The dolls that surround the walls are of a different design. While the imperial dolls are smaller and more triangular in shape, the others are carefully proportioned ichimatsu dolls with faces that
might at times pass for real children, if not for their affected stillness. Despite these differences, all the dolls in the room bear milky, porcelain-white skin. They are dressed in heavy robes and kimonos, colorful ornaments woven into their hair. Their eyes are colorless. All gaze down at the visitors with expressionless faces, draped in the silence that often comes before the passing of judgment.
“Who is it?” the woman asks. Though her smile is genuine, her words are slow to come, thick with unnatural lethargy. One doll, two dolls, three.
“Yoko?” At the Shirt’s nod, the father enters the room. He slides part of the shoji to one side so he can step in and kneel by the woman. He is used to the presence of these dolls and thinks little of them, but the boy is not yet acclimatized. He does not follow, remaining hidden behind the partition. His eyes wander from doll face to doll face with nervous misgiving.
The man takes the woman’s hand in his. “It’s me, Yoko,” he says gently, and all the love and worry are in his eyes. “It’s Doug.”
“Doug,” the woman repeats. She smiles warmly at him. “It’s been so long since you last visited, anata. I was so worried something had happened. It’s been…It’s been…” She falters, unable to remember. Nineteen dolls, twenty dolls, twenty-one.
“We’ll be visiting more often,” the man promises. “And Tarquin is here,” he adds, though he now says this slowly and deliberately, watching her face anxiously for any signs of distress. The boy standing behind the screen waits, his back rigid. From his position, all he can see of his mother is her shadow, stooping behind the screen.
“Tarquin’s here?” the woman says, this time with more animation. “Where is he?”
“Hey, Mom,” the boy says. His voice is low, trembling with pent-up emotion. Gone is his usual derision, all traces of sarcasm lacking from his tone. For now, Tarquin Halloway is a fifteenyear-old boy who, for all he has endured, still misses his mother. For all his hurt, there is much forgiveness in him.
“Tarquin? Where are you?” The woman twists her head and moves as if to stand.
“He’s here, Yoko,” the man says, “but the doctors say you can’t see him today.” Forty-one dolls, forty-two dolls, forty-three.
“Did I hurt him?” Terror rings her voice. “Did I hurt him again? I am so sorry, Tarquin, I am so sorry!”
Overwhelmed, she starts to sob. The man wraps his arms around her. The boy can only watch their shadows, helpless.
“It was the only way,” the broken woman whispers. “I didn’t know what else I could do. I didn’t have much choice. But I couldn’t let her out. Don’t you see? I couldn’t let her out!”
The White Shirt steps forward, alarmed, but the woman quickly rights herself, shaking off her ramblings. The sudden queerness in the air that had settled around her like dense fog is gone. She sits up straighter in her chair, now prim and delicate, though her hands twist and clench without her knowledge at invisible paper she is slowly tearing to shreds. Sixty dolls, sixty-one dolls, sixty-two.
“It was very nice of you to visit, Doug,” she says calmly with no trace of her previous hysteria. “It’s been so long since I last
stepped out of these walls that I’d almost forgotten what it feels like to be outside.”
“Yes,” the man says, at a loss at how to respond.“I’d like to go back to Japan again,” the woman says, and her voice sounds like it is coming from somewhere else, far away. “It’s been so many years since I’ve been back in Tokyo. I miss hanami in the springtime. Do you remember, Doug? All those times we would camp out underneath the trees and watch the cherry blossoms bloom ’til nightfall. How long has it been?”
“It’s been seventeen years since we graduated from the University of Tokyo, Yoko.” The man’s voice is choked.
“Has it been that long since our Todai days? How odd. I still remember them as clearly as if they were only a week ago. I remember the hanami well.” She laughs. “We had to look at six different shops just to find a yukata in your size.”
“You always insisted on doing things the traditional way,” the man said, smiling at their memories. Eight-five dolls, eighty-six dolls, eighty-seven.
“For hanami, it is only proper to dress in the right manner.” She squeezes his hand. “The old ways of watching are always the best. Cherry blossoms die as quickly as they bloom, so one must always come with the proper clothes and the proper attitude to admire their beauty before they pass away so quickly. The great writer Motojirou-san said it best: ‘Sakura no ki no shita ni wa shitai ga umatte iru.’”
Dead bodies lie under the cherry tree.
The woman whips her head to stare at me, as if I had spoken the words out loud. Her face turns white, her eyes staring.
“Who’s there?” she whispers, growing more agitated by the second. The man reaches out to take her hand again, but she shakes him free.
“Who’s there?” She jumps out of her chair and begins to advance toward me, unexpected anger bleeding from every pore in her body. “There is someone in here! You! Who are you?” Her voice grows louder until she is all but screaming.
“Who are you?”The White Shirt starts forward, intent on restraining her, should it become necessary, but there is strength in the woman still. The drugs that cloud her vision prove to be his undoing. She pushes him away, harder than it would seem possible, given her small frame, and the White Shirt crashes into the shoji screen, knocking it over and revealing the tattooed boy standing behind it, stunned and shaken by his mother’s rage.
The woman sees her son, and then she begins to scream. It is a howling symphony of loss and fear and madness. She leaps toward him, her eyes blazing and her hands clawed, transforming that pale, pretty face into that of a creature of malevolence.
“You!” she howls. “I will not let you escape! You will not have him! I will not let you have him! I’ll kill him first! I’ll kill him!”
At the same time, I see that aimless shadow drift up from behind the boy’s stricken form, the same darkness I saw in the classroom that day, though there is more to its shape. Something is rising out
of the boy’s back—something with terrible, burning eyes, yet not quite eyes at all, preserved behind a bloodless, decaying mask that hides its face from the world.
Our gazes meet.
The woman is still screaming, hurling vile curses into her stunned son’s face. She fights off her husband’s attempts to restrain her. “Get away from him! I will never let you out! I’ll kill him first! I’ll kill him I’ll kill him I’ll kill him!—” She stops only to reel off sutras and chant at breakneck speed in a language that should be familiar to me but is not, a language that crackles in the air, which now grows uncomfortably hot from the heat of her words.
The door flies open and several more White Shirts run in. With efficient precision, they surround the woman, cutting off her chants. She lashes out with her legs and her fingernails, dislodging dolls from their shelves in the process, but the Shirts are successful at incapacitating her, holding her long enough to jab a large needle into her arm. In time her struggles grow weaker until she finally sinks, exhausted, against a White Shirt’s chest, her head nodding as she spirals into sleep.