**
Kodokuna silenced and an uneasy, almost unnatural, stillness filled the void left by his voice. With a click of the hashi, he lifted a marble of rice to his lips. Chewed with care. To his left, someone in the audience let out a cough. The rest remained silent. Not as much as a subtle exhale could be heard from them. Kodokuna took another portion of rice and took his time before continuing.
“Takeshi chose a direction in which the fog appeared to be lifting and hurried away from the bewitched place, alone. Without knowing whether he was moving away from or entering deeper into the forest, he stumbled his way over protruding roots. They seemed to be snatching after his feet, as if they knew what he’d done and wanted to stop his escape.
Whatever had happened to Mizuki, he thought, there was something unnatural about the whole thing. Bodies did not usually vanish into thin air! Theories, one more unlikely than the other, including demons, evil spirits and other monsters swirled around his head and somehow, he felt the forest close in on him. The trees were looming like warriors over their victim and shut out the light; the moon was gone and with it the silvery glow it had given him. The forest turned black anew. Deep within his heart a voice whispered that this place, right here, would be the scene of his final rest.
Before he decided to embrace and accept the end of his life, he stopped and looked around him one last time. It was a beautiful spot. Somewhere close by he heard the ringing clatter of rain falling onto water and Takeshi understood there must be a lake or a pond close by. Gazing in the direction of the sound, for a moment he considered the easy way out. But he soon discarded such thoughts. He was Takeshi Iwamura. With that name came valour and strength, not frailty and submission. On the other hand, the voice within breathed, if the people of Fujiyoshida found Mizuki and then him they would believe they had done the deed for each other and his name would not be tarnished. So the thoughts went round and round, but before he reached a decision he saw a light.
Ahead—how far was impossible to tell—a beacon of light reached out to him: it called him and told him to hurry. Without hesitating he summoned all the strength left and ran towards the source. Since he had to admit himself lost, Takeshi sought the light hoping it was a sign from something other than the wilderness. That it was not simply a fox playing his tricks. Many tales told of phantoms in the Aokigahara and how they allured lost wanderers. He had no desire to be added to the assembly of those who were never seen again.
A few minutes later he was closer to the light. At last he reached it and saw that it came from a small lantern on the porch of a cottage. It was placed in a narrow opening in the dense forest, a place where the sparse growth had offered space for the cottage with its porch, a small altar and a well, but nothing more.
It seemed like a strange place for a cottage, Takeshi thought—remote beyond comprehension—and he wondered who might live in such a place. Who could be bold enough to take up residence in the Aokigahara? Even if Takeshi did not take much notice of the rumours surrounding the area, the step from refusing to believe to settling down in it was inconceivable. These few hours had been more than enough. He raised his hand to knock on the little door but before his knuckles reached the wooden surface a man—a monk—appeared on the other side of the threshold. He stared at Takeshi.
‘Please, let me seek shelter, monk. All night I’ve been wandering in this rainfall and I know neither where I am nor how to leave this place. All I’m asking for is roof over my head and perhaps some tea before my body perishes.’
The monk nodded and welcomed Takeshi with a sweeping gesture, bound by his oath to give help to those who seek it. Inside, he provided the wanderer with a bowl of rice, steaming hot tea, and a blanket for warmth. The monk let Takeshi heat up his cold body and fill his stomach before asking any questions.
‘Few people come this way,’ he said.
Takeshi did not reply at once, not sure how much of the truth he should reveal to the monk. He crossed his legs and sipped his tea.
‘Since you have shown me such hospitality, monk, for a man adrift, I shall be truthful,” he said at last. “I am on the run from my home.’
The monk did not appear too surprised over this revelation, but merely seated himself, cross-legged, next to Takeshi on the tatami mat.
‘You may call me Saochi,’ said the monk.
Takeshi bowed and gave his name.
‘I have fled from my village, Fujiyoshida,’ Takeshi continued, ‘because my father, Naoki Iwamura, arranged for me to marry a woman I did not love. How could I endure the rest of my life with someone I do not love with all my heart?’
‘“The wonders of the world are seldom what they seem—nor are they otherwise,”’ cited the monk.
Takeshi said nothing, as his mind had flown back to his family and friends who, by this time, surely would have noticed his absence. He thought back to that morning, the one of the himatsuri. When he woke up that morning he had felt a distressing concern within and he had not been sure of where, or even who, he would be when the sun set. The only thing he had known with any certainty while he took his breakfast was that he would leave Fujiyoshida behind, most likely for good.
No matter what way he chose to avoid the wedding, he would be opposing his father and that was an insurmountable taboo. He would no longer be a son of Iwamura, his name would forever bear shame, and he would no longer have a home. To everyone who had ever come across his name—and it was many—it would become a cursed one: children in every Fuji-san village would be told his story as a cautionary tale; his mother would weep; and the strain would come to affect the relationship between the Iwamura and Kagami families for generations to come. The consequences and the suffering would be immense. His thoughts went to Mizuki and yesterday. Perhaps it was for the best after all? Those who were left behind would wonder of course, but her body would never be found and they would assume Takeshi and Mizuki had eloped together. In a way, it was not entirely untrue. Once again he felt the power surge through his arm—the power that had steered his arm to crush her skull with a rock. She had died without uttering a single word and he recalled it had surprised him. Then, it had felt easy, almost too much so, but now when Mizuki’s body was missing a solemn disquiet had settled in his heart.
‘You look troubled,’ said the monk.
‘It is only fatigue,’ said Takeshi and stood up. ‘Will you show me my bed for the night?’
The monk made a slight bow and pointed towards a tokonoma, an alcove, in a corner, separated by a folding screen. When he entered it, Takeshi saw the monk had left blankets and a lit candle beside them. On the wall, one of Buddha’s sutras hung. Takeshi turned around, bowed deeply towards the monk, and thanked him again for his generosity before withdrawing behind the screen.
All night the storm attacked as if in combat for its life. Takeshi twisted and turned, all the while listening to the battle outside, before finally falling asleep. A slight fever plagued him where he lay under the blanket in A cold sweat, drifting between dreams and reality. Later, because of this he would not be sure whether it was real or merely a fantasy from his subconscious, but in the middle of the night a woman’s voice spoke to him. She begged him to atone for his ill-doings.
Your wickedness shall be your undoing. You are selfish, Takeshi Iwamura, a selfish little child. The shell may be gone but the soul persists. You have committed an evil, Takeshi-san, and an enraged spirit does not rest in peace. This is not the end of your journey. You stole from me, so now I must steal something from you.
Takeshi woke the next day to a heavy rain and stared into the ceiling as if waiting for it to fall through it. Dream or reality, Mizuki had not left him entirely, of that he was certain. Killing her in the Aokigahara had been reckless. If the voice of the night was right, if her spirit was enraged, she would. without a doubt, return to collect her revenge. In that case he was in a precarious situation. Then again, how would she find him out here? He lay still for a while, without reaching a reasonable answer,
until a loud hunger broke his thoughts. Getting to his feet, he pushed all thought of Mizuki aside.
The storm continued and made departure impossible. The fog had lifted from the forest, but the rain was incessant and lightning struck around the cottage. It would be nothing short of dangerous to leave the protective house. Takeshi found the monk and asked him for another night’s stay, as well as help to cleanse his body from evil.
‘What evil?’ asked the monk.
‘I defied my mother and father and I broke the promise I’d given to a woman,’ Takeshi said and bowed in his kneeling position. ‘I wish to atone for these evils.’
‘If true regret is in your heart your wish shall be granted and your spirit be pure,’ Saochi said. ‘Allow me to read a sutra:
Shûjo mu hen sei gan do—Every immeasurable being is without limit, for I vow to bless them;
Bunno mu jin sei gan dan—Though greed, hatred and ignorance thrives, I vow to abandon them;
Ho mon mu ryo sei gan gaku—As the gates of Dharma are countless, so I vow to open them;
Butsu do mu jo sei gan jo—The way of the Buddha is bygone, but I vow to embody it.
Takeshi repeated the words and thanked the monk with a deep bow. He hoped it would be enough to keep Mizuki’s spirit at bay.
‘Is that all your evil?’ the monk asked.
Takeshi rose and went to the door. With his hand cupped to his ear he leaned against the closed exit.
‘The storm is persistent,’ he said, fully aware that it was an indirect reply to the question he’d rather avoid. ‘It could be perilous to venture outside today.’
‘So it would appear,’ said the monk.
Takeshi wondered whether he had succeeded in averting the monk’s attention.
‘If the weather allows it, I shall depart tomorrow.’
‘Half a day’s walk from here there is a village, Fujigoko. From there you can return to your home, should you wish, or continue your journey in the other direction.’
So Takeshi stayed another night with the monk.
Barely had he fallen into a blissful sleep before the voice from the previous night once more spoke to him. This time he gathered courage—he was Takeshi Iwamura after all—and opened his eyes. There she stood. All his suspicions were confirmed, despite her ethereal appearance: Mizuki. And she was without a doubt there to claim her vengeance.
He took in her entire physical form and swallowed with some difficulty. Her body was almost transparent, but around the deadly wound in the head there seemed to be more substance, more of the human. It was almost as if the injuries of life became more significant in death. He could do nothing but stare at her, enchanted.
Takeshi Iwamura. Takeshi-san.
Her voice was so real that he, for a moment, wondered if it was a dream or whether it was another fox succumbing him to his slyness. She came close and he ought to have been able to touch her form though when he reached out a hand he felt nothing but thin air.
‘What are you?’ he asked.
Her reply came in the form of his whispered name after which she stretched out her hand, paler than the finest silk, and he retracted as if by instinct. His reaction did not deter her, and she glided towards him without a sound.
When she was close enough to touch them, she caressed his lips with her fingers; cold and wet. Within his chest, the heart pumped faster at her touch, and despite the repulsion he felt at it, he became more and more aroused. In life, it was an effect she had had on him. There was no doubt about it—she was a magnificent beauty with her shiny black hair reaching all the way to her feet.
With obvious confidence she stroked her fingers over his lips, above and under, and a drop of wetness fell on his chin. At first he thought it was tears, but no salt touched his lips. It was clean. When she withdrew into the dark he forgot all about his physical response to her presence and realised in a spurt of horror that she had performed the matsugo-no-mizu, the Water of the Last Hour on him. She had signed his death warrant!
The realisation was paralysing. When she approached anew, he had no will left to stop her. With skin as porcelain white as a geisha, she came closer, closer. Her being bewitched him to stillness. In an instant her attractive form transformed into a grotesque monster! From her forehead grew two horns and between them an eye pressed through the skin. The slender fingers procured a beast’s claws and the hair, a second ago sleek and smooth like the lake surface, was now hanging in greasy stripes around her severe face. All the beauty turned ugly in the blink of an eye. Petrified, Takeshi watched it happen with awe.
Her body felt cold and rough when it pressed against his. Just like in the forest, he thought. She was surprisingly heavy when she lowered herself over him. With slow and light fingers she began unbuttoning his night shirt, without scratching with the claw-like nails. Before long he was completely naked with his clothes discarded in a pile on the side. Her fingers meandered over his ribs; counting like a butcher counts his cows. Once more he felt his lower body respond to her caressing touch—she must have bewitched him, the demon!—and she pulled him closer to seal both their destinies.
I love you. We shall be together, for ever, like you once promised. I am your sister and you are my brother. Hold me.
She kissed him with passion and growled as she thrust him into the Cave of Passion just as lightning struck a tree outside, cleaving the trunk in two.
When she had left him for the night Takeshi failed to embrace sleep, and lay instead awake and listened to the ominous sounds of the night. The taste of blood spread in his mouth.
‘Oh, to be devoured by any creature but a woman’s spirit,’ he mumbled with bitterness and fell frightened tears.
For the second time in a short time he experienced a profound dread for his life.
The next morning Takeshi broke the sleepless night as soon as he heard the monk up and awake. He tied his kimono before hurrying out into the garden, where he found Saochi in solemn prayer in front of the tree split by lightning. The hefty trunk had been cut right through the middle. Takeshi, shielding himself as best he could with the sleeve, rushed through the wet spears falling hard outside the roofed porch. The patter was so loud he had to raise his voice to catch the monk’s attention.
‘Monk! Demons live within your walls! We must protect it at once—for both our sakes.’
When he received no reply, Takeshi assumed that the monk was too deep into meditation to hear, but decided his message was important enough to interrupt. He fell to his knees, caring not that his dress sunk into the mud. Bowing in humility, he begged the monk for forgiveness. He had withheld part of the truth.
‘I am so ashamed of my ill-doings, and that is why I did not tell the truth,’ he confessed.
The monk still said nothing, he just bowed to the tree and went to seek shelter from the rain underneath the roof covering the little altar. He washed his hands in the basin as if preparing for a sermon. Takeshi raised his head to see the monk’s reaction to his confession and when he saw that Saochi had turned his back to him, he cried anew and slipped in the mud on his way to the altar.
‘Be merciful, monk Saochi of Fujiji—forgive me! I left my family and defied my father, but that is not all! There is more. Mizuki, my bride, my betrothed—not only did I leave her and so broke my promise after stealing all her heart; I did something terrible and now her spirit—the demon—has found me!’
When the monk did not offer as much as a grunt to Takeshi’s pleading, he sat up and watched as Saochi performed his ritual—as if he was unaware of Takeshi’s presence. It was most peculiar! In the world outside the little altar, the morning opened up to storm again and pitiless thunder shook the morose canvas stretching over the forest opening. After a while the monk bowed again, thanked Buddha, and returned to the warmth of the cottage. He passed Takeshi on the ground without even a glance in his direction.
Takeshi remained where he was with shoulder slumped, alone in the rain. The thoughts going through his mind gave him
vertigo and no single one was more logical than the next. His breathing was heavy as he attempted to listen to the bottomless silence within him. The inner void surpassed the precipitation outside which, suddenly, seemed as distant as a dream.
A calling made him lift his gaze. Where the forest resumed, where the trees once more thickened the Aokigahara—there he saw her. She had been observing him from a distance and now showed her blackened teeth in a skewed smile. Nothing had changed since the night—the naked body was as pale and grotesque. The wound at the temple was as vivid as before and it seemed to be swelling and shrinking with every beckoning gesture. Their eyes met and he noted that the rain no longer felt cold or wet, despite falling with the same intensity as before.
**
The monk had finished his morning prayers and prepared rice and miso for his guest who had not yet risen. The storm began to abate somewhat—at last—and the dense dark in the sky was scaled away in favour of spots of blue.
‘Much like a farewell between friends,’ the monk said to himself.
Once the sun perched at the top of the sky and offered a warm glow over the Aokigahara, it had chased away the clouds and now stood as one almighty in the clear skies. Since his guest had still not shown his face, Saochi went to the alcove. To his astonishment he discovered that the screen was pushed aside, the blanket at the foot of the bed—and the man himself nowhere to be seen.
It was of course possible that the man had simply left the cottage without waking the monk, normally that would have been Saochi’s conclusion. However, three crimson round spots caught his attention. Large as rice bowls, they seemed to glare up at him like sinister eyes and on closer inspection, Saochi realised that the rich colour reflected exactly what it was—blood.
He went outside again and discovered another trace, just below the steps leading from the porch. A couple of metres away, towards the forest, he found yet another one. Following the trail of blood, it led him amongst the trees and, not far from the edge of the forest, he found the violently flogged body of his guest. The mid-section was split open and revealed the inside of the stomach: it was filled with stones. The left temple was bloody and beaten to the bone, as if it had been hit by a blunt object.
The monk understood that this was the work of a demon and burned the body as custom would have it. Instead of burying them, he took the bones deep into the Aokigahara and left them above ground. That way, the demons would forever keep their prey.
That is the end of my story.”
Kodokuna fell silent and put down the half-finished bowl of rice that he had held. By this time his eyes had adjusted to the dark and he could just about make out the contours of each and every single member of the group in front of him. A brave American on his right spoke first.
“But if he wasn’t buried, his spirit can’t move on, can it? To the afterlife—what d’ya call it?—Nirvana!”
“Just so,” Kodokuna confirmed.
“So he’d be walking around on earth?”
“So.”
“We ought to remember it’s just a tale,” said the guide and laughed nervously.
The group laughed along with him, but Kodokuna sat quiet. He scratched his left temple, at the irregular scar which his audience could not distinguish in the dark.
“Like I said before the night blinded us—it is a custom not to spear your hashi into the rice like that,” said the guide. “It is a symbol for death.”
“For death,” Kodokuna repeated and bared his teeth in an evil grin.
***
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Oni
Copyright © Nina J. Lux
Published 25 January 2015
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