The Onryo

Proper Funeral Rites

Jack objected to the idea that Paul try to communicate with the ghoulie girl. "You are not to talk to that thing period."

"Uncle Jack, Jim says that--" Paul didn't get to finish.

"Jim isn't responsible for you. I am. Now, you don't talk to her. You got that." Paul knew that Uncle Jack wasn't going to change his mind and let the subject drop.

There was the tapping on the window again. It was after two in the morning. She was standing there. Her face pale with blue around her eyes and her lips were blue. Her hair was wild as usual. A hand showed Paul long, ragged nails. Blue as well.

Paul got up and went to the window. Standing face to face with the ghoulie girl. Her black eyes stared back at him through the plate glass of the window. "What do you want?"

"To rest. Leave the purgatory and finally rest." She said in what was obviously no human voice.

"My Uncle Jack can help you more with that. Or maybe this guy called Jim." Paul said. "You should talk to them."

She shook her head. "Who are you?" Paul asked.

"Kun Gioche." She said.

"Kun Gioche. She's got no right to be wandering around out here. Her body buried proper after Joe took her bones out ot that cellar." Jack was making pancakes. They were up early in the morning to do some work on the house before going over to Sophia's house.

"Maybe it needed some special ceremony that they do in Japan." Paul was sitting at the table sipping percolated coffee. "Or maybe the ground where she used to be needs to be blessed in some way."

"Maybe this Jim you were talking about has got some idea why a properly buried person would want to get up and haunt people." Jack suddenly remembered that the whole episode concerning Kun Gioche was a reservation secret. "Of course we can't tell him the whole story."

"Why not? Haven't we kept the whole thing secret enough." Paul was tired of hearing how he couldn't tell anyone about this particular secret of the reservation. "Maybe she's haunting us because we are keeping it secret. Although it happened three quarters of a century ago, I don't know why we have to keep it secret anymore."

"Because secrets are meant to be kept. When you turn into an adult you will share in other secrets, if you break this secret how do I know you won't break others." Jack said.

"This is a pretty well know secret. I mean on and off the reservation. The United States Army knows all about it and the Executive Branch knew about it. I imagine that others know, like some of the Tribal Council. Actually the stuff is public record now." To Paul this thing was no real secret anymore. Not since Key and Paul exposed it in September.

Key had even contacted John Wilkerson's Grand Daughter and told her the whole story. About how the Government was trying to cast suspicions on the Indians on the Thornbrush reservation. In order to use their reservation as detention camps for Japanese Americans the United States had displaced at the time.

John Wilkerson had fallen in love with Kun Gioche and their affair had disrupted the plans of the government racists who had hoped to use the reservations for every race, not just the Japanese. If it hadn't been disrupted American history might have taken a different course. It was Franklin Rooservelt who had finally nixed the plan. It was possible that Franklin Rooservelt would have stopped the plan anyway. It was one thing to use war as an excuse to detain Japanese Americans, another to make it a racial issue, and detain every race on Indian Reservations.