Akumu: A Japanese Ghost Story

Chapter 11- Oneirica

"I can't believe it," Shindo thought as he sat in the break room. "Oneirica is a real fucking place? How come I haven't heard about it until now?"

Luckily, he had his laptop with him. He needed answers as soon as possible.

He Googled "Oneirica" to find out the town's history. The village, founded in 1790, had become infamous because of a man named Toshihiro Kurosawa. The other villagers viewed Kurosawa as an outcast due to his obsession with death. Some even speculated that he might become a killer if he had not already.

One day, a woman's body washed up onto Tokyo Bay's shore. Another villager saw him standing over the woman. He believed that Kurosawa had murdered her, but she actually committed suicide by drowning, and her body later showed up on the shore. A mob, spurred on by the village's ruler, then lured him into his own house and set it on fire, roasting Kurosawa alive. Some accounts had witnesses seeing his skin fall off right before he died.

In Japanese culture, when a person's life gets cut short under terrible circumstances, the spirit of that person will hang around, seeking vengeance. It happened to be extremely windy on the day of Kurosawa's death, and so the fire started to spread to other buildings, eventually burning the entire town to the ground.

Survivors could not entirely escape the horror of that day, though. They began to have recurring nightmares about the flames, and the dreams all had one thing in common: an older man wearing a white robe carrying a wooden cane resembling Kurosawa. Some even had lasting mental health problems because of the nightmares.

Shindo read all of these facts and realized that his residence, the Sky House Hamarikyu, must have been built on what used to be Oneirica.

"So that's how he found me," Shindo realized. He then thought about something else. Could Kurosawa return tonight?