Chapter 1: Midnight Communion with a Hungry Ghost
The cold woke him first.
Then the touch.
Hank’s eyes snapped open to the dark, his hand already moving for the knife tucked under the ragged cushion serving as his pillow. A weight, insubstantial but present, pressed down on his chest. Fingers, pale as moonlight and freezing as a winter river, traced the ink etched into his skin.
He froze.
Kaidan loomed above him, a translucent silhouette against the deeper black of the shrine’s ceiling. The ghost’s form seemed to drink what little light there was, the tattered edges of his grey kimono bleeding into the shadows. His dark, wet hair clung to a gaunt, handsome face. From his vacant black eyes, thick tears the consistency of crude oil welled and fell in a slow, constant drip. One landed on Hank’s sternum with a sizzle that wasn’t sound, but sensation—a brief, electric jolt of despair.
The ghost’s lips, stained dark at the corners, parted. A string of the same black fluid leaked from them.
“Kannushi-sama?” The voice was a whisper of dry leaves over stone, but the inflection was new. It wasn’t the flat echo of the past two days, or the puzzled query. This was low, intimate. Hungry.
Hank’s breath fogged in the air. He didn’t move the knife, not yet. “I’m not the kannushi,” he said, his own voice rough from sleep and the lingering ache in his side where a Yakuza boot had found a home. “You know that. The old man’s in the back. Go bother him.”
The fingers continued their exploration, skating over the Madonna on his left pectoral, down the line of a rosary that wrapped around his ribs. The touch was curiously careful. Hank’s skin pebbled, revolted and fascinated. This was worse than the thugs outside. You could shoot a man. What did you do with this?
“Kannushi-sama,” Kaidan repeated, tilting his head. The black tear tracks glistened. His breath, if he had any, smelled of damp soil and forgotten things.
“For the last time—” Hank began, tightening his grip on the knife.
A floorboard creaked in the main hall. The ghost’s head jerked up, his form shimmering like a heat haze. In an instant, the weight and the cold were gone. Hank was alone on the tatami, the chill seeping into his bones from the inside out. He pushed himself up on one elbow, wincing. The single lantern by the small kamidana flickered, making the paper gods dance.
The old kannushi shuffled into view, a frail silhouette in a faded blue robe. He held a chipped teacup in both hands. “He is restless tonight,” the old man said, his English soft and accented.
“No kidding.” Hank sat all the way up, rubbing the spot on his chest. It still felt cold. He looked at his fingertips, half-expecting to see oil, but there was nothing. “What does he want?”
“The same as any of us, perhaps. To be remembered. To have a purpose.” The kannushi set the tea down near Hank. “Your presence disturbs the balance. You bring the stink of violence and unfinished business. It calls to him. He was not a peaceful man, in life.”
Hank barked a short, humorless laugh. “Join the club.” He took the tea. It was bitter and smelled of herbs. “I need to get out of here. Tonight. Your… resident spook is creeping me the hell out, and my friends outside have probably called for meaner friends.”
“The men in the black cars are still there. At the foot of the path. They watch.” The kannushi knelt slowly, his joints protesting. “You barged into a sacred place, armed and bleeding. You speak of deals gone wrong with the wolf-men of the city. And yet you complain of one lonely spirit?”
“Lonely spirits don’t drip acid tears and feel people up in their sleep,” Hank shot back, sipping the tea. It warmed a path down his throat. “What happened to him, anyway? Why’s he stuck here?”
The old man was silent for a long moment, his eyes on the crumbling altar. “A story for another time. It will not help you leave.” He sighed. “There is a side gate. It leads into the forest behind the shrine. The path is overgrown, and the mountain is not kind. But it is not watched.”
Hank’s mind, always calculating angles, kicked into gear. A forest path. Darkness. Better odds than a stroll past three armed Yakuza sentries. He nodded, already moving. He pulled on his ruined dress shirt, the white linen stained brown with old blood and dirt. The jacket was a lost cause. He checked the pistol, a sleek 9mm, slid it into his waistband at the small of his back. The knife went into his boot.
“I’ll take it. My thanks, old man. For the floor and the… dubious company.”
As he stood, a gust of wind whistled through a broken panel in the shoji screen. The lantern flame guttered wildly. In the strobing light, Hank saw Kaidan again.
The ghost stood by the entrance to the inner sanctum, not looking at Hank, but past him, towards the front of the shrine. His form was more solid now, the red ruffles at his hem seeming to tremble. The black tears fell faster.
“Kannushi-sama.” The tone was a warning.
Headlights, stark and white, sliced through the cracks in the old wooden entrance doors, painting bright bars across the dusty floor. The soft purr of car engines died. Doors opened and closed with solid, expensive thunks.
The kannushi’s eyes widened. “They do not usually come so close,” he whispered.
Hank was already moving towards the back wall, his heart a hammer against his ribs. The Yakuza weren’t playing a waiting game anymore. They’d gotten permission, or they’d decided permission didn’t matter. He found the small, wooden door, half-hidden by a frayed tapestry.
He yanked it open. A wall of cool, damp night air hit him. Beyond lay a tangle of shadows and the scent of pine and decay.
A sound made him glance back.
Kaidan was right behind him, so close the spectral cold radiated through Hank’s shirt. The ghost’s black eyes were no longer vacant. They held a sharp, almost intelligent focus. He lifted a translucent hand and pointed, not out the door, but back towards the main hall.
“Kannushi-sama,” Kaidan hissed. This time, it was a command.
From the front of the shrine, a fist began pounding on the door. A voice, flat and authoritative, called out in Japanese.
The old kannushi looked from the pounding entrance to Hank, his face pale.
Hank’s choice was simple: the known danger of the forest, or the certain death waiting in the main hall. But the ghost’s pointed finger, dripping and insistent, gave him pause. Kaidan wasn’t pointing at the Yakuza. He was pointing to the left of the main altar, to a shadowed corner Hank had ignored.
There, partly obscured by a fallen bamboo screen, was a small, ancient door, iron-bound and low to the ground.
A cellar? A tomb?
The pounding turned to splintering wood.
Hank made a choice. He wasn’t running into the night on a ghost’s tip. He was a Corleone soldier, not a character in a fairy tale. He turned back to the escape door.
Kaidan’s form suddenly solidified, blocking the threshold. The cold became a physical wall, biting into Hank’s face and hands. The ghost’s features twisted, not in anger, but in a kind of frantic urgency. The black liquid now streamed from his eyes and mouth, a river of sorrow.
“Kannushi-sama!” The name wasn’t a question or a plea. It was a key. A designation.
And in that frozen second, Hank understood. The ghost wasn’t calling for the old priest. He was calling him.
The front doors shattered inward.
Hank dove to the left, not for the forest, but for the small iron-bound door. He hit the floor, rolled, and scrambled towards it, his fingers finding a rusted iron ring. He pulled.
It didn’t budge.
Boots were stamping into the main hall now. Gruff voices. The old man speaking rapidly, calmly.
Hank threw his shoulder against the wood. It held.
A wave of cold enveloped him. Kaidian passed through him. The sensation was like being submerged in a grave. For a heartbeat, Hank saw double—the crumbling shrine, and a glimpse of the same room, vibrant and new, a young man in a clean kimono weeping over a body on the floor.
Then the ghost was inside the door, and with a soundless, spectral effort, the iron bolt on the other side slid back.
The door gave an inch.
A flashlight beam cut across the altar, searching.
Hank wrenched the door open, tasting dank, stale air. He didn’t look back. He slithered through the opening, feet finding stone steps descending into absolute black. He pulled the door shut behind him just as the flashlight beam settled on the spot where he’d been.
In the perfect, silent dark, he heard the final, faint echo from the other side, Kaidan’s voice now thin with distance and what sounded like satisfaction.
“Kannushi-sama.”