In my parents’ small village, when a woman dies, the custom is to gather 10 men from the village on the night of the funeral.
They keep burning candles and incense incenses while having a party.
The candles have a certain shape. The youngest of the men selected for the year’s turn carves a shape that looks like a broken down Buddha statue.
Various charms are placed on the windows and water fountains of the house to ward off evil spirits, and the watch is kept to prevent them from coming off.
No one except the watchman is allowed to enter the house that night, even if he is a member of the household.
There are several other detailed rules.
These were customs that had been handed down from generation to generation to protect the corpse from a demon called a Kyassya.
I was 16 years old when I participated in the night watch for the first time.
A neighbor’s new wife died young.
I carved the candles in the daytime as my grandfather had taught me.
Late at night, we lit the candles and began to feast.
The members ranged from young to middle-aged to old, all of whom had the night watch before except for me.
From my family, I and my brother, who was five years older than me, participated in the party.
The feast proceeded smoothly (or rather, all but the oldest were unwilling to take the night watch).
Time passed in an awkward atmosphere, even for a kid like me.
I was not allowed to drink alcohol, so I just drank juice.
Around one o’clock, I couldn’t resist sleepiness and went to the washroom to wash my face.
I noticed that the amulet on the smaller, less conspicuous of the two windows in the bathroom was tilted.
All the window screens were checked once an hour by young men, including my brother.
Perhaps they were too lazy to check the window coverings strictly.
Normally, they would have reported to the old man the moment they found them and had to re-decorate them.
However, I decided to straighten it up by myself and left it alone.
I didn’t want to see my brother scolded by the old man.
Soon after returning to my seat, I heard a tremendous banging on the front door.
Surprised, several of us went to the front door, whereupon the next-door neighbor burst out in a blood-curdling frenzy: “There’s Kyassyer! It went over my house and onto this property!!”
For a moment, I was shocked at what he was saying, but then I realized that the old men and the middle-aged men were all talking about the same thing.
The old men and the middle-aged men turned red and rushed to check the house, yelling at the older brothers who had neglected to look around.
The uncle next door tried to go up to the house as if it was a matter of course, but my brother stopped him, saying that he couldn’t break the rule.
He said, “This is no time to talk about that! Fix the amulet quickly! Let me in!”
He started to get angry.
My brother and my senior tried to calm him down, but he wouldn’t listen to them.
He would say, “Let me in, let me in, let me in! and “oooohhhh!”
He began to emit strange noises.
His body remained erect and immobile, and only his face was frowning as he yelled.
His gaze is slack, and it is hard to tell where he is looking.
I think we were all thinking that we couldn’t break the rule any more, partly because of the guilt about the amulet.
Anyway, I calmed down the man who kept yelling at me in a loud voice.
After about 10 minutes, he sighed heavily, said, “That’s enough!”
He closed the door and left.
Almost at the same time, the old man returned and scolded us for the leaning of the bathroom amulet.
When we all gathered around and I told them about our neighbor’s uncle, they all turned pale.
We all turned pale and muttered, “It’s Kyassyer, Kyassyer…”.
That night we stopped drinking until dawn, and kept a tight watch on the whole place, and the dawn broke without incident.
I felt like I was not alive to say the least.
Later that day
That night, the man next door suddenly fell ill with a cold and fell asleep.
His wife nursed him until late at night.
At the time in question, his wife was still nursing him.
The uncle was indeed lying on the futon. He had not taken a single step outside.
There is a strict way to display amulet ornaments, and I was supposed to have been taught how to do it.
I didn’t seem to have listened carefully enough.
The dead body (or is it more like a soul? The legend goes that if a fire or amulet is not kept out, the Kyassyer will enter the house)
It is said that a house whose corpse is stolen will never prosper again.
Do not befriend the Kyassyer.
If the Kyassyer likes you, it will surely come to your house when you die.
The old man who took part in the second funeral said…
The last time he saw Kyassyer was decades ago.
His father saw it when he was young.
He scolded me harshly, “If your generation continues to be like that, the village will perish.”
This is the only horror experience I have ever had around me.
