I hear the rustle of movement behind me, and I don’t wait for a reply this time. I drop to the floor, relying on my tried-and-tested habit of playing dead instead of mustering a defense, and the clawed hand flies uselessly over my head. I aim for the feet, figuring that a bum leg is a bum leg, whether its owner’s been possessed or otherwise. The trick works, and Alan George’s body hits the floor beside me, my stake through his ankle preventing him from doing more than flail around.
One look at him tells me that we’re too late. His face looks like it no longer believes in adipose tissue and is decomposing rapidly. Cobweb-like threads gather at his neck and wrap around his head, and I can tell this was the initial metamorphosis the villagers went through before they were finally spun into cocoons.
Kagura and Riley are still attempting to break down the door, but I can’t wait for them to finish. “I’m sorry,” I tell Alan’s body. It’s one thing to stake down ghosts, people you consider dead and gone. It’s another thing to confront someone you just talked to, who was alive and breathing when you left him.
“I’m really, really sorry.” I’m sure the man’s past the point of feeling anything now, but I cringe as I hammer a stake through his hand. Alan rolls his eyes until only the whites show. His cheek sags. I steel myself, croak out another “sorry,” and shove the final sacred spike into his chest just as Kagura and Riley burst through the door, armed with what look like the remains of a chair.
George’s body jerks and his muscles lock, as if rigor mortis has finally remembered to set in. I see a brief vision of him as I first remember him, minus the bone-mangling features. And then his whole being crumbles into dust.
“Holy fuck,” Riley says, staring at the spot where his friend used to be.
The look of horror on Kagura’s face makes me feel worse. “It’s my fault.” I tug at the stakes on the floor. “He was on my watch, and I didn’t take enough precautions. I didn’t think he’d take the ofuda off…”
“No, the fault is mine. I should have never…” The miko’s voice catches, and Riley’s hand finds her shoulder.
“I think Adams and I were the fools here,” he says thickly.
We don’t say much. There’s little left of Alan to remember him by, so we stand in a semicircle for a moment of silence before Kagura tells us we have to go.
Whatever trespassed on this property and possessed George appears to have left. I lead the way to where I found the Jizo statue. There’s a lever on this one too, in almost the exact same position, which saves us time. It pulls to the side in a similar manner, revealing another set of stairs leading down to a dark tunnel below.
I can practically hear Riley reconsidering joining us, but to his credit, he doesn’t make a sound. Kagura insists on leading the way, shining her flashlight into the dank depths and being careful to keep her pace slow in case anything jumps out at us. Okiku and I take up the rear. There’s another lever artfully tucked to the side that will allow us to move the statue from inside, so we don’t need to leave anyone to guard the entrance, which also makes me breathe easier. We might be eaten and torn to bits by whatever creatures we find wandering these passageways, but at least we won’t be trapped.
As before, the tunnels are devoid of light, so we have only our twin flashlights to guide us. I keep close to Okiku, not wanting to be overprotective but also not able to stop myself. She looks a lot better than she did, but I know she’s not up to her full strength yet. Her exhaustion pulls at me, mingling with my worry.
“You could stay hidden within me, you know,” I murmur to her as we inch our way down the musty-smelling path, the cave glittering from the way the beams of light hit the mold and the uneven walls. I make a note to add a flu mask to the list of essentials to bring next time I find myself in a ghost-ridden town. “You don’t need to physically be here.”
Okiku eyes me like I’ve just spoken in Klingon. “I am fine. I am—curious.”
That’s an odd thing to say. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask what else she is curious about, but Riley gives me a funny look, so I shut up. After all that time spent hunting ghosts on his show, you’d think he’d know if one was nearby.
“There is something here,” Okiku whispers.
“A fork in the path,” Kagura calls out in front of us.
A small path branches out to the right, and another tunnels straight ahead. There’s nothing to distinguish one from the other, no way to determine which route will take us to the shrine.
“I surmise one of them leads to the Kunai house, which has been blocked off, and the other should lead us to the shrine. The problem is figuring out which one is which.” Kagura bites her lip. “We were facing east when we entered the caves, and the shrine’s due north. If the ritual was being performed directly underneath it, then the path to the right should take us there.”
The words are barely out of her mouth when a loud sonorous chanting booms out, echoing against the walls and hitting us from all directions, so we’re not quite sure where it’s coming from. All I know is that it’s not Kagura and it’s not from my recorder.