I turn my head to see the ghost staggering back, her wrist hanging uselessly off her arm. Ignoring the pain in my back, I lunge with my own stake and catch the ghost bride in the stomach. The momentum sends her to the floor, with me nearly on top of her. More wood splinters as the spike lodges itself in the floor, leaving her squirming in agony.
“Stop moving,” I growl, but the ghost isn’t interested in commands. She reaches for me with her uninjured hand, but I roll away. Kagura is close behind and sends two more stakes into the ghost bride’s shoulders. All the while, she recites her sutras, so when I drag the doll in front of Kajiwara’s livid, blackened face, it doesn’t take long.
“Tark, wait!” Kagura gasps. “Let me take the doll and—”
Too late.
She hangs suspended from its branches and knows that she must flee. But her arms and legs refuse to comply with the screaming in her head. They remain motionless, unable to struggle. She feels tired and exhausted, as if she gave up control of her body a long time ago.
Her feet are tied together, her arms stretched above her and bound by the wrists. She tries in vain to move again, to think, to free herself, but there is a low voice telling her that everything is going to be all right, that she must only fulfill her intended purpose.
She wishes Toreo was here. No. Toreo cannot be here, she remembers. Toreo cannot be here with her, because…because…
It is getting harder to think, to will words into her mind.
Her vision clears for a moment, and she sees the kannushi standing solemn before her. His attendants—her father and her brothers—stand on either side of him, carrying long yards of cloth so white and pure that it looks nearly invisible in their hands.
“Sleep well, Fujiko.” The kannushi’s voice is gentle. “Sleep, and protect this village from what comes.”
Her father and brothers carry the cloth so that it is stretched in front of her, brushing against her kimono. She tries to look at her father, not quite sure what is supposed to happen next.
She hangs suspended from a lower branch of a large tree. It is dark and dying, yet magnificent, though it no longer has leaves to shed.
A curious beat of drums starts nearby, and her father and brothers begin to circle her, wrapping the cloth around her midsection. Their speed quickens, until her chest and lower torso are bound in the silky material, and she is finding it hard to breathe.
Now her lower legs are constrained so tightly that she could no longer move even if she wished to. The material twines around her chest—her neck, nearly choking her—and her mouth. The last thing she sees before the thin gauze wraps around her eyes is the kannushi, watching her from behind his mask—
I am only barely aware that my face is planted onto the floor when I surface back into consciousness as Kagura frantically shakes me awake. There is ash in my mouth. It tastes bitter and grainy. I gasp for air. I feel like I was the one being strangled in Fujiko Kajiwara’s place.
The ghost bride is long gone, the holy stakes on the floor the only evidence she was ever there, but I’m still clasping her hanayome ningyō, those now-familiar black eyes large against that placid, porcelain face. Kagura’s hand clutches at its leg.
“Kagura, did you…?”
“Long enough to see.” The miko bites back a sob. “Those poor, poor girls…”
In light of what we’ve just seen, the girls’ attempts at murdering anyone who enters Aitou now seem pretty justified. But there is one more thing we have to do for Fujiko Kajiwara, and Kagura finally delivers the coup de grace. Her eyes brimming with unshed tears, she yanks one of the wooden stakes from the floor and sends it straight into the doll’s chest.
Chapter Fifteen
Last Words
“I’m fine, Kagura. It barely even hurts anymore. See?” I rotate my shoulder to prove my point, then disprove it when what feels like fire ants come dancing up the length of my back. “Owwww.” The wound turns out to be only a scratch, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting.
“I don’t recall you being this petulant before,” Kagura chides lightly, placing gauze on the wound on my back. With hindsight, I realize I didn’t bring as many first-aid supplies as I should have, but thankfully, Kagura also came prepared.
“I don’t recall ever being clawed by a ghost before,” I say grumpily and then flinch again. The upper part of my knapsack is shredded, but some quick work with my needle while Kagura works on my back ensures it’s intact enough to carry most of my belongings. The thick cloth, along with Okiku’s timely intervention, kept the ghost bride’s fingernails from digging in too deeply.
“You should have let me finish the exorcism, Tark.”
I give Kagura’s shoulder a pointed glance and then sober up. “Hey, Kagura…I read as many of the notes you left behind as I could, and nowhere did I read how the ritual was performed. Do you know?” The idea that the girls were potentially killed via suffocation, spun slowly into the cloth like trapped insects, is a sickening revelation.