A World of Horror, page 8
“The gods spoke to me today.” Would she believe him? Was it obvious he was lying? Did oni even believe in gods?
“What did they say?”
“Well, I was tilling the fields, like I was yesterday,” Saburo made a motion to indicate his clothes that now suddenly looked too obviously dirtied. “And I was telling them how thankful I was that you had come into my life. They agreed that you were beautiful and kind and hard working.” Saburo realized he couldn’t look his wife in the eye.
“But then they told me that you are too good a wife for me,” the words came out rushed. “They said that I’m a bad husband for leaving you home all day to work and take care of the house. That you deserve better than me and this life I have to offer. That maybe even it’s dangerous for you to be left here all alone all day.”
His wife raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak.
“Then the gods told me that they think you should return to your parents’ house where you will be safe and happy. Your parents are getting older and they need you too.”
“I see,” his wife said. She got to her feet. “The gods said this to you?”
“They did.” A stream of sweat trickled down Saburo’s back. He tried not to look at her glossy black hair pinned up on top of her head or remember the horrible mouth that was hidden inside.
His wife bowed low and Saburo took a step back.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m really very happy, but I don’t think we can go against what the gods say.”
“I understand. I will go,” she said. She started to turn away but then faced him again. “Dana-sama, before I leave, may I ask for two things to take with me. If you don’t mind, that is.”
“No, yes, of course.” Saburo was elated. His plan was working. He would soon be free of the beast.
“I’d like to take with me the wooden bathtub and a long length of rope.”
“Yes, yes,” Saburo agreed, his heart soaring. He was already planning on making another bathtub and the rope cost hardly anything at all. “I will get those for you now.”
His wife followed him outside and waited for him to lug over the heavy tub and hand her a long length of rope.
“Hai, douzo,” he said, presenting her with the gifts.
“Arigatou, dana-sama.” She bowed again.
“I think you should leave right away, you know, before it gets dark. It’s what the gods suggested.”
“Did they now?” She examined the skein of rope. “That’s what I intend to do. There is just one thing . . . ”
“Yes, anything.”
“Before I go, yesterday when I was cleaning the bath, I noticed there was a small leak in one of the slats on the bottom. Could you please check it for me? Maybe you could mend it before I go?”
“Mochiron, of course,” Saburo said, and without a second thought climbed inside.
In an instant his wife threw the rope around the tub, hefted it onto her back with him inside, and took off running at full speed.
Saburo howled, knowing he’d been tricked. He kicked at the sides and then peeked over the edge only to see that his once beautiful wife had grown three times her size and now had a head of wild matted hair.
She was an ogress, the worst of the oni.
He’d have to escape, but she was moving much too fast, and even if he managed to get out of the tub, she’d only stop and snatch him up again. All Saburo could do was hold on and begin praying again to the gods to save him.
He continued his heartfelt pleas until they were deep in the mountains and she started to slow. The gods had heard him. They had listened again. His oni wife stopped by a crooked old tree to rest and Saburo got an idea.
While she leaned over catching her breath, he reached up and grabbed a branch and very carefully pulled himself out of the tub and into the tree. There he remained absolutely frozen until she grumbled something unintelligible and, readjusting the rope in her thick hands, started off again.
***
WAITING. TOO MUCH WAITING. There is no time.
Her blood waterfalls in her ears, heartbeat clubbing in her neck and temples. She closes her eyes and collapses against a tree. Through thorny, ill-fitted teeth, she hisses air until her breath returns.
Cannot stop. No time. No time.
Haste. Fear. Elation. Is she already too late? Her children. She heaves herself back up and rewraps the rope around her hands, repositioning her load. She races off again.
Ah. Just a moment’s rest and already the burden is lighter. A little farther and my children. Almost there.
The grit of dirt and the slip of grass under her bare feet renew her strength. The animal-scent of night eating away at the day renews her hope. It will be dark soon. This is where she belongs.
My children. My sweet children. Innocent faces last remembered, but how are you now? Cheeks drawn. Eyes hallowed? The snap and yearn and skull rending headaches of the mouths you are obligated to feed. Do you cry? Was that you I heard howling on the wind last night? Was that all of you? Were any missing?
Oh, how you suffered. But I suffered, too. Day in and day out with that man. That fool.
Loathing fed her heart.
Not clever. There was nothing to fear from him, no wit, no bludgeon or blade. Those are the only things that make a man equal to us. Without them he is filth. That man is filth.
She spits.
“Filth and a fool,” she says to the man she has trapped on her back. “A friendless fool. I waited, hoping I could ensnare more like you. But to my surprise you have no family or friends.” The ogress chuckles at the thought. “No one will even notice that you are missing, I suppose.”
“If I had known that you were so despised by the others, I’d have left earlier instead of surviving on that atrocious grainy rice you farmed. Salted, barely edible, a poor substitute for the blood-salt of a man.” The ogress feels her stomach churn at the thought of a real meal. Soft, sinewy meat. Her head throbs.
“And then you found me out,” she goes on. “I didn’t think you were near clever enough. So I had to leave. Only one of you, but you’ll do.”
Just then the ogress reaches the caves.
“Children! Children!” she calls. Where are they? Hunting? Sleeping? Starving? “Look what I have for you.”
There is the sound like a hundred insects hatching, scurrying. They come.
“Bring your knives and your cutting boards. Let’s chop him to pieces before the sun sets. We can feast under the full moon.”
In the gloaming they swarm, and the ogresses’ heart lightens. Thick-limbed, clawed, scarred. Some rub the sleep from their hazel eyes, others growl and scratch. They are beautiful.
“Want to see what mommy has brought for her sweet children?” She swings the heavy wooden tub from her back. The empty, heavy wooden tub.
She screams.
***
SABURO WAS DEBATING the merits of hiding against how fast he thought he could run, when he heard the scream. His blood iced and his knees buckled. He fell. There was no way he could outrun the monster. It was growing late, the sun had already set, and the moon was rising. He wasn’t even sure about the path she’d taken up here. He was so far from home. Would anyone miss him and come looking?
Even if he attempted to flee, he’d probably trip and hurt himself, call out in pain. She’d hear. Or, more likely, he’d get lost until she or her sisters or brothers discovered him. No. He couldn’t run away. But where could he hide? Saburo was having trouble finding the strength to stand again.
“Oh, God of Dirt, God of Rocks,” he implored. “Oh, God of Flowers, God of Weeds. Listen to my humble prayer. Listen to my pleas.”
Saburo began crawling; hand over hand, pulling himself toward a grassy patch of land in the distance.
“I’m a humble man and I don’t ask for much. You’ve already bestowed such great fortune on me and for that I am grateful. But I really need you to protect me. I need you to save me, please, I don’t deserve—”
Saburo was interrupted by another howl from the oni and what sounded like branches being torn angrily from trees. She was getting closer. When he continued his prayer again, it was in a whisper and with more genuine sincerity than he’d ever mustered before.
“I think I’ve lived a good, honest life, and my rice is the best in town, everyone says so. Also, I will make amends for any sin I’ve committed. Forgive me. Please forgive me.”
This was it. This was all the strength he had left, all the faith he had left. Saburo looked up and through the pearly moonlight noticed dozens and dozens of irises growing among the snarl of tall grass he was headed. But their sharp leaves were different. They were no longer leaves.
Blades! Katana blades.
The gods were saving him again. With everything he had left, he dragged himself into the bladed fortress, rolled over on his back, and began scraping at the ground, trying to cover himself in dirt and fallen leaves. He needed to become even more invisible. A band of clouds swam to blanket the moon. Everything fell into pitch. Another blessing. A tiny bubble of hope bloomed in his chest.
He heard a slow approaching animal growl and recognized it as the same one from his home, him hanging in the rafters, right before his wife opened up the monster in her head and fed it.
A sharp crack, a foot treading on a fallen branch? She was near, close enough to reach down and grab him. Her breath a deep rattle in the back of her throat, her stench watering his eyes. Saburo bit down on his sleeve to keep quiet. He listened. And he prayed.
The ogress circled his hiding place. Again and again, stalking. But it sounded like she was growing impatient. She couldn’t reach him. All he had to do was wait. Soon she’d be gone.
Saburo gave himself permission to begin imagining his home, the home he never thought he’d see again. The maple. He thought about his storehouse and how he’d refill it with rice, how he’d build a second one next year.
Oh, gods, you knew I was worth it. You knew I was worth saving!
Just then the veil of clouds skitted across the sky and the forest was again bathed in the blue underwater light of the moon.
***
FILTH OF A MAN, there is no time.
She circles the waist-high thicket of weeds. She doesn’t understand what he’s done, how he did it.
What’s this? What trickery?
A hundred katanas, hilts sunk into the earth, surrounding him. A trap. A clever trap. She knows he’s there. She can hear him, trembling, lips popping in silent prayer. She can smell him, that fetid reek that clung to him every day after he came in from the fields, even after his wretched bath. Even in the complete darkness she can see his outline.
Knives, swords, surrounded by blades.
She blinks again and again, reaches out an arm, draws it back.
Waiting. Too much waiting. My children are starving. I have to feed them.
A chilly breeze wafts through the trees and delivers a different smell. She stops in her tracks and turns. A wild boar in its den, the pups plump and juicy, full with their mother’s milk. She can hear them mewl and grunt. She can hear her human husband shift on the ground beside her, an exhalation of breath. She weighs her choices.
The ogress looks up and just then the clouds slip away. The night brightens. She glances back down and laughs. The ground seems to be lit from underneath, an ethereal glow. She can see him perfectly, on his back, both fists clutching a handful of weeds.
“What do we have here?” she asks, noticing the magic that stayed her hand has completely dissolved. “Why these are not swords at all. They’re iris leaves.”
***
SHE’S GOT ONE HAND latched to his ankle, the grip so tight he can feel her nails scratch the bone, scrape a nerve. Saburo screams out again. He can’t help it. His throat burns.
“Onegai, please, no!”
The gods have abandoned him, he thinks. There are no gods.
“Sleep, child, sleep,” she’s singing. The song has words.
“A sleeping child is precious
A child who cries is loathsome.”
Saburo claws at the ground, a passing limb, some underbrush, a stone. Everything is yanked out of his hands. He has the amusing thought that he’s being pulled along with so much less effort than she gave his precious bags of rice. He briefly considers his worth against his harvests and then dispels the thought when he hears a sound. Hundreds of clicking noises. They’re growing louder.
Saburo garners his strength and readies himself to thrash out again, a well-placed kick. Maybe he can get away this time. He imagines himself bolting into the trees and escaping.
“A loathsome child is put on the cutting rack
Chop-chop-chopped up like a daikon radish
And scraped into the river out back.”
The oni stops and releases her grasp on his leg. Instead of scrambling off, Saburo curls into a fetal position, eye still closed, and whimpers. He can hear them all around him. He doesn’t want to see them. There are so many. They scuttle on what sounds like too many legs, curious grunts and wet slurping noises. His stomach heaves as he realizes the clicking sounds are probably teeth, children’s heads cracked open to reveal voracious mouths greedy for their meal.
“Dana sama.” The sweet cooing voice of his wife whispers warm by his ear. It’s calming and for a moment almost makes him want to look, to open his eyes and gaze upon her smooth cheeks, her long-lashed eyes. He resists the urge, screws his eyes closed tighter.
“Hush, hush, dana-sama,” she repeats. “It’s time to be eaten.”
THERSA MATSUURA is an American expat who has lived half her life in a small fishing town in Japan. Her fluency in Japanese allows her to do research into parts of the culture—legends, folktales, and superstitions—that are little known to western audiences. A lot of what she digs up informs her stories, while the rest finds its way onto her blog (thersamatsuura.com) and into her podcast, Uncanny Japan (uncannyjapan.com).
She is a graduate of Clarion West (2015), recipient of HWA’s Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship (2015), and the author of two short story collections: A Robe of Feathers and Other Stories (Counterpoint LLC, 2009) and The Carp-Faced Boy and Other Tales (Independent Legions Press, 2017). She’s also had stories published in various magazines and anthologies including: Black Static, Fortean Times, Madhouse (anthology), and The Beauty of Death (anthology). You can find her on Patreon: www.patreon.com/thersamatsuura.
THE DISAPPEARED
Kristine Ong Muslim
This next selection is the shortest in the anthology, what’s known as “Flash Fiction,” but don’t assume that less words has any adverse effect on a story’s impact; I’ve read entire novels that cannot inspire the vibrancy and atmosphere author Kristine Ong Muslim is able to create in the space of a couple pages.
Perhaps it’s her natural talent, perhaps it’s the experiences of her life, her home in the Philippines, but everything I’ve read by Kristine has always been succinct, always meaningful. When she submitted this piece, she was somewhat late past the deadline, with an apologetic note that read, “Things have been a little crazy here, as air strikes against ISIS sympathizers are battering the nearby city . . . ”
That she can still write through such turmoil is a marvel, as I consider I’d most likely be cowering under the bed in those circumstances, much less penning fiction. So it is, she turned in the following, the aftermath of a young girl’s death, and what it means to the village that she’s become one of The Disappeared.
***
AFTER SIX MEN, THREE ON EACH END, had carried and passed Alyana’s corpse through the window facing north, the child’s dead body revealed its true form: half a stump of a banana stalk’s main trunk.
This proved the prediction by Salvador, the albularyo, who wouldn’t touch the body even while it still looked like that of Alyana. Salvador was adamant about not touching it when it was first presented to him and was told that it belonged to a seven-year-old who drowned in Kapisan River. He said that touching anything corrupted by the dwellers of Kapisan River would draw their unwanted attention, would mark him somehow.
“How do we get her real remains back?” Alyana’s mother, distraught but already resigned to her daughter’s fate, asked. The trunk’s stump faced her. “It would be fitting to at least give her proper burial.”
“We can’t,” Salvador said, making no effort to assuage her grief. “You know how it is. They take one life every year, supposedly by drowning. They float something for us to find on the water surface, a likeness of that drowned person, possibly to remind us of our vulnerability. That’s the case with the banana stalk. It would look like your child until passage through the north-facing window showed otherwise. This has been going on for a long time, at the same time every year. It was Roberto’s child last year. But you already know this, don’t you?”
She did not say anything back; there was really nothing to say. If it weren’t her child, then it would be someone else’s.
Unspoken in the room was the question: Why did you let your daughter near the river at this time of the year?
Slumped in one corner of the cramped hut’s interior was Alyana’s father, a construction worker in Manila. He’d arrived a few hours ago. He did not join the villagers as they went out to bury the stump of banana stalk that once looked like the body of his child. Instead, he absently batted the flapping edge of a calendar showing a scantily clad woman holding a bottle of Tanduay rum. He wore the same expression as his wife: distraught yet resigned. Like the generations before them who insisted on living close to the precarious riverbank.
The two-room hut smelled of dried fish tamban and fermented coconut water called tuba. For seven years, it was the smell of home for Alyana, who used to walk three hours every weekday to reach the nearest and only public elementary school, where she was on her second grade and starting to learn about multiplication tables. Alyana’s fraying blanket on her cushionless bamboo bed was unfolded. Past treasons stained the folds, presumably leaving only the undersides to be soiled.
