Back into the world of Juni Ito and not one, but actually two interesting shorts. This first was published in 2003, with the variant in 2004. I read them both in the UK collection Smashed. To start with, however, the original story is set in a small Japanese village where a travelling haunted house attraction establishes itself.
Villagers are sceptical, given the very high price of entrance. However the showman behind the haunt allows one villager to enter for free and he soon runs out terrified. Koichi and Satoshi are young boys who decide to sneak in after hours. They are caught by the showman admires their moxy and allows them to enter.
At first the haunt seems tame but then exhibits are revealed to be live – a severed head speaks and they meet a crucified man. They are, it is claimed, the showman’s siblings and he uses magical powers to hold them enslaved and tortured. By far the worst torture is being forced to look after the showman’s son (the mother, an abomination, is not with them). At this point the spitting of nails tells us that the showman is none other than an adult Soichi.
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| adult Soichi and Miss Fuchi |
When we last saw Soichi, in the story Rumors, he was still a boy and facing an irate Miss Fuchi – the shark-mawed recurring vampiric character. When we see his son, cannibalistic with rows of sharp teeth, it is clear that the child is Soichi and Miss Fuchi’s offspring (as a youth, Soichi had been rather taken with her when he saw her photo in a fashion magazine).
I won’t spoil the fate of the two boys but it is worth noting the ending as Miss Fuchi, Soichi’s partner (I assume not wife as the child is refered to as a bastard), turns up and drags him away, vowing to kill him if he runs away again. This, in itself, would be an interesting coda to the stories Junji Ito has given us about both Soichi and Miss Fuchi. However, the next year he did a variant version of this story entitled The Mystery of the Haunted House: Soichi's Version (also published as The Souichi Front).
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| offspring |
Strangely, the story does not start with Soichi but his cousin Michina, who has been searching for the family since they all went missing. She is actually about to give up when she meets the son of a landlady who spits nails. He has acted strangely since a travelling Haunt came to town. As she investigates, she discovers examples of changed behaviour in children wherever this show went (essentially Soichi is cursing children to act like him).
She eventually tracks down the haunt but meets a dishevelled old man first of all, who is fleeing the haunt where he was indentured, she does not realise at first that this is the wreck of the man who was her cousin (and Soichi’s brother) Koichi. The Haunt is much like the first variant and she finds the son in a cage. However, in this Miss Fuchi is not as forgiving when she arrives and we see her jaws around Soichi’s head (with the son biting into his shoulder). The real twist, however, is that at this point Soichi (still a child) awakens… was the Haunt only a dream… one of the kids from the first variant shares his brother’s name… or perhaps this variant featured a vision of the future, with the first variant being part of his actual story?
In Hardback @ Amazon US
In Hardback @ Amazon UK
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