So, the title might be a bit weird so I’ll try to put this in a way that makes sense. Technically speaking I’m a wildlife conservationist since I do work on protecting endangered species of animals during the day, but most of the time at night my job requires me to give assistance to entities of the more supernatural kind. I specifically help with situations involving Yokai, which is a very broad term referring to various creatures and mythical beings of Japanese folklore and urban legends. The job title doesn’t really have an official name, rather I coined it when I first started to help out. As for why I had started this kind of work in the first place? Well, like the Yokai I help I know what it’s like to not fit in here in Japan, since while my mother’s Japanese my father was born and raised in Sydney before he came here for schooling. It probably didn’t hurt that I loved learning about mythology and grew up watching Steve Irwin on our tiny living room television. Of course, being a rookie at this job I’ve only interacted with spirits of the more harmless variety, at least until a few nights ago.
This particular job I was sent on seemed simple enough, I was asked to escort a shrine maiden to an old shrine hidden within the depths of Aokigahara Forest. In a recent visit someone had discovered that a straw doll had been hammered to a tree within the grounds of the shrine, and act meant to be used in cursing someone and is actually considered illegal here in Japan. Doing this to a shrine is bad enough, but this shrine was there to keep peace with a Tatarigami, a type of Yurei - which is the Japanese term for “ghost” - that I had never worked with before, let alone seen. Usually the spirit of a fallen deity or that of a murdered Japanese noble, Tatarigami are the type of entity you don’t want to piss off. Plagues, famine, natural disasters, events like this capable of destroying an entire village can be traced back to a Tatarigami. In fact, Tatarigami are so powerful, your only chance of preventing one from destroying your town is to build them a shrine, keep it maintained and make sure to consistently give them tribute. The spirit in question whose shrine we were sent to was that of an ancient warlord’s daughter who lost her life when enemies of her father razed their village to the ground. Her undead wrath was said to be so immense that the villagers eventually fled, even after her father ordered a shrine to be built to honour her memory.
And this shrine was now the reason why two young women, myself and the shrine maiden I was accompanying, were traveling through one of the largest and most haunted forests in the world. Due to that and the occasional mist rolling through the trees, it took the two of us a few days to reach our destination. We managed to become good friends while travelling, with her sharing stories of her apprenticeship under her local head shrine maiden and myself telling her about all the Yokai I’ve interacted with. One of her favourites that she wouldn’t let me down was how I nearly got eaten by a Jorogumo on my very first job in my career. Eventually however, all fun had to wait as we finally approached the land where the village once stood. As we walked through the rotted wooden gates of the village, I almost immediately felt a chill run down my spine. Even though I had only been working with Yokai for a month, it was just enough time to recognize if I was being watched. I exchanged a glance and a nod with the shrine maiden next to me, for even if we didn’t know exactly where the Tatarigami was, she knew exactly where we were.
Together we cautiously walked through the ruins towards the shrine in the center, making sure to keep our eyes and ears open for trouble. The sun was barely visible as it was setting in the distance, with our surroundings starting to get darker with each passing minute. Just as we reached the shrine, I was able to make out the doll mentioned before, the other shrine maiden not having had the right tools to remove it hence why I was there. Immediately the two of us chose to split up, with the shrine maiden using the special tools she brought to repair the shrine itself while I brought out a hammer to take down the straw doll. Just as I approached the tree, however, I began to feel the slight sensation of heat nearby. I tensed up at this, for by this point the sun had long since set. There was also a light around me, brighter than the small flashlight I had on my bag. I slightly turned my head to look behind me, and what I saw filled me with dread that I can barely describe.
To properly describe a Tatarigami’s true form is pretty much impossible, since they are entities so powerful that no mortal mind can comprehend what they truly look like. Even now, trying to think back to what I fully saw not only gives me a headache but causes me to feel overwhelmed by unfiltered terror. I can describe some of what I was able to make out, since although I couldn’t comprehend everything what I was able to see appeared to be a humanoid shape made of fire and darkness. Through the smoke that surrounded me physically and mentally I could tell that this humanoid appeared to be a woman in her late teens early twenties, one of ethereal, unearthly beauty. The one thing I remember most were ash white eyes, filled to the brim with rage that would make even the most dangerous of Oni hesitant to draw near. She didn’t say a word, but it didn’t take much to know that she was angry at whoever had been foolish enough to desecrate her shrine. I knew then that this doll needed to be removed and the tree given treatment as soon as possible, I didn’t know what she might’ve done to the person who left the doll there and I certainly didn’t want to find out. And so, with a polite bow and a mumbled apology to the vengeful spirit, I turned back to the straw doll and used the hammer’s claw to pull out the nails holding the doll in place.
There was a brief flash of light as the doll fell from the tree, and before my eyes I saw it get reduced to ashes and then nothingness before it even hit the ground. I was confused for a few seconds until I remembered that ghosts - particularly vengeful spirits of any kind - tend to have power over anything involved in their deaths. A victim of drowning would have hydrokinesis, a victim of asphyxiation would likely be able to control something like their hair, so on and so forth. Even though I was still terrified out of my wits, I couldn’t help but still feel remorse over the loss of this spirit’s life. To die at such a young age in such a cruel way was indeed a tragedy. As I finished tapping wooden dowel rods into the holes left behind by the nails, I decided that I would do more than just leave an offering at the shrine once the repairs were done. Right after I finished my work on the tree, I turned around again, only to be somewhat taken aback to find that the Tatarigami was no longer hovering over my shoulder like she had been moments before. Truth be told, as I approached the shrine both of us were surprised to find that, not only had the Tatarigami chosen to not attack me as I had worried, she didn’t even go near the shrine maiden at all.
It was after we set up and lit some incense at the shrine that I decided to do one last thing before we left. Knowing that I still had rice left over from our dinner earlier that evening I filled it into a bowl and placed a pair of chopsticks into the center. Then I walked over to the village’s old cemetery and placed the bowl at the foot of the headstone that my friend ensured to me was the Tatarigami’s, made another bow of respect, and turned to leave. Out of the corner of my eye I could briefly make her out again, glancing back and forth between me and the bowl of rice. The light of her flames faded the further I walked away, until I couldn’t see her at all once we made it out of the village. On our way back to civilization, the shrine maiden and I acknowledged what I had seen, and it dawned on me just how close I was to death. I figured that maybe this job was just a fluke and that hopefully I wouldn’t have to worry about coming face to face with yet another entity that could bring my life to ruin with a curse. I didn’t realize until the morning after I got back home just how wrong I was.
Things have felt off ever since I’ve returned to my cozy little apartment. There have been a couple nights where I’d woken up sweating due to heat, despite my thermostat being set at room temperature and it currently being winter outside. No matter how much rice I buy, I’ve been running out twice as fast as I usually would’ve before, and I’ve found hair that isn’t mine in my shower and bathtub. On top of that I sleep on a small single bed, yet it feels like I’m not alone in bed during the night. There’s even been times where I’ve sworn to have seen wisps of black smoke out of the corner of my eye, only to not see it when I look again. Until this morning I thought I was just going crazy from stress, but then as I was washing my face I saw those same eyes staring at me from behind my shoulder in the bathroom mirror. Right at that moment, I remembered that some ghosts like to haunt specific people, often following them home from places they once were haunting. To be honest I don’t know what’s more terrifying, thinking about how I might’ve unintentionally invited a very powerful vengeful spirit to be my new roommate, or having to explain to my family why I’m now needing to gather supplies to build a small shrine in my apartment.