The carpet had stopped being soft hours ago. Now it was just texture—abrasion against my bare thighs, a thousand tiny fibers digging in every time I shifted, which I did constantly, because sitting still meant feeling the mark on my belly pulse, and feeling the mark pulse meant remembering her fingers on my cheek, cold as a grave.
The lamp was the only light left. I'd killed the overhead hours ago, after the shadows in the corners started moving when I wasn't looking at them. The single bulb threw a hard circle of yellow onto the carpet, and I'd positioned myself at its edge, like light could be a barrier. Like she'd respect the boundary.
The laptop sat closed on my desk. I'd shut it at 3 a.m., after the screen flickered on by itself for the fifth time, showing nothing but static that resolved, for one gut-drop second, into the shape of a face. My face. My own reflection, but wrong—mouth open too wide, eyes too dark, like something was wearing me from the inside.
I'd slammed it shut so hard the hinge creaked.
That was six hours ago. Six hours of sitting on this floor, watching the closed laptop like it was a snake that might strike if I blinked wrong. Six hours of my own heartbeat in my ears. Six hours of the smell of spilled beer and old dust, of Rachel's dead face behind my eyelids every time I closed them.
I should have run. Should have grabbed my keys, my wallet, my phone, and just—walked. Driven to the airport. Taken a bus to nowhere. But I'd tried that on day three, and the television in the Greyhound station had flickered on by itself, and I'd seen her standing in the static, head tilted, one eye finding me through the glass. I'd turned around and come back to my dorm room and hadn't left since.
Somewhere outside, a car backfired. I flinched so hard I bit my tongue. Copper taste of blood, sharp and stupid.
"It's nothing," I whispered to the empty room. My voice came out cracked, unused. "It's just—it's nothing."
The mark on my belly throbbed, like it was laughing at me.
I pulled up the hem of my hoodie, looked at it for the hundredth time. The handprint had spread overnight—fingers now reaching up toward my ribs, the palm pressed flat over my navel like she was cupping me. The skin there wasn't bruised or burned. It was just . . . cold. Permanently cold, like a patch of frost that wouldn't thaw no matter how many times I pressed my own warm palm against it.
I'd tried to scrub it off in the shower on day two. Scoured until the skin went raw and red. The mark had just sat there, pale and patient, watching me hurt myself.
"Seven days," I said. My voice was steadier this time. I'd been saying it like a mantra, like naming the horror made it smaller. "Seven days, and then she comes. Seven days, and she's going to—"
I couldn't finish the sentence. I'd never been able to finish the sentence. Because every time I tried, my brain just—stopped. Refused to form the words. She's going to rape me. She's going to crawl out of the screen and pin me down and put something inside me, something that doesn't belong in a human body, and she's going to fill me with—
Nope. Brain stopped again. White static where the thought should be.
I'd looked it up, of course. The Ring. The curse. Sadako Yamamura. There were forums, threads, grainy screencaps of the well, the cabin, the tape. People arguing about whether it was real, whether the curse could be transferred, whether there was a way to survive. I'd read them all in a fever of desperation on day one, before I understood that the rules were different for me.
Because every account I found ended the same way: the victim died. Seven days, and the onryō came crawling out of the screen, and the victim died of fright, heart bursting, face frozen in a scream.
But Sadako hadn't killed Rachel. She'd killed her, yes—but not with fear. Rachel had tried to transfer the curse to me, tried to make me the substitute, and Sadako had come for her instead. And the look on Rachel's face in those final seconds hadn't been terror.
It had been relief.
Like she'd finally gotten what she deserved.
I shivered, pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapped my arms around them. The hoodie was too big—it was always too big, I bought them oversized on purpose, so people would look at the fabric instead of the body underneath. But sitting here, alone, with the mark burning cold on my belly, the hoodie felt like a costume. Like armor made of tissue paper.
"She's not going to kill me," I said out loud. The words hung in the stale air. "She's going to—"
The laptop screen flickered.
I went rigid. Every muscle locked at once, my breath catching in my throat like a fishhook.
The laptop was closed. I'd closed it. I'd watched the lid click shut, had pressed my palm flat against it for a full minute, feeling the plastic warm under my skin, reassuring myself that it was off, it was closed, it was done.
But light was bleeding through the seam now. Pale, flickering, blue-white. The light of a screen that had turned itself on.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no, it's not—it's not tomorrow yet. It's not the seventh day. I counted. I counted."
The light pulsed. Once. Twice. Like a heartbeat.
And then the laptop opened.
Not by itself. The lid didn't just rise—it was pushed, from the inside, by something pressing against the glass. I watched, frozen, as the screen bowed outward, the display rippling like the surface of water disturbed by a stone dropped into its center.
Ripples. The screen was rippling.
And then I saw the fingers.
Pale. Too long. Nails cracked and black, like they'd been clawing at stone for decades. They pushed through the surface of the screen like it was a membrane, like the glass was just a skin stretched over something waiting on the other side. The ripples spread outward from each finger, and the fingers themselves kept coming—knuckle by impossible knuckle—until two whole hands were visible, braced against the edges of the screen, pulling.
The sound started then. A wet, popping rhythm, like joints dislocating and relocating in sequence. Like something that had been folded too small for too long was finally being allowed to unfold.
I couldn't move. My legs had turned to water, my spine to glass. I was sitting on the floor, back against the wall, and she was coming through, and I couldn't even scream.
Her head emerged first. That lank black hair, hanging in strings and curtains, wet-looking even in the lamplight. It dripped onto the desk as she pulled herself through, leaving dark spots on the wood. Her face was mostly hidden behind the hair, but I caught a glimpse of it as she turned—pale, corpse-white, skin stretched too tight over bones that sat wrong. And one eye. One wide, unblinking eye, dark as a well, finding me across the room.
The eye locked onto mine, and I felt it. A pressure, like a hand closing around my throat from the inside. Like she was already touching me, already claiming me, and my body knew it before my mind could catch up.
The mark on my belly flared. Not cold this time—hot, burning, like a brand fresh from the fire. I gasped, doubled over, one hand flying to the spot, and that was when she finished coming through.
She slid out of the laptop screen like a birth, like a thing that had been waiting in the dark of the well and had finally found a way to crawl out into the world. Her burial kimono was tattered, stained, dragging on the desk and then on the floor as she came over the edge. Her limbs were too long, elbows and knees bending at angles that made my stomach turn, and she moved with that wet, popping rhythm, each joint settling into place with a sound like cracking ice.
She landed on the carpet in front of my desk. For a moment she just crouched there, head tilted, hair hanging down, that one eye fixed on me through the dark curtain. The lamp light caught the edge of her profile—the sharp jut of her jaw, the hollow of her cheek, the way her skin seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it.
I heard myself make a sound. A thin, reedy whimper, high in my throat. The sound of an animal that knows it's trapped.
She started crawling toward me.
Not on hands and knees—on her palms, her arms too long, her body dragging low across the carpet like a snake moving through grass. The kimono spread out around her, a white stain against the dark floor. Her hair dragged too, leaving a wet trail behind her, like she was leaking something onto the carpet.
Each movement was slow. Deliberate. Savoring.
She wasn't hunting me. She was tasting the moment. Drawing it out.
"Please," I heard myself say. My voice was a stranger's, small and broken. "Please, I—I did everything you asked. I watched the tape. I didn't tell anyone. Rachel tried to—I didn't want her to—please, just—"
She kept coming. Closer. The popping sound of her joints filled the room, louder than my heartbeat, louder than the blood rushing in my ears.
"I'll do anything," I tried. "Anything. I'll—I'll find you someone else. I'll bring you another virgin, I swear, I'll—"
She stopped.
Inches from my spread thighs.
I'd pressed myself back against the wall as hard as I could, but there was nowhere left to go. My legs were splayed in front of me, useless, shaking. The carpet scratched the backs of my thighs. The lamp light made a hard line across her face, and I could see her mouth now—a thin, bloodless slit of a thing, tucked beneath the shadow of her hair.
Her head tilted. The other way this time. Like she was considering me. Like she was deciding something.
And then her mouth opened.
Too wide. Far too wide, the corners splitting past where a human mouth should end, the jaw unhinging with a wet, grinding sound. Her throat was dark, endless, and I could see teeth in there—too many teeth, needle-sharp, layered like a shark's.
I screamed.
The sound ripped out of me, raw and animal, filling the small room. I screamed and screamed, my voice cracking, my throat burning, and she just—watched. Her mouth open, her head tilted, that one dark eye drinking in my terror like it was the finest wine.
And then I saw it.
Beneath her stained kimono. The fabric had shifted as she crawled, falling open at the front, and there—between the pale columns of her thighs—was something that didn't belong on a corpse.
Thick. Veined. Rigid. Darker than her corpse-pale skin, flushed with blood that shouldn't be flowing. It stood upright against her belly, curving slightly, the head swollen and slick with something that glistened in the lamplight. It was thick as my wrist—thicker—and long enough that I could see it was going to reach places inside me that nothing had ever touched.
My scream died in my throat.
I stared at it. I couldn't not stare. It was like looking at a wound—horrifying and fascinating and impossible to look away from. Her cock. The onryō had a cock, and it was hard, and it was pointing at me like a weapon being aimed.
"No," I breathed. "No, no, no—"
She moved.
One hand shot out, impossibly fast, and closed around my ankle.
Her fingers were cold. Not cold like the air, not cold like a window in winter—cold like the bottom of a well, cold like water that had been sitting in the dark for decades, absorbing the chill of the earth and the stone and the bones at the bottom. The cold shot up my leg, through my shin, into my knee, and I felt my muscles seize, locking up, useless.
"Please," I sobbed. "Please, I'm a virgin, I—I've never—please don't—"
She pulled.
Not hard. There was no violence in it, no sudden jerk. Just a steady, inexorable pressure, like a tide pulling me out to sea. My body slid across the carpet—I tried to brace myself, tried to dig my heels in, but my legs wouldn't obey, my arms wouldn't obey, everything below my neck was frozen—and then I was flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling, the breath knocked out of me.
She was above me in an instant. Her weight settled between my spread thighs, and I felt it—the cold pressure of her body, the impossible lightness of her, like she weighed nothing at all and everything at once. The kimono pooled around us, a white shroud. Her hair fell around my face, a curtain of wet darkness, blocking out the lamp light, blocking out everything except her.
The mark on my belly throbbed.
Not with cold this time. With heat. With something that felt like recognition, like the mark was greeting its maker, like it was happy she was here.
"Get off," I gasped, pushing at her shoulders. My hands sank into her skin—not flesh, not bone, something denser, colder, like pushing against a block of ice. "Get off me, get off—"
She didn't move. She just stared down at me, that one eye fixed on my face, her head tilted at that curious, animal angle. And then her hand lifted—slow, deliberate—and closed flat on my stomach.
Pressing down on the mark.
The heat flared. I arched off the carpet, a cry tearing out of me—not pain, not pleasure, something in between, something I didn't have a name for. Her palm was cold against my burning skin, and the contrast made my vision swim, made my thoughts scatter like roaches in the light.
She leaned down.
Her face came close to mine. Her hair brushed my cheeks, my forehead, my lips. It smelled like standing water, like moss, like something that had been dead for a very long time.
Her mouth opened again. I braced myself for teeth, for that impossible jaw, but it only parted slightly, and I felt it—a breath. Wet. Cold. Against my ear.
Not a word. Just a breath. But it carried a sound with it—a low, guttural hum, vibrating in my chest, in my bones, in the mark on my belly. A sound that wasn't language but meant something anyway.
Mine.
The screen behind her still rippled, still stirred, as if more was still coming through. As if she wasn't done with me yet.