Strange Light Afar (9 page)

He cannot shut his ears, though, and the whispers follow their backs.
How horrible her disfigurement! Such a tragedy about the baby! How long do you think he will stay with her?

She asks to go to the escarpment where they first met, and they walk arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder. Just like a decrepit elderly couple, he thinks to himself. The wind is high, and the waters below the cliff are rough.

But the sun keeps shining. It keeps shining as if all were kind to each other.

“You seem much better now,” he tells Oiwa.

“Thanks to you nursing me back to health. I am so sorry to have been so much trouble.”

She lifts her sleeve and wipes a shimmering tear from her eye.

“Nonsense,” he says. “This is what it means to be married.”

“Yes, I suppose that is true. You truly must take care of me now that your poison has disfigured me so.”

The ocean's roar seems to grow louder on the wind. He releases her arm and takes a few steps backwards.

“It could only have been you,” Oiwa says, pointing her finger and piercing his heart with the accusation. “It could not have been food poisoning. I was so careful about what I bought and ate, for the sake of the baby. I checked every fish, every piece of vegetable.”

Thin strands of hair hang stiffly around her hunched shoulders. She truly looks frightful. When she opens her mouth to speak, he realizes she has lost a few teeth.

The accusing finger trembles in the wind. Oiwa has trouble speaking without choking on her anger.

“I was a fool to think a child could make things better between us! You could not even stand to be with me!”

Tamiya is only half-listening. He looks around. No one is nearby. But the wind rises and carries the whispering voices from town. Waves rise and fall on rocks beyond the cliff.
Their marriage was doomed from the start. How long will he stay with her now? How can he even stand to look at her?

It is all so very simple. No poison. No mess. No blood or vomit or a sick wife you have to take care of afterwards. Why did you not think of this before? She is so weak she cannot run. She has lost so much weight that she is as light as a twig.

His fingers tighten around her shoulders, and she moans.

The vastness of the sea is so inviting. This will solve everything. There will be no more suffering 
—
not for her nor for him.

She screams as he tosses her over the cliff. His heart is pounding in his chest. He feels so light, he thinks the wind might even carry him away also.

•

The whispering voices grow louder, but no one saw anything. No one can contradict his claim that Oiwa lost her footing while they were on their walk along the escarpment. He had been distracted for just a moment. Just one moment. Did he mention that was the place they had met?

Ume eagerly plans their wedding. She and her grandfather can hardly contain their glee.

Tamiya still has most of Oiwa's dowry. This forgives the old rice vendor from providing another. It is Tamiya's second marriage anyway. No one pays much mind to the whispers.

No one except for Tamiya. At night when the house he shared with Oiwa falls silent, he cannot help but hear the voices.

It has only been a month! Has he no shame? They say Oiwa's body was carried far out to sea and devoured by sharks
.

He lies awake at night, trying to ignore the whispers that fly past his ears like tiny insects. The harder he tries to sleep, the more deftly sleep eludes him.

As the darkness grows heavy, he notices another layer to the voices 
—
a barely audible, melodic humming. After a while Tamiya realizes that, unlike the chattering in his head, this voice is coming from downstairs, even though no one else is in the house.

As he slowly makes his way barefoot down the cold steps, he notices candlelight in the sitting room. As he draws closer, he sees a woman kneeling in front of the mirror. Her kimono is soaked, as are the strands of hair hiding her face. She is singing softly to herself.

“Oiwa?” he asks, despite the impossibility of this. “Is that you?”

She stops humming but does not turn around.

“What are you doing here, Oiwa? What do you want?”

Her shoulders fall, as if she is weary beyond words.

A familiar anger returns and emboldens Tamiya. He clenches a fist and takes a step forward, but a sudden draft smothers the candle. In the near darkness he can see that she is gone. Deafening silence returns to the house, but he knows he will never sleep well again.

•

The wedding is hurriedly held at a local shrine. The priest is more than happy to take the bribe from Itoh to squeeze them into the summer schedule. The rice vendor fears the groom might change his mind. Tamiya has certainly been acting strangely. Anyone might be nervous before a wedding, but he seems unable even to look at his own shadow without recoiling in fright.

An uneasy crowd gathers more out of obligation than celebration. The whispers are so loud now that it does not take a paranoid mind to hear them. Tamiya hears the voices above the flute and the mouth organ as he and Ume follow the procession to the shrine. The townspeople line the winding path along the escarpment to the sacred gates, not too far from where he met Oiwa 
—
from where he tossed Oiwa into the ocean.

She looks so beautiful! He looks so guilty!

Tamiya tries to think only of the wedding as they reach the shrine 
—
of how the skies are breathtakingly blue, of how a pheasant is singing beyond the woods.

Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!

The men and women of the town continue to whisper as the ceremony proceeds. It is as if they do not see the priest in the gold silk robes, or the shrine's young maidens pouring ceremonial rice wine into the bride's and groom's cups.

Tamiya glances at his bride, who is shyly staring at the floor. Her ornamental wig and hat are regal, as is her kimono, and Tamiya's chest eases a little.

Everything is turning out as planned. The rumors are certain to settle given time. He has riches and a bride who is appropriately young and beautiful. Laughter percolates from somewhere inside him as he gazes lovingly at Ume.

As if she can feel his stare, she turns to him.

Tamiya sees a face that does not belong to Ume. Scars slide across delicate features and dead skin. A black tongue hangs limply from her mouth.

It is even more horrible than he remembers. Oiwa's lips are chapped and flaking. Fresh bruises mottle her cheeks and forehead. The lump above her eye has split open, and some dark ooze runs down her cheek. All of her teeth have fallen out, and her gaping mouth is a bottomless darkness.

“We will be together now always,” Oiwa says hoarsely, and she smiles horribly.

Tamiya stumbles backwards.

“My husband, what's the matter?”

Oiwa reaches out with a trembling hand, which Tamiya brushes to one side.

“Get away from me!”

Itoh is suddenly at his side. “Tamiya? What's wrong? What are you doing?”

Tamiya is suddenly furious. He only wants to be happy, surrounded by beautiful things. Why is that so difficult, so impossible?

“Get out! Get out of my life!”

The words erupt uncontrollably from his twisted mouth as he rushes at his bride, his hands reaching for her thin white neck.

“What are you doing?” she shouts. Her voice reminds him of a sandstorm. “Get away from me! Oh …!”

As his fingers tighten, Oiwa's face crumples, pained and pathetic. She squawks like a goose. Spittle drips from her lips onto his hands, which she scratches desperately.

Itoh and a few other men try to pull him away, shouting things Tamiya does not understand. He marvels at his own strength as his fingers dig into her skin like a vice.

Finally, Oiwa shuts her eyes and goes limp, as if to sleep. Only she is not Oiwa anymore.

Tamiya stares in horror at Ume's pale, lifeless face, still perfect except for a trickle of blood dribbling from the corner of her rouged lips.

Tamiya wails at the terrible sight.

“What have I done?”

The crowd stares, incredulous. Tamiya brings them back to life by choosing to run. They give chase, down the stone path leading from the shrine toward the escarpment.

He runs faster than he ever thought possible. Faster than someone who has spent every day of his adult life drinking should be able.

The wind picks up. The afternoon sun is blinding.

And somewhere from just beyond the wind, he hears Oiwa's haggard voice.

“My husband … do you really think you can get away?”

Tamiya screams something unintelligible just as he feels the ground give way beneath his feet. He screams again when he sees nothing below him but rocks and waves. And for the first and only time in his life, he feels something resembling remorse. But there is no time to consider for whom he feels sorry: Oiwa, Ume 
—
or himself.

The men giving chase only see a man, his mind demented, running off a cliff, yelling at the top of his lungs.

The wind does not relent, and the sun keeps shining over a vast, heaving ocean. There is not a cloud to be seen anywhere.

All of the stories contained in this book are very old, and many are familiar to most Japanese, who would have encountered them again and again as a part of growing up. What would be unfamiliar to them, however, is the depth of characterization.

Folk tales and other ancient stories, in Japan and elsewhere, were first told when their functions were very different from those of the narratives we enjoy today. Often they were cautionary tales with didactic messages, as opposed to works of contemporary fiction, which are usually character studies. Thus, the traditional storytellers often left their characters flat and two-dimensional 
—
props that stood for good or evil 
—
existing simply to move their tales along. As a result, the actions of the characters were habitually inconsistent and quite perplexing unless the audience sufficiently suspended disbelief.

In this book, characters that were flat in their original incarnations have been given depth, and their previously peculiar, incomprehensible actions result from motives and pathologies. This way, these tales of the supernatural have been made plausible and, in some cases, darker than their original versions.

My intent in fleshing out these characters was less to redeem them than simply to understand their perspectives. Indeed, knowing their inner workings did not make them any better people, and in fact oftentimes made the villains even more despicable.

“Snow” was the story that inspired this project. Why did the Snow Woman return to Minokichi in the guise of Oyuki? Why was his promise so important to her that she would sacrifice their happiness? Was it a matter of control? Did she mistake control for love? Such questions compelled me to reinterpret and retell this old folk story that is included in
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
, the celebrated collection of Japanese ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904).

Some readers may recognize “Trickster” as another story from
Kwaidan
, originally entitled “Mujina.” This was a story my father liked to tell me when I was a young child, except in his version the supernatural creatures were not
mujina
(badgers) but
kawauso
(river otters). I stay faithful to my father's version while at the same time creating a literary mash-up with another story he loved called “Oil of Toad.” The combination of the stories makes the old peddler's final fate seem karmic in nature.

Aside from
Kwaidan
, arguably the most celebrated book of Japanese ghost stories is
Ugetsu Monogatari
(
Tales of Moonlight and Rain)
by Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), from which “Honor” is drawn. Is it bromance or romance? Where does one draw the line between the two? I leave it for readers to decide.

Some stories in this collection are not usually considered to be of the horror genre. “Envy,” for example, is a well-known and widely loved children's story, but I personally have always found it deeply disturbing 
—
especially the killing of the dog Shiro. The motif of the good neighbor and the bad neighbor is common in Japanese folk tales, and usually they are elderly men or women.

“Captive” is also a well-known folk tale, so popular that it has even been adapted as a Noh play. Similar stories of men imposing misguided control over a woman who is in truth a magical creature exist in folk traditions around the world.

Noh was also the inspiration for “Vanity.” The original play was titled “The Great Sermon.” It is a story about temptation, much like the Biblical story of Lot or Orpheus from Greek mythology. I believe, however, that the monk in the Noh play is as much a victim of his own narcissism in the face of divinity.

“Paradise” is the tale of Urashima Taro, another well-known children's tale about a boy who saves a turtle, then is invited to an underwater utopia. Like Rip Van Winkle, he returns home after a period of self-indulgence to discover his family and his previous life gone, and that he has aged more than he'd realized. Just like the curse of an addict.

“Betrayal” is as well known as “Snow” among
Japan's ghost stories, which is why it concludes this collection. Previous retellings of this story of self-destructive narcissism include the original kabuki play, as well as film and manga adaptations.

I would like to thank Yusuke Tanaka and the Katari Japanese Storytellers of Toronto for first inspiring me to retell these stories. My sincere gratitude also goes to Sheila Barry, Michael Solomon and everyone at Groundwood Books for believing in this collection, in particular Shelley Tanaka for her skills and insights in editing it. Of course, Mikiko Fujita has enhanced this collection in ways I could not have imagined with her illustrations. I am extremely grateful for her contributions and immense talent.

As always, countless friends and family members have given me unwavering support for this project in particular and for my writing career in general. My heartfelt thanks to you all. I would like especially to extend my deepest appreciation to my wife Linda for her faith and for making everything possible and meaningful.