the shadowless samurai: 3 the vengeful spirit

 

Chapter 3 The Vengeful Spirit

 

It chanced that Taro and Ichiro came upon a village which should have been prosperous, but the people walked furtively, and looked over their shoulders. Many of them had painful-looking boils.  The sight of strangers made them mutter amongst themselves.

Taro and Ichiro repaired to the inn, which seemed to have a less nervous keeper than some of his fellow villagers, though even he nibbled on his finger-nails as he served them.

“Tell me, innkeeper, what troubles this sad village?” asked Taro.

“Oh, noble samurai, it is trouble brought onto ourselves,” said the innkeeper.

“Less on you, I think?” said Taro.

“I always loved my son,” said the innkeeper, bowing his head, and weeping. “And what befell him, he understands is not my fault, for I acted as I believed best.”

“Come, now, you intrigue me,” said Taro.

The innkeeper sighed.

“My wife and I had a baby boy, on whom we placed all our delight.  But as he grew, he developed some kind of wasting disease, and became weaker; and his speech became laboured, and hard to understand. And a wandering Buddhist priest said that he would stay, and see if he could cure the boy with exorcism.  I let him have a room, and my boy, whose name was Ako, to stay with him to pray more easily whenever it was needed. And I scarcely saw Ako, but one evening I heard him scream, and I hurried to the priest’s room, and he was… I could not believe it! He was abusing my son in the worst of ways, and beating him cruelly.  I laid him out,” he added.

“Well done!” said Taro. “Some of these wandering priests and monks are rough fellows, and many have been cast out by their temples, though some are good, holy men. He sounds most unholy.”

“Indeed; and he had been accustomed to gag my son, but he had been careless, and Ako bit the gag off. But though I drove out the unholy man, the villagers shunned my inn, since they though Ako possessed, and they would throw stones at him, if he ventured into the street. His poor little legs were too wasted to run away, and he would come to me sobbing, with bruises and cuts. My wife left me; she was sure it was my fault for driving out the priest, even though I told her what he was doing, but she would not believe me. It has been hard, for she went to live with another man and to make and sell sake, so I was almost driven out of business, though I was more concerned with nursing my son.  And one night, he said ‘Oyaji! [Daddy!]I am going!” and it was the clearest thing he had said for a long time; and he died in my arms. And as soon as the funeral was over, he started haunting those who had been unkind to him, which was most of the village. And though he does not haunt me, I have little custom save of those who pass through. My former wife and her new man killed themselves for the way he drove them to madness, so some people must perforce come to me, for their drinks, though they fear the inn where he lived.”

“You are a good man who has done his best as a father,” said Taro. “Well! I should imagine that the inference is clear; that the villagers should pay you what you have lost in loss of trade, so that your son, Ako, who is full, it seems, of good filial piety, can rest in peace and pass to the next world.”

He heard a childish chuckle, but cold and full of cynicism.

“Ai, master Samurai, you have it correctly, but they do not seem able to hear me.”

“Well, I will make an announcement; and let them pay. I will stay here a week; and if they have paid, then you can go to your rest, Ako! But if not, I will grant you one more night of grand haunting before I use prayer to send you onward, and I will take your father with me, if he wills it, and find him a place where his love for his son is respected.”

“So let it be; what will be is my karma,” said Ako. “But I have brought karma to these unkind people.”

 

Taro went outside, and beckoned the man whom he guessed was the village headman.

“Summon everyone,” he said, harshly.

Soon, a crowd of people had assembled.

“I hear that you have managed to turn the crippled boy you tormented into a Mononoke, an angry ghost. And so he has been visiting some of the misery he had to suffer on you; I see many of you having to walk with sticks from suppurating wounds on your legs.

“He was cursed!” cried one of the villagers.

“No, he was not,” said Taro. “If he had been cursed, he would not have been able to return as an angry ghost. He feels that you owe his father, who nursed him devotedly, for the troubles you gave him.  I leave the reparations up to your own consciences. But you have a week in which to make things good, and appease Ako with your prayers and pleas for his forgiveness.”

There were mutters and murmurs from the crowd.

Taro thought many of them were unrepentant; but that was their own problem.

 

oOoOo

 

The week passed; and a ragged mendicant monk turned up and read the notices Taro had put up about paying reparations.

“Oh, ho, is that your game? I understand, you ronin rogue. You’ll not object to sharing with me, eh?” he said.

The spirit of Ako howled in anguish, and surrounded the false  priest.

“This is the one who hurt me!” he cried.

“Leave him to me, son,” said Taro. “I need no sword on such scum; let me cut a staff such as he bears.”

He helped himself to a pole from the village’s rough stockade, the ghost of Ako preventing him from attack from behind by the false priest. Then Taro confronted the would-be sohei, warrior monk. He had learned bojutsu, the art of the staff, and gave the pretended monk a good thrashing. The false monk fell to his knees.

“Mercy, oh mercy!” he cried.

“And how many young victims of yours have begged thus?” asked Taro. “Let the ghosts of other children hurt by you come forth, and drag your soul to judgement.”

The villagers, who had been watching, covertly, cowered, and hid again as one by one the filmy ghosts of young boys, some of them killed by their assailant to keep them quiet, some dead by their own hand, appeared, and Taro struck a single blow with the butt of his staff over the man’s heart, which released the spirit into the angry custody of his little victims.

Taro watched, impassively, as a slit in the universe opened, the sulphurous smell of the depths of the underworld opened for the shrieking spirit.

He went back to the inn.

“Nightfall; and a week has passed, Ako. Will you do your worst on those who have not paid reparation?”

“No, good samurai, but I healed the woes of each of those who did. It will be clear who did not, who will always suffer pain. I want to pass along to the afterlife now, whilst my soul is unstained by causing needless suffering.”

“A wise move, Ako,” said Taro. “Fare well to you.”

He bowed to the ghost of the boy, who bowed back; and then he was gone.

Ichiro was waiting, terrified, at the inn.

“Have all ready for an early start,” said Taro.

The innkeeper bowed.

“Thank you; I can afford to stay here, now, and I trust my neighbours might be less unkind.”

“I hope so too; but I have done nothing, save speak out for your son,” said Taro. “Oh, and that false monk will need a coffin. The barrel maker may make one at his own expense, for he is one who still has boils.”

The villagers watched the stranger walk into the sunrise without casting a shadow; and said that he was a mighty spirit lord come to punish them.

And some of the unrepentant finally realised their crimes; but if their sufferings ceased, it was at the behest of a higher power than an angry ghost and a samurai with no shadow. 

 

 

A quick oneshot here and to ask which you want next: the first of a bronzeage fantasy trilogy  or a break from fantasy with a regency romance.