My grandmother was an awful, awful person.
At the funeral, everybody went on and on about what a wonderful lady she was. How there wasn’t a soul like her. But I knew the truth.
Not a single honest word had come from that old woman’s mouth. My dad left just before I was born, and my mom had to work around the clock, so my grandma had looked after me. Everyone around me always said what a kind person she was, so when I was little, I believed it. The truth was she had always wanted a son of her own but had only ever given birth to girls. Really, she just wanted me as her own. And the way she spoiled me was abnormal. She was seriously terrible.
Of course, even she scolded me a few times as a kid. When I was young, people in the village, not just my family, liked to scare little boys and girls by telling them, “If you’re naughty, the god who ate men will come and take you away.” Which was fine. People say stuff like that everywhere.
But whenever I heard that, I couldn’t help wondering, why is it the god that ate men and not the god that eats men? Around the time I turned ten or so, I decided to ask my grandmother.
Here is what my grandmother told me. She said, “Once long ago, the god that ate men was a terrifying and wicked god that would grant wishes, but when the wish came true, the god would eat a person in exchange. Then one day, a miko—a shrine maiden—from the village offered herself up as the sacrifice, but as her wish, she asked that the god never eat another villager again. After that day, the god became a good god, one that protects and watches over the village.” That old woman lied through her teeth.
I nearly died one day. After starting middle school. I was walking in front of a gasoline stand on my way home from school, when a truck that just filled up turned as it hit the road and sent me flying. I don’t remember it hurting at the time or even being scared. All I remember is the truck’s cargo skidding toward me like a landslide.
From what I was told afterward, the accident was pretty bad. The doctors had to frantically shove my insides back into my stomach. Supposedly, when the doctor emerged from the intensive care unit with his face pale, he told my mom to begin preparing for the worst. But when he said that, my grandma stood up from her chair and declared that she would “figure something out.” Looking back now, it probably would have been better if I had just died.
I must have been in a coma, I think, and dreaming. I didn’t see the Sanzu River—the river of the dead—like they say you’re supposed to, or any field of lilies. Instead, I saw a gloomy mountain road and a pair of emaciated, wrinkled, and bruised legs that were not mine. And each time those legs took another step, the scene advanced, and the darkness grew deeper. At one point, I remember seeing the sky as if through a high-exposure filter, with withered branches spreading like capillary vessels across the night.
When my gaze returned to the ground, a strange creature was standing there. It had horns like a deer, but it looked more like a dried-up cluster of straw than a living creature. It resembled the rush mats or old-fashioned straw winter clothing that hung as decorations in the village community center.
It had no eyes, nose, or ears. Its straw-like fur puffed up in the middle, fluttering insistently. Where the fur parted, I saw what looked like a faintly see-through red tube—a plastic bag, maybe. I think they were internal organs. Though it had no mouth.
My perspective dipped at that point, and all I could see was gravel, dead leaves, and the wet ground. I think I must have been kneeling or prostrating myself before the thing. That was when the dream ended.
When I woke up, my grandmother was at my bedside, and she was assuring me I would be fine. The anesthesia was still working, and I didn’t feel any pain, but I remember feeling empty inside. At the time, I thought it was because I had been on IV fluids for so long and because my organs were shredded up.
For a while, nothing else happened. I made it into college and left the village.
I returned to visit the village every now and again, but at some point, a thin animal trail that hadn’t been there before had formed, leading through the woods and up into the mountain. When night fell, I would often spot human figures making their way toward the trail, trying not to be seen.
I went back to the village again just recently for my grandmother’s funeral. Well, no, not really for her funeral. I’d rushed home in a panic because I’d been told something terrible had happened. When I arrived at the hospital, a police officer was there. “We don’t think a crime has taken place, not exactly…” That was the first thing they said when they saw me. I wondered what was going on as they led me to my mother and the doctor who had just performed the autopsy, who had bewildered looks upon their faces.
As it turned out, my dead grandmother’s abdomen had been as bare as a cupboard inside. The doctor said it looked like some sort of animal had rooted out the organs and devoured them. Nothing had shown up in any of her tests while she was still alive, and during her operation for colon cancer back when she was eighty, her insides had been right where they should have been. The only possible explanation seemed to be that some animal had been allowed to gorge on her guts after she passed, only for someone to sew her back up afterward, good as new, without even a scar. But obviously, there was no way that my mother, who had been looking after her, would have been capable of such a thing. Nor would there have been any reason for her to do that in the first place.
We carried on with the funeral and cremation, my grandmother’s missing organs still a mystery.
After returning home and divvying up her keepsakes, I was left with a notebook. Not that I wanted it. Apparently, my grandmother had kept a diary. My mom had no idea what was written inside, but it had my name on it, so now it was mine.
“Your grandmother went a little funny in her later years,” my mom said, by way of apology, when she handed it to me. Opening the cover, I saw my name on the very first page, written in brush-tip calligraphy. When I turned to the next page, it was covered with a maze of undulating loops and curved lines written in red pencil, like a child might doodle.
“You must have drawn stuff like that when you were a kid,” my mom said, laughing, but that wasn’t it. I knew. It was that monster’s innards.
That was when it started. Now, when people die in the village, though they were hale and whole while still alive, dissection reveals that they are bare inside, their guts and organs completely missing.