Nagashibina Read online

demanded she take it from the village and set it free in purifying waters. Letting it go would ease her grief and allow Makiko’s spirit to finally rest.”

  Fumi found her voice despite her shock. “Why - why did the monk say that your sister’s spirit wasn’t at rest?” Deep down, she was afraid of his answer, wanting to run back to their house in the suburbs - even then, what could she do to protect them?

  “There were things, unexplainable things happening around our village. Once so peaceable, the children, my playmates, had begun acting strangely. Having violent outbursts and screaming fits, they were deemed to be possessed by evil spirits. Their worried parents banded together at the Minoru shrine to pray for aid. I was afraid in our own home. The monk entreated my mother to listen to reason and send the doll away. With pressure mounting from all sides, she finally assented. I was there that day when we traveled to Lake Ashi the doll was laid in a boat made of woven grasses and sent away from the shore. My mother in a fit of grief or madness, leapt into the water claiming she could see Makiko drowning.”

  They shuddered in unison at the image his words presented.

  “When her body was retrieved some time later, the Nagashibina was clasped in her arms. The head monk took possession of her with my permission, to keep her housed in a sessha on the grounds of the shrine. Since the gradual decline of the village, I haven’t seen the life-like Nagashibina again until this photo.” He indicated the Polaroid Hinohara-san brought.

  She had claimed two lives...,

  They finished the tea in comparative quiet; Hinohara-san made their polite excuses to leave when it was time.

  “There is one thing,” Ichinose-san stopped them.

  “What is it?”

  He looked at them sternly, but not unkindly. “Where is the doll now?”

  “My little sister has her.” Fumi answered hesitantly.

  Ichinose-san’s face took on a grim cast.

  Hinohara-san spoke up, “you know it’s true about your sister not being at rest. What does she want?”

  He spread his hands out, defeated. “To live again. To have back the life that was once hers. What else is the wish of the dead?”

  They left the old man’s house in heavy spirits, walking to the capsule motel located among the brighter lights of small eateries and Lucky-Cat waving statues in gift shop windows. Over dinner at a roadside stall, Hinohara-san laid her chopsticks down. “I can’t imagine not being wanted by your parents.” She smiled at Fumi sadly, “I didn’t mean yours, Fumi-chan. They love you deep down. Ichinose Asao-san was in a different situation. His parents loved his sister more than they loved the young male of the family. His pain must’ve been great.”

  Something she said stirred memory. “I wonder...,”

  “What?”

  “No...maybe it’s nothing.”

  That night as Fumi struggled to find sleep in the women’s dormitory, her mind churned over the story they’d heard. She’d fallen into a light doze of half-remembered words when her cell phone rang in the shuttered darkness of the capsule built into the bunks. It was the local police precinct from her hometown calling to tell her of her father’s death and sister’s sudden illness. Her mother had been reported missing days before, from her grandmother’s country house. A squad car would be coming around to pick her up within an hour. Fumi immediately roused Hinohara-san and both girls readied themselves to leave.

  The ride was fraught with questions which had difficult answers. Fumi could answer little of the policeman’s questions concerning her estranged parents. She told me she remembered very few details from that night or the following weeks. Her father’s funeral was a blur of faces and the somber man from the company attending to tell her she had to vacate the house provided by the company during her father’s tenure.

  Fumi though saddened, made plans to begin packing up the house the next weekend. Into the boxes she’d been left with at the curb by Hinohara-san who she’d asked to let her do it alone; went her memories of childhood, a few special toys, her old clothes and family pictures. A few stuffed toys she gathered up to take to the hospital. Fumi had nearly finished the upstairs leaving the furniture behind for the next residents of the house. She had piled the boxes neatly in the upstairs hall, dusting her hands off, yawning.

  The sixth stair creaked.

  The stair that always creaked when someone’s weight was upon it.

  Cold sweat broke out on her skin, she went to the rail and leaned over, looking out over the foyer down below. Something fell with a crash. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Kami!” Fumi choked, pressing her hand to her fast beating heart. Cautiously, she headed for the stairs, “Who’s there? Come out, show yourself!” Her voice was braver than she felt. The stair creaked under her steps, the house remained deathly silent. Upon reaching the bottom, Fumi turned in a complete circle searching for the cause of the noise.

  A vase had been overturned.

  By who - or

  Then, she saw what had been left behind.

  Makiko with the damaged eyes. Which one was she? The inanimate or inanimate? She was without her plaid parasol, her kimono was tattered. Fumi picked her up carefully, propping geta-clad feet against her hip, “who are you?”

  What are you...?

  Her fingertips passed over the painted face, sliding over the jagged seam worn down with time. The old crack had been fixed by a master craftsman. Fumi traced the edge encircling the doll’s skull; Ichinose Asao’s words came back strongly then.

  “I was jealous.”

  “Weak girl.”

  “I was jealous of Makiko.”

  “Stupid girl.”

  New voices, a man and woman’s.

  “What have you done? Insolent boy!”

  The dreams she’d forgotten, came back with frightening clarity. The crippled boy and young girl walking by the riverside - the girl bedridden, angry, alone and the doll that had been in her arms on that fateful day. Somehow, she made it out of the house that had once been home. A nearby bus stop carried her to the multi-storied hospital downtown. If someone had asked her where she’d left the Nagashibina, Fumi wouldn’t have been able to answer.

  Memory guided her to the floor where her sister was kept, a children’s high-risk ward where Sato Aimi shared a room with someone else. A nurse met her inquiries at the desk, leading her down a short sterile hallway into another turn of a long corridor lined with closed doors. “She’s been asking to see you, Ms. Sato.” The nurse let her into her sister’s room. Aimi had been placed in a room with another child, a boy by the looks of the stuffed warriors decorating his bedside. Fumi went in a few steps further; the nurse closed the door gently behind her. Aimi looked small and pale surrounded by machines regulating her breathing, doing other things that kept her alive.

  “Nee-chan.” Fumi whispered, patting the top of her tiny hand. “Onee-san really messed up this time.” Tears she hadn’t been able to shed before, smarted her eyes. She took her hand off Aimi’s to brush her damp face. Fumi meant to stay a while, think over things. Ichinose had insisted Makiko wanted life, but it wasn’t that simple. She didn’t believe he had told them the truth; that embittered old man...,

  What had happened in that village?

  Dolls were meant to be cherished, loved...she thought of the Nagashibina’s rooted hair with its rare blue-black sheen and shuddered violently stricken with cold. Fumi started to rise, reaching for her cell phone. A small hand stopped her, clasping her wrist tightly.

  Slowly, the girl’s gaze drifted down into the glassy hate-filled face of the long-dead Ichinose Makiko.“I hate you, Asao-niichan.” The spirit whispered in her sister’s voice.

  Before Fumi’s eyes, the face she’d known since her early years, transformed into a hideous, revolting mass of decaying flesh. The voice that rasped from its throat was a nightmarish amalgam of burning hatred. “I’ll take her away you.”

  She wrenched her wrist from its grasp with a scream, falling backward. The collision jar
red Fumi’s spine, her legs scrambled, propelling her backward away from the possessed thing that had been her little sister. Makiko’s pestilence grew like a malignant tumor down the sides of the hospital bed, pooling into viscous tendrils that snaked toward her. She shut her eyes and began screaming.

  The nurse’s hand fell on her shoulder.

  “Ms. Sato? Whatever is wrong, dear?”

  Fumi’s eyes opened at the sound of the nurse’s voice.

  She was sprawled in the middle of Room 205 with a fast beating heart. Makiko had fled her sister’s human shell. “I thought...I thought...,” Fumi stammered embarrassedly, rising with the nurse’s help. The truth of her vision stared the girl in the face. The nurse was worried she was suffering a mental breakdown in a children’s ward. Fumi fled with her sanity barely intact. On the boardwalk beyond the hospital overlooking the harbor, she quickly called Mai. Hinohara-san answered on the fifth ring. She was mildly irritated going between clubs, fulfilling her duties.

  When Fumi told her the reason for calling, she softened slightly.

  “She called you by his name? Why?”

  “I think she has us confused. I think this has happened before...after the tragedy,” Fumi stopped pacing, leaning against the rail. The salty breeze felt good, it whisked away her confusion, her terror allowing her to think clearly. “What if Asao lied to us? What if he caused Makiko’s death?” The fragments in her mind were beginning to form into something horrific.