"Red-Handed" | A climate horror short story

Encroaching Forces 

A stinging split in her pinky finger rubbed red. Mari Yanagi sucked the blood away and ignored the burning. Small cuts came with the job. That along with frequent visits to many of Okinawa’s unfrequented places made her work hazardous for the body and mind.

「すぐに辞めます」

She was way past the age when anyone gave a fuck about what she did with her future. The job was a routine. Something that was fun a decade or so ago, but now stole parts of spirit with each day at a site.

The hum of insects swelled around as Mari stepped onto the construction site somewhere north of Kadena Air Base. The spiky honey locust trees swayed in the wind, their twisted branches rustling like brittle bones. Somewhere above, the roar of an F-15 rattled the humid air—one more layer of noise in a place already choked with it. 

Mari pulled her helmet low, adjusted the chin strap, and scrolled through her tablet. A new luxury hotel, funded by foreign investors. The thought ticked by but prompted no feeling. Her protest days were long past. More change meant more work – that was it.

But the trees wouldn’t come down without a fight. The land around them was old—sacred, according to the Okinawan elders—and protests were making permits a nightmare. She’d been sent in to smooth things over, to convince the locals that their spirits and curses should be bulldozed along with the dirt.

Behind her, one of the workers with sun-shrunk skin leaned against a backhoe, lighting a cigarette. He gestured toward the grove of trees nearby, their spiny branches cutting sharp lines against the washed-out sky.

“あの木 Trees are cursed, Yanagi-san. ユーリーだなー。Old spirits.” He chuckled as if it were a joke.  「なんかトラブルでしょう」

Mari forced a polite smile. “It’s just trees. There’s no trouble. They’ll go down like all the rest.” Always some superstition. It was the same with every job—old timers with stories about spirits, old gods, and curses. She shrugged it off, picturing that ice cold Orion waiting in her fridge after a long day.

A sea gust blew a sheet of dust across her boots. She looked down and swore there was a tiny handprint there. Mari kicked the dust off and kept moving. Probably just the heat.

The first tree loomed ahead, a massive honey locust. Mari approached, trailing her fingers along the rough bark. She stopped midstride.

“You shouldn’t be here. It’s too dangerous,” she said.

A girl stood in the shade of the branches. Her black hair a tangled curtain over her pale face. She wore a royal red furisode—an elaborate silk kimono with wide trailing sleeves brushing the ground, and stared up at the arms of the tree with eyes that seemed to belong to someone much older. 

Mari squinted at the girl’s face, a stitch of discomfort bubbled deep in her gut. It wasn’t the first time the work crew had tried to spook her with ghost stories—but this? Way too far. But she could feel the weight of the girl’s gaze like a hand pressed to her chest, the kind that forces you to notice every breath you take.

It’s the heat, she told herself, just the heat.

“Do you know what waits in the branches?” the girl whispered. 

Mari followed the girl’s eyes into the canopy, just as the wind kicked up again. 

A flash of red flickered between the branches, followed by a wet slap against the earth. Mari froze.
On the dirt, a child’s severed hand twitched once, curling its tiny, cracked fingers. Slowly, it dragged itself into the undergrowth, leaving behind a dark, sticky trail.

Mari took a step back, her heart hammering, but when she looked for the girl again, she was gone.

---

Stalker in the Trees

Back at her apartment, Mari cracked open a tall can of Orion, then took five large gulps.

「ああぁ気持ちいい」

She set it down then let out a large burp. That one was dedicated to her stuffy ex-husband.  She scanned her email inbox on her old laptop. Utility rate hike would be expensive this year. Damn. With the Japanese economy in the swirling like a large turd in the toilet, perhaps it was too early to quit after all.

Another email pinged in. She took another sip of beer as she read it. A new job offer from a rival company glared from the top of the screen, promising higher pay and a fresh start. Tempting. But leaving now would burn bridges, and the construction company had been her safety net through the mess of her divorce. Walking away felt too much like failure. Waiting was the best option for now.

She leaned back and rubbed at her eyes, exhaustion settling in her bones. It wasn’t just the heat. Something had been off all day—since that hand dropped from the tree. She shook the bad thoughts away. 

A faint knock pulled her attention toward the window. Without thinking, Mari reached out and opened it. 

A small red hand clutched the window frame.

It was no larger than a child’s, slick with blood, the nails dark and cracked. It twitched once, twice—then crawled down the wall and vanished into the night. 

「いや!」

Mari dropped her beer, then slammed the window shut, her pulse thudding painfully in her ears. A smear of blood marked the glass. She took quicksteps to the kitchen, swiped up a towel, then returned, to furiously wipe it away, but it only smudged deeper, a dark streak that wouldn’t come clean. 

---

Hands Take Hold 

The next day, the trees came down. 

Mari stood stiffly by the machinery as workers hacked at the roots of the old honey locust trees, the sharp whine of chainsaws biting into bark; the splintered wood flying, cracking. Red stone markers appeared beneath the soil, each one stamped with handprints—small, childlike imprints pressed deep into the rock. 

Mari’s radio crackled with static. She turned it off, trying to push down the unease spreading through her, but it hung heavier than her protective gear—a sour feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was there something, somebody, under there? Even though she stood a safe distance away, she found herself wanting to avoid the final inspection.

As the last tree fell, a red hand burst from the dirt - not at the tree, but around Mari’s ankle.

The cold fingers gripped then ripped her to the earth. She hit the ground hard, twisting her knee.

More hands appeared—red and writhing, clawing up from the earth, dragging themselves over the roots. They crawled toward the workers, who shouted and stumbled away, kicking at the disembodied things with panicked curses.

A voice drifted through the chaos, soft but clear: 

“This is only the beginning. The gates are opening soon.” 

It was the girl from yesterday.

Unable to get up, Mari screamed as a legion of spidering hands fingered toward her. A slick, gelatinous hand slapped against Mari’s cheek, leaving behind a smear that smelled faintly of rusted rot. The wet squelch of dozens of hands slithering over her skin made her stomach churn. Heat roared through her body, as if a furnace ignited beneath her ribs, each breath seared sharp. Sweat oozed from her pores, her heart drummed too fast and faint, a headache mashed her forehead to near mush against her helmet band. A merciless fever pinned her down even after the hands had gone away. From the corner of her vision, before the felled tree, she saw her—the girl in the furisode, standing.

---

Hospital

It was dark out when Mari woke in the hospital, disoriented and feverish. What the hell was that?

The doctors dismissed her collapse as heat exhaustion. Her boss ordered her to take time off while the hotel project moved forward. The land was being cleared; soon, the foundations would be poured.

She had no strength to have any say.

Perhaps, it’s time to quit after all—walk away, leave the cursed soil and everything behind.

But what good would that do? Some things, once touched, never let go.  

Her body ached; sleep was all she could do.

But the fever didn’t leave. It squirmed through her dreams, filling her with flashes of blood-soaked hallways and the sound of a school bell ringing, transforming slumber into umbra visions.

In the worst of these dreams, she saw children staring with bloody, empty eyes—their faces turned toward a lone figure in a classroom, a blonde-haired American woman with an exhausted, defiant gaze. Zena. Was that her name? It sounded familiar.

Mari didn’t know the woman, but she there was a connection—as if something from the construction site had reached beyond the dirt, stretching toward the base’s only high school. The hands, the blood, the fever—they were linked, tangled together in ways she couldn’t yet understand. 

She woke with a start, gasping for air, her skin clammy with sweat, a scream stuffed in her throat. Her ankle burned. She pulled back the sheet – there was a deep red bruise spread around the skin in branching lines—roots, the shape of a child’s hand.  

Thanks for reading!

Learn more about the Japanese yokai in this story Akateko, here.

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