With great reluctance, I switch off the recorder. The skeleton remains immobile. Then the skeleton bends and kneels in the formal seiza-style, her legs tucked underneath her. As she does, she takes on a flimsy, transparent appearance—the figure of an elderly matron wrapped around her bones.
It’s an unnerving sight. I see how she would have looked when she was alive, yet it is like seeing her through an X-ray. Her eyes, however, are on Okiku, who has assumed a similar sitting position beside me. I remain where I am, my heart hammering, because I don’t know what the hell is going on.
The old-woman skeleton is weeping. The threat of battle is in the air but with all the outward formalities of a tea ceremony.
Cozy.
Okiku speaks first. “She was incomplete. Her soul remains in this village still.”
The response comes, dull and hollow, as the ghost continues to weep. “Yes.”
“Why was this so?”
“The kannushi chose the path for her.”
“It is a perilous path.”
“Yes.”
“Your daughter is different from the others.”
“She is not completely aragami. She is not completely corrupted. I am not like the other mothers. But it made little difference.” The grief is evident in that worn, hopeless voice. “I stay for her. She is a good daughter, dutiful and obedient.
“I wrapped her in spells and charms before her sacrifice to help her on her journey. I did not know that the kannushi lied when he took her. When the last ritual failed, she and the chosen brides were caught in the chaos, and I died with the rest of the village. I cannot leave while she is here. She cannot leave while I am here.”
“You can leave now.”
The ghost turns to look at the doll, which I’m still holding in a death grip.
“Yes.” Some animation enters her voice, pathetic with longing, as her gaze meets mine. “He is different.”
“Yes,” Okiku agrees.
“The kannushi will seek him out.”
“Yes.”
I interrupt with “I’m sitting right here, you know,” but they don’t listen.
“Do not let the kannushi take him. There is great risk.”
Okiku’s reply brings an ache to my chest: “I risk all for him.”
“Good. Please—you must free the villagers. The girls. They are trapped by the silkworms. Give us peace.”
The old woman says nothing more, only gestures at me to continue my ritual. I oblige, and the chants resume. The ghost stands and bows low to Okiku and then to me before closing her eyes. Her surrender is easy—
She sits in the darkness, cradling the hanayome ningyō in her arms. She is calm.
Outside, the world is ending. Insanity hurtles through the small house, rattling the screen doors. Peal after peal of wild laughter echoes, interspersed with the screams of those still living, still running. The force is enough to knock over her meager possessions: vases break, wood splinters, and the ceiling comes down around her. Still she sits. Still she waits. She knows there is nowhere else to go.
The doors burst open, and things crawl into the room.
She recognizes some of them in their tangle of limbs, and her grip on the doll tightens, her mouth whispering prayers. One of the corpses inches closer, ever closer. She has been dead many years, but the woman knows who she is despite her face.
“Kaaaasaaan,” it says in a singsong voice, “Mother, mother, mother”—
I’m not used to two exorcisms in succession, so it’s at least ten minutes before I catch my breath, trying to understand what I have just seen.
“The visions of that ritual, that was the last in this village,” I say with sudden clarity. “Something happened, and it freed the ghosts of all those sacrificed girls. We need to find out what went wrong.”
“The old woman was strong,” Okiku observes quietly, “to maintain her sense of self.”
“I could tell. She didn’t once try to eat my spleen,” I say. “What does she mean by silkworms? And that Ran girl’s vision—was that how they chose which girl to sacrifice? That’s—this is insane. What did she call her—an aragami?”
“One who had been sacrificed in vain and returns for malice.”
“In vain? But I thought the previous rituals were completed.”
“No. The rituals make up a larger, more powerful one. It is not yet finished. He intended this all along.” There’s newfound steel in Okiku’s voice. This is the angry, vengeful, justice-seeking Okiku I know and love. “The kannushi founded the village for this purpose alone. He intended to sacrifice all for the hell’s gate. He cared nothing but for the power he could receive from it. The last ritual trapped the people in this village. But it is still incomplete.”
“This was all the kannushi’s doing? The master of ceremonies? But why?” Then it hits me. “Do you think the kannushi is this Hiroshi Mikage person? The guy who was exiled from the emperor’s court for dabbling in forbidden magic?”
“The woman does not know. She only knows that the kannushi’s magic took her daughter’s corpse and breathed malice into it, as it did the other brides. Until the ritual is complete, they are bound here. What protection the woman had given preserved some of the girl’s memories, and she stayed until her child could be vanquished.”