In full daylight Furyo is much more confident about exploring the お化け屋敷 Ghost house. Now as mid morning son birds and rays of light penetrate the dismal interior, a blue hue of toxic air and dust fills the building. The windows are all smashes, boards but up ripped down and interior sliding paper walls kicked to pieces. Once there must have been good memories and laughter here, over centuries a mix of cultures poisoned the family into the realm of Countess Bathory or Unit 732. Adopting orphans for explicit purpose of tormenting them physically and emotionally. The downstairs is formal drawing rooms, ballrooms, offices in the 19th century British colonial style with maps and half of the endangered species of the tropics stuffed in menacing poses, meeting rooms with comfortable leather chairs, a large tile pool in the style of Hearst Castle filled with a broken piano and medical equipment.
Furyo climbs to the second floor where the bedrooms are all are grand, large as tennis courts but trashed with slashed paintings, dead plants and burned beds. Farther down he sees no obvious children’s bedrooms, no toys, no child-like pictures or signs of light and life. He goes back down stairs and off the kitchen, finds a stone stair case descending to a row of jail cells with heavy wooden doors that have been torn off their hinges and lie splintered inside. These rooms have an aura of sadness, dirty mattresses on the floor, a hole in the floor for a toilet and small skeletons still curled into fetal positions in each room. Furyo collects the bones in a bucket to return to the monks for purification and summoning of the spirit to reach a better afterlife. Furyo sees signs of animals living here. He hopes he won’t run into a sleeping bear or pack of wolves. One cell has not been opened, Furyo struggles to unlatch the heavy iron pull bar. Rust and expanding due to temperature changes makes it impossible to open.
Looking in though the tray slot, he sees something incredible. The wall behind the cell is totally broken like a bomb went off. Some supernatural power melted the stone into pools of magma on the floor that cooled into strange patterns almost like hieroglyphs. Feeling watched, Furyo turns and sees darting shapes in the corner of his eye that scatter just as he has time to focus. He saw enough to feel like the ghosts of innocent children still live here. Following the direction he thinks they went, he comes to a lower half flooded tunnel bellow. Furyo has learned techniques to create gouts to spiritual fire to light his way but he has not mastered the 火の玉 (Fireball). Furyo feels a sadness that contaminates here, like a sickness of the blood. With a fleeting fireball guiding him, he remembers Mr Ghost Lantern, and is if he was there all along, appears in his hand. This calms him a little as Mr Ghost Lantern is never scared and ghosts are his people.
Furyo remembers the incense and prayers. He allows Chōchin'obake to float freely so he can use his hands to light incense he holds in his mouth to read aloud from his book of blessings. He reads aloud. “The myriad Spirits in the High Plane of Heaven, on the order of the imperial ancestor the Living Kamurogi (The Spirit Takamimusubi) and The Living Kamuromi (The Spirit Kamimusubi), met in the heavenly river plain and discussed the transfer of the rule of Japan from the great Spirit of the Earth to the Spirits of Heaven. The imperial descendent, The Living Ninigi, suggested descending to the Plane of Reeds, Japan. And after serious discussion, the Great Spirit of the Earth agreed to relinquish control of our country. And the mother of The Living Ninigi, The Great Spirit Amaterasu said ’My heavenly child, The Living Ninigi, go and govern so that this country, Japan, remain peaceful for all generations to cometh.’
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
This purification will be the strong wind that blows down from high mountains, which can blow away the clouds that have piled up thick, and like the way that the morning and evening wind can blow away the morning and evening mist, and like the way the wind can blow a large ship. Berthed in a large harbor, breaking its chains, pulling up its anchor and blow it out into the ocean, and like the way we can clear mountains of trees and bushes by burning them and through the work of our sharpened hoes cultivate mountain sides, in this way, our sins will be gone, purely purified, and cleanly cleaned. The sins and impurities thus swept away, will fall from high and low mountains, with a thunderous sound into the water, the Spirit of rivers, Princess Seoritsu, who lives in the upper reaches of rivers that flow fast like the flow of a waterfall, will take them out into the ocean…
If they are taken out in this way, the Spirit called Princess Hayaaki, who lives in the whirlpools where hot and cold flows meet and collide, will gobble them all up. If the sins and impurities are all gobbled up in this way, The Spirit, Ibukidonushi, who is the origin of the breath of life, will breath and blow them out to the world at the origin of the world. If they are blow out in this way, The Spirit, Princess Hayasasura, who lives in the world at the origin of the world, will take them off into the distance so that, even these sins and impurities will be lost forever and completely and if they are lost in this way, wherever one searches for them, we will allow ourselves to say, before the myriad Spirits, before the spirits of Heaven and the Spirits of the Earth, to whom we dedicate this purification, this cleansing prayer, that sins will completely cease to exist.”
As he sloshes through the dark water, the incense and words seem to dispel the darkness. As if smoke is receding and giving some feeling of peace in the shadowy depths of this horrible place. Furyo comes to rooms littered with more medical equipment and signs of distress. Saying aloud he is here to gather up spirits unjustly imprisoned who want to return to the world of light, he rings a chime three times and claps to call forth the children. As if they have been beside him all alone, little faces of children totally white with lack of sunlight for decades appear beside him, the entire hallway is full of them. The children have dead eyes, their bodies as thin as skeletons and they creep towards him with an unignorable intention to feed on his flesh. Maybe as many as fifty Hungry Ghosts close in on him. Furyo smiles and says. “You must be hungry, let me take you to a place of plenty where you will never be scared or yelled at again. Where you can reside with all your ancestors in a calm wind of eternal spring.” The children seem to perk up from their gloom. He gives them a few minutes to find any missing spirits they can and collect their things.
Like an angelic Pied Piper he leads this heavenly chorus of singing children out into the light of day. The forrest seems less threatening as columns of light break up the morning fog, giving the dark forrest a golden quality of hope. As Furyo thinks of how proud he will make the monks, something unpleasant screams and he sees the children have all fled to the afterlife head of him except one. A girl with a intense face, riding a grey wolf who has not followed him from the experimental labs in the depths of the house. Her face is painted with blood and she carries a spear. Furyo smiles at her and says. “こんにちは、野田恵美さん、お手伝いに来ました。Kon'nichiwa, Noda Emi-san, otetsudai ni kimashita.” (Hello Emi Noda, I have come to help you.) She glowers at him and her wolf picking up on it, growls with a bone chilling deep throated threat. Furyo feeling unsure continues. “I am not here to force you to go, if you prefer this place I won’t try to convince you. Only to share the invitation of Heaven any time you are ready.” She doesn’t respond and turns her wolf to dash off into the trees.