Chapter 10: The Antiquarian

Chapter 10: The Antiquarian

The apartment had become a mausoleum of silence. The entity, having demonstrated its ability to mimic Remi’s voice and wear her face, had retreated into a state of quiet observation. It no longer needed to perform. The lesson had been learned. It sat on the coffee table, a passive, patient predator, and its stillness was somehow more terrifying than any slammed door or disembodied whisper.

Jenna and Remi existed in a state of suspended animation, huddled on the mattress, speaking in hushed tones. The world outside the grimy window—the wail of a distant siren, the rumble of a passing truck—seemed to be from another dimension, a place where porcelain dolls were just objects and reflections stayed true.

“This is insane,” Jenna whispered, her eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion and fear. She was scrolling through her phone, her screen a blur of conspiracy theories and crackpot forums. “There’s nothing here. Nothing real. It’s all ghost-hunting shows and fake exorcists.”

Remi stared blankly at the wall, at the childish red letters that had become the defining feature of her life. MY TURN. The doll wasn’t just a ghost. It was a thief, waiting to steal a life it was too lonely to build for itself. Kanashii. It clings.

“Grandma used to talk about things like this,” Remi said, her voice a monotone. The spooky stories she had spent her entire adult life trying to dismiss now felt like a neglected survival guide. “She said there were… places. People who understood.”

Jenna’s head snapped up from her phone, a spark of something igniting in her tired eyes. “Wait. You’re right. Do you remember that man she used to visit? The one with the dusty shop? She bought that weird silver locket from him, the one she said ‘kept dreams from souring’.”

Remi’s memory flickered. A vague image of a small, dark storefront, a name half-remembered. “Corbin? Mr. Corbin?”

“Yes! That’s it!” Jenna was suddenly animated, a plan forming amidst the chaos. She abandoned the useless glow of her phone and grabbed her laptop. “Corbin’s Curios. Or Antiques. Something like that. If he’s still around, he’s got to be our best shot. He took Grandma seriously.”

It was a sliver of hope so thin it was almost transparent, but it was all they had. A quick search confirmed the impossible: Corbin’s Curios was still in business, tucked away in an old, forgotten corner of the city, an analog relic in a digital world.

The next obstacle presented itself immediately, a cold, porcelain fact sitting in the middle of the room.

“What do we do with… it?” Remi asked, gesturing with a trembling hand at the doll. “We can’t leave it here. What if it locks us out? Or burns the place down?”

“And we can’t take it,” Jenna countered, a shudder running through her. “What if it causes a ten-car pile-up?”

They were trapped. Taking the curse with them was dangerous. Leaving it behind was unthinkable. In the end, the logic of the parasite won out. It was attached to Remi, not the apartment. Leaving it would be a pointless gesture.

With a shared look of grim resolve, they found an old shoebox. Remi couldn’t bring herself to touch the doll, so Jenna, her face a mask of determined guilt, carefully lifted the cold, heavy figure and laid it inside. Its unblinking eyes stared up at them from its cardboard coffin. They didn’t close the lid. They couldn’t bear not knowing what it was doing.

They placed the box on the back seat of Jenna’s rental car, propped up so they could both see its impassive face in the rearview mirror. The drive across town was the most tense of Remi’s life. Every red light, every sudden stop, felt like a prelude to catastrophe. But nothing happened. The doll simply sat, watching, its silence a threat all its own.

Corbin’s Curios was exactly as Remi’s childhood memory had painted it. The storefront was narrow, wedged between a laundromat and a boarded-up check-cashing place. The windows were layered with so much dust they were nearly opaque, and a small brass bell chimed a fragile, discordant note as they pushed the heavy oak door open.

The air inside was thick with the scent of old paper, beeswax, and a faint, metallic tang like the air after a lightning strike. It was a dragon’s hoard of the forgotten and the strange. Shelves overflowed with leather-bound books, tarnished silver, and strange scientific instruments. Objects covered in dusty shrouds stood in the corners like sleeping gargoyles. It was not a sanctuary, precisely, but it was a place where their story might not be met with disbelief. It was a place where the supernatural was understood, cataloged, and shelved.

An elderly man emerged from a back room, wiping his hands on a grey apron. He was smaller than Remi remembered, with a halo of thin white hair and eyes behind thick spectacles that were startlingly sharp and intelligent.

“Can I help you ladies?” he asked, his voice dry like turning pages.

Jenna, ever the forward one, stepped up. “Mr. Corbin? My name is Jenna Vance. This is my sister, Remi. Our grandmother was Eleanor Vance. She used to be a customer of yours.”

Mr. Corbin’s eyes softened with recognition. “Eleanor. Of course. A fascinating woman. She had a keen eye for objects with… personality.” He peered at them over his glasses, his gaze lingering on Remi’s pale, haunted face. “You two seem to have inherited her eye. And her trouble. What have you brought me?”

Remi’s courage failed her. She could only point a trembling finger at the shoebox in Jenna’s arms. Jenna placed it carefully on the cluttered countertop, pushing aside a stack of yellowed maps.

Mr. Corbin leaned over, his sharp eyes examining the doll without a trace of surprise or alarm. He simply observed it, his expression that of a physician examining a peculiar symptom.

“An ichimatsu doll,” he murmured. “Mid-Meiji period, by the look of the silk. A lovely piece. But you didn’t bring it here for an appraisal.”

“It’s haunted,” Remi blurted out, the words sounding crude and childish in the quiet, scholarly atmosphere of the shop.

“No, my dear,” Mr. Corbin said softly, his gaze never leaving the doll. “Haunting is a crude term. A ghost is an echo, a memory replaying itself. This is not an echo. This is an occupant.”

Over the next twenty minutes, in hushed, frantic tones, they told him everything. The television, the moved furniture, the digital prison, the message on the wall. They told him about the mimicry of Remi’s voice, the horrifying vision in the mirror. When Jenna recounted the story from the temple, her voice cracking as she repeated the Japanese words, Mr. Corbin held up a hand.

“Say those words again,” he commanded gently.

“Kanashii,” Jenna repeated. “Sad. And shiritsuku. It clings.”

Mr. Corbin nodded slowly, a deep, weary understanding dawning on his face. He finally looked up from the doll, his gaze locking with Remi’s. “Your grandmother was right to teach you her stories. You have found yourself a gaki.”

The word was unfamiliar, but its sound was inherently ugly, guttural.

“A what?” Remi whispered.

“In the simplest terms, a hungry ghost,” he explained, his voice low and serious. “But not hungry for food. It’s a spirit defined by a profound, bottomless loneliness. An insatiable craving for experience, for life. It was likely bound to the doll to comfort a dying child, but when the child passed, the spirit was left behind. Alone. For centuries.”

His explanation landed like a series of hammer blows, each one confirming their deepest fears.

“It forms a parasitic bond with a host. The first person to show it kindness, to take it from its solitude. It clings, as the old woman said. And it feeds. Not on blood or flesh, but on life force. On identity. The mimicry you’re experiencing… that’s it learning. Studying. It’s hollowing you out, my dear, to make a space for itself. The message on your wall was not a threat. It was a statement of process.”

Remi felt the blood drain from her face. “Can you… can you take it?” she pleaded. “Can you lock it up?”

Mr. Corbin gave a sad, thin smile. “I cannot take what is no longer in the doll. The bond has been forged. The object is merely an anchor, a focal point. The spirit has its hooks in you. Removing the doll now would be like removing a splinter while leaving the infection to fester.”

Despair, cold and absolute, washed over them. They had come for a cure and found only a diagnosis for a terminal illness.

“Then what do we do?” Jenna asked, her voice shaking with desperation.

Mr. Corbin turned and walked toward a heavy, locked cabinet behind the counter. He produced a small, ornate key and opened it. The cabinet was lined with dark velvet and contained a handful of objects that seemed to hum with a contained, dangerous energy. He withdrew a small, leather-bound book and a bundle of dried, fragrant herbs tied with red string.

“There is a way,” he said, placing the items on the counter. “A severance ritual. A way to forcibly cut the tie that binds it to you.”

A fragile, desperate hope surged in Remi’s chest. “Will it work?”

Mr. Corbin’s sharp eyes met hers, and in them, there was no comfort, only the grim honesty of a man who understood the stakes.

“It is a dangerous and violent undertaking,” he warned, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “You will not be pushing the entity out. You will be tearing it out. It will fight. It will use your fears against you. It will show you things… things to break your will. If you succeed, the bond will be shattered. You will be free.”

“And if we fail?” Jenna asked, her voice barely audible.

The antiquarian’s expression was grave. “If you fail, if your will breaks during the ritual, you will not simply strengthen the bond. You will shatter the remaining barriers between you and the gaki. You will, in effect, be holding the door wide open for it.” He paused, letting the weight of his words settle in the dusty air.

“It won’t have to learn how to be you anymore. It will just… be you. And it will be its turn, forever.”