Plain: Book 2

Stand in Holy Places

I came to with the smell of bile in my nose and blood in my mouth.

I had to relearn to breathe. No thought could form in my mind, because it was nothing but a mess of turmoil and animalistic terror.

But my body remembered for me, and before I knew it I could register the white tiles, the paper charms taped to the shower walls, and the blond head bowed at the edge of the porcelain tub I sat in, filled with luke-warm water to the brim.

John crossed himself, and I registered the burning pain that had become my body, as though I had overexerted or pulled every muscle. I blinked and saw Ayako, Takigawa, and Naru, pale and crowded in the small hospital bathroom. Another rasping breath told me my throat had been turned to sandpaper and that everyone was almost as soaked as I was. Only the paper charms seemed to be untouched.

The priest looked up and met my eye. On contact with the blue of his gaze, a calm spread over my mind, and the first thought dug itself out from the layers of wreckage.

It wasn't real.

"Mai?"

At John's tentative, but blessedly familiar voice, I burst into tears.

I had nothing to say. I could say nothing. But I had never been so relieved to be fully dressed in an overfilled bathtub and surrounded by my friends who looked as though they had walked through a typhoon.

Naru pushed his way past Takigawa and dropped besides John. His knuckles went white as he gripped the side of the tub. His usual fringe of bangs had vanished into the wet mass which was now his hair, giving me a rare view of his naked forehead. "Mai, can you hear me?"

In answer I threw my soaked arms around him and buried my face into the crook of his neck. The memories had already started to fade, almost as though being washed away by the soothing touch of the water. My sobs came out croaking and raspy through my torn vocal chords, but I cried his name anyways like a mantra that could scare away the last of the nightmare.

Naru, never the hugging type, still wrapped one arm across my shoulders and squeezed.

"Oh, Mai," John put his hand to my head. It trembled.

"It worked! She's okay!" cried Ayako out the doorway to whoever waited outside.

Takigawa just wilted onto the toilet, eyes wide, pale as death.

"Mai-chan," he croaked. "I'm so sorry. God, I'm so, so sorry."

And then I remembered. "M-Masako?"

"Has some nasty cuts on her side and arm, but otherwise is fine." Ayako hesitated. "She said you saved her."

"What ha-happened?" it hurt to talk, and my voice didn't want to.

"The girl I exorcized possessed you and Masako, somehow," said Takigawa, who propped up his head with his arm on the sink besides him. "She said...she says she pulled you into...into her, or something. Not exactly see what she saw, but more than she saw, or something like that. But that she brought other spirits, or woke up other spirits, or maybe there weren't spirits at all—"

"As you can tell, she's also very confused," said Ayako with a weak frown.

"So, why am I..." my voice cracked and I had to suffice with pulling back from Naru and looking down at the tub of water I sat in.

"Every time I exorcized her, she'd just go back in," said John, his hand slipping down to my arm as though afraid that if he broke contact with me I'd fall apart. "I even tried to keep my crucifix on you, but you..."