Chapter 1

The desolate earth froze solid over itself into countless meandering ridges.

The grey sky hung low, the universe split perfectly in two parts, the clouds and the earth.

All that traversed the two was the wind, like a blade; there was no light in the sky, to say nothing of the earth. Nevertheless, a pure splendor closed in on him from behind, and as he bowed his face low to avoid the wind, before his line of sight was cast a long, deep crimson shadow.

He didn't know whether the red that tinted that shadow was the earth itself or whether it was an effect of the curse he carried in himself. What he did know was that it would be bound to his ankles eternally, until the day he died and decomposed into refuse, it would probably never leave him. No, even after he rotted away, perhaps the slivers of waste would continue to cast their own crimson shadows.

All that moved on that deserted and desolate earth were he and the spirits of the dead. His forehead bore a mark and as the dead spirits did not know its meaning, they blew cold winds his way, or they would spit poison at him, or with their half transparent hands they would throw pebbles.

----You cursed wretch.

The dead spirits kept their distance but still, transparent, stalked after him. No matter how dull it may have been the light of day showed their hazy forms. Though they had no shadows, their voices carried clearly on the wind.

---You cursed wretch.

---Outcast.

Under the weight their jeering voices and at the stones that rolled beneath his feet, he fell--how many times was this now?--to the cold, hard earth, like a stone.

He pushed both hands to the ground to raise himself up, first peeking beyond his arms to the brilliant light. Situated atop the low hill, the greenery of the hill shone far and wide. The hometown to which he could never return was there, emanating its distant glow.

The light at the peak of the hill spread light and love over that entire hill, the greenery a warm, glowing hue, but on this earth there was nothing cast but shadows.

This was the land of wanderers; the vegetation fostered by this light would never flourish here. A cold that seemed to freeze solid even the wind itself pierced him, without so much as a hair's measure of that warmth coming down. That light only served to cast relief of the hobbled texture of this land, to cast shadows--dense, shadows the color of sin, garnishing anything and everything.

----Outcast.

Again, the stones and pebbles came flying. He closed his eyes and stood up with a single breath but, unable to forget the light that seared itself into his pupils, beneath his eyelids, when he opened his terrified eyes this time, the splendid sight's radiance reflected still on the clouds.

The day grew dim yet the clothing of the spirits of the dead remained vivid, by the brilliant light behind him that itself did not dim. He had done nothing but walk for countless days now through the wasteland and yet, the light never weakened, his hometown on the hilltop never faded beyond the dips and rises of the earth behind him. He did naught but walk. He struggled and yearned for a place where neither the hill nor the light would be seen.

Before long before him was a human figure, faint and white. It had been there since before, waiting for him. Pallid blue will-o-the-wisps wavered, gathering as a shadow at his feet.

He gasped as he made out the features of that figure. It meant that night had come again.

This was the appointed time for it to come to the wasteland.

It followed him, and until the clamor of the dead spirits came with the dawn, it was unlikely to leave his side. He already knew that he could neither escape it nor drive it off. Without choice, he walked. Whether he stood still or whether he changed directions, he would surely end up reaching its side.

He himself without intent took a narrow walk step by step, until the figure's contours wee clear. His feet stopped and he covered his face.

That was his brother who he had slain. It was his little brother, born after him, the little brother to whom everything he himself had wanted had come so easily.

He buried his brother in the ground, and within a fortnight all greenery was eliminated. He'd meant to bury his sorrows together with that corpse on the hill. The light of the splendor that shone over the grave dimmed with sadness, and the surrounding trees and flowers bloomed only at night, the birds in the branches wailing only the same song.

It came, revived from the grave again tonight.

----A Shiki.

Having written that much, Seishin gave a sigh. In that moment the tension eased as he was thrown from the frigid wasteland back into the middle of the summer night.

The temperature seemed to rise instantly. Seishin released his pencil. The old style lacquer hexagon rolled above the wasteland confined to the squares of the writing paper, reflecting the light of the lamp. The traditional Japanese writing paper spread out over the inorganic clerical desk that wore the reflection of the lamp like an egg yolk and from the window at the side of the desk, the summer temperature and the sound of insects flowed into the room.

Sunday, July 24. The date had just changed, and Muroi Seishin was just shy of 33. He was a monk and an author. Facing his desk in the temple office, before his eyes was spread the manuscript that had come from about five hours of transcription.

Seishin sighed again, taking up the sheet of paper he had just filled. He looked over the letters he had written into the squares from the beginning.

The lively hum of insects flowed in through the temple office window. Loud as that should have seemed, the room was mysteriously stagnant with silence. In the old styled room, beneath the light that just barely covered the whole of the desk, there was only himself with his head bent down towards the manuscript, closing himself off to all else. Behind him silently stood the steel desk and office supplies. The head monk's family slept in their quarters. The temple that held them in its breast was filled with emptiness in the space beyond that, all human presence cut out. Surrounding the temple was a forest of fir trees. The temple was on a mountainside covered with firs, with no adjacent houses. The village spread out beneath the view of the temple was itself alone in the mountains, closed in by fir trees. Such overlapping layers of isolation were pooled within the temple office.

(The little brother, he feels for him...)

Seishin returned the paper to the desktop with another faint sigh. He took a box cutter from the office desk and took up the abandoned pencil, running the blade along it. The pencil shavings fell onto the manuscript he had just engrossed himself in.

The little brother had become a Shiki in death but he was by no means a vengeful ghost, much less by any means an evil apparition. The little brother had simply risen from the grave, that's all. Thus the little brother, just as when he was alive, oozed with compassion towards him. But there's nothing that can torment a criminal more than a victim who commiserates with his assailant. He anguished in his little brother's compassion.

----And did what, then?

Seishin could only ponder, following the story he could only follow vaguely, until at last he was caught up in confusion at its ambiguity, losing sight of where it was going.

While repeatedly fumbling for something in his writing, he shaved the long end of the pencil down to a precise point. The lead was 2H; he had a habit of writing characters as if engraving them with the hard pencil. So while he used a pencil, he didn't use an eraser. The way he used it, the characters wouldn't disappear so when it came time to erase something, he'd end up ruining the paper itself.

(The murdered little brother rises from the grave every night.)

That compassionate little brother's older brother attained the title of murderer when he took up a weapon against him. More than himself who had been killed, he sympathizes with the older brother who killed him.

That's why he became a Shiki and pursues his older brother. He has to follow his brother who had become a sinner wandering the wastelands to his final destination.

This was not a curse driven by affection.

The little brother who became a Shiki doesn't know that he's tormenting his older brother. The older brother knows as much. And---where is this going?

As he thought, he sharpened the pencil to a point and went on sharpening the other pencils he had used that night. Much as he hated dull tips, he couldn't simply keep sharpening them constantly, so he kept a dozen of them reliably in a pencil tray to trade out whenever the tip became rounded.

The rainy season had ended but the stillness of the night that seemed to flow piercingly into the room had nothing to do with the heat. Rather, one would feel a chill in a short sleeved shirt. A mountain town laid out along the mountain stream was not one fated to sultry summer nights. There was a notable difference from the town he had lived in while going to college. In his dormitory room without air conditioning, just sitting at his desk would have him dripping sweat. Just like now, he would be bent over the writing paper into the dead of night, when a bead of sweat would smear the ink, making him wince; he'd stopped using pens. For ten years since, he'd used hard, thin lined pencils.

Which editor was it that had mentioned with surprise 'You still use Japanese writing paper?' Seishin replied that his nature didn't mesh well with machines. He'd tried buying a word processor but he ultimately ended up giving it to his father. He didn't hate precisely pounding out the letters but somehow he didn't like the way that they could be easily redone.

Filling out each square on the traditional Japanese paper was similar to taking a path without being able to retrace one's steps. If you lose yourself in a dead end, you'll have to return to a branch road. And then, step by step, he wrote as if traversing a maze by foot, a way of doing things that was most like himself. It took time but, Seishin was first and foremost a monk after all, so writing was nothing more than a side business. He was never enough of a top seller that publishers would press him to hurry in finishing his manuscripts, and he likely never would be. Things had gone this way for ten years and while he didn't mind, he didn't doubt that it would continue like this from now on.

Finished sharpening his last pencil, he gathered the shavings in the middle of the paper and folded it around them. He folded the paper into itself so as not to spill what was in it before putting it in the wastebasket. Because of his habit of handling anything and everything this way, his mother and others had laughed that they couldn't tell if he were throwing something away or storing it away.

Spreading out a fresh sheet of paper, Seishin stood up. He was getting faint goose bumps. As he moved to close the window, as if frightened by Seishin's shadow, the bugs suddenly ceased chirping. Because of that, he faintly heard the vague sound of a gong sounding. The sound which sounded like a preparation to flee, which sounded melancholy, was the sound of the mushiokuri bells.

Seishin smiled faintly at the clear notes of the bells. Night fell fast on the village. At a time when most would already be asleep, so many people set out, still making a hustle and bustle, continuing the night's festival. Long ago, he had a feeling that the night held a secret. He had had a feeling if he could follow those men who dawned their masks and went on parade, he would find it.

Unfortunately Seishin was over thirty and he knew the truth of what hid in the night. But even now many children probably followed after the procession, rubbing their sleepy eyes, in search of something. He remained unaware that with that thought, the year before, or the year before that, he too had believed that something had to be out there as the sound of the bell jolted through his chests.

He looked casually out at the village, sunken into the darkness. The dotting of houses and street lamps could not wipe away the darkness. Maybe it was because of those very forlornly sparse points of light that the village was all the darker. The darkness that towered as if to consume the village was made up of mountain ridges covered with firs. The stars spread out vividly across the tabernacle of the sky, immeasurably brighter than the view down at the mountain village.

The village is surrounded by death.

The firs were death. The villagers still buried their dead here. The dead who harbored regrets or resentments would rise from the grave and linger, bringing calamity. The village called them "Oni." Death would infect those touched by the Oni. Humans and livestock would die and crops would wither. The Oni come when children cry, parents would tell their children in the past, and even now.

The Risen, corpses that spread death as they lingered. They awoke within the firs, coming down from the darkness of the mountains swarming towards the sparse lights, towards those who were engrossed in their dreams.

(This darkness...)

Behold this darkness.

The stars above the mountain rage.

What is the darkness, compared to the splendor of the stars? The sage upon the hilltop pointed to the wasteland.

This is the darkness of avidya, of ignorance, this darkness is filthy and cursed.

Saying this as he motioned, the sage pushed him from behind. He staggered on the bellows of his feet out into the wasteland, the narrow golden gate closing behind him.

Seishin shook his head and rested his hand on the window.

Since he had started it, he had been harboring doubts, doubts about being unable to see the end point of this story, doubts about why he started writing this story at all. Bits and pieces fell into place, bit by bit, obscuring the focus of the story.

Seishin smiled bitterly at himself and moved to close the window when from that direction, just barely breaking through the darkness was a glowing point of light. From years of experience, Seishin knew that he was looking at the divergence from the national highway to the road along the river. The lights moved. It must have been a car.

Furrowing his brows, he checked his watch. At some point it had become 3:00AM. The lights in the village went out as they would and the sound of the bells grew more lonesome as they would, the climax of the festival having passed and going into its denouement. Villagers couldn't participate in the denouement. Being a ceremony to ward off insects and plagues, the people could only see them off, unable to be present for the ending. The only ones who could be present were those "inhuman" ones who dawned the masks.

(At this hour...)

The light came from the highway directly towards the town. From a distance it could still be told that they were the headlights of three cars.

The reason he watched over the sight so intently may have been because how rare it was to see a car coming to or leaving the village at that hour.

Three car lights were...

Drawing arcs in the darkness, as if drifting, they traveled the land. A beckoning, invoked by the the dead who rose from the grave, he who dispatched the will-o'-the-wisps.

Seishin shook his head brushing off the phrase that had floated to mind.

As he casually closed the window, he noticed the lights had stopped.