Ghost Hunt, Volume 8 by Shiho Inada and Fuyumi Ono

Mai, Naru, Lin and the others are engaged by the owners of an old restaurant secluded in the countryside to prevent more deaths from occurring. It seems that every time the restaurant changes hands in the family that owns it, when the head of the family passes on, people within the family begin to die. And now that the head of the family is dying of old age, already, strange things are ocurring.

One of the sons of the family was badly burnt from a fire that seemed to come out of nowhere to burn him. Two of the family children whisper amongst themselves and barely seem like normal children at all. When Mai overhears them talking amongst themselves, it is with glee over who will be next to die.

The current head of the household seems almost resigned to this, but hopes to limit the scope of the deaths, at least, since before the restaurant passed the last time, the family was almost completely wiped out by this strange curse. And the source of the curse is known- a shrine kept in a sea cave beneath the restaurant. Strange tales are told about the statue of the God kept in the wooden shrine, and legends abound of the greed of the villagers who first invoked the curse. Tales of a monk who was actually a God, or of five monks with a great treasure who were killed and slain by the villagers abound, but the outcome is the same. The villagers attack the monks and steal the treasure, whereupon, they are cursed by the God and must construct the shrine to be safe, and the image of the God within must be made out of the Gold they stole.

But is this reallya God taking revenge on the family for not properly worshipping at the shrine the village were forced to build, or is it something more sinister? When Naru is attacked by the force that the shrine contains, things get worse and worse! Naru is possessed by the spirit, and while Lin calls on his Taoist magic to keep Naru sleeping and the spirit within him contained, the others must defend Naru's body while keeping the family safe from the evil already unleashed. Have they finally bitten off more than they can chew?

This book was one of the most effective yet for this series. The menace of the spirit and the already-possessed family members is palpable, and the images of the two youngest children of the family whispering with evil glee in the corners of the house sends shivers down your spine, combined with the evil smirks the two children sport. The team breaks out all the old standbys for help with the case, including paper Ofuda, but when one of the children touches it scornfully to refuse it, the paper bursts into flame, leaving her unharmed.

As usual, Mai dreams in the restaurant, and her vision of the shrine shows it wavy and distorted, as if viewed through a lens of evil and malice, but the inside of the shrine has only a piece of driftwood, eaten away from whatever it had been through a combination of the waves and time.

This spirit, whether it is a God or something else, cares nothing for human lives, easily sending a child running to throw itself off a cliff if the investigators will not let it have Naru. But as spiritually powerful as Naru is, that would be a catastrophe. Naru uses modern methods to hunt ghosts because his great spiritual power makes it difficult to control. If he uses too much of it, he could become open to possession- as he does here. This story is powerful and nightmarish, and I can't wait to see what happens. Highly recommended.