Small. Small. Smaller yet. I had to be small; become the corner, become the wall. The door would open, but I'd be flat, I'd be small. It could bump into my toes, but no one would know. By now the floor was warm, and only my feet felt numb anymore. But she'd come in, call me cold—no, I was small. Small, small, just part of the wall.
Let my hair suck in light. Let my lungs breathe out silence. Let my limbs melt into my flat body, no more breasts, no more hips, no more waist or nose or chin.
Small, small, just part of the wall.
And let no one ever find me.
I woke up with the afterimage of light shining through strands of hair burned into my mind's eye. Morning sunlight shone onto the amber hair of Ayako, who had changed her mind about staying on seeing she'd have to leave me all alone with four men (or rather 'a pathetic excuse for a monk, a rock, a naïve priest, and a narcisstic brat'). Not to mention she had yet to hear from Masako that her general shrine priestess purification had worked (Naru had pretty much ignored her when she walked past in her uniform and set up her shrine in the entry hall).
After waking up from a dream that left my arms and legs cold, I couldn't be more glad. I didn't want to vanish into a wall, where no one would find me. I didn't want to be so alone.
Ayako rolled over with a groan. "Curtains...damn it, what time is it?" She blinked out the sleepies and frowned on meeting my eye. "You okay?"
"Dream," I said.
"I take it not a nice one."
I shook my head and tucked my hands into my armpits. How'd I get so cold?
"What was it about? It might have to do with the case."
As I knew well. I searched my mind for words, but couldn't quite find them. "This one was weird. I didn't really see much but...some light through my hair. Maybe a floor. Mostly it was just hearing all these thoughts about wanting to be small, I don't know."
"Small?"
"Yeah. Or was it flat? There was something about becoming part of a wall." I shook myself and sat up, my blankets puddeling at the end of my cot. "That's probably not any help now. Though Masako did say something about feeling like there were spirits hiding—no, it was dormant, she said."
Ayako nodded and yawned, though when her jaw came closed her lips were pursed. Across from us, Naru's, John's, and Lin's cots were empty, though Takigawa's tuft of honey blond hair stuck out from above a lump of sleeping bag and cotton blanket. We decided to let him sleep while we took turns with the shower and got ready for the day.
At base, Naru was ready with a cup of coffee. He didn't look like he entirely enjoyed it, but it wasn't like there was a working kitchen in this place, right? And with all the asbestos, he probably wouldn't want to risk me disturbing some insulation or accidentally setting the whole place in flame.
"Mai, there's an electric kettle in the tote at the end of the table. Make me some tea."
I almost tore off my shoe and threw it at him. "Can't you bother with a please?"
He grunted. "Please."
An 'I love you,' or even a nice, 'sleep well?' would have been too much to ask for. If Naru was such a crabby morning person, why'd he get up so damn early? It wasn't like anyone was making him.
There also happened to be a heating plate and some basic, non-perishable breakfast foods in the tote as well. Just as I was pulling out a bag of bagels, the door opened and John came in, a plastic bag in one hand and milk in the other.
"Would anyone like some eggs and bacon?"
"Would I ever!" I crowed, momentarily forgetting about the tea.
"Yes please," added Ayako, who was more than happy to take the bag off of John's hands.
It wasn't till we had our first panfull of scramble eggs going that Naru reminded me of the tea, which I got to right away.
Lin came in later. We offered him some eggs, but he refused. Takigawa, however, came in nose first and plunged into the breakfast efforts, which made things more than a little crowded, as there were only two heating plates, one pan, and one frying pan.
Once there was something of a calm, however, Naru finally turned from his monitors and headphones to level his eyes on me. For a moment I got the crazy hopeful thought that he'd say something sweet, but his next words reminded me that he probably was still upset over me laughing at him the day before.
"Any visions?"
I swallowed a mouthful of eggs. "Um, just a weird one about wanting to be small or part of a wall. My thoughts, or rather, the words I heard were kind of scrambled, maybe even like some modern poetry."
"Can you recite to me what you remember?"
I did, to the best of my abilities, but was starting to think that it hadn't been a dream of any significance, but rather one of the garden variety dished up by your subconscious because it had nothing better to do while you slept.
"What about you?" asked Takigawa. "Any of the tech pick up anything?"
"No. Though we did get some interesting sounds from the west wing. Lin?"
Lin, who had his headphones on, flicked the switch to the sound from headphones to speakers, typed a bit, and brought up a brief sound clip. At first, it sounded like ordinary white noise. But then a beat picked up to the fuzz, almost like—
"Footsteps," said John.
"So there is something here," said Ayako, tapping her bottom lip with a plastic spork.
"It makes one wonder for how long and why, but that is none of our concern." Naru crossed his legs and leaned an elbow onto the table. "Our task is to verify that there are not any lingering spirits here. Thus, we need to figure out where these spirits are and to exorcise them as quickly as possible. Hopefully, we won't hit any snags along the way. When Ms. Hara gets here I want Takigawa to accompany her and Mai to see if we can identify any of the spirits here for an exorcism."
I would have choked if I had any food in my mouth. "What?! You expect me to do the same as Masako?"
"No, but it wouldn't hurt to try. Besides, spirits usually find their way to you on our cases anyways. Maybe we could hurry it along."
"Well gee, that's comforting." Because I had so loved them finding me all those other times. Let's see: dragged into a well, get knocked out by fumes, get knocked out by spiritual whatever presence, nightmares, visions, floors and ceilings falling through, blood—oh yes, lots of blood. Oh, and wind sickles, because what were deadly driftwood gods without wind sickles?
So much fun.
And dare he have that spark of amusement in his beady, beautiful, smart-ass eye? Forget that the others were chortling behind me, Naru had no right to laugh at me. He had brought me into this, after all.
Nevertheless, when Masako finally made it to our breakfast party wearing yet another spring kimono (this one sky blue, hemmed with lotuses, and scattered with goldfish), the whole group tagged along with us to see what would happen while Lin and Naru kept watch at base. Takigawa had a walkie-talkie on his hip to keep us in touch.
The hospital consisted of a sort of two rung ladder shape, with an overgrown courtyard in the center containing a fountain filled with algae and frog spawn. The two rungs of the ladder were called North and South halls, while the longer, thicker polls were West and East. Whether they faced the four points exactly no one bothered to ask. The North and South halls were shorter and smaller that the West and East, and consisted of what could have been the administration offices and pharmacies when the hospital was still in operation. The many rooms for patients and whatever else a hospital needed made up the West and East halls. The emergency room made up the far most tip of the West wing, and in which we were keen to look into last.
Takigawa and John opened door after door, each on one side of the hall, so Masako and I could take turns peering inside. Through all this, Ayako watched from a safe distance, making comments now and then about her own parent's hospital and how national medical laws had become a pain in some ways since the old building's time.
"—you know they use to think blood was harmless? It wasn't considered a biohazard waste and, while doctors knew it was stupid to care for other patients with contaminated tools, they'd just hand off bloody sheets and gowns to janitors like muddy clothes."
"Yeah, I've heard of that," said Takigawa, brushing aside an empty grocery bag from the doorway he had just opened. Inside was one of many generic patient rooms, with empty aluminum beds, bare curtain rails on the ceiling, and a closed, adjoining bathroom. "My great uncle use to tell stores of an old industrial laundry mat he use to work at. One time he heard some rattling in the dryer and pulled out a whole set of teeth."
"And here I am just wondering why someone had to get all their teeth taken out," I said, peering around Takigawa to the room. I examined the same, peeling green wallpaper, the boarded up window, the mouse droppings, the trash, the spiders...just the same general, creepy feeling. I eyed the adjoining bathroom and winced at what could be inside. The previous bathrooms had proven to be cleaner than I expected and in much the same shape as our own, but I still expected to open a door to a nightmarish spider nest from an Indian Jones set.
Once I had had my fill of a creepy room, Masako and I would cross the hall to take turns examining each other's rooms. The others got to signal to move on whenever we did.
"I keep expecting to find blood stains or something," said John, who had started out pale and pensive, but who had calmed considerably after the dozenth boring, decaying, but mostly empty room.
"Please," said Ayako. "Even then they had their cleaning procedures. This place has probably been bleached from head to toe every day of its life."
"You'd think it'd smell like it then," I said, sneezing as I took a whiff and caught dust instead.
"Now that you mention it, I can't really place the smell—beneath the usual old building smell, that is," Takigawa said.
His sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as we moved to the next set of doors. One of these turned out to be a utility closet, which, though not being my spider hell, had several pairs of scaly, worm like tails and furry behinds darting from the sudden light. I bowled into Takigawa in my retreat.
He caught my shoulders as I bounced against him. "Woa, there, you okay?"
"Rats!" I squeaked. "I've never seen them outside pet stores. They're huge!" That's it. I was so sleeping in the van tonight.
Ayako must have been thinking the same thing. "You've got to be kidding me! And they want to refurbish this place?"
"Rats are easily taken care of," said Takigawa, shutting the door without bothering to ask if Masako wanted to look. "It's the asbestos that's the real problem."
She made a noise between a grunt and a squawk. "Asbestos? And we've been sleeping here?!"
"I see her."
All of us turned to Masako, who had stepped into the room enough to see behind the door, which opened inwards. John stood in the doorway with his hand still on the handle. She held a lotus and goldfish speckled sleeve to her mouth.
We approached cautiously as she spoke; "I can just see her outline. She's tucked between the door and the wall, and I can see through her. It's almost like she's two-dimensional. I don't get the feeling she's asleep, but she isn't aware of her surroundings either."
By the time I stood at Masako's side, hand on the doorway, I thought I could feel something like déjà vu tickling the back of my mind. I couldn't see anything, but through a thread like jerk in my gut, I knew someone was there.
"That sounds like my dream," I said. "Small. In the wall, till she becomes the wall, so no one will ever find her."
Masako nodded. "Seeing her now, it makes sense that nothing major has ever happened here. But if she's so withdrawn from this world, why hasn't she crossed over yet? Or even faded?"
"Faded?" asked John.
"It's when a ghost is weak, or rather, has weak sentiments towards what they left, but they aren't particularly keen on leaving anyways," said Takigawa behind us. "It's like they're stuck at the crossroads. They don't tend to stay there long."
Masako's perfect eyebrows puckered above her sleeve, and I could imagine her small mouth plumped up like a flower as she pursed them in thought. "She's...almost glowing. I can't believe that she hasn't noticed us yet. Perhaps she chooses not to."
The walkie-talkie crackled. "Did you find something? You've stopped."
Oh yeah. We had one of the hall's camera's pointed right at us. I glanced back at it as Takigawa responded.
"Yeah, we did. Just one, possibly the girl that they sensed before."
"It is her," said Masako, her eyes still on that spot behind the door. I could see her footsteps in the dust on the floor.
"Is an exorcism possible?" asked Naru.
My gaze trailed around the edges of her kimono to the rest of the room. No black plastic, trash bags, or debre littered the corners, besides the occasional fallen peel of wall paper. But then, like the others, it was dark due to the window being boarded up, so there could be something further in. I flicked at the light switch, but nothing happened. It hadn't been the only room we found with a burnt light bulb, but my stomach clenched.
"I think so," said Masako, bringing down her sleeve. "I don't sense any aggressiveness. I believe she's simply been here in the dark and quiet so long she's forgotten she's dead. Let me talk to her first."
And Masako did, even crouching down to coo to her as though to a cat, explaining she was dead and that she could find peace now. My eyes had adjusted to the light enough to see that the black plastic I had missed was hanging in shreds from the curtain rail in the ceiling. On closer inspection, I realized it wasn't plastic, but fabric. Someone had forgotten to take these one down.
The clenching in my stomach increased.
Small. Small. Like the wall.
Masako sighed and stood. "She's not responding, but I don't think she's any harm. I suspect being exorcised would do her good."
No one find me. Please, no one find me. Numb feet, cold—small small—
"Good. Takigawa, would you do the honors?"
"I did bother to dress for this occasion," he said, wrapping his prayer beads around his hands and making the first sign. Any playfulness had vanished as his usual seriousness before spiritual work took place. It was only in these moments that I could believe he was meant for the job of a monk.
Let my hair suck in light. Let my lungs breathe out silence, silence, nothing.
"We should leave," I breathed.
Masako, who was nearest to me, look askance at me. "What did you say?"
Takigawa switched places with John, who had slipped out his bottle of holy water just in case. "Best you girls get behind me, just in case."
"Something's not right. We should leave her alone. She's not doing anything, right?" I stepped out with Masako anyways.
"Spirits can change over time," buzzed the walkie-talkie. "And we're not meant to stick around after we die, Mai, you know that."
And since I had no other reason other than the tightening in my gut to say so, I bit my lip and took my place out in the hall with John on one side and Masako on the other, with Ayako coming up from behind to casually rest her forearm on my head.
"She'll be okay," Ayako said kindly, her fingernails soft against my scalp.
John also gave me a comforting smile. "She'll be even better. I bet there's loads of people waiting for her."
"Yeah..." Of course. Why in the world would I have suggested otherwise?
Monk begun his chant, eyes closed, fingers in place, and framed by the shadows of the room. The yellowing light of the old fluorescent lights throwing the shape of the doorway over his purple robes.
An ache tightened behind my eyes, and for a blink the blackness around monk seemed to grow.
No—small—nothing at all. Wall wall, no knees, no breasts, no liver, no insides---
Monk lifted his beads, shifting to the sign of the Immoveable One.
The ache in my head exploded. I could see the light now, shining through strings of hair—
Masako started to scream. In the next heartbeat, I realized it wasn't just her, but me as well.