…Would you care to hear it?
I cannot say with certainty that any of this is true. Only — having served this peninsula for many years, I sometimes find that those who come down from the mountains will speak to me in trembling voices. I do nothing more than pass along what they have said.
Deep in the mountains of Kunisaki, there is said to be a hamlet that appears on no map. Certain old-timers call it the Village of Stone Buddhas. Ask anyone where exactly it lies, and you will find no one who can answer clearly. Only this much is said: if you leave the ancient pilgrimage roads of Rokugo Manzan and press on until cedar roots begin to swallow the path, you will find what appears to be the ruins of stone steps, and beyond them, some faint suggestion of habitation.
This would have been about three years ago, as I heard it. A man of around forty, fond of hiking, ventured alone into that area at the end of autumn. He entered the mountain in the afternoon, and as evening fell he could find no path and could not find his way back.
The mountains at night, as you may know, become an entirely different place from what they are by day. The beam of a torch looks strangely small among the trees, while the sound of dead leaves underfoot seems unnaturally loud. He walked on, holding his unease in check, or so I was told.
It was then that something reached him — not incense, not the smell of rotting leaves, but the smell of stone. The cold, faintly metallic scent one catches on wet rock after rain, drifting toward him from nowhere, though there was no wind.
Uneasy but curious, he pressed on and came out into a clearing. There in the moonlight, stone buddhas stood at intervals — perhaps ten of them, ancient figures worn smooth with age, the kind of rounded relief carvings not uncommon in Kunisaki. It should have been an unremarkable sight. And yet that night, for reasons he could not explain, his feet stopped moving.
As he stood before them, one of the figures tilted its head — just slightly.
The person who told me this said that his voice left him at that point. After a long silence, he corrected himself: he thought it had tilted. Perhaps a trick of the darkness, he said. But then he added something further.
The face of that stone buddha was turned toward him. It had been facing forward until a moment before — and now only the face had turned, turned in his direction. He felt their eyes about to meet, and looked away without thinking. Then he ran, and ran, and could not have said how long or how far, until he found himself standing on a paved road.
Afterward, I was told, a grey mottling appeared on the back of his right hand. The dermatologist could find no cause. He himself laughed it off — sunburn, most likely — but the person who told me all of this said they had never felt any desire to look more closely.
In old records, there are faint traces of a group known hereabouts as the Nembutsu Shū — people who withdrew into these mountains to practice, who sought to become one with the Buddha. What became of them is not written down.
Only this, which someone who has lived here since long ago was once heard to say:
The stone buddhas were not always stone.
…I would advise against going too deep into the mountains. At night especially.
And should you happen to encounter a stone buddha along the path — please, whatever you do, do not meet its eyes.
