There is no need for torches here; a queer light emanates from somewhere above our heads. I can’t tell if the ceiling opens to the sky or if the light is from some luminescent mold.
Kagura stands below the silkworm tree, her hands tied above her head, much the same way the bride ghosts were bound. My hands clench when I see that the lower part of her body is already cocooned in a long silk cloth. Her bag is on the floor, and the bridal dolls she’s acquired circle the tree. As I draw closer, I see the cocoons surrounding her and realize, to my revulsion, that some of them are moving.
Riley kneels beside Kagura, his hands bound behind his back. Two specters—both assistant priests, judging from their clothing, and still loyal to the kannushi even in death—stand behind him. The Ghost Haunts host looks visibly frightened, uncertain of what is going to happen next, but Kagura is calm and composed. She spots me, and her gaze hardens.
“Please get out of here, Tarquin-san.”
“I won’t, Kagura.” I don’t think I could have, even if I wanted to. There is only one way to end all this, and that is to face Hiroshi Mikage and all the demons he’s freed from the hell’s gate.
The kannushi does not need to ask me for the terms of my surrender. I can already imagine what he wants me to do. “My life in exchange for hers, right? And if I refuse, you’ll kill them both, huh?”
“Don’t do it, Tark!”
“He’s been planning this from the very beginning, Kagura. Why else would he go through all this trouble to be helpful to me? He wants me here. Showing me that old book in his house, helping me through the tunnels—he wanted me to learn about the ritual, to come to this silkworm tree. I am meant to be a part of the sacrifice.”
Because I’m exactly what he needs: a boy with a particularly strong attachment to a young ghost girl who, if not actually killed by the ritual Lord Oimikado or Hiroshi Mikage began, nonetheless meets all the requirements for it.
Okiku does meet all of the kannushi’s requirements. I am to her the way Tomeo was to Hotoke, and Okiku doesn’t need to have spent three years in an isolated room to strengthen our bond. She’s rife with spiritual energy. To rule the gate, one must suffer. My death would cause Okiku to suffer, just as the ritual demands. And Mikage clearly intends to rule the gate.
That is the reason he has waited so long without performing the seventh ritual. He was willing to wait as long as it took for an eighth sacrifice to come to the village—for the eighth ritual to be performed as well. Kagura must have seemed like a viable candidate until he set his sights on Okiku.
“But you can’t do that just yet, can you, Lord Oimikado? Or Hiroshi Mikage or douche bag or whatever the hell you call yourself nowadays.” I reach behind me and produce one of the hanayome ningyō. “There are five dolls here, but you still need a sixth.” I point to one doll lying by its lonesome, some distance from the circle—Yukiko’s hanayome ningyō, still uninhabited by its owner.
Should the gate fall, only one hope remains. Use the vessels to trap the sacrifices within. Perform a final ritual one last time in their presence. Wasn’t that what The Book of Unnatural Changes instructed?
“You have no control over the ghost brides, or you would have found a way to bind them years ago. For all the power you claim to possess, you can’t even control your own failures. In fact,” I add, with a sudden burst of certainty, “you don’t go out much, do you? All those ghosts crawling the village scare you. They don’t like you, do they? It’s why I only see you inside your own house or here, underground. Hiding.”
I didn’t intend to bait the kannushi, but I guess it’s just my personality. His face hardens and the gentle, almost compassionate features twist. The monster inside him comes out. It’s like Keren McNeil all over again. Mikage’s own incompetence obviously grates on him, and my barbs are hitting home.
I risk more of his wrath by walking over to the empty bridal doll and picking it up. Faint movement above us tells me I’ve got more to worry about than just the priest, and I struggle to keep the same composure as Kagura. I don’t have much of a choice; the circle of ghost brides needs to be completed in order to pull this off the way I hope to. The problem is that Lord Oimikado–Mikage–douche bag needs for it to happen too.
Another problem is the ghost lurking in the shadows above—Yukiko Uchiyama in her kimono of plums and bamboos and cranes. Kagura and I never did catch her, but the miko banked on the fact that Yukiko’s ghost would be attracted to the spiritual energy surrounding the place, to the dolls and the ghost brides trapped inside. To her own doll that we’d taken, the one I’m holding at the moment.
I can feel Okiku breaking away from me, her attention focused on the cave ceiling. The action is all I need to prepare myself. I slip my recorder out of my pocket, still holding on to my wooden stake.