The Woods Are Dark and Deep

by Blue Jeans

Chapter 2

While the trip to Edo again had been mostly uneventful, it did not end as well as I had hoped. A wheel on the carriage broke and the passengers were told to wait at a nearby village only a short walk away. This would have been fine, considering that the village would have had better accommodations and entertainment, but as we neared I began to feel dread rise up inside me.

The first sign that something was wrong was when I noticed the crows circling overhead in the direction of where the village was supposed to be. Their cacophonous voices and their numbers were a loud shout to my senses that something was wrong and, having been near battlefields in the aftermath rather more recently than I would have liked, I had come to dread what their appearances entailed. The closer we got, the more I could feel the solidifying confirmation of the dread I felt. The other passengers also slowed, apprehensive about the birds overhead and the silent road, void of any passers-by and the rising voices of a bustling village.

"Are you sure this is the location of the village?" I overhead one passenger ask another in a low voice.

"The driver pointed this way," another answered anxiously in return, as quietly as the one who started the conversation. He sounded like he wanted to be wrong though and there was a soft rumble of heightened agitation that was quickly silenced.

No one wanted to talk louder than in a hushed tone. Something felt like danger, though I did not feel any killing intent nearby. My hand tightened around my wakizashi and that was when we found the first victim.

It definitely looked like the remains of a male farmer by the cut of his clothing, though it was drenched a crusted, coppery color from the blood that came from multiple stab-wounds. My stomach roiled at the sight and the smell. It could have been the work of any brigand of ronins, I tried to convince myself. Even with the war just over, there was a lot of soldiers returning home, or not, in this case, returning anywhere at all. Many ronins wandered, lawlessly cutting down those who would not give them what they wanted. It was, in a way, much as Kyoto would have been without the iron-hand of the Shinsengumi before the war.

As we got in sight of the houses, I could no longer deny what my eyes were seeing. Each villager was brutally murdered, the closer we got to the town, the more violently they were cut down. Most where unrecognizable now if one were to look down the town's main road, but I could see that all were in pieces, even though most of those pieces were already carried off by the birds and other wild animals.

I had heard of this before. It was as terrifying as I had imagined it would be when Hijikata had begun to receive notices of the murders happening in Kyoto. Even then, we had all suspected Sanan, though no one really had the courage or the desire to say it out loud.

I didn't want to go any further, and in fact, several travelers had long stopped or turned back. But I had to know. Were there any survivors? It was still light out, so I tried to take courage in that.

I wanted to so desperately deny it, but memories of that first night when I met Okita, Saito and Hijikata flooded my mind as I walked further into the small village. The dark street. Those crazed eyes, red with blood lust staring straight through me. The smell of fear and the terrified screams. My own horror as the mad-men neared, bodies littered behind them. Here was that night, a hundred times worse and no matter where I turned I only saw death and destruction. So much of it flooded my senses that I wanted to cover my face and weep, I wanted to look away.

But I continued until I reached the end of the town and knew...

Everyone was dead. Men. Women. Children. No matter their age or gender, all were cut to pieces.

Every single one was dead.

I had thought Amagiri and Kazama had annihilated my father's abominations that day. The day my father died, I had told Kazama that I was responsible for what he had done, but even then Kazama had spared me the pain of taking responsibility. That day felt like a knife in my heart, even though it seemed, more than ever, as if it were a life time ago. If I was responsible then, I was responsible now. There could be no doubt concerning what had done this.

Despite my desire to deny it, we were wrong to think that the furies were gone for good. I was wrong to hope that it would mean the end of the nightmare that had led me to the Shinsengumi.

I was so, so wrong...

To be continued...