Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Maya's Tale (C14: All In Green)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, General
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: While Kurama wonders if he'll pass the exam, the Kawasaki sisters encounter a monster.
A/N: Rokurokubi, those mythical Japanese creatures who look human, who might even believe they are human, can extend their necks to outlandish, Alice-in-Wonderland lengths. Some famous Japanese prints depict a few of them lounging around, their heads floating far above their bodies, as they smoke their pipes in dreamy contentment.
"Father is quite gifted."
Maya's Tale (14: All In Green)
by
Kenshin
Kurama was frustrated.
Do I even want to take that test? Do I want to continue in school? Or returning to Makai? Or becoming a street juggler?
All he really wanted now was a good night's sleep.
Failing that, he would settle for squeaking by on the test. College courses were proving unexpectedly more difficult than either middle or high school. Chemistry eluded him, mocked him.
Unable to concentrate at home, Kurama had just dashed back to the house for his backpack, intending to leave straight away for St. Francis Xavier's. He was on his way to the door when the phone rang.
His backpack was laden with study materials for the exam. He had given up looking for an 'incident' that had occurred on Rokurokubi Block fifty years ago.
Not even researcher extraordinaire Kaitou Yuu had been able to find anything, though Kaitou had confirmed April temperatures were also recorded extremely low back then.
The phone shrilled on.
Answer. Don't answer. The straps of the backpack bit into Kurama's shoulders.
He had an uneasy feeling who the caller might be.
This was his turning point. He knew it.
Sighing, Kurama lifted the receiver. "Yes?"
"Minamino, dear." It was Olivia's gentle, cultured voice.
Kurama intended to rush her off the phone, to plead the case for last-minute study, but before he could speak, Olivia said:
"Do you know what a Rokurokubi is?"
Of all the things she might have said, this was the last Kurama expected. In complete puzzlement, he replied, "Yes, but what's that got to do with-"
"I am in my office now, looking at one." Olivia's voice was distant, floating. "And she is looking at me."
The backpack slid from his shoulders, fell with a dull thud.
Rokurokubi are half-human creatures who often do not realize what they are, living in the daytime as humans, until night rings in a profound change, and they go into action.
Lying in wait for unwary humans, they delight in the shock and terror they cause when they suddenly display their distorted, serpentine necks.
Of course he knew; in fact the block where the sisters lived had been named for those creatures.
Rokurokubi seemed more like pranksters than anything sinister. They were nothing for even Minamino Shuuichi to fear, let alone Kurama, but-
For two elderly ladies, living alone in a half-abandoned neighborhood, for all their blithe chatter about guns...
His throat was dry. He swallowed.
"Yes, I know what a Rokurokubi is. Don't try to deal with it yourselves. Leave the-"
"Listen to me." Olivia's voice cut across Kurama's like a whip. "Do as I say. Assemble any allies you can muster, and go at once to the house at the end of our street."
"But-"
"Never mind us. Save Maya."
0-0-0-0-0
"Maya," the strange creature repeated.
Her face was that of a girl's. Her neck was a serpent's clad in human flesh, long, sinuous, boneless. "In danger. At the end of the block. I can't help. Too much the coward."
Olivia's hand remained frozen to the phone.
The creature's head and neck were well inside the window. Her face floated about four feet from Olivia's. I could swear that window was locked, thought Olivia.
"The girl," she repeated, her voice as pale and wan as the color of her skin.
In spite of Olivia's brave words to Mr. Minamino, her heart leapt, labored, jarred her ribcage.
Shunning the use of the blunderbuss, the Meiji-era cannon in good working order, or the American Civil War sword, Ruth reached above her chair for the good old Browning shotgun.
They still possessed one weapon they hadn't mentioned to the Minamino boy. A .22-caliber Taurus pistol in the desk drawer. Releasing the phone, Olivia tried to will her hand to grasp the knob, open the drawer, get the gun.
The Rokurokubi was on the move now. Her head and neck snaked around the office, searching, searching, peering into every corner, at every painting. Examining a room on the second story of the house, while still standing outside.
This alone stood Olivia's hair on end.
The creature made her inspection of the office, murmuring to herself all the while. And then she stopped.
For Olivia had caught her attention. Abandoning the paintings, she studied Olivia now with the same keen curiosity.
Ruth stood, and brought the Browning to bear.
But the strange girl took no notice of Ruth or the expert way in which she held the shotgun. Moving closer to her quarry, she spiraled her head, and where her head went, so went her neck until her neck was a corkscrew with Olivia at its center.
The human revulsion for snakes. Mr. Sanrio across the street, crushed, then torn to pieces. Olivia hardly breathed.
Try not to think about cobras. The creature's head sat well above the corkscrew of her neck, eerily reminiscent of the way a cobra coils to strike.
Did Rokurokubi have fangs? Were they venomous?
Ruth would be thinking the same thing.
But so thoroughly had the Roku-girl's freakish neck encircled Olivia, though not actually touching her, that Ruth would be unable to get a clear shot.
The Taurus semi-automatic pistol, at close range, might do the trick. It held eight rounds, and was only five inches long and less than twelve inches away in that center drawer.
Even if Olivia had been able to reach the comfort of the pistol, neither could she shoot without risking harm to Ruth.
She didn't have to see Ruth to know that Ruth would be in an agony of suspense.
If only the damned thing would back off.
With her eyes on the creature, Olivia's left hand gripped the round brass knob and slid the desk drawer open an inch.
Olivia's gun hand, however, was pinned to her side, though the girl's neck was not touching her. Still, that neck...
Gripped by a fear of the serpent as old as mankind, Olivia had no desire to brush against the pale pink flesh.
Eight rounds. Twelve inches. Out of reach.
The hovering creature was close enough for Olivia to look up into her eyes. They were greenish brown, the colors of moss-fringed earth. They were filled with curiosity, so-human.
The set of the girl's features, the look in her eyes. She did not seem so much a threat as afraid.
Afraid, yet determined, eager, like a child seeing a vast garden for the first time.
Olivia released the knob. No, she could not shoot this strange, deformed creature. In a low voice, she asked, "What do you want of us?"
"Maya." Repeating what she had said before Olivia hung up the phone, the Roku-girl insisted, "In danger."
If you ignored her freakish ribbon of a neck, the Rokurokubi didn't look much like a monster.
Olivia saw a well-scrubbed face with a snub nose and a wide mouth. There was a hint of the exotic in the moss-and-earth eyes that turned up at the corners. Straight, un-groomed eyebrows drew slightly down, and her voice was hesitant, even timid.
"The one you call Maya," she repeated, as though she was not certain they understood. "In danger. Try not to blame him. The house at the end of the block."
"Yes." Fear made Ruth sound harsh. "So you've said."
The girl said, "Telephone that man."
"That man?" With the girl's face bobbing a mere fifteen inches from her own, Olivia kept her voice low, soothing.
"The one who has the dreams," said the girl. "He must have had them. He must. I tried so hard."
Ruth lowered the shotgun. "We already called."
"I- oh, yes." The strange girl nodded, making her neck ripple like a Slinky-toy. "So you did. I am relieved."
"Relieved?" Olivia was beginning to breathe again.
"Oh!" The Roku-girl peered at Olivia. Her eyes widened. "My neck. Did I do that again? I am so sorry."
The long neck began to corkscrew in reverse, untangling from Olivia. The girl seemed about to get it in a knot in her haste to unwind, and the swift retreat would have been comical if not for the eerie deformity that caused it.
When Olivia was at last clear of the coils, the girl's head and neck still protruded some six feet from the curtained window.
"Oh." Coming from that respectable distance, the girl's words were easier to take. "Forgive my excitement. I forget! Lately I forget all the time. I'll just come in the front, shall I? May I please, just this once? I can't tell you how much I've longed to see the inside of this wonderful house."
The initial shock of the harrowing encounter was, mercifully, fading. Beat by beat, Olivia's heart was returning to its normal, sturdy rhythm.
Ask her in? Why not?
The strange girl seemed more distracted than dangerous. And painfully earnest. She had not attacked. She had in fact warned them Maya was in danger.
They must focus on Maya, and what they might learn from this Roku-girl about the nature of her peril.
Olivia asked the strange girl. "W-would you like some-"
"Some tea?" The Roku-girl's moss-and-earth eyes widened in unalloyed delight. "Just like an invitation? Do you really mean it? Oh, I've been waiting for you to ask!"
Her face retreated like a balloon reeled in by unseen hands. The curtains parted. Her head popped back through, the curtains fell to again, and she was lost to their sight.
Olivia sat listening to the faint gong of the mantle clock. It was past eight.
Then she got up and went to the window. It was closed. And locked. She looked at Ruth. Ruth was racking the shotgun.
"Did we dream this?" Olivia wondered.
But even as the words left her mouth, she heard the knock on the door.
Ruth replied with admirable composure. "Apparently not."
"Maybe," Olivia said slowly, "this is our second chance."
"We may as well hear what she has to say," agreed Ruth.
"I'll make the tea," said Olivia.
Ruth nodded, giving the shotgun a last pat. "The cookies are already out."
In five minutes' time, the strange girl, her neck now looking like any human's, sat with Olivia and Ruth in the parlor.
The tea was scented with bergamot, and the cookies were of a kind that Maya had particularly liked: thin crisp wafers half-dipped in milk chocolate.
The girl wore a dress of heavy green wool that was the color of Maya's old sweat shirt. Somewhat awkwardly, she grasped a cookie. When she glanced at Olivia, and saw that plates had been provided for the cookies, she placed hers down.
As if, Olivia thought, she does not know what to do.
"Now," said Ruth, folding her hands in her lap. "Maya's in danger? Tell us about it."
"And then we must fly," added Olivia.
For a few moments, the girl studied her teacup as though it was an alien artifact. When she glanced back up at them, her eyes were swimming. "Father is really very gifted," she began.
-30-
(To be continued: Sometimes allies come in handy.)