Abe no Seimei lay face-down where the last of his rage had left him, as silent as a blown out storm. His face was pressed into the tatami, his one remaining eye closed, the hollow where the other had been open and ghastly, staring blankly into the darkened room.
Near the center of the room something stirred from among the mound of discarded flesh that filled the elemental circle of Earth. Perhaps mound is the wrong word. It was not strictly a pile, nor was it anything so dignified as a stack. It was, and this is as precise as language allows, a mass of meat: the combined, carefully curated, and then discarded muscle, sinew, and fat of what was once dozens of children. The whole mass was currently quivering quite unexpectedly.
Atop a fallen ink-stone nearby, the spider stood staring. Her legs, usually so quick to preen or jump or stamp in agitation, were now pressed flat against the stone. Her body as rigid as cold marble, all eight of her dark eyes completely focused on what was happening in the circle.
There are no words for what it is like to watch a pile of dead flesh remember what it is to move. You may be imagining something dramatic, a swelling, a great apocalyptic writhing as limbs shoot out and a creature emerges full-formed, roaring its rage out at the moon. But the real thing was much more subtle, and somehow infinitely worse.
A pulse ran through the mound, a ripple, like the quiver that runs down a sleeping dog’s body when it dreams of particularly murderous rabbits. A fold of muscle along the upper surface contracted, tensed, and then peeled away from the rest before flopping back down. Then the whole mass contracted, drawing in on itself with a fleshy clap. Followed by another contraction, another release. The rhythm was wrong, nothing like a heartbeat or the breathing of a living thing. No my children, nothing living stirred within the circle this night.
A rope of muscle, thicker than a man’s thumb, reached upward. It held there, wobbling, the effort visible in every fiber. The rope trembled, then twisted suddenly toward the spider, and for a long moment it seemed to regard her, though the mass contained no eyes, ears, or any other organ to sense her with.
On the ink-stone, the spider began to shake.
Since her awakening, the spider had known pain. She had experienced such sorrow that her tiny body could barely contain it all, but not until now, as this alien, faceless thing seemed to be watching her, did she finally know what it was to fear.
The flesh pile heaved forward, all at once. It reached for her, if such a word could be said to apply to something wholly devoid of limbs. The whole mass lurched forward in a singular, unified effort. The surface smeared, a wet smack as it flopped onto the floor outside the ruined circle.
The mass twitched, then righted itself. It flopped again, this time a mere hands span from the spider.
The spider leapt away, catching itself on the edge of the fallen writing desk, blue body pulled in tight and small to avoid notice.
The mass stopped for a moment, then lurched a third time. It had turned, now moving in the direction of the desk the spider perched on. Slowly, awkwardly, the thing seemed to discover that it could slide itself forward if it kept all the contractions on one side, and then let go at the last possible moment. It did this four times in creeping succession. The fourth contraction bringing it to the bottom of the desk.
The meat creature paused again. Another rope of flesh reached up, much longer this time, towards where the spider crouched. The smell of it was sharp and sour, a reek of copper and death.
The spider leapt again. This time across the room. She scuttled beneath some shattered crockery, her every instinct screaming to flee, to hide.
The rope of raw meat slapped the desk where she had been, stuck for a second, then slid off, smearing the lacquer with a long, greasy mark. It fell stiff, like a tree, landing on the tatami flooring, extending far from the main mass.
Another pause, as if the thing was searching for the spider. Then the rope of flesh contracted powerfully, pulling the creature forward like the tentacle of an octopus. It was moving much faster now. A second and third tentacle of pale meat shot out, pulling it rapidly towards her hiding place.
The spider skittered further into the ruined remnants of furniture, but she could still hear it coming. She could feel it, the vibrations through the wood echoing up her pedipalps, the percussion of each ropey muscle as it lashed itself closer and closer. She ran, blue legs a blur, racing for the narrow gap under the hearth of the old kamado. As she squeezed herself into the darkness, the flesh creature quickly crossed the room. It did not circle around the detritus and broken items littering the ground. Instead, it reflexively batted the refuse aside, or simply flowed over it if it proved too large.
The kamado oven was an ancient clay thing, the gap beneath it just wide enough for a small rat. More than enough room for a tiny jumping spider, but far too small for the child-sized mass of flesh following her. The spider crept as far back within the darkness as she could, and at last felt safe. The cold soot above and below, the sheltering press of clay, the absolute silence. Here, she thought, nothing could reach her.
A moment passed. She peered out from the darkness, scanning with all eight eyes.
The mass of meat came into view and halted just outside the oven’s base. A pale rope of muscle extended from the main body, groping blindly into the narrow space underneath. It stretched towards her, but reached its limit long before reaching where she crouched at the back. The tentacle wavered in the air, flexing as if it would rip itself free of the main mass to reach her, before, to her great reassurance, it finally retracted.
The spider exhaled with a silent shudder of relief.
Then the creature came again, this time bracing against the edge of the oven’s mouth. The flesh seemingly had no need to squeeze into the space; it simply flowed. The boneless mass deformed, elongated, and in a soft, silent surge, filled the entire gap beneath the oven with its own eager self.
The spider shot backward, scrabbling deeper. The tunnel narrowed tight around her. Soot smeared her belly, hairs along her back pulled out at the root. For one horror-soaked second she was completely stuck in the blackness with the creature pressing ever forward, and then with a pop, she was tumbling out the other side.
The thing followed without pause, squeezing snake-like through the tiny exit hole as if from a meat grinder.
There was no pause for orientation. The spider hit the ground, legs already moving. She sprinted across the cold tile, body low, each leap a tiny desperate burst. The creature was close behind, yanking itself rapidly forward tentacle by tentacle.
The spider took a hard left, straight for Seimei’s comatose form. Surely, she thought, the great onmyoji alone could stop this malevolent beast. She slipped beneath a small collapsed shelf, ducked a splintered board, vaulted over a spilled bowl of glue. Behind her, the meat mass barreled after, battering the shelf aside with such violence that the whole thing shattered, the snap like a bone breaking. Where it needed to go around something, it simply didn’t: instead, a wedge formed within the mass, the two halves separating to circle around the object, and rejoining into a unified mound on the other side. Broken remains of spirit-jars rolled in its wake, their insides fizzing out brief, nervous exhalations.
The spider was losing the race. There was only one more chance. She ran, heart hammering, straight up the leg of an overturned chair. She took the incline in three hops, and then leapt mightily through open air for the scrawl-stained wall of the room itself.
Now, the only path was up. The spider spun a silk anchor and jumped up the wall, catching the vertical beam at the room’s corner in three calculated bursts.
She did not need to look to know her final gambit had failed.
She could feel the wooden wall flexing beneath her, groaning at the sudden, inhuman weight following her up the wall. The meat creature’s tentacles dug into the old cedar, splinters lodging in its bulk, but it never slowed. Its gelatinous nature clinging to every crack and joint in the carpentry. Pulling it up without rest. Relentlessly pursuing her.
Near the ceiling, the spider felt her legs begin to shake. Her tiny body was reaching the limits of its endurance. She looked down. The mass was already upon her, a featureless, child-sized bolus, tentacle rising, stretching, grasping.
There was no time for calculation. No space for the innate geometry that was the art of her particular arachnid race.
She leapt without looking.
She misjudged.
She landed on the bowl end of a wooden rice spoon that jutted from a high shelf’s lip. The force of her landing drove the spoon down, catapulting her off the shelf and into open space. She tumbled, legs windmilling, and hit the tatami floor with a force that stunned her. The spoon, now dislodged, spun after her and landed with a heavy clatter, pinning her small body flat to the mat.
Everything was silent, except for the slow, sticky sound of fatty flesh sliding down a wall.
Now that the spider was no longer moving, the mass descended with a measured, almost lazy pace, seemingly content to take its time now that she was trapped. Trapped, like a fly in a web. The irony was not lost on the spider.
The creature reached the floor and paused. From where she lay, the spider saw it only as a shadowed bulge at the edge of her vision, framed by shivering moonlight. It crept towards her: a gentle slap, a wet squelch, then the slight hiss of fat and grease dragged across the floor. Each pause between sounds was longer than the last, as if the creature was savoring the moment, terribly slow, and horribly inevitable.
The mass slid completely into view a hair’s breadth from her prostrate form, filling her vision with nothing but red and mottled gray flesh. A tentacle separated from the whole and gradually reached out, pausing at the edge of the rice spoon that was pinning her. It prodded the spoon once, twice, then with a casual flick batted the utensil across the room.
Frozen in pure, animal terror, the spider did not move.
The tentacle wrapped around her leisurely. It was surprisingly warm and disturbingly moist. Like the disembodied tongue of some long-forgotten beast.
The spider still couldn’t move, all muscles locked in the rigor mortis of fear. She waited for the squeeze, the snap, the cold rush of oblivion.
A second tentacle rose from the mass. It hovered for a moment over her head, poised to strike. Then it shot forward.
Gently, with infinite care, it began to stroke the spider’s upturned head. A series of careful, steady passes from the top of her cephalothorax down the length of her abdomen. It repeated this again, and again, with a rhythm that, had the spider been traditionally born, would have reminded her of her own mother’s grooming.
Another tentacle joined the first, patting softly at her side, as if to say: there, there. It’s all going to be alright now.
The weight of the mass settled around her, but it never pressed. It only surrounded, enclosed, offered warmth where no warmth had ever been wanted.
It was not, I must say, a very pleasant feeling, but it certainly beat the alternative.
Now, , I can see you look just as confused as the spider did. Please, don’t be cross with me. Allow me to explain.
If I made you feel unsettled, do not be ashamed. I myself do not care for the sight of helpless creatures being toyed with by things beyond our mortal ken, even when the thing in question ends up so earnest in their affections. But you must remember, dear children, this is a story of the Five Elements. The meat beast, or Nuppeppō as we shall now call it, for that is what it was, is made up of nothing but the purest expression of the Earth element.
There are many yokai, or supernatural creatures in this world, and I dare say before our tale is through we shall meet many. But a Nuppeppō is a very special yokai, in that this ambulatory mass of meat is the only one of its kind that ever was, and the only one that will ever be.
The Earth-aligned meat it was made of, as the ancients saw it, does not seek or desire. Earth cannot want, because it has no Wood element to want with; cannot rage, because it has no Fire to feel with. Its only power is in holding together, in the binding of many parts into one whole, the unceasing work of making things stick and stay and never let go.
And so, when Nuppeppō awoke to find itself alone in the world, and then noticed a small, sad, frightened thing at the edge of its reach, what else could it do? The instinct was literally elemental; it could only seek to draw it close, as Earth must. It could only act to hold tight and protect.
So it was that Nuppeppō, with no brain to think or heart to feel, wrapped itself around the trembling spider and offered her what little solace it could: a warmth, a steady pressure, a slow and rhythmic motion like an ocean tide of human flesh.
The spider did not resist. She dared not move at all, unless you count the tiny vibrations in her front legs, or the way her eyes, so wide and black, reflected the pale and grotesque shape above her.
In another part of the room, Seimei did not stir. To Nuppeppō’s limited senses, Seimei’s comatose state was not present at all. He was not showing any negative emotion to attract the yokai’s attention, and was therefore as inert and lifeless as the wall, colder than the floor, a thing to be ignored.
It was at this moment, when all seemed disturbingly cozy, that a new noise entered the room. Not from within the ruined pagoda, but from beyond it.
You see children, one cannot hope to expend the kind of necromantic power that Abe no Seimei had gathered that night, without attracting the attention of the type of things you very much do not want attending you.
At first, it was nothing but the pitter-patter of liquid drip-drip-dripping on the cobblestones outside, as if the beginning of a gentle rain. But then came the next sound: a scratching, as of claws or nails or something worse, questing along the outer door, almost like an animal seeking entry.
But what was now sliding the door slowly open was no animal, nor human, but like Nuppeppō it was something other. And like Nuppeppō it was very much dead, and yet somehow terribly, horribly alive.
Thanks for reading. This story is a work in progress which I hope to some day publish. As such, I welcome all comments and constructive criticism.
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This was my face the entire time btw: 😧🥴🥴🤢
This was so suspenseful and vivid I forgot everything while I read it. The twist had me reeling with surprise, as did this part: "Now, Iva, I can see you look just as confused as the spider did. Now, don’t be cross with me. Please, allow me to explain." Thank you for another amazing chapter!