Invisible Traces · A Horror Story No. 23
The Well of Names
Alex Moonn
The dead stay in the well. So do the living.
Aokigahara, at the foot of Mount Fuji. At seven, Haruki Sone heard from his grandmother the story of a well in the heart of the forest that keeps the names of the dead. At thirty-two, a researcher for a Tokyo publisher, he is asked to write an essay on the forest's old stories. The municipal employee who hands him the map says, without being asked, that no one who enters that area comes back different. He doesn't say worse. He says different.
English edition, available on Amazon.
Read an excerpt
Haruki had asked what happened if someone spoke their own name.
His grandmother closed the book she was holding—though she hadn't been reading it. She kept her hands open on the cover long enough for him to understand that the question had changed something in the temperature of the room. When she answered, she didn't meet his eyes.
You don't do that. You never do that.
He was thirty-two years old when the other version of him did exactly that.
English edition, available on Amazon.
