It's not here

Mr Haraguchi made a confused noise on the other end of the line.

“That's right,” said Hikari, listening carefully to his reaction as she spoke. “It's a bit hard to explain but there's been some trouble with the Kimura family … No, they didn't do anything to us. They've been attacked and it's quite bad.”

Quite bad didn't do the situation the slightest bit of justice. Yota couldn't even look at Juri. Her grief crept across the mattress towards him and blew cold air down his back. His shoulders rose and his ribs ached from being pulled into such a tense position. Hikari's gaze flickered between Juri and the doorway as if she couldn't tell which one was more threatening. He should have felt grateful, rather than rejected, by the fact he wasn't part of that particular equation.

“We're going to need help getting rid of the attacker … No, I'm not sure where he – where it is right now.” She paced in a tight circle, her expression completely devoid of amusement like a mask someone forgot to paint. “That's right … I'm not really sure what it is, Mr Haraguchi.”

No matter how much Yota thought about it, it didn't make sense that something as big as the entity had been teleported and remotely controlled to murder the Kimura family like that, even if Juri and her husband had somehow managed to get on the bad side of a very rich, technologically advanced organisation. On the other hand, there was also no universe in which that creature could have been real.

Culturally a significant amount of the general population believed in the existence of demons, spirits, and other supernatural beings. Seeing one in person should have made them seem more tangible, not less. He dropped his head into his hands which he then dragged up and down his forehead and the top of his scalp. Slowly, in time with his breathing, stimulating own his thoughts instead of leaving them to run wild without any supervision.

If that monster had been a real demon or something similar, no one was safe. They needed to get out before it found them. Or before something worse happened.

“Yeah, so you need to get everyone to evacuate as soon as possible,” said Hikari into the phone. “Set off the fire alarm if you need to. I can check the upper floors and tell everyone once they come out … Don't worry, I'll be okay. Yota's with me.”

Yota cringed and tried to hide his skull between his knees. His fingertips brushed against his newly acquired gash and his eyes watered. Even now, Hikari was trying to lift him higher than he deserved to be and he couldn't work out why. A loud sound from the phone drew his attention back to her.

“Mr Haraguchi? What's wrong?” Her tone changed, slanting upward. She finally glanced in his direction but only for a split second. He straightened up even as strength flowed out from his soles. “You saw something? What is it?”

A distinctly scream-like noise burst from the small speaker and Hikari stopped pacing.

“Mr Haraguchi? Hey, Mr Haraguchi!” She checked to see if he had hung up before returning the handset to her ear, then twisted around again. Possibly to focus on the door. Most likely to hide her expression. “Where are you? What did you see? Hey!”

“Is he okay?” asked Juri, her face and voice both ashen.

Yota was sure she knew the answer just as well as they did, even before the call ended and filled the room with a low buzzing noise.

“He said he saw a dog or something,” replied Hikari, staring down at the phone for a second longer before replacing it on its base unit. “But that didn't sound like one to me. He wouldn't have freaked out that much if it was. He loves dogs.”

“Did it – did it sound like that thing?” He forced the question out and the mouthful of hot chocolate he drank earlier swirled uncomfortably in his stomach.

“So then – ?” Juri swallowed loudly.

Yota wanted curl up in bed and howl like a wolf behind bars. Before he could block it out or give in to the miserable urge, Hikari grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet.

“Do you have anything you could use as a weapon?” she asked.

“Why?” He shook his head. “You're not thinking of –?”

 “We need to make sure Mr Haraguchi's okay,” she replied. “And Juri needs medical attention for her leg, which she won't get if we just hang around here and wait for help.”

“But the monster –”

“It wasn't that fast,” she cut him off, encouraging rather than impatient. “All we have to do is get it to chase us, then hit it with something hard enough to break it.”

“Where are we going to get something that hard?” he hissed. “I doubt even a baseball bat would make a dent in that thing.”

“If we can't hit it with something ourselves,” said Hikari as she scanned his room, picking up the basketball he kept in another corner. “We'll have to make it hit something stronger than itself.”

“Like what?” He caught the orange blur as it flew at him. Its rough texture reminded him of trainers squeaking on polished floors, the old sweat and wood scent of the gymnasium, and the heat of being able to fight someone else without exchanging a single blow.

“Maybe we can make it run into a wall or something.” She tapped the one closest to his window contemplatively. “More than one, if we need to. Maybe then it'll open its eyes or its ears, and then I can pump it full of BBs.”

“That means one of us would have to be the bait,” he reminded her, swallowing a reminder about disturbing the neighbours. “Otherwise it won't come.”

“I can do it.” She turned to him with a shrug and checked her Eagle gun. “Not sure if these will actually do anything but I can always jump out of the way if it gets too close.”

“I'll do it.” Even Yota wasn't sure which dark pit of his brain that offer had crawled out of.

“When's the last time you jumped anywhere?” asked Hikari with an inappropriate yet genuine chuckle.

Probably the last time he played basketball, now that he thought about it.

“Um – excuse me,” said Juri, who also looked like she wanted to throw up as she lifted a hand. “I can't jump either. Or run. What am I going to do?”

“You're going to stay here,” replied Hikari.

The other woman covered her mouth.

“What?”

~

“Are you sure we should've left her like that?” asked Yota as soon as he confirmed the monster was nowhere near either of them.

“We're in more danger out here than she is in there,” replied Hikari, carefully pushing each and every door on the left hand side of the corridor.

She backed away instantly as soon as any of them opened up, her BB gun pointed at eye height. Confusion darkened her gaze as she found all of the unlocked apartments empty.

“Don't remind me.” Yota mimicked her on the right hand side, his back covered with goosebumps under his clothes even as his forehead radiated warmth.

“I'm surprised you brought that with you.” She nodded at the basketball tucked under his left arm.

“I didn't exactly have anything else,” he said mournfully, pressing the back of his palm to his forehead. Now would be the worst time to develop a temperature. “I doubt any of my kitchen knives would do anything against stone.”

“It's a good thing you left Juri the door code,” she said after a hum of agreement, her voice low. “That way she can open the door once we send the rescue team up for her.”

His throat trapped his response as soon as she stopped in front of apartment number eighty five for the second time that day. The door was already ajar and he quickly checked the stairway. If the monster was hiding there, it would had to have been oddly quiet about it. She caught his eye and they nodded at each other before she shoved the door open.

Yota clutched the basketball, fingernails pressed painfully into its pebbly surface, and stepped back to give her room. His footsteps left two soft marks in the silence and he bit his lip to ensure she wouldn't be distracted by his noisy breathing. Hikari backed up too, her wide body taking up even more space as she settled into an easily adjustable stance most sportspeople would have recognised. They waited for several air-stealing seconds before she leaned through the doorway and scanned the interior.

“It's not here –” She turned back to him and her observation died on the spot.

The low drone behind Yota would definitely have robbed him of his soul he hadn't been alerted by her widened eyes a second beforehand. Instead he lurched sideways with his heart beating in his mouth and the back of a stone hand brushed across the centre of his spine. The orange ball rolled away down the corridor as he landed on all fours and he barely managed to flip himself over as he crawled away.

“Yota!” called out Hikari, shooting several times.

The dark grey entity remained bloodstained as it floated out of apartment eighty six, bringing with it the scent of crushed granite and copper. Its hands seemed glued to its ears as though it didn't want to heard the sounds made by its own throat and rushed straight at Hikari, completely undeterred by the BB bullets. Just as they had expected it to be.

“Hi-!” He clamped a hand over his mouth.

She slid out of its way smoothly and moved until she was just past the staircase, drawing level with him. She caught his eye, then shot at it again. The monster stopped in between both doors and Yota scrambled to his feet quietly before it rumbled towards him like a bulldozer in the hands of a careful yet evil driver. This was the riskiest part of the plan. The part that reminded him of how many years his athletic days were behind him and how much the quality of his upper body muscles had deteriorated in that time.

It was possible that his thirty year old friend might not move aside fast enough on her escape route down the flight of stairs, and that he could lose her beneath the entity whose existence didn't make any sense in the first place. It reminded him there was a very real chance that his own body would phase right through the stone and he could end up knocking the wind out of them both if she didn't catch him. There were too many things that could go wrong, and not enough time or information to reduce neither the amount nor the severity of the risks.

Hikari shot several bullets towards the ceiling as soon as she had the monster in sight and it turned to face the open staircase. More questions flooded his thoughts, his entire nervous system, even his blood vessels it seemed, but he couldn't answer any of them.

What if he couldn't make himself move towards the monster?

But he had to.

What if he moved but didn't make it in time?

He had to otherwise –

What it he made it in time but Hikari didn't?

She had to.

What if she made it in time but the entity turned back to face him at the last second?

She had to save him because –

What if it tried to eat him and he was too useless to stop it?

Each thought slowed his legs as he forced them to propel him forward and he tried to remember what it felt like to cross the basketball court faster than anyone could predict. To finally score a goal of his own. He couldn't remember what it felt like to win, even after pouring everything he had into doing so.

Distracted by the sound of his rapid footsteps, the monster stopped on the top step and began to twist, moving faster than it should have. Fear stole the mercy from his muscles and he slammed his palms into the flat expanse of its back. Unsurprising, it felt exactly like running straight into a wall and he mourned his chance to brace himself for such a collision. Instead, bolts of pain shot all up his arms and wrists, as well as across his palms, and he was tempted to flee to the safety of his apartment. No matter how temporary a sanctuary it was.

He pictured himself falling straight into its gaping mouth and struggling against the chunks of stone shaped like human teeth until it crunched his bones. The mental image propelled him backwards until he hit the door opposite the stairs and his spine set off several alarms in his nervous system.

The plan had failed.

He had failed.

And now he had no idea what to do next.