The powerful stench of rot hit us, carried on the tepid air. The slurping, dragging sound grew louder. I could see a shadow approaching through the darkness. I grabbed the girl and lifted her up, ignoring her screams.
“Miyaki, can you run?!”
“Absolutely!”
I broke into a sprint, the penlight clutched in my mouth. A stifling heat washed over us from ahead.
“That way.”
I quickened my pace, dashing in the direction the girl pointed. In the billowing darkness, from the corner of my eye, I spotted a white glint, like misshapen teeth.
“Dammit…”
Just as the rotten smell seemed to be growing thicker, five splayed fingers brushed past my face. Sodden and unnaturally pointed. Not like claws, I realized instinctively, but bone. Bone protruding from flesh. In the quavering light, I saw the broken bars of a zashikiro cell, only its bottom half remaining. There was a tiny space inside. At last, the rotten smell grew fainter, and the presence behind me seemed to disappear.
I came to a stop, confirming that nothing else was coming to get us, before setting the girl down.
“You said…that was Rokuhara…?” Miyaki asked, wheezing and wiping the sweat from her face.
“Rokuhara is always around there. That’s where they threw him away.”
The girl’s voice was flat and unperturbed.
“Threw him away?”
“A long time ago, Rokuhara told a fib about the god, so everyone says that the Rokuharas are bad.”
“A fib?”
The girl nodded.
“I don’t really understand it. They said if everyone becomes like me and can see the god, the god will get weak. But Rokuhara wanted to make it so the village only had people who weren’t afraid of the god.”
The girl’s explanation didn’t tell us much. I tried to piece together what she could mean. The phrase a long time ago suggested something had happened before even Misaki and my brother-in-law’s time. Misaki and Rokuhara’s parents died, the siblings left the village, and later, the Rokuhara line died out, but why? Had the villagers killed the other Rokuhara? Speaking of which—
“What did the Rokuhara family do?”
“Um, I don’t really know. The people who can kill the rabbits and chickens aren’t good people, not really, because they’re not afraid of the god, but Rokuhara’s ancestor lied and said those kind of people were the best.”
The girl cocked her head to the side.
“After all, the people from the Rokuhara family left, and the remaining old grandmas and grandpas died out; the mothers were cleaning out their house when they found…they found a…monograph?”
Of course. I felt a cold sweat trickle down my neck.
“Now they knew the Rokuharas were bad people, so they dug up all their graves and threw them down here along with the bones of the old people. And the boys and girls who could kill the animals were sent underground, too. And…and…I was told I wasn’t supposed to know any of this, but I was curious, so I peeked at Rokuhara’s diary…”
“I think I understand now…,” I said. Miyaki looked intently at me. “The curse isn’t concentrated from poison or illnesses. The real power behind this village’s god is fear.”
“Fear…”
“It would explain the discrepancies in the testimonies of the villagers at the foot of the mountain. This god probably takes the form of whatever a person is most afraid of. To put it another way, it would be powerless against anyone incapable of feeling fear. Which is why they had to make up an excuse to imprison such people.”
My brother-in-law had told me that the village practiced inbreeding to create people capable of seeing the god. But it was the other way around. It must have been the Rokuhara family that tried to fill the village long ago with people who would no longer embrace the faith. Without letting the other families know what they were doing. To chip away at the power of this god, even if only slightly. This god that served as a vector of fear.
One of Rokuhara’s ancestors likely came up with the ritual of killing small animals to identify such people. But once the villagers realized the true reason behind the ritual, they turned it on its head, using it to ferret out and eliminate people who served as a threat to their god.
I shone my light toward the cell. I could see human bones among the withered patches of earth inside, like broken pottery. It was the bones of the Rokuharas, including Misaki’s parents. I cursed inside. If it wasn’t for this twisted faith, Misaki might have been able to live a normal life.
The little girl flinched as she watched me. I can’t imagine what kind of face I was making. She must have thought she had angered me. It was the first truly human expression she had shown so far. I crouched down in front of her.
“Hey… How would you like to get out of this place?”
My voice echoed throughout the caves. A single drop of water fell.
“Can I?”
The girl stared up at me with trepidation. I had seen this expression once before. Just before Misaki and I had gotten married.
“Do I really deserve to be happy?” Misaki had said. The words had slipped out of her like a passing thought, barely a whisper. Misaki, who almost never displayed weakness, never complained.
She must have been thinking of the people imprisoned underground in this village. Even after coming to Tokyo, even while she was together with me, maybe Misaki had been trapped here all along.
“You can go wherever you like.”
The girl looked down at her feet, confused. Miyaki spoke, adopting an intentionally cheerful tone.
“Don’t worry, everything will be fine! We may not be able to capture a god, but we can sure as heck arrest people. Unlawful imprisonment, murder, child abuse, you name it. And you know what? I bet they didn’t even have a permit to build this place. We’ll drag them in by the ears! Finally, a case we can actually solve! This calls for a celebration, Katagishi!”
“See? Who needs to fear gods when people are the real terror?” I said, gesturing toward Miyaki.
Miyaki pouted. The girl smiled weakly and lifted her head.
“Will my mommy get arrested, too?”
“Well…we’ll see what we can do to get her a lighter sentence.”
Another drop of water fell from the ceiling. Apparently, a tiny bit of water was still flowing down here after all. If the well hadn’t dried up, the god would have never been able to travel so easily, and this underground prison would have probably never been built. But there was no use wishing for what couldn’t be. I shook my head and rose to my feet.
“Let’s go. Come on, show us the way to the marsh.”
Just then, the slurping sound returned, and the stench of rot, powerful enough to make the back of my eyes sting, wafted through the air. A human silhouette materialized into view, seeming to melt out of the shadows.
I lifted the girl back up and made eye contact with Miyaki. It was time to make a run for the marsh. The noise, like raw meat being dragged across the ground, mingled with the sound of falling waterdrops. Before long, I began to imagine the feeling of muddy water working its way into my shoes. I was almost worried my feet would slip out from under me.
“Wait, aren’t there other people trapped down here, too?!” Miyaki shouted as she ran by my side, her voice shrill.
“The only alive one is me,” the girl said, gripping the collar of my shirt and clinging to me tightly. “But everyone still runs because they don’t like the god. Even Rokuhara when the scraping sound comes.”
The sound of footsteps we’d heard earlier must have been the ghosts of everyone who had been trapped down here up until now.
I heard a low thud, and a cloud of dust swelled up in front of us. Ragged chunks of dirt spilled from the wall. A long shape, lustrous in the dark, drooped down from the ceiling of the broken cell, like a sash made of long hair and peeling scales. Miyaki pointed.
“Katagishi, look…”
The aberrant god stared at us with its masklike face. I glanced behind us. The rotten black shadows were trudging toward us. We were surrounded.
“Now what do we do…?!”
I made eye contact with a glint in the shadows. Glistening eyes, milky and hollow, stared back at me. The dead of the Rokuhara house, disposed beneath the earth, were steadily drawing near. Were Misaki and my brother-in-law’s parents among them? What could I say to them? That I was trying to save their son and daughter? How could I when the truth was, I had failed Misaki?
“Katagishi! Pull yourself together!”
I had been standing there helplessly. Miyaki urged me to hurry. The little girl clung tighter to my neck. The dead were nearly upon us. There was only one thing I could do—
“Wait! We’re going to destroy the village that did this to your children…,” I shouted, the words tumbling out of my mouth.
The shadows came to a halt. Their cloudy eyes seemed to pierce through me. The next moment, the stench of rot vanished. Where the horde of dead had stood a moment ago, only a desolate, underground path awaited.
“Let’s go back that way for now!”
Having no other choice, we rushed back down the path we had come.