Furyo feels pain, coldness and completely alone. Feeling like he fell off a roof, like his face splattered, his arms splintered, his organs burst and his legs are oriented in a way they couldn’t be attached to his spine. As he sits across the alley it hasn’t hit him yet. His body is over there. Pieces of his brain are in a U shaped pattern going twelve feet from whats left of his skull. It’s too much… the rain is washing away his blood. He hears Mr Ghost Lantern making jokes but they fall on deaf ears. Furyo needs to take a walk. Looking down at his hands, he is reminded of the Ghost Clan with their pale corpse like aura and poisonous blight around their soul. There is no mistake, he is dead.
Gathering his things, he puts on the Master’s Devil Mask and holds up the Chōchin'obake. Akihabara is weird now, only faces he sees share the hallmarks of a sad death. Girls standing alone bear slashes to their throats, men stumbling around are riddled with gunshots, families standing in the middle of the street have dented in ribcages from car accidents. An echo of buildings on fire, soldiers wailing for lost loves and mothers carrying charred children of the ww2 Tokyo firestorm. Startled by sounds of screams, motorcycle crashes and mass shootings craze his fragile psyche. Soon the street disappears under an ebbing tide. Ghostly flames and jovial Yokai sing songs off in the darkness of a swamp of lost souls.
He hears spirits calling his name… in the miasma of endless misery. He hears Rikki calling a name… Fujin. A name so familiar. He comes to an ancient mound with a giant stone lantern, beside it Rikki whispers prayers. When she sees him she runs into his arms, speaking fast in Japanese, crying, screaming, sobbing. They don’t understand each other but he tries to comfort her. He only knew her briefly and spoke though Machiko as an interpreter. Furyo gets the impression she is blaming him for her death. She falls to the ground and her voices becomes hysterical then silence. The sound she makes is a low hiss, turning slowly with snake-like yellow eyes, her mouth twisted in a grimace of hunger. She is a Yokai, 濡女 Nure-onna, Snake Woman.
Furyo dashes away and can hear her slithering into the water inches behind him then nothing. Stumbling through a the black swamp, he feels like he runs for hours. Mr Ghost Lantern is not scare and begs for a cigarette. Furyo has exhausted him self, his lungs and legs ache. Stopping to smoke, he thinks about the name Fujin, it sounds so familiar from his childhood. Watching the full moon rise over gnarled trees, Furyo laments his life. He never lived like his future mattered, now he has none. Blue orbs of spirits dance over the still waters, wind picks up and frogs sing in putrid blackness. Looking around he has come to a graveyard.
Getting up to walk, he feels a little better. On the wind he hears funeral bells and smells incense. Lightning far off illuminates a ruined shrine in silhouette. Moving towards it he hears the name again… Fujin… Fujin… Fujin… in a sweet feminine voice. Coming to a grove of burned trees and a stone Tori gate, he enters the courtyard of the Shrine. Stone lanterns light the boundaries of the place against broken stone walls. He sees a figure walking around inside the Shrine, a small old woman in a Kimono. It’s his grandmother. He climbs the stairs cautiously and she smiles and gestures for him to sit. She serves him tea and cookies. Mr Ghost Lantern interprets when she begins speaking in Japanese.
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“I apologize for our short time together. I had suffered with many health issues of the body and mind. Now I am at peace here. I wish we had more visits as your grew older but your mother was very rude and only called me to ask for money. She refused my visits after the day I tried to drown you.” Furyo doesn’t understand. “You were born under a harsh curse, that aggravated our own shame. Your fathers family were Japanese from Korea, living there since we lost the Imjin War. This left a stain on you that still follows you. A great injustice was committed by your ancestors and the fact you are drawn to a life of evil only proves that I was right in trying to drown you.”
Furyo isn’t sure whats going on, but his grandmother does not remind him of a Holy Spirit calling to him for his welfare. He knows stories of Hungry Ghosts who can only feed on their own families, causing generational misfortune and spiritual torment. Begging her forgiveness he quickly leaves the Shrine and hears echoing laughter that fills him with an emotional pain he has never felt before. He walks on with Mr Ghost Lantern into lands of the dead. He thinks he hears his mother’s famous songs. “A flower for the unloved” a song she wrote as a young girl that became a hit in the 50’s. “Simple hearts yearn together” her hippie era bubblegum hit, “Walking in the rain, singing your name” a song she never recorded as her career faltered in the 70s when she came to the USA.
Furyo sees a festival in of torches climbing a mountain. Every one wears Ghost Masks and has sunken eyes. A fire festival in honor of the dead. Furyo has no torch so he follows the stragglers along a winding trail up the mountain. Passers by have the same ghostly injuries as him, burning children, skin and bones corpses of the sick, skeletons walking in feudal costume, Samurai in full armor and Shinto priests coming down the other way glaring at him and whispering curses. His mother’s songs stop and at the crest of the hill he is shocked to see an exhumed casket surrounded by corrupted Shinto priests, their white ritual robes covered in dirt and mold of the grave.
Ghostly ninja pull the casket up with heavy ropes. Possessed Men dance in a grotesque display of bloated corpses falling apart and splitting from putrified liquids in the chest cavity. Singers and Onna Yurei cut open the throats of chickens and ducks over the casket. Finally the drumming and symbols go silent. Pallbearers approach with pry-bars to open the ornate casket bathed in blood. Furyo cant help but approach, transfixed by the spectacle of this blasphemous exhumation. Deep set, black ringed eyes of the crowd of Priests and henchmen of the Akuryō-kai and Yajū-gumi. Furyo gasps when he realizes the green and shriveled corpse exposed to the night is his mother!
Shinto priests spit sake into flames, toss gold coins and seize the corpse, hoisting up up from her casket. Furyo cries out in horror as her eyes open with an accusing glare. Her gnarled finger points at him. As if she held him responsible for her untimely death. This couldn’t be! Furyo didn’t even know about his mothers death. Shame tackles him as he surrounded by the Ghost Clan. Falling and and scurrying away backwards in spiritual revulsion as all the faces of corrupted souls of Shinto priests of the Akuryō-kai look his way. A hand gently grasps his shoulder. He would have had a heart attack right there if he wasn’t already free of his corporal form. It’s the Hell Priest! Furyo blinks out of existence.