Ethereal Chronicles

Off the coast of home lay a scattering of islands, seldom visited and rarely spoken of by our people, who favoured the safety of our familiar mainland. Perhaps they did well to leave the islands alone, because one in particular carried a harrowing past.

The island was home to an abandoned monastery, once inhabited by a revered order of monks. Long before I was born they had often visited the mainland, offering blessings and quiet wisdom, but one year they stopped coming.

When it was decided that the monks should be searched for, people learned that they had died in a mysterious manner, each found in their rooms with slimy seaweed protruding from their mouths, noses and eye sockets, as though it had been growing from the inside.

Nobody ever understood how or why the phenomenon happened, but since then few dared set foot on that island, where even holy men had met an unnatural end. There was however, one small temptation that remained.

It was said that in the garden of the monastery, rare herbs still grew; plants capable of curing all disease, perhaps even unlocking the key to eternal life.

It was an unfortunate event that forced me to make the journey to the island myself. My wife, now pregnant with our second child, had fallen ill to a sickness that I could not name, and for which the doctors had no cure. It was for this reason that I thought of the fabled herbs in the monastery’s forgotten garden, intending to bring them back to save my wife and unborn child.

We left port with eleven crewmen, not including myself. Four were of my own blood; my brothers, Hirotu and Riku; my uncle Takeo, a seasoned sailor; and his son, Yoshio – a spirited young boy eager to prove himself at sea.

The journey began easier than expected. The waters were calm, and the wind blew steadily. After a day, Takeo smiled and told me that he foresaw no trouble at all.

His words proved true.

We sailed for four uninterrupted days, reaching the island without incident or injury. Not one of us could have imagined the evil that would follow.

Only Riku and Takeo joined me on land to search for what we had come for. The others remained with the ship as a precaution. There was a subtle sense of dread the moment we stepped foot on land; the island was barren, and lifeless. Not once did we spot a sign of vegetation, nor the whistle of a bird, or the rustle of naked trees.

The monastery loomed at the top of a winding path, hunched and half collapsed into the hill. It was a decrepit place, with dark rooms that reeked of rotted wood. The walls, though dry to the touch, gave off the sound of running moisture, though no rain had fallen.

Skeletons in dusty robes slumped in lonely rooms and empty corners, watching us with dead eyes as we passed through the abandonment, thinking only of the garden.

When we eventually did find it, the garden was unlike anything we had seen on the island. It was impossible. While the monastery rotted and the land about it lay dead, the garden thrived. Lush plants crowded the beds, green and vibrant and weedless as though tended daily by something unseen.

Quickly, I knelt in the rich earth to gather the herbs I needed, slipping them into the small bag tied around my neck before returning to the ship with my brother and uncle.

When we returned, however, Hiroto stood at the bow, pale faced and stiff as he stared out across the sea. At the sight of us, he rushed forwards, mouth trembling. His voice shook as he turned to Takeo.

“You need to see Yoshio,” was all Hiroto could say.

We came below deck, finding Yoshio dead in his cabin.

His body was twisted with fear, frozen in a spasm as though he had died screaming. His eyes were wide, his mouth agape with horror. And from both spilled clammy strands of dark seaweed.

I and the rest of the crew began to make our grieved return home. Takeo, distraught over the death of Yoshio, locked himself away with his son’s corpse, refusing to leave and refusing to let anyone enter.

On the morning of the second day after leaving the island, the calm sea turned violent without warning. The ship lurched so harshly it threw me from my bunk and caused me to slide across the floor. I scrambled to my feet and rushed to the deck, where I found the crew preparing for a storm.

The mast groaned as the sail caught the rising wind, and great crested waves slapped the hull with an unforeseen fury.

As the ship rose and fell with the movement of the waves, I noticed a strange shape emerging from the water in the direction of the accursed island from which we had come from. I could not make out its form, only the size of it; vast, grotesquely disproportionate, and approaching with intense speed. Two more shapes surfaced to either side of it, and behind them, four more. In moments, they had surrounded us. Massive heads, impossibly large and slick with seawater.

They were the faces of monks, I was certain, but rotted, covered in seaweed and barnacles. Their mouths opened wide, gnashing blackened teeth and spraying putrid saliva. Without hesitation, they descended on the ship, biting and splintering the wood beneath them.

The men aboard panicked, some crashing into the sea below where they were swept into the jaws of the drowned monks, which closed and ground the bodies until blood spurted out between the cracked lips of the creatures.

Hiroto made a desperate run for the cabin, hoping to hide until the creatures left, but as he moved to do so one of the monstrous heads sliced through the middle of the ship, seizing him in its grasp. I caught his terrified eyes just before the jaws clamped shut.

Frantically, I began to search for Riku, but he was nowhere to be seen. When a shrill cry erupted from the water I saw him struggle against another creature, only to be dragged beneath the waves before I had the chance to jump in after him.

When the monsters had finished their killing and the ship had been reduced to drifting splinters, they turned to me.

I clung to a shard of wood, half submerged in the black sea. Their yellowed eyes locked onto the small pouch tied around my neck, the herbs still safely sealed within. They hissed, teeth gnashing, though they made no move.

I shut my eyes and prayed.

And to my astonishment, they withdrew. One by one, the heads sank silently beneath the waves, vanishing into the depths from which they had come.

The days that followed passed in a haze of sun and salt and darkness, and then sun and salt again. When I finally reached land I was starving, almost dead with thirst and exhaustion, but made it home to my wife, perhaps due to the herbs at my chest.

She recovered, and in time gave birth to two healthy baby girls.

But I never forgot that terrible night, and ever since have been drawn to the water. Despite my survival, I know that the sea did not truly let me go. I know that one day, the drowned will come for me too.

Umibozu are malevolent water spirits from Japanese folklore. 

Umibōzu are spirits of the drowned dead that rise from the sea to haunt unsuspecting sailors. They are said to appear on calm waters, their arrival heralded by a sudden onset of stormy weather. From the surface, only their enormous heads and shoulders emerge. Typically they are described as bald with deep, sunken eyes. These towering apparitions loom silently over ships.

An Umibōzu will either smash a vessel to pieces or demand a ladle from the captain. If given one, the ghost will scoop seawater into the ship, drowning the sailors.

If you hand an Umibōzu a bottomless label, the spirit will pause, giving you enough chance to flee. Umibōzu are also afraid of smoke.

Sailors speak of Umibōzu being able to appear in swarms, rising all at once from the depths to cling to the hull and terrorise the crew.

In some interpretations, Umibōzu are seen as corrupted or drowned monks, or possibly the spirits of monks who died at sea without proper rites. The name Umibōzu literally translates to “sea priest” or “sea monk”, referring to Buddhist monks.