Chapter 63: Tōkigan (Part 7)
Ōgami Yōsuke’s voice dropped, taking on a new, somber gravity that instantly silenced the room. “If the violation of the first two taboos led to a series of escalating tragedies,” he said, his gaze sweeping over the silent, captivated group, “then the violation of the third taboo… it unleashed a pure, unadulterated disaster.”
“The failed dolls, the ones that had been so carelessly, so thoughtlessly buried in the cold, hard earth… like the unquiet, vengeful spirits of unborn infants, they began to emit a powerful, malevolent resentment. And this resentment, this psychic plague, was drawn, as if by some dark magnetism, to Aoi-jō, the first and most powerful of her kind. And she, in her cold, inscrutable, and perhaps even alien wisdom, directed it back towards the unsuspecting village.”
“Under the insidious, creeping corrosion of this resentment, the ordinary villagers, the ones who had no dolls of their own, the ones who were entirely innocent of Tōkigan’s transgressions, began to change. Silently. Imperceptibly. During the day, they would go about their lives as usual – farming, living, eating – with no outward sign of anything amiss.”
“But at night, when they fell into a deep, dreamless slumber, they were no longer themselves. They were puppets. Mindless automatons. Their bodies, controlled by some unseen, malevolent force, would rise from their beds, take up sharp instruments – knives, sickles, axes – and, in a state of silent, horrifying automation, walk out of their homes and brutally murder their own kin, their own friends and neighbors. And then, their grim, bloody task complete, they would return to their own homes, their own beds, and continue to sleep, with no memory whatsoever of the horrors they had committed.”
“And so it went. Every night, more people died. Every day, more funerals were held.”
“Everyone was desperately, frantically, trying to find the killer, or killers. Everyone was terrified that they would be the next victim.”
“And at the same time, everyone, unknowingly, was also a killer.”
“Fear, suspicion, paranoia… these poisons began to saturate the very air of the village, turning neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend.”
“From the day Tōkigan was murdered by his own creation, the once-peaceful, harmonious village began a swift, visible, and seemingly unstoppable decline. As the number of people killed at night increased, so too, naturally, did the number of unwitting murderers. This only served to heighten the tension, the paranoia. The villagers fell into a vicious, self-destructive cycle of mutual suspicion, accusation, and violent conflict. The fields, once so meticulously tended, now lay fallow.”
“If things continued this way, it was clear that within a month, the village of Gogatsu would be completely annihilated, a ghost town haunted by its own terrible secrets. The six remaining doll owners, the ones who knew the true, horrifying source of this waking nightmare, gathered together in a state of desperate, abject terror. And after much debate, after much soul-searching, they decided there was only one, single path left to them: to confess everything.”
“The six of them called a village meeting. And starting with their discovery of Tōkigan’s mutilated body, they recounted the full, horrifying story of their crimes. Their greed, their fear, their desperate, bloody ‘hunt.’ And they revealed to the stunned and now incandescently furious villagers the three sacred, and catastrophically broken taboos of the dolls.”
“The villagers, upon learning the truth, were consumed with a righteous, homicidal rage. They were about to execute the six doll owners on the spot. But at the critical moment, the landlord, the one who had, in his own way, started it all, intervened. He offered the six a single, final chance at redemption: if they could solve the mystery of the bizarre, nightly murders that were plaguing the village, if they could stop the killing, then their past crimes, their complicity in the initial tragedies, would be forgiven.”
“And so, the six doll owners led the villagers to the place where the half-finished, malformed dolls had been so hastily buried. They dug up the broken, unsettlingly misshapen creations and, with a grim, solemn ceremony, burned them in a great, cleansing pyre, releasing the tormented, resentful spirits that had been sealed within.”
“At the same time, the six owners, believing that Aoi-jō, as the doll created by both the god and Tōkigan, was a true incarnation of the island’s deity, the progenitor of all the dolls, pooled their remaining wealth. And on the very spot where they had burned the failed dolls, they built a small, simple shrine to worship Aoi-jō, praying that she, the source of all their suffering, would now, in her strange, new apotheosis, become the village’s guardian deity.”
“And, just as the six had desperately, almost unbelievingly hoped, after the failed dolls were incinerated, the nightly murders ceased. Though strange, unsettling things still occurred from time to time – a person would go to sleep in their own bed, only to wake up, inexplicably, lying in a distant field; another might intend to take a short nap in the cool shade of a tree, only to awaken and find themselves at the foot of Aoi-jō’s new shrine.”
“These bizarre occurrences were, of course, deeply unsettling. But at the same time, the villagers now understood the true, horrifying nature of the previous murders.”
“And so, they came to believe that these new, strange events were simply Aoi-jō’s way of revealing the truth to them. Or perhaps, her own dark, mischievous, and ultimately benign pranks. Because the killing, the bloodshed, had stopped. And the village, slowly, painfully, and forever changed, returned to a semblance of its former peace and harmony.”
The story, at last, came to an end.
A long, heavy, almost suffocating silence descended upon the clubroom.
The sudden, bloody turn the latter half of the story had taken had left Takada, Junko, and Kana stunned, speechless. The idea of living people being silently, insidiously transformed into puppet-like killers, murdering their own kin in a state of unconscious slumber… if such a thing had truly happened, it was too terrifying to contemplate.
It was Junko who was the first to find her voice, her usual cheerful confidence now noticeably, and understandably, diminished. “Aoi-jō… she… she was worshipped as a god? Is that part of the story really true?”
“The deity currently worshipped on Mie Island… is indeed Aoi-jō,” Ōgami Yōsuke confirmed with a solemn nod.
“Then this isn’t the legend of Tōkigan at all,” Kana said, shrinking into herself a little, unable to resist the snarky comment, a nervous habit. “It’s the legend of Lady Aoi-jō.”
Ōgami Yōsuke scratched his head. “Well, calling it the legend of Aoi-jō wouldn’t be entirely wrong, I suppose. But Aoi-jō was Tōkigan’s doll; that’s also a fact. If Tōkigan had properly, and with due reverence, abided by the god’s three taboos, he would have likely remained Aoi-jō’s master. And it seems the people of Mie Island also hold the deceased Tōkigan in high regard, though, for obvious reasons, they do not worship him.”
“Oh, right!” Takada Shōji suddenly looked up, a practical question in his eyes. “What about the other dolls? The story said that six of the doll owners survived at the end. What happened to their dolls? Were they destroyed as well?”
“Yeah, there were twenty-three dolls in total, right?” Junko asked, her own analytical mind re-engaging. “Besides Aoi-jō, who became a god, there were still eleven male dolls and eleven female dolls. And fifteen of them went missing. Were they ever found?”
Kana’s focus, as usual, was on a different, more aesthetic, aspect entirely. “Speaking of which, all the female dolls were made in the image of Aoi-jō, right? Including the landlord’s. So, if any of those dolls survived, we’d be able to know just how incredibly beautiful Aoi-jō really was.”
Ōgami Yōsuke shook his head. “No dolls survived. Not a single one. Not even a drawing or a single component part was left behind. We have no way of knowing what those dolls, or what Aoi-jō herself, truly looked like.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Kana pouted, genuinely disappointed.
“However,” Ōgami Yōsuke said, his voice dropping slightly, a new and distinctly analytical note entering his tone, “there is still a strange and very significant inconsistency in the story, isn’t there? A loose thread.”
“Where? What’s strange?”
“Eh, is there?”
Ōgami Yōsuke said, “Of course there is. Takehime. Tōkigan’s wife. She just… vanishes from the narrative. Her final fate is never mentioned. The day the doll owners found Tōkigan’s mutilated body… was Takehime killed along with him?”
Hearing this, the other three were stunned into silence.
Takada Shōji let out a “tch,” his expression a little dismissive. “Takehime wasn’t a main character, though, was she? There was no need to specifically mention what happened to her. I bet she met the same fate as Tōkigan, killed by Lady Aoi-jō.”
Junko thought for a moment. “But only one sacrifice was needed, right? Lady Aoi-jō killing Tōkigan would have fulfilled that requirement. Why would she need to kill Takehime as well? It doesn’t make sense.”
“And Takehime was given a name in the story,” Ōgami Yōsuke added, pressing his point. “If she were truly an unimportant, peripheral character, she could have simply been referred to as ‘Tōkigan’s wife.’ There would have been no need to record her name. And if you look at other legends, other folktales, characters who are given a specific name are usually very, very important. For the fate of such a character to be completely unmentioned… no matter how you look at it, that’s highly unusual.”
At this point, Yomikawa Tsuko, in a rare departure from her usual, watchful silence, suddenly spoke, her voice sharp, and dismissive. “The fact that Takehime’s fate was not mentioned is actually quite… logical. One must simply consider the time period in which the story took place. It was an agrarian society, and one that was, by all accounts, extremely patriarchal. Takehime, as a woman, was merely an appendage of her husband, Tōkigan. After Tōkigan’s death, there was, of course, no particular need, no narrative necessity, to mention what became of her.”
Takada Shōji nodded vigorously at this, a look of dawning comprehension on his face. “Exactly! That’s just how it was back then.”
Comments (0)
Please login or sign up to post a comment.