The Liminal Zone

Internationally renowned master of horror Ito (Deserter) returns with a collection of four new stories. In “Weeping Woman Way,” a soon-to-be-married couple touring the countryside stumble across a village inhabited by women who believe it is their duty to weep uncontrollably at all times in order to help the recently deceased find peace in the afterlife. In “Madonna,” students at an elite girls’ Christian boarding school discover a disturbing connection between their stern headmaster’s eerily intense wife and the strange rock formations decorating campus. A terminally ill man visits Mount Fuji’s Sea of Trees determined to end his life on his own terms, only to be bizarrely transformed after encountering the local phenomena known as “The Spirit Flow of Aokigahara.” “Slumber,” the best and most viscerally disturbing story in this collection, features a young law student who comes to believe he is responsible for committing a series of gruesome murders in his sleep.