Flipping Haunted Houses For Fun And Profit! 1.09 - Dolls And Spirits (Patreon)

Loren had thought that finding corroborating evidence for the idea of figurines becoming tsukumogami outside of Amatsushima wuld be difficult. After all, if it was a thing that happened, surely he’d have heard of it as being common before now, right?

At first, his searches when the got back to Happy Homes—after being told sternly that the work computers were for work, and Harmony pointedly reminding him that Diwata was watching—hadn’t been all that product. Searching for tsukumogami had mostly led either to links about fictional media featuring them, sites featuring the publicly known examples, or both. The famous battleship Akitsu was very well-represented, both in fictional its depictions and in sites relaying its history and its current existence as a training vessel and testing platform.

Narrowing it down to dolls that were tsukumogami… well, he had to filter out the search results about Tsukumogami Monogatari, especially since they had announced a fifth film was coming out. There was a lot of ash there, mostly selling toys and doll based on the toys and dolls in Tsukumogami Monogatari, which was some very weird recursion in his opinion, especially if they actually did become tsukumogami in a few years.

Still, he was eventually able to find a site that provided a reasonably clinical description of tsukumogami as a spiritual phenomenon, and they’d even been kind enough to provide sidebars as to how they interacted with the other forms of magic, such as Phaustriantry, Necromancy, and—ugh—Water. He read over the notes about Flame, which seemed accurate enough, if sparse. They fed on heat as an ambient imbuement source, but were not fatally overloaded by direct infusion the way vampires were. Though given they were dolls, the material of a tsukumogami would still affect it.

The site provided a list of kinds of tsukumogami, although it noted that these were traditional names for old, common objects. The Akitsu showed as a specific, named entry, as did Lasablica’s Protector and Teutania’s Kaiserin. Notably, there were no names for tsukumogami of newer objects like phones and computers, simply putting them all under the blanket term of tsukumogami… and probably because such were very unlike to remain functioning long enough to become a tsukumogami under normal circumstances. Planned obsolescence at its finest. He’d heard there were small, artisanal businesses trying to fix that… but honestly, there was no market for a smartphone that would last a hundred years. Consumer habits would doom the venture in ten. Of course, there were scrying mirrors, which was old magic and technology and the basis for modern computers, but once fully operational those were basically spirits already, so they didn’t count.

Internet rumor had it that many scrying mirrors found the movies about intelligent computers wiping out human civilization hilarious, but so far, any attempts to get them to explain why only elicited more laughter. Very ominous, really.

Loren bookmarked the page for Steve, then continued on, changing his search terms to find modern references to tsukumogami dolls—hinnagami—instead of tsukumogami in general.

To his surprise, that had immediately brought up links to ScryVid.

He stared at the screen for a moment, then looked around. “I want to make it clear, this is strictly work,” he said. “I’m not goofing off.”

The keyboard began to type.

Loren managed to manfully resist his initial impulse to throw himself away from the computer, then sighed at himself. Really, he was living with a ghost. Things moving without any hands or tentacles manipulating them was something he should be used to.

There was a moment, and then the mouse moved so the text cursor was somewhere that would actually accept typing, and the keyboard began typing again.

we’ll see

Loren supposed that was fair.

Very aware the house was watching—wasn’t it enough that the house always won?—Loren carefully checked on the links. It was immediately obvious some of them were completely useless. Many were videos about making dolls move with magic—whether with Flame, Spiritualism, Thaumaturgy or… ugh… Water—though some were more mundane but skilled examples of puppetry. It seemed it was a popular kind of video in the Amatsushima part of ScryVids.

Still, it gave him an idea, and he changed search terms again to help him find documentaries about hinnagami. There he finally found venecite. An episode of a documentary series discussed tsukumogami, which was a bit lengthy, so Loren merely saved the link and moved on. The recommended videos under that what were of a similar subject, and Loren scrolled through them.

Ten videos down, he found one about a figurine collector who had hinnagami in his collection.

It was a strangely anticlimactic discovery. After all this searching, it was just… there. he thought he’d have to jump through a few hoops, at least.

Still, he watched the video, which was an excerpt from a news report, one of those people interest stories. As it was foreign, it didn’t involve anyone being raped or dying. Once he was reasonably sure the moving figures were moving under their own power and not because of some external magic, CGI or puppetry, he noted it and moved on. Fortunately, the suggested videos under this one was of a similar vein, and he found other videos. Notably, he found ones depicting collectors who lived outside of Amatsushima, with one actually depicting how someone realized their favorite figure was moving, learning about tsukumogami and hinnagami, and researching how that was possible outside of Amatsushima.

He watched the whole thing, taking notes as it progressed. It was very similar to what he’d proposed, although since the person in the video wasn’t any kind of mage—they were some kind of art ScryVidder—the person in the video had needed to go around talking to experts and such to find out the underlying principles. It was close to what he had theorized, although the experts had clarified that the presence of a child was needed for dolls or doll-like bilaterally-symmetrical biped effigies to become tsukumogami, and for the child to play with the dolls in question. He hadn’t realized that…

Still, that didn’t rule out his idea. Mr. Halili had been assembling and collecting plamo before he’d been married and had presumably had his children.

Stretching, Loren went to find Harmony to see how he was supposed to format this report.

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Thankfully, Steve didn’t require some strict format for reports. The notes he’d taken, and links to various useful articles and videos had been enough. Loren had submitted the former in a printout and Steve had asked him to send the latter in an email, which had been done quickly.

Afterwards, he’d been asked to go take one of the company’s pick-up trucks to pick up some supplies, for the simply reason that Harmony and Malory didn’t have driver’s licenses. Steve had given him a list of ‘be carefuls’ for the truck—which was apparently a bit temperamental—before giving him some petty cash, a shopping list, and directions to the hardware store they went to. Metal-cutting disks, tile-cutting disks, cement-cutting disks, welding rods, wire, grout, tile adhesive… all sorts of things that Loren hadn’t realized they went through very quickly.

When he got back, Harmony dragged him off to try to make a psychological profile of the hinnagami.

“Sorry, what?” he said as he started unloading the truck and moving the supplies to the tool shed.

“You heard me right the first time,” she said as she picked up the sack of tile adhesive. “Steve’s asking me to try and make a profile of the tsukomogami in case we can try and negotiate with them. Personally, I don’t think we have enough to even guess at what a group will act like, but the job’s the job. You did the research on them, so as your senior in the company, you’re helping me figure this out.”

He rolled his eyes. “Get a move on, I’m not sure where these are supposed to go.”

Once they were finished putting things away, the two of them sat at the computer desk as Loren brought up the articles he’d found, the  two of them reading over the material as they tried to make sense of it. Well, Loren tried to make sense of it. Harmony had just immediately started taking notes—and making him wonder if he was even needed.

A lot of the articles referenced called tsukumogami in general ‘tricksters’ and ‘mischievous’, but could be roused to anger and take revenge on those who treated them wastefully or thoughtlessly, especially those who through them away… which made sense. No one wanted to be mistreated or discarded, after all. The articles relating specifically to dolls were more ominous. While dolls allegedly sought to make children happy and were known to protect them—with some allegedly granting wishes, taking the child’s place when in danger to throwing themselves in the way of things that could bring harm to the child, there were other stories of dolls haunting people for throwing them away, becoming demons that somehow killed the usually now-adult child and taking their place.

That last Loren was safely able to set aside. That wasn’t how demons worked, after all. The replace part, anyway. Killing was fully on the table when demons were involved.

“So… all right. Should we slot the behavior so far as the figures not wanting to be thrown away?” Loren mused. “From the sound of it, it looks like the Halili family aren’t planning to bring the collection along with them anymore.”

“That’s probably part of it,” Harmony said, tapping her lips with her pen as she thought.  “However, I doubt that’s their primary issue. From what we’ve seen, the figures are trying to keep the family from leaving the house or selling it. The most common incident was trying to lock them inside, and not very hard at that.”

“Most of them are little plastic figures shorter than my hand,” he pointed out. “They can hardly barricade the Halili inside.”

“Yeah, but you saw that latch on the screen door. Sure, there’s a shelf right next to the door, but it’s not like they can just reach out and slide the latch in. plus there’s the incident with the electric fan.”

Loren frowned. “What about it? I thought we agreed that enough of the figures massed together would have been able to do it.”

“Yes, but why? Why would they bother? It doesn’t keep anyone the house since they were all asleep, it doesn’t undo or inconvenience their packing, and it doesn’t scare off potential buyers of the house. So why did they do it? It must have been a lot of effort and used up a lot of magic for them, but they obviously felt it was something they needed to do. So why?”

He was tempted to brush the matter aside, to just shrug it off as a weird thing and a statistical anomaly… but he’d watched enough shows and read enough stories to know that dismissing the weird isolated incident was a stupid idea. Besides, it genuinely didn’t make sense.

“What do they want?” he mused out loud, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. “You said that ghosts want to be noticed, that they didn’t want to be alone. Is that what’s happening here too? If we look at it like that, it looks like figures don’t want to be discarded or left behind. That tracks with tsukumogami behavior according to the articles, especially for dolls.”

“But these aren’t dolls, though.” Harmony said. “Yes, they fall into the category of dolls, but even in Amatsushima, that’s a wide category, and not all are for children to play with. Some are art pieces to be seen and not touched, and a couple are basically just balls with a face drawn on it.” She gestured towards the articles. “A lot of the articles are clear that tsukumogami want to be used, or at least be useful. Shoes what to be worn, umbrellas want to keep the rain off you, houses like Diwata want shelter families and care for them—”

A bell rang cheerfully directly behind Loren, and he instinctively turned to look before remembering.

“—yes, thank you, Diwata. Now, I know these wants are likely because these are what people use these things for and the subsequent sophomorphizing by people is what shapes these tsukumogami to have these feelings, but how the tsukumogami are treated by people affect this too. The animadomo of the Tower of Llundein considers itself a prison because for almost a thousand years people have seen it as a prison, even though the reason it has a spirit was because it was a royal residence….”

“Do you really need me for this?” Loren said. “You sound like you know the subject pretty well already.”

“Yes, and I want to be able to foist it off on someone else. So learn on the job, bestie. How do the hinnagami of model kit figures want to be used?”

Loren sighed. “Well, they’re model kits. They’re not really meant for rough play. They’re for display, and probably elaborate posing. They’re not the kind you hold in your hands and slam into each other so they’re fighting. So… they’d probably want to just stay still and be admired…”

“Which means they’d want to be seen,” Harmony pointed out. “They want an audience. They want people to drop by and look at them.”

He tilted his hear, frowning. “People… like those who want to buy the house?”

The two of them looked at each other.

“People show up…” Harmony mused.

“…look around…”

“… see them…”

“But if that’s the case… why are trying to get people to not buy the place by scaring them off?”

The two of them frowned thoughtfully, both of them looking up at the ceiling as they considered.

A bell rang. It sounded like it was coming from the computer.

Both of them looked down as the keyboard started typing. There was a pause, the mouse moved and clicked, and then the keyboard was typing again and this time producing letters.

who came up with the idea to do that?

Loren blinked as Harmony suddenly sat up straight. “What do you mean, Diwata?” she asked.

More typing.

dolls like statues. look pretty but not smart. won’t be smart until old. how did they think to do what you’re saying?

Harmony and Loren looked at each other. “So… either someone else told the figures to do this…” he said thoughtfully.

“…the figures are doing it for some simpler reason and it just looks elaborate because we’re overthinking it…” Harmony continued.

“…or one of the figures is somehow really old and either very smart or capable of very complex reasoning,” he finished.

A bell rang cheerfully.

“For the record, I think we’re overthinking this,” Loren said. “If only because I, at least, have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Noted for the record,” Harmony said. “I have to go write this up. Why don’t you shut down the computer and… I don’t know, ask Norm if he needs help with anything.”

Loren nodded as Harmony moved to a separate table to get started writing. She’d always preferred handwriting things. He was about to start shutting the computer before he paused. “Hey, Diwata?” he said softly as he brought up the notepad and set the cursor in it.

A bell rang, this time in front of him.

“Can you think of any reason a spirit or group of spirits would use up a lot of imbuement just to move an electric fan into the room someone was sleeping in and turn it on?” He kept his hands off the keyboard.

It typed. because they think its too hot for their people.

Loren stared at the words thoughtfully, then nodded. “Thank you, Diwata. You’ve been a big help.”

A bell rang cheerfully.