woman in White.

Miho watched Kubo, careful to
follow his every step. Beyond him she could see several ghosts urging them on,
racing ahead and then beckoning for them to follow. The old monk seemed able to
do more than see them. Miho thought he could hear them as well, or understood
them some other way, for he insisted they were here to help, that the presence
of the winter witch had given them a kind of anchor in the world, had woken
those who had not yet accepted their own deaths. Ren had wondered why the
ghosts would help them, then, since that sounded to him like a good thing, and
the answer had been simple. Death — at least until their spirits passed
from this world into the next — was hollow and cold, and if Yuki-Onna
meant to kill, they meant to stop her.

Especially if she meant to kill
people they loved.

One of the spirits ahead was
Sora. Miho had seen Hana earlier as well. Now she glanced back through the
storm and saw three figures rushing after her and Mr. Yamato, two living boys
and one dead one — Jiro's ghost. In life, Jiro had been Hachiro's best friend.
Now the boy's spirit raced along between Hachiro and Ren as if he were alive as
well and in just as much peril. But he did not feel the cold that clawed their
bones and slashed their skin.

"Are they still here?"
Mr. Yamato asked. "The ghosts?"

It wasn't the mask blocking his
vision. Of all of them, Mr. Yamato was the only one who had never encountered
the supernatural directly before. He could not see the ghosts. He had to take
their presence, and Kubo's words, on faith.