Last week my cousin invited me to go with him to my grandma’s house. He met me at my house since he only lived about 2 km away. We went shopping at a few local stores to pick up some snacks for the road and gifts for my grandma. Once we did that, we were on our way. My grandma lives deep in the countryside of Shimane prefecture. Her town was small like most rural towns with a temple, shrine and about 200 citizens in total. They (the citizens) were all highly religious and when we went, we had to follow all the odd customs. No walking under the shrine gate between 11pm and 3am. No wearing all white outfits while going out, especially dresses. Don’t smoke when on public grounds or when near the shrine. Lastly, Don’t let outsiders into the shrine grounds unless married into the family of one of the townspeople. Because of this last rule, I had never been inside the shrine grounds. My cousin had been born inside of the town so he was allowed to enter the shrine. This fact always made me jealous.
We entered the town about 4 hours after leaving. It was only 2 pm at the time so we decided we would call our grandma a few minutes in advance and ask if she could make us lunch. She picked up and we agreed to grilled fish since she had leftovers from her lunch. We parked the car, said our hellos, ate our meals, then relaxed. We sat together in the living room for a few hours, chatting away before my grandma decided she would show us an old notebook she had. “Summer 1680” it said on the cover. “One of our ancestors made this journal to document his summer,” she said. “Whenever I read through it, it felt like I was reading a fairy tale. These were the last few months of his life. I’m pretty sure it’s just a documentation of him losing his mind” she giggled. “There were some beautiful drawings he made though”. she flipped through the pages and suddenly stopped with a smile. “This one here is my favorite”. she pointed to something that looked like a well made out of fish and another drawing on the opposite page. It was an unfamiliar room with a statue of a fish suspended from the ceiling. “Hm … why is there a drawing on the shrine there?” my cousin muttered. Oh, so this was the notorious shrine I had never been allowed into. This was my first glimpse of what the inside looks like. There was a slight feeling of anxiety growing in my chest. This felt forbidden but it was just a drawing. It would do no harm to look at a drawing and my grandma assured me of that after noticing the look of panic on my face.
The thing is, looking at the drawing was like opening Pandora’s box. Honestly, I should have held myself back but later that day, when my grandma was in the bathroom, I begged my cousin to accompany me to the shrine. He refused over and over until after about 4 minutes, he caved. My grandma went to sleep at 10 so we would go at 10:30. That meant with the 10 minute drive, we would have 20 minutes to get in, explore and leave. That wouldn’t be hard since the exterior of the premises was generally small. 10 o’clock soon rolled around. Then 10:30. My cousin ended up needing a few extra minutes to throw something on but that was fine. Just in and out. Eventually we started heading through the dark roads. For some reason it felt as though the drive was 20 or even 30 minutes. We were so focused on the dark roads in front of us we didn’t even bother checking the time. We got there and ran up to the surrounding fence and jumped over it. Once we were in, our pace slowed down. We wandered around and my cousin pointed out everything that he saw as noteworthy. There were various ponds scattered around the property swarming with fish. Finally we passed through the shrine gate. All of a sudden I felt as though there was a shift of atmosphere. I turned to my cousin and by the look on his face, he had to.
“Hey,,,” I said “is it always like this in here”
He shook his head no. We tried to disregard the odd feeling and continued forward. We got to the hall of worship and opened the door. The second I entered, I felt dizzy and the dizziness was getting worse with every step I took. And suddenly, I fainted. When I woke up it was still dark out and I saw my cousin laying by my side. I shook him awake and he shot up.
“Eh, are you ok? What happened” he said worriedly. He picked up his phone and his face went pale as he disregarded his own question. 12:54 it read. “Oh no oh no oh no oh no. We need to get out of here”. He hurried to his feet and tried to drag me out. I relented and stayed on the ground.
“We’re already here. Can’t I just take a look around”
That was a mistake. I should’ve left as soon as possible.
Once again, he caved to my request and I admired the statues of fish surrounding the room. After closely examining the room, I grabbed my cousin’s arm.
“We can go now, I’m done”
He walk towards the door and opened it, then took a step back. Eh? Outside.. It was bright out. I stuck my head out of the door and it was dark again. What’s going on? I shut the door, then opened it again. There was now a dark figure in the distance so I shut it again. I opened it one final time and everything was back to normal. We slowly stepped out and walked forward. Suddenly I felt the sensation of falling. I looked around me. I saw my cousin, but everything else around me was gone. I was falling down a deep well made of fish. I screamed.
I kept falling for what felt like eternity. I hit the ground and slowly looked around. Huh? We were back on the shrine grounds. Once again, everything looked normal until I turned to look at the hall of worship. Where there once had been a beautiful traditional building, there was a giant void. Just pure darkness. We got to our feet and were suddenly surrounded by water, wait no. not surrounded, submerged. I tried to swim to the surface but the water was endless so I tried swimming to the void. My cousin followed after me. I pushed my head through and finally got a gasp of air. I pushed my whole body through and stumbled to the ground. This time, I didn’t get up. Who knew what would come along if I did now. We sat in silence for a few minutes then my cousin spoke.
“W-we should’ve never come here,, why did i let you do this. What if we never get out. What if no one ever sees us again. What will grandma do when she realizes we disappeared. And our parents??” tears welled up in his eyes and I could feel the same happening to me. We just sat there and cried. Our tears fell to the floor creating small puddles in the dirt in front of us. Then, there was a laugh. The laugh of a little girl. No… there shouldn’t have been a little girl here, there couldn’t have been. We stopped crying and held our breath. The laughing got closer. I could see that dark figure from earlier. The laughing got louder as if it was someone screaming with laughter. This laugh was childlike, but the source…. Definitely not a child. It was a tall woman with small circular eyes with an odd amount of distance between them. Small pinkish lips and pale skin. Her hair floated as if she was submerged in water. If I could use one word to describe her, it would be fish.
When she was about 2 meters away I heard her mumble something.
“Come. Come swim with me”. She giggled. “Come swim with me”
My cousin and i avoided eye contact with the woman
She leaned forward so that her mouth was just beside my ear. “Won’t you swim?”. My mouth filled with water. There were tears in my eyes from the choking. I couldn’t see my cousin but I could hear his choking too. The woman smiled at me, giggled, then it all went blank.
I woke up in a familiar room. My grandma sat next to me with a sad look on her face then suddenly perked up when she noticed my open eyes.
“What happened,,” i mumbled
My grandma spoke softly as she said, “some kids were on their way to go play and they saw you passed out on the side of the road”
“A-and where’s my cousin” I questioned
She looked confused. “What cousin?”