Takeshita Demons Read Free Page B

heard her move to help another kid up the front,
so I sneaked another look. Her hair was so shiny it
seemed fake, like a wig or a costume. And her jacket
was way too tight. She looked like a badly dressed
skeleton, not a teacher. Why couldn't we have
Mr Lloyd back? I almost missed him. He wore
funny cardigans with awful turtleneck sweaters,
but he never...
    And then my heart froze. My breath stopped.
I'd seen something. Something no one else would
understand. I nearly choked with the shock.
    But perhaps there was some mistake? I took a
slow breath and tried to calm down. Perhaps I hadn't
seen what I thought I'd seen? I had to look again,
but when I did, there was no denying it.
    Mrs Okuda was itching at her neck. She was
digging her painted fingers deep down beneath her
collar and through her crowded pearls, as if to scratch
a violent itch. But that wasn't the bad bit. As she
dug, I'd seen a flash of red through the white. It had
been ink red, usually a colour of protection, but not
in this case. This red took the form of tiny Japanese
characters, tattooed like old blood into the skin of her
throat. I couldn't read them, they were too small and
she was too far away. But I didn't need to read them.
I already knew what they meant.

    Hand shaking, I took a deep breath and tried
to stay focused on my pencil, on the blank page.
But already my mind was racing. It was as my Baba
had told me in her most horrible stories. Mrs Okuda
was a nukekubi, or a'cut-throat' in English. A demon.
A type I'd never seen before.
    But what was she doing in London? And why
was she teaching my class?

     

I handed in my two-page essay just before lunch,
like all the rest of the class, but I made sure
it was a complete load of make-believe. I pretended
to love chess and football, flower arranging and
cake baking: all things I totally hate. But right then
I would have played ten games of football and baked
a dozen cakes. Anything to keep the nukekubi off my
scent. Thanks to my Baba, I knew exactly what I was
dealing with.
    Baba had told me all about their kind. By day
they seemed like ordinary people, except for the red
symbols around their neck. Those symbols were like
the teeth of a zipper: they marked the place where the
nukekubi's head would come flying off. As soon as
it was dark, when its body was safely hidden away,
the nukekubi would go hunting. I'd seen pictures of nukekubi, and Baba had told me stories that
would make your toes curl up at night in fear.
About children who disappeared from their beds,
never to be seen again. About dogs and goats that
went missing in the night, their clean bones
discovered the next day. Once (and this was
never proved, but Baba believed it to be true), a
nukekubi ate an entire classroom of kids on their
Second Year school camp. One night the cabins were
full of boys and girls, laughing and telling ghost
stories. The next morning, there was nothing left
but their futons. Not even their bones were found.

    The thing is, nukekubi can do more than just
send their heads flying around like mini aeroplanes,
zipping through windows, down chimneys, round
corners and into your house. Nukekubi are hunters.
Meat-eaters. While their bodies are safely sleeping
in bed, their heads can detach and zoom about,
sniffing around for a tasty meal. Children are their
favourite. Puppies and kittens come next. But
according to Baba, they weren't fussy. They'd eat
anything that was young and fresh and tasty.
    "Takeshita-san..."
    The sound of Mrs Okuda's singsong voice was
like sandpaper in my ears. Each time she opened
her purple-lipped mouth I expected to see it come zooming towards me, sharp teeth bared. Each time
I felt like running away, screaming for my Baba to
save me.

    But that wasn't an option. I was trapped in a
classroom with all the other kids. I couldn't just run
home and call the police. What would I say? Excuse
me, but this woman's head is probably going