They tiptoed through the café, passing shadow people in the seats and whispering to themselves about what or who those beings were. The entities didn’t speak, though they made gestures as if talking. They didn’t eat, though plates of food were set before them. Even elsewhere in the mall, the otherworldly phantoms shopped, walked with their offspring, and popped in and out of the public restrooms like normal city-going folk. It was as if they didn’t know they weren’t human, or like they were on the verge of being real but couldn’t venture beyond the realm of fantasy, and they most certainly didn’t notice Kenji and his party.

“What’s going on?” Misumi questioned as they gathered by the café entrance, watching the phantoms go about their lives unobstructed. “Are these…wraiths?”

“Maybe,” replied Kenji. “But it’s impossible to say. Whatever they are, we shouldn’t stick around too long just in case they’re not harmless.”

Amelia nodded her head. “I concur. Let us depart from here at once.”

From the café they absconded, neither rushing nor dawdling, and they continued out to the main street, where the phantoms not only walked on the sidewalks but also drove cars, much to the amazement of Cleo and Amelia. There were dozens of them, and they even wore seatbelts and paid attention to traffic laws.

“These rumbling beasts are quite docile to allow such creatures to ride inside them,” acknowledge Amelia, who looked puzzled to the point of questioning her own sanity. “What are they? What do they eat? Where do they come from? Do they lay eggs?”

Kenji slapped his own face. “They’re not animals,” he said. “They’re cars. They’re built by humans and run on gasoline, so no—they don’t lay eggs.”

She let a befuddled mien splash over her face as her brain set sail with new knowledge.

As they began wandering the streets, they passed by stores full of shadow people, and the residential buildings were haunted by the creatures as well, who were tending to gardens, taking out the trash, or even hanging up laundry to dry. Everything about them seemed so natural, like they were actual humans just going about their daily lives.

“Hey, Kenji,” uttered Misumi as they walked up a staircase to the monorail system, which was now active. “Could these things just be part of your memory?”

He looked around, now high enough to see over a few of the shorter buildings. The roaming shades filled out the entire area in a population density equal to Tokyo in real life.

“It’s possible, I guess,” he answered. “But it’s not like I have a photographic memory. I don’t know who any of these people are.”

“Then perhaps that is why they appear as darkness,” Amelia responded. “If we found someone you knew, maybe we could see them clearly.”

As they set foot on the platform, the piercing rays of sunset blinked through the windows of a train just pulling into the station, and when came to a screeching halt, the large machine hissed and opened its doors, allowing various shadow people to board as well as Kenji’s party. Finding someone he knew—that wouldn’t be hard. All he’d have to do was go home, and fortunately, that was only one station away.

Just as he expected, Cleo and Amelia were taken aback by the sheer level of technology that surrounded them, and as they stood in awe on the train, the white walls and large glass windows, the cushioned chairs, the metal hand bars and luggage nooks overhead. They were fascinated, just like he and Misumi were after appearing in Duncaster. A few seconds later, the train disembarked from the station, causing Amelia to nearly fall over.

“The beast seeks to steal us away…” she panicked, grabbing a metal bar to hold on to. “Or is this another one of your ‘cars’?”

“It’s a train,” Misumi informed her. “Made for carrying a lot of people all over the city really quickly. Some even travel throughout the country.”

Amelia whispered in a spellbound way, “A train…the concept is riveting. I must compliment your people, because they are truly magnificent.”

Misumi helped her and Cleo keep their balance, giggling. “Thanks, Amelia.”

When the train picked up speed, everyone stared out the windows toward the skyline, in love with its surreal beauty and the nearby buildings they passed by. There were shops and homes, rooftops and apartment buildings; all of it was so nostalgic, so pretty in the sunset, and so different from the city of Duncaster.

Elsewhere on the train were shadow people sitting down or standing up, carrying on with their mysterious lives. For a moment, Kenji almost felt at home, like he’d walk off the train and head home for another night of hanging out with Misumi before the tv screen. However, when they reached the next station, he shrugged those thoughts aside, for those days were gone, just like all of Japan.

It wasn’t long before the train came to a squeaking halt and the doors hissed open, granting access to the next station, which was small, comprised of a short covered platform as it served a less densely-populated community in Tokyo—in which Kenji and Misumi both grew up—and together, their party hiked down its staircase, proceeding into the residential district. Most houses sat in walled complexes, and the streets were especially narrow, barely able to hold two cars side by side. Amelia was still enamored with everything, though Cleo’s fascination started to level out, and she just peered here and there, curious.

After snaking down several streets and moving aside for a passing car, they finally reached their destination: Kenji’s house. He stood before it, heart thumping fast with an emotion so bizarre he couldn’t name it, as he wanted to see his house again but hated the idea of having to say goodbye a second time.

“So,” Cleo spoke, sounding like a bratty teenager about to verbally abuse her parents. “This is the place? Our fearless leader once lived here?”

“Sure did,” he answered. “But you may burst into flames once you step inside. In our world, demonic entities don’t last long.”

“Then I presume that’s why you were exiled to our world.”

“Nope. We died, remember? You saw it yourself.”

Kenji decided to bite the bullet and storm the house whether his fear wanted him to or not, and he crept in through the front door, wondering if the phantom of his mother was inside. She typically left for work around sundown, so she may have gone out already.

That home had so many memories in it he’d rather forget. So many lies. Like all the Christmases his father promised he’d stop by, or the shouting matches his parents had more often than not. He remembered crawling under his bed as a kid and blocking out the noise with both hands, always thinking their anger would fall on him at some point. Eventually, it happened. And on that day, he got violent with his father for the first time.

They wandered through each room, and he felt colder and lonelier with each moment he spent inside, each piece of furniture he saw, each whiff of the air that smelled exactly like he remembered. Misumi stayed close to him, though Amelia and Cleo were more adventurous—especially when they reached the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed and wafted cold air when they opened it, catching them off guard, while the stove, microwave, and oven were like enchanted pieces of art, worth fawning over with wide eyes. Upon inquiring about the stove specifically, Misumi told them it was for baking, spurring Amelia to question the very foundations of her own understanding.

“But where do the coals go?” she asked.

“There are none. It was uses electricity.”

“Electricity? What is this mysterious heat source you speak of?”

Waltzing over to the kitchen’s threshold, Misumi flicked off the light switch, causing the room to be swallowed by shadow. Then, she flipped it up again, which made the ceiling light to come on in an instant. “There you go—that’s electricity.”

Like a careless infant, Amelia wandered to the light until she was standing directly under it, and she stared upward, wincing her eyes. “Is it magic?”

“Nope, just modern technology. The whole world has stuff like this, not only Japan.”

And from Amelia’s mouth came another disbelieving breath as Misumi pulled her away from staring at the light. “This is unquestionably a magnificent time to be alive.”

The group proceeded upstairs after not finding any signs of Kenji’s mother other than a few cigarette butts on the kotatsu and an open bottle of wine, and while Misumi led the others into his bedroom, he gulped and staired down the hall, eyeing his mother’s room. Never before had it felt so terrifying just to see her. To meet her. Part of him hoped that beyond that was just another phantom and not a lifelike recreation of the woman who raised him.

Step by step he inched forward, taking his time. And when he grabbed the doorknob, he twisted it and shivered at the idea of walking in, afraid of what he’d find. And yet he didn’t cower. Kenji pushed into his mother’s room, only to find the very thing about he hated the most, the thing that gradually tore them apart over the years.

Like many times before, she was with a client—a dark shadow of a man. Meanwhile, she was her normal self: smooth hair, clean skin, an old necklace around her neck she had kept since high school, and a stark-naked body. The two of them were tearing at each other like lustful animals, and before Kenji could watch anymore, he slammed the door shut and marched away with red eyes, only coming to a halt once he reached his old bedroom. Seeing his mother like that was shameful. Her acting like that was shameful. There was no excuse for bringing home sex-crazed assholes when you had a damned teenager living in the house, and even at his age, he realized how immature her behavior was. Then again, a piece of his mom had shattered. And like those men could never do, she had no idea how to fix it.

In the bedroom doorway he stopped, watching as Misumi, Cleo, and Amelia went through his belongings, and even watched television—the nightly news. There were no voices coming from the speakers, but from the sliding headline at the bottom of the screen, he recognized the story as an old one from at least a year prior. It was presented by a shadow person, and just like the arcade, Amelia was smitten with the audiovisual box.

“And this…” Misumi pointed to a picture in an old photo album, showing it to Cleo. Both of them were sitting on the bed. “…is Kenji when he was thirteen. That’s me next to him, but I was a serious dweeb back then.”

“You’ve known each other a long time,” Cleo acknowledged.

“Yep. Since we were little. I lived in the house next door, by the way.”

Curious, Cleo shuffled to the window and peered out, narrowing her eyes. “That one? With the overgrown garden out back?”

“Mhmm, that’s the house.”

Kenji wanted to shift the conversation onto what he just saw, onto the fact that his mother appeared to be a normal human being and not a shadow, but a greater part of him wanted to leave. It wasn’t worth hanging around in that place, especially since it was nearly dark outside. It would be wise for them to head back and catch the last train, assuming they could leave Phantom Valley the same way they entered.

However, as he lingered in silence, he heard a door squeak open down the hall.

A voice.

“Kenji…” it whispered, a beckoning plea. “…I’m waiting, Kenji…”

He stared off toward his mother’s room to find the door completely open, and the space beyond darker than midnight. Again, the voice called out to him, begging him to search, and he recognized it as his mom’s.

“What the hell?” he wondered.

By no means did he think his mother was actually calling his name, for he was in a memory, not reality, so it must have been a trick of the mind. Still, her bedroom was impossibly dark like some kind of monster’s lair.

“Hey,” he muttered to his friends. But they distracted, which spurred him to cough and speak louder. “Hey. You guys. Let’s get out of here, alright? Something doesn’t feel right.”

Cleo was the first to protest, complaining that he just didn’t like anyone seeing old pictures of him, but Kenji put his foot down while keeping focused on the physical shadows seeping from his mother’s room.

“Just get your weapons and be quiet,” he hissed. “Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?” asked Misumi, putting the photo album aside as she stood up and readied her bow.

“It from my mom’s room. I don’t know what exactly, but it’s not like the other phantoms. I’ve heard it speak twice now and it doesn’t sound friendly.”

Hearing that, his three friends took on more battle-ready stances, eventually pushing him out of the room as to have a better position in the hallway. Once there, they all stared at the wall of liquid shadow in the furthest bedroom.

“Do you think it’s a wraith?” asked Cleo.

“Probably.”

Kenji drew his dagger, knowing it wouldn’t be helpful against a spirit. Only Amelia would stand a chance against those creatures, given their ‘half undead’ classification. And as they watched, he heard the creature’s voice again as it attempted to bargain with him, to trade one of his life beyond the Spire for a permanent life within Phantom Valley. He could live the remainder of his days inside that memory if he so desired.

“Shut up!” he cursed, enraged by the fact it had his mother’s voice. “We’re not making any deals with you!”

His companions must not have been able to hear the creature’s voice, for they had no idea what he was talking about, but it continued pleading with him, trying to get inside his head. Finally, after all its verbal attempts failed, a physical appearance was in order, and his mother’s body lurched out of the shadows like all its limbs were broken and uncontrolled. The phantom wore a bedsheet to cover up. And when in the hallway, hunched over and limp, it snarled for him to obey its commands, lest he suffer a gruesome death; that time, everyone heard what the monster had to say.

“We can fight this thing, can’t we?” asked Misumi, shaking in her boots.

Kenji answered, “I guess we’ll find out either way.”

And like a track runner with legs broken legs, the phantom of his mother barreled toward them, stumbling and crashing with every step, howling like a ghoul in a haunted mansion, and dripping with lust for their souls. It was out for blood, and wouldn’t stop until its hunger was satiated.

Fortunately, Amelia was there, and she stepped in front of every and cast Barrier, which would temporarily block any creatures in the Undead category of monsters. The rabid spirit smacked into an invisible, letting out a terrible shriek.

“We must flee this place at once,” Amelia insisted. “The barrier will not hold for long.”

And without needing to be told twice, they all exchanged glances and scurried to the staircase, rushing downstairs and out of the house like they were trying to outrun a race horse. When outside, they kept running down the street and conversing along the way, only to glance back after hearing glass shatter. The wraith—it had burst through his bedroom window. And now it staggered onto the pavement and continued hurtling after them like a living representation of an abstract portrait.

“Shit!” Kenji cried. “She’s not slowing down!”

Amelia turned back and cast Crucify, a spell meant to do serious damage, but the attack missed and she was forced to keep running. “Apologies,” she huffed, running alongside her party. “But I appear to have failed.”

He complained, “Nah, you think?”

Through the streets they persisted, heading in the direction of the station, and as they located the monorail system above and ran beneath its tracks, a train bustled over them, heading in the direction they needed to go.

“Hurry!” Misumi shouted as she picked up pace. “We have to catch it!”

And all the while, a screaming wraith gained ground.

Through many attempts at Crucify, Amelia missed every time or the wraith dodged the attack altogether, being incredibly agile. That, alongside Misumi’s clumsiness that led to her falling down twice, and they were almost taken by the creature, though they managed to climb the station steps and bolt into the train just before its doors whistled shut. They were out of breath, terrified so much they were shaking, and Kenji especially didn’t know what to make of the situation, for it was not just a phantom, but his mother. Why of all people did it have to take on that form?

But as the raging spirit clashed with the train doors, flailing and thrashing against the glass, Kenji stood up straight faced it, meeting its bloodshot eyes with a temper of his own. Wraiths—they were pure evil. Right down to their very core, they could do no good and were always trying to deceive. However, the one before him now was even worse, for it did more than just try to kill him—it took from him the only semblance of longing he had left for Tokyo, and as its foul breath fogged up the glass, the wraith fell silent when the train eased off from the station. They watched each other drift apart, and he wondered what the beast was thinking, what it felt.

As for Kenji, did he want to go back home? Did he miss it? Was it worth crying over now that he was a citizen of Kathra? No. Not for one second. And so long as he lived, he never expected that opinion to change.