Spirits of the Season: Eight Haunting Holiday Romances

by Amanda DeWees

  Spencer had caught himself more than once wondering what the hell he was doing in the jungle, and he wasn’t the only one. The same confused fatalism haunted too many sets of eyes in the mess tent. What did they hope to accomplish, anyway? Was there any point in the loudspeaker on his back and the ephemeral funeral procession following him around at night?

  We doubted. Doubt was our demon. He remembered Toshiro’s words outside his uncle’s place. We made it up. It wasn’t supposed to be real. We made stories about their demons. And they became our demons in the dark.

  * * *

  Yukiko stood frozen on the cliffside just outside Spencer’s room, the snows masking her presence even though she remained flesh and blood. She’d seen him use the tiny radio, then freeze with horror twisting his features like a man possessed. But when he closed the shoji screen to his room and she saw his distorted shadow cast by the light of the charcoal brazier, she realized that her thoughts were not metaphorical.

  The shadows that writhed around her American soldier were not his own.

  Yukiko met Fox in the woods later that night. “You rouse me from my sleep, Yuki-chan. This had better be good.”

  She paced back and forth in the ancestors’ grove, her sighs echoing those of the pines far above. “He is cursed! The foreign devil has demons!” She slumped down into the snow, her kimono billowing out around her, and buried her face in her hands. “I’ve let demons into our home.”

  Kitsune burrowed under her elbows, sticking her nose up between Yukiko’s palms. “Silly girl, worrying about inviting demons into the homes of other demons.”

  Yukiko’s fingers curled into the fox’s soft fur, finding comfort in her friend’s warm body. “But it’s my time! The Grandmothers declared as much.”

  “This is what you wished for, is it not? To be a modern bride? To captivate a man like the hairy one in the picture book?” Kitsune licked her chin, where tears had fallen. “To roll with the rock spirits?”

  “Rock and roll.” She sighed. “I never thought—I mean, I wanted to find a modern man, not a foreign man!” She sniffed. “The Grandmothers are laughing at me. This is a harsh lesson about the traditions. They must remain as unchanging as the mountain.”

  Kitsune crunched up her nose and showed her teeth in a grin. “Even Myoko-san blows her top once in awhile.”

  Chapter 5

  The following day dawned clear and bright. Spencer knew he couldn’t put off the trip up the mountain any longer. “Just draw me a map,” he said to Yukiko. “I don’t want to get in trouble with your landlady.” He glanced outside at the bright snow and the blue sky. “I’m sure the other guests are going to be needing you.”

  Yukiko halted in putting on her tanzen. She turned. “There is no one else here right now.” All morning, she had cast worried glances in his direction when she thought he wouldn’t notice. She seemed preoccupied, and conversed in urgent whispers with the landlady when the older woman had asked her a question.

  His chest wanted to cave in when he realized that the break in the weather probably meant he wouldn’t have a monopoly on her time. Or privacy in the onsen. Last night hadn’t been an easy sleep, either. From the position he’d awakened in, he knew he’d been a disruption.

  Spencer had prepared for the trip. He wore his street clothes and carried a rucksack with a few items he thought he might need. It felt weird to be putting on his boots again, even if the snow merited them. “Will you be warm enough?”

  “The mountain is my home.” Her words were as unfailingly polite as his question was dumb and he blushed.

  At the sight of his ruddy cheeks, a smile broke out on her face. She picked up a small wooden basket “Come. It is a lovely day to travel to the shrine.”

  They traveled down the path that joined the inn to the main road. Midway down, the mist grew thick enough to have trouble seeing where the side of the path ended and the drop down the mountainside began. Yukiko led the way as if she’d been born to it—he guessed she had.

  The shrine wasn’t far from the inn, but it wasn’t an easy trip. The paths wound around the mountainside and sometimes narrowed to where he wasn’t certain if his feet would be too big for them. Yukiko, in her wooden clogs, danced along the track like the occasional shifting wind that sometimes sneaked around a tree trunk to startle him while he clumped along behind her..

  He amused her by singing some of the less filthy marching cadences he’d learned in basic training, and she sang him the chant that would keep him safe during the youkai parade—the Night of One Hundred Demons—in summer. He told her about Halloween, and how the curse-breaking holiday had turned into a festival for children.

  When they arrived at the shrine, Spencer felt a bit of pride at not needing to be told how to cross under the torii gate, or to use the scoops at the shallow dish of spring water to wash his hands and mouth. He carried coins with him to offer, and clapped to call the attention of the shrine gods to his prayer.

  But Yukiko had been right when she said the shrine was humble. About the size of a garden shed, it had four walls and a roof, but the walls were rough-hewn boards lashed to uprights at the four corners. Space at the top and bottom of the walls let in air and light—or rather, the wind. Spencer knelt down in front of the wooden offering table. Neither Toshiro nor Uncle Nobu had said what was supposed to happen next. “All right, ghosts or demons. If you’re here, time to bug off.”

  Before his tour, Spencer had held respect for the beliefs of the people whose stories he collected. Even the commune hippies, whose practices came straight out of Tolkien, because he believed more in the power of belief than the belief itself. His orders first took him to Okinawa, where his understanding about what people believed went to convincing enemy soldiers to believe their spiritual health depended on embracing the South Vietnamese government and ending the conflict. The infantry in his unit believed hard in their St. Christopher medals, and even harder in their M-16s.

  “You have respect. But you do not believe.”

  The voice startled him so badly that he fell back. His eyes darted around the shrine room, seeking the owner of the voice. It wasn’t Yukiko, who waited at the top of the steps far enough away to not eavesdrop. In fact, he couldn’t tell whether the voice was male or female. “Who are you?” But he was fairly certain it didn’t belong to a god.

  “Consider me a guide.” There. He spotted a shadow moving behind the far wall, where the little hut that made the shrine butted up against the large boulders of the mountainside.

  “What is your purpose?” Spencer righted himself, feeling the burn in his bad leg, and really wished he hadn’t pushed it by kneeling, even for such a short time. He faced the voice, which came from either the dark corner to his left or the dark corner to his right. The rustle of dead leaves crunched.

  “You already know you are haunted.”

  The guide put voice to what he persistently wondered might be true. “Yes. I was told to visit the shrine here to put the, ah, ghosts to rest.”

  “Nothing rests well when it cannot find its home.”

  “I don’t understand.” He stretched his throbbing leg out in front of him. “And who are you?”

  “I told you. I am a guide. You must find the origin that binds the onryō to you and sever it.” A low laugh trilled. “And if I were you, I’d plan on an adjustment in your lack of belief.”

  * * *

  Shortly after midday, Yukiko turned them onto a different path and stopped by a small hot spring pool. She sat on a fallen log and opened the box she’d been carrying to reveal a boxed lunch. Spencer fell down onto his good knee. “Yukiko-san, you are a goddess among women.”

  She looked at him strangely, her mouth hanging open, before she snapped it shut and shook her head. “You speak so silly, Supensaa-san.” She unpacked the box’s contents onto a linen cloth.

  The tiny feast looked incongruous in the snowy woods. “This reminds me of Irish stories about fairy picnics. You have fairies here, don’t you?” />
  “We know of fairies from foreign travelers.”

  “Like me.” Spencer brushed the snow off the log and sat down next to her. She edged closer to him when the wind blew. Probably too close for propriety, but here in the woods, who would tell? The raccoons? The foxes whose tracks he’d spotted here and there? “You’ve outdone yourself for a picnic lunch.”

  Yukiko’s lips pressed together in a smile. “Okami-san was kind enough to do this. She does not approve of my impetuousness sometimes, but she approves even less of not caring for guests.”

  Spencer laughed. “She is very...particular about that. I can hear her counting the silverware after dinner.” He winked. “I think she thinks I’m going to steal them from her.”

  Yukiko laughed. “She does not think ill of you. When she was young, a plate from her household went missing. She is terrified it will happen again.”

  “I once visited an inn in America whose cook accidentally burned the kitchen down a hundred years ago, and still haunts the place, harassing the kitchen staff. Do you think Okami-san would do the same?”

  Yukiko coughed, then looked up to the sky. “Yes,” she said faintly. “I do believe Okami-san would do just that.”

  The day was pleasant, and Spencer was in no hurry to get back to the inn. The spirit—whom he now believed was probably the local shrine priest, hidden somewhere behind the shrine to dispense wisdom in an appropriately supernatural manner—had told him he needed to find the source of the ghost that plagued him. He wasn’t sure how that would work out, but he had done what he set out to do.

  “Look.” She stopped in her packing up of their lunch and pointed to a thick fall of boulders on the other side of the little pool, where scrubby evergreens had grown.

  To Spencer’s surprise, a tiny red face peeked out. He gasped.

  She placed her hand on his arm. “Be still, and watch.”

  One by one, more tiny red faces peeped out from the bushes. Within minutes, an entire family of white-furred, red-faced snow monkeys had assembled at the pond’s opposite edge. The two largest members paced back and forth, their eyes on Spencer and Yukiko. “Remain still and do not meet their eyes.”

  Spencer ducked his head, reminded of training exercises where he’d had to keep his head down, lest the shine of his glasses give away his position. In this case, his opponent was a monkey, but given the flashes of sharp fangs, not one to scoff at.

  They stayed quiet and the monkey family gradually began to slip into the hot spring. Yukiko leaned against him as the monkeys became less concerned with their presence. Instead, they paddled around in the warm water, grooming each other and clearly enjoying their midday bath. “Won’t they become overheated?” he whispered.

  Yukiko shook her head. “They know when to leave.” Sure enough, ten minutes later, the monkeys crawled out of the pool one by one, shaking the water from their fur. With the large males keeping watch, they melted back into the forest.

  Spencer clasped her hands. “Thank you for that. It was wonderful! I wish I could have taken a picture.”

  She smiled up into his eyes. “You are most welcome. You tell many entertaining stories. I wanted to share something of my own.”

  “I try.” She gave him the perfect opening to open his rucksack. “I know it’s inappropriate, but I want you to have a gift.”

  Before going on leave, he’d raided the PX for English-language reading material for the train ride, and for the inevitable nights where he thought he’d be unable to sleep. Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, Fantasy Reader, even Archie comics. And a handful of issues of Rolling Stone.

  “I—that is very kind of you.”

  He wanted to erase the confusion on her face, so he pulled out the bundle of readers and handed them to her, remembering at the last minute to bow. “Since you have given me so many stories about your home, I feel it’s only appropriate to give you stories from mine.”

  “Oh!” She clapped one hand over her mouth. “English magazines! My aunts don’t approve of them.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend.” He’d thought, since she bought the dress in Tokyo...

  She grinned. “The aunts cannot approve what they have no knowledge of.” She began to flip the glossy pages of the rock and roll magazine.

  Spencer brought out his own notebook. While the stories were still fresh in his mind, he wrote them down in the battered field notebook he kept on hand, even in the jungle.

  He looked up to see her eyes shiny with a captivating joy he could get lost in. She flipped the pages eagerly, too fast to read, and he wondered if she possessed the skill. He didn’t know how she couldn’t read—her command of English had to have come through extensive schooling. Perhaps she just wanted to look at the pictures now.

  He took out the transistor radio. A curl of anxiety ran through him when he inserted the batteries, but when he turned the switch on, he found music. Western music at that. He grinned and held up the device. “Listen, Yukiko. It’s your bride’s husband.”

  The thumpa-thumpa of the Beatles’ “Revolution” squawked out of the little box. He bobbed his head in time to the music and forgot the world just watching her face as the music played.

  “Yukiko-san–” A stuttering start. But he plowed ahead, before he lost his nerve. “Your company is–” How could he put it without sounding like an idiot?

  She met his gaze. “I—really like you, too.” Immediately after her admission, she cast her eyes downward. A breeze caught a few strands of her hair and they waved like flags carrying prayers from the mountain top.

  He felt the unspoken ‘but’ hang between them. She might speak his language, and he might understand her traditions enough not to give offense, but a gulf as wide as the valley below still separated them. Coming from a western woman, he might have dismissed her admission, given so carefully and in such a roundabout way, but that was not the way of this place. So he savored the softly-spoken words that had fallen from her lips the way he kept the sacred stories people in other places had given to him.

  “I know your family won’t approve of me.” For her to make such a declaration, even as demurely as she had, put her in a very vulnerable position. Doubly so, since he was a foreigner. Anything other than honesty would sever that delicate thread binding them.

  “Do you think people can change the world, Supensaa-san? Just one person?”

  Spencer looked up at her face, pale like the moon. “I think it would be worse not to try.”

  * * *

  Yukiko felt flushed, hot, in spite of the cold. The sunlight filtered through the trees and she balanced on a high ridge with the Grandmothers whispering in one ear, and the Beatles singing in the other. He was not wrong about her family’s disapproval, but the Grandmothers did not always use discernment when hunting suitors for their Bride. Sometimes, they did not even require willing consent.

  As long as it was her Bride time, she wasn’t sure the Grandmothers would care if he really were a devil. But afterwards? “It is...complicated.” There was a reason why there were no men at the inn, and the stories of her people were whispered around hearth fires instead of sung loudly to the world. “There are many traditions. Duties an unmarried maiden must fulfill.” She flapped her arms in frustration. “Some of them are so old-fashioned. We could be more modern and join the world. Instead, we stay on the mountainside with only the monkeys for company.”

  “Some traditions should be changed.” Spencer grew quiet. “I study traditions to understand why they exist, and if it’s right to change them.”

  She searched his face and saw the ghosts in his eyes. A prickling in her fingers reminded her that he bore a curse. She wondered if she should tell him, or if he would think her backward and stupid. But without her youkai nature, she couldn’t see what plagued him. He met her eyes and she was struck by the sadness in his features. “Challenging a tradition has its consequences.”

  Spencer excused himself some time later after she cleaned up the remains of their lunch, carefu
lly tucking the English magazines into the box.

  “You play a dangerous game, young snow bride.”

  “’Tis you who plays the riskier game, coming here.” She flapped her sleeves at the shapeshifting youkai. “Supensaa-san could return at any moment!”

  Kitsune danced out of her reach. “The more time you spend with the gaijin, the more chance you have to lose your heart.” Fox cocked her head to one side, eyes gleaming.

  The joyful warmth bubbling up through her cooled in the cold wind of truth.

  “When your heart is gone, so are the gifts of your nature.”

  Yukiko sniffed. “What good are the gifts of my nature when they are a curse?” For the first time, Yukiko considered Kitsune’s words. Her legacy was what concerned her. She was meant only to enchant him long enough to quicken with child, and then–

  And then he dies. The heat that warms his heart in his chest goes to feed the child he and I will make. And then I will become Okaasan, Mother, if we are fortunate. Her bloodline would live on, half-breed though it might be.

  Or perhaps, as was the case more and more years in the household, the baby would be born blue and cold, already a shade before it had time to cast a shadow, and she would be driven by her own grief to wreak havoc on the mountainside. If she were lucky, her grief would not shred the flesh from her bones, forcing her to repeat the childbirth until she wasted away to nothing but sorrow. If she were lucky, she would join the ranks of Obasan, the aunties, who grieved silently, and hung all their hopes for the future on the next Bride.

  I cannot! Terror welled up inside her heart. Spencer would die, and her daughter, if she lived, would be half-gaijin, and would never know the kind man who fathered her.

  Fox sat and began to groom her hindquarters. “Now, then. There is someone who may help you. For a price.”

  Yukiko heard the sounds of Spencer returning. She leaned down. “What kind of help? And what price?”