Wednesday, June 4, 2025
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| Ghostbound |
It was supposed to be a chill solo trip. Akane, 23, boarded the midnight sleeper train bound for Hiroshima. Car 3, solo cabin by the window—perfect. The train was almost dead empty, just a few passengers scattered like forgotten thoughts.
She slumped into her seat, headphones in, but something felt... off. The kind of off that clung to your skin like wet fabric. As the train slipped into a tunnel, the lights glitched out like a dying breath. Silence swallowed the cabin whole. Then, blink—lights on.
And there she was.
A little girl. Ten, tops. Old-school Japanese uniform, dusty and stiff like it crawled out of a history book. She just stood there by the door, staring at Akane. Not blinking. Not breathing. Just empty. Like her soul got left behind somewhere.
Akane froze, lips parted, stomach tensing. But curiosity? That thing's dangerous. She stood and walked toward her. The girl's eyes tracked her like prey. When she got closer, she saw it—moth-bitten fabric, yellowed lace, shoes caked in mud.
Then the girl whispered.
"Get off this train..."
Akane’s skin prickled. "Why?"
The whisper didn’t flinch. "Because it doesn’t stop anywhere real."
The train rolled past a station: Yūyūbara. But that place had been out of service since the '90s. Everyone knew that.
Akane’s bladder started screaming. Great. The restroom was taped off—"使用禁止" in glaring red. She bit her lip, tried to distract herself. But the girl's gaze was stapled to her like a curse. Akane made a move. All the cabin doors? Locked tight. Panic itched her spine.
Sudden stop.
No station name. Just "臨時停車" blinking in static. The little girl stepped forward.
"This train isn’t leaving."
Akane clenched, the pressure unbearable. She turned to run—but darkness dropped like a curtain. Pitch black.
She fumbled for her phone—dead. Of course. Then—breath, close to her ear.
"I died here... thirty years ago."
A faint glow appeared. A passenger's flashlight. Enough to reveal the truth.
Bones. Everywhere. Clothes rotting in piles. Akane couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t a train anymore. It was a coffin with wheels.
She bolted, tried the door. Locked. Smashed the window. Didn’t budge. The girl's voice behind her:
"You can't leave."
Akane spun. The little girl, lifeless eyes, now closer than before. Akane slipped on something—bones. She fell. When she looked up, the girl was beside her, hand ice-cold on hers.
And then... no more feeling.
Akane realized something hideous.
She was dead.
The girl held out a photo. Two girls. School uniforms. One of them was Akane. Dated: 1993.
Dr. Yui entered the scene hours later. A 31-year-old surgeon heading to Osaka. Stumbled into Akane’s cursed car. The scent of formalin hit like a slap. Her eyes landed on a dusty purse. Inside? A Polaroid. Two girls. One looked familiar. Yui had seen that name before.
"Akane Matsumoto. Died: Feb 15, 1993. Train crash."
Then came the whisper: "Dr. Yui... I'm still here."
Akane. Eyes empty. Smile wrong. Step slow and dragging.
"I never left this train."
Yui’s head buzzed. Her own memories twisted. Flashbacks of the crash. And herself... lying on the tracks.
She wasn’t supposed to be alive either.
Both girls. One train. One fate. Names on a manifest of death.
Yui and Akane wandered the train together, searching for answers. And relief. Yep—*that* kind of relief. Bladders on red alert. They found a stash: 8 ancient basins, porcelain, dust-covered.
Akane snorted. "Can we... use these?"
Yui, deadpan: "Better than exploding. Just don’t spill."
They picked one—Number 6. Cleanest of the bunch.
Akane squatted behind an old bench, eyes locked with Yui's. "No peeking."
Yui laughed. "We’re way past modesty now."
The sound echoed loud. Like water breaking a spell.
Yui’s turn. Her stream hit like a waterfall. They both cracked up, nervously.
"This is the weirdest haunting ever," Akane muttered.
But then... something shifted.
From the basin? A black mist curled upward. Hissing. Whispering.
"You defiled the vessel..."
A shadow formed. Not the girl. Something else. Something older. Dripping hate. Eyes like burned-out stars.
The train jolted. Lights sparked. The entity rose, tall and misshapen. It screeched.
Yui yelled, "That thing's tied to the basins!"
Akane grabbed the one they used. "Then we break it."
They sprinted toward the control room, dodging gnarled hands reaching from the shadows. The train twisted like it was alive.
They hurled the basin into the engine core. Explosion. Screeching. Smoke. Darkness.
Then... silence.
Sunlight spilled in. The train sat still on an overgrown track. No stations. No signs.
Akane: "Did we kill it?"
Yui: "Or just piss it off."
Behind them, the intercom fizzled.
"Welcome... to your final destination."
The sky outside was unnaturally still. No birds. No wind. Just grey fog sliding against cracked glass windows. Akane leaned out cautiously, scanning the forest beyond the rails.
"So uh... should we get out, or stay trapped in demon express?" she asked.
Yui stepped off the train. Her shoes crunched over old gravel that felt like it hadn’t been touched in decades. "It’s not over. I can feel it."
The trees around them leaned slightly forward. Just a little. Like they were listening.
They walked up the broken platform, past shattered signs and vines curling through vending machines. The air felt thick, like it was trying to choke them slowly.
Akane froze. "Hey... look."
A shrine. Half-buried in moss. Small, red, and angry-looking. Inside, a doll. Cracked face. Its eyes had been gouged out.
Yui whispered, "Shinto. Protective. Or... imprisoning."
Then something screeched behind them. Metal. Bending.
The train was moving. Without them.
They sprinted, but it was too late. The train vanished into the fog like it had never existed.
"Well. That’s just freaking great," Akane huffed.
Yui turned back to the shrine. Her hands trembled as she reached for the doll.
"Don’t," Akane warned.
"It’s part of this," Yui muttered. "This isn’t just a haunting. This is a loop. A trap. The whole thing—it’s scripted."
Suddenly, the trees rustled violently. A voice hissed through the wind.
"You broke the seal."
From the forest, a figure emerged. Same hunch, same long hair, same death-rattle voice.
Not the little girl.
The woman.
Only now, her skin peeled in long strips. Black veins pulsed under semi-transparent flesh. Her mouth was open too wide, like something had ripped it apart from within.
"RUN!" Yui screamed.
The chase was back on.
But this time, the forest wasn’t passive. Roots lunged from the ground. Branches clawed. The path shifted behind them.
Akane stumbled, turned, grabbed a sharp stick and swung wildly. It sliced through mist.
Useless.
Yui grabbed her arm. "To the shrine! Now!"
They dove inside. The doll glowed faintly. Akane kicked the small gate shut. The woman screeched and halted, just outside the perimeter.
The shrine... it was working.
For now.
Yui panted. "That thing... that’s not just a ghost. That’s something ancient. It’s like the entire forest is under its curse."
Akane nodded, swallowing bile. "Then we break it."
Yui looked at the doll. Then at Akane. "You thinking what I’m thinking?"
Akane smirked. "Yep. We bring the fight to her."
The shrine reeked of old incense and rain-drenched ash. Akane paced along its edges while Yui examined the cracked doll again. The thing was humming now—low, and off-key, like it was remembering a lullaby wrong.
"Why’s it glowing like a cursed Tamagotchi?" Akane whispered.
Yui didn’t answer. Her eyes were locked on the symbols carved beneath the shrine’s platform. Lines intersected into spirals, like rail tracks colliding into each other. Beneath them: kanji, deep and dark.
"It’s part of a sealing ritual," Yui muttered. "But it’s unfinished. Broken."
Akane crouched beside her. "So... someone tried to lock this evil down. Didn’t finish the job. And now it’s pissed. Cool. That’s awesome."
Yui nodded. "We need to finish it—or undo it entirely."
Suddenly, a voice—soft and wet—slipped between the trees. "You shouldn’t be here."
They turned fast. A figure stood a few feet away. Not the terrifying woman this time—but a teenage boy in an old train uniform. His eyes flickered, like static.
"I was the apprentice conductor," he said, his voice distant. "I tried to stop them. But they needed vessels."
"Vessels?" Akane stepped forward.
He nodded slowly. "The basins. They’re not for water. They were never for that."
Yui whispered, "They used human essence. Blood. Urine. Tears. Anything to bridge the world between the living and the dead."
Akane’s stomach flipped. "So we basically offered ourselves to it... by peeing."
The boy nodded again, slower this time. "You woke it up. The ritual has begun."
The fog around them thickened, like soup gone wrong. Tree bark cracked. The shrine pulsed.
Then—something huge stirred in the distance. Not footsteps—drags. Flesh dragging across roots. A groan so low it rattled their spines.
"We need the full mantra," Yui said, flipping open a torn page she'd yanked from the shrine's base. "It’s written in pieces—probably across this whole cursed forest."
"So it’s a scavenger hunt now?" Akane snapped. "In haunted Blair Witch woods? Awesome."
From behind them, a hiss.
"You defiled the vessels. You must complete the offering."
They turned. From the trees, a creature stepped out—massive, hunched, its limbs jointed the wrong way. Its face was a swirl of blurred features, as if someone tried to draw a human from memory and failed.
"Run," the ghost boy whispered—and vanished.
Yui grabbed Akane’s wrist and bolted. The ground shifted, roots twisting beneath them like tendrils. Fog clawed at their clothes.
They found an abandoned food cart, half-eaten bento boxes and shattered bottles littered inside. Yui slammed the door shut.
Akane panted. "This is officially worse than dying."
Yui rummaged through the drawers and gasped. "Another page. Part of the chant."
Akane leaned over. "‘To return what was taken, blood must answer blood.’ The hell does that mean?"
Yui looked down at her hand. A deep gash from earlier had reopened. Drops of blood soaked into the wood floor. The shrine’s glow had followed them—it pulsed faintly now in the corner of the cart.
Akane bit her lip. "We’re giving it more. Aren’t we? Every move we make feeds the ritual."
Before Yui could respond, the roof caved in.
The creature was above them.
Akane screamed. "Baskom! Where’s the damn baskom?!"
Yui tossed her one. The creature lunged as Akane hurled it upward like a frisbee.
CRASH.
Black smoke exploded everywhere. The creature shrieked, curling back.
Yui pulled Akane out through the back of the cart as fire ignited where the basin shattered.
Behind them, the forest wailed.
Ahead—more symbols. More pieces.
And they were just getting started.
The forest was different now.
The air had turned metallic, thick like liquid iron crawling down their throats. Every tree leaned inward, like a thousand skeletal arms trying to cage them in. The fog no longer drifted—it pulsed, breathing like some ancient beast.
Akane wiped blood off her face, smeared with ash from the last explosion. Her hand trembled, not from fear, but because whatever was watching them was no longer pretending to hide.
Yui held the torn ritual page in both hands, eyes scanning symbols with growing dread. "We’re missing two verses. Without them, the seal will break completely."
"Great," Akane muttered. "So we’re basically running on a broken Wi-Fi signal to the afterlife."
Branches cracked to their left. They spun.
No one.
Then—soft humming.
The same lullaby the shrine doll had sung. Off-key. Childlike.
From the mist, the little girl stepped forward. Her school uniform was soaked in something dark and sticky. Her smile stretched too wide, like her skin forgot where her muscles ended.
"You can’t fix it," she said. "It wants out now."
Akane stepped back. Yui reached for the basin fragment tied to her belt. It was glowing again—faint red this time, like an ember waiting for breath.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them quaked. From the center of the trees, the earth split with a groan. Roots tore upward like tentacles, revealing a sunken pit. Inside it: a massive circle of stone, engraved with the full ritual symbol.
Except...
It wasn’t complete.
The missing verses were carved into the flesh of something lying in the center.
A body.
Mummified. Bound by rusted wires. Mouth sewn shut. Eyes gone.
Yui’s knees buckled. "They used a person as the vessel. Not the basin. This is the source."
Akane stepped forward, the pit pulling her in with invisible strings. The closer she got, the louder the voices screamed inside her skull.
Let it out. Let it out. Let it out.
She grabbed the edge of the stone ring. Her nose bled instantly.
Yui screamed, "Akane, STOP! That’s the heart of the ritual! You touch that thing and we’re DONE."
But Akane didn’t move. Her eyes locked onto the mummified face.
It blinked.
The stitched mouth opened.
And then it spoke.
In Akane’s voice.
"We never left."
The pit exploded with black fire. The fog roared into a vortex. The trees bent backward. A shape—massive, multi-limbed, and bone-white—crawled up from beneath the forest floor. Its scream shattered the air like glass.
The ritual was done playing.
It was awake.
Akane staggered back, but her limbs felt disconnected. Her fingers twitched like they had minds of their own.
"Yui... something’s wrong with me."
Yui looked up, horror washing over her face. Akane’s shadow... it wasn’t hers anymore. It was writhing, clawed, twitching like it wanted to detach.
"It’s trying to take you," Yui breathed. "You’re becoming a vessel."
Akane’s voice shook. "Then cut me out. Do something—anything."
Yui pulled a knife from her side pack. Not surgical. Rusted. Old. From the shrine.
"This might hurt," she whispered.
"Just do it."
She slashed Akane’s forearm. Black smoke hissed out like steam. Akane screamed—not from pain, but because the thing inside her screamed louder.
The forest erupted in shrieks. Shapes danced in the mist. Bones cracked somewhere too close.
Yui shouted, "I need the final verses! The ones on the corpse!"
Akane, barely standing, yelled back, "Then read them! Burn them! Whatever it takes!"
Yui jumped into the pit, yanked the wires from the mummy’s torso, carved the symbols into the air with her blood-soaked fingers. The stone ring began to glow.
The massive creature shrieked.
Then silence.
The wind stopped. The forest froze.
And a voice—not a ghost, not a monster, but something older—filled the air.
"The curse is awake. The curse is watching. The offering has begun."
Akane fell to her knees. Her eyes bled.
Yui clutched the basin shard, now hot to the touch.
They had completed the ritual.
But they had no idea what they had just unleashed.
The forest wasn't breathing anymore.
It was snarling.
The trees had contorted into claws, the sky above them split with black lightning that left no thunder—just static, vibrating in the chest. The pit crackled, red veins of light surging through the earth like arteries, feeding the thing crawling out of the abyss.
It had no single face.
It was all of them—every soul the train had consumed, stitched together with grief and gore. Dozens of jaws opened where a ribcage should be. Legs split backward and forward. Human hands grasped from its shoulders, clenching and unclenching in rage.
Akane stood, barely. Her blood was black now, her eyes flickering with something ancient. But she gripped the basin shard tight. Her free hand shook.
"If this thing wants a fight," she growled, "we give it one."
Yui tightened her belt, sliding the rusted shrine knife between her fingers. She nodded once. No more escape. No more running.
They charged.
The monster screamed. Not a sound, but a feeling—a mental nail driven into the skull. The trees split apart to make space for the battle.
Akane leapt first, hurling the basin shard like a cursed boomerang. It sliced through two limbs. They reformed instantly, but the thing flinched. It could bleed.
Yui vaulted over a rock, drove her knife into what might’ve been a throat. The blade sunk in, hissed. A geyser of steaming black ichor erupted. She rolled as a tentacle slammed the ground behind her.
"Aim for the symbols!" she shouted. "They're the seals holding it together!"
Akane’s eyes locked on a glowing kanji carved into its chest—burned into the skin like branding. She sprinted, jumped, grabbed a jutting bone like a ledge, and climbed.
The beast roared, swatting at her, knocking her halfway off. She dangled for a breathless second—then plunged the edge of the shard into the symbol.
A pulse of light exploded.
The creature shrieked, its body distorting, convulsing.
Yui didn’t waste time. She drove her blade into another seal under its armpit. Another pulse.
The thing screamed in thirty voices.
A claw the size of a car swiped at Yui—slashed her across the back, sent her crashing through a dead tree. She hit the dirt hard, coughing blood.
Akane dropped next to her, bruised but standing.
"You good?"
Yui coughed. "Still got one lung. Let’s end this."
Together, they sprinted toward the last seal—etched into the monster’s exposed heart, beating outside its ribcage like a sacrificial offering.
"I’ll lift you," Yui said.
Akane planted her foot into Yui’s cupped hands. With a scream of pure fury, Yui launched her upward.
Time slowed.
Akane twisted mid-air, raised the shard with both hands, and drove it straight into the heart.
Black lightning cracked the sky.
The world inverted.
The beast howled, all its mouths open, splitting further until it tore itself apart from the inside out. Light poured from every wound. The forest caught fire—but it wasn’t heat. It was memory—images of passengers, crying children, lost time, flickering like film being burned.
Akane hit the ground, hard. She didn’t move.
Yui crawled to her, bloody and shaking.
"Akane," she whispered. "Say something."
Akane blinked. Then grinned.
"Told you I could throw."
The sky split one last time. Then... silence.
The forest was just a forest again.
The shrine lay in ruins. The pit had vanished. The basin shard turned to dust.
A familiar screech of brakes echoed in the distance.
A train. A real one.
Akane helped Yui to her feet. "Think it stops for ghosts?"
Yui smiled, teeth bloodied. "Let’s find out."
They walked toward the tracks, limping, battered, but free.
For now.