Ink Stained

65: death god*

死神

She turned back to the window, and shrieked when she saw not only her own image looking back at her from the glass of the window, but the very faint and hazy reflection of a woman with eyes blacker than midnight and a sly smile curling her crimson lips staring back. Her face was right next to Pai.

She whirled around. There was no one beside her.

Her heart thundered in her chest as she brought her gaze back to the window, but saw nothing there. There was no second face. She focused all her attention on listening hard to everything around her, but all she heard was the force of the gale outside the house and the creaking wooden boards of the walls that remained standing stoically against the battering of the wind.

But when the voice called again, she knew she wasn't imagining things.

How come it's taking you so long? It called out petulantly.

She scrambled to her feet and stood with her breath shooting out of her in shivering gasps as she stared at the eyes of her frightened reflection. She took a hesitant step toward the window, eyes un-focusing as she watched herself moving warily closer, and closer. She racked her brains trying to think of any kind of Yori Chiisai that could possibly cross over the magic boundary of Ayashi House and somehow cause her hallucinations.

Or maybe it wasn't that – maybe it was the Amanojaku. They were known for being able to influence people, especially humans, into doing things they never would. Maybe it was making her imagine things, hallucinate impossibilities where she was seeing faces in window reflections.

She stifled a scream when her reflection warped into something inconceivable.

Her face dissolved into screaming agony, black seeping into the white of her hair like oil spilling over snow, her hands raising up to scratch and claw at her eyes as her head snapped back. she could almost hear the nerve-shattering scream that had her physically lifting her hands to her ears as she continued to watch the reflection with her eyes wide.

It was like watching something out of a horror movie. She saw herself screaming in pain, tears of blood dripping down her darkened eyes, before jerking to the left. Another face, the woman from before, seemed to tear herself out from Pai's neck, silent laughter echoed in the crazed smirk of her blood-red lips.

Pai turned and crossed the room quickly to her door. She flung it open and raced down the corridor to the bathroom. When she got there, she lifted her gaze up to stare at the row of seven mirrors. She stared back at herself. She was relieved to find no one else was there. She gulped as she stared at her largely dilated pupils in the mirror.

What's happening to me?

She shook her head and turned the tap on, cupped her hands under the running water and splashed it on her face. The shock of cold jarred her senses into full wakefulness more than smashing the frozen snow against her face to wipe away the blood had.

She looked back at herself in the mirror, water clinging to her eyelashes and dripping over the planes of her cheeks and down her jawline to land on the cold stone surface of the sink. Her bottom lip trembled, and her eyes were scared.