Oni

The story

On the last night of winter, high on the mountain, nobody went outside after sunset.

Everyone knew it, even the children. The next day spring would begin, but that night, between one season and the next, there is a moment when doors open by themselves. And the most dangerous door is the one that faces north-east, where the sky is darkest. That, the old people said, is where the oni come from.

The girl had heard the story a thousand times and had never quite believed it. She was twelve, with a little brother of five, a mother who sewed by the fire and a grandmother with hands as crooked as roots. Her father had gone down to the valley to sell charcoal, and in the afternoon the snow had closed the path behind him.

“Tonight we sleep with the door shut tight,” said the grandmother. She set a basket of roasted beans by the threshold, still warm and smelling of smoke. Above the entrance she had hung a thorny branch and the head of a sardine. “And these stay here. Nobody touches them.”

“Not even one?” asked the little brother.

“Not even one.”

Around midnight the wind dropped. It did not fade slowly: it stopped, all at once, like a hand closing. The fire seemed lower, the shadows longer, and the room, which a moment before had been warm and full of small noises, became very large. The dog, which had been growling under the veranda all evening, fell silent. Not even a whimper.

Then, on the snow, footsteps.

They were not a man's footsteps. They were slow and heavy, like someone carrying a load of iron: a thud, a pause, a thud. With every thud the cups trembled on the shelf. The mother put down her needle. The grandmother raised a finger, and nobody breathed.

On the paper door, lit by the last embers, a shadow appeared. It was almost as tall as the door. It had two horns on its head, and in its hand something long and thick, covered in spikes.

“Open up,” said a voice.

It was a deep, cracked voice, like a stone dragged across ice.

“I have walked for three days. I am cold. You are good people, you mountain folk. Open to a traveller.”

No one answered. The little boy hid his face in his mother's lap. The club scraped slowly down the doorpost, with a sound like fingernails on a plate.

“Open up,” said the voice. And then, more softly, in a way the girl recognised at once: “It's me. The charcoal's sold, I made it back. Open the door, my girl, it's freezing out here.”

It was her father's voice.

The girl stood up, almost without noticing. She took one step, then another. Her hand was already on the latch when the grandmother's dry fingers closed around her wrist, with a strength that did not seem possible.

“Your father doesn't knock,” she whispered. “Your father calls the dog by its name. Can you hear the dog?”

There was no dog to hear. Not a whimper, not a breath, and since those footsteps had come, nobody had heard it move.

Behind the door, the voice laughed. It was the stone voice again.

“A pity,” it said. “I was really hungry.”

The paper of the door bulged inwards, like a sail. Through the gap between the door and the wall a finger slid in: as thick as the handle of a spade, red as an ember, with a black, curved nail. It felt the air. It searched for the latch.

“Now,” said the grandmother.

She pushed a handful of beans into the girl's hand. “With all your strength. And shout it.”

The girl threw. The beans hit the door with a sound like hail.

“Oni out!”

The finger twitched. From the darkness came a hiss, like water thrown on red-hot iron. The mother grabbed a handful of beans, then the grandmother, then even the little boy, with shaking hands, and all together they shouted into the room, their voices cracking:

“Oni out! Good luck in! Oni out! Good luck in!”

Something howled. It was not a howl of pain: it was more like rage, a roar that shook the roof and sent ash drifting down from the ceiling. The finger vanished. There was one blow, just one, so hard that the door jumped on its hinges. Then the footsteps, still heavy, but faster, and the club dragging a long furrow through the snow.

They moved away towards the north-east, fainter and fainter, until they melted into the silence.

Then, somewhere under the veranda, the dog began to whimper.

Nobody slept. They sat by the fire, huddled together, listening to every creak of the wood, until the paper of the door turned grey and then white. At some point the mother realised she was still holding her needle, and could not remember picking it up again.

When the girl opened the door, the sun was already high and the snow glittered so brightly it hurt her eyes. On the path were footprints as big as washbasins, deep, with three toes. They climbed towards the ridge, straight towards the north-east, and they did not come back.

On the doorstep, driven into the wood, was a single thing. An iron stud, black, as big as a fist.

“Let me see,” said the grandmother. She pulled it out of the wood with two fingers, turned it over and slipped it into her sleeve. “The old folk keep these above the door,” she said. “A monster that has lost a piece of itself is more careful. And they say that sometimes, if you put it where it can be seen, it scares off worse ones.”

In some villages higher up, even today, people put a tile with an oni's face on the roof, with crooked teeth and bulging eyes. The neighbours smile, but nobody takes it down.

Since then, every year, on the last evening of winter, the girl opens the basket of beans and throws the first one with all her strength. First, though, she listens. If the dog barks, all is well. If it is silent, she shuts the door, and counts the footsteps.