Merry Christmas, ya'all! Let me know what you think of the story so far and if there's anything I could do for you for Christmas! Within my power, that is. I can't really fly to your house and give you a pony that poops rainbows, I ain't freaking Santa Clause.
Chapter 3
By the time we made it back to the hotel it was getting dark. We first had dinner, which was a wide array of sushi that I stuffed myself on, followed by a soak in the springs outside our room's patio. Naru nearly had to physically drag me from the springs I was so sleepy. The day's exertions had been long and stressful, though a little adventure here and there never went amiss. The moment my head hit the pillow I was gone into a deep, warm sleep.
Which was why I was confused when I found myself awake at some odd hour of the night. Figuring I might as well go pee now so I could sleep in for as long as possible, I wriggled out from underneath Naru's arm and padded my way across the room to the bathroom. As I passed the glass patio doors, something out of the corner of my eye made me pause. The moon was out, though I couldn't see it through the heavy steam created by the cold autumn air meeting with the hot spring. The effect was a vague gray glow with the blurred shape of the privacy fence and landscaping.
And through the miss, I through I could just make out the shape of someone.
Heart stalling, I stood as though my feet had been glued to the floor mid-stride. They stood in the far corner, right up against the fence, dark and hunched as though their arms were just too heavy. Just as I was starting to wonder if it was just a figment of my imagination—maybe one too many ghost cases getting to my head—the figure rose its dark shaped head. It didn't stop where I thought it should too, but kept going and going, stretching the body beneath it up and up until I couldn't believe I had ever thought them short. Their arms stretched like taffy, hands reaching for a stone through the mists.
An overwhelming impression of being seen, of being wanted as a hungry wolf wants the sheep, washed over me. I opened my mouth to scream for Naru, but no noise came out. The ever more inhumanly long figure stepped towards me, tree-like, taffy fingers scuttling like spider legs towards the step of the patio. Any second now they'd draw near enough for me to see their features through the steam. There'd be no nail, no knuckle, just bendy miles of flesh.
I woke with a start and a gasp. It took me longer than it should to realize I was still in bed and staring up at the ceiling of our room. One would think I'd get use to these dreams. But, then, was there ever any getting use to them?
Shivering from a thin layer of cold sweat, I felt around for Naru, and on not finding him, I peeled back the blankets and looked about. Outside the glass patio doors it was raining, which made it difficult to the tell the time. At least no weird stretch-man was outside it.
"Naru?"
A panel on the other end opened, revealing a yukata dressed Naru with a newspaper in his hands. He sat at a winter kotatsu that must have been brought in while I was sleeping. I breathed a sigh of relief.
"You got that look," he said, reaching over to bring up a rather out of place, western styled tea-cup to his lips.
"Just a weird nightmare of some creepy thing by the spring," I said, pawing about for my own yukata. "It was like that hunched man that we almost hit, except it was like he…stood up and became all stretched out, it was creepy. All the mist covering his features didn't help."
"Hmm." He blew over his tea and took a sip, eyes once more back to the newspaper.
Too happy about being awake and with him to care about whether he was listening or not, I pulled on my yukata and made my way over to the kotatsu, where breakfast had been lain out. It was a mixture of a classic English and Japanese breakfast, which I though fitting for the couple it would be feeding.
The heater under the kotasu and warm blanket helped to dispel the last of the chill from my nightmare. We ate in a comfortable, homey silence, only broken by a turn of the page or the clink of a cup. Occasionally Naru would start rubbing my leg with his foot in an absent minded sort of way.
Naru finished his paper and spoke as he folded it up. "I take it was an important dream since you're so willing to forget about it."
"Your logic makes no sense," I said around a mouthful of English muffin.
"Just because you have accepted the fact you have clairvoyance doesn't mean you like drawing attention to yourself or your gift. When you're sure it's a normal dream, you're more likely to talk about it, even if it's a nightmare, because that's how you help reassure yourself that it was a dream. On the other hand, if you're not so sure, you push it aside, probably without even thinking much about it."
"I've told you about my visions before," I said, more surprised than annoyed with his ability to see through me.
"If you know for sure that they pertain to whatever case we're on," he said, setting aside the newspaper and leaning back on his hands. "Since we have no case, my theory remains unchallenged. So, tell me, why are you unsure about whether it's a normal dream?"
He was right, in a way. On waking up I had questioned it myself, and half of the time I could tell whether or not I was having just a normal wacky dream or my latent psychic abilities picking up on something.
He was patient and let me think on it for a minute or so. As he waited he started petting my calf with his toes once more.
"I think it's just how much it unnerved me," I said. "It looked like a monster, not a person, and the way I felt as he looked at me—I guess, I think he was looking at me. I couldn't see his face."
"That's comforting."
I lifted a crescent, as though it were the subject for our conversation. "But it was just a bad dream. Nothing to be worried about. You were the one who said not to jump to conclusion."
"True." He put down his empty tea cup and reached for the tea pot. "Either way, I can't say I'm not eager to return home. Vacations never suited me."
"All the more reason to stay for the week as planned. If we go home you'll just suck yourself back to work." I leaned my elbows onto the table with my hands on my cheeks. His eyes went exactly where I wanted them as my loose yukata hung low from my chest.
"What else to we have planned to do, then? Besides getting lost in forests." He tried pulling his eyes away, but his toes had curled up away from my leg.
"Wasn't there something about a water amusement park not far from here? One of those carved out of the hot spring places—you know. The one you found—or are you having a hard time concentrating?"
"Mai, don't tease me."
"Why?" I pulled my leg from his foot to paw my own toes up his leg.
"I-uh-because—"
"Did the great Naru just say 'uh'?"
He growled low in his throat and pulled out from the kotatsu. "Damn it, get over here."
With that out of the way, we got in our car and headed back to the freeway with our swim suits in tow. It actually wasn't far away at all, as ten minutes later we reached the adjacent side of the mountain where the prolific hot springs had been turned into a small water park, consisting of two swimming pools, two hot water slides, and various other warm water enjoyments to steam up the cool autumn air.
The moment Naru stepped out in his swimming trunks, he froze up. Children and other patrons were laughing and splashing everywhere. At first I thought it was just because he was cold, but when we had been in one of the larger hot water pools for fifteen minutes with me paddling around him as he more or less huddled against a vent, I figured it was something else.
"Are you afraid of the water?" I asked.
He glared daggers at me, making me jump. I didn't expect such a violent response.
"Of course not. You've seen me swim before."
"What's wrong then?"
"Nothing. I'm just not as playful as you. Never have been, even when I was a child."
And because he sounded like such a grouch, I splashed water into his face. He spluttered and glared reproachfully at me, so much so that I actually started to feel like I had really done something wrong.
Wilting in the water, I gave a quiet sorry and decided it would probably be best to leave him alone for a bit, though the truth was that I wanted to be away from him. He didn't stop me as I swam to the other side of the pool and got out. The steam kept the goose bumps away until I could make it into the cozy cover of the tunnel which held the stairs up to the waterslide. I hugged myself anyways, hoping it would help the hurt part of me feel better.
A pair of young men filed behind me. As we rose up the steps, so did a gaggle of children. There wasn't much of a line, though, just many steps.
"Just how tall is this thing?" I asked aloud.
"I wonder that every time," said one of them, who had bleached hair and deep dimples as he smiled at me.
"I think that whenever I hear the steps creak," said his friend, who looked about Monk's age and could have been an older brother. "I don't think they've ever replaced the wood staircase that's been here since the place opened thirty years ago."
Even as he said it, a step beneath my foot gave an awful squelch of wet wood.
"Holy crap!" I said.
"You can say that again," said the bleached boy as he stepped on it as well and another unsavory squelch sounded in the tunnel
"Where you from? Tourist, right?" asked the older of the two.
"Tokyo, and yeah, I'm staying at hotel."
They gave low whistled. "You must be fine stuff."
A bit of warmth rose to my cheeks. "Uh, um, not really. It's the first time I've ever done anything this nice, I mean, usually I'm saving every yen I make."
"What do you do for work?"
"Um, I don't know if you want to know." It only took their raised eyebrows to realize how bad that sounded. "It's not like that! It's just, uh…well…" Psychic sounded better than ghost hunting, right? "I work for Shibuya Psychic Research."
That just made their eyebrows go higher. Just then we reached the top and the end of the short line. A life guard sat next to the maw of the waterslide with the red rescue board flat against his lap. He let a little girl with a little frilly skirt on her swimsuit go, then tapped his fingers as he counted.
The boys must have only been mildly interested before, because their looks and their voices betrayed eager intrigue now.
They spoke at once.
"What do you do—"
"Are you psychic?"
"What kinds of stuff have you—"
"Do you meet lots of psychic people?"
The older man in front of us jumped into the waterslide. I walked up and put my feet in the water, waiting on the life guard.
"Um, well," which to answer first? It was like being at high school after Naru hired me all over again. "I work for a man named Oliver Davis, he's the one you should really be impressed with—"
Naru's true name didn't mean anything to the younger, but the older lit up.
"Davis? The Oliver Davis?"
"Go," said the lifeguard.
Suddenly uncomfortable with the situation (perhaps the attention was all the more uncomfortable because I was in a swim suit instead of fully clothed in my school uniform), I took hold of the handle bar above the opening of the slide and threw myself into the darkness.
The hushing sigh of water, splashing, and warm air blowing past my ears calmed me. I closed my eyes, loving the feeling of being taken away. I thought of Naru and why it had hurt so much to be glared at like that when I had just been trying to have fun. Why didn't I snap back like I usually did? What was so different this time?
Maybe because I realized that I was stuck with this. That, in the end, I was stuck with this wet, bi-polar blanket that didn't know how to have fun.
What a horrible thought. I loved Naru. Just because amusement parks seemed to make him uncomfortable didn't make him an awful husband.
The air suddenly grew cold. Thinking I was near the end, I opened my eyes to ready myself. The light through the green plastic of the slide made the water look thick, red, and opaque.
Something acidic and icy clawed its way to my throat, cutting off my breath even as I smelled it.
Blood.