Tale of the Dead Town

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “I’d like to see the person in charge,” D told the nurse in a low voice.

  Reaching for a switch under the desk, the woman said, “He’ll be right here,” though it was nearly a moan. Her syrupy tone seemed to have an almost wanton ring to it.

  “He needn’t do that. I’ll go to him.”

  “No,” the nurse said, shaking her head, “he expressly told me to let him know the moment you came in.”

  “So, he knows me, then?”

  “Yes. Actually, so do I . . . ”

  It’d happened again.

  D looked at the nurse. The light of reason had already left her eyes. He turned to the far end of the lobby.

  Just then, footsteps echoed from one of the numerous corridors, and a figure in white came running toward him. The figure became an old man with a white beard who crossed the lobby at a lively pace and halted in front of the Hunter. Gazing steadfastly at D, he moaned, “Oh, my!” By the look on his face, he wished he were a woman. “Looks like I’ll have to move my female patients and nurses somewhere else. I’m Allen, the hospital director.”

  “Call me D,” the Hunter said in his usual brusque manner. “So, do you know me, too?”

  Director Allen nodded deeply. “Though I only just met you last night. Looks so good it even made a man like me lightheaded—not a chance I’d forget that. So, what brings you here?”

  “A few minutes ago, a girl told me to come here.”

  “A girl?” the aged director asked. His expression grew contemplative, and he asked, “Was she about sixteen or seventeen, with black hair way down to her waist? Pretty as no one’s business?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’d be Nan. Not surprising, really. You’re just the man for the job.”

  “How did you know I’d come?”

  “That was the impression I got last night.” As he finished speaking, the hospital director swallowed hard. D was calmly gazing at him. The black of his eyes, impossibly dark and deep, awakened fearful memories etched in the very genes of the director’s cells. Small talk and jokes had no place in the world of this young man—this being. Director Allen did all he could do to look away. Even when the young man’s image was reduced to a reflection on the floor, the director was left with a fear as chill as winter in the core of his being.

  “Please, come with me. This way.” His tone bright for these last few words alone, Director Allen started retracing his earlier steps. Traveling down a number of white corridors, he led D to a sickroom. A vague air of secrecy hung over this part of the hospital. There wasn’t a single sound. The room was surrounded by noise-dampening equipment that worked almost perfectly.

  “So we don’t wake the sleeping princess,” the director explained as he opened the door, seeing that D had noticed the arrangements.

  This place had turned its back on the light of day. In the feeble darkness of the spacious sickroom, the girl lay quietly in her bed. Her eyes were closed. Aside from the usual table, chairs, and cupboard, there wasn’t any other furniture in the room. The windowpane behind the drawn curtains was opaque.

  The dream last night, the watchmen at the gate, and the girl with the long hair—they all had to be part of a plan to lead D here. But toward what end?

  The girl didn’t seem to be breathing, but D stared down at her in pensive silence.

  You should be out laughing in the sunshine.

  “This is Sybille Schmitz—she’s seventeen,” the director said, hemming and hawing a bit when he came to her age.

  “How many decades has she been like this?” D asked softly.

  “Oh, so you could tell, then?” the hospital director said with admiration. The fact of the matter was she’d been that way for nearly thirty years. “One fall day, she was found lying out in the woods not far from the village. Right off we knew what’d been done to her. She had those two loathsome marks on the nape of her neck, after all. The whole village pitched in and we took turns watching her for three days without sleep so no one could get near her. In the end, the guilty party never did appear, but Sybille didn’t wake up, either. She’s been sleeping here in my hospital ever since. Our village was just about the only place that got along with the Nobility, so I don’t see why something like this had to happen.”

  It was unclear if D was really listening to the man’s weary voice. In this whole absurd business, D had confirmed only one thing as fact. A young lady dancing on and on with elegant steps in the blue light. People laughing merrily at a never-ending banquet. D turned to Director Allen. “How did you know I’d come?”

  The hospital director had a look of resignation. “I had a dream about you last night,” he replied more forcefully than necessary. He still hadn’t fully escaped the mental doldrums the young man’s gaze had put him in.

  D didn’t react at all.

  “And not just me,” Director Allen added. “Now, I didn’t exactly go around checking or anything, but I’d wager the whole village did, too. Anyone who had that dream would understand.”

  “What kind of dream?”

  “I don’t remember anymore. But I knew you were going to come. You’d come to see Sybille.”

  Dreams again?

  “Have there been any strange incidents in your village recently?”

  The director shook his head. “Not only hasn’t there been any problem with the Nobility, but we haven’t had any crimes by outsiders or villagers, either. I imagine arguments and fisticuffs between those who’ve been hitting the bottle hardly qualify as the kind of incidents you’re talking about.”

  Why, then, had the Hunter been summoned?

  “What’s supposed to happen after I get here—can you remember?”

  The director shook his head. He almost looked relieved. It was as if he had the feeling that, if he became involved with this young man in any way, there’d be a terrible price to pay later.

  D drifted toward the door. He didn’t give another glance to the girl or the hospital director. He was about to leave. There was nothing here to hold a Vampire Hunter’s interest.

  Wanting to say something to him, the director realized he really had nothing to say. There were no words to address a shadow. When the door finally closed, the director wasn’t completely sure that he’d actually met the young man.

  On his way through the lobby to the exit, D passed a man. He was middle-aged and dressed in a cotton shirt and trousers and, while both garments were clean, they’d also been patched countless times. His rugged face had been carved by the brutal elements. Anyone could easily picture him out working the soil to earn his daily bread. With a weary expression, he quickly walked past D.

  Slipping once more through the feverish gazes of the nurse and patients, D exited the lobby. Silently riding down the slope, he came to a little road. It wouldn’t be much farther to the main road. But, just as he was going around a curve at the bottom of the hill, he found a dragon-drawn wagon coming from the opposite direction.

  Not all of the supernatural creatures and demons the Nobility had unleashed were necessarily ferocious beasts. Though extremely rare, there were certain species, like sprites and smaller dragons, that humans could keep. Some of these creatures could howl for flames in freezing winter or summon the rains that were indis-pensable for raising produce, while others could replace machinery as a source of cheap labor. The beast before D now was a perfect example of the latter.

  The dragon seemed to have sensed D even before it saw him. Its bronze flesh was covered with bumps that manifested its fear, and not even the whip of the farmer in the driver’s seat could make it budge.

  After lashing the beast a number of times, the farmer gave up, throwing down the whip and drawing the electronic spear from a holster beside his seat. As he hit the switch, it released a spring inside the handle. A three-foot-long spear suddenly teles-coped out to twice that size. At the same time, the battery kicked in and the steel tip gave off a pale blue glow.

  The weapon was far more powerful than its appearance
suggested—even if it didn’t break the skin, the mere touch of it would deliver a jolt of fifty thousand volts. According to the Complete Frontier Encyclopedia, it was effective against all but the top fifty of the two hundred most vicious creatures in the midsize class. While jabbing a beast of burden in the haunches with it might be a bit rough, the technique certainly wasn’t unheard of. The dragon’s hindquarters were swollen with dark red wounds where it’d been stabbed before. Electromagnetic waves tinged the sunlight blue. The farmer’s eyes bulged from their sockets, but the dragon didn’t budge.

  No amount of training could break a dragon’s wild urges. Cyborg horses were something the dragons loved to prey on, but, even with one nearby, there wasn’t the slightest glimmer of savagery in the beast’s eyes. It remained transfixed, and tinged with fear. It couldn’t pull away . . . It stood still as a statue, almost like a beautiful woman enthralled by a demon.

  As D passed, the farmer clucked his tongue in disgust and pulled back his spear. Since his cart was so large, there were fewer than three feet left to squeeze by on the side of the road. The point of his spear swung around. An instant later, it was shooting out at full speed toward D’s back.

  -

  III

  -

  The blue magnetic glow never would’ve suspected that at the very last second a flash of silver would drop down from above to challenge it. D’s pose didn’t change in the least as his right hand drew his blade and sent the front half of the spear sailing through the air.

  Still leaning forward from his thrust, the farmer barely managed to pull himself straight. The farmer, after only a moment’s pause, made a ferocious leap from the driver’s seat. In midair, he drew the broadsword he wore through the back of his belt. When he brought the blade down with a wide stroke, a bloody mist danced out in the sunlight.

  Looking only for an instant at the farmer who’d fallen to the ground with a black arrowhead poking out of the base of his neck, D turned his eyes to what he’d already computed to be the other end of that trajectory. There was only an expanse of blue sky . . . But the steel arrow stuck through the farmer’s neck had flown from somewhere up there.

  The stink of blood mixed with the almost stifling aroma of greenery in the air, and, as D sat motionless on his steed, the sunlight poured down on him. There wasn’t a second attack.

  Finally, D dropped his gaze to the farmer lying on the ground, just to be sure of something. The bloodstained arrow was the same deadly implement the man had used to attack him in his dream. Perhaps the arrow had flown from the world of dreams.

  Putting his longsword back in its sheath, in a low voice D asked, “You saw what happened, didn’t you?”

  Behind him, someone seemed to be surprised. Just around the base of the hill, a slim figure sat astride a motorbike of some kind, rooted to the spot. The reason her long hair swayed was because her whole body was trembling.

  “Uh, yes,” she said, nodding slowly. It was the same young woman who’d told him to go to the hospital.

  “Tell the sheriff exactly what you saw,” D said tersely, giving a kick to the belly of his horse.

  “Wait—you can’t go. You have to talk to the sheriff,” the girl cried passionately. “If you don’t, the law will be after you until the whole situation gets sorted out. You plan on running the rest of your life? Don’t worry. I saw the whole thing. And don’t you wanna get to the bottom of this mystery? Find out why everyone dreamed about you?”

  The cyborg horse stopped in its tracks.

  “To be completely honest,” the girl continued, “that wasn’t the first time I’d seen your face, either. I’ve met you plenty of times. In my dreams. So I knew about you a long time before everyone else did. I knew you’d come for sure. That’s why I came after you.”

  Up in the saddle, D turned and looked back at her.

  Though the girl had no idea she’d just done the impossible, her eyes were gleaming. “Great. I’m glad you changed your mind. It might be my second time seeing you, but, anyway, nice to meet you. I’m Nan Lander.”

  “Call me D.”

  “Kind of a strange name, but I like it. It’s like the wind.” Though she’d intended that as a compliment, D was as uncongenial as ever, and, with a troubled expression, Nan said, “I’ll hurry off and fetch the sheriff.” And with that, she steered her motorbike back around the way she’d come.

  Due to urgent business, the sheriff wasn’t in, but a young deputy quickly wrapped up the inquiry. D was instructed not to leave town for the time being. The deputy said the farmer who’d been killed was named Tokoff, and he had lived on the outskirts of the village. He was a violent man prone to drunken rages, and they’d planned on bringing him in sooner or later, which explained why the matter of his death could be settled so easily. Even more fortunate was the fact that he didn’t have any family.

  “But for all that, he wasn’t the kind of man to go around indiscriminately throwing spears at folks, either. If we didn’t have Nan’s word for it, your story would be mighty hard to believe. We’re gonna have to check into your background a wee bit.” The trepidation in the deputy’s voice was due, no doubt, to the fact he’d already heard D’s name. But that was probably also the reason why he’d accepted the surreal tale of Tokoff being slain by an arrow fired from nowhere at all after attacking the Hunter.

  Nan said she’d show D the way to the hotel. The two of them were crossing the creaky floor on the way to the door when D asked in a low voice, “Did you dream about me, too?”

  A few seconds later, the deputy replied, “Yep.” But his voice just rebounded off the closed door.

  With Nan at the fore, the two of them started walking down the street, D leading his horse while she pushed her bike. The wind, which had grown fiercer, threw up gritty clouds that sealed off the world with white.

  “You . . . you didn’t ask him anything at all about Tokoff,” Nan said as she gazed at D with a mournful look in her eye. “Didn’t ask the name of the man you killed, or his line of work, or if he had a family. Don’t you care? Does it just not matter now that he’s dead? You don’t even wonder why he attacked you, do you? I can’t see how you can live that way.”

  Perhaps it was her earnestness rather than her censure that moved D’s lips. “You should think about something else,” he said.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Nan replied, letting the subject go with unexpected ease.

  On the Frontier, it was taboo to show too much interest in travelers, or any concern for them. Perhaps it was the enthusiasm all too common in girls her age that made her forget for a brief instant the rule that’d been borne not out of courtesy, but from the very real need to prevent crimes against those who would bare their souls to strangers.

  D halted. They were in front of a bar. It was just a little before twelve o’clock Noon. Beyond the batwing doors, women who looked to be housewives could be seen clustered around the tables.

  Under extreme circumstances or in impoverished Frontier villages that lacked other recreation facilities, this one institution—the bar—often played a part in essentially everything the villagers did. The bar served a number of purposes—a casino for the men, a coffee shop and chat room for housewives, and a reading room and a place to exchange information on fashion and discuss matters of the heart for young ladies. It wasn’t even frowned on when the tiniest of tots tried their hand at gambling. For that reason, the bar was open all day long.

  Nan watched with a hardened expression as D wrapped the reins around a fence in front of the building. “Aren’t we going to your hotel to talk? I wouldn’t mind. It’s not like I wanna be a kid forever.”

  Giving her no reply, D stepped up onto the raised wooden sidewalk. He didn’t even look at Nan.

  The girl gnawed her lip. She wanted to look him square in the face so she could glare at him. All the anger she could muster was directed at his black-clad back, but the wind that came gusting by at that moment lifted the hem of his coat to deflect her rage. When she
pushed her way through the doors a moment later, she found the figure in black was already seated at a table right by the counter.

  From the far left corner of the bar, where all the housewives congregated, D was being bombarded with whispers and glances. Every gaze was strangely feverish, yet filled with fear at the same time. Everyone could tell. Everyone could see this young man belonged to another world.

  Feeling a certain relief at D’s choice of table, Nan took a seat directly across from him. Telling the sleepy-eyed bartender on the other side of the counter, “Paradigm cocktail, please,” she looked at D.

  “Shangri-La wine,” was all D said, and the bartender gave a nod and turned around.

  “You know, you’re a strange one,” Nan said, her tone oddly gloomy. “You can watch someone get killed without even raising an eyebrow, but you won’t take a woman back to your room. On the other hand, you did get me a grown-up seat here. Are all Vampire Hunters like you?”

  “My line of work was in your dream, too?”

  Nan nodded. “Even though you didn’t come out and say it, I just knew. And I knew you’d come here, too. Though I didn’t know exactly when it would be.”

  “You know why you had that dream?”

  Nan shook her head. “Can anyone tell you why they dream what they do?” Quickly donning an earnest expression that suited a young lady, Nan added, “But I understand. I saw that you were just walking on and on in this blue light. Where you came from, where you were going—no, scratch the first part. I only knew where you were going. To see Sybille. And there’s your answer.”

  Was she trying to suggest the sleeping girl had summoned him? Why would Sybille do that? And why had only Nan seen D over and over again? The mystery remained.

  “Thirty years ago, she was bitten by a Noble. The doctor said it was only natural you’d tell me to go to the hospital. Why are you so concerned about her?”

  “Why did Sybille call you here, for that matter? How come I’m the only one who’s dreamed about you more than once? I’m going to be honest with you—I’m so scared, I can’t stand it.” There was a hint of urgency in Nan’s voice. “No matter how scary a dream may be, you can forget it after you open your eyes. Real life is a lot more painful. But this time, I’m just as scared after I wake up. No, I’m even more scared . . . ” Her voice failed.