I deal in antiques in Tokyo. We bought a painting. I wish we hadn't.

I make a living dealing in antique art in Tokyo. And if you work in this field long enough, you run into some genuinely weird stuff. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.

Three years ago.

I got hired to sort through a storage warehouse at a big old farmhouse in Inagi. The family wanted to sell whatever they could to fund their son's business. So me and my buddy started digging through this incredible old warehouse together.

We're looking around when suddenly my friend goes "oh."

Just. "Oh."

I walked over and he was staring at a painting.

"Kano school?"

"Yeah, definitely."

"Who painted it?"

He checked the appraisal certificate in the box but it was blank. Nothing.

"Unknown artist?"

"Hard to tell in this light but judging by the condition... mid-Edo period. Maybe Meiwa or An'ei era?"

"Let's take it outside and check for a signature."

We brought it out into the light and looked at it properly.

And it was STUNNING. A bijinga, a beauty portrait. Unmistakably Kano school style, thick lines, vivid color. But no signature anywhere on it.

"Okay but this is genuinely incredible work for an unknown."

"Let's get it back and do a proper investigation."

We agreed, paid the owner, grabbed the painting along with a few other odds and ends, and headed home.

Not once thinking about what that painting would bring with it.

On the drive back from Inagi, we talked about it the whole way. The Kano school was the conservative faction of Edo-period painting, you know. Landscapes, animals, still life stuff mostly. But as Edo culture shifted from samurai to merchant class, painting subjects shifted too. Actors, beauties, supernatural figures. That's the ukiyo-e world.

Kano school resisted all of that. But apparently there were younger painters trained in the Kano style who got fed up with the rigidity and just went rogue. If that's what happened here, an unsigned work actually makes sense.

"Could even be a British-influenced piece."

"No way."

We were in the middle of chatting when I looked out the window and went cold.

We were driving through Fukagawa.

We had gotten off the expressway at Gaien. That was the last thing either of us remembered. And somehow, in like five minutes, we were in Fukagawa.

My friend just tilted his head. Neither of us could explain it. We chalked it up to spacing out and drove back to the shop in Minamoto Ward.

Back at the shop we looked at the painting again.

A woman. One knee raised, sitting in a loose, undone way. A lower-class courtesan, by the look of it. Hair disheveled, one kanzashi pin, one comb, the loose strands catching a subtle shine. Her hemp kimono had fine vertical stripes with morning glories. The robe hung open, sash tied loosely at the waist. The whole thing looked like a scene right after a summer tryst. The hem was disordered and her pale thigh was visible. You could almost see further.

Her face was turned to the side. You couldn't see her mouth.

We didn't say anything for a while.

The detail in the disheveled hair. The intricacy of the mother-of-pearl comb. The vividness of the kimono. I couldn't imagine who could have painted something like this.

But also.

Something felt OFF.

Like that feeling you get at 3am for no reason when your stomach just drops. That kind of feeling.

It was her eyes.

Glancing sideways at us. Long, sharp, narrow eyes. And the pupils inside them were tiny. Like someone had pressed a pin into the paint.

My friend must have felt it too because he rolled the painting up fast and shoved it back in the box without a word.

Then he said: "I mean... I don't know how to put this."

"It's a creepy painting."

"...yeah. Kind of. It's getting late anyway, I'm heading out."

It wasn't that late. But he basically ran to his car.

I turned off the shop lights and went upstairs to my apartment.

And that's when it started.

That night I dreamed about my late grandmother. She died before I was born so I'd never actually seen her face, only the portrait photo from her memorial altar. In the dream she looked exactly like that photo, same clothes and everything. She was looking at me with this sad expression, trying to say something.

And then the phone SCREAMED and I woke up.

It was my friend's wife.

"I'm sorry to call so late... my husband... he was in a car accident... they're saying he's unconscious, critical condition..."

She was sobbing. I tried to calm her down and get the details. He had driven straight into a utility pole. Skull fracture. They were fighting for his life in the ICU.

"Where did the accident happen?"

"...Fukagawa. I don't know why he was even there..."

"FUKAGAWA?!"

I actually cut her off saying it that loud.

"I'll come to the hospital right now."

"No, they're not allowing visitors right now, you can't see him anyway. I'll call you if anything changes."

I put the phone down and just sat there. Told my wife, who had been staring at me in shock. We stayed up all night. No more calls came, which was the only good news.

The next day was brutal.

I went to the hospital first thing and gave his wife some money for the situation. She said he'd barely made it through but was still critical. After that I had to cover my friend's work on top of my own. I got home past midnight, completely wrecked.

Fell asleep. Nightmares. Woke up.

My wife wasn't next to me.

I looked around and then I heard it. From downstairs in the shop. A woman crying.

My wife's voice.