When Rachael and Stephanie had made their way back to the van, they first noticed how the other car, which was left for however long, looked as though it had been searched through. Seeing this, Stephanie unlocked the vehicle opened the side doors and quickly discovered documents that were hidden under the back passenger seat since she could recall how everything was initially when they left it.
Only to become disturbed upon reading what they had assumed, finding that the disappearances went even further back than either could have anticipated.
Stephanie tried to contact the police but only met with an automated message that no signal could be reached. After several tries, she switched to contact Taryn, only to receive the same automated voice recording and again when she tried with Robert.
“Shit!” Stephanie cursed. “Stupid fucking reception!!” She practically snarled through clenched teeth. Her dark blue eyes narrowed angrily at her phone as if glaring at it would make it change and give a signal.
Rachael, however, remained quiet as she sat along the edge of the van’s passenger seat. She was looking over the documentation slowly as Stephanie began to pace back and forth, trying to think of what they could do. Rachael found it somewhat ironic, with how Stephanie was acting would very well have been the way Rachael would have if she were with Taryn, yet found herself unable to.
Rachael wasn’t sure if it was due to her own past experiences or just the fact that she knew panicking wouldn’t do a damn thing like before when the doll had attacked Taryn. Now she didn’t have the luxury for that.
Be calm, be collected, and go slow. Read everything at one’s own pace.
That was what Rachael felt best in what needed to be done as she looked over these documents. Even still, it did not stop the slight faint tremors in her hands that would come from her ever-present anxiety. She took a deep breath and continued.
The amount of information left behind by June Suchiko was very telling of just how many people disappeared in the village over the decades, even if they were decreasing in number in recent years. The question was, why?
Could the person behind it find no more use in doing so? Was that why these disappearances were becoming less and less?
And what of the doll? What did it want with Taryn? Why was it trying to take her, what purpose did it have? And to where?
Racking her brain, Rachael stood up and put everything back where Taryn had initially hidden it before closing the van’s door. “I’m heading back to the village.” She told Stephanie.
“What?” the blonde woman stopped dead in her tracks, looking shocked and confused at Rachael’s declaration. “Why? After reading all of that, we should be heading to the police, not the village! The number of people who have gone missing alone is scary enough, not to mention Taryn was attacked.”
Still, Rachael didn’t move. “You read June’s notes; the police don’t know anything about this. Or if they do, then they’re covering it up for whatever reason. And besides, what’s written in there bothers me.”
“No shit!” Stephanie rested her hands on her hips. “It should be for anyone.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. The disappearances have been getting fewer and fewer, doesn’t that seem weird? And that a doll that attacked Taryn tried to get her to fall unconscious. Not kill her. At least from what I can gauge.”
Stephanie frowned. “So, you’re saying it wanted her alive for some reason?”
Rachael nodded. “I am, but again that’s just my speculation from seeing the bruises on her neck. There’s also a story from this village that’s got me wondering something, so I’m going to find out.” She paused and added. “You do have the car. If you wanted, you could take it and try to explain it to the police. I’m not going to stop you.”
Anger soon overtook her shock as Stephanie gripped the other girl’s arm as her acrylic nails dug into the fabric of Rachael’s sweater stopping her from going back. “And leave you alone with this? Fuck that!” anger filled her dark blue eyes as she stared down at the shorter woman. “I’m not leaving without any of you.”
Rachael looked at her before smiling. “You’re just as stubborn as me.” For it was something she had told Taryn before. They could both be too stubborn at times.
Taryn seemed almost indifferent to death itself and had no qualms with being left behind after helping Rachael escape a room locked by the dead when they were in that hospital four years ago. Even after all this time, Rachael still felt guilty for Taryn going so far for someone she barely knew back then. But that was just how she was, and it was a trait that seemed to grow even more over time.
“Damn straight I am,” Stephanie said before grasping Rachael’s hand as they headed back to the village. “Now, let’s get this over with quickly and find my moron of a boyfriend and your best friend and get the hell out of dodge.”
* * *
Back in Kōeihei Village, Rachael kept her eyes peeled for the elderly man she had spoken with when exploring the village as storm clouds were beginning to brew overhead.
She even worked up the courage to ask some of the villagers; some were helpful, while others did not.
The ones who said that the man she was looking for would most likely be at the Shrine’s graveyard since he often visits his deceased wife if he wasn’t at home.
Making their way up to the Shrine as they walked up the stone steps, Stephanie paused when seeing a woman in the clothes of a Shrine Maiden walk past them. The two’s eyes met before the woman in the traditional garb and continued walking down the steps, her hands in her sleeves clasped together as her face remained expressionless.
Stephanie frowned; there was something about the woman she couldn’t place but continued to follow after Rachael. And much like Rachael had hoped, the man was there sitting by a gravestone not far from the Shrine.
“Excuse me!” Rachael called out to him in Japanese. “I’m sorry to bother you while you’re visiting your wife. But I need to ask you something.”
The elderly man smiled. “Hello again, young lady and I see you’re with another friend. But you look a little pale, is something the matter?”
Rachael knelt before the man so that they would be eye to eye. “You told me before about the story of a demon that takes people away. That it could be a man or a woman, was there anything else to it? Like what it wore, or its hair and eyes? Or perhaps even its skin?”
The elderly man looked a little surprised by this. “I didn’t expect you to take such an interest in what I said.”
“I know, but I may have seen it myself. I just wanted to be sure.” It was a lie, of course, but his reaction to her words was telling.
His whole body straightened as his expression turned more serious. “I see,” he said softly before moving to sit on the Shrine’s wooden steps as they followed yet the two remained to stand. “To clarify, I personally haven’t seen it. I only heard about it second-hand. The one who had seen this demon was my wife. It was only once and was several years ago. In the seventies, if I’m remembering it right.”
“What did she see?” Rachael asked him.
With a breath, the elderly man simply said. “A murder. Or at least I think it’s what it would be called given the state of the man’s body. No one cared; however, the deceased was a horrible drunk and notorious for his foul temper. His wife ran out on him, leaving their son to deal with him alone. It was a mess; many felt bad for the kid with how his father would beat him. When that man died, no one thought anything of it. Calling it an accident and merely moving on as though nothing had changed.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“But you said your wife saw it,” Stephanie added.
He gave a grim nod, as though he were still trying to understand it himself. “Yes, although, what held her attention the most was not the man’s screams for help, but of the one who had done the act. The person saw her, as she described, the way its head turned in an almost unnatural way in a shockingly swift moment to look behind itself without moving its body. And the sound it made when doing so. Like that of a rusted gate. Even now, I can recall the look of confusion and horror on her face. How its eyes must have looked to her.”
“Were they a certain colour?” Rachael asked. “A few of the village kids said that their grandparents believed that people with different coloured eyes were demons. Does that have any correlation with what your wife saw?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Possibly, I knew a few of the other villagers who had claimed to have seen this demon when Japan was an ally with the Germans during the second world war. It was always the same, a man or a woman with long black or dark brown hair. With eyes, the colour of dark jade, as its skin seemed to have a strange look to it in the dead of night, as though it were a living doll.”
* * *
Shortly after, the two thanked the elderly man, with him giving a word of warning.
“If it is true that you have seen it, then if you were to see it again, do not let it see you. That is something my wife has always said, even in her dying breath. I do not know what will happen if it were to get you.”
“It’s terrifying,” Stephanie said as they headed down the stone steps of the Shrine. “I still can’t come to the reality that this, these killings and disappearances, have been going on for so long. And by the hands of a demon that looks like a doll? It just sounds insane.”
“I know what you mean,” Rachael admitted.
There was a moment of silence before Stephanie stopped abruptly. “Then let’s go and look,” Stephanie stated. “Taryn said that the doll looked like Toya. If Toya is connected to this, then his room would be the best place to start looking for some kind of clue.”
“But wouldn’t that be the first thing they’d think of and hide whatever it was they wanted to keep out of sight?”
“Yes, it is. But it’s better than wandering around aimlessly trying to find our two idiots.”
Rachael found herself smiling despite the situation; hearing her friend being called an idiot for doing something like this was oddly funny to her. Also, because Taryn wouldn’t even deny the stupid decision either, she could practically picture it.
“We might get caught,” Rachael said to her as they continued down the steps.
“Then we lie as to what we’re doing,” she stated.
This then prompted another question. “How do you even know where his room is?”
She glanced at her. “When we separated for a moment while looking for Taryn in the mansion, I found his room. It was on accident, really; he was talking to that Ayako woman. Not sure what it was about since I couldn’t hear a word, but he had a bleak expression on his face.” She paused. “Taryn did say that Toya was the one who found her first after the attack. So, that might have been the reason. But now I’m wondering if it was for something else altogether...”
Rachael flinched; that thinking alone made her concern ramp up. Gripping her shoulder bag, she pushed on, picking up speed in her steps. “Then let’s hurry and see if we can find anything.” Either something or nothing. Please, please let it be something.
When they returned to the mansion, Stephanie led the way without a greeting since none of the mansion’s staff was around. As they walked through the halls, Rachael couldn’t help but notice how there was practically no staff to be seen. It was getting late; it was almost six, and the rain began to pour outside, so perhaps they were preparing for dinner.
Yet it nagged at Rachael in the back of her skull as she gripped the sleeve of her sweater while glancing around, not seeing a soul. This was normal, though, wasn’t it? She shook her head and pushed back on that paranoid way of thinking. Whether it was normal or not shouldn’t have mattered since it gave them the chance to look around without getting caught.
But the feeling persisted.
She glanced at Stephanie, the fact that this woman could recall where to go after just seeing it once was impressive. Perhaps she had some kind of photographic memory.
“Here.” Stephanie’s voice jarred Rachael from her growing frantic thoughts. Rachael stopped next to the taller woman and looked at what was supposed to be the door to Toya’s room. Yet the fusuma, a type of sliding door, not to be confused with a shōji, was rather thin and would allow light into the room, separated areas of the mansion, it looked like any other fusuma. Actually, it looked rather plain.
Was this really the door to his room?
Stephanie opened the door and the two went inside, quietly bringing the door too so no one would know they were inside a place they shouldn’t be. Yet what they saw wasn’t something Rachael expected either. The room wasn’t all that large.
“It’s tiny,” Stephanie whispered as Rachael faced her after closing the door.
“Maybe he’s a minimalist?” Yet even stating that seemed wrong, Toya was the owner of the mansion, surely, he had to have a grander room than this? This just felt like a room one of the staff would use. Heck, the space that Taryn and Rachael shared looked way nicer and twice the size than this.
Looking around the room, which had only a small window on the far-left side, which showed a garden alcove on the other side that looked like an island garden built within the mansion’s interior, Rachael could even see a low stone bench possibly for someone to sit.
Beneath the window was a built-in desk known as a tsukeshoin, with some books resting atop it and a small mirror. Beside it, there looked to be a closet, possibly where the futon would be placed since it wasn’t set up already and a stand for a kimono that currently remained empty. The other side of the room had a medium chest of draws and a small ornate doll resting on top.
At the far back of the room was simply a screen with painted images of cranes in winter.
But it was the object to their right tucked in a corner covered in a cloth that held Rachael’s attention the most. For the moment, she ignored it, they looked around the room to see if they could find anything else, but there was nothing of note to indicate of any importance.
Rachael should have felt bad for what she was doing, prying into someone’s private life, and poking her nose in places it didn’t belong. But after going on several excursions with Taryn to abandoned places, that feeling of going into where she shouldn’t gradually dissipated to the point where it no longer bugged her. She knew it was morally wrong, but currently was grateful for it; the less nagging of guilt, the better.
“Nothing,” Stephanie said as she let out an aggravated sigh before looking at Rachael. “Were you able to find anything?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Damn,” she muttered. “Well, I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise given the way the room is.” she paused when seeing the sheet. “That seems a little too obvious.”
Rachael looked at it, then at what she could see below the sheet peeking out at the bottom. “I think it’s a painting. You can see the feet of the easel sticking out.” She went over and lifted the sheet to look underneath.
“I don’t know why you’d look; I doubt a painting would give us any clues.” Rachael didn’t answer. Instead, after a moment of complete silence, she pulled the sheet down and what was there caused Stephanie’s breath to hitch in her throat. “What the hell? Is that…?”
“I think it counts as a reason.”
The painting was in an old yet simple gold-leaf frame. With the depiction of a person of unspecified gender, standing in the center of a battlefield surrounded by dead soldiers. With the person leaning on the hilt of a longsword as if they had just finished fighting. Blood and dead were strewn around them. The clothing looked to be a Greek Chiton, a tunic of dark purple with the golden pattern of a Meander, the Greek symbol for eternity, woven at the bottom that stopped at mid-thigh. The hair was cut short along the nape of the neck and hung loosely as striking blue eyes peered back at the viewer as they and the cloths brought contrast to the paleness of the person’s skin that had little to no blood on the subject in question.
It looked uncannily like Taryn. Almost to a disturbing degree.
With the length of the hair, the colour, the paleness of the skin and especially the eyes.
Stephanie placed a hand over her mouth as she stared at it. The person wore ornate jewelry, several rings with small stones resting along slender fingers, a golden bracelet on the left arm and a golden diadem encrusted with jewels resting across the person’s exposed forehead. The face was holding her attention the most; it did look a lot like their friend.
At first, the two thought it might have been something recent, but that proved to be false judging by the date given at the bottom corner that it was several decades old.
Stephanie looked at Rachael, who seemed to be questioning the same thing—giving context to Toya’s actions a whole new meaning.
“Why do you think that the person is depicted in Greek clothing? Putting Taryn’s likeness aside. Do you think there’s a reason or meaning for it?” Stephanie asked.
“Death,” Rachael answered. “I think it means death,” when Stephanie gave a puzzled look, she added. “There are several names that have a connection with the meaning of death. The name Taryn is one of them…”
That surprised her. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, people have used the phrase “you’re surrounded by death” to her as an insult. However, most say it is due to her history in finding those who’ve died. But that phrase tends to hold more than one meaning, at least to her, whenever she hears it. Of course, she wasn’t given the name because of that. It just happened to be a by-product. In fact, her name doesn’t have a discernible origin from what we could find. Since her name could mean a vast variety of things depending on the culture or even given gender. I even found out it could mean Queen in Greco-Roman or Wild Goat in Hebrew.”
That’s still one hell of a by-product. Stephanie thought. “So what? This guy thinks she’s related to death, is that it? What would even the reason for that be anyway?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” She picked up the sheet from the floor. “Either way, it’s probably best we just pretend we didn’t see it. At least for now, we saw the information left by the reporter. We know what they know, that’s at least something.”
“Right. Let’s get out of here and see if we can find those two.”
With that, Rachael put the sheet back where it belonged before giving the room one last look before they headed out to look for the others.