The Cursed Dolls

　
Note: I'm not the authour of this story. I've translated it from original Japanese into English. Please do NOT copy and paste it somewhere else on the web without my permission.

Due to the nature of my job I often had to move house. Sometimes we lived in rented apartments and sometimes in rented houses.
This happened when I was transferred to  a place called Hagi in Yamaguchi prefecture. There I found a cheap house for rent and decided to take it. It was overall a good property but there were a few drawbacks; although it was large it was a bit ramshackle and it also stood isolated way back in the mountain.

Nearly a month had passed since we started living in the house when one day my daughter found a strange box in the garden.
Now, during my first holiday there I did go around the inside and outside of the house, taking time
to check everything over to make sure all was well; so I was sure there was no such thing as a box in the garden before. I would definitely have noticed it if it were there because it had a very characteristic look.

Although I think my psychic power is next to none, I could sense there was something really uncanny about the box .
If only I had made a right choice then, I probably wouldn't have had to go through all the terrifying experience that followed.
But I decided to burn the ill-fated box.
I am sure anyone with a common sense would have either thrown away or destroyed the thing. At the time it seemed to me there were no better choices.
Or so I thought.

A few days later, a terrible incident took place.
My friend had a car accident.
The car went up in flames and by the time she was taken to the hospital she had already stopped breathing, having suffered burns all over her body.
Again a few more days had passed when yet another friend of mine, who, while having a bonfire in her garden, caught fire by accident, and suffered severe burns on both her right arm and the right side of her face.

I went to visit the friend in the hospital and asked her what had happened.
She told me that, just a few days before the accident, she dreamt that she was being burnt alive.
I am someone who does not believe in such things as superstition, but this time I thought maybe I knew what might have caused those accidents...

After I left the hospital I immediately went home and searched the garden.
I found the small hole where I tried to burn the box and discovered that the box had survived the fire.
I remember that, just when I reached out to get the box,  I felt an awful chill come over me. Some dolls tumbled out of the box.

There were three dolls in all. One of them had been burnt to a crisp, and another one was only half-burnt.
The last one was completely intact. They were all traditional Japanese girl dolls wearing kimonos.
When I picked up the half-burnt doll, the doll's kimono crumbled away.

And the minutes I saw the doll's now bare back I was struck by utter terror.
My friend's name was written on it. The one that was completely burnt was too blackened so I couldn't make anything out but I think I'd had enough information to guess what might have been written on there.
Because the one that was left intact had my name on it.

Everything was a mystery. Who did this thing?
Three of  us didn't particularly had anything special between us. I have a lot of other friends.
I could not think of anyone holding a grudge against me. Why was the thing left in this house...?
Was there someone living here before me who had a grudge against me? But I have no acquaintances living in Yamaguchi prefecture.

Everything was just so extraordinary.

I moved out of the house soon after the incident.
I took the dolls to a shrine. I can not forget what the person at the shrine told me then:

"I  tried to purge them, but they are not something you can purge.
The grudge that infests these dolls are not of human origin."