Okiku and the Saucers

The wailing began the following night. Aoyama started up from sleep, his head prickling, and stared round him. A dream? The eerie shriek slowly died away on the air, but he lay rigid with fear that the nightmare would seize him again. The sound came no more that night, but on the second night and then the third, Aoyama was torn from his dreams by the unearthly sobbing, and thereafter lay sleepless until the dawn.

The other samurai began talking in hushed voices about the strange sounds in the night, and several said they had heard a voice counting, "one...two...three..." before rending the air with its long scream of anguish.

Exhausted and distraught, Aoyama knew he must find the source of this wailing disturbance and silence it. On the fourth night, then, he took his stance in the courtyard near the well, for it was here that the sobbing seemed to have its source. Nothing happened for a long time until, just as Aoyama was beginning to yawn, he saw a faint mist gathering, and in the mist an apparition appeared.

It came gliding from the well, this ghostly presence, and gradually took on the shape of the little Okiku. In a sorrowing voice it began to count....

" One . . . two . . . three . . . four. . . five . . . six. . . seven. . . eight. . . nine . . . " and with a heart-wrenching sob the voice rose into a shriek of pain.... As the last tone died away, the image of Okiku wavered uncertainly and then slowly drifted apart like a dissolving mist on the night air.

Aoyama was shaken. His nights had been robbed of sleep; now he found that he could no longer eat. If he tried to swallow the smallest morsel, his throat closed against it. Not even a grain of rice could get past that knot. His flesh began to shrink from his bones. Soon the other samurai broke off their talk when he appeared in their midst, drew back as he approached. It was only a matter of time before the shogun would come to hear of the haunting.

Each night, unable to close his eyes before the ghost's appearance, Aoyama went into the courtyard to await its coming; and after it had counted in its sepulchral voice up to nine and uttered the terrible wailing, he could not sleep again for the trembling of his limbs. His eyes sank deep as wells beneath his brows; his body became so emaciated that it cast but a meager shadow on a sunlit wall. He feared that he must soon die.

It was only then, as though summoned by Aoyama's great need of him, that an old friend appeared, the monk Missakuni Shonin. He listened to the story that the bannerman poured into his ears, nodded once, and retired to the courtyard, where he sat all day and into the night in deep contemplation.

At the appointed hour, the pale presence took shape above the well and slowly began to count. "One...two...three..."

Missakuni waited. The maid at last came to "...nine," and before she could utter another sound, the monk roared "TEN!"

The ghost of Okiku appeared to turn her head, and it seemed that the faintest smile curved her bloodless lips. Then, with a small bow, as of gratitude, she faded gradually into the night mists and was never heard from again.