Nightmare Fuel / Erma

Erma is not happy...

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

• While Erma herself is good natured and is mainly generally considered an in-universe example by adults around her due to her harmless spooky behavior, she is still a powerful yokai who will retaliate hard should her or her family be threatened and/or antagonized, as her former babysitter, Wallace, Pennywise, the Yokai thug trio and the Yokai children can attest.
  • Likewise, some of her pranks may fall in this category, especially if they gone horribly wrong.
• Erma's possessed dummy "Wittle Wallace", who seems to have taken up residence around Erma. Especially after it takes over the body of Erma's babysitter Felicia, with plans to do the same to Erma herself.
• Felicia's body after she falls victim to a Grand Theft Me from the Big Bad of the Secrets Arc (Granted it is Wittle Wallace controlling her body). Her eyes are much more blank and demon-like, she always has a creepy, malevolent smirk on her face, and she's outright cruel and antagonistic towards poor Erma and Felicia's new body.
• The Secrets Arc manages to pull one last bit of this, as we learn an upcoming Big Bad is Erma's original babysitter, most likely out for revenge for Erma's innocent pranks. Her face is almost demonic, much like Wallace's!Felicia.
• "The Search, Part 23" has Erma being drawn into walking down a creepy forest path when she hears a voice. As she walks down the path, things get foggier and more voices to speak. Then it becomes clear that these are the sounds of a youkai attack on a human village, and the resulting massacre of the inhabitants, including children. As more and more cries for help ring out, Erma jumps at the sound of a loud snap, causing her to disperse the fog. Then it's revealed that the snapping sound was caused by her stepping on a bone. She follows the bone trail to a tree growing over the piled-up remains of the slaughtered humans. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
  • The tree with the skulls surrounding it is a type of yokai known as a jubokko. A tree that has become a yokai after absorbing vast quantities of human blood and thus hungers for it.
  • Later on, the three yokai thugs Erma faced off against before discovering the tree force her inside, and she encounters the human souls trapped within the tree, who still don't understand why the yokai killed them. Their cries for help are bloodcurdling.
  Damned Soul: WHY???? We didn't do anything to you! We had nothing but peace with each other! And yet you trapped us in here! In this unending nightmare! Why? TELL ME WHY!
  Damned Samurai: You monsters burned down everything we strived and cared for! Isn't that enough?! I've been in here for so... so long... In this cramped hell... No room to breathe. No room to live in this afterlife. (grasp Erma, near tears) Please... I just want to feel freedom again... To see light once more, sun or moon...
  Damned Shogun: The voices! Everyone's voices! They just won't stop!
  Damned Soul: Let's peal this one's brain so she knows how it feels in here!
  Damned Soul: (a little girl) Why did you do this? W-Where's my momma?
  Damned Soul: WHO CARES ANYMORE?? NONE OF THIS MATTERS! JUST LET US OUT! LET US OUT!
  • LET US OUT! LET US OUT! LET US OUT! LET US OUT! LET US OUT
  • On the final page of Part 53, Erma's eye began to glow red with anger while she's harassed by the other spirits inside the Jubokko and struggles to break her chains, this resulting in a pissed off Erma becoming powerful enough to break free from her sealed chains and uprooting the Jubokko.
• Spirit's Bloom introduces two new bad guys, both of which have their brand of nastiness. On the day of Erma's parents' wedding, Emiko's father causes the two to get into a car accident and fakes her death. Hard to say which is more terrible; Sam thinking his wife was dead for months, or her being kidnapped for months with no way to tell anyone where she was. The other new big bad is a strange invisible man who takes it even further by violently killing three innocent nurses who just happened to see him. The first kill was particularly bad since he'd completely stolen the nurse's voice, leaving her unable to scream for help.
  • On the slightly bright side, we know the afterlife exists in this world so at least they’re in a better place.
• The patriarch of the Yureimoto family, Osamu Yureimoto, is feared in the yokai to the point that the mere presence of his shadow is enough to make any yokai tremble with fear.
  • Osamu reveals to Emiko that she never escaped him, as he reveals that despite his old age he still has the power to drag Emiko back home to place her under permanent house arrest and make sure Sam underwent eternal suffering and torment for daring to love her, all of it while he briefly transforms into his most powerful form.
  • Yori Yureimoto's husband wasn't so lucky, as Osamu locked him in a cell underground when he tried to confront him.
• The ending of Mitsu and Momo's oneshot comic. It's not clear what happened to the kids and teacher who were bullying them, but it can't have been good.
• The Yokai Thug Trio quickly establishes as some of the most dangerous enemies Erma faced thus far as they freeze and murder a bystander innocent Yokai that offered Erma help by freezing him and shattering his frozen body into millions of ice pieces, completely annihilating him.
  • Later on, they manage to kidnap Erma by kidnapping some of the bullied yokai and forcing them into kidnapping Erma by sealing her with talismans and chains strong enough to restrain a whole mountain dragon. Not only that, but they feed her to the Jubokko with the sole intention of getting rid of her.
• As soon as Erma emerges from the Jubokko, in her new enraged form, one of the Thug Trio realizes they messed up bad and tries running for it, only for Erma to immediately destroy him swiftly. Before the other two could even process what happened, Erma quickly wipes them off the face of the earth as well, leaving only the bullied Yokai who kidnapped Erma in the first place at her mercy.
• The chapter where the Yokai Kids are trapped in the darkness is an amazing example of Nothing Is Scarier. All it shows is the cyclops running around in the darkness as he tries to save his friends from... whatever it is that's dragging them down into the darkness. At the end, all he can do is curl up as their cries for help torment him. Even if they had it coming, it's still unsettling.
  • Hell, the description for the chapter is scary in of itself:
  in the darkness
  in the madness
  forever
• We don't see much of Erma's One-Winged Angel form, but what little we do see is horrifying: blood red eyes under a writhing mass of hair, with horns sprouting from her head and massive claws on her hands. The hair is also spreading outward across the landscape, decaying the land it touches and driving everyone caught in it mad with fear.
  • Before her parents find her and snap her out of it, she almost gives in to her rage completely, as a self-satisfied Slasher Smile spreads across her face as she listens to the screams of the Yokai Kids.
• The aftermath of Erma's rampage. No punches are pulled, the lands are destroyed, people are hurt. But special mention has to go to the Yokai Kids. They're laying on the shattered ground, mumbling gibberish with their hair whitened from the shock. Even Momo can only mutter a dumbstruck "Whoa..."
  • In the next comic, what is Osamu’s reaction to the entire ordeal? To CLAP, and declare it a fine show.
  • And as revealed one page later, it wasn't just the Yokai District who saw the Blood Moon. It was visible globally.
• While it was awesome to see Osamu get some comeuppance, what on earth did Emiko say to leave a ruthless and cruel warlord like him so shaken?
• Osamu's motives for cozying up to Erma are finally revealed at the end of the family reunion arc: he's grooming her to take his throne one day. Just what else does the old tengu have in store for Erma and her family?