The Suffering Read online

  I suppose a show of gratitude was too much to expect. “I got the job done, all right? That’s more than you were able to do.” I lift the garbage bag. “Wanna burn it?”

  Sondheim takes a step back, eyeing the sack like it ate his grandmother. “Uh, no way, man. I’m not touching that.”

  Figures.

  “You’re sure it’s not going to come back?” Trish speaks up uncertainly. “I mean, really sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “My mom’s vase.” Sondheim moans. “And the painting’s got a hole in it!”

  “It’s only a Manet reproduction,” I say. “And kitsch is in nowadays.” The side effect of being a spoiled rich kid is that I know how much things cost.

  The jock glares. Okiku stops by the vase’s corpse and begins counting the broken pieces.

  “I should never have listened to you,” Sondheim snaps, turning on his girlfriend. “Why the hell did you want to play some stupid ghost game anyway?”

  “Beth and Lisa played it,” the cheerleader whines, tugging at a strand of golden hair. “Nothing happened to them.”

  “That’s because you didn’t follow the rules.” I speak up, not feeling particularly sympathetic. One-man tag is a ritual that has no real purpose other than to mess with nearby spirits. Invite one into a doll’s body, fool around with it for an hour to prove your manliness, then—hopefully—send it back to where it came from without repercussion. It’s supposed to be a test of courage.

  “You didn’t use salt water, you didn’t bother cleansing the place with incense beforehand, and worst of all, you didn’t finish the game. You might have gotten away with that if you’d been in a public place, but by summoning a spirit here, you might as well have drawn a large exclamation point over your house.”

  Both stare blankly at me. “How the hell could we finish the game after seeing that…that thing stand up?” Sondheim demands.

  “Beth and Lisa said the doll just lay there when they tried it,” Trish chimes in.

  Inwardly, I groan. About the only smart thing they did tonight was call me for help, though being woken up at two in the morning by people who never give me the time of day isn’t something I enjoy. I don’t even know how they got my number.

  “Yeah, well, if you’re not prepared to see things go bump in the night, then don’t go playing with dolls in the first place.”

  I heft the garbage bag over my shoulder, knowing this will be the first and only time I score one over on Andrew Sondheim. “And one last thing, not that I’d recommend there be a next time—but at least pick a better name than ‘Dumbelina.’ You don’t want to anger the creature before the game even starts. You might not wanna take it seriously, but believe me: it takes you very, very seriously. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a doll to burn and classes in the morning.”

  I walk out, Okiku trailing after me. I can hear bits of an argument starting up again after the door closes behind me. The two of them will probably tell everyone what happened here tonight, stirring up new rumors to cement my status as a freak, but I don’t really care. Trish has a fondness for hyperbole, so it’s not like anyone in school will believe her.

  It’s 4:30 a.m. and I’m tired—but glad I only live a few blocks away. I bike back to my house and let myself in, not bothering to be quiet about it. Dad’s away on business and won’t be home ’til late afternoon, so I’ve got plenty of time.

  I burn the doll in a metal trash bin I found in a junkyard several months ago. Most days it sits half hidden behind some bushes in the garden. Dad probably doesn’t even know it’s there. I’ve used it about thirty-five times.

  It’s a quick and easy bonfire. I empty the contents of the garbage bag into the can, making sure I don’t leave anything out, then strike a match.

  The doll burns easily enough. Its beady black eyes watch me until its face disappears into the flames and smoke. Soon, nothing will remain of it but black soot and angry memories.

  When there is nothing left of the doll, Okiku smiles. She always does.

  It’s not that I have to do these exorcisms. I’m not responding to some higher calling that insists I don a cape, cowl, and tight spandex to rid my city of crime. I’m not about righting wrongs. All these creatures I’ve been trapping and killing during the last several months—there’s no real purpose to it. I tell Sondheim not to meddle in things he has no understanding of, but I’m just as guilty. I mess around with spirits, test the boundaries of my fears, see how far I can step over the line without falling over.

  Besides, Okiku delights in the hunt. She ended life as a victim and started death as an avenger. She doesn’t kill for any higher purpose. She doesn’t need a reason to take someone’s life. She does it because she can. And I get that. I’ve been a victim for most of my life. She changed that.

  I tell myself I’m doing this—ridding the world of these things that go bump in the night—because I want to. I tell myself I’m doing this because I’m not going to spend the rest of my life as prey.

  I tell myself it’s an adrenaline rush.

  And, admittedly, that’s where the stupidity comes in.

  Okiku senses where my mind is wandering, and curiosity crosses her dead, mottled face.

  “I’m all right. Let’s finish this.”

  She smiles again.

  Together, we stand and watch the night burn.

  Chapter Two

  Girls

  I used to forget it was Okiku and not the masked woman of my childhood in the room with me. I used to wake up screaming with nightmares. The only times I’ve ever seen Okiku look helpless are when I buck out of bed covered in sweat and crying. She’ll wrap her withered arms around me; she’s not used to comforting anyone, but she tries all the same.

  Then a miko of Chinsei shrine, Kagura, offered to teach me the rituals, teach me how to exorcise the demons in my head and the demons around me. “To protect you,” she said. Everything I know about containing spirits, I learned from the former priestess.

  The first exorcism I performed on my own was nine months ago in Japan. The ghost had appeared to be a kindly old lady, asking for something sweet to drink. When I produced the doll and apologized, she was no longer kindly. Or old. Or, after an unexpected transformation, a woman.

  Kagura scolded me, said she wasn’t teaching me these traditions so I could go out and be proactive without supervision. If she’d had her way, it would have been at least two more years before I could execute these rituals on my own.

  I pointed out the need for constant practice and that Okiku was there to make sure I got out with my skin intact. It took a lot of convincing—and stretching the truth about how frequently I use these talents and on what—though Kagura has never stopped worrying. Between her and my cousin, Callie, I’ve got all the mothering I could ever need.

  After I caught my first spirit, I slept like a baby for the first time in months. Most mornings arrive easy like that now.

  This morning, I wake sputtering out tangles of hair. Sometimes I suspect that Okiku’s dark locks have their own sentience. They slip beneath my pillow and burrow into my blankets. A chosen few wrap around my arm like a protective cocoon.

  All the while, Okiku never moves. She’s curled up on the ceiling, near the headboard, and her hollow eyes stare straight ahead without blinking. To call what she does “sleep” is like calling couch surfing an extreme sport.

  You’d think that waking up every day to see what most people would consider a dead body would have driven me crazy a long time ago. But dead bodies don’t smell of incense and eucalyptus. Okiku’s scent dances into my bedsheets and lingers on my skin.

  I roll out of bed, tired but too keyed up to sleep, the adrenaline still somersaulting in my bloodstream. I hop into the shower. Okiku is a considerate roommate, quick to leave me to my own company the instant she thinks I’m getting naked. It’s a good compromise, because she’s the only reason I bother with clothes when I’m in my room.

  By the time I’m out, she�
��s awake, hair tamed and thrown forward over one gaunt shoulder. A book is open in her lap. Words fascinate her, and this month, she’s all about Murakami Haruki novels. She looks up from the page, staring mournfully out the window. I recognize the look on her face. It’s why she’s been so distracted. Okiku enjoys catching spirits and chasing after dolls, but that’s not the reason she’s here.

  “Another one?”

  She nods and points a finger out the window, as if the perp she’s after is just around the corner.

  Okiku has never been wrong when it comes to tracking down murderers. I could almost pity the guy. Almost. “That’s five in three months. You’re on fire, Ki.”

  “I see no conflagrations.” Okiku’s sense of humor died centuries ago with her physical body.

  “How about we find him tonight? That sound good?” I know better than to put myself between Okiku and her target when she’s marked the hunt. Drag things out for too long, and she gets ornery. The faster she can get her hands on whatever asshole she has in her sights, the better it is for everyone involved. Except for the person in question, of course. It’s Friday, so I figure I can sleep in during the weekend to make up for these two nights of vice.

  She perks up at my suggestion—and I mean, really perks up. For a heartbeat, the putrefied spirit standing by my windowsill fades, and a beautiful brown-eyed girl in a simple kimono looks back at me.

  It takes a tremendous amount of concentration for Okiku to will herself into the form of the teenager she used to be. It’s easier for her to keep old habits and the horrifying face she’s worn longer than she was alive. But when the moods suit her, she makes the effort. And every time she does, I can’t stop my breath from hitching in my throat. The sunlight leaches away the remains of the revenant I know and adore to reveal the girl beneath the ghost.

  “Thank you.” Even her voice sounds different—no longer the coarseness of sandpaper, but light and clear. She smiles at me one last time before allowing her features to be reclaimed by the night. Pale death and decay steal back her face.

  I leave her to her own thoughts and head down to breakfast. Mrs. Lippert is the closest thing we have to a housekeeper. She comes in mornings and does a bit of cleaning. More importantly, she’s a fantastic cook. As I slide into my seat, she lays down a breakfast fit for a king—or a hungry seventeen-year-old boy: sizzling bacon, ham-and-cheese omelet, freshly squeezed orange juice, oven-baked bread, and her special homemade jam. My stomach rumbles its approval.

  “All set for spring vacation?” she inquires as I dig into the bacon.

  “Yup,” I say, mouth full. Despite constantly switching schools and states, this is my senior year, and the one thing I’m looking forward to is graduation.

  “How are your grades doing?”

  “4.0 GPA, last I checked.”

  “And your SAT scores? They came back yesterday, right?”

  “Yup, 1570.” Mrs. Lippert beams at me from across the table. Mom died a couple of years ago, and with a dad away for weeks at a time, I’m not bashful about taking whatever praise I can get.

  I return to my room to retrieve my bag, but not before taking a quick detour. In the back of my closet, I dig out a small plastic container, pick out two random dolls, and stuff them in my backpack along with my emergency sewing kit and tape recording of Shinto prayers. You never know.

  “I’m ready, Ki. Let’s—”

  She steps into me…

  She runs along the river.

  Lights twinkle before her, bobbing up and down along the stream, beckoning her to follow. It is not supposed to be a joyous occasion, but her laughter carries in the air. She runs, stopping only when she hears her mother’s voice call out behind her, telling her to slow down.

  One of the lights comes to a stop on the riverbed, sputtering, struggling against the reeds. She pauses beside the water’s edge, crouching down to study it more closely.

  It is a chochin, a lantern, the paper so delicate that clumsy hands would tear at its surface. There is a short inscription on one side, where someone has written down their prayers and secret wishes, a common practice among the villagers before these chochin were surrendered to the river.

  I wish for happiness, it reads.

  So do I, she thinks. I, too, wish to be happy, forever and ever and…

  A careful push sends the little lantern on its way to join its brethren sailing several meters ahead. She watches it for a while, long enough to ensure there are no other obstacles in its way.

  I wish for happiness.

  She waves at the chochin. In a way, it’s also her chochin now. She begins to run again—

  “—go.” The vision clears as my brain slams back into my body. Almost immediately, the exhaustion from my poor night’s sleep drains away, and I feel sharper, more alert. More complete.

  I can feel Okiku humming, even as I leave the house.

  ***

  I may not pass for popular, but I’m still not the statue to everyone’s pigeon. I don’t think most people in school know what to think of me, much less to which end of the high school spectrum I belong.

  Take, for instance, the BMW Z4 I park in the school lot. Dad bought the Bimmer for my sixteenth birthday and for passing my driver’s test. You’d think the car would put me in with the cool kids, because it’s practically considered unpatriotic to ridicule anyone with a nice car at Pembrooke High.

  But it doesn’t. The reason lies mostly with Okiku, though I can’t blame her for being protective of me. I’ve talked with her numerous times about curbing her enthusiasm for mayhem, but I’m not sure how much of it she’s taken to heart. After a mirror inexplicably splintered, slicing through the arm of a quarterback who was about to deck me, and when a water fountain exploded on some jocks who’d had problems with my Asianness, people stopped trying to bully me.

  Rumors spread about strange events at my previous schools, that my mom had been locked up in a mental asylum and died under unusual circumstances, not to mention claims by the rare, insightful few who could glimpse Okiku around me when her guard was down. Nobody really believes what those kids say anyway, but the general consensus is that something’s not quite right about me. They’re scared of me and would rather not have anything to do with the creepy Japanese-American outsider.

  Except, as I discovered, when they need an exorcist.

  I’m hoping my adventures from last night will go unnoticed, because I don’t see Sondheim as the type to admit I had to defend his virtue from a possessed doll. By the time lunch rolls around and not a whimper is heard, I start to relax.

  I use my phone to check email in between bites of my sandwich. The first is from Kagura, and I smile as I read.

  Some people have funny stories about how they met their friends. “Funny” is not the word I would use for our introduction. When I first met Kagura in Japan a couple of years ago, she was one of many shrine maidens who used an elaborate doll ritual to exorcise a demon that’d possessed me for ten years.

  Kagura and her aunt run an inn near Mount Fuji now, but she still travels to the Chinsei shrine to keep things in order there. Callie and I visit her every year. When someone saves your life, it’s a hard bond to break.

  Hello Tarquin,

  I hope it is not too early for me to congratulate you on your upcoming graduation. Brown University is an excellent choice—though if you ever change your mind and come to Todai, I would be more than happy to assist you with the enrollment process. Your parents are both alumni, which should work in your favor.

  Saya is doing very well. She works at the Adachi Museum of Art now and has become a keen gardener. I told her you and Callie will be visiting during your Easter break, and she has happily booked a room at Kamameshi as well.

  Saya was one of the other shrine maidens from where Kagura served. No matter how many times they assure me otherwise, I still feel guilty, knowing I was responsible for their unexpected change in careers.

  The crew of American ghost hunters I mentioned be
fore have finally arrived. They had initially asked me to provide them with the necessary research about Mount Fuji, but now they also want me to assist them in their filming at the Aokigahara forest. They are investigating the legends of the Aitou village, said to have existed inside Aokigahara during older times, though no evidence of it remains today.

  Garrick Adams, one of the ghost hunters, says I was recommended to them because my father studied records of this village in detail and was the expert in the matter. The ghost hunters would like access to all the research and findings I kept when he passed away. Adams-san also believes that as a former miko, I would be of great help dispelling any ghosts they may encounter along the way.

  Still, despite their credentials, I have my doubts. I understand their interest, but Aokigahara is not a place to meddle.

  They will be leaving a few weeks before you arrive, so it is a shame you and Callie will not be given the chance to meet them. They seem to be quite popular in the United States.

  I’ve heard of them. Garrick Adams and Stephen Riley are spirit investigators and the hosts of Ghost Haunts, a paranormal reality television show that’s had some good buzz as of late. Adams and Riley are known for their wildly unorthodox attempts to taunt ghosts into maiming or possessing them—whatever helps their ratings, I guess. I try to imagine them with the ever-cautious Kagura and nearly choke on my sandwich.

  I’m afraid Brown’s for me, I type back, but I like the idea of postgraduate studies at Todai. Dad wants me studying in America for the time being. It might be good to actually know what it feels like to stay in one place for four years.

  Ghost Haunts is a big show on cable here. But watching guys flail around with a camera doesn’t sound like very convincing television to me. No harm in showing them around the place, I’d say, and it’ll be great to see you on TV! Any chance you can get me some autographs?

  I pause, searching for a font that would best convey my sarcasm, then give up. It would probably be lost on the miko anyway.

  Send our love to Saya-san. Looking forward to seeing you guys in a few weeks!