"This is more than we can handle." -- Mishima

1:21 AM: A shot just rang out!

It came from across the hall--maybe in the master bedroom--and just as I'm penning this down a guttural scream unlike any other came next.

Another shot! My hand's trembling. A door wrenched open and a second wave of screaming hailed through open air. It sounds like Mr. Furuya. 

Then a second roar joined in and--I tremble just to write this--it was like needles in my heart. My God it shook the walls.

The screaming died down. Whatever got to Mr. Furuya finished him off for good.

If that weren't enough, the house is quaking again. Is no one else hearing this? Are they just as afraid as I am to investigate? Did they, too, dive under their bed frame with drumming hearts and strained breaths?

Now I just hear shambling. Shuffling uneven feet. A limp body sliding across the floor. It's got him by the ankles, and I can hear his head thumping down the stairs.

I can't do it. I can't go out there, not even to leave.

1:44 AM: But goddammit, Akane's out there too!

I don't have much, but there are a couple things which can be useful. My trusty cellphone provides light, but it's quickly running out of battery life, which means I must use it sparingly. If there's anything...out there... I have two things: my walking stick, and a pocket knife I've kept safe for situations like this. No matter where you go, hiking is not entirely safe. I'm not confident in either. Whatever got Mr. Furuya took two shots and survived. What good, then, is some chipped stick and an old carpenter's knife? 

While it's insane that such a gruesome fate is befalling a family who took us in, I'm not such a hero that I want to solve some mystery or vanquish whatever evil took the life of Mr. Furuya. I'm just one man.

But Akane doesn't deserve this horror; she simply came across this mansion, same as me. Whatever troubles the Furuya family is going through, that's their business, and if by some miracle I make it back to reality with my life, I'm taking this to the police and the press.

In short, I'm gonna find Akane--maybe even Chihiro if I'm brave enough--and we're gonna get the hell out of here.

1:52 AM: Cellphone light out, and with 12% remaining, I inch the door open and stepped into the darkness. Maddeningly, the whole house seemed to be still as though the last half hour's chaos was just a dream.

I'm writing this all inside the master bedroom because, as I thought, the master bedroom's door was wide open and a bullet hole was lodged inside the top-middle portion. Since a foul deed had already happened, I'm hedging my bets that it's currently safe here to write. Nevertheless, my worst fears were realized: something WAS here, and what remained was the strong smell of gunpowder and something like raw meat mixed with old perfume.

Oddly enough, as I peek outside with my light out, Chihiro's bedroom door is open, too, as well as the childrens'. I didn't hear any other screams though. Maybe the creature searched through the rooms and failed to find more victims, or--and I shudder to ponder it--they followed it out. 

Or...did the thing beckon them?

2:01 AM: The next checkpoint is the toilet; it's small, compact, and I can lock the door and see everything inside. There's no sign of Akane or Chihiro anywhere on the first floor, not the kitchen, not the dining room, and not the atrium nor the foyer. I looked longingly at the main entrance, gazing at the door. I have to write this down, because...because I'm just a scrawny, weak failure of a man...and for a split second I seriously thought about leaving the whole thing behind...I wanted to escape so badly...but I would be abandoning them, and how much more worthless would I become if I took the coward's way out? Why should I live if it meant they would not?¹

3:06 AM: The rumbling began again, shaking harder than ever now that I'm a floor below. I can't imagine this quaking being the handiwork of the thing that got Mr. Furuya. Something that shakes the whole house can't possibly fit through a door. That just begs the question, then: what else is out there?

I'm checking around the parlor--where it all began. Strange that, two days ago, this is where I felt the most safe. Now I'm trapped in a cage, a pig who knows they're next to be stamped through the skull with a steel piston. 

While I didn't find Akane or Chihiro, I did find evidence someone left behind. Right at the foot of the hearth lay a fresh piece of paper.

"If it quakes, you don't have much time. They're down below. I'm down below."

This has to be Akane. She knows more about what's going on more than she's letting on. After all, she was the one who first told me about the mountain. How much more was she keeping herself, and why?

True to her words, inside the refuse was an iron ladder leading down the chute to...somewhere.

3:24 AM: I descended down the ladder, the last specks of my sanity begging me not to enter. What I found was a long stone corridor that cut back across the house, and as I followed, I was certain to be heading towards the kitchen until the corridor pivoted left, and afterwards, a long set of moldy stairs with chipped white paint. A mansion like this had to have a basement, but this can't be only way to enter. 

3:26 AM: Cellphone battery's at 7% and the light's guiding my way. Only thing louder than my footsteps over rotting wood is my heart beating against my chest as though it were trying to jump out of my throat. 

The raw meat smell is getting closer. That, and the sound of weeping. 

I am now behind the door of what lies beyond in this old, run-down basement, the sobbing so loud, it's as if they're just across the wall from me. In between their wailing they utter the words 'just one more' over and over again, and I don't know what they mean by that, but it must be the inhuman creature's moaning.

Then I hear something so grotesque that...it sounds so simple on paper, but hearing it, experiencing it fills me with dread.

I hear cutting. A clean tear across flesh, and whoever's being cut isn't resisting: the cutter is the one doing the weeping.

One last stop before I step foot inside, to bravely face evil and stare down death. The weight of this journal feels heavier somehow. Maybe, instead of just being jovial journal entries of a foolish man, it will be used as evidence. Either way, for the first time, I'm doing something for more than just myself, to finally be useful for something.

4:11 AM: So cold. So weak. Losing feeling. I must write with all I have. Whoever finds this, pay attention and believe every word.

The mountain, that ritual, the story Akane said, it's all true. I went inside and there they were, tied up, but that creature was with them. It was wearing Mrs. Furuya's yukata, no, IT was Mrs. Furuya herself. She's what Akane called her. She's the Onibaba. Just like the story, Mr. Furuya was spent in the corner, and was in the middle of working on Tanji. Just like the story, she pulled out his liver and chewed a piece off before placing it as an offering to this shrine, a womanly statue that shimmered in odd colors. Just like the story, Mrs. Furuya is the Onibaba³. 

The rumblings come from the house. It makes sense. What did the ritual say? The Form, the Domain, the Law. I don't know what the third is, but if the Onibaba is the Form, then the mountain and all around it must be her Domain. If this creature is more powerful than I realize, then she can do whatever she wants with the house, even hide the basement where she keeps her victims.

While the Onibaba was occupied, I swung my walking stick and smashed the statue into pieces. She didn't like that. It hurts to laugh in this state. Whatever it did hurt her more than I thought and she collapsed to the floor in a rage. I quickly cut the ropes from Akane and Chihiro and we made a run for it.

Problem was the house. It took us so long to find the way out. It wasn't the same way back, and the Onibaba was close behind.  But the house rumbled again, and somehow it opened a new path.

They ran out first, but as I was about to go, the Onibaba's talons latched out and dug into my back, but I managed to pull myself into the foyer before the rumbling began again, locking her inside the basement for a time. 

Either I bleed out, or the Onibaba comes back to finish me off, but this must get out to the public.

The horrors I've seen, others must read them, to understand the words, to learn to stay away from the mountains, to never foolishly enter a mansion that appears on the horizon as an escape from the cold. You'll walk the halls of this mansion and it is already too late, for all your preconceived notions, the light you spent years building up to cast away the darkness, it all leaves once you step foot past that door, because it sure as hell isn't coming with you. What the gods stamp out are intruders who invade their house. Their power lies in their house--that's why we have so many--but they don't overstay their welcome, they don't overreach, because they'd be intruders. No god is welcome in this house. What else could possibly remain then but a naive crumb of a miracle, the faint hope that someone will come to save you?

Then She grins at you, and at the end of it all, that single pinpoint speck you cling so desperately to flees from the tips of your fingers and leaves you to your demons you spend the rest of your life fighting to stamp out. That is when the nightmares will begin.²

¹[Wet blotches dot along this passage. Sasaki Kentaro, not particularly ambitious, tried and failed to get into university, which further strained his teetering relationship with his parents. Mishima suspects Sasaki went hiking either as a form of escapism, or as a way to collect his thoughts. The journal suggests Sasaki's failure to live up to expectations was the final straw that collapsed his mental psyche.]

 ²[After reading Sasaki's diary, Detective Mishima radioed Detective Inoue to follow up on his investigation, to which only static remained. A second rescue operation to recover Inoue's team is currently underway, and all routes leading to the Hidaka mountain range are restricted to police only.]

³[After reading this passage to the elder Shinto priest, he shook his head somberly and said "Her true name is Kijou."]

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