"Megumi-chan, Beniko-chan, you came to see me!" she exclaimed, bowing where she sat.
"Yes," Meredith said carefully. She put the tray down beside the old lady. "We came to see you - Ms. Saitou."
"Don't play games with me! It's Inari-chan! Or are you mad at me?"
"All thesechans . I thought ¡®Chan' was a Chinese name. Isn't Isobel Japanese?" whispered Bonnie from behind Meredith.
One thing, the doll-like old woman was not, was deaf. She burst into laughter, bringing up both hands to cover her mouth girlishly. "Oh, don't tease me before I eat.Itadakimasu! " She picked up the bowl of miso soup and began to drink it.
"I thinkchan is something you put at the end of someone's name when you're friends, the way Jimmy was sayingIsa-chan ," Meredith said aloud. "AndEeta-daki-mass-u is something you say when you start eating. And that'sall I know."
Part of Bonnie's mind noted that the "friends" Grandma Saitou had just happened to have names starting withM andB . Another part was calculating where this room was with relation to the rooms below it, Isobel's room in particular.
It was directly above it.
The tiny old woman had stopped eating and was watching her intently. "No, no, you're not Beniko-chan and Megumi-chan. I know it. But they do visit me sometimes, and so does my dear Nobuhiro. Other things do, too, unpleasant things, but I was raised a shrine maiden - I know how to take care ofthem ." A brief look of knowing satisfaction passed over the innocent old face. "This house is possessed, you know." She added,"Kore ni wa kitsune ga karande isou da ne."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Saitou - what was that?" Meredith asked.
"I said, there's a kitsune involved in this somehow."
"A kit-su-nay?" Meredith repeated, quiz-zically.
"A fox, silly girl," the old woman said cheerfully. "They can turn into anything they like, don't you know? Even humans. Why, one could turn intoyou and your best friend wouldn't know the difference."
"So - a sort of were-fox, then?" Meredith asked, but Grandma Saitou was rocking back and forth now, her gaze on the wall behind Bonnie. "We used to play a circle game," she said. "All of us in a circle and one in the middle, blindfolded. And we would sing a song.Ushiro no shounen daare? Who is standing behind you? I taught it to my children, but I made up a little song in English to go with it."
And she sang, in the voice of the very old or the very young, with her eyes fixed innocently on Bonnie all the while.
"Fox and turtle
Had a race.
Who's that far behind you?
Whoever came in
Second place
Who's that near behind you?
Would make a nice meal
For the winner.
Who's that close behind you?
Lovely turtle soup
For dinner!
Who's that right behind you?"
Bonnie felt hot breath on her neck. Gasping, she whirled around - and screamed. Andscreamed .
Isobel was there, dripping blood onto the mats that covered the floor. She had somehow managed to get past Jim and to sneak into the dim upstairs room without anyone seeing or hearing her. Now she stood there like some distorted goddess of piercing, or the hideous embodiment of every piercer's nightmare. She was wearing only a pair of very brief bikini bottoms. Otherwise she was na**d except for the blood and the different kinds of hoops and studs and needles she had put through the holes. She had pierced every area Bonnie had ever heard that youcould pierce, and a few that Bonnie hadn't dreamed of. And every hole was crooked and bleeding.
Her breath was warm and fetid and nauseating - like rotten eggs.
Isobel flicked her pink tongue. It wasn't pierced. It was worse. With some kind of instrument she had cut the long muscle in two so that it was forked like a snake's.
The forked, pink thing licked Bonnie's forehead.
Bonnie fainted.
Matt drove slowly down the almost invisible lane. There was no street sign to identify it, he noticed. They went up a little hill and then down sharply into a small clearing.
"¡®Keep away from faerie circles,'" Elena said softly, as if she were quoting. "¡®And old oaks...'"
"What are you talking about?"
"Stop the car." When he did, Elena stood in the center of the clearing. "Don't you think it has a faerie sort of feeling?"
"I don't know. Where'd the red thing go?"
"In here somewhere. I saw it!"
"Me, too - and did you see how it was bigger than a fox?"
"Yes, but not as big as a wolf."
Matt let out a sigh of relief. "Bonnie just won't believe me. And you saw how quickly it moved - "
"Too quickly to be something natural."
"You're saying we didn't really see anything?" Matt said almost fiercely.
"I'm saying we saw somethingsuper natural. Like the bug that attacked you. Like the trees, for that matter. Something that doesn't follow the laws of this world."
But search as they would, they couldn't find the animal. The bushes and shrubs between the trees reached from the ground up in a dense circle. But there was no evidence of a hole or a hide or a break in the dense thicket.
And the sun was sliding down in the sky. The clearing was beautiful, but there was nothing of interest to them.
Matt had just turned to say so to Elena when he saw her stand up quickly, in alarm.
"What's - ?" He followed her gaze and stopped.
A yellow Ferrari blocked the way back to the road.
They hadn't passed a yellow Ferrari on their way in. There was only room for one car on the one-lane road.
Yet there the Ferrari stood.