User:JohnB/Fanfiction/The Sorry Tale of Yotsuya

(It's summer in Japan, the time when things go bump in the night. July 15th is the official Day of the Dead, but most people commemorate the dead on August 15th, the day Japan surrendered in the Pacific War.

Just recently, a police officer in Aichi Prefecture murdered his wife and two children, trying to make it look as if his depressed wife committed a murder-suicide by placing a charcoal burner next to her body. It didn't wash because, first, a sharp-eyed detective saw the marks of strangulation and, second, her friends said she was suffering from domestic abuse, so if the fault was anybody's, it was his. He was arrested and is now certain to be convicted. The ghosts in his head might get to him before the hangman's noose does. That's how they still carry out executions here.

For your reading pleasure, I am presenting a classic Japanese ghost story that started out as a kabuki play and then was filmed in 1959 [for the full movie with English subtitles, watch www{dot}youtube{dot}com{slash}watch?v=XjUSncCDMxU]. I won't dwell on how the original story goes because it is somewhat long and convoluted. You'll find I've simplified it and made it more realistic.

However, above the title there was a graphic depiction of the head Oiwa depicted as a damaged paper lantern with smoking eye-holes and gaping mouth where the lower lantern has torn away. It survived a purge of my stories for my not handling my graphics well, but then suddenly it vanished. I think somebody on the editorial board got spooked and asked that it be taken down.

I don't blame him. I'm given to nightmares and so can't handle it either.)

The Sorry Tale of Yotsuya

Charles Pierre Marie de Beaumarchais was something of a scoundrel, the prime reason being that "Charles Pierre Marie de Beaumarchais" was not his real name. I have investigated this and found that it was during a burglary of the Beaumarchais plantation in the Azuras Coast region when he came upon a scroll, a family tree of the Beaumarchais family, among other worthless items in the Comte de Beaumarchais's study. But Charles—no one recalls his real name, so let's call him that anyway—had a deliciously clever idea what to do with this scroll: make it his ticket to high society. That was the only item he took from the house. After all, who needs a hefty bounty on his head when this scroll will open doors to the houses of the rich and the mighty? And if he's caught? The bounty for a stolen family tree can be paid out with pocket change.

And so Charles ingratiated himself into the manor house of a Hlaalu magnate in the Ascadian Isles region, becoming the magnate's valet. The depth of his knowledge of protocol and manners was very shallow, but he was swift and learned on the fly. If he did make a mistake in protocol or manners, he obsequiously begged forgiveness for the gaff, and the matter was quickly forgotten—but not to him. He told himself, "Never let that happen again!" And so Charles waxed from strength to strength as the master of the house got sucked into the scam. It came to the point where the master held such unwavering confidence in the scumbag that nobody could question his poor judgment. It came to the point where the master actually recommended that Charles take his daughter in marriage.

The problem was there were two obstacles to Charles: a wife, named Oiwa, and an infant son living in a hamlet called Yotsuya in the Suran district. They meant nothing to him because the wife was a rank commoner like himself, and he was honestly starting to believe that he was really an aristocrat at heart and deserved better. And if it came to disposing of a commoner wife to advance in this world, so be it. But the disposal had to look legit. He had to make her weak constitution the cause of her demise, and so he began spreading the assertion that she was in poor health and concerned about the welfare of their son should her life be cut short. And as you know, talk about something often enough and people start believing it.

Charles visited an apothecary to inquire about a remedy for a disease of the skin, one of many that afflicted the people of Vvardenfell. The apothecary recommended a powder with an active ingredient that when sprinkled lightly on the affected area and rubbed in brought relief. However, in no way was the powder to be ingested as it could cause severe eruptions of the skin and organ failure, so it had to be kept away from children. When he returned to their home in Yotsuya, he had her drink the powder as a cure for her malady. The next day, she felt a burning sensation in her face. She picked up a mirror and was horrified to find that half her face was practically sagging off her head.

"What did you do to me?!" she shrieked at him.

He couldn't bear to look at her, so horrific was the face wound.

She grabbed a straight razor from her things and came at him slashing at him. He managed to scramble backwards to avoid the flying blade, but she gradually succumbed to organ failure. Her condition weakening, he took the razor from her limp hand. "What did I do to you to deserve this?" she asked as he pressed the razor to her throat, and the rest was history.

He waited until midnight to drag her body to the river. He really did feel sorry as he gently lowered her body into the water. He had put the bloody razor back into her hand to prove that this really was a suicide.

When he returned home, he found his infant boy screaming for his mama. Filled with indignation that the job was only half-finished, he gripped the infant by the ankles and carried him thus to the water's edge where he made like an Olympic hammer-thrower and flung the infant into the middle of the river where it went ploop into the water and vanished. For the first time in his sordid existence, Charles felt a deep pang of remorse because he witnessed this tiny manifestation of his own flesh-and-blood spiral through the air and disappear into the water. It was as if he had killed his own humanity.

His mind was confused now. What had seemed so easy was now painfully difficult. His feet felt as if they'd been turned to lead. Images of his dear wife and infant son flooded his head. He wept bitterly for them, but there was no going back. He quickly pulled himself together because tomorrow was his wedding day. Everything was going to be all right from now on.

Charles felt jumpy during the ceremony at the local shrine of Dibella, expecting at any moment that guards would burst in and arrest him on the spot, but it came off without a hitch. From there, it was on to the Eight Plates in Balmora for the wedding celebration. Everybody toasted Charles and his bride, and Charles went around the room toasting each guest in turn.

"Please, Charles, come join us!" someone called from one table.

Charles looked and saw that all the seats were occupied.

"Maybe later," he responded raising his glass. "It looks as if your table is fully booked."

The people there looked at each other wondering why he didn't see the empty chair at their table.

"Charles, you must be jesting! There's a place right here!"

"Where?"

"Here!"

Charles approached the chair they were pointing out, but there was a woman sitting there with her head bowed and her back to him. Her horrific sagging face then turned slowly toward him.

"What is the meaning of this?!" he screamed.

The room fell silent.

"The meaning of...what?" somebody inquired. "An empty chair?"

The woman in the chair rose and approached him.

"What did I do to you to deserve this?" she groaned raising the straight razor that was still in her hand.

"Leave me be!" he screamed and returned post haste to his father-in-law's manor.

The wedding guests gazed at each other in trepidation. The bride and her father were deeply shaken.

(Note: this scene was borrowed from Roman Polanski’s Macbeth [1971].)

In the mean time, the authorities were becoming aware that something was amiss in Yotsuya. A woman’s body was found at the river’s edge, and positive identification was impossible given the horrific deterioration of her face. Residents of the hamlet had been told that Oiwa had returned to her parents’ home after a particularly bitter spat between her and her husband, but her parent’s had no idea where she was. Nobody knew where he was, but rumor had it he was passing himself off as an aristocrat somewhere in the Ascadian Isles region. The woman in the water had to be Oiwa.

Furthermore, the body of a male infant, half-gnawed away by slaughterfish, was found at the mouth of the river. The question now was why the mother remained where her body had been dumped while the infant was found way down river. They had to have been dumped separately. This was evidently not a murder/suicide. There had to have been foul play.

And yet one more furthermore, a mind healer was consulted on the most common form of female suicide. After all, what this woman had done with a razor was deemed highly uncommon, the reasons being that deep razor cuts are painful, the sight of one’s own blood is highly unpleasant, and life dribbles out of you. Death by hanging was the preferred course: no fuss, no muss, a lightning-bolt snap to the neck, and you’re gone.

Charles was unaware that suspicions were looming. He had other issues to deal with. He only wanted to be alone, but a bride was waiting for her consummation, and a father-in-law was waiting to become a grandfather. Feigning sickness, he was able to remain curled up in his bed until he felt life was worth living again.

He played the part of a convalescent, and then when his libido got fired up again, he decided now was the time to do his matrimonial duty. He tiptoed into her bedroom as she playfully hid under the covers.

“Where is my little buttercup?” he cooed as he approached the bed.

When he pulled the covers away…

“YE GODS!!!”

Charles threw a pillow over Oiwa’s face and threw himself on top of it to prevent her from escaping. For a spirit being, she had an awful lot of fight in her as she thrashed about. Her struggles weakened and then stopped all together. Charles removed the pillow only to find that his bride was now a lifeless corpse. Her father barged in after hearing the commotion and was struck with horror. He called for guards to come and arrest the murderer.

During Charles’s arraignment, he was judged incapable of taking responsibility for his actions. He was too deranged to answer for himself. He was summarily committed to the corprusarium at Tel Fyr because Vvardenfell had no facilities to accommodate the criminally insane. In time, he contracted the disease himself, and the people of Yotsuya felt that justice had finally been served. They erected stone cenotaphs at the spots where poor Oiwa and her dear little babe were found.