Didn't get to yesterday's chapter, so here it is today. I'll probably finish today's chapter this evening. We're getting there.

Chapter 12

The cool touch of Ayako's fingers on my cheek brought me back. Phlegm seemed to have dammed up my lungs as I slept, and my fight to clear the airways shook Naru awake, which got him started.

Ayako grimaced, half amused, half pitying, at the hacking newlyweds. "Honestly, what would you two do without me?"

"Like I haven't been..." Naru started, but found speaking rather than coughing more effort than it was worth. Settling for a grumpy grunt, he gave her his back and snuggled deeper into the blankets.

Ayako looked to the ceiling, shrugging, then gestured to the tray she'd brought in. "I made you some soup. Thought you might like an update on your stalker too, boss."

"As long as it leaves us alone, I don't care," he said through a pillow.

I, however, accepted the warm bowl, delighting in the heat that wiggled to the shivering in my being. The first spoonfull was like a dollop of warm, though it vanished before it could hit my frozen insides, or rather, its heat became insignificant to the fire of my fever.

I phased in and out between spoonfuls. At some point, Ayako took up the spoon and started feeding me, saying something about me taking too long and staring stupidly into the distance. The headache, which had retreated from the onslaught of sleep, had returned in force by the time she took the bowl away. I bent over, groaning. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so awful or had a sickness come on so quick. Didn't it start with a few days of coughing.

"It didn't take Yasu too long to find something," Ayako said. "It wasn't long into their relationship that your mom noticed your dad doing some odd things out of the blue for no reason. He told her it was because of some dreams he had that sometimes came true, so he was just playing it cautious. He's jumped to the end, though, in the days following his death, hoping to get to the chase. The rain isn't letting up, and whatever is out there seems to be getting stronger. There's another crack in the window."

The bed creaked as Naru twisted. "It's midday, ghosts don't get stronger."

"Newsflash, sicky, it's six in the evening. Night's coming on."

He scowled, glanced up at the window (for some reason he didn't keep a clock by his bedside), and twisted back to his cocoon.

Something jerked urgently against my breastbone. "He was involved in a fire," I told her, my voice only a step shy of heavy smoker and Vader. "And I think he might have meant it. There was a man he had meant to burn, and a girl he hadn't meant to."

Ayako flinched. "Your dad murdered people?"

I jumped too, blinking at her in groggy alarm. "What?"

"Well, when you say 'burn' I'm assuming he didn't just put a match to their toes."

I coughed, and the effort to push the air up and out just seemed to fill in my skull with a painful, thumping pressure. I got the image of my head exploding while I coughed.

"Burn off the face of the earth," I gasped. "Burned away."

Ayako watched me struggle to breathe normally again with pinched eyebrows and pale lips. "Lord...you seemed fine at your wedding. Well, fast coming means fast going. Give it a day and you should get better, so just lay back down, kay? Oy, Naru, soup."

"Just leave it."

"Oh no, then you'll just fall back asleep. Don't make me feed you like a baby." Never mind the fact that she had already done that for me and hadn't made a big deal out of it.

But he must have thought nothing of my dignity compared to his, as he sat right up, a glare set to maim and cheeks flushed.

"Give me the bowl."

"Wow, fevers make you even more of a grouch." But she gave it to him.

"It's been more than just a fever," I said from my pillow, watching the proceedings with my hands folded above my stomach. "Could you bring me one of my books to read or my laptop? I don't really feel like sleeping."

"Sure," said Ayako, smiling at me as she never would to Naru. She took my bowl and left to return with my laptop, one of my true crime mystery novels, and a still rather pale Yasu in tow. He held what I recognized to be the last volume of my mother's journals.

"I got info, boss."

Naru, who had sat up so he could eat his soup hunched over like Sméagol straightened like an old man trying to show off a much younger man. "Well?"

"What Mai told Ayako fills in some gaps of what I just read. Three days before her father dies, he comes home late from a job smelling of fire and babbling about a woman who had come to him in a dream begging him for help to save her daughter, saying she was going to be eaten like she had been. He'd gone where she had shown and accidentally burned a girl in the process-but it's unclear whether or not that was the daughter she spoke of or...it's rather muddled. But he fell sort of ill afterwards, and every time he'd sleep he'd wake up afraid of being eaten, or another girl being eaten, he was unclear as to who."

I could just see that everyone was thinking the same thing: that fit me to a T. But, since I was miserable enough to believe I was going to die of the common flue anyways, I wasn't too impressed. For some reason, I felt assured that I would be okay, which was a stark contrast to what I had been that same morning.

"What about you, boss?" asked Yasu. "Having any dreams?"

Naru, who had just put the spoon in his mouth, swallowed, and gave Yasu a dry look.

"I'll take that as a no," said Yasu, pushing up the rim of his glasses. "Anyways, the day before he dies he leaves the house fearing something is after him and might hurt Mai and her mother in the process. It sounds like it may be the man he killed, or tried to kill. The man who ate the woman. Almost twenty-four hours later he is found drowned in the river a few miles from home."

A chill prickled up my spine, spreading lines of ice into my aching head. But they weren't lines, they were sounds, words. My vision blurred, and my hands that had just received my laptop and had been opening it went numb. I couldn't see the computer.

"Stay out of the water..." I whispered.

Either they didn't hear me, or didn't know what to make of it, as Yasu continued with, "It doesn't sound like any real investigation was made into the matter, as the fire had burned out before anyone could get to it and the shack was so old it wasn't believed that anyone could have lived in it. Also, no one drew the connection between Mai's father's disappearance and consequential death to the fire that was a hundred miles or so apart; one being in the country and the other in a rather shady neighborhood of Tokyo anyways. And it doesn't sound like Mai's mother pushed them to either out of fear of finding out that her husband really had murdered a family." He opened up the journal and glanced through it. "Though I haven't found anything yet to indicate whatever went after her father went after her mother, and it seems strange that it would be coming after Mai now. How did your mother die, Mai?"

"Car accident," said Naru, as I didn't answer quick enough. I still felt strange and fuzzed. The laptop's screen went dark, having fallen asleep from my inactive fingers.

"Yeah, that's no drowning," said Ayako, who had leaned up against a wall. "And so far this thing seems to have an affinity for water."

"That's assuming that we're dealing with the same thing that killed Mai's father," said Yasu. "The doctor's labeled it a suicide. Said he jumped from a bridge and must have just been overwhelmed by the current. But, I agree, there are just a bit too many coincidences, and Mai's dreams have never been wrong yet."

"Mai said it wants to eat her," said Naru. "Her father said the same thing. I think we can make the assumption for now."

Another icy pinpricked ran up my spine. My jaw dropped open of its own accord.

"Burn him," I breathed.

"What was that?" asked Ayako.

"Burn him off the face of the earth." They weren't my words, but the alarm in me was calmed by the same something that assured me I'd be okay. "Stay out of the water. Burn. Fire." Sleepy.

"You're not making any sense," said Ayako, frowning.

Naru suddenly clutched my arm and shook it. "Mai, are you with us? Come on, shake it off."

I tried, but I just sunk deeper. So sleepy. I lost awareness of the laptop on my lap. My surroundings blurred into its main colors: the gray of the room, Ayako's red hair, the black splash which was Yasu.

Then a great upheaval flushed through me, like the action of throwing up. I even bowed over, every muscle in my body cringing to expel something, quivering with rejection.

But out came words instead, and I recognized a horror that was not mine.

"He ate his lover, raped his daughter, sired his grand-daughter. He was going to eat them to."

"Aw, hell," said Yasu.

"Takigawa!" Naru's voice came to me from a distance.

"He can't do possessions!" Ayako.

"He must eat. He's going to eat her. Swallow her whole. Burn him. Burn ME!"

And I was screaming, clutching my throbbing head fit to burst. I was colder than ever before, and something crashed onto the floor.

Because I didn't know the hand that touched my spine. The smell of smoke burned my nose and aggravated my raw lungs, but I couldn't stop screaming to breathe. His arms shook as they held me. I thought they would drop me.

"BURN ME! BURN ME! Stayoutofthewater-BURN ME!"