Yōgenkai

“Bateren!” a voice echoed through the thick woods and cicada chatter. “Here!”

“Who calls out to me?” Ezoreth called back into the dark. “Reveal yourself!”

From between the pines, a twig snapped. A weak flicker of torchlight emerged, followed by the hesitant approach of a small figure. 

“Declare your business!” Ezoreth shouted, clutching his crimson ledger tighter under his arm. “I have been sent by the Society.”

An old man stopped a few meters in front of him. His face was wrinkled and his scalp was hairless aside from an unkempt back tightened with a knot. Ragged hemp robes clothed him, and sandals carved of wood bound his feet.

“Bateren?” the man repeated, voice cracking and ripened with age. “You are bateren? Father?”

Ezoreth took a moment to restore his senses. “I am he,” he answered, after a pause. “You are a… Kirishi, a believer, yes?”

In an instant, the man dropped to his knees, and gestured the sacred sign upon himself. “We thought you all had perished.” He rose abruptly. “Please, come.”

The figure scuttered into the dark without another word.

“Wait!” he called. But the man did not turn back. “I am coming!”

The old man continued through the overgrowth, retracing the invisible path he’d taken many times before. Ezoreth trailed from a distance, doing his best to keep up with the man’s pace without slipping on the moss-laden forest floor.

“Kind sir,” Ezoreth asked, nervously glancing over his shoulder at the path behind. “That red arch which once stood solemnly atop the white cliffs… if my eyes deceive me not, it now stands no longer—”

“SHHH…” the man cut, throwing a finger to lips that Ezoreth could not see. “Yokai… Yokai…”

Ezoreth’s breath hitched at the thought. He lowered his voice, quietly clearing his throat before continuing. “Is… is there a name you go by, believer?”

“Isago,” he finally answered, batting a branch away.

“Isago…” Ezoreth whispered back. “May I ask, kind sir, what is it that this land called in your tongue?”

The man paused for a moment, raising his head ever so slightly, then muttered a phrase as if he feared one might overhear him. “Yōgenkai.”

“Yo… gen… kai,” Ezoreth repeated to himself. “Realm of illusions…”

“We go to Mora,” the man said. “My village. Not far.”

The path ahead was drowned in mist and darkness, only opened up by Isago’s fragile torchlight.

♱

An hour passed, perhaps more. The heavy mist and ancient pine gave way to mountainous pastures and tall, wild grass. From an opening, a settlement emerged. It was nearly obscured in the night's shadow. About two dozen homes, their mud walls and reed-thatched roofs rising crooked from the soft soil.

“Mora,” Isago muttered.

As they neared, men, women, and children all dressed in the same rags as Isago was, began to reveal themselves from their hidden places. They crowded at the sides of the dirt path, eyes on Ezoreth. “Bateren..?” they whispered. “Is he truly a Bateren?”

A greying woman leapt to Ezoreth’s feet, nearly kissing his muddied boots. “You have come… You will save us?” Around her, many gestured the sacred sign.

“Yes,” Ezoreth said calmly, placing a hand to her head. “You are safe now.”

And a dull sound broke the silence...

Gonnng… Gonnng…

The woman at his feet stopped breathing for a moment, eyes widening. Families scrambled back into hiding.

“What is it?” Ezoreth asked.

“Come!” Isago called, grabbing him by the arm, and pointing to a wooden temple at the far end of the village just beyond the dirt path. “Quick!”

A dampened interior greeted him, lit only by two torches on either side. On the back wall, hung a cross made of twine. And below it, an altar made of stone.

A group of villagers quickly extinguished the torches, then slid shut the paper door, leaning the stone altar against it. “Get down,” Isago muttered. "Do not make noise." 

Ezoreth fell to his backside. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Shhh…” was all that he replied.

Minutes passed. There was nothing but the sound of cricket chirping, and the clinking of the bronze chimes that lined the temple's low roof. Ezoreth wondered if it were an animal.

And then he saw it…

A shadow emerged from the other side of the paper door. It made no sound. Ezoreth could only make out its silhouette… inhumanly slender with long straight hair which did not move with the breeze-swept chimes. It whispered something unintelligible.

He watched the figure reach for the door. But instead of seizing the handle, its hand passed straight through…

Only shadow. A phantom. No flesh attached itself to it.

Ezoreth’s eyes widened; his breath grew heavy.

The shadow’s arm stretched longer and longer, reaching for him. A black phantom limb creeping its way across the uneven floorboards. He kicked backwards, hitting the wall behind him. He would have screamed had Isago not placed his palm to his mouth at that moment.

And as quickly as it’d come, the shadow retracted, and the silhouette vanished into the moonlit night. Isago released his hand from the missionary’s trembling lips.

“What was that…?” he stuttered. “Explain what sorcery had possessed that figure which’d permitted her to reach her arm through the walls of this sacred place…?”

His voice shook, his eyes wet with unbridled fear. “...Tell me, what kind of mortal creature is affected not by gale that blows so absolute…?”

“Yokai,” Isago answered.

♱

A villager handed him a porcelain bowl half-full with sticky brown rice and some sort of dried fish. “Eat.”

He eagerly stuffed his mouth, having last eaten many days ago. His mind was racing.

“Bateren,” Isago said, kneeling beside him. “Why have you come here?”

Ezoreth stopped and looked him in the eyes. He promptly dug into the satchel beneath his cloak, drawing a sodden letter barely legible now.

“I seek Father Godric and his companions," Ezoreth answered. “There is word they’d passed through this place. The Flemish missionary… Do you know of him?”

“I am afraid not,” Isago replied, bowing his head in respect. “For I am but a poor farmer.”

“I must find them," Ezoreth reiterated. “I was sent here. It is my sacred duty.”

Isago smiled faintly, though his brows remained furrowed. “...You should not have come,” he continued. “Your friends… likely perished in the inquisitions. Like the yokai which haunts this world, we are nothing to them but another demon plaguing the peripheries of their lands.”

“I haven’t a choice. I must go.”

“You will die, bateren. Please. They show no mercy to believers like us.”

“I shall take my chances.”

“Then I will come with.”

Ezoreth looked back at Isago. 

His voice did not waver. “I know these paths. I can help you.” 

“And what of your village? What about the danger you warn of?”

He shook his head. “If your mission is as sacred as you say, I would gladly walk into danger with you, bateren.”

This time, it was Ezoreth who bowed his head. “Thank you, Isago.”

“There is another Kirishi village,” Isago said. “About a day’s journey away.” He paused. “Unfortunately, the path there is blocked by the Emperor’s inquisitors, and the other—”

“I know another,” a new voice cut in, startling the two men. A young woman, not much younger than Ezoreth himself, stood in the corner of the temple. Her voice was soft, yet slightly rasped. Her face, though dirt-stained, had a gentle beauty. Her robes were clean. “I know a shortcut.”

“And what is your name, maiden?” Ezoreth asked.

“My name is Kanma.”

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Outside, the chimes had gone still.

Ezoreth 1:2