A dead secret

A retelling of an old Japanese tale. For the original version see Lafcadio hearn's "Kwaidan"

         Written by Freddy J. Gioffre         

Edited by Michael E. Turner & Sebastian L. Mcintosh

August 9th 2016    

    An old priest sat, in the shade of a cherry tree yet to bloom; watching the fire's ghostly fingers desperately trying to consume the unnatural parchment of paper. It fails to find a weak spot, with a flicker, it dies out.

   The priest's mind, a tidal wave of raw emotion, virtually unnoticeable as his exterior remains calm and unmoving in the cool autumn breeze. The worldly man knows what he must do if the soul of the departed is to find peace in death's cold embrace.

    His swirling thoughts begin to take form in the dark occurrences of the night before; of the old women who came desperately seeking aid, and of the hideous demon that watched from the shadows of the underworld.

    The dark business began, as far as the priest could tell on the previous afternoon. When the sun was beating down its harsh rays on the exposed earth. It was hot, in fact too hot to remain comfortably indoors. As a result the priest seeked the comfort of the temples veranda on the east wing opposite of the sun in an effort to cool himself.

    Deep in meditation, the old women standing at the base of the stairs appeared to come out of thin air. The desperate neediness in her eyes made him visibly uncomfortable.

    "Are you Daigon-Osho?" the women's voice cracked with age, and sweat began to drip down her cheeks.

    "Head priest of the To-ji temple?" Her face, though generic was no doubt drenched in fear.

    "It is I whom you seek?" Daigen-Osho said plainly while examining the women's composure. "How may I be of your service?''

    The priest listened attentively as the teary-eyed women began to tell her story.

   "You see kind priest" she said, her voice clogged with Phlegm. "my daughter, O-Sono had recently fallen ill. At first we thought it was only a mere cold, brought on by stress. As she had recently finished her schooling in Kyoto" Her face became grave, shadows appeared under her eyes and below her mouth.

    "But the sickness dragged on for weeks. Her body began to wisp away as if something was sucking the life from her very body!" at this point, her lamentations touched the priest to the very marrow of his bones, her voice scrapped like a nail on metal.

    "soon after" she continued, wiping away tears with the back of her hand, "she fell ill and died. We laid her to rest in the cemetery of the Amida-ji following all the ways of the Soto-Zen Style funeral rites.*            

    The priest shuddered with the utterance of the Amida-ji. Although he has never experienced it first hand, he has heard of strange happening from amongst those headstones in the dark hours of the night. Ghostly samurai, earless biwa* players. Daigen-Osho shudders to think of the possibilities.     

    "At first everything went as expected, a local monk assigned her Kaimyo* and all close relatives placed their koden* with her, including a sharpened tanto* for protection in the afterlife"

    The shadow seemed to expand, covering her whole face as if the sun suddenly shifted position, removing the blessing of peace from her soul, and inviting the claws of despair.

    "But" the old lady appeared hollow  as she spoke through a dry throut.As if to tease us, everynight at the hour of the rat, her ghost appears in the same room which she had died in. Everynight...everynight without fail, at the first division of the hour of the rat* she comes to steal what remains of our happiness."   stirred

     Something stirred inside the priest.  A feeling deep down in the pit of his stomach that he  can't quite put his finger on what it is, he pushes it away.

    "Have you tried donating the clothes of the deceased to the temple?" the priest asks. For usually when the spirit of the recently dead return, it is because they have some sort of spiritual connection with some of their worldly items; and cannot rest knowing they go to waste.

    "yes we have"  she replies " to no avail"                  

   "How about the heart sutra?" he asks with feigned hope.

   "We have tried everything" she groaned with a mixture of exhaustion and hopelessness. As a child would ask their mother for assistance when all other options have run dry.

    Daigen-Osho ponders for a minute. The heat momentarily lets up and a small autumn breeze stirs the leaves on the nearby cherry tree.;

   "Very well" he announces finally; scratching the first tidbits of facial hair beginning to grow. "With the setting sun, I will aid you in your situation"              than

 For the first time the woman's voice denounces fear and pain, and employs hope.

   "Thank you kind priest!" she exclaims with an ear to ear grin before turning around with a youthful spring in her step, departing down the road.          

    With eyes faraway,Daigen-Osho watches her as the women walks down the dirt path. The stirring return.  Anxiety's cold fingers press below his heart, there is something deeper at work here. Something more sinister than  he can possibly imagine. He feels like a child, ignorant of what he did wrong.

    "At this point" he thinks to himself before closing his eyes to nap.  "Only the Amida Buddha knows, the lord of immeasurable light"

    It began as a whisper towards the east. The sky began to tumble, laden with thick ebony clouds. The priest glances over in its direction to see a wall of rain obscuring his view of the mountains behind it. Above him the sky remains uncorrupted, sporting a crisp blue, stretching for miles in the other direction. With the speed in which the rain usurped power over the eastern sky, he estimates that he has roughly thirty minutes before he too lies beneath its power.

    He arrives at the house of the deceased girl by the name of O-Sono just as the gleaming disk of the sun fails, and autumn rain rules supreme.  As he approaches the door, the smell of ceremonial incense dances upon his nostrils. Shadows appear and disappear behind the  shoji*. The priest can't exactly say why, but something about them seems oddly forlorn.

    Daigen-Osho raps on the door and almost immediately after it slides open. A young man stands in front of him.

    "Thank you for coming" he says sincerely enough. Anxiety seems to radiate off of him. Before the priest Knew it, the young man guides him in through the humble, charcoal colored house, and into the main room.

    He finds the family sitting on blue colored Tatami mats with their heads bowed low. The fire beside them splaying eerie shadows across the walls. One by one they greet him, starting with a small child on the left, then a girl, who by appearances seems to be roughly the same age as the young man who greeted him at the door.  Finally, the old woman from before. With a smile she offers him sake*

    "No no no" demurred the priest while shaking his hand "Thank you for your generosity, but I am quite alright".  In fact the priest would like nothing more than a warm glass of sake. But the priest must keep his wits if he is too relieve this house of its hauntings.

   "If it is possible" he says looking between the young man and the old women. "I would like to get to work as soon as possible"

   Awkward moments of silence pass as the house seems to hold its breath. The old women and the young girl share glances. The man's eyes drop and his plastic smile curves downward.

    "Of course" he says flatly.

    He moves wordlessly over to the far side of the room his shadow extends over the family nearby and picks a long white candle.

   "Its just up here" he says avoiding eye contact with the priest. Thunder rumbles outside.

   The priest finds himself standing before an empty hollow room cleared of most of its contents, save for a small wooden dresses on its far side near an open window. the candles the man holds trail over its entirety. The paper slides of the shoji have fallen into disrepair and are left torn at the seams. This reminds the priest of a queer story he was told during his days in the Tokugawa army; the story involved glaring eyes growing on unattended shoji slides. These Yokai* wouldn't harm the inhabitants, by simply...stare.

    The window by the dresser stirs in the wind and the priest is for a brief second afraid that they might too grow eyes and blink shallowly at the two men by the door. He takes note that a shadow seems to stir by the dresser, he dismisses the thought and turns toward the nervous man who is now sweating.

   "Thank you my friend" he says reaching out his arm toward the candle "that will be all"

    The man's shaky eyes meets the priests unusually round ones, and passes him the candle. As he does the entire room seems to move as the shadows shift in the moving light. As the candle is passed between them, for a brief second, the man's cold, clammy fingers touch the priests. They hold eye contact and it occurs to the priest that not only is the man passing him the source of light, but also all of his hope and optimism. The priest nods slightly and takes the candle. The mans mouth seems to drop suddenly and his eyes become focused on the priest. The priests efforts to secure his trust have succeeded.

    The now calm man departs out of the room and down the stairs. It is now the priest, and the priest alone against the otherworldly machinations that live in the shadow of the night. A sense of duty, of an obligation he has not felt since his days in the army washes over him as he straightens his posture and quietly finds a spot in the middle of the room roughly six feet away from the window and the dresser.

   Sitting down with his legs crossed he digs into his sack and produces a small book of sutras. With a whisper he begins to recite the heart sutra. The priest,  while whispering his holy words, the only good thing in a haunted world, reflects on his life and where he came from.

   His days in the army ended rather quickly following the battle of sekigahara*. The atrocities that he was forced to commit during his time in battle still haunt him to this day, he can almost hear his commanders murderous Orders like a bad dream that will never go away. When all was said and done, the tokugawa shogunate reigned supreme over his homeland. The very utterance of the word seems to wickedly dance upon his ears. In his mind, the past is the present as his murderous acts helped elevate them to the top.

   So after, he went back home to his province of Tamba and became a cloth maker by day, and a drinker by night. One night especially, consumed by seemingly insurmountable darkness he made a decision that will forever change his destiny, he knew  he must find some source of light here in the wicked world, but felt lost in a forest of confusion. He immediately left his home and began combing the hills and woods on the outskirts of town. He reached the middle of the woods and found himself in a clearing, the voice of the murdered echoing back in forth in his mind.

   "Not my son!" one said

   "Please not like this!" screamed another.

the drunk cloth maker  covered his ears kneeling there in the dark forest in middle of the desolate night. Tears falling like the autumn rain from his eyes, snot spewing from his nose

   A glimmer of light shined in his tear-fogged peripheral. he glanced over quickly, falling back to his knees. The image of what he saw that night still taking form  today as clearly as it did 40 years ago. An old man deep in prayer in front of a moss covered stones shrine of the buddha. It was obvious that the strange man was a priest. In desperation the lost man crawled on all fours to his feet.

   "Priest!" he cried clutching the man's( his last and only hope) robe with sweaty hands. As a man dying of thirst would grab at a jar of cold water  

    "Help me!" he begged.

    Without opening his eyes, the zen master simply said:

   "Pray my son"

   He looked at him like a man dying of thirst in the desert. The cloth maker then meekly sat up on his knees mimicking the stance of the priest and began to pray. Eternities flew by in the form of mere hours. A feeling never before felt rushed through his veins instead of hot red blood. A feeling of hope, of redemption. The cloth maker, a new man, abandoning his old world had found the Buddha. When all was said and done he returned the way he had come, looking back only once at the man who brought him to the light. But nothing was there except for darkness

   Back in the room in the haunted house on the hill, an unseen sensor seems to move all around the room like a piece of paper in a slight breeze, before softly settling down before the window and next to the dresser. At that moment, the full moon seems to focus all of its light on the aforementioned spot. The priest of course only sensing this as he is still deep in meditation.

    Slowly, the priest opens his eyes to behold the specter standing before him. A chill is sent up his spine reverberating on the back of his neck causing his flesh to break out in goosebumps and the hair to stand up on end. For standing not but six feet in front of him bathed in bright blue moonlight innocently flouting off the ground, was the yurei* of the deceased o-sono.shy

    The priest stared into her eyes which resembled that of the fox, but something unusual lay within. He suddenly felt how a thief would feel when caught in a trap. But for now, merely pushed the thought away. upon seeing her empty face, and hopeless eyes, the priest thought of sorrow, natural sorrow of rain on a moonless night. Her thick black hair levitating and flowing like spiders legs all around her deathly white face. Her body thin and drained beneath her white Burial Kimono that trails down to her waist. Below that everything fades off to nothing.

    She flouted there staring weakly at the dresser as if she desired something inside but was too  shy to ask. Seemingly lost in a ghostly trance the worldly man can only look upon the lonely figure. The scent of sadness and pain shined off of her and directed it's rays solely toward him. Something struck the priest as abnormal, (as he encountered Yureis before) Something didn't belong, something lodged deep inside her corrupted soul, for now he pushed the thought away.

   Standing up, leaving the book resting open on the ground the priest said:

   "I have come here to help you" the words echo slightly in the darkened room. The moonlit figure doesn't move, still floating in the same position with it's eyes fixed upon the dresser.sincerity

    "Perhaps in the tansu* there is something about which you feel anxious? Shall I try to find it for you?" He spoke with genuine care and sincerity . An emotion long since missing from the ghost's soul. The ghostly shade gave assent with a slight, almost invisible nod, still sharply remaining focused on the dresser.

   The priest stared for a moment at the magnificently twisted figured that is before him, before moving in front of her and beginning to open the tansu. He combed the first drawer, nothing, then the second, nothing still, finally the third drawer, it opens with a creak but still nothing. What can it be? he thought to himself while rubbing his head. he patrols around it to see if maybe something his hidden not in it, but behind it, but only bare wall lay there.

   Maybe whatever the spirit is looking for lay's not in the drawer, but in the drawers lining! He opens the first drawer and carefully begins tearing away at the paper lining. He slowly feels within. Still nothing. He repeats the process for the second drawer with the same result.

   But within the third drawer he discovers a small parchment of paper with a seal of a hideous green demon, it has already been broken. Immediately upon drawing it out her eyes flick in its direction and appear to glisten with joy. Though the heavy sorrow still bares down upon the room.

    "Is this the thing about about which you have been troubled?" Elated, the ghost hideously bows low in front of him, her hair remains in place only growing longer as she bows lower.

  The priest unflinched

   "Very well" he says pocketing the letter "It shall be burned at the temple this very morning"

   With a smile, the ghost van-beneath

   A terrible vision of an unearthly being suddenly appears before him. Its scarlet red face lined with thick, ebony warpaint around its eyes and its devilish golden horns seems all the brighter in the pitch darkness that surrounds it. It's mouth gaping open and blood gushing down its black tongue drenching  its protruded fangs turning them red. The malicious beast only seen from the head up lies beneath a small wooden sign bearing in red ink the words "Jigoku"*.

    As quick as it had appeared the ghastly vision passed leaving the priest on his back laying by the candle. He leaps to his knees and finds the woman's ghost vacant from the spot, and the unnatural moonlight gone. Before he has time to process what exactly he had seen, thin blue streaks of the early morning seep through the window and onto his body and he hears footsteps fastly sprinting up the stairs. The door slides open with astounding speed and he is greeted by the young man from before.     

   "Are you okay?!" he shouts from the doorway.

   The priest, still lost in a faraway land of confusion over the events that just transpired over such a short time was lost for words. He felt like a tanegashima* had unloaded in his cranium.

   "We heard a bang? We were scared? Are you alright?" he demands still standing in the doorway.

    With a voice like a man returning from a dream filled slumber the priest stands up and tells him that everything will be okay, and that the ghost won't bother you further. This provides the man no satisfaction. His hands continue to shake while holding the candle.

   Daigon-Osho collects his book and puts in his bag before departing out the door, fully aware that he just told his first lie since he began his long journey to enlightenment. By the time he arrives on the path towards his temple the sun is starting to rise and golden sunlight shoots out of its sides from over the mountain forest to the east.

   He understands that the end of this sad tale has yet to come, that whatever he saw in his nightmarish vision is very much alive. Maybe he should have told them the truth, maybe he should have told them what he saw up in that room, maybe he should have told them that when he glanced back at the house he saw a red headed demon already staring at him. Maybe he should have said that it was smiling, smiling...and waving.