There are only fourteen tourists on the bus as it navigates the slopes leading up the mountain, though the view is one most consider breathtaking. Halfway through the trip, the bus stops by a nearby mountain spring, the driver encouraging the visitors to sample the fresh water. Tarquin has regained most of his health. His eyes are no longer bright from the feverishness that accompanies most sicknesses. He has resumed his habit of regaling his fellow travelers with outbursts of sarcasm. His father is pleased. “We should have done this sooner,” he admits to Callie. “Maybe all he really did need was some good, fresh air.”
But the miko does not share the same opinion. “Osorezan is a holy place,” she tells Callie quietly once the man is out of earshot, aware of the father’s ignorance of the disease that truly plagues Tarquin. “It is one of the three most spiritual places of Japan. Osorezan serves as a shintai—a place where powerful spirits called kami are believed to reside. It is enough to suppress most spirits’ malice, if only temporarily.”
But Osorezan itself does not look like a place associated with holiness. A landscape of black coal rocks and charred soil is what first meets their eyes. The air smells strongly of sulfur and pitch, and the mountain itself is not a mountain at all, but a series of strange peaks that jut out from the barren wasteland. Where other places may have piping hot onsen—hot springs—these only contain bubbling pits of more sulfur. The wind howls through much of the region, like spiteful demons calling out to one another, attracted by the fresh smells of humans that enter their lair.
“It is not so bad!” the miko says, amused at seeing the looks on the others’ faces. “Osorezan literally means the ‘mountain of dread,’ for it is a place where ghosts are said to stop on their way to the underworld. The Japanese people have a very high regard for their ancestors and for kami—they believe that everything has a spirit, and that these must also be properly honored by the living. How we view hell is much different from how you Americans view it.”
“Is there any way we can visit Japanese hell without a sense of smell?” Tarquin asks, holding his nose.
Only one man-made building of note is found here—what humans call the Bodai Temple, surrounded by several sulfuric hot springs that smell even more strongly of rotten eggs. “The river beyond it is called the Sanzu”—the miko points—“our version of your Styx river. All visitors must cross the red bridge over it to gain access to the temple. It’s runoff from a lake called the Usoriyama. Do not bathe in it, though. The waters may look inviting but are actually quite poisonous, and no living thing thrives there.”
Small Jizo statues adorn most of the paths. People leave tiny bibs, pinwheels, and other simple toys along these stone figures.
“This place is called the Sai no Kawara,” the miko says next, “the Buddhist purgatory. These statues are to honor those children who die before their parents, and you will find many offerings like these here.”
Piles of small pebbles are also found along the paths beside the statues. The miko explains these are made by spirits of dead children who, unable to repay their parents in life, are now doomed to constantly build these small mounds of stones until prayers are made to comfort their spirits.
Despite the pervading smell, Bodai Temple itself is an unassuming shrine, its importance rendered irrelevant by the strange world outside its doors. A few of the locals are lighting four candles inside a small shrine that contains the teeth of the dead (Callie draws back in alarm upon being told this, while Tarquin leans forward eagerly), and the incense that wafts through the air is a tangy contrast to the other smells of dank and death.
Beside the temple is a small red pool that the miko says is called the Pond of Blood, guarded by more imposing statues and dead flowers. A small woman, wizened and hunched, totters about the grounds, murmuring, “I understand it now, I understand it now,” to herself like a small mantra. She smiles vaguely at the visitors, at the Halloways, and at Callie. She smiles at the miko, and then at me, and then at the large eyeless stone figures draped in scarlet and yellow aprons, guarding the bloody pool. “Yes, yes. That must be it. I understand it now,” she says. “I understand it now.”
We spend a few more minutes wandering about the temple. Besides the Halloways, there are three more tourists who quickly leave, perhaps repulsed by the sulfur and the disquiet of the place. Intrigued by the small statues and unaware of their significance, Tarquin’s father stops to start up a conversation with one of the priests, and the miko joins him.
But Callie sees me standing around the side of the temple, watching her and waiting.
She rounds the corner and follows in my footsteps, and it is here that she sees Tarquin and the man. He is in his mid-sixties, with brown, doughy skin and eyes like a frightened weasel’s. He is darker than most Japanese, from days spent under the constant sun, and his knuckles are knobby, fingers pudgy. He is kneeling before several more stone statues in the area, this time eyeless figures draped in miscellaneous cloths of forbidding scarlet and black, and he is rocking slowly back and forth. To those who do not truly see, it looks as if he is kneeling before Tarquin and begging. The boy himself appears grave. He sees the dead children and knows what must happen.
Like him, Callie also sees them for the first time. Two young boys cling to the old man’s shoulders, and another lies chained at his feet. They are no more than eleven years of age, and their faces are as worn and as tired as the obese man’s, the imprint of their prison years stamped over their listless faces, their dull eyes.
It is here that I make her understand.
The old man shrinks back again when he sees me, but people like him are more accustomed to the ancient tales of old ghosts and older vengeance. He sees his fate standing before him, and he knows it is a price he must pay. While he was once wild and untamed in his younger years, when he killed these children for the thrill and the sport, in his old age he now wrestles with the horror and the guilt of what he has done, and the fear of what is to come. He comprehends that he has been living on borrowed time ever since, and when he turns to face me, the dread and the terror is on his face, but with it also a quiet relief, an acceptance.
As Callie watches, terrified, I
approach him. The man says nothing, but merely holds out his hands in supplication as he sinks to his knees before me. I reach out only
once,
and my form envelops his, my hair wrapping around his cringing face as I take him. It is in places like Osorezan where guilty men repenting of their old crimes come to wait for the end of their life or to wait for one to take it on their behalf.
Finally, the mangled, bloated body slips out of my grasp and sprawls at the foot of one of the figures. Callie cringes at the familiarity of his terrible, staring face. Tarquin says nothing, and his face shows little else but determination. He understands, quicker than his cousin, the sins the man has committed and the necessity of his punishment, however repugnant to human eyes.
But the children are free, and now they are gathering around me. Their faces are tired yet expectant, knowing their own peculiar form of purgatory has finally come to an end. Callie gasps when they begin to glow, and I gather them in my arms as best as I can, once more closing my eyes and surrendering briefly to that inner warmth.
When I open my eyes again, I am surrounded by glowing balls of light where the three children had once stood. There is fearful awe on Callie’s face.
Unafraid, Tarquin walks to where I stand, stepping into this circle of fireflies. He touches one, wonderingly, with a finger, but it immediately shies away, bashful even in this form. He turns his attention to me. As he has done before, he touches my cheek tentatively with his hand and looks directly into my face.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I smile at him. Then I raise my hands,
and the balls of light respond, spinning slowly around my arms and the tips of my fingers until they are set adrift on their own, soaring lazily up into the blue autumn sky.
Together Callie and Tarquin watch them rise, higher than the farthest-flung kite, watching them become little specks of morning stars until the last of the clouds hide them from sight, leaving nothing else but the two of them, the now-desiccated body on the ground, and me. And when the last of them disappear, I turn away and vanish as well.
“Why did you say that?” Callie asks Tarquin, a little later. “Why did you apologize?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m just sorry she has to keep cleaning up after other people’s mistakes all the time.”
There is no one else in sight at the temple by the time they return. The old woman continues to putter about the place, every now and then resting a hand against another of the statues, greeting them like they are old friends. “I understand it now,” she repeats herself. “I do. I understand it now.”
I wonder what it is that she understands.
• • •
Yagen Valley is a few hours’ hike away, along a small, unused road where no buses will go. The tourists along the road are even sparser at this time of year than at Osorezan. Two small hamlets are all that make up the population at Yagen. One is the Oku-Yagen, and the other is the unpopulated Yagen-Onsen. The miko says they are traveling to the latter.
“But the guidebook says Yagen-Onsen is uninhabited,” Tarquin’s father says as he consults his guidebook.
“Are we camping out?” Tarquin asks, stomping his foot on the hard ground and looking uneasy at the prospect.
The miko only smiles.
Callie is nervous. Perhaps, after all, the grinning miko is not who she says she is. There is little evidence that the miko knew Tarquin’s mother beyond what she claims, and yet they have embraced her words as the truth. This suspicion is also apparent in the father’s face, but unlike Callie, he is unaware of my presence, of the comfort Callie draws at knowing I am close by, my soundless feet padding after theirs. Only Tarquin seems unfazed, pushing on eagerly as we leave the forest path and trade it for the uncertainty of the woods.
“I’m not sure we should go any farther,” the father begins unexpectedly, but what he is about to say next is silenced when the miko calls out joyfully, “We are here!”
A smaller shrine is nestled farther into the thick of the forest, where no clear trail marks its location to outsiders. The only other visible landmark is a small well that stands beside it.
From inside, a few women emerge. Two are older than the miko by at least ten years, but the third is at least thrice as old as the oldest shrine maiden, though she stands straight and tall despite her weathered skin and her long, white hair.
“Kagura,” the old woman asks in Japanese, “are these the Halloways?”
The miko kneels on the rough-strewn trail and bows, her forehead touching ground. “This is Douglas-san and Tarquin-kun, Obaasan. And this is Tarquin’s cousin, Callie-san.”
The old woman moves along the path. Though her steps are sure, she walks slowly and with a limp. When she reaches us, she surprises everyone else by reaching out with her thin, frail arms and clasping both sides of Tarquin’s startled face, kissing each cheek and whispering in more Japanese, though the words are simple enough that her short time in Japan has taught Callie to recognize their meaning.
“Welcome to the Chinsei shrine, little Tarquin-chan,” she whispers, “Welcome to Chinsei.”