I don’t have Okiku’s second sight. I need to be within visual range of the person to make the connection, but that first recognition never fails to curdle my gut.
What I hate about most of these perps is how normal they look. Like they have the right to sit at any Five Guys in any town in any country in the world and be served a bacon cheeseburger and a side order of fries like everyone else. I hate that no one else around them can see them for the putrid waste of flesh they really are.
Mr. “Normal” here has red hair and brown eyes. He’s wearing a faded Rolling Stones shirt and jeans. He’s eating his burger like the only thing he’s ever murdered in his life was a cow.
The rotting corpses of the three girls crawling over his back beg to differ.
It always hurts to look at them. You can tell how long they’ve been shackled to their killers by their condition, and these poor girls have been prisoners for a long, long time. Their eyes have sunk almost below their sockets, and their hair’s matted and stringy, revealing bits of crumbling skull. Their bones show through parts of their skin, which sags at the elbows and shoulders. I’ve seen other, more decomposed dead children, but I avert my eyes anyway. I can’t look at them without seeing my own damage. Not too long ago, that could have very easily been me.
What hurts even worse is the living, breathing girl across the table from him. She’s blond and rosy-cheeked, nibbling at her fry. A possible victim? It churns my stomach, and I wish I hadn’t eaten dinner before we headed out.
Okiku is quiet, but her eyes are intent on the murderer. I can feel the shadows she keeps inside her snaking out. They reach hungrily for the man but are kept in check by the noise of people and the threat of discovery.
I’ve felt those shadows myself. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night enough times, pale and sweating—and bawling my eyes out, I’m not ashamed to admit—because the strange malice festering inside Okiku occasionally finds its way into me, the
festering, festering,
make them break
them take them
shadows’ voices curling into my mind. When there’s a delay in Okiku’s special brand of justice, it’s harder to contain the darkness inside her, and she knows it. Her desire to catch these cutthroats quickly is as much a way to stop my own terrors as it is to quell hers.
I could stay home while she’s out on these nightly haunts, but that’s not an option. We’ve tried. Okiku hadn’t been gone five minutes when I was confronted by a wayward ghost. I’d trapped it in a doll by the skin of my teeth, never more grateful to Kagura for her lessons. Okiku had returned not long after, sensing something was amiss.
Whenever Okiku strays too far, other things start moving in to claim me as their territory. They want a body to take over. To many spirits, Kagura says, I am prime real estate, easier to inhabit because of my previous possession. But as long as Okiku is around to defend her territory, they leave me alone. When she’s more than half a mile away, the rules no longer apply.
I’m relieved when the man gets up half an hour later. The girl skips forward to hold his hand, much to my own horror. I follow them out into the parking lot, arriving at my car just as they climb into a white Buick. Okiku and I tail them as they pull out into the street.
By the time they stop, I am a riot of nerves, wanting this over and done with. All throughout the ride, I worry about the girl, who has no idea what’s about to happen. To minimize any evidence I might leave behind, Okiku often forges into these places alone while I wait nervously in the car a block away, hands primed on the wheel like any self-respecting getaway driver.
Once he’s dead, the deed done, I can go home and climb into bed and console myself that one less bastard is preying on the world tonight. Sometimes I even feel good about it.
I note the room both the man and the little girl disappear into—Room 5. Then I drive to find a place to park.
“Go get him, Ki.”
Okiku’s been gathering herself up to spring, stiff and taut as a silver-slicked bow. She is gone before I finish speaking.
I take a deep breath, hunker down in my car, and squeeze my eyes shut. I fiddle with my leather gloves, hoping it won’t take long.
It doesn’t.
Within minutes, I hear him in my head—a high-pitched cry that echoes into the night air. I pan the area, half expecting someone to come and investigate the source of the sound, although I know no one else hears.
And then the visions start, and I cease caring about much else.
sweet dark the dark calls kill him dying on a bed kill him
watching always watching
fear he runs screaming feast on him take the
eyes
sunken beautiful staring eyes
crying
girl
rip him rip him bleeding
bleed
I grit my teeth, trying to drown out the sounds in my head, the final images I see: Okiku standing over the bloodied corpse, its face already starting to bloat. I’ve seen most of Okiku’s victims, but you never get used to it.
I wait tersely for several more moments, until I sense Okiku emerging from the motel, passing through the door to Room 5 as if it was never there. I feel her moving to where I sit, and that’s my cue to get out of the car.
She carries three glowing orbs of light against her chest, and her expression is one of contentment, despite her sadness.
My relief is immediate. Three orbs means the three sad ghosts I’d seen are no longer forced to spend a lifetime on their killer’s back. It means that somewhere inside that motel room, the little girl is safe.
Okiku stands in the middle of the small parking lot, stalling before she has to release the lights into the sky, as she has done countless times before. When she finally opens her arms to welcome the night, I can see the wistfulness on her face. These children will escape into the heavens, though she will not. I know I’m part of the reason Okiku stays, to stave off spirits who wouldn’t be as kind to me as she has been—but I suspect there’s something more to it than what she tells me.
To watch these glowing children, taking on the semblance of bright fireflies and winging their way up, is one of the most profound things that I will ever know. Whatever they might find on the other side, I hope and believe it’ll be better than the brief lives they led here. In those moments shortly after they take their place among the stars, I feel a sense of peace, a peace I know Okiku shares.
That feeling dissipates as reality sets back in.
I don my face mask and pull up my hoodie. Okiku looks curious when I turn back in the direction of the motel.
“I need to make sure the girl’s okay, Ki.”
Okiku understands the concept of crime prevention now. I was her first successful experiment. But the last thing a little girl wants after potentially debilitating trauma is to be confronted by a terrifying specter telling her everything’s going to be all right.
I probably shouldn’t have tried to make sure she was all right. If the door to the room had still been locked, I would have considered being selfish, but unfortunately, it opens at a touch.
The little girl is on her knees, crying before the desiccated corpse.
I swallow the bile that threatens to inch past my throat and move toward the child. She looks up at me, her beautiful blue eyes tear-stained and red from weeping.
“Daddy’s not moving,” she cries.
I don’t know what to say to her.