The Eyes

The dirt road was little more than a scar carved through the Japanese countryside. The four men trudged along, their boots kicking up dust, their patience thinning. The air smelled of damp earth and distant rain. “This is a shortcut?” Tom muttered, his voice flat with disbelief.

Joseph, the one who had insisted he knew the way, only scratched at his greasy beard. “I’ve been to this part of Japan before,” he said, but even he no longer sounded convinced. But gosh, the scenery they were passing was gorgeous.

They had been walking for hours, and Benjamin needed the toilet; he had a ten-turd pile up on the intestinal freeway. Looking for some inn that a fat man with a beard on both necks swore was out this way.

“So, Joseph,” Tom continued, towering over the others. They looked up at his flamingo-colored face. “When exactly do we reach this inn?”

James shot him a sharp look, his nerves already frayed. “Does it even matter, Tom? The further we get from Kyoto, the better.”

Benjamin scoffed, shaking his head. His face was covered in fuzzy stubble. “Maybe this will teach you two a lesson,” he said, his tone cutting. “Don’t let me drink so much damn sake.”

“And don’t let me hire a hooker,” Joseph added, as though it were some joke.

Benjamin nodded, grinning, but James wasn’t laughing.

James looked over at Joseph, a slick-looking weasel of a man. Joseph smiled at him, his mouth full of rotting teeth. “Joseph,” James said, his voice tight. “Her being a hooker and the amount of sake you and Benjamin drank doesn’t excuse the fact that you chopped up a woman.”

A cold silence settled between them, thick as the mist that curled around the trees. James’s pulse thudded against his ribs to the point where it was almost painful. He looked at Joseph and Benjamin—two men he had known for years, men he had once called brothers—and for the first time, he was afraid of them.

Then, suddenly, his breath caught. “The inn!” he cried, pointing ahead.

Perched atop a hill, the building loomed, its wooden beams blackened with age. It was traditional, yes, with its sliding doors and curved roof, but something about it felt wrong. James no longer cared. He only wanted a locked door between himself and the men beside him.

Benjamin’s voice broke the tension. “And what are you guys gonna do once we check in?” He grinned, eyes glinting in the dim light as they flicked between James and Tom. “Not let me have any sake?”

Tom and James didn’t answer. They only bolted up the hill, their heavy steps swallowed by the mist. Joseph and Benjamin followed at a slower pace.

As they neared the entrance, they spotted a figure—a little old man sweeping the steps. He moved slowly, deliberately, as if he had been performing this task for centuries. Joseph raised a hand in greeting.

The old man stopped.

His head lifted, and a smile spread across his wrinkled face. Too wide. Too slow.

Without a word, he turned and beckoned them inside.

The inn smelled of cedar and something else. Something faint, like decay just beneath the surface. “Tatta ichi heya?”

Tom quickly corrected him; he knew this assumption from the inn in Kyoto. “Two rooms. James and I in one, Joseph and Benjamin in the other.”

Joseph crossed his arms, annoyed. “She was just a hooker,” he muttered under his breath, as if saying it aloud could make it better.

Outside, the trees rustled. But there was no wind. This was getting away from reality and into the territory of a bad dream. And somewhere, down the darkened hallways of the old inn, a shoji door slid open on its own.

The four men followed the old man up the narrow wooden staircase, their footsteps hollow against the aged planks. The walls pressed in close, the dim light from a single paper lantern casting shifting shadows.

At the top, he gestured to two rooms across from each other—mirror images, down to the plain tatami mats and shoji doors.

“Nihongo wa hanashimasu ka?” the old man asked, his voice as thin as brittle paper.

Tom shook his head; he only knew what he had heard before. Benjamin knew some textbook phrases, and Joseph—well, Joseph at least knew enough to hire a hooker. Tom doubted that it was something Duolingo covered.

“Bottom floor is bath,” the old man added before shuffling away, his sandaled feet whispering against the floor.

James exhaled, rolling his stiff shoulders. “I could sure use a soak tonight. Anyone wanna join?”

“I will,” Joseph said immediately.

James frowned. He’d been hoping Tom would take him up on it instead.

“We should put our stuff down first,” Tom said, his voice firm, fatherly. It suited him—he was the oldest by two years.

He slid open the shoji door and motioned for James to follow. The paper-thin walls barely muffled the sound of Benjamin and Joseph shutting their own door across the hall.

The moment their room was sealed, James turned to Tom. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Tom let out a slow, measured breath. “I don’t know.”

He turned to the closet, reaching for the neatly folded futons and blankets stacked on the top shelf.

Then he screamed.

Falling backwards, arms flailing, the blankets tumbled down around him in a soft avalanche. The shoji door snapped open.

“What the hell?!” Benjamin’s voice cut through the air from the other room.

Tom’s breath hitched. His hand trembled as he pointed up to the closet. His voice came out in a strangled gasp.

“Eyes,” he whispered. “Eyes!”

Benjamin hesitated, then frowned. “What?”

Tom swallowed hard, his pulse hammering in his skull. “It was… her eyes. Nyūsatsu’s eyes.”

Benjamin blinked. “Nyūsatsu?”

Joseph snapped his fingers. “Oh, hey—wasn’t that the hooker’s name?”

Tom’s head jerked towards him. “You didn’t even remember her name? What the fuck is wrong with you two?”

Benjamin groaned, rubbing his temples. “Jesus, I was drunk. You know I can’t remember shit when I’m thirteen sakes deep.”

Tom pulled himself up, rubbing his arms as if trying to shake off the lingering cold. He forced a laugh, but it came out hollow. “I’m probably just tired. And, you know, finding out my two best friends murdered a woman can mess with your head.”

James shook his head, exhaling sharply. He shoved past them. “I’m going to take that soak now—before I start seeing shit too.”

The shoji door slid shut behind him.

Joseph followed James down the stairs, his presence clinging like the damp stench of old sweat and alcohol. His breath was thick with sake, his voice slurred but smug.

“Good to get some one-on-one time,” Joseph murmured.

James didn’t slow his pace. “We’ve been together this whole damn trip.”

James looked over at Joseph and finally realised that his best friend in the entire world had the soul of a snake and the charm to match. “Not like this.” Joseph grinned, his teeth yellowed in the dim light. “You don’t wanna hear the real reason I left Ruth?”

James’s stomach twisted. The thought of Joseph’s first wife sent an ugly chill creeping up his spine. Had she met the same fate as that poor woman in Kyoto?

They stepped into the bathing area, a large tiled room that echoed with the faint drip-drip of unseen water. The air was thick with steam, but there was no warmth in it—only a clinging dampness that made James’s skin crawl.

The back wall held six deep soaking tubs, the water inside eerily still. Between the tubs and the entrance, five rows of squat plastic stools faced fogged-over mirrors, each with a handheld shower attachment hanging limply from the wall.

James didn’t want to be here.

“You don’t sit next to me,” Joseph grunted as he dropped onto a stool, reaching for a bucket.

“Like I’d want to.”

James turned his back to him, stripping down and sitting on the next aisle over. The water trickled down his spine, cool despite the heat of the bathhouse. He tried to relax, scrubbing his arms, forcing himself to think of home. He longed for the comfort of something familiar—his own bed, the hum of a TV in the background, anything but the suffocating quiet of this place.

Then Joseph made a sound—a low, guttural groan, half a gag.

James exhaled sharply. “What now?”

Joseph didn’t answer right away. There was only the shuffle of movement, a sharp intake of breath. Then something wet and heavy landed on James’s head with a sickening slap.