Hyakki Yagyou

Prologue: Train Station

A word for the start: laughing sounds a lot like screaming.

- Mika Ninagawa, Helter Skelter

November 30th 10:45 pm

People laughed at the train station.

The girl felt nothing like laughing (this was a very stressful day at school for her) so she tried to pay the least possible attention to the people around her. A few times, she glanced at them wondering if they really had such a good day that laughing was an inevitable ending of it but she doubted it.

On some of their faces, she saw the same thing she would see on her own had she a mirror. Exhaustion, paleness, weariness… And there was the weariness of limbs inconspicuous to the eye. All she wanted to do was get onto that train, go home and sleep. Sleep. She desperately needed that but every time she looked at the digital clock above their heads that notified the passengers when the train would arrive, the girl thought time was not moving at all.

Still five more minutes. It seemed as if time got stuck at 10:45 unmoving. What would happen to the world, though, if time suddenly stopped? There would have to be some kind of a consequence. She did not know much about physics or anything relating to that branch of science (IT and languages were here thing) but… If time stopped, wouldn’t the world end? In some way… How would it look like? Now, she started to imagine it. Time would stop, the earth would stop moving and slowly, every cell, every atom would… Implode? She shivered. What a nasty ending that would be, wouldn’t it?

Back to the clock. Oh! It moved. The train would be there soon.

Trains were timely. Now it was already four minutes, or fifty seconds and decreasing. She could expect it to be there in due time. This was a short time span. In less than an hour she would be home, on her bed, sleeping like a rock. Or so she hoped. She could check the website, though. This late in the evening, interesting conversations tended to take place there.

The word hour, however, made her stomach twist and she wrapped the arms around herself, sighing softly. Music was playing in her ears, one of her favourite songs yet today she was unable to fully enjoy it.

Two minutes, twenty four seconds.

Perfect. If she tried really hard, she could even hear the train coming from afar. If she looked at the iron tracks she could even see them shivering slightly from the massive strength of the train coming their way. Home was not such an abstract idea anymore.

As the people around her moved, continuously talking, smiling, laughing, she took a deep breath, closing her eyes. Once she opened them, what she saw by her side made her pupils dilate. A hand. Someone was trying to grab her side. Jerking back and turning around, she scanned the crowd to see who was playing jokes with her but no one responded with a sneaky laughter or a strange glare… Well, there were strange glares. What was she doing, they wondered? Strange girl.

She frowned. Was she seeing things now? Great. That’s all I need now.

But something happened again. Fifty nine seconds and she realized that something was wrong. While she was busy looking around and then back at the tracks, the people left somewhere.  They somehow… Disappeared. In an instant. Looking around, she could not see anyone. The station was full seconds ago and now everyone vanished into thin air. Furrowing her brows softly, the girl wondered if she had dozed off standing and the train was actually gone. But that was impossible. Also, the clock was showing forty more seconds.

Wind. A gust of wind of a shady scent blew through the station and the girl frowned, wrinkling her nose. What was going on?

Little did she know, however, that the people were still there. They were watching her, some of them at least, every now and then, wondering why she was acting so strangely. A girl looking around bewildered and frowning... Was there a problem, some of them wondered but decided to ignore her as they were waiting for the last thirty seconds to pass before the train comes.

They could already hear it from the distance.

The girl sighed, deciding to ignore the lack of people as well. She looked back at the wall several metres in front of her wondering who bothered to cross the tracks and paint graffiti there.

By the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of something though. When she turned right, she saw there was a woman, wearing all black, standing some ten metres away from her, her back turned towards the girl. Gulping, the girl looked away but felt that something was still wrong. There it was again, the wind, and when she looked once more, the woman was closer.

Carefully pulling out her earphones, the girl stared at the woman who seemed to be getting closer and closer by the second but her body did not look as if it was moving. She was…. Floating.

The girl’s heart missed a beat and then changed into higher speed. She tapped legs against the ground as she prayed for the train to come quicker. Fifteen seconds, five metres.

Come on come on come on come on, she repeated as the woman kept silently approaching her. Finally, she stopped and the girl heard a horrible sound. Something was cracking and her mind recognized the sound as bones breaking. It could only be that.

How did she recognize it? She had no idea, she never heard such a thing (except on movies perhaps but that was fake) but the girl was sure that this was the sound.

Gulping, she turned to look at the woman again to see what was going on but what she saw became her end. The woman’s head had turned a hundred and eighty degrees. She was faceless – only lips sown with black thread. And she was holding an index finger in front of her face was if indicating the girl should be quiet. The girl covered her ears and screamed jumping onto the tracks.

People screamed at the train station.