Plain: Book 2

Need for One

It took Monk and Ayako the better part of the day to create the charm, as well as water-proofing it so it could be on my person constantly. Masako verified that the ghost had subsided for a time, but to where she didn't know, so Naru, John, and she went through the hospital to try and locate her. Yasu was called up in the middle of his classes to research past patients of the hospital, or any stories that might stand out, and Lin was kept at the monitors and recorders for any leads he could direct the searching gang.

And I sat in the tub turning into Yoda. Eventually the water did get cold, and since consecrating water to holiness did take some effort, I just had to put up with it. By the time Takigawa and Ayako could pull me out, not only had I wrinkled into oblivion, but I swore I was turning blue with cold. Combine that with overtaxed muscles and legs being bent too long and I ended up having to be supported by them to the toilet, where they doused me in towels. The charm they taped onto my upper back. Since I didn't start seeing my organs again, we supposed it worked.

I hadn't felt like eating all day, and Monk and Ayako pressed me for an appetite. I meekly asked for some soup (that should be easy enough to swallow, right?), which, to my embarrassment, sent Monk running. That gave Ayako time to help me shake and tremble my way into the warmest pair of PJs she could find, which ended up being Monk's grey sweats, so it drowned me.

"You look like a baby elephant," she said with a snicker.

I would have stuck out my tongue if I weren't afraid my chattering teeth would bite it off.

The soup came, I sipped at it, managed to half finished it, then filled the rest of the empty space with milk. Takigawa was just happy I ate, and he couldn't get enough of me being eaten alive by his sweats either.

"Careful, Monk," growled Ayako. "Or Naru's going to hear you."

"No he won't. Besides, Mai's going to marry me one day anyways, there's no way I could pass up on seeing something this cute first thing in the morning!"

He got a crack in the cranium from Ayako for that. For once, I didn't mind so much. Even though I knew he was joking, it still made me a bit uncomfortable.

John checked in on me after seeing Masako back to the hotel. He held my chin to see my eyes, then traced the cross on me and murmured a prayer before taking off his own wooden crucifix and slipping it over my head.

"Just in case," he said softly, and his bottom lip quivered as though to say something else, but he changed his mind and left it at that.

Before I was ready for it, before I had even faced the cold truth that there was nothing I could do to stop the day from ending, nighttime came. As requested, the others helped me set up my bed in the van (Naru kept his back to us and his eyes to a book as we carried out sleeping gear), but when the team said their goodnights and left to bed, the lonely van seemed much more scary and cold than the cot-filled room I was about to leave.

As I stood at base, waiting for my courage to return, the smell of old wall-paper, dust, and empty space clogged my mouth. Just beyond it, I thought I could taste the latex of gloves and the breath of antiseptics. My stomach clenched, threatening to expel the soup and milk I had labored to swallow.

"Breathe," I whispered to the door to the hallway. I opened my ears to the calming whirring of the monitors behind me. Lin had gone to check a camera, leaving me alone with the blue-white glow of the screens.

But my stomach didn't unclench. Fearing I might hurl, I mince-walked to one of the chairs and sank down, digging my hands into my hair and down my face. Deep breaths did nothing to quell the shaking in my bones, or the sense of inescapable doom reaching over me in a smothering tarp of panic.