Modern Rituals (6 page)

James glanced up at her and the paper slipped from his fingers and spun to the ground, landing in a thick patch of dirt by his right foot. The word “Protect” stared up at him. Olivia had turned to walk away, and James bent down to pick up his note. He followed her, rubbing dirt from the parchment, and as he rubbed, the parchment changed. The texture frayed. He flipped it over. A series of words appeared.

“Whoa…whoa…whoa! Check this out!” he said, still wiping away dirt.

Olivia turned and jogged back to him.
 

“What are you doing?” she said.

A varnish had coated the parchment’s reverse side, now rubbed free by the abrasive dirt. James scratched away the remaining substrate, revealing the following characters:

教室
B-12 //
本
Amida
 

“Uh…looks like a mixture of Japanese and English. Check yours,” he said.

Olivia retrieved her slip and scratched at the reverse side. Nothing happened.

“You need to use something gritty to take it off,” James said. He took a pinch of dirt from the ground and placed it on her paper.

She rubbed. Same inscription. Neither of them understood Japanese, leaving them to ponder the English words. Neither B-12 nor Amida meant much to them.

“Hmmm… Maybe B-12 is a code? What is Amida referencing—is that a name?” Olivia said.

“Not sure, but this was obviously meant for us to find,” James said. “I wonder if there’s some way we can translate these characters.”

Olivia started back toward the road. “Well, we aren’t going to find any answers out here, I guess. Let’s go.”

They reached the dead-ended road. The quiet forest unsettled James as the low hum diminished behind them. The silence deafened—his ears desperately grasped for sound, only to find a peculiar auditory void. His heart’s thumping resonated in his neck.

“Man…do you hear that? Or, rather, the lack of
that
?” he said.

“I’m sorry?” Olivia said, hopping back over the roadblock.
 

“It’s like this forest is dead. I haven’t heard a single bird or animal. Nothing. I’m no country boy, but I know that forests aren’t this quiet.”

“It is strange, yes.”

They walked to the parking lot entrance in silence.
 

An eeriness crept into their surroundings: quiet and chilly. Tendril shadows snaked around the forest and school grounds. James’ neck hairs stood on end as if a stalker watched him—or rather, hunted him. The buildings invited him.

James approached the archway positioned between two buildings at the forefront of the compound.
 

“This must be a high school, but it’s not American, I can tell you that. Where the hell are we?” James said examining the archway and marquee.

Olivia opened her mouth to speak, but words evaded her. She could be anywhere. She could be far from Belfast or only a few miles from her flat. This place did not strike her as threatening—no, it was the unknowing that threatened; the lack of information and strategy. It was balls-up and it boiled her blood. A tingling clawed on the underside of her skin—this, she knew, was her subconscious digesting her surroundings, the result of which she hoped would reveal her next move.

She had new clothes. She had a piece of paper. She had a potential ally—or enemy? She wasn’t certain, yet. She couldn’t escape by running—at least not here. And, she had a slight headache. She needed more options, and options came from access to resources—especially information. Her next steps: explore the school—or whatever it was—and figure a way out.
 

Olivia stood silent for few moments. Finally, she said, “Anywhere.”

They passed underneath the arch and into an open foyer sandwiched between what appeared to be a two-story administration office on the left and an entrance to the gym on the right. A pair of soaring glass doors provided entry to the office building, and on them, Japanese characters mixed with numbers informed of office hours or the building name—at least, James assumed they did. The foyer narrowed into a long walkway shooting through the school’s campus, intersected by a covered walkway that connected a windowed low-rise—twice the size of the gym and three stories high—on the left and another building beside the gym on the right.
 

Perhaps that building to the left is where the classrooms are?
 

THOCK
—
the sound of knocking wood mingling with babbling water broke the pervading silence. It trilled from a well-manicured Zen garden that harbored a lily-pad-laden pond and towering, Japanese gazebo under which meditated a mammoth, bronze Buddha statue. The administrative building wrapped behind the garden, standing as perimeter to intimate dirt paths speckled by inviting stone benches and shrubbery. A bamboo dipping-bird filled with water and repeatedly spilled its contents by slamming upon a hollow log.
 

In other circumstances, James would have found this spot beguiling—charming…romantic even. He looked at Olivia and realized that he was goggling her.

“Huh…” he said, embarrassed, and glanced away.
 

He peered up at the offices. They overlooked the garden from floor-to-ceiling windows on each level—they seemed to lack interior lighting. The windows revealed nothing.
 

They arrived at an intersection where the tea garden ended and an overhead sky-bridge connected two buildings.

An entrance opened off to their right. “Looks like a multipurpose room or something,” Olivia said.

They slowed to investigate the juncture—James walked in front of Olivia and stopped, turning to face her.
 

“Well, I think we have the gist of this place. This looks like the center—the whole thing’s not all that large, really,” James said. “You okay? You haven’t said anything for a while.”

She looked at him and parted her lips, but instead of speaking she cocked her head and her eyes widened. James whipped around—he struggled to distinguish the outline in front of them.
 

A girl. A small girl.
 

“Hey, there! We aren’t here to hurt you!”

No response.
 

He raised his hands and walked forward until he could see the young girl’s eyes. Dread sunk needles into his neck—the eyes discharged a frightening stream of murderous lust. Knee-length wet, matted hair shrouded her downcast face. She wore a tattered, gossamer gown, grimy and unwholesome over pallid skin, slightly damp and decayed here and there. A sneer furled her purple lips.

 
“What the holy fuck!” James said, reversing course, placing himself between Olivia and the girl.
 

The wet girl wriggled forward in spasmodic, bone-snapping movements, careening down the corridor in blurs and snapshots.

Nothing should move like that!
 

He grabbed Olivia’s arm and dashed left, taking cover in an alcove outside the low-rise.
 

“Where did it go?” Olivia said.

James peeked around the corner. The girl…thing had disappeared.
 

“W-What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck! That was like straight out of a goddamn movie! Shit, I can barely breathe!” James said.

Olivia put a hand on his shoulder.

“We need to move,” she said.

They retreated to a set of nearby doors, which swung open after a valiant shove, crashing into the walls. The sound echoed throughout the campus.

“Oops,” James said, listening to an unusual steadiness in his own voice. “I guess I need to calm down.”

Olivia grabbed his hand and pulled him into a dim hallway lined with lockers and classroom doors. Polished bamboo squeaked beneath their feet—flares of light reflected in it from a door at the hallway’s end. James glanced to the side and noticed a narrow set of stairs that led upward. Olivia quietly closed the doors behind them and stood for a moment catching her breath.

James stared into Olivia’s eyes as his ears strained to capture any sign of the thing that chased them.
 

Silence.
 

James’ cheeks burned hot.

“Okay, well, I’m guessing we weren’t put here to begin a new semester of school,” Olivia said. “Whatever that thing was, it’s probably going to come back. I can’t shake how cliché this all seems. I mean, I’m dressed like some slutty schoolgirl, and that thing looked straight out of a Japanese horror film. Is this some asshole’s sick fantasy? I also can’t shake the feeling we’re being watched.”

James hadn’t sensed an eerie watchfulness until now. “Jesus, we need to get out of here.
Can
we even get out of here?”

“Let’s hope so. These cards might be a clue—why else would we have them? Keep an eye out for anything that could be related to B-12 or Amida.”

“Already on it,” James said, glancing around them. “And…um…if that thing comes back, just run—don’t even think, okay? If we get separated, let’s meet back here.”

Olivia nodded.

The unlit hallway harbored enough light for them to discern numbers and characters on the lockers and doors. James checked the first locker they walked by: it read A-09.

“Well, that’s convenient,” he said.

Olivia looked at the locker. “Should we look for B-12, then? It must be on the next floor up.”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s a good starting point.”

They turned around and hurried up the stairs. James cringed as his feet clacked on each step. “B” prefixed the second floor’s lockers, with B-12 near the hallway’s center. It appeared no different than the rest. James pulled up on the vertical sliding handle—the door swung open with ease.
 

Less light entered the second floor, so at first he thought the locker empty, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw a small book lying on the locker’s top shelf.

“What’s this?” Olivia said, pulling the book out.

“It looks like a prayer book or something.”

Olivia opened the leather-bound book, revealing bible-thin pages filled with Japanese characters, their edges frayed from extensive use. The front read
弥陀
.

“Hot damn, it looks like we found it!” James said.

“Found what, exactly?”

“Good question.”

She flipped the pages one by one, discovering a few marked areas and intermittent worn pages, each without a hint of English.

Curious about the remaining lockers, James reached for B-13. He fiddled with the handle, opened it and found a book on the top shelf as well. He retrieved it. Olivia’s full attention focused on James. The front read
弥陀
.

A quick comparison revealed the books to be identical. James opened B-14. Same book. He gave Olivia a bewildered look.

“And here I thought we were clever thinking the card pointed to a specific locker. This is ridiculous,” James said.

“Yes. So, what do the numbers on the card point to?”
 

A thunderous crash boomed from the opposite end of the hallway, followed by a man’s voice, then a symphony of others. Silence returned as quickly as it had gone.

James froze, his eyes fixated in the direction of the noise. James tugged on Olivia’s sleeve and placed a finger to his lips. She silently mouthed, “
Really? No shit…
”

They tiptoed toward the end of the hallway—a devilish creak accompanied every third step. This unnerved James who had convinced himself that, via osmosis, he’d gained ninja-like grace from watching his collection of kung fu movies. He pursed his lips and ground his teeth.

They neared the classroom door at the hallway’s end. Commotion rattled within. Two men argued while a woman pleaded for peace. Olivia pointed to James, then pointed to the opposite side of the door. He followed her cue, ducking beneath the door’s window and leaning back to the side, away from Olivia.
 

“On three, let’s both take a look,” James said.

Olivia gave him a thumbs up.
 

James held up one finger, two, and just as his third finger raised—just as they began to slide their backsides up the door, heads craned awkwardly preparing to look into the window—James shoved Olivia aside.

CHAPTER 2
 

Do not caress the notion of escape—it exists not.

(Labyrinth 9:14)

1

A shout from behind the door alerted James and he pushed Olivia from the door’s path. Two men stampeded into the hallway and continued their argument.
 

“I’m done with this! We need to find a way out instead of wasting our time here!” the shorter of the two men said in a Spanish accent.

“Bloody hell! Like I said before, there is no
out of here
. Colette and I walked as far as we could, and like it or not, we hit a wall. I can’t explain it, but we just couldn’t go any farther,” the other man said in an articulated Southern Wales accent.

Olivia and James watched the two men bicker in plain view. No immediate exit presented itself, and their discovery seemed imminent. The debate raged—the two men vehemently traded insults as each struggled to take command. James had had enough.

“Um…excuse me?” James said.

The men, now spouting a meaningless cacophony of angry noise, fell silent, looking down at Olivia and James in disbelief. James held his hands up, palms out. Olivia stared.

“Who the hell are you? You’ve got three seconds,” the Spanish man said. He sported a perfectly bald scalp and sported it well.
 

“Whoa, whoa! Hey now, no need for that!” James said. “My name is James and this is Olivia. We suddenly found ourselves here, in this place, not too long ago.”
 

The two men’s eyes prowled James and Olivia. Silence clung to the air. James hoisted himself onto his feet. Olivia followed. The men’s eyes calculated James’ every movement—he wondered whether their calculations would return in his favor.

“What were you doing eavesdropping on us?” the second man said. His smooth, ebony skin gleamed with beads of sweat.
 

“We heard arguing and decided to check it out. You are as much a surprise to us as I’m sure we are to you,” Olivia said.