My hand clenched around the tiny jewel, I make sure I’m completely intact before looking at what I just got myself out of.
It’s like a horror movie. The dead are rising from the graveyard’s trenches, clamoring toward the side of the pit and me and Okiku. The skeletons scratch futilely at the rock. At least none of them look capable of scaling the hole. Only Kazuhiko’s body remains inert. However he died, he’s not part of their curse.
I look down at the magatama in my hand. The skeletons began to move almost as soon as I started my climb, and I wonder if something in the polished stone kept them immobile. There is a hole in the pendant where the necklace cord runs through, but it’s bigger than it ought to be—an inch across in diameter by my estimate.
I peer through the hole in the magatama, straight into the pit, and nearly drop it at what I see.
I no longer see skeletons. I see men and women—villagers, judging from their clothes—pale and frightened, their arms raised in supplication, begging wordlessly. I see a few robed priests, parts of their heads bashed in, pleading with at me with missing jaws. But the pit dwellers that hold my attention are the unhappy-looking boys who would be about my age, with their throats slit from side to side, blood still running freely down their chests.
I pull away from the magatama, and the villagers are reduced to skeletons again.
I understand now what the magatama does. At least that’s one mystery confirmed.
Okiku lets out a quiet hiss. She is no longer watching the skeletal mosh pit, her gaze now focused on something behind us.
Standing over the altar is Hotoke Oimikado, the last ghost bride.
Chapter Seventeen
The Silkworm Tree
She is clearly dead. She is made up like the others, white-faced and strange-browed, and her kimono is the same as she described in her diary—adorned with wisteria and cherry trees, if no longer a pristine white. But unlike her sister ghosts’, Hotoke’s eyes are the vivid blue that I saw when I peered into the boarded-up shrine. And unlike her sister ghosts’, her lips are not stretched across her face like a homicidal marionette’s. Instead, her mouth is pursed, thin and colorless.
Also unlike her sister ghosts’, Hotoke’s head has nearly been taken off her shoulders. Her neck is slit from ear to ear, blood dripping onto her clothes.
I cringe, taking a step back before remembering the mob of skeletons behind me. Okiku thinks differently, positioning herself between us. I grab her hand.
“Ki, no.” I don’t want her to face the ghost, though I can’t think of another alternative. I’d rather risk using my recorder and my last remaining Kewpie doll in lieu of a hanayome ningyō to trap the ghost than see Okiku helpless again.
She squeezes my hand. “It is all right.”
“But—”
“Look.”
The ghost circles us, blue eyes trained on my face, but she doesn’t attack. If anything, she’s hesitating. A vengeful creature would be trying to gnaw my face off by now.
“She has not been sacrificed,” Okiku says.
Slowly, Hotoke nods. It takes a moment to process what they both mean. “She hasn’t taken part in the ritual,” I say, trying to puzzle my way through. It explains how the manner of her death—obvious enough—isn’t consistent with the suffocation that the others succumbed to.
I remember my visions, the sluggish way the other girls walked to their executions, as if they had little control of their bodies.
The tea Father gave me is getting cold, Hotoke had written in her diary, so I have set it aside.
That explained all the research Kazuhiko Kino did about the use of belladonna. I had glossed over most of it, but a few things stand out in my mind. Belladonna is a poison, one that can have a paralyzing effect, and it was known as “the beautiful death.”
Even Yukiko Uchiyama’s mad scribblings had a grain of sanity to them.
Don’t drink the tea.
Beware the beautiful death.
“There was something in the tea,” I say, understanding. “That was why the other girls didn’t resist. They wouldn’t have been willing to be martyrs, so there had to be a way to keep them docile before they were sacrificed to meet the ritual’s prerequisite. But you didn’t drink the tea, did you, Hotoke-san? You weren’t docile when they came for you once you realized the truth. You interrupted the ritual.”
I refusssed. Her voice gurgles from the never-ending stream of blood flowing out of her neck.
“Tomeo told you what really happened to the other girls. He suspected that they and their companions were killed, right? And when he was killed, you tried to stop the ritual by killing yourself, thinking it would all end in your death.” I struggle to remember what The Book of Unnatural Changes had mentioned. “Except it didn’t. Instead, the ritual failed. Whatever was keeping the hell’s gate stable fell apart. The gate wrested control away from the kannushi and condemned the whole village.”
Sssuffering. Amendss.
“Is that why you helped us? To avenge Tomeo’s death and to help the village?”