Tetsuko held Kiri tight to her chest as the child shivered, whimpering incoherently. The ghosts stood still but for a ghostly breeze that drifted around their bodies, flicking the shreds of the kimono that hung loose and torn about them. They were white but for the red blood that tainted them, oozing from scars and eye sockets.

“What do you want?!” Tetsuko cried.

As one they answered, reaching out a hand to the young girl in Tetsuko’s arms. They did not advance; only this gesture marked their request: Kiri was the prize they longed for. Kiri’s fingers tightened around the silk of the geisha’s kimono.

“Why?” Tetsuko asked. “Why her? She’s only a child.”

One, with a blade’s gash across her face with floor-length white hair, seemed to part her lips to answer, but before a sound parted her lips, the door burst open and they scattered into ash.