n. Supposing he
were killed?

One night in a dream she saw his body carried past her, limp and
bleeding. She screamed in her sleep. Sadako awoke, terrified.

"What is the matter?"

"I dreamed of Geoffrey, my husband. Perhaps he is killed in the war."

"Do not say that," said Sadako. "It is unlucky to speak of death. It
troubles the ghosts. I have told you this house is haunted."

Certainly for Asako the Fujinami mansion had lost its charm. Even the
beautiful landscape was besieged by horrible thoughts. Every day two
or three of the Yoshiwara women died of disease and neglect, so Sadako
said and therefore every day the invisible population of the Fujinami
garden must be increasing, and the volume of their curses must be
gathering in intensity. The ghosts hissed like snakes in the bamboo
grove. They sighed in the pine branches. They nourished the dwarf
shrubs with their pollution. Beneath the waters of the lake the
corpses--women's corpses--were laid out in rows. Their thin hands
shook the reeds. Their pale faces rose at night to the surface, and
stared at the moon. The autumn maples smeared the scene with infected
blood; and the stone foxes in front of the shrine of Inari sneered and
grinned at the devil world which their foul influence had called into
being through the black witchcraft of lechery, avarice and disease.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE AUTUMN FESTIVAL

_Yo no naka ni
Ushi no Kuruma no
Nakari-seba,
Omoi no iye wo
Ikade ide-mashi?_

In this world
If there were no
Ox-cart (_i.e._ Buddhist religion),
How should we escape
From the (burning) mansion of our thought?

During October, the whole family of the Fujinami removed from Tokyo
for a few days in order to perform their religious duties at the
temple of Ikegami. Even grandfather Gennosuke emerged from his
dower-house, bringing his wife, O Tsugi. Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was in
charge of his own wife, Shidzuye San, of Sadako and of Asako. Only
Fujinami Takeshi, the son and heir, with his wife Matsuko, was absent.

There had been some further trouble in the family which had not
been confided to Asako, but which necessitated urgent steps for the
propitiation of religious influences. The Fujinami were followers of
the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. Their conspicuous devotion and their
large gifts to the priests of the temple were held to be causes of
their ever-increasing prosperity. The dead Fujinami, down from that
great-great-grandfa