“Aunt Yoko!” The young teacher takes hold of the woman’s shoulders, steadying her. Pain travels up her injured shoulder, but she does not let go until the woman ceases her violent thrashing, her voice now reduced to soft whimpers. The White Shirt relaxes, though still alert. “Aunt Yoko, who would have killed more?”
“I had to,” the woman whispers. “I had to stop her.” “Who? The woman in black?”
A shudder racks the woman’s body, and she moans.
“I think that’s enough, Miss Starr,” the White Shirt says disapproving.
“No! No. She has to know. Do you have a mother, my dear?” “Yes. Linda Starr, Uncle Doug’s sister.”
“I see it now. There is something of Douglas in your eyes. Tarquin was always too young to remember the mother I once was with him—the mother I should have been. How is it that you can see her? Why do you see the woman with the mask?”
“I…I don’t know.”“I looked up to her, you know. She was the best of us all. Chiyo had always been perfect, could do no wrong. But even she could not prevent such hate from taking hold of her. I tried, but the sealing was incomplete. The ritual had not been performed in such a long time, and none of us knew how well it would work, if it even would. But we had to try. Poor, poor Chiyo. And my Tarquin…” Her face crumples, and she ducks her head, long hair streaming down her face.
“Did you send her as well?” she asks, head still lowered. “The white ghost?”
“The white ghost?” the teacher’s assistant repeats, taken aback. “The yuurei—a spirit that cannot rest. The lady in white. The lady with the broken neck. The woman who cannot rest. Did you send her to help my son?”
“I…I don’t…”“I saw her,” the frail woman insists. “I saw her on the ceiling, hanging down. I thought she meant to harm my husband and my
son, but now I know she is here for a much different purpose. The binding seals on my son attract her, as they do all yuurei. But the woman in black repels even her. Even now I see the woman in white, standing behind you.”
The young woman swallows hard and, trembling, turns—but sees nothing.
“Seals?” she asks. “The tattoos on your son’s body…they’re binding seals?”
“Five seals, arranged in a star pattern. Here, and here…” The woman touches her chest, then the backs of her hands. Finally, her fingers drift down her sides to rest on the rise of her hips. “And here. But the ritual has only partly succeeded. Little by little, the masked woman is breaking free of the chains that bind her to my Tarquin. I know she has broken many of those seals. She knows she is close.” The woman grips the teaching assistant’s arm. “Promise me you will protect my son. Promise me you will tell my husband that he must return to where it all began, to lift the curse. He will not believe you. He will not understand. But you must convince him.”
“Return to where?”But something else distracts the woman. She rises from her chair, stepping toward the platform, and lifts an empress doll off its stand. Taking a tiny pearl comb from her dresser, she returns to her seat with the doll settled on her lap. Now she combs its hair, a doting mother.
“Have you ever been to the Hina-matsuri?” Her voice is calm once more, placid. “It is a time-honored festival, celebrated throughout
Japan. My father was a celebrated dollmaker, and my sister and I grew up surrounded by his creations. People would buy his dolls and bring them out for luck during the Hina-matsuri. But dolls are useful in other ways, as well. One can, for instance, use dolls as a sacrifice—a way to capture evil spirits and keep them trapped within their bodies for as long as it takes to exorcise their malice. Did you know what dolls like these are called in Japan? Ningyo. ‘One of human shape.’”
She pauses, staring off into the distance, while her hand continues to stroke the empress’s hair.
“But there also exist spirits so powerful that mere dolls cannot contain them. For this, another type of sacrifice must be used—a living human being, an innocent.
“For many long years, Chiyo had endured as such a sacrifice. But then the spirits took over, transforming her into the revenant she is now. To overcome her ghost, I was forced to create a new sacrifice… “Was it wrong for a mother to sacrifice her son to protect the lives of others around me, those who looked to me for protection?
I do not know. I was so sure of myself back then, so sure I could cleanse him from her taint eventually. But I could not.”
She smiles then, sadly. “Tarquin must have told you how I have tried to kill him many times. I thought it was the only choice I had left. But there is one more thing I can do for him. After tonight, my son will no longer suffer from my mistakes. This will end, one way or another.” She places the empress on her bed, rises to select another doll, and begins the same painstaking process all over again. “But if I fail, he must return.”
“Return to where?” The teacher’s assistant could easily dismiss the woman’s words as nothing more than ramblings. Even the White Shirt lounging by the door is no longer listening, now that the threat of violence has passed.
But the young teacher has seen the woman in black. She has seen the woman in white and is now aware of how strange things may lurk, unseen to the eye. She has seen the Smiling Man’s corpse. She has seen her cousin’s face, as blank and as paper-white as all the dolls in this room, and her own blood curdling against the seals on his skin.
The woman looks back at her, and for the first time, there is clarity in her gaze. “Yagen Valley,” she says. “They must return to the little dolls of Yagen Valley, to my sisters. To the fear, where it all began.”
The young woman leaves several minutes later with more questions, rather than the answers she seeks. The woman is alone. She selects another doll, running the small comb through its glossy black hair. Once this is completed to her satisfaction, she lifts the doll to the light, gazing into its face. She must like what she sees, for she sets the doll down—not in its usual place on the stands, but on the floor next to her chair.
She takes another doll and does the same thing, placing it down on the ground once she is done and reaching for yet another— until finally, eight dolls surround her in a circle, all facing inward. Their blank faces bore into the woman’s, awaiting her next move.
It is foolish, this thing that she attempts.
“It may be so,” she says to me, as I stand in the corner of the darkened room and watch her, “but it must be done.”
There is a knock at the door. One of the White Shirts arrives with dinner and her medication. In exchange, the woman hands him a small letter and asks him to post it on her behalf as quickly as possible. When he leaves, she carefully spits the tablets back into her hand and hides them in a tiny space between the wall and the dresser where several other pills gather dust.
From behind several dolls, she extracts four slim candles and a box of matches, taken when the White Shirts were distracted elsewhere. She lights one of the candles and tilts it to allow the tallow to drip onto the floor. She moves slowly, and when the flames flicker briefly against her fingers she gives no cry of pain, making little sound at all. She does not stop until a perfect circle of dried wax surrounds all eight dolls.