But I wouldn’t care if Satan himself spawned out of my back. My eyes are locked on the seventh silkworm cocoon. I frantically search with my mind for a sign that Okiku’s presence is still there—and find nothing. I reach out, frantic, and encounter emptiness. In that moment, I find the strength to move.
The recorder must have fallen when I did. It’s lying a few meters away. I hit the play button, and monks’ chanting fills the air. When a faint metallic clatter sounds to my right, I crawl toward the noise as soon as I’m able to. Kagura’s still immobile, watching through frightened eyes.
I close the distance between me and the ritual dagger and stagger to my feet. I understand now why the knife was in the other cave instead of in the kannushi’s possession. When his daughter’s ritual failed and the malice overwhelmed him, the kannushi became a creature of wood, just like the hell’s gate, this silkworm tree he worships. So he has become susceptible to sacred metal, even his own.
Kazuhiko, Kagura’s father, must have known this and used the dagger to fight him, but he was too old or too weak to succeed. As if I could access Hotoke’s memories, I can almost see the kannushi fleeing the cavern in my mind’s eye, weak from the knife’s use and leaving the vile dagger behind just as the ghost bride arrived, too late to save her beloved.
Hotoke isn’t as strong as Yukiko was, and the kannushi deflects most of her blows. But his mask has been ripped off, and his eyes are wild with the power so close to his grasp. I still feel a touch of Hotoke’s presence within my head, and while her thoughts are nothing more than a jumble of emotions—fear, anger, rage, a tinge of madness at being dead—I sense that her father always under-estimated her, even in life. He thinks he’s winning; without Okiku in the fight, it feels like he will.
That doesn’t stop me from plunging the dagger through his back, sliding it into what little heart he has left.
This time, the gurgling comes from the kannushi’s throat, and I withdraw and stab, withdraw and stab, withdraw and stab. He doesn’t bleed, but the knife cripples him and causes him to stagger.
I want to see him suffer. I want to see him fall, to bring him to his knees using the very weapon he used to cause so many girls such grief and torment.
My final blow skewers him by the throat. I should be nauseated by that, but I’m not. The anger and sorrow of losing Okiku are still too much. I switch on the recorder and press my hands over his face.
“Tarquin-san!” Kagura screams at me, but I don’t listen. I’m breathing hard, sweat dripping out of every pore. I can feel the priest struggling. His nails are doing a number on my hands, and he bites at my palms, but I barely feel the pain anymore.
I’m a moving, living, breathing doll—maybe not of the same aesthetic as the hanayome ningyō, but close enough. Kagura explained that enough times. All one needs is a vessel to contain malevolent spirits—ningyō dolls, Kewpies.
Or me.
I’ve been a vessel since I was five years old.
It’s hard to explain what it feels like to have a hostile ghost bottled up inside you—it’s worse than my experiences with the masked woman in black of my youth. I had tattoos stitched into my skin to keep her from breaking free. With the kannushi, and without the inked seals to lock him in, it’s a wrestling match to stop him from using me as his own—a hand here, an eye there—when my defenses are down. He sends nightmares into my head, trying to frighten me, but I shield my mind and heart with memories of Okiku.
I don’t need to hold the kannushi long, just long enough to finish what he’s started—but on my own terms. I turn the tables on him. Now I force myself into his head and access his knowledge.
I tap into his mind, into everything I’ll need to know to rule the gate and wrest the control away from him.
Seven to close and eight to rule.
I drag myself to the altar. Hotoke floats toward the silkworm tree, her arms outstretched. The silkworm cloth finds her easily, wrapping almost lovingly around her spread limbs. She’s willing too.
The obscure mantras I need come easily to my lips, but they’re not in my voice. I hold the ceremonial knife to my arm, pressing the blade against me. The kannushi’s presence leaps away from its touch, stilling him long enough for me to reap the words from his mind. The hymns dip and flow, bending the air around me, and for the first time, I welcome it.
The priest screams inside my head. The cloth wraps around Hotoke Oimikado one final time, and she disappears into the flowing silk.
A terrible noise whips through the air, like the crack of thunder. My breathing quickens, my lips moving faster as the chants quicken, and I watch the silkworm tree slowly split open, and its malice, a black shapeless form, begins to wriggle through the gradually widening entrance. I feel its heavy touch against my mind, its presence so overpowering that my first impulse is to get away from it.
I take a deep breath and embrace the darkness.
There is
nothing
here
Just the scrolling endless
dark of for
ever
So
easy
to let
go so easy
to let
It
overcome
you
no.
Okiku in the morning light.