Festival of Ghosts

On the night of the Festival of Ghosts, the midnight sea lapped against the stilts of the wooden dock. Lanterns warped and twisted in their reflections, and laughter drifted down the narrow streets. Annaisha listened absently, lying flat against the cold, wooden dock. Her steady eyes examined the setting sun, and she willed a sail to pierce the fiery sky. But no silhouette appeared. She sighed and bowed her head, thinking only of Papa. She could remember his face, his strong brow, his patient eyes—but how long would it be until her memories would begin to recede, slowly but surely, until she could no longer recall them? She clung desperately to Papa’s image and the ghost of his voice saying her name.

Annaisha. It rumbled like rocks on the cliffside but was full of comfort. His northern islander accent never failed to amuse her. Even in anger or frustration at tangled fishing line or a poor catch, there was joy in his lighthearted grumbles. Annaisha brushed her fingertips against the water below and thought harder, willing herself to commit his voice to memory.

Annaisha. Annaisha. Annaisha.

A shadow appeared in the water beneath her. Slowly, it drew closer. It was probably a fish searching for food or seaweed drifting to the surface, but still, Annaisha whispered, “Papa?”

A small hand gripped her shoulder. The grip became an impatient shake.

“Aisha?” a voice whined. “Annaishaaaa?”

The shadow vanished, and Annaisha rolled onto her back to meet Kaito’s crossed arms and pouty lips. He was dressed in the dark red kimono Mama made him, its dragon scale design glimmering in the lantern light. Mama had traded one of her hand-sewn hakamas for the precious silk fabric woven into the kimono, and it sat folded and untouched for months—saved especially for this occasion.

“Kai?” Annaisha asked. The pointed roofs of the seaside shops and red-orange lanterns were stark and unfamiliar compared to the endless ocean. “Where’s Fumi?” she asked instinctively.

Kaito uncrossed his arms and hung them loosely at his sides. The sleeves of his kimono stopped just short of his fingers (as Mama intended, so he could wear the kimono again over the years), but it made him seem all the more young and childish. Annaisha struggled to take his irritation seriously.

“She’s with Mama,” he huffed. “Hurry up, or we’ll miss the ceremony!” He seized Annaisha’s shoulder and pulled her away from the rippling waves.

Mama and Fumiko stood at the mouth of the street, shadowed from the festival’s glow. Fumiko clutched Mama’s black kimono in one hand and removed the other from her mouth to babble and point at her siblings. Mama was not as quick to notice the children and kept her eyes latched onto the moon-lit horizon. Annaisha recognized that look, the same one she had worn only moments ago. She wondered how many hours Mama had searched the skyline for a white sail.

“Aisha! Kai!” Fumiko squealed. Mama’s expression faded like sand taken into the tide. She placed a hand on Kaito’s head as he knelt to Fumiko’s level.

“Fumi, aren’t you excited for the ceremony?” he asked. Fumiko giggled and pointed at his kimono.

“Dragon!”

“See, Aisha?” he said, ignoring her reply. “She’s excited! We can’t keep her waiting, can we?” Annaisha formulated a retort when Mama cut in.

“I’m sure Annaisha’s excited, too,” she explained in her soft tones. “We all show it in different ways.”

The temple bell sounded throughout the village, and Kaito jumped to his feet.

“We’re going to be late!” he shouted, scooping up Fumiko and pulling at Annaisha’s sleeve. “Let’s go, let’s go!” 

Kaito bounded up the street with Fumiko clinging to his back. But as they neared the temple, he slowed and fell in line with the other villagers. A bubble of silence encompassed the temple courtyard. Annaisha took a breath and stared at the red arches. It had been a year since she last brought herself across its threshold.

Steadily, the crowd entered. Annaisha tried to recall her last visit: the sharp smell of burning incense, the flickering candles, her father’s face hidden in his hands as he prayed. She saw many villagers settle into that same position on the woven mats, but he wasn’t sitting among them.

As she and her family knelt among their neighbors, Annaisha studied the altar at the front of the room. The platform of candles was the only source of light, casting soft shadows across her face. She saw the familiar shelves stationed on either side, and she could almost smell the sweet blossom branches tipping from their vases. Mama and Papa had a tree just like it until a storm knocked it down four years ago. Annaisha glanced at Kaito’s face in the soft light. For as long as she could recall, it was moments like these that seemed to cast a spell over her unruly brother. He sat with his legs folded beneath him, his back straight, and his hands flat on his thighs— identical, by all appearance, to the stately and reverent elders around them. It was Papa who taught him that. Kaito wanted nothing more than to be like him, and Annaisha could still see this desire lingering in his posture. This was his way of remembering.

The man at the front gathered a basket of unlit candles and began passing one to each family. Mama traced her thumb over the smooth and hardened wax, and Annaisha saw that look again. She knew that for a moment, Mama was no longer in the temple with her children. She was again on the dock, staring at the hungry ocean, willing her husband to come home. Annaisha wanted to call out and let her words carry over the water. Instead, she placed a hand on her shoulder. Mama removed one of the pins from her hair and began etching Papa’s name into the candle. When she finished, she passed it to her children. 

“With each carving, we share a memory with the person we name,” Kaito explained in hushed tones to Fumiko. His markings were clear and concise. Then he wrapped his hand around Fumi’s and guided her etchings. “Do you remember Papa, Fumi?”

“Papa, Papa,” she repeated. “Papa gone?”

Kaito gently released Fumi’s hand. Saying nothing more, he began carving.

When it was Annaisha’s turn, she tried her best not to smudge the wax and carefully etched her Papa’s name. He had written his name out this way, too, she thought, at the end of his correspondence to the sailing posts north of their village. What had he said? What did they send? When Papa left, it seemed like any other day. He would board his vessel with a few other men, sail past the clouds, and return just before the sun dipped below the sea. But he never did. 

Annaisha finished her carving. One by one, the living approached the lit candles at the front of the room to light their own. Then they placed them on the empty wooden shelves where they’d burn until the last flame extinguished.

After the procession, the room glowed with flickering candles. Annaisha saw Kaito’s lips murmur a prayer as he patted Fumi’s head. She lay asleep before them, using her brother’s thighs as a pillow. When the temple bell rang twice, Mama took her into her arms.

“Go home?” Fumi murmured sleepily.

“Yes, Fumiko.”

“Can we stay a bit longer?” Kaito would not budge. 

“It’s late,” Mama insisted. “All the ghosts have returned to their paradise. Just as we must return home.”

Kaito shook his head and settled further into his mat. 

“They are still here. I want to stay with them.”

Seeing his determination, strong and persistent like Papa’s, Annaisha said, “It’s okay, Mama. I can stay a little bit longer, too.”

Mama shifted Fumi’s weight in her arms as she considered.

“Thirty minutes,” she decided. “And not one minute more.”

After she had gone, Annaisha settled beside her brother. It was just the two of them in the empty temple. She glanced at her brother and furrowed her brow. The temple held something different over him—something she could not comprehend. What seemed clear to Kaito was just out of her reach. There were no ghosts or divine spirits: just the scratchy straw mats beneath her legs and the chill of night that crept into the room.

So as Kaito murmured and prayed, his eyes shut and seeing or feeling something Annaisha did not, she looked once more at his dragon-like kimono and thought of her Papa. It was his stories, and only his, that could bridge the gap between her and impossibility. He told tales of dragons who could level whole forests with just the flap of their wings, and small spirits that lingered in the brush and under boulders. He even told them of great serpents stretching as far as the coast in the deepest parts of the ocean, feasting on the gifts of the tide.

“We take what they don’t eat,” he said once over a meal of fish he and Kaito had caught one evening. “There’s a balance between all creatures.”

As the cold settled over her, Annaisha thought of those giant serpents slithering their gluttonous bodies along the ocean floor. Were they hungry for something different—for something bigger and warmer than cod or salmon? Had one swallowed Papa’s vessel in one gulp, emerging and disappearing at impossible speed? Maybe that’s why Papa hadn’t visited her for the Festival of Ghosts: he was trapped in the serpent’s cavernous stomach—now the doomed protagonist of his mythical tales.

“Kai?” she asked. “Is it true you can see the ghosts?” 

He broke concentration and studied her. 

“Well, I can’t see them. I feel them with us.”

“How?”

“I…” he began, trying to find the words. “It’s like there’s someone I want to speak to standing out of my view, but I cannot find them. I know they’re near, but they never show themselves.”

“Then how do you know it’s Papa if you can’t see him?”

“I just do,” he insisted. “It feels as if I’m with him again.”

Jealousy coursed through Annaisha. She would give anything to see Papa’s ship pierce the horizon, but Kaito was already with him. 

“You’re fortunate.” She stood. “I’m going back to the dock.”

“To search the water like Mama?” Kaito asked. “He’s not out there.”

But she left anyway, telling him to find her when he was finished praying. As she passed the quiet, dark shops in the street, she tried to imagine Papa walking beside her. When that didn’t work, she tried to sense him right behind her. Two pairs of sandals against the cobblestone. Two bodies breathing.

No. The only person there was her. 

When she reached the dock, she cast stones in the water. How did Kaito do it? Why was he so lucky? Every Festival, she pretended to feel something she couldn’t, and now her inability hurt all the more. She grabbed the largest stone she could find, drew her arm back the farthest it could go, and hurled it into the air. Some yards away, water splashed as the stone sank below the surface.

What were their last words together? Good luck, I love you, see you soon? There was the image of him walking toward the rising sun. If she had seen the storm clouds lurking in the west, could she have stopped him? 

Annaisha grabbed another stone and then another. She began a barrage of stones against the serene water, throwing them and not caring if they landed on the yawning platforms or the boulders peeking from the shallow waters. She gathered more stones, tucking them into her kimono until it burdened her shoulders, tying the belt so tight as to not let any slip to her feet. Then she ran to the farthest point of the dock where the ships would port. Papa had taken them there when the docks were empty, and they caught dinner with the fishing rods he helped make. She threw stones at the memory.

“I hate you!” she shouted into the night. Anger rose to the surface like those great serpents. “I hate you!” Who did she hate? Papa, for dying? The ocean, for taking him away? Herself, for not stopping him? Over and over, she hurled her stones as far as her arms could throw them until she had to run back to the shore for more ammunition.

Rocks clicked together in the folds of her clothes and spilled from the pile in her arms. Her legs protested against the weight of the heavy stones, but she pushed forward, taking from the pile and hurling the rocks across the moonlit water. Pain claimed the tender muscles in her shoulders, but its ache was warm and rich in the cold night. She savored the pain—just as she savored the hot anger coursing through her and lingering in her clenched fists.

She wiped at her blurred eyes and drew her arm back once more, winding up her strength and aiming for the moon. But when she inched backwards, her ankle twisted on a large stone that had escaped her arms. The stones nestled in her clothes tipped her balance farther and farther over the liquid black beneath her. 

The ice-cold water stabbed at her skin before she realized she had fallen. She kicked toward the surface, but with every passing second, she seemed only to be sinking further down. In her breathless panic, she clawed at the fabric of her kimono, releasing the weights. The moon shone through the water in flickering rays of light, and Annaisha used every ounce of strength left in her to inch toward it. She erupted from the water and fumbled for the dock through a curtain of soaked hair. 

Then another hand grasped hers and lifted her from the water. Annaisha collapsed to her hands and knees and coughed up the water lodged in her throat. Though the cold air made her shiver and ache, she rejoiced as it filled her lungs. She knew she had been so foolish to lose her temper, and look where it had gotten her: cold and wet, sputtering on the dock like a pathetic fish. What would people think if they had seen her throw the tantrum of a young child—something Fumiko would do? Annaisha’s clammy cheeks tinged red. Someone had seen her. They pulled her to safety. They were standing right in front of her, watching her cough up the last drops of seawater.

“Thank you,” she began, pulling the hair from her eyes. “I’m sorry, I—”

Annaisha blinked away the water and saw no one standing before her. Her soaked clothing dripped onto the dock, filling the quiet night with its steady rhythm. She scanned the empty storefronts of the seaside shops and the vacant walkways, but her savior was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it was Kaito, but why would he run? Why would anyone else run from the person they’ve saved? She stood, and the cold settled deeper into her bones. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was there, standing out of her view, nearer than she could understand.

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A previous version of this story was published in Café Shapiro Anthology 2025 (2025).