A dead girl walks the streets. She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.
And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.
Because the boy has a terrifying secret – one that would just kill to get out.
There was once a young servant girl who loved the lord of Himeji Castle. She warned him of a planned takeover by one of his retainers, and the latter nursed a grudge because of this.
He stole a valuable plate from their master’s collection, and convinced him of her guilt. She was consequently tortured and thrown into a well.
Since then, the ghost of the young girl has been said to rise from the well to count the plates. Always finding nine instead of ten, she rends the air with screams of agony, reliving her death all over again.
