Chapter 21
1. The Lonely God
Clear water was bubbling up from a stone basin placed next to a small Jizo statue with a broken nose.
The water seeping through the cracks reflected the blackness of the stone, making the water itself look murky like blood.
A wooden sign propped against the thicket behind them read "Purifying Water."
"Sounds shady..."
Muttering with a cigarette in hand, Miyaki gave a wry smile as if to gently scold .
"Co now. It doesn't seem to be just so superstition. Look, it says here that when epidemics like cholera and Japanese encephalitis spread in the village, the villagers, thinking that the rivers connecting to other villages were contaminated, often relied on spring water."
"So as long as their own village was safe, they didn't care about anyone else?"
I could tell Miyaki was making a vague expression.
Getting irritated now would only make things harder for Miyaki. I exhaled a long puff of smoke to calm myself, then looked up at the gently sloping stream.
Natural stone walls towered on both sides, covered with nets to prevent rockslides. The barely paved path was green with moss. I figured if soone slipped here, their body wouldn't be found for a week.
"Katagishi, have you been to this village before?"
Miyaki asked while staring intently at the sign, seemingly amused by sothing.
"Nope. Why?"
"Originally, the request for this case was sent to Rokuhara, right? You intercepted it and ca instead. I thought maybe you had so personal reason."
I literally crushed the letter hidden in my suit jacket.
Miyaki turned around to look at .
"Katagishi, then, can I ask you sothing unrelated?"
"What?"
"You call Rokuhara your brother-in-law, but is he your wife's brother or an unrelated older brother?"
"It's not unrelated."
I stubbed my cigarette into the portable ashtray.
"He's my wife's brother. I used to be married to a woman nad Misaki, and Rokuhara is her brother. This village we're in now is where the Rokuhara siblings were born."
Miyaki's eyes widened slightly.
Exiting the dim stream, we ca upon a suddenly wider road. There was a rusted bus stop sign and a glass-fronted shop that looked like an oversized old ice cream display case.
"For now, let's start by asking around."
Miyaki quietly agreed. Perhaps out of consideration for , she didn't ask any more about Misaki. Either way, I'd have to talk about it eventually.
When I pushed open the heavy glass door, a dusty wave of heated air spread out, and the shopkeeper with earth-toned skin looked at us from behind the counter. Next to the register were a half-eaten chocolate bar and a fragnt of what looked like deer antler.
"Excuse . We're here on behalf of the local governnt to conduct an investigation..."
"You finally ca!"
I was taken aback by the shopkeeper's sudden energy as he kicked over a folding chair and stood up.
"Glad to see soone who takes this seriously! Everyone else says I'm just seeing things!"
The shopkeeper grabbed our hands in turn and shook them, letting out a relieved sigh.
"Um, can we ask exactly what this is about?"
Miyaki discreetly wiped the back of her hand against her jacket.
The shopkeeper looked half confused, half disappointed.
"Isn't it about the giant snake living in the marsh?"
"Giant snake?"
Miyaki and I looked at each other at the sa ti and shook our heads, both indicating we didn't know anything.
"There's a huge snake living in the swamp that makes all the water ripple! Sotis it splashes up with a big splash. I've never seen it myself, but sotis the surface coils up—look!"
The shopkeeper rolled up his flannel sleeve and showed his arm. It was just his earth-colored arm.
"Just thinking about it gives goosebumps. That wouldn't happen unless you'd actually seen it!"
Trying not to show our disbelief at the shopkeeper's serious shiver, we quickly wrapped things up and left the store.
Outside, where the sun was dimd slightly by thin clouds, everything looked even more desaturated. A housewife in her forties stood by the bus stop.
"Oh, are you really here to investigate the snake?"
"No, we're not."
The housewife looked us up and down from toes to head.
"Good. That shopkeeper is an idiot. He's a coward. We were in the sa class, and ever since he got bitten by a snake in the thicket as a kid, he jumps at hoses thinking they're pit vipers."
I glanced at a neatly coiled rubber hose by the shop's entrance that looked brand new.
"More importantly, I wish soone would do sothing about the poisonous bugs in the stream. There are yellow and black ones I've never seen before. You need to call a specialist before soone gets stung."
As the woman spoke, the sound of a large vehicle with a loose fan belt interrupted her, and a long-bodied bus slid into view.
Aside from us and the housewife, the bus was empty.
As soon as I sat in the farthest seat and felt the hard tal beneath the cushion, Miyaki spoke.
"Did you bring here to exterminate your wife's house pests?"
"Of course not. Besides, my wife is already dead."
I regretted saying it the mont it left my mouth, but Miyaki's unreadable expression told it was already too late.
"Sorry... I didn't an to..."
"No, that one's on ."
The bus started moving, and the vibrations from the uneven road reached our feet.
There wasn't even an announcent for the next stop—only the rattling of the bus echoed.
"I had a hunch... but I guess I was right."
Miyaki added, talking about my wife.
"Yeah..."
I leaned my head against the seat, watching the steep road and thick trees flowing diagonally past the window.
"I t Misaki in our university folklore studies club. We got married right after graduation."
"Sounds like the ideal love marriage."
Miyaki joked deliberately. I made a sound like I was laughing too.
"We just didn't have any better options... Before we got married, she told her only family was her brother. She never brought up visiting relatives or going to her family's graves. I figured she must have bad mories and didn't press."
A deep wrinkle had ford between my brows reflected in the window. I placed my hand on my forehead as if to hide it.
"I heard from Rokuhara later that this place had so strange guardian god and beliefs surrounding it."
"Territorial Divine Offenses?"
Miyaki lowered her voice. I shook my head.
"Not sure, but apparently they intentionally practiced inbreeding to create people with divine possession—what we'd now call ntal illness. You hear about that sotis in rural areas."
"Yeah... that's definitely a hotown you wouldn't want to return to. But it lasted into modern tis?"
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the crumpled letter. It had no sender or postmark. I had no idea how it had gotten to .
As I pulled the paper from the torn envelope, Miyaki peeked over. I heard her quietly gasp.
On the torn notebook paper were pencil-written words rewritten many tis. The lines were ruler-straight, and the pressure was so strong the pencil had broken mid-sentence.
Big sister,
Please co. Leaving alone is unfair. It's cruel.
The ones left behind are lonely.
Even the god is lonely.
I want to let them out.
It won't work unless all ten are gathered.
Please co.
At the end, the na of this village was written.
"What is this letter? A child must've written it..."
"Who knows."
I folded the paper and stuffed it back into the envelope.
"Maybe this rotten faith still survives today. Whether it's a trap or not, we won't know unless we go in."
The bus announcent said it was the last stop. The digital sign displayed the words "Local History Museum."
Even though it was the last stop, I panicked and pressed the stop button.
As the bus stopped, I composed myself and stood up before Miyaki.
Ahead on the wide road were two directional signs.
One pointed to the marsh, the other to the Local History Museum.
Looking down the winding path, I saw a standing sign that read "50 ters to Kuhara Local History Museum."
"Kuhara, huh..."
It won't work unless all ten are gathered. I repeated the words from the letter in my mind and stepped onto the curved path.
Between the tal fences that made the museum look more like a prison, there was a small gap with a sign that said "Open." It had the lazy feel of a half-hearted public museum.
Despite being open, the grounds were eerily deserted.
"They really don't care, do they..."
Miyaki muttered with an exasperated laugh.
"Feels like they built it just because they had too much land and didn't know what to do with it."
Scattered across a field big enough to play baseball on were low-roofed buildings with no explanatory signs or anything. Surprisingly, it wasn't unstaffed—two or three families, probably there for their kids' howork, were going in and out of the buildings or sitting on benches in the corners.
In the center, where the earth was slightly raised, stood a wooden statue. It was said to be Kuhara Sothing-or-other, the founder of this museum. The gloomy, gaunt face bore a slight resemblance to Rokuhara.
Though I understood that things like consanguineous marriages weren't uncommon in small villages, a deep discomfort stirred in my gut.
From the building in the back, a boy wearing glasses erged, led by his mother. His expression was stiff, like he'd just co out of a haunted house. The map labeled the exhibit as "Quarantine and Living with Disease."
There was no one at the building's reception.
As I passed through the automatic doors, the extrely dim lighting faintly reflected off the brownish walls and ceiling. It felt like a dungeon.
"It's dark in here. Maybe they're saving on electricity?"
"Probably because it's funded by taxes."
As I turned my face away while speaking, I was startled to find myself face-to-face with a Hannya mask painted in black and red ink.
The entire wall was covered with paintings of grotesquely emaciated tigers and giant snakes with won's faces.
"Is this a governnt-run haunted house?"
I grumbled in disgust, and Miyaki giggled quietly.
"It seems this village used to represent plagues as monsters in their artwork. Look, here."
Her slender finger pointed to a caption on the snake painting that ntioned blisters and fever. The tiger, labeled with an alternate na, was probably cholera.
"They even have Soviet Flu here. Did it really spread to such a remote part of Japan?"
"I figured that country would be pretty strict about disease control, though."
We walked along, looking at the paintings in order, but they were just eerie and didn't offer any real insights.
At so point, Miyaki had passed and slipped behind a black curtain in the back, letting out a small scream.
"What happened?"
When I pushed aside the curtain, I saw an elderly man, half-naked, over Miyaki's shoulder.
"Sorry, I just didn't expect sothing like this to be here..."
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized the old man was a doll, so lifelike it could be mistaken for real. Sitting cross-legged with a gaunt upper body exposed, the doll was behind a red fence.
In its cloudy eyes, a sharp light glead through the lattice.
"A confinent room...?"
As if in response, a rough noise crackled from a speaker, and an old, worn-out recording began to play.
"Until the iji era, it was customary in various regions to confine those with ntal illness like this... but in this village... they were treated with reverence as possessed by gods... serving as a kind of barrier..."
I glared at the speaker's sh. The recording cut off there.
"Creepy exhibit."
I was so absorbed in staring at the confinent room doll that I forgot to respond to Miyaki's voice. The dull light reflected from the glass-embedded eye sockets.
This village also had an abnormal god and a strange faith. I was sure of it.
As I stepped out of the building and breathed in the soft sunlight and cold air, sothing light bumped into my back. A crumpled scrap of mo paper rolled to my feet.
When I picked it up and looked up, a short-haired child—couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl—stood in the distance, arm still extended from the throw.
"Little brat."
While Miyaki gave a wry smile, the child ran off.
I unfolded the paper in my hand and was transfixed by the clumsy handwriting.
"Thank you for coming.
But please co more. Please help big sister. It's almost ti. I'm lonely.
Five"
The kanji for the number was written large, filling the bottom half of the mo.
Miyaki narrowed her eyes, glaring in the direction the child had disappeared.
I stuffed the mo into the sa pocket as the letter.
Trap or not, I had no choice but to go.
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