Slim: Book 6

Waterslide

By the time we made it back to the hotel it was getting dark. We first had dinner, which was a wide array of sushi that I stuffed myself on, followed by a soak in the springs outside our room's patio. Naru nearly had to physically drag me from the springs I was so sleepy. The day's exertions had been long and stressful, though a little adventure here and there never went amiss. The moment my head hit the pillow I was gone into a deep, warm sleep.

Which was why I was confused when I found myself awake at some odd hour of the night. Figuring I might as well go pee now so I could sleep in for as long as possible, I wriggled out from underneath Naru's arm and padded my way across the room to the bathroom. As I passed the glass patio doors, something out of the corner of my eye made me pause. The moon was out, though I couldn't see it through the heavy steam created by the cold autumn air meeting with the hot spring. The effect was a vague gray glow with the blurred shape of the privacy fence and landscaping.

And through the mist, I thought I could just make out the shape of someone.

Heart stalling, I stood as though my feet had been glued to the floor mid-stride. They stood in the far corner, right up against the fence, dark and hunched as though their arms were just too heavy. Just as I was starting to wonder if it was just a figment of my imagination—maybe one too many ghost cases getting to my head—the figure rose its dark shaped head. It didn't stop where I thought it should too, but kept going and going, stretching the body beneath it up and up until I couldn't believe I had ever thought them short. Their arms stretched like taffy, hands reaching for a stone through the mists.

An overwhelming impression of being seen, of being wanted as a hungry wolf wants the sheep, washed over me. I opened my mouth to scream for Naru, but no noise came out. The ever more inhumanly long figure stepped towards me, tree-like, taffy fingers scuttling like spider legs towards the step of the patio. Any second now they'd draw near enough for me to see their features through the steam. There'd be no nail, no knuckle, just bendy miles of flesh.

I woke with a start and a gasp. It took me longer than it should to realize I was still in bed and staring up at the ceiling of our room. One would think I'd get use to these dreams. But, then, was there ever any getting use to them?

Shivering from a thin layer of cold sweat, I felt around for Naru, and on not finding him, I peeled back the blankets and looked about. Outside the glass patio doors it was raining, which made it difficult to the tell the time. At least no weird stretch-man was outside it.

"Naru?"

A panel on the other end opened, revealing a yukata dressed Naru with a newspaper in his hands. He sat at a winter kotatsu that must have been brought in while I was sleeping. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"You got that look," he said, reaching over to bring up a rather out of place, western styled tea-cup to his lips.

"Just a weird nightmare of some creepy thing by the spring," I said, pawing about for my own yukata. "It was like that hunched man that we almost hit, except it was like he...stood up and became all stretched out, it was creepy. All the mist covering his features didn't help."

"Hmm." He blew over his tea and took a sip, eyes once more back to the newspaper.

Too happy about being awake and with him to care about whether he was listening or not, I pulled on my yukata and made my way over to the kotatsu, where breakfast had been lain out. It was a mixture of a classic English and Japanese breakfast, which I thought fitting for the couple it would be feeding.

The heater under the kotasu and warm blanket helped to dispel the last of the chill from my nightmare. We ate in a comfortable, homey silence, only broken by a turn of the page or the clink of a cup. Occasionally Naru would start rubbing my leg with his foot in an absent minded sort of way.