‘Yes, a visitor.’ Akitada looked at the wall and gate and saw that it did not match the neat appearance of the rest of the street. Plaster had fallen, exposing the wood and mud construction, and in one place a large section had collapsed, mocking the heavily barred wooden gate by allowing easy access to cats and humans alike.

Patch? The cat was spotted. Surely, the boy had recognized the cat and tried to call its name. ‘The dead courtesan’s house?’ he asked the watchman, who seemed amused by the odd encounter on the moonlit street.

‘Nobody lives there anymore,’ the watchman said. ‘It’s a sad ruin. The cat belonged to her.’

‘Really? Who owns the property? I might want to buy it.’

‘Ah.’ The watchman’s curiosity was satisfied. The rich, not having regular work, kept peculiar hours, but that was not his concern. He shook his head. ‘Dear me, not that place, sir. She killed herself because her lover left her to starve. They say her angry ghost roams the garden to catch unwary men to have her revenge on. I never go near it myself’ He produced a wheezing laugh. ‘Not that she’ll have much use for an old stick like me, but you’d better keep your distance, sir.’

Akitada looked at the watchman. It was the middle of the O-bon festival, and the old man was clearly superstitious, but somehow the tale of a haunted house fitted his own mood. ‘How did she die?’

‘Drowned herself in the lake. Pity. They say she was a rare beauty.’

‘Were there any children?’

‘If so, they’re long gone. The house belongs to the Masudas now.’

Akitada thanked him, and the man resumed his rounds, making a wide detour around the broken wall and barred gate.

Akitada walked to the collapsed wall and peered into the overgrown garden. Trees and shrubs hid all but the corner of an elegantly curved roof. Up ahead the night watchman looked back and shook his head at such foolhardiness. Akitada waved and waited for him to disappear before scrambling over the rubble into the garden. He was trespassing and felt foolish, but was more determined to find the cat than ever.

A humid, stagnant atmosphere received him. Dripping vines, brambles, and creepers covered shrubs and trees. His feeble lantern gilded wet leaves and picked out a stone Buddha, half-hidden beneath a blanket of ivy. Strange rustlings, squeaks, and creaks sounded everywhere, and clouds of small gnats hovered in the beam of his light. The air was oppressive and vaguely threatening. The cat’s coming and going had left a narrow track which soon disappeared under dense vegetation. Akitada followed it, but had to take detours and lost the way. His progress was noisy with snapping twigs, and he wondered vaguely about the neighbors. Surely no one else was out at this time. When he felt a tug at his sleeve, he swung around, his heart beating, but he had only brushed the branch of a gaunt cedar.

He would have turned back, if he had not heard the sound of a door or shutter slamming. Perhaps it had been the cat, or some beggar finding refuge in the deserted house, or even the wind from the lake beyond, but it was enough to make Akitada press on.

When he reached the house, he was covered with scratches, itching from insect bites, and his topknot was askew. But there, on the veranda, sat the cat, waiting.

The villa looked small, dark, and empty, its shutters broken, the paper covering its windows hanging in shreds, and many of its roof tiles had shattered on the ground. The balustrade of the veranda leaned at a crazy angle, and where there had been doors, black cavernous spaces gaped in the walls. It must have been charming once, poised just above the lake in its lush gardens, a nobleman’s retreat from official affairs in the capital, or – as the watchman had implied – his secret love nest.

The lake stretched, dull silver, towards a distant shore that wore a necklace of tiny lights. People were still welcoming the return of their dead. Here, in this dark and deserted villa, no one had lit candles or set up an altar to welcome the spirit of the unhappy woman who used to live in it. Only the water lapped gently among the reeds along the bank, but Akitada suddenly felt a ghostlike presence and shivered. He looked about, then walked up to the ruined house. The cat watched him with unblinking eyes, motionless until he was close enough to touch it. But when he stretched out a tentative hand, it slipped away and disappeared inside. He called its name softly, but the animal did not reappear.

The veranda steps were missing, as was most of the floor. The house, which had been vandalized for useful building materials, had become inaccessible to all but cats. He was turning away, when he heard an eerie sound from inside, a soft wail definitely not made by a cat. He swung around and caught a movement inside.

He thought a tall pale shape – a woman trailing some diaphanous garment? – had moved past the opening to one of the corner rooms. Akitada felt the hair bristle on his neck and called out, ‘Who’s there?’ He got no answer.

Walking quickly around the corner of the house, he climbed one of the supports of the veranda and held up his lantern. He directed its beam into the room where he had seen the woman. It was empty. Dead leaves lay in the corners, and rainwater had gathered in puddles on the remaining floor. In spite of the warm and humid night, Akitada felt a sudden chill.

When he jumped down from his perch, his foot landed on something that broke with a sharp crack. The lantern revealed a shimmer of black lacquer and mother-of-pearl: a wooden toy sword, proof that a small boy had once lived here. He picked up the hilt and choked with pain; the sword was identical to the one he had bought Yori during the last winter of his life. A costly toy, it had been lacquered and ornamented to resemble the weapon of an adult. Yori’s delight in it, and the times they had spent practicing swordplay in the courtyard at home, had been more than worth the expense. When the memory faded into the familiar bitterness, an irrational fear gripped Akitada. He stumbled away from the haunted villa, plunging back into the wilderness. He scrambled through as fast as he could, and when he reached the broken wall again, his heart was pounding and he was out of breath.

The street lay empty, the watchman long gone. Dejected, Akitada returned to the inn. He was no closer to helping the boy or making sense of what was troubling him. A courtesan’s ghost, a feral cat, and an expensive toy? What did they mean? He was too weary to think.

In spite of his exhaustion, he slept poorly. The encounter with the child had brought back all the old grief and added new fears. He lay awake for a long time, thinking that he had abandoned the boy to his fate without lifting a finger to help him and remembering the guilt of having neglected his own son during the time of the pestilence. When he finally fell asleep, his dreams were filled with snarling cats and hungry ghosts. The ghosts had the face of the boy and followed him about, their thin arms stretched out in entreaty.

Towards dawn he woke, drenched in sweat, certain that he had heard Yori cry out for him from the next room. For a single moment of joy he thought his son’s death part of the dream, but then he felt the tears on his face and knew he was gone. The dark and lonely room of the inn closed in around him, and he plunged back into despair.

Waking was always the hardest.

The final day of the O-Bon festival dawned clear and dry. If the weather held, Akitada could reach the capital in a few hours’ ride, but he decided to chance it and spend the morning trying to find out more about the boy, the cat, and the dead courtesan. He thought, half guiltily and half resentfully, of his waiting wife, but women seemed to draw on inner strengths when it came to losing a child. In the months since Yori’s death, Tamako had quietly resumed her daily routines, while he had sunk into despair.