Chapter One, in which I’m Forced to Weigh the Costs and Benefits of My Unusual Line of Work

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I sat up in my futon to find bloody writing on the wall directly in front of me. At least, that’s what it seemed to be. I didn’t really feel like fighting my fatigue, prying my eyelids open, or giving the situation much thought.

What time was it though? Two or three in the morning? I was awake for some reason, but couldn’t recall any noise that woke me up. My heart beat slowly, so if there was a crash or clatter it apparently hadn’t registered with my brain. I woke up for no reason then?

I sat there half-asleep, or maybe three-quarters asleep… yet not quite ready to collapse back to full-sleep. Was there a reason for that?

Somehow I was able to light the floor lamp beside me. Once my vision adjusted for the dim light, I discerned two rows of crimson calligraphy glistening a couple meters in front of me.

Ah, right. Some kind of message perhaps? My eyes already squinting from weariness, I managed to work out the kanji that stood before me.

I love you, Naoki-kun.

That was my name. I stared at the writing for a few more seconds, not quite sure what more to think of it all. It was the middle of the night, I was all alone in a haunted mansion, and somebody just confessed their love to me.

I could figure it out in the morning, my listless subconscious decided. The moment I fell back against my pillow, I was gone.

* * * *

I woke up the next morning—or rather, later that morning—and there it was again. The bloody writing on the wall.

I love you, Naoki-kun.

It didn’t make any more sense now than it did the first time I saw it, unfortunately. Nobody had ever said something like that to me before, save perhaps my mother on occasion. But only when I was really little.

I doubted my mother was responsible for this. So who wrote it? And why in blood? The owner of the mansion had mentioned receiving some threatening messages in blood a few times, though the words had conveniently disappeared before I arrived.

I stood up to inspect the writing a little more closely, and noted how it still looked a little wet. Perhaps it wasn’t actually blood? And yet that seemed unlikely to me. Who would bother wasting everyone’s time with red ink? If you’re going to all the trouble to scare someone with crimson messages on a wall, you’ve got to use blood. The whole effect is diminished if you cut corners.

The question remained though: Who did this? Someone trying to make a fool of me? There were plenty of people in the world who didn’t like me very much, but this seemed like too much work for anyone reasonable. Was it possible the old mansion owner himself wanted to play a practical joke? He said he was going away for the week to visit relatives, but perhaps he made that up. Old people do strange things sometimes.

Some people say it’s the most obvious possibility that tends to be correct. Well, I was in what people called a haunted mansion… Sounds like I was witness to the work of a ghost then, right? A ghost whose penmanship produced immaculate kanji, curiously. But still—a ghost, yes?

It was only natural to at least consider the possibility at this point. Despite my proclaimed profession as an onmyoji—or more colloquially, a ghost hunter—I had never actually seen a ghost before, nor had I felt convinced a true poltergeist had given me grief. That didn’t rule out the chance that ghosts could actually exist, however—and I was open to the possibility, given the number of people who truly believe they had encountered spirits of some sort. The concept of being haunted or possessed needed to come from somewhere, right?

The fact remained though—or at least in my personal experience it was rather clear—that most people who claim to sight ghosts or to suffer the wrath of an ancestor or to cross paths with some kind of kami or yokai are actually… wrong. Or rather, just mistaken? Mistaken.

In life… things happen. And whenever we can’t readily explain what happened, our minds tend to fill in the gaps. To some degree consciously and to some degree unconsciously we fabricate our explanations. It’s generally not that hard to dismiss conflicting points that may be brought up in the future. At the same time, it is also quite easy for people to amend their understanding of an event or concept the moment it suits their needs.

It’s the same with ghosts. Everyone knows about spirits, but the fact spirits tend to be invisible makes the whole premise rather difficult to be certain about, let alone any of the details. And yet details exist… I have read entire books and scrolls that are just full of them. It’s a fascinating subject to be certain, but the average person will never need to know any of it. So when people believe they are haunted by a spirit, they need an expert to come help them deal with the problem.

And that’s where I come in. The expert on ghosts. As luck would have it, it doesn’t take much to convince people I’ve managed to banish the spirits lurking within their homes. Since it’s a field of work drenched in mystery, I don’t even have to put on much of a show. Most of my work has to be done in private, I can say. And most of the time, people don’t want to stick around any longer than they have to in the first place—at least, not while the area is still “haunted.”

Perhaps it’s not a truly honest living, but I don’t lose much sleep over it. My efforts to exorcise the ghosts ultimately do, in fact, exorcise the “ghosts” people have conjured in their minds, after all. Plus, it’s no small matter to find a well-paying customer in the first place. It’s only thanks to those rare mansion-owners that I’m able to keep filling my bowl with rice each day. The man I was working for at this time was one such person.

Unfortunately, it looked like I was going to have a bit more to deal with than I had anticipated. I could technically just take off with the down payment the old fellow gave me, but I wasn’t quite ready to risk becoming an outlaw. Plus, I did have a ghost-hunting reputation to uphold. It was the one decent thing I possessed at this point.

First things first, then. I needed to figure out if everything here really was the work of a ghost. Could it have simply been children from the village wanting to pester me and the old man, for example? Such an explanation had a lot of holes to fill, unfortunately. But perhaps the old man had an enemy? A relative wanting to scare him out and claim the mansion for himself, for example? This explanation didn’t seem to fit either. I really needed something more to work with if I was going to find the culprit.

And so long as the truth didn’t involve an actual ghost, I was probably going to be okay, I reasoned.

* * * *

A thorough search through the mansion availed me nothing. I had hoped to find at least some sign of someone’s breaking an entry, but I was met with nothing but silence in every room and corridor. Perhaps that was my cue to get out of there while I still could, but it really wouldn’t have been nice of me. Someone was causing trouble. I couldn’t let this situation worsen and leave the old man to die of a heart attack.

Granted he probably only had a month or two left before his natural deadline, but still…

Maybe some food would inspire me into some new course of action. I generally went without breakfast during my travels about the country, but the old man did give me permission to eat whatever food I wanted during my stay. Might as well take advantage of that, I decided.

The mansion had a raised iron stove with four cooking holes, making it easy to heat several dishes at the same time. Once I got a fire started I went ahead and prepared some rice porridge and miso soup for myself.

After breakfast I slid open the door to the adjacent living space, a sparse yet immaculate room twenty tatami mats large. There were presumably walls available to divide the room, but the old man probably didn’t have much reason to do so. It made the desolate living space feel terribly… not living.

There was still a glossy black floor table in the middle of the room, at least. And a nice cushion and arm rest, and a rather elaborate wooden chest. One wall had a number of recessed shelves built into it, holding a variety of potted plants, small statues, and decorative ceramics. Meanwhile the far wall had a lake and mountain scene painted on its sliding doors, and if I wished I could slide that open for a view of the mansion’s inner garden. It was too cold for that though, so I just paced around a bit to collect my thoughts.

After a few minutes of that I grew bored. Nothing good came to mind.

I ended up walking through the mansion again. Nothing appeared to have been moved in any of the rooms since my arrival the previous day. Each of the mansion’s entryways were still locked. There were no hidden storage spaces with pots full of blood. I thought to check the walls and tatami mats for a secret hideaway of some sort, but I wasn’t sure how to go about that beyond a basic search. Regardless, I neither saw nor heard anything out of the ordinary.

I recalled feeling certain I hadn’t heard anything when I awoke in the night as well. Did I simply sense somebody had entered and left the room, but the culprit was so quiet I didn’t make anything of it amidst the stupor of my half-asleep reverie?

I thought of each of the things the old man had told me regarding his experiences with the one he termed “a haunting spirit.” First there were nights where he would suddenly feel incredibly depressed. Then there were times where he thought he heard someone repeating a few whispered words over and over again. Later, he began to feel the mansion was growing much colder than was normal. And lastly, a number of bloody messages appeared on various walls. One in his room stated “Someone is here,” another in the kitchen read “My presence is poison,” and a third in the entry room proclaimed “You are already dying.”

Of course, there was no way to prove any of this. The purported messages were all gone, all homes are cold in the wintertime, it’s normal for the wind outside to play tricks on our ears, and it’s not that unusual for people to feel sad every now and then. The explanations were even more obvious when considering the fact it was a lonely old man who was getting depressed, hearing things, feeling cold, and thinking he saw bloody writing. Since I had seen a message of my own on the wall though, it seemed that much at least was probably legitimate. But why would the culprit threaten the old man on three separate occasions, then not do anything further?

The purpose behind the vandalizing was a mystery. The manner in which these words disappeared was a mystery. And then there was the content of the messages themselves…

I walked back to the guest room I spent the night in and studied the writing once more.

I love you, Naoki-kun.

The biggest mystery of all. This succinct confession was quite different from the foreboding omens the old man received. Beyond this discrepancy, there were two further points to consider.

First of all, the writer knew my name. I hadn’t even given the old man my full name—just my family name: Tsunoda. Nobody I interacted with on my way here knew who I was. So who was it that knew me and wished to set up such an elaborate “ghost scare” for me? Nobody came to mind, and the entire notion felt too ridiculous to dwell upon.

The second point I pondered was perhaps even more unsettling. What was it that the shift in tone implied? The first three messages felt like threats against the old man’s life. Why would the follow-up for the hired exorcist be some kind of bizarre love letter?

It brought me back to the question of whether or not a ghost could be responsible for all this. If people intended to make a place feel haunted, they would be certain to orchestrate grim and ghastly acts of terror. So the fact the culprit wasn’t doing what one normally thinks a ghost should do actually made the proposition of a real ghost being responsible that much more likely. People have expectations of what a haunting entails, and what I had experienced felt too out-of-place.

Unfortunately, the explanation of a restless spirit being the culprit only brought more questions.

For starters, why would a ghost love me? Though I had never truly dealt with ghosts before, I was still regarded as an onmyoji. I hunt ghosts. I exorcise spirits. I put an end to hauntings. You don’t usually fall in love with people trying to destroy you.

Perhaps I needed to focus more on a plan to apprehend the culprit, should my enemy turn out to be living or otherwise. For the event of a bandit attack, I always kept a small knife hidden in the sash of my kimono. I didn’t want to use it if this was only an elaborate joke I was dealing with, though. And in the event of my foe being a vengeful yurei… Well, I certainly knew a lot of methods for dealing with ghosts. But could I actually pull off an exorcism should it come down to that?

I rather doubted it. It’s one thing to read about how a samurai general leads his army to victory against all odds, and another thing entirely to actually pull off such a feat yourself.

I paced the room for a bit, and eventually transitioned into pacing the hallway and then on through the rest of the mansion. I couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of what I would do if I couldn’t deal with the situation at hand. Failure now could very well expose me as the fraud I was.

I had nothing to fall back on. And just to reach this point—this vague semblance of stability—was the result of many difficult and unpredictable years. A whole lot of days wondering if I had any clue what I was doing with my life. And more than a few nights wondering if I should even care.

* * * *

I walked about the mansion, my thoughts wandering amidst possible motives of the culprit, the likelihood of a ghost being near me at any time, and whatever feeble plan of action I could piece together.

I shuddered. Did it suddenly get a lot colder? I slid open a door leading to the back deck and found the sun had already begun to set behind the distant snow-capped mountains. My kimono had a couple layers to it and that generally sufficed, but I thought to make use of the hefty metal hand warmer I found in a room down the hall. Perhaps I could move it into the tea room adjacent to it? There was a sliding door between the two rooms, so it wouldn’t be difficult.

The hand warmer had a large, sturdy base that made it a good half-meter tall. A myriad of tiny flowers were painted on it, and the cover above the bed of coals depicted a great cherry tree, its sakura blossoms serving as the holes to let heat sift out. If I had an eye for art I perhaps would have been more deeply impressed by any number of its intricate details, but for the time being I just wanted to get the room heated up.

I wondered how often the old man used this room. He supposedly lived in this giant house all by himself, so he might not have served anyone any tea in years. But then again, perhaps he had some old friends who came over to play go or mahjong each week. There wasn’t much I knew about the old man. I probably should have asked him more questions before taking on this job.

Besides his account of the bloody messages and restless forebodings, all I really had to work with were various tales associated with the mansion itself. Tales of the place being haunted went back a full hundred years, supposedly. Every now and then someone would die in some slightly vague and arguably peculiar manner, and it would be attributed to ghosts. The anecdote that stood out the most to me now was the one regarding a couple shrine priests and an onmyoji who were murdered by a wild spirit. I had taken these brief accounts as generic ghost stories though, so I didn’t press for details…

Once I had a cup of gyokuro green tea—a variety that tasted sweeter than what I was accustomed to—I turned my thoughts back to the job I had to pull off by the time my client returned at the end of the week. Was there something important I wasn’t giving enough consideration? Some detail that would make everything clear if I just examined it from a different angle?

I set my tea cup on the little floor table beside me and shut my eyes.

What did I have to work with, exactly?

Someone is writing messages in blood. Someone knows my name. Someone is really quiet.

Someone has a lot of free time on his or her hands.

I opened my eyes and frowned. A message in crimson kanji adorned the wall before me.

You can’t see me, can you?

I stood up and looked in every direction I could. There was nobody there. I immediately ran into the hall and looked down both ways.

Nobody. And not a sound to be heard. No pattering footsteps of someone running away. No sliding of doorways. No breathing.

I looked back in the tea room and found another message to the left of the previous one.

Are you really an onmyoji?

My heart beat far faster than was comfortable. My subconscious seemed to recognize the need to run. To get away from that room—and this mansion—as fast as I possibly could. But I somehow stayed put. I perhaps still reasoned that if the enemy wanted to attack me, he would have already done so. But nothing was happening.

Just messages.

I stared at them. Such simple words. But suddenly they carried more weight than my mind could hold.

What was I supposed to be thinking about? What these messages on the wall meant? Or who wrote them? Or how any of this was happening?

I decided to just answer the questions.

“Of course I’m an onmyoji,” I said to the wall. I had no idea where to look for this trespasser hiding in plain sight. Or… this ghost. But either way, it was best to not give away the fact I had never confronted one before.

For what may have been a full minute, I waited for a response. What was supposed to happen now? Perhaps I needed to respond to the first question as well. But wouldn’t that give away that I’m not a legitimate ghost hunter? I needed to tread carefully through this discourse.

“I can’t see you because of the unusual qualities you hold.” I placed a hand near the location of my hidden knife, just in case an ambush awaited me. Was this answer sufficient? Hopefully it was good enough for now.

Silently and without any warning, red strokes appeared on the wall to my right. It was as if someone were painting the wall right before my eyes—but nobody was there.

I clenched my teeth and froze in place as the lettering for Is that so? appeared from thin air.

I wanted to ask what in the world was going on—but wasn’t it obvious at this point? I was in the same room as a ghost. A ghost I could not see. A ghost who knew my name. A ghost who suspected I did not know how to exorcise it.

More lettering appeared on the wall. What unusual qualities do I have?

It wasn’t exactly fear I was feeling at that moment. If I was truly afraid for my life, I would have run away screaming by then. But I felt compelled to stay. Perhaps a fear of being killed for trying to run away played a part in it, but… maybe it just felt better to go ahead and keep chatting with this spirit.

If this could really be called chatting.

I maintained normal breathing and spoke as calmly as I could. “You are special.”

It took just a few seconds for a new question to appear on the wall.

How so?

I smiled and held out a hand to the side. “It seems you’re just an especially cursed spirit.”

What felt like at least a couple minutes passed, but there wasn’t a response. My hope was that if I acknowledged the ghost’s power in a casual way like this, it would look like I knew what I was doing. As long as I maintained an air of confidence, the ghost would perhaps hesitate doing anything rash.

Second after second passed, and I had to exert all my self-control to not appear concerned. Was the spirit just thinking of what to write next? Or was it about to wreak havoc in some way? Or did it just grow bored and head off somewhere else?

A stroke of red appeared to the left of the previous question. I was receiving a response after all.

You’re probably right.

I’m probably right? It sounded like the spirit itself wasn’t so sure about what it was, exactly.

Maybe it was time for me to ask some questions of my own.

“What’s your name, spirit?”

It sounded ridiculous as I said it, but I wasn’t sure of a better way to ask.

In response, four kanji appeared for the family name… slowly followed by two more kanji. The long pause between the writing of the surname and personal name almost gave a sense of shyness to the ghost’s introduction.

“Kijimuta-san,” I pieced together. The personal name that followed was Michiko, a girl’s name. “It’s nice to meet you. I’d like to help you out if I can. Is it all right if I ask a few questions?”

The response came more quickly than I expected.

Yes.

“Great…” I reached for my empty tea cup and held it out on the palm of my hand. “Can you pick things up?”

The ghost didn’t need to write a response. The cup rose from my hand and floated in the air a couple paces in front of me.

I was standing face-to-face with a spirit. In theory I should have been taken aback by all this, but perhaps my years of acting like an onmyoji made this feel less unusual than it actually was.

The cup suddenly fell to the tatami floor. I stepped back in surprise, but fortunately the finely embellished clay didn’t shatter.

Did this mean the ghost could only hold something for a few seconds then? Well, for my purposes a few seconds would be long enough.

“So, Spirit-san… Do you know how to play go?”

* * * *