47

ALL MAD

Leaving Hana to sleep on, Jack performed a healing mantra before changing the bandage on his arm. Then he foraged for some breakfast to supplement their dwindling supplies. When he returned to the cave, he found Hana awake and pacing the floor in an anxious state.

‘There you are!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought an onryō had taken you in the night.’

Jack smiled. ‘No chance of that. Remember, I was one myself!’

His joking seemed to calm her and when he produced a sleeve full of berries and nuts, her face positively lit up. They tucked into their breakfast, then looked for a route up the sheer cliff. Halfway along, Jack spotted a face carved into the rock. It was partially hidden by a bush and covered in lichen. With wild hair, three eyes and long sharp teeth, the terrifying image did nothing to allay their fears. But it did indicate a narrow ledge along which they could ascend.

‘At least we know we’re on the right path,’ said Jack, going first.

Clinging to the wall, they sidled up the cliff in painstaking steps. The rock was slippery and Hana’s legs trembled all the way. Jack was impressed by her courage – she didn’t complain or freeze at any point. Reaching the top, Hana let out a huge sigh of relief.

‘That’s the easy part over,’ she gasped.

Below them, the forest formed an unbroken carpet all the way to the river, which wound like a silver snake down the valley basin. Above, a new forest began, giant cedar trees stretching as far as the eye could see.

‘Where’s this temple then?’ asked Jack.

Hana pointed to the wooded peak of Mount Jubu in the distance. A glimmer of a pagoda spire could be seen jutting out of the canopy.

‘No wonder it’s abandoned,’ said Jack, realizing it would take them all day to reach.

A narrow track wound its way upwards through the forest and they trudged along, the rain dripping heavily from the spreading cedars overhead. Their trek took them through countless swollen streams and they had to negotiate several trees that had fallen during the night’s storm and blocked the path. Quickly the forest became claustrophobic. The maze of cedar trees had strangled all life from the ground and what little sunlight there was struggled to break through. Jack was glad when they finally emerged from its disturbing gloom to stand beside an expansive mountain lake.

‘Let’s stop here for lunch,’ he suggested, cupping his hands and drinking from its waters.

Sitting upon a large boulder, they shared half the remaining rice and admired the waterfall cascading over a craggy rock face and into the lake. The point at which the lake flowed into a river was clogged with fallen trees, forming a natural dam. The scene was quite beautiful and for a moment they both forgot about their quest.

As soon as they finished eating, Jack suggested they move on. Once again, the forest swallowed them. By late afternoon, the path they’d been following petered out and Jack was forced to rely on his natural sense of direction to guide them. The trees crowded in on either side of them and the forest grew darker, but his confidence rose when he spied another of the gruesome faces carved into a boulder.

Jack was keeping his eyes peeled for another sign, when Hana grabbed his arm.

‘I think there’s someone ahead,’ she whispered.

Sure enough, a figure sat motionless upon a rock, his back turned to them.

Not daring to breathe, Jack and Hana hid behind a tree and observed the man.

Several long moments passed and nothing happened. Jack waited a little longer before deciding to make an approach. Signing for Hana to stay where she was, Jack stood, his hand ready upon his sword, and walked up to the man. He still didn’t turn round. In fact, he didn’t move at all. It was then that Jack realized the man was a statue.

The figure was unsettlingly lifelike, almost as if the man had been turned to stone where he sat. But the eyes had been plucked out, his tongue was forked and the mouth was fixed in an eternal scream. The image sent a cold shiver through Jack.

‘It’s a warning,’ said Hana, almost making Jack jump out of his skin. ‘An outer demon to the temple.’

A crashing through the undergrowth made them both spin round. But, when they looked, there was no one there. Just an eerie stillness among the trees.

‘What was that?’ said Hana, her voice no more than a whisper.

‘Must have been a falling branch,’ replied Jack, keeping a firm hold of his sword. ‘Best keep moving.’

The rain now dripped in a sluggish rhythm from the canopy above and the air seemed heavy, almost too dense to breathe. A mist hung among the trees and Jack felt a growing sense of foreboding.

All of sudden, disembodied giggling echoed through the forest and a branch cracked nearby.

‘Did you hear that?’ gasped Hana, flinching, her eyes round with fear.

‘Yes.’ Jack nodded and drew his katana.

They crept onwards. A clump of ferns twitched, seemingly alive with spirits. But when Jack hacked them down, there was nothing.

Hana’s breathing became agitated and rapid as panic overwhelmed her. ‘Onryō. We should get out of here!’

‘Stay calm. It was probably just some animal,’ said Jack, though he too felt the creeping coldness as the mist wrapped its tendrils around them.

Shadows flitted between the trees. Jack and Hana picked up their pace, fear driving them on. The ground beneath their feet hardened and the mist parted briefly to reveal a hidden pagoda. Lopsided, with green walls, the forest had grown into it, tree roots wrapping themselves around its base.

They had entered Mount Jubu’s abandoned temple.

But it didn’t feel very abandoned to Jack or Hana.

Maddened laughter assaulted them from behind. Turning, they saw a skeletal man in a tattered robe, his eyes sunken and his cheeks hollow. He stood beneath an ancient torii gateway, the entrance through which Jack and Hana must have passed unwittingly. Lurching towards them, one foot dragging behind, one hand outstretched, he croaked, ‘Have you the Answer?’

Jack and Hana backed away from the hideous onryō. As they passed another decrepit building, a bony hand shot out from a shadowy doorway and grabbed Hana. She screamed and Jack wrenched her from its grip.

‘Have you the Answer?’ beseeched a voice from the building’s dark recesses.

Several more voices joined the entreaty. ‘Have you the Answer? … The Answer? … The Answer?’

More emaciated bodies materialized out of the mist. Upon a flight of crumbling stone steps a man rocked to and fro, mumbling gibberish to himself. Another was slapping his head with his hands and howling like a wolf. Crouched in a corner, a woman was putting pine cones into a bowl, emptying them on to the ground, then repeating the process endlessly.

‘They’re all mad!’ said Hana.

The chorus of ‘Have you the Answer?’ grew and the skeletal man advanced on them, others joining his ranks. Jack and Hana found themselves surrounded and backed up against the pagoda.

Then suddenly the chanting ceased and the onryō scattered, disappearing into the shadows.

Glancing up, Jack saw a head thrust out of an upper window of the pagoda. Bald, bug-eyed and bearded, it gawped down at him with wild delight. The head vanished and a moment later reappeared in a window on the floor below. It popped out again on the third, second and first floors, before the Riddling Monk, in bright red robes, burst from the pagoda’s doorway and bowed with great ceremony.

Skipping round Jack and Hana, he waved a dead branch and scattered leaves over their heads in a bizarre imitation of a Shinto purification ritual. He stopped before Jack, bringing his face so close that their noses touched.

‘Fish to a cat, you came back!’