Nothing But Blackened Teeth(12)

Even if it was from a corpse with blackened teeth.

Anything to feel alive again right now.

Suenomatsuyama nami mo koenamu.

I’m so tired of this, I thought. Come make me warm and I’ll give you what we both want.

“Once upon a time,” I repeated. “Once upon a time, there was a house in the middle of the forest and it stood silently until a group of twentysomethings barged through the door, looking for ghosts.”

Phillip and Faiz gave each other high-fives.

“They ate their dinner. They drank their beer. They played a game to call up the dead from their rest. Except they didn’t have to. The house already knew they were there.” I sloped backwards, weight balanced on the heels of my palms, watched that one fly as it wiggled from a crack in the ceramic boy’s skull and buzzed to another doll, squeezing through its black-lipped mouth. I thought I could hear its feet scratch at the lacquer.

Lin caught on first. “Did you see something?”

“A girl,” I whispered. It should have sounded like a joke, something stupid. But a wind frissoned through the cracks in the shoji and it was as if the manor was laughing, I was sure, its voice dripping with termites. “A pale little bride with a smile full of ink.”

Right on cue, all the lights went out.


*

“Shit!”

Smartphones strobed to life, slicing the darkness into halves, quarters, polygons of irregular sizes like pieces of shattered glass. Phillip staggered upright, an arm raised to fence the group from the door. “What the fuck was that?”

“Probably just a breeze.” Lin didn’t sound so sure, though, body thrumming with adrenaline, and you could just about see his heart battering against his breastbone, dying to get out. He was afraid. I couldn’t wrap my alcohol-addled brain around the idea. Lin was never afraid. But since he was, it meant that the rest of us should have already started running.

I lapped my tongue over my upper lip.

“It’s her.”

Talia’s eyes shone in the near dark. “What are we waiting for? Let’s check it out.”

She clambered onto her feet, swayed for one tightrope of a heartbeat, before the momentum drove her straight into a sprint. Talia was out the door before the rest of us could put together why forward was the wrong direction, before Faiz could wring out a desperate “Wait!” and take off after her, the rest of us clattering along behind. All of us shouting, filling up the corridors with our voices, and somewhere, an ohaguro-bettari was wandering the house her husband built.

I came out of the room in time to see Talia flashing down a corridor, her silhouette receding along the wall, spotlighted by the halogen glare of her phone. No footsteps, their escape frictionless as envy. I started forward, only to be jerked back, Lin hauling me back inside, my wrist trapped in his long fingers.

“Wait,” he hissed. “It isn’t safe.”

“Don’t you think I know? There’s something wrong with this place.”

“Well, shit. Yeah. It’s a giant mansion in the middle of nowhere full of dolls and creepy shit.” Sweat gleamed on his forehead, dampened the ring of his collar. I tugged, but Lin wouldn’t let go. He adjusted his grip instead, wrapped his palm tighter around my joint. His wedding ring ground into bone.

“And this is safer? Separating from the group?”

“From those idiots? Absolutely.” He craned a look outside, neck rigid. Phillip and Faiz were wading farther into the house, their voices gusting together into one unbroken howl, one throat. “Structurally speaking, this place is a shithole. Who knows if it’s going to come down on our heads? What with all that stomping—”

“You’re deflecting.” I pulled again.

“Yeah? So what if I am.”

“They’re our friends. We have to go after—”

“Your friends.” Lin yanked. With one supple motion, his hands routed my arms into improbable configurations and pinned them there, two degrees from torture. I tested his hold anyway, winced as my synapses lit up with a what-the-fuck-had-you-expected. “Not mine. I don’t give a shit about those idiots.”

I bared my teeth. “Nice. Real nice. Those were your groomsmen.”

“I had a baker’s dozen, so whatever. There’d be spare. But that isn’t the fucking point.” He nuzzled his head against my temple, exhaled. “Cat, this is literally the part where the supporting cast dies horribly. You’re bisexual. I’m the comic relief. It’s going to be one of us.”

“But—”

“Phillip’s white. He’ll be fine. Faiz’s the hero so he won’t die in the first fucking act. And Talia’s, well, maybe Talia’s thoroughly fucked. But I don’t care about her.” He said it so casually. Like it was the easiest line in the universe, simpler even than hey, how ya doing, I didn’t miss you at my wedding at all, and I’ ll never ask why you didn’t RSVP, didn’t stop to tell me your world was crashing down.

I kept rotating my shoulders, checking to see if I could find any give, any way to move without dislocating my elbow, or ripping the tissue threading my scapula together. And all that’s assuming, of course, that Lin wouldn’t let go if push escalated to shove. I leaned into a direction and counted how long it took before the amygdala called time-out on my chicanery, flashbangs of pain going off over my corneas like a black-and-white Fourth of July.