Chapter Text
A dense fog circled the shadows of trees as night fell and the wind picked up, howling along with the insects and animals stirring within.
Chuuya stood at the entrance to the forest with a fist on the leather strap circling his torso, bow and quiver slung over his shoulder. If the warning words of the villagers hadn’t convinced him that something evil lurked in its depths, then standing here and breathing in thick, oppressive, humid air did.
It hadn’t rained today, and yet it smelled as if it did. Instead of total darkness with only the moon to guide him, a gray haze weaved through the leaves that looked like something had been on fire.
As he walked closer and ducked beneath branches that jutted out from the trees, it hit him. The certain stench of death he associated with yōkai. Rotten leaves. Moss. Old blood. The fleeting kiss of fresh air that took his breath away. It grew harder to breathe and remain calm, an innate panic creeping up his spine, and unknown fears crawling out from the depths of his mind never experienced before.
I should leave. I should leave. Ishouldleave. The words flooded his thoughts against his will like someone had hijacked his brain. Goosebumps spread across his skin beneath his clothes. The air dried up and turned cold, bone-chilling, in an instant, and white puffs escaped him.
He crept farther inside and everything went still. Crickets froze. Owls turned their gazes on him. The harmony of this hellish place had turned to chaotic silence, and the forest itself took notice of his presence. He did not belong here. He was not welcome here.
This was the power of a yōkai.
It never got any easier, but Chuuya learned over time to betray the thoughts not his own. He could only push forward and focus on what his body was doing rather than how it was reacting, for it was now an enemy too.
One moment his teeth were chattering, and the next he was breaking out in a sweat. He could still turn around and leave. It wasn’t too late. This wasn’t his problem, after all—he had been contracted to put the village and its people out of their misery from the creature that tormented and preyed upon them. But they were also the ones who had defiled this once-holy place. He shone a fluorescent light up ahead, recognizing the burnt remains of a torii gate, struggling to remain standing. Chuuya climbed the steps leading up to it, making out hand prints smeared across the poles and a wet substance of some kind that glowed brightly beneath his light. When he reached out to touch it, his finger came away dry and clean.
Piercing yellow eyes watched his every movement with interest, following him like fireflies. They used to look like they belonged to owls, and now Chuuya didn’t know what was lurking in the trees. Whether they were alive or a figment of his imagination.
To his left stood a stone statue of a fox. It had its beady eyes carved out at some point by blunt force, a spiderweb of cracks stretching across its entire face. It looked like if Chuuya tried to touch it, it would crumble to dust and leave a headless husk. He noticed its legs were caked in dirt, and the fabled scarf the villagers had mentioned was no longer around its neck. There was supposed to be a silver bell attached to its tail that chimed with the wind, but as he flashed his light on it, the stone began to sizzle and drip. A mark had burned itself into the fox’s tail and thrummed to the tune of Chuuya’s own erratic heartbeat. His eyes went wide and he swallowed hard, reading the word:
Leave.
Something in the distance roared then, sending birds scattering, and he shut his light off. It sounded like the forest itself crying out in pain—a ghostly wail of something that had once lived, now a cemetery for its beast.
He had two dozen arrows in his quiver. More than enough to send the thing back to where it came from. To avenge the eaten children who once made this their playground and shrine maidens who disappeared without a trace. The people offered as sacrifices to appease whatever was out there, only to further anger it. Only to make it hunger for more and more.
And Chuuya was the last resort. He could become the next sacrifice and went in knowing this as he always did. Unrest settled over unseen canopies. It was not just a vicious creature with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. Blood lust encroached upon him, stalking him like a predator would as he ducked for cover beneath an overgrown brush. If he died, it would not be a merciful one.
That was his final warning.
The fog shifted and seemed to clear up. He heard sticks snap and leaves crunch underfoot. Footsteps that sounded human. Chuuya held his breath and peeked through the bush, watching the fog swirl and take the shape of a specter no taller than a man. Something was approaching, and whatever it was, it was coming for him.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” the voice of a man sang, filling Chuuya with dread. This instinct he knew to trust. Yōkai often took the shape of people to gain the trust of their victims, their true forms being revealed only in the moments before death. Even the wise old ladies could not tell him what he was dealing with, just that it bore a terrible plague upon the region for centuries.
“Potentially an oni, given its desire for making others suffer. But we’ve also suspected a yūrei, given the violent ways people have died in the forest and their bodies never recovered to give a proper burial. So now it haunts its place of rest, unable to move on.”
It stopped suddenly by the torii gate and turned toward it before looking in Chuuya’s direction again. He first saw embers for eyes, crackling in the silence. But as the creature then turned its attention to the fox statue, the little fires went out, and when it looked at him once more, its eyes were missing. Carved out the same way the fox statue’s were.
His vision blurred around the edges as it stalked closer. His heart beat painfully fast, and his mind screamed for him to run the closer the creature approached. He began to make out simultaneously beautiful and grotesque features of a porcelain man wearing a dark yukata that dragged across the ground. A distortion rippled across its face where eyes resembling a human’s would appear before disappearing again. It had a gaping maw for a mouth that became a pair of lips twisted in an awkward smile, baring sharp teeth.
“I know…know you’re in there…,” it said lowly in a monotonous tone.
Chuuya breathed in and pushed down the panic welling up in him, threatening to suffocate him. Through the creature’s clothes, the longer he focused, he made out the silhouette of a human heart buried within its chest, pumping a ghastly blue life force through its veins.
Its soul. The very thing that tethered it to the mortal world. From this distance, he could not possibly miss, but if he did, there was no second chance. He repeated this over and over, trying to steel his nerves, trying to will away how clammy his hands were and how they shook almost uncontrollably. This always, always happened, and if it did not kill him, then he feared passing out at any moment as an unknown pressure weighed down on him and made him lightheaded.
Bow in hand, he pulled an arrow back against the shelf. Its feathers glowed the same ghastly blue as the yōkai’s life force, sparkles drifting to the ground as Chuuya aimed for the chest. He let go and the arrow shot through the night, blazing a path across a field of flowers that went up in flames on impact. An explosion of blue and white lit the surroundings up, too bright for Chuuya to look at as he shielded his eyes, the impact sending shockwaves through the earth.
His arrow collided with something, but as the seconds dragged and the forest darkened again, it struck him what had happened.
There was supposed to be a scream of agony as the yōkai fought to keep its material form before bursting into flames. The flames were there in their blazing glory, except burning the field silently. He hadn’t missed. The creature deflected the arrow with an attack of its own. When Chuuya readied another arrow, eyes darting around for his target, he could no longer sense the creature’s presence. The pressure lifted as if the spirit had been dispelled, but there was no way, right?
He let out a shaky breath for the forest, continuing to look around. He didn’t dare leave the bush. But the yōkai clearly knew where he was, as it was upon him the moment he shot his arrow. He could chance running and finding another spot, but running from the unknown was a death wish. And so was this. Chuuya could chance an arrow through the mouth if it revealed its true form, but he only had seconds to make his move.
“Ohhhh…I seeeeee now…,” it said, its words wavering with the wind. Chuuya kept his hand on the arrow pulled taut against the bow, straining to hear the direction the creature was coming from. It sounded all over. It sounded like it was in his head. “You’re not just one of those humans who fell into my home. You’re one of thoseeee. You’re one of the tasty ones. One of the fun ones.”
The flames before him shrank and vanished. Smoke billowed from the scorched earth, smelling of grass and flowers. This yōkai was capable of mimicry. To what extent, he did not know, but he remained silent in case it could steal his voice.
“You want to see how I really am?”
Chuuya fell back, startled by the words whispered into his ear. He pulled a knife from his thigh strap and slashed to his right, expecting a face, a body, anything tangible, but his blade whipped through the air. He heard a chuckle, almost a giggle, to his left and slashed again. Uselessly. He scrambled backward, over dirt and stone and sticks that ground into his palms.
“Let’s have some fun, hunter. The night is long, and I’m incredibly, awfully bored as of late. Your entire soul is bursting at the seams from all the spirits you’ve collected and consumed. If you think to add mine to yours, then let our game begin.”
The creature no longer struggled to mimic human speech. It spoke like a normal man without wispy undertones—sounding both amused and bored at once.
The bush beside him rustled and Chuuya got to his feet, knees weak and threatening to give out on him like his strength had been sapped. It felt like he was steadily losing blood: the lightheadedness, the warm, sickening sensation in his stomach, his limbs growing numb, but he didn’t get injured at any point since entering the forest. At least, not from what he could remember. A deep cold pierced through him.
“Whatever you do, if it tells you to play a game with it, do not engage. It feeds off of fear by mentally torturing its victims to the brink of insanity.” An elder’s words repeated in his mind as he looked around and above him at the clear sky and its stars, taunting him. The calm before the storm. A clock was ticking, and the yōkai would not be patient. He was not to engage, but he could not simply ignore it either, now that it set its sights on him.
Leaving was an illusion.
If he spoke, it might steal his voice and assimilate as him next. But he needed to lure it out to banish it.
“All right, ya got me,” Chuuya called out. He approached the steps leading up to the torii gate, and as he did, fog flooded the area again, and the sky was no more. “No point in hiding since you know where I am and what I am. But I’m not interested in playing one of your games.”
The wind picked up and rushed past him, knocking the knife out of his hands.
Wrong answer.
“We’ll play my game and by my rules. If you don’t, well, then you miss out on your chance at eating me, and I bet you want to fatten yourself up on all the spirits stuck inside me. You’re all the same: greedy bottom feeders that have no place here. Unless you’re a coward and thought I’d make an easy meal by falling for your trap.”
A bolt of lightning struck the torii gate, sending it crashing to the ground, sparing only the fox statue. Between the mark burned into its tail and the way the creature’s face kept melting and molding into a human man’s, Chuuya had a terrible feeling of what he was up against—and if the thing had plagued the land for centuries, then it had enough time to grow in strength and cultivate supernatural abilities even he might not be able to stop.
It barely reacted to his arrow as if it were a toy.
“Boring me is dangerous, hunter, and I bore easily. If you make an easy meal, then you do not deserve to live. This forest is a labyrinth I am intimately familiar with, and you’re trapped inside with me. The last gate is gone, if you thought you could harness what little energy it still had. There’s nothing to protect you now.”
He heard feet dart behind him and into a bush. Shadows danced and mocked him, licking at his feet where the field was burned and the dead flowers he stood on. A voice whispered inside his head, “Run.”