The room was slightly tilted and the walls were plastered with ofuda. The occupants had been rattled, but the medicine seller stood calmly, one foot higher than the other as he balanced in his tabi socks on the wooden floor. Here he was hoping for a simple task to stay somewhere and avoid the monsoon outside, but the supernatural sense that scratched at the back of his mind was never wrong. A mononoke had crossed into the human realm.
He glanced at the pot of orange water now leaning against the tilted cabinet. That wouldn't work for this sort of infestation.
"What do you mean, mononoke?" Heya questioned.
"A creature born of strong negative human emotions," the medicine seller replied. "When they cross into the human realm, they seek to act upon that emotion and often kill those close to their creation, their truth. Though they rarely stop there."
"I don't want to die!" Kura cried, clinging to the stack of bowls in her arms.
"It is gone," the medicine seller said, "for now." He peered at the door, running through a list of possible forms. Bug yokai were rather numerous, but ones related to caterpillars, butterflies, and moths were less common. They also could be related to caterpillar-like creatures, which only complicated things. He looked at Ieshige as the angry man crossed his field of view.
"This is preposterous!" Ieshige jabbed a finger at the medicine seller again.
He stared back at the innkeeper. When faced with the supernatural, humans often would deny the evidence right in front of them. "Do tell me then, what exactly was out there and has tipped the room sideways?" Sometimes such a bold statement helped reveal the truth. Sometimes it resulted in a slap in the face. This morning was definitely the latter.
"Insolent merchant!" Ieshige hissed.
Heya leapt at him, grasping his arm. "Stop, dear! He has a point. That wasn't normal! There was a face in the doorway! What if it gets upstairs? We'll be ruined!"
"Not if I can help it." Ieshige yanked open the counter drawers, fishing out a very large knife. "I'll kill that thing myself. I'll do what all those useless miko and monks and merchants couldn't do!"
Ieshige headed for the door and Heya attempted to dissuade him from going out into the hallway. It certainly was a bizarre scene, the struggle between the innkeep and his wife over the knife. The medicine seller wasn't certain if the innkeep would plunge the knife into his wife or if he'd take it to the door. Ieshige was likely related to the mononoke's truth, though the medicine seller hadn't quite figured out exactly how. But if Kura's reaction of cowering behind the counter was any indication, he wasn't as pleasant as his wife and that likely led to someone's unpleasant death.
Ieshige wrestled his sleeve from his wife's grip, heading for the door with intent and the knife.
"I wouldn't go out there if I were you," the medicine seller warned.
"And why exactly is that?" Ieshige demanded, his hand now on the sealed door.
"The mononoke has transformed the hallway into its domain," he replied. "That is no longer the inn hallway you know."
Ieshige scoffed, yanking on the door.
The medicine seller gritted his teeth, the pronounced fangs slightly visible in the edges of his downturned mouth. The ofuda began to flare up red, starting with the lower half of the room and quickly moving towards the door. "Don't!"
The innkeep pried open the door. The hallways were covered in writhing caterpillars and strange cocoons were suspended from the ceiling. All were bound up with a thick twine tied off somewhere in the darkness. In the center of the hallway was a massive human-sized caterpillar with the head and shoulders of a woman. She was beaten and battered, twine wound tightly around her neck and shoulders.
"Nine…?" she sobbed. "Why are there only nine?"
Ieshige yelped, dropping the knife to the ground, nearly taking off his toes with it. "You! Impossible!"
Twine shot out from the doorway, wrapping itself tightly around Ieshige's body. He fought against the mononoke's grip, trying to reach the knife on the floor. Yet the more he struggled, the tighter the twine dug into his arms, cracking his bones underneath the pressure.
The medicine seller threw ofuda at the twine but the mononoke wouldn't surrender its prey so easily. It cast twine out towards him, drawing back just slightly as he repelled the attack with the taima sword. Ieshige let out a strained whine of a gasp as the mononoke yanked him forward and into its domain.
The medicine seller shut the door, barricading and sealing it with ofuda. The papers flared up red as the mononoke traveled further down the hall. As the furthest ofuda turned black and began to fall silent, the room shifted and creaked, tilting in the opposite direction before stopping at a slight incline.
The room had fallen silent. He felt Kayo grip the back of his kimono, afraid that the room would tip completely sideways. Whoever that mononoke was, she was suffering. That twine was wound so tightly around her, even in that form, Kayo couldn't imagine what hell she'd been through.
"The form," the medicine seller broke the silence, "is an okiku-mushi."
The taima sword's teeth echoed off the quiet walls.
"It is a caterpillar which looks like it has been bound with twine when it is in cocoon form," he continued. "It is said these yokai carry a grudge from earlier eras of a servant girl who lost an important plate and was murdered because of it. She too is said to count. I do wonder how this is linked, as we are not in the right region for this tale."
"Th-that face!" Heya stammered. She was on the ground, reaching forward as if trying to grab Ieshige or perhaps the mononoke she recognized. "It… it can't be!"
"Do you know who that was, Lady Heya?" he questioned.
"It's Gen," she replied. "Absolutely it's Gen! But Ieshige said she went back to her family to be married off to someone! There's no way she could turn into a mononoke thing!"
"That's a lie." Kura's words were muffled as she buried her face in her hands. "It's all a lie. Master Ieshige tied her up and beat her until she died, dumping her body down the well. He made us watch so we would never question him."
Heya choked on air. "But… That's…. That can't be."
"It happened, Lady Heya, I swear it," Kura confirmed.
She began sobbing loudly. She didn't want to believe it, but it was hard to deny after everything she'd just witnessed. "I… This is just too much. I can't handle this…. Poor Gen…" She managed to pry herself off the floor, heading over to the counter to find a towel to rub at her face and sob into. "Why would you do this, Ieshige? Gen was such a sweet girl!"
The room began to shift sharply as the ofuda near the nine kanji began to flare up red. The side wall tore open as the caterpillar began to pry its way inside. Tossing Kayo towards the stable counter, the medicine seller flung dozens of ofuda at the open wall as he attempted to thwart the mononoke's advance. He reached out, catching himself on a slightly open drawer.
"Nine! Why are there only nine?!" the okiku-mushi demanded.
Kayo landed on the side of the counter, colliding with Heya as she slid down the tilting room. Kura clung to the edge of the counter, still grasping the bowls in her arm.
Heya held her hand out. "Kura, let go of the bowls and take my hand."
"I can't!" Kura insisted. "That's how this all started!"
"I don't care about the bowls!" Heya said. "I don't want to lose you too!"
Reluctantly, Kura released the bowls. They clattered down the tilted kitchen floor and disappeared into the mononoke's domain below. She grasped Heya's hand, the innkeep's wife pulling the servant up to safety to the side of the counter.
There was still a missing truth and reason, but the path to finding them was becoming more and more clear. With Kura's obsession with the bowls and the fear of Ieshige, the truth was right there before them though it missed a few details. "Miss Kura, what was Miss Gen's connection with the number nine? Was it bowls?"
"Yes!" Kura replied. "There were supposed to be ten but only nine were on the shelf. They were Master Ieshige's best bowls, so she was accused of stealing them."
The taima sword's teeth chattered in confirmation of the mononoke's truth.
"It's my fault!" Kura cried. "I misplaced the bowl on another shelf but when I found it, it was too late! Gen had already been killed! I'm sorry, Gen! I'm so sorry!"
The medicine seller released his grip on the drawer, skidding down the tilted kitchen floor. "Your reason is despair. You weren't at fault for the missing bowl but you suffered for it regardless."
The taima sword chattered in confirmation. "Release! Relea-" its voice disappeared as the medicine seller slid into the mononoke's domain. He stood on the wall, his inner self grasping the colorful sword as he watched the mononoke sob uncontrollably. The caterpillars seemed to cry with her.
"They didn't come for me," the mononoke sobbed. "They didn't stop Master Ieshige. But could they really stop him? We're just servants, nothing. If I hadn't taken the blame, would he have brutalized us all?"
Strings shot out, attempting to snare the medicine seller. He dodged backwards, easily walking on the vertical floor as the runes kept him stable against it.
"Nine! Nine!"
Slashing through each one, he cut the strings before they could reach him.
"There were just nine! Why were there only NINE?!"
He leapt forward, deflecting diving caterpillars with runes as he headed towards the okiku-mushi.
"NinenineninenineNINENINE!"
It was time she was finally relieved of this binding despair. She would no longer need to count the plates as there was never one missing. All that was left was to let her know the truth. "Ten."
As he drove the sword through her, she cried one last time. "Kura, I'm sorry for leaving you behind..."
The world felt like it was suddenly being thrown back to normal as the mononoke's domain collapsed. He was thrown from the darkness, the outer self crashing into the now balanced floor and rolling several times before colliding with the far counter.
"Mr. Medicine Seller!" Kayo exclaimed.
He rubbed at the back of his head, fixing his bandanna as long tendrils of hair attempted to escape from beneath it. "I'm fine, don't fuss."
Heya peered around the counter at the wall on the far side of the room. Aside from the chewed holes spelling numbers, everything looked relatively normal. Spell papers had fallen from the walls, littering the floors. The shelves had taken quite a bit of damage. Cloths and towels had pooled at the side of the room when it tipped. Relatively normal after a supernatural encounter like that. "Gen, she's not suffering anymore, is she?"
"She is no longer bound to the mononoke," the medicine seller replied.
"Good." Heya stood up, nearly tripping on her crooked kimono slightly ripped from the commotion. There they were, on the counter. The bowls that Ieshige treasured more than the people around him. All ten of them were there. They were quite a beautiful set, black with delicate golden cranes dancing along the base.
Frowning at the stack, she grasped the bowls in her hands. Picking them up she quickly and angrily slammed them against the kitchen floor. She was angry at Ieshige for all of this, for making Gen suffer, and for creating a mononoke. To think she'd married such a terrible person. "No more stupid bowls, no more fearmongering, no more disrespect. I will not have more mononoke created. From now on, I'm running this inn my way."
The medicine seller grinned, amused. Gen was standing at the far wall, holding the bowls as she watched Heya break them. She smiled, dropping the bowls on the ground as well before holding up all ten fingers. She turned, walking out of the kitchen. With Ieshige gone, she could leave everyone in Heya's care and know that this wouldn't repeat itself. Everything would be just fine from now on.
…..
Author's notes:
Okiku is a very famous, bloody tale about a servant girl in Himeji Castle. Her lord attempted to get her to marry him, but she denied his advances. He broke a plate (which was pretty much like breaking your life then) so she was bound, tortured, then drowned.
This lead to the tale of the okiku-mushi (aka okiku-bug). A particular caterpillar called the Chinese Windmill hung around the area which has a chrysalis that looks like it's been bound with twine.
When I was searching for possible bug legends (I couldn't do an entire story about the unnatural world without some kind of bug), I came across this one. The more I read about Okiku's story, the more it sounded like something in the series, so I had to use it. And I've always wanted to tilt a room sideways.
Name meanings!
Heya へや (sounds like "room")
Ieshige - house luxurious
Kura くら storehouse
Gen げん Probably "source, origin" (元).