It was when I was in the fifth grade of elementary school.
At the time, I was a naughty kid who was always misbehaving.
I and my friend K was always getting scolded.
One day during summer vacation, K, who had been scolded so severely
K asked me to run away from home.
I couldn’t possibly object to such a fun idea.
We packed a big backpack for the field trip with snacks, juice, comic books, and other important things the kids could think of, and after dinner, we met up at a nearby park.
I think it was around 8:00 PM.
But, we were shallow kids.
There was no way we could go anywhere.
“What are we going to do?”
After some discussion, we decided on a hut in a field.
I live in the countryside of Nagano.
When you leave the village, you are surrounded by fields and open fields.
In the fields, there were huts dotted with farm implements and straw bundles.
We hid in one of these shacks, which appeared to be uninhabited.
Inside was a disused hand-pushed tiller?
The rest was just a pile of straw that looked like it would make a good bed.
We lit the battery-powered lanterns we had brought with us and
We were enjoying our freedom, eating snacks, drinking juice, and reading each other’s manga.
How long had it been?
We heard a noise outside.
K and I jumped up and
We hurriedly turned off the light of the lantern.
We thought it might be our parents or the owner of the hut who had come looking for us.
We both crawled into the straw.
I was hiding to catch my breath.
We heard a strange sound.
It sounded like something being dragged across the gravel.
The sound seemed to be going around the hut.
“…what is it?”
“You want to see what’s going on?”
We quietly got out of the straw and moved closer to the glass window.
“・・・・・!!!”
There was an old woman there.
She was bent at the waist and skinny as if she were only skin and bones.
Her hair was long and gray, growing out in a shaggy mess.
“What the hell is that? …”
K asked me in a whisper, but I didn’t know either.
The old woman was dragging something like a sack.
It looked like a big burlap sack.
The mouth was tied shut and the old woman was holding the end of a long string.
The sound from before seemed to be her dragging it.
K said, “…Oh no, that’s not good. Isn’t that Yamamba?”
We became frightened and slowly tried to move away from the window.
At that time, K knocked over a hoe or a plow that was standing on the ground.
I looked out the window in a panic and saw an old woman coming toward us at a great speed!
I pulled K and jumped into the pile of straw.
We jumped into the straw and the old woman opened the door almost simultaneously.
We put our hands over our mouths and tried not to scream!
“What… is there…” the old woman said in a hoarse voice.
Her eyes narrowed and she looked around the hut.
“Come on out of there, I won’t hurt you…”
I stared through the straw at the old woman’s behavior.
I stopped to look at the burlap sack she was dragging.
Something was wriggling around in there.
And then, something popped out from inside.
(・・・・・!)
I could not believe my eyes.
It looked like a human hand.
It looked like a child’s hand.
“Stay!”
When the old woman noticed it, she kicked the bag with her foot.
She grabbed a child’s hands and shoved them into the sack.
“Here it is…”
The old woman picked up a farm tool, which looked like a large fork, and put it in her hand.
She came over to the pile of straw where we were hiding.
Then she began to thrust it into the pile of straw.
We were half crying as we dodged the fork.
If it weren’t for the large pile of straw, we would have been skewered by now.
As the straw crumbled, I and K dived to the far end of the wall.
As expected, the forks could not reach this far.
How long did we endure?
“Hmmm, maybe it was my imagination…”
She threw away the fork, carried the burlap sack again, and walked out of the hut.
The sound was fading away.
After the sound stopped, K and I remained stuck in the straw for a while.
We were stuck in the straw for a while.
“Is she… gone?”
K finally spoke to me.
“Maybe…”
But I was still in a daze, not wanting to get out of the straw.
I was still standing there in a daze.
I suddenly realized that air was coming in through the wall behind my back.
I discovered a hole in the wall about five centimeters wide.
The moment I brought my face close to it to see what was going on outside.
“Oh, that’s a delicious-looking… child… !”
With an old woman’s voice.
A wrinkled hand was thrust into the hole!
I was grabbed firmly by the face and pulled toward the hole.
“OHHHH!!!!!!!!”
The smell of blood and fear made me faint.
The next thing I knew, I found myself in a neighborhood firemen’s hut.
K and I were found passed out in the shed by the local firefighters who had been dispatched at the request of our parents.
They were very angry with us.
I and K were so relieved that we cried.
When I told both parents about last night’s incident, they scolded me again, saying it was a dream.
But that can’t be true.
I still have the marks of the old woman’s fingers on my face like a bruise.
