Karahara had already broken eye contact before finishing. He was probably aware that what he was saying made no sense. He stared downward, his expression flat, expecting nothing.
“Has anyone else in the village dreamed of a creature like this?”
Karahara shook his head.
“Who knows? I never considered asking. If rumors started to spread that I was some kind of weirdo, I wouldn’t be able to find work anymore. Not in a place like this. You understand?”
“Well then, do you have any idea what this creature from your dreams might have been?”
Karahara dragged over a glass ashtray sitting atop the table toward himself, pulled out a cigarette, and lit the end. Trails of lingering smoke crept beneath the silence.
“The god that ate men.”
“Is that…a local belief?”
“I bet you think it’s just superstition. But I’m pretty sure that’s what I saw.”
“And why do you think the god that ate men would appear in your dream?” Miyaki asked. Karahara snorted in self-deprecation.
“Probably because my grandmother prayed to it.” Ash fell on the table, a few residual sparks melting the varnish. “The idea that it used to eat people for wishes but had turned over a new leaf was a bunch of bull. Nothing that old lady ever said was the truth. It’s still a man-eating monster, just like before. And my grandmother prayed to the thing. Asked it to save her grandson.”
I could feel the smoldering anger behind Karahara’s guttural tone.
“So you’re saying that your grandmother prayed to the god that ate men, and in exchange for it saving your life, she was eaten?”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Miyaki said, cutting me off. “Your grandmother died because she was sick, didn’t she? And long after you had already grown up. If she wasn’t killed and eaten on the spot, then how…?”
Miyaki suddenly trailed off. I assumed she had just reached the same conjecture as I had.
“It doesn’t snatch people and devour them. It just leaves behind the results. That’s the real reason it’s called the god that ate men and not the god that eats men…”
Karahara nodded.
“My grandmother awoke something truly terrible. And for what? It would have been better if I had been left to die…”
“You shouldn’t say that. It’s not as if anything has been done to you.”
In response, Karahara stood up and slowly reached for the buttons on his shirt. As we watched, speechless, he began undoing the buttons one by one from top to bottom.
“Wait, what are you doing?”
Before Miyaki could stop him, however, he had already unfastened the buttons and rolled up the hem of his black undershirt. We were speechless once again, although for very different reasons this time.
“I used to have a scar on my stomach from the accident. From where they had stitched my shredded abdomen back together. At first, it had just looked like stitch marks. But after a while, it slowly began to change.”
His stomach was thin. We could see the ribs poking out from underneath. This wasn’t an old, discolored scar, like the kind that grew taut and shiny with age. The scar had formed a meshwork pattern instead, with numerous overlapping dark-red lines. Like slash marks from a set of bestial claws, attempting to tear into the flesh and eat away the innards.
“If it was just a monster, something that attacks like normal, I could probably do something about it. But how am I supposed to deal with an invisible god, one that only leaves behind the scars from where it has fed?”
Karahara smiled wryly, causing his drab eyes to curve and distort.
“Miyaki…let’s head up the mountain. We need to gather more facts.”
Miyaki inhaled softly, as if thrown for a loop, but she recovered enough to nod.
“If you’re heading to the mountain, you should wait until nighttime,” Karahara advised as he tugged his undershirt back down and rebuttoned his shirt. “It will give you a chance to see for yourselves just how far gone this village is.”
Evening light streamed in through the kitchen window, ebbing into shadows as it crossed the room and silhouetting the keepsakes of the old woman, which filled every corner, in dark hues.
The nighttime forest sprawled, dark and indistinct, between the earth and the sky.
“Katagishi, this occurred to me back at the abandoned school building, too. But don’t you think we stick our necks out a little more than we need to sometimes? Inviting dangers that aren’t ours to deal with?” Miyaki asked in a plaintive voice as she picked her way through the woods, careful not to trip on protruding roots.
“Above and beyond, Miyaki. Don’t forget: It’s the taxpayers who pay our salaries!”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s the civil servant’s prerogative to do the jobs the private sector doesn’t want to, right?” Miyaki kicked a stone, which struck me in the heel, as if delivering her complaint. “Stuff like this pops up in horror stories all the time, you know, where some village has a dark secret. The unwitting outsiders who bumble into their midst are always the ones who wind up getting sacrificed in the end.”
“Who said anything about a sacrifice…? Other than Karahara, no one in this village appears bothered by the situation. At most, they seem annoyed at having to answer the questions of the police from the neighboring city.”
“That’s exactly my point. I find it very hard to believe.” The drooping canopy of trees overhead rustled in the nighttime wind. “That a person could be living their life, just like normal, and all the while, something is gnawing away at their insides, leaving them none the wiser. And with no rhyme or reason as to who it happens to. Shouldn’t that bother them more?”
“I’m sure there’re plenty of people who wouldn’t care so long as it doesn’t affect them while they’re still alive.”
“Assuming it really doesn’t affect them while they’re alive, that is.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. I remembered the clawlike scars on Karahara’s stomach. I decided to change the subject.
“Speaking of sacrifices…”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
The wind ruffled the trees, and the canopy of leaves parted. Moonlight filtered down to us from far overhead.
“Do you think there really was a shrine maiden who offered herself up to the god that ate men?”
“I wonder. I looked up what I could before we came, but I didn’t find records of anything like that. Maybe it was just a convenient story made up after the fact to explain away the god’s name…”
I could see a spot up the slope where the path opened up slightly. We must have been getting close to the top.
I was about to take a step forward when Miyaki grabbed my shoulder to stop me. Moonlight reflected listlessly off the wet gravel and dead leaves on the ground. I could see some sort of clumped shape ahead, like a large boulder. It trembled ever so faintly. Soon, I heard a hushed voice.
“Please, please. I’m begging you…”
I immediately switched off my light and covered my mouth with my hand. Miyaki nodded ever so slightly in the dark.
The clumped shape was a person. A person hunched over in prostration, hands in the dirt, making some sort of proclamation.
I could tell from the frazzled white hair swaying in the darkness that the person was old. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could even make out a dark-brown down jacket and a skirt with a pattern like an old floral curtain. The old woman pressed her face against the ground, not caring if she got dirty. Her forlorn voice bled into the night wind.
“Please, kill that woman for me…”
I breathed in sharply and glanced at Miyaki. Her pale face was stiff as a board, her gaze fixed upon the old woman.
“She’s a bad woman. She tricked my son. It’s her fault his father passed away, too, I know it. She wants the house. Our house. The one he worked so hard for, the one he finally built for just the two of us. When I can’t walk anymore, she’s going to do me in; she’s going to kill me. I got married at nineteen, and I’d devoted myself to my in-laws ever since. I put up with so much and for so long, and now all I have left are my house and my son. I won’t let that woman take that away from me. I’ve never done a single bad thing in my life, but I don’t care if I go to hell for this. Just please, please, kill that vile woman for me…”