“I promised not to attack without first speaking to you.”
There’s a skeleton clinging to my ass, and Okiku chooses this moment to quibble over semantics. “Okiku, I take back whatever I said! You have my permission to kill it!”
“Is this what you truly—”
“Okiku, kill it.”
She stomps down hard on the skeleton’s wrist. There’s a sickening crunch, and the whole hand dissolves into fine black sand. The rest of its body twists and then collapses onto the floor. Okiku hovers over it, waiting for it to rise again.
A rustle of cloth behind me. A low, moaning sound. A sudden movement catches my eye.
I turn and spot the dirty mirror again, my own face barely recognizable underneath all the cobwebs and grime.
But I see enough to realize there’s something behind me with wide, dark eyes staring out of its head.
I scramble forward on my hands and knees. I feel a swipe at the back of my neck, a harsh snarl. The bride ghost reaches for me again, all hair and groping hands. It lifts its head, and I see that we have not yet met. From what I can see of her torn face, she’s younger and slighter in form—but with the same distorted grin, the same ink-black brows as the other brides.
Okiku reacts. Her fingernails bite into the ghost’s yellow kimono, but the ghost shrugs off the grasp and leaps to attack. Okiku slides out of the way, barely. The ghost attempts to strike back, her rotten teeth snapping.
I fish out the tape recorder and hit Play. The sonorous chants that fill the room have never sounded so good.
“Hirano Ran,” I croak. “Hirano Ran. Hirano Ran.”
The ghost bride pauses and turns to me with a low hiss. Okiku takes advantage of her distraction to score another hit across the face, and the ghost staggers back. I hold the hanayome ningyō out, repeating the ghost’s name.
Ran.
The whisper does not come from me or Okiku. I swallow, turning to the skeleton at the center of the room.
It has lifted itself but makes no move to harm us. Its eyeless sockets are trained on the Hirano ghost.
Ran. The name rattles from between fleshless jaws.
For a second, the ghost bride wavers, and another face emerges from behind its hair—not another creature of blood and squick but that of a young girl.
Okaasan. She draws the word out, as if she’s no longer used to speech.
The emotion in her voice transports me back to Washington, DC. I’m at the old motel on First and Third, watching a little girl cry for her scumbag father.
“Hirano Ran,” I say again, my voice raw.
She looks at me. There is nothing gruesome about her appearance. The horror is gone. Now she seems unsure, almost fearful.
Ran—the skeleton clatters—follow him.
I’m not going to argue, so I hold out the doll to her, the recorded mantras still playing, and gulp. I wait for her to sprout teeth and claws, but she doesn’t. Her feet begin to slip and slide across the floor, the chants pulling her toward the doll in my hand. For a moment, she resists, and her face darkens again. But then her eyes close, allowing the chants to wash her away—
There are eighteen dolls in the room, all seated around a small altar. Candles burn in every corner, throwing heavy shadows on the dolls’ expressionless faces. She sets her doll down to complete the circle and takes a step back, unable to tear her eyes away from the strange sight.
“It’s okay,” her mother says from behind her, a faint tremor in her voice. “Come here now, Ran-chan. Let us leave the gods to decide.” The words are followed by a queer, hacking cough.
She takes in the room one last time before returning to her mother. The door closes behind her.
In the morning, she hovers by the doorway with the other children. The gods decided. Seventeen dolls are strewn across the room, no longer in their perfect circle. Only her doll remains untouched.
Behind her, her mother begins to cry.
The gods have chosen her—
—and I double over, hacking and sputtering. I stagger back and cling to the wall, hoping the dizziness passes. The look on Okiku’s face tells me she’s seen the vision too. Nothing gets past my brain that she doesn’t see. The doll pulses in my hands, its eyes a familiar, wretched shade of black. I position the spike. It only takes a second to ensure the ghost won’t be going anywhere.
There’s still one more unauthorized ghost in the room, and I raise the recorder again, clawing behind me for one of the dolls I’d brought along.
“Wait.”
I pause.
“Wait,” Okiku says again, this time with more urgency.