Wai‘anae was warm & still and the night was dark & quiet when they all jumped into a Nissan truck headed to the hidden graveyard. Using their flashlights to help them find their way through the maze of headstones, they noticed that all markers seemed to be engraved with Japanese characters that looked like they were crudely scrawled into the stone by someone’s finger. The teens grew nervous and an eerie feeling fell across the group that made everyone’s skin crawl and gave them the overwhelming sensation that whoever it was that wrote out the crude Kanji was going to appear at any second.
The center of the old cemetery was marked by a single monolithic stone that stood out among all the others because it was the only one of its kind. The group gathered before the stone and then turned their backs to it and placed their innocent friend in front of them. Kehau, the leader of the onclave handed him a digital camera while the rest of the group placed their hands on his shoulders and back.
“Now,” said Kehau, “As we place our hands on Alba’s shoulders, we are to focus on the image of a ghost in a white kimono since we’re in a Japanese cemetery. Everybody concentrate.”
The entire group cast their heads down and began to focus on the image that Kehau decribed.
“You too, Alba,” Kehau whispered.
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Alba answered.
“If we are really focused, Alba will feel our energy and he’ll know when to take the picture. Focus everybody, focus.” Kehau commanded.
Suddenly, a tremendous surge of energy went through the group and funneled right into Alba. As the boy lurched forward and pressed the button, it continually flashed and took pictures non-stop. The flash was so bright that it illuminated what seemed to be a woman standing at the opposite end of the cemetery, she was dressed in white with long black hair. She was holding something in her arms, something that caused blood to slowly stain her white dress, except that it wasn’t a dress. It was a white robe of some kind that was tied at the waist. The woman approached the group of young teenagers and, as she drew closer, they realized that she was holding a baby. It wasn’t moving. They also realized that they could see right through her.
“Someone,” the ghostly form said, “Someone please feed my baby? Please?”
Alba was in a trance-like stupor now as he held up the camera in front of him with the flash going off, again and again.
“She won’t stop crying and I have no food to give her,” the ghost continued, “Please feed her. Her crying, her crying is driving me crazy.”
They heard it, the mad incessant crying of the infant child. The sound was in their heads, it made them dizzy.
“Won’t someone help me?” The ghost pleaded. “I don’t know what I might do, I don’t know what I might do.”
The ghostly woman in white suddenly shrieked at the top of her lungs, “STOP CRYING!”
The whole group screamed in return, now racked with maddening fear.
The ghost was gone. The group made a mad scramble for the Nissan truck and as they did, they stumbled over the headstones, causing scrapes and bruises all over their knees and shins. Alba still stood there in a catatonic state, still talking pictures. Kehau yanked him by the shirt and practically dragged him to the truck where she shoved him into the passenger’s seat and slammed the door. Kehau started the vehicle up and stomped on the gas pedal. The Nissan seemed to float back and forth on the dirt path before its tires finally gripped the pavement and screeched out into the night. It didn’t get far.
Just before Kehau rounded the corner at Kaneana cave, the ghost of the woman and her blood-soaked baby appeared in the middle of the road. She was holding up her infant child now as if she were offering up a sacrifice.
“Feed my baby please, feed my baby,” she pleaded.
Kehau swerved too hard to the left, veering off the road and hitting the guardrail. The impact caused the truck to spin completely around throwing the passengers in the bed of the truck to the hard ground while the momentum still carried the truck forward. The occupants of the cab lurched forward as the grill of the Nissan met a telephone pole. The teenagers piled out, screaming in horror.
Dizzy and in pain with adrenaline running through her veins, Kehau first looked for the ghost of the mother and her bloody infant but saw only darkness. Seeing her friends beginning to gather around her, she thought they were all safe. Then she realized that Alba was missing. Her gaze focused on the burning wreckage and she saw him still in the passenger’s seat, screaming.
...
It was over a year before Kehau could even bring herself to pass the cave again. The one time she did, a friend was bringing her to Yokohama’s one afternoon. It was meant as a kind of therapy where Kehau could just unwind after months of depression and sadness. Just a quiet barbecue on the beach with some close friends. They ended up leaving when it was dark. Kehau had felt better than she had since the crash that killed her innocent friend. She thought she could finally find some peace.
As they rounded bend after Makua, Kehau saw a flash, then another, just after Kaneana cave, beyond the hill. Still another and many more flashes in a quick succession. Approaching the top of the rise, the driver swerved and then slowed down to a crawl.
At the crest of that low hill, Kehau’s eyes adjusted to the darkness once again to see the outline of a person just barely beyond the beam of the car’s headlights. As they approached, her eyes were able to make out who was standing before them but her brain couldn’t wrap itself around what she was seeing. There before them, in the middle of the road, was Alba, walking towards them with a camera in-hand, still taking pictures.
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