Near an abandoned shrine, one rule survives: when a finger points into the dark, do not look.
A young man lived alone in an apartment a few minutes from an old shrine. The gate leaned to one side. Soil filled the offering box. The name on its wooden plaque had been painted over, leaving only ███-sama.
He could not remember who had told him the name. But he knew the rule. If someone did a certain thing near the shrine at night, something would draw closer from far away. It would appear wherever a finger pointed. Anyone who looked that way would die.
He had never thought to ask how he knew.
That night he attempted to sexually assault a woman visiting his apartment. She fought him off and ran through the front door. He chased her.
She ran barefoot, working frantically at her phone. She was trying to block him on Instagram. He opened his own phone and, for no reason he understood, tried to block her as he pursued her. Why now? His thumb kept moving.
She stopped beside the shrine. Kneeling at the roadside, she pressed a hand to the ground. Was it a prayer? A ritual? He couldn't tell.
Then the road became shorter.
A distant utility pole slid silently toward them. Then the next pole did the same. No one was approaching on foot. The distance itself was coming closer.
The woman stood and pointed into the darkness.
He nearly followed her finger with his eyes. He forced his neck still. Look, and you die. He stared at the base of a streetlight. At the edge of his vision, something narrower than a pole and taller than a house appeared to stand up.
He reached for the woman. She pulled away. Her fingers were longer than before. Her wrist bent the wrong way. Her face remained her face, but her breathing came from directly behind him.
When had she become like that?
Just as he began to lift his head, there was a sound overhead like fabric tearing.
Something enormous fell over both of them from the same angle at which he had first lunged at her.
The woman fleeing and the man pursuing vanished beneath one shadow. He never looked up. He only felt his feet leave the road and realized that the thing lifting him had nothing resembling hands.
His phone hit the ground. Its screen still asked:
"Block this account?"
A single finger extended from the darkness above.
This time, it pointed down.
