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When they were little, Mio had always been the one to check for monsters, under the bed and in the wardrobe, and behind the curtains sometimes. She'd done this every night, long after they had stopped believing in monsters, making a small ritual out of it; it was her way of honouring the unspoken promise to take care of her sister and keep her safe.
But there were other kinds of monsters, and Mayu discovered more and more as she got older. Some monsters were dead things that wouldn't go away, but accumulated like water into puddles, until there was just enough to feel something strange when you walked into them, hear the sound of a scream that been echoing for a decade or more. Those were the weak ones; you could pass through them out into the living world again.
Monsters weren't always ugly. Sometimes they had crimson wings that glowed with their own light, leaving a luminous trail as they led you into darkness, took you over and let you wake up just in time to see yourself – but not yourself – with blood on your clothes – which weren't really your clothes – and hands extended for a neck to close around.
And sometimes they were people with fear-grins gathered in a festival room, pretending not to know what was happening underground, or where the blood-coloured butterflies came from.
Underground, the steady throb of Malice from the Abyss hurt like a rotten tooth, so Mayu could scarcely think of anything but the emptiness of the stairs where Mio had not yet come. Sometimes monsters were just absences, where something should be that wasn't, the way the Mourners had no eyes and the priests had no faces.
And sometimes – she thought, looking at the black mouth of the staircase where Mio would come, if she ever did – they were just people who didn't do what they should. Like sisters who made promises they didn't keep, and let you fall without looking back.
Mayu looked around. She was the only one willing to wait forever. The priests were impatient for her death; if Mio didn't come quickly enough they'd hang her from the Shinto gate: once wasn't enough. Above, the villagers were anxious to know that somebody else's death had permitted them to live a little longer. And somewhere, maybe, Mio was deciding it had been long enough; she couldn't keep her promise now; the price was too high.
Mayu looked around, and everyone was a monster but her.