Takeshita Demons by Cristy Burne Read Free Book Online Page A

moon.

    The doorknob of our classroom door was frosted
with tiny ice crystals. Cait turned it slowly, with
such care that it didn't even squeak. She edged the
door open, peeking one eye around to see inside
the room.
    I waited in the freezing corridor while Cait
checked the room. After what seemed like forever,
Cait swung the door completely open.
    "I don't think she's here," she said, puffing
a cloud of white with her breath.
    We tiptoed into our classroom. It was like a
graveyard - rows of empty desks, some with lonely
pencils or forgotten books left on top, like sad
offerings at a shrine. Mr Lloyd's desk was just like
all the others: empty of life. And there was no sign
of the nukekubi.
    "Where would she be?" Cait asked, shivering.
    I was shivering too. My frozen fingers were
aching, and the cold seemed to be spreading. What
were we doing here? Maybe I had imagined the red markings on Mrs Okuda's neck. Or maybe they
were just mosquito bites, or a tattoo. She might be
just an ordinary person who happened to like
unusual bright red neck tattoos. I opened my
mouth to ask Cait what she thought, but no sound
came out. Instead, an awful wailing echoed from
the corridor.

    Cait jumped to attention, as if she'd been shot
in some scene from an old Western movie. Then we
both ran for the door, peering outside. I felt sick.
This was it. There had to be something out there.
The nukekubi was hunting.
    But the corridor was empty and quiet once
again.
    "Was that her?" Cait hissed.
    "Dunno. Maybe." I'd never heard one before.
What did a nukekubi's hunting call sound like? Had
we really thought this through before we came here
all alone in the middle of the night to hunt a flying
demon head?
    The wail echoed again, this time a piercing scream
that seemed to move up and down the corridor like
a wave.
    I grabbed Cait's arm and hung on. "It's a ghost.
There's nothing out there to make that noise. It's got
to be a ghost."

    I'd heard Baba talk of ghosts. Yurei, 'faint spirits'
in English, usually someone who'd died horribly,
who couldn't make it to the afterlife.
    A shot of cold passed through me. There had to
be a ghost walking with us. An angry ghost by the
sound of it. I wanted to run but the cold had frozen
me to the spot. My nose began to tingle and burn and
I could feel my blood cooling, sending icy messages
to my heart.
    The screaming came once again, but it changed
mid-way, becoming a cracking sound instead,
metallic and ringing like a bell. Suddenly it didn't
sound like any ghost I'd ever heard of. But it still
didn't sound friendly. And if it wasn't a ghost, what
was it?
    More loud gonging sounds echoed along the
corridor, seeming to come from the walls themselves.
It was as if we were trapped inside a massive temple
bell on New Year's Eve. The sounds kept getting
louder until something seemed to break. A crash like
thunderclaps exploded all around us, up and down
the corridor and, horror of horrors, even from the
classroom behind us.
    I swung round to see what was coming up behind
us, but could see nothing that could have caused
the noise.

    "That's no ghost," Cait guessed. "I think it's
gunshots. Someone's in here with a gun."
    Just then the noises stopped. And, just as
suddenly, the cold lifted. My blood started flowing
again.
    "The pipes," I guessed. "There's no ghost, and
no gun. It's the pipes. They've frozen. They've burst
with the cold."
    "What?"
    It felt like a better idea than gunshots and
ghosts, but I still wasn't sure. "The cold," I said. "It
can freeze water in the pipes. Like when you freeze
a Coke can in the fridge. The water expands and the
pipe explodes. There's water pipes all through the
school."
    "Exploding pipes?" Cait didn't sound convinced.
She unzipped her jacket as her face flushed in the
growing warmth.
    "Sure, why not?" I unzipped my own jacket and
ripped off my beanie. "That screeching, the gunshots,
I bet that was the water expanding