The Hidden World: Awakening

Without doubt the worst decision, I ever made, Daniel Murdock thought to himself, as he picked himself up from the damp forest floor. He had tripped over the root of a tree, something he couldn't even see with all the brush obscuring the ground. At least his video camera was intact, something he was thankful for as he brushed some dirt off the lens, glad to see it un-cracked. At the same time, he made sure his omamori was still hanging from his pack, another bit off good luck. Still.....if he was superstitious enough to wear it, he should have been equally superstitious to stay on the damned trail. Aokigahara forest was definitely not a place to go exploring alone.

Daniel was a student from the US, though for his vacation he decided to travel to Japan, specifically, the infamous 'Suicide Forest'. Technically, it was called Aokigahara, located at the foot of Mount Fuji, but it had one hell of a scary reputation. Demons were said to populate the forest, and thousands of people wandered into the forest to commit suicide. He had even passed signs that urged visitors to rethink any suicidal thoughts. On the bright side, he had yet to meet anyone who was going to kill themselves.....or seen any bodies. With a shiver, he thought that the forest swallowed them up, leaving no trace they had ever been there.

So again, why was he there? It wasn't something he majored in, but Daniel had one big hobby: the supernatural. Ghosts and monsters, magic and the ilk. He firmly believed they were all real, on some level, and spent a lot of his time trying to find proof. Whether it was examining online ghost videos (the majority of which were more rehearsed jump-scares than anything concrete) or visiting locations with a history of activity and stories, he was immersed in it. He didn't have any hard evidence, but that hardly deterred him.....though again, he debated whether or not venturing into the freaking suicide forest was a good idea or not.

He wondered how far from the path he was now. It had been only a few minutes of walking in a straight line, he couldn't have been that far. The sun was still up, large swaths of golden light shining where the trees had parted.....and straining to poke through where their leaves and branches gathered. Cicadas buzzed and chirped loudly in the trees, at this point his only companions. In all honesty, he wasn't sure what he'd find. Or hell, even what to look for, beyond what he had heard of: shadows moving in the trees, unnatural howls in the wind. Even, if one knew where to look, faces staring back at him from the forest. He moved his camera in slow arcs, making sure to capture everything he could, examine what he missed later.

If there is a later...he thought dimly. He wasn't that scared though, confident that despite the reputation, this place wasn't any worse than the other locations he had visited.

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Now.....now Daniel was worried. He decided to turn back, return to the trail and move on. Only when he walked back in the line he came, there was no trail. He kept walking on and on, hoping to find the familiar break in the forest floor, the well worn earth of a trail. But there was nothing. Even the trees looked different, despite Daniel swearing he had walked past them. The light of the sun was growing dim, day slowly turning to dusk. In the sky above, bright blue skies began to yield to angry hues of orange. He checked his compass, but the dial spun round and round like a top. Daniel was lost, in a haunted forest....and night was beginning to fall.

Shit shit shit...he thought, still walking around blindly in the woods. He hadn't expected to turn this into a camping trip, packing only two bottles of water and some snacks. Hell, the most he had was a first-aid kit in case he happened to trip and do real damage. What was he gonna do with that? Closing his eyes, Daniel stopped to take a deep breath, muttering "Okay, calm down....you're lost, not doomed." Maybe if he said it enough times, he'd actually believe it.

Continuing to walk, he suddenly came across something he wasn't expecting: a marker, ornate and made of stone. It was weathered, worn with moss growing on it. As soon as he saw it, hope welled up in his chest and he began looking for further signs. He found another soon enough; this time, it was a Torii, a Japanese gate. The wooden pillars that held it up were overgrown with moss, making it almost blend in with the trees....but there was a path beneath it, of stone steps leading....where? The best guess he had was that it led to a shrine perhaps, somewhere that if he had to, he could take refuge.

As he made his way up the steps though, he was unprepared for what he heard from behind him. An awful, wailing sound, as if dozens of different voices cried out at once. Turning, the sight he saw made his eyes widen in fear. The shadows beneath the trees moved, slithering as if through the air to meet together in the clearing he had just come from. That howling grew louder, more agonized as the shadows bound themselves together, writhing in the air like smoke. Smoke, that began to take shape.

He should have run. Should have turned and run away for the shrine. But like a deer in headlights, he stayed rooted to the spot, staring at the shape forming before him. At first, it was almost like a ball, a sphere of jet black smoke that curled in upon itself. It gained an odd sheen, and Daniel realized that somehow, there was a membrane around the smoke, keeping it all together. Then, as the sphere began to elongate it also began to sprout off long pieces from the whole, bending into joints before they touched the ground. Hands formed as well, long thin fingers stretching across the ground, making the bases of those limbs look for all the world like ghostly spiders, and the whole thing look like a person doubled over in pain.

Then more limbs spread out, some not even touching the ground but drifting in the air, like reeds on a windy day. The transformation reached its climax, when at the front of this body, where he would have imagined the head to be, something bulged out from under the surface of that membrane. It made an ugly sound, first like someone heaving, ready to throw up. Then a subtle, wet pop as what could only be described as a face broke through. Ethereal ichor rained down from where the face had emerged, though Daniel could really only focus on the face. Chalk white and expressionless, he realized it was in fact a kabuki mask, the mouth closed and eyes empty pools of black.

That was, until they filled up with unnervingly human eyes, darting wildly in their sockets every which way before focusing on Daniel. He felt the whole weight of this things attention on him then, and wanted badly to scream. Instead the Onryo screamed for him, its mask splitting at the lips, opening to show a mouth full of teeth far too large to be human. It wailed an almost gleeful sound, before charging at the lost human on spidery limbs.

Daniel finally screamed, turning to run away. His legs pumped beneath him against the stone steps, driving him to escape the spirit. Even as he panicked, the part of his brain still obsessed with the supernatural took note of several things. For starters, this was a legitimate sighting of a spiritual entity, an Onryo no-less. Angry, wrathful ghosts that were rumored to be incredibly violent, and he did not want to let it reach him. Supposedly, he would be worse than dead here in the forest--his soul would be trapped among the countless others, unable to move on.

Second, his goddamn omamori, the good luck charm meant to keep evil spirits away was clearly not working. That was some yen he was never getting back....if he lived long enough to gripe. Third, there was a shrine at the end of this path, he could see more Torii's set up down the path, signs of a shrine at the end. If he remembered his mythology correctly, they should be able to protect him from the Onryo, though that was iffy at best.

But what choice did he have? There was a nightmarish mass of screaming, even laughing limbs and solid smoke gaining behind him. Every one of its limbs, even the ones that seemed to be randomly placed, were moving, pushing it along up the steps. Still staring nowhere but ahead, Daniel continued to run....which allowed him to see a group of smaller things running towards him now. It was a pack of foxes, something he could scarcely believe. Some bright orange or dark red, others snowy white. And that they were foxes wasn't even the oddest thing: some had more than the one tail, small orbs of of blue or orange flame hovering over each of their tails. Teeth bared, they rushed towards Daniel.....

.....and then past him, ignoring him as if he were of no interest, continuing to the Onryo. One snarled, leaping up into the air towards a limb. In midair the foxes paws became alight with flames of their own, the tongues of fire not burning a single hair. But when they made contact with the Onryo, the gleeful scream became a cry of pain, the horror stopping in its tracks.

It made Daniel stop and turn to watch, hope flickering to life in his chest. He stared in shock and awe as the fox began clawing with paws coated in fire at the Onryo's skin, tearing off bits of the....Daniel didn't even know what to call it, the dark gunk the spirit was made of. The next thing to actually go through his head was the realization of what the foxes were: Kistune, fox spirits. He wasn't sure why they were attacking the Onryo, and he didn't care. He was close now to the shrine, so he moved to run for it.

The Onryo though, had different plans in mind. In an almost perverse manner, its cries of pain became almost....lustful, orgasmic sounds as it thrashed, throwing the clawing Kitsune off it and into the brush, before renewing its charge. "Oh fuck you!" Daniel snarled in fear and frustration. That was when the other Kitsune, with fire floating over their tails, flicked the balls of flame at the dark spirit like catapults. Each orb splashed against the surface of the Onryo's skin, spreading more of the flame over it and driving more cries from the mask-face. Still it pursued Daniel, though now it was on fire and diminishing in size, the flames eating away at it.

Crossing the threshold of the last Toreii, Daniel emerged into a larger clearing than before, the trees all pushed back to expose a small collection of buildings; the shrine. His elation at finding potential refuge was short lived however, as the Onryo was still behind him, wailing as it followed him through the Toreii. The Kitsune were hot on its heels however, leaping onto its back to claw and tear at the vulnerable rear. If it noticed them however, it didn't care as it raised a fist in a move to hammer Daniel into the ground.