Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
FENRIR
PRESENT
She’s looking at me like I’m a fucking nutjob.
Can I blame her?
But I know what I saw.
Her shadow?
No. Not Hayami’s shadow.
Then whose?
Kuchisake-Onna?
It was making its way towards Hayami. If this is Kuchisake-Onna, then what is her purpose other than to put the fear of God into me?
I should tell Hayami what I believe is happening here, but I doubt she’ll believe me, and she has enough going on without worrying about ghosts. I will tell her, but not until I have the full picture, and I won’t have that until I’ve finished reading Junko’s journal.
Hayami picks up her phone. “I’m setting an alarm for four hours. Then we’ll swap.” She places her phone on the bedside table before settling back onto the pillow.
I don’t like the idea of being asleep at night. But she’s right. There’s no way I can stay awake for a whole eight hours. But can I trust her to keep watch?
Yes, of course I can. It’s the other thing I can’t trust.
Kuchisake-Onna.
The shadow had been about to devour Hayami. It had been about to slink into her body and take over the controls, just like I’ve seen on several occasions now, and I won’t allow it. If I leave Hayami awake and vulnerable, it could do anything to her, make her do anything, and I can’t take that risk.
I’m sure now that this is what stalks the walls of this house.
Kuchisake-Onna. It’s what Kevin’s father saw the night he was leaving the house.
Did Noa see it too? Did she experience Kuchisake-Onna, and that’s what caused her to miscarry her child?
Did she die of fright, of heartbreak that she’d lost her baby?
The only thing I do know is that nothing seems to happen during the day, only at night.
“I’ll sleep when the sun rises,” I tell Hayami. “That’s non-negotiable.” I settle on the small sofa in the corner of the room, sit back, and rest my ankle on my knee.
She throws me a stern look, one I’ve seen countless times before as she’s geared herself up to argue with me, but then her shoulders drop along with her arms, and tiredness washes over her face.
“You drive a hard bargain,” she says before turning off the small lamp and closing her eyes.
There’s a gap in the curtains where I’d been checking on the snow. A purple glow slithers into the room, casting enough light for me to see Hayami’s face. Her face. Not the contortion of that thing. Not the face of Kuchisake-Onna. Just Hayami’s beautiful face.
I can still feel her arms around me after I shot the shadow, felt her heart beating against my chest as she clung to me as if her life depended on it. And I’d held her like she was mine. And the minute she let go, I felt bereft.
Hayami is right. Sleep deprivation is playing tricks with me, addling my brain into thinking things that aren’t true, and I don’t mean the ghost. I’m referring to the fact that I keep imagining that Hayami could be mine.
That she might feel an ounce of what I feel for her, and that she might fall into my arms willingly.
What I wouldn’t give to crawl under the covers and hold her, feel her skin against my own, let my hands claim what I believe to be mine, let my tongue take what it wants, and watch her unravel.
It will never be.
How could she ever feel that way about someone like me? Someone who wears my scars like armour and whose history is etched on my body like graffiti? She could never want me.
She will never want me.
I need to stop thinking like this, imagining things that’ll never be, and concentrate on the very real problem of what is happening in this house. So, I pick up Junko’s journal and pull up the torch on my phone, aiming it at the open pages.
Day Eight
Since hearing Kevin’s story of what happened the night his dad dropped off the late delivery, I should feel more afraid of the house and what it hides.
I should be scared.
But instead, I’m curious.
How can a folklore, a legend from my home country, be here with me on Hellion Ridge? For that is what I have always believed Kuchisake-Onna to be: a legend, a myth, a story. Not dissimilar to the bogeyman or Bloody Mary. They’re just stories invented to scare people.
Is that what this is? A scary story? And how would that explain what Kevin’s father saw?
He wouldn’t know anything about Kuchisake-Onna, so he couldn’t have had any preconceived ideas that might influence his thinking.
And if he didn’t see Kuchisake-Onna, then who or what did he see?
Because a grown man doesn’t return home the way Kevin described when nothing has happened.
Is it this house? Is it playing tricks on me? Playing tricks on others?
Barrett appears immune to it all. He strides about the house looking perfectly content.
The only thing that appears to rile him is if there’s a problem with one of his businesses or something going on with his people.
He doesn’t tell me what he does, and if I’m honest, I don’t want to know.
He’s a rich man, but he isn’t a good one.
I should never have married him, but I was blinded by his looks, his wealth, his charm, and the promise of a better life. Because who doesn’t want a better life?
Day Eleven
It was the strangest thing, the strangest feeling, as if someone had taken over my mind.
I went into the town to do some shopping and popped in on Kevin at the general store, who said I looked well, which I took as a compliment. I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts of late, but I’ve put this down to the house and being so cut off from the world up here.
The visit to town did me good. It stretched my legs and reminded me that there is life beyond this house and these walls.
Barrett was in the library for most of the day, making calls and sending emails. In the evening, I cooked us a meal, which he seemed to push around his plate as if trying to get away from it. Nevertheless, he drank the wine I bought and then told me it was time to make an heir.
We went up to the master bedroom, my food sitting heavily in my stomach. I performed my wifely duties. That’s what it feels like. There’s no passion, no romance, no attention to me other than to make sure his seed gets to where it needs to be.
As soon as it was over, he scurried off into the en suite and left me with my hips raised on a pillow, staring at the ceiling.
And that’s when it happened.
There was something odd about the air above me; it pulsed before my eyes as if a great heat had penetrated the room, even though it felt cold.
I blinked several times, wondering if there was something wrong with my vision, that I was developing cataracts or experiencing an aura from a migraine, but no.
The air continued to shimmer before me as if the colours in the room were mixing, like a painting that had been tipped up and wasn’t quite dry yet.
And the ripples got closer and closer and closer.
I couldn’t move for two reasons. First, I’m trying to get pregnant, as it’s the only way Barrett will be happy, and second, I was mesmerised by the sight. The fear didn’t arrive until it was too late, until the ripples were right in front of my eyes, and then they were behind them.
It was like being engulfed, swallowed whole, my body consumed by the shimmering light that had been hovering above me not seconds before.
Pain radiated through my body, searing hot torment across my face, and a spasm in my stomach, an emptiness that threatened to consume me. Desperation flooded me, mingling with darkness and sorrow.
Scratching at my skin, I tried to claw this feeling away, tried to pull it from my body, but it was stuck fast and wouldn’t let me go. It held me in an iron grip until tears sprang from my eyes and stung the burning in my cheeks.
All I remember after that is Barrett standing over me, yelling at me to put the scissors down.
He wrenched them from my hand. I had no idea what I was intending to do with them, but when he tore them from my fingers, it was like a slap to the face, like waking from a bad dream, and I was back in the room—me, Junko, not the darkness that had blinded me.
Barrett shouted, asked me what the fuck I was doing.
Pressing my hand to my face, I expected wet, oozing blood, but my fingers came away clear, only sweat coating my skin.
I glanced down at my stomach, expecting to see a huge gash gushing with blood, but again, there was no wound.
Quickly, I checked the scissors. There was no blood coating the blades.
I told him that I didn’t know what I was doing, which was the truth, and he said I looked deranged. He started to say more but then stopped himself, as if he didn’t want to say what or who I looked like. What had I reminded him of?
This is the only time I have seen him spooked. The only time since we arrived in this house that I’ve seen the businesslike facade slip.
What the hell happened to me? Was it Kuchisake-Onna? Had she visited me? And why had Barrett looked so afraid of me when it is I who am afraid of him?
Letting the journal flop in my hand, I see now what might be going on here.
Kuchisake-Onna is infiltrating their bodies.
She did it to Junko. She’s doing it to Hayami.
And maybe she did it to Noa. Kevin’s dad described seeing a woman by the side of the road, but she wasn’t pregnant, so did he see Kuchisake-Onna herself?
Is this why Junko relies on drugs and alcohol to get her through the days and has never returned to Belial House, because she’d been possessed by an evil spirit?
Or is this all just a product of my sleep-deprived brain?
Maybe I’m the one who’s being possessed, and none of this is real.