“They couldn’t have dug out something this large from scratch. This must have been the cave system where the well water used to flow. If the wells are connected to other villages, that would make them the one path through which illnesses could reach this otherwise-isolated settlement. At first, it was ‘the bad things travel to us from underground,’ but over time, that mutated into ‘the bad things are waiting underground.’ I think that belief was what gave rise to the local faith.”
“So you think it’s a curse, like kodoku, but formed from concentrated illnesses rather than concentrated poison…?”
“Yes, that’s my guess.”
In the dim light, Miyaki placed her chin in her palm.
“That still begs the question, though: Why did the villagers want us to meet their god…?”
I heard something scraping against the walls again. We quickly pointed our lights in the direction of the sound. A small human shape was crouching along the path just a little farther ahead. Miyaki screamed.
I took a step back, but the giant serpent monster was waiting back the way we had come. The figure ahead, however, was much smaller than we were. I shone my light in the thing’s direction, and it shielded its eyes with its hand, as if the light hurt.
“A person…?”
It was an emaciated child with filthy hair and clothes, sitting with their back pressed tightly against the wall. They stared at us from behind a greasy tangle of hair. Never taking their eyes off us, the child stretched so that their back rubbed against the wall and then slouched down again. The sound their back made resembled that of the crawling serpent we had heard earlier. A moment later, we heard the patter of footsteps scurrying away. The child wasn’t alone. There were others here, too.
“Um, are you okay…?” Miyaki asked as she lowered the light, shielding it with her hands. The child continued to scrape their back rhythmically against the wall, looking up with eyes that seemed ready to spill out of sunken sockets.
“Who are you?” the child asked, their voice barely audible.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. The child stared at us with eyes that were clear yet inscrutable.
“Did you kill a rabbit or chicken?”
I shook my head, not understanding the question.
“Oh.”
The child dug their nails into the dirt and pulled themselves to their feet, leaning their back against the wall as they stood. The sight of their emaciated legs made me suspect that this was the only way they were able to stand.
“How long have you been down here?” Miyaki asked.
“I don’t know,” the child said simply, before turning their back to us and beginning to walk away. We hastily followed. It was not hard to catch up to the stumbling child.
“Um… We were told to come down here by the people who live up above. But we would really like to leave now…”
“Did my mommy tell you to come down here?”
“Your mommy?”
The child’s thin face seemed to quiver in the glow of the penlight. The shadows on their face, out of place on someone so young, resembled Itsuhara’s.
“We were told to come meet the god,” I said.
The child flinched. Miyaki shot me an accusatory glance before hugging the child’s shoulders.
“You don’t want to meet the god. It isn’t nice. It doesn’t do anything, but the way it always slithers around is creepy. That’s why I rub my back against the wall when the god comes, to let everyone know to run away. I can’t shout because it would hear me.”
The child rubbed one of their hands, which was dry and withered like an old person’s, against the wall. Apparently, the sliding, scraping sound was how the child signaled that the god was coming.
“Who do you mean by ‘everyone’? Are there other children down here besides you?” I asked.
What was going on here? Why was this child imprisoned underground? Was it because of some sort of illness? Did they offer up the sick in this village as sacrifices?
“They’re the people who killed rabbits and chickens and things.”
“What?”
As we stood there, confused, the child slipped out of Miyaki’s embrace and began walking again.
“Everyone gathers, Ichihara to Tohara, and the boys and girls my age kill an animal. My brother cried because he didn’t want to, so I did it for him.”
The only sounds were footsteps reverberating in the darkness. But there were more footsteps than there should have been for just the three of us. I tried to tell myself it was only the echo.
“That’s when Mommy told me I had to live down here now because the god had chosen me. The god was lonely, so it needed people with my…essence? People who could see the god.”
The child’s voice was devoid of emotion.
“I’ve been here ever since. The people of the village send down food and stuff to clean myself off with every day. Sometimes, Shou will bring me comic books and things. He cries. He says it’s his fault.”
“Is Shou your younger brother?”
“Yes.”
I recalled the note that the little boy from the Itsuhara household had thrown at me. This must have been his sister. The note must have been his call for help, the best that he could manage.
“If we can find out where the food is delivered, we may be able to get out of here,” Miyaki said, keeping her voice low.
I was starting to regret not telling anyone we were coming here, but it was a little too late for that now. If we couldn’t count on help arriving, we would just have to escape this place by ourselves.
“Where do the villagers usually give you food?”
“Over that way. There is a place that only people from the village know about. A place that connects to the marsh.”
The girl pointed to a spot where the darkness grew deeper.
“Can you show us?”
The girl bit her lip and fell silent. A droplet of water fell from the ceiling, shattering like glass.
“Right now…”
The deep shadows writhed imperceptibly, taking shape. It was a faintly curved outline, resembling the head and shoulders of a person. I heard a slurping sound, like something moving in the dirt.
“Right now, Rokuhara is there.”