The Monster on the Road Is Me

by JP Romney

  “I have to go.”

  “No. Don’t. Stay here and bother my books some more.”

  I slipped my arms through the straps of my backpack. “I know you don’t mean that, but it’s okay. Coming here was the right choice after all. I thought someone’s life was in danger, but it turns out I was wrong. See, libraries are still good for something!” I made a little jump in the air like anime characters do at the end of their shows.

  “Wait, whose life did you think was in danger?” the old woman asked.

  I ignored her and ran out of the front doors.

  * * *

  “What were you doing in there?”

  “Aahh!” I yelled, nearly somersaulting over my bicycle. “Gods, Moya! Were you following me?”

  “Of course,” Moya said. “What were you doing in there?”

  “I was reading a book.”

  “Reading a book?”

  “It is a library.” I picked my bike up off the ground. “I was worried there for a bit, but it was all a misunderstanding. I get what’s going on here.”

  “Do you?” she said, crossing her arms.

  “Yep. It has to do with the Seven Noble Families.”

  “Right. I told you that.”

  “But while other people are running around looking for crows and starting fires, I’m doing something productive. I’m reading. And figuring things out. With my brain.”

  “And just what did you and your brain figure out?”

  “That Yori isn’t from one of the founding families. He was all paranoid about birds following him around, but he probably just read that in the police reports. Or maybe it’s part of the Desert Punk. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. Kōtenbō doesn’t care about Yori. Nobody cares about Yori! He’s going to be perfectly safe.” I struck another triumphant anime pose.

  Moya turned and sprinted down the street without a word.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  She didn’t look back or call to me. She just kept running down the street as fast as she could.

  “Wait up!” I called, swinging my leg over my bicycle seat. “And … you’re already gone.”

  I pedaled down the road after Moya. Each time I rounded a corner I would catch sight of her, but then she would disappear again. After a few more turns I lost her completely. I knew this road, though. I knew where she was running.

  I may have made a mistake.

  28

  Yori’s house was dark. I called up to him. I banged on both the front and back doors.

  “He’s not here,” Moya said, running through the side garden.

  “Can’t you, like, smell him out?” I cried.

  “Smell him out? What does that even mean?”

  “With your nose! With your fox nose. Gods, Moya, don’t you care?”

  “Of course I care!”

  “Then find him!”

  But all my yelling didn’t do any good. Yori was not at his house. He was nowhere near his house. The Tengu Road had carried him far away into the wastelands of Tōkyō. Once there, Rain Spider rushed forward to battle Desert Punk for the honor of all of Japan. Those wastes, however, were actually a set of train tracks north of Kusaka. And Rain Spider was a thirty-ton railcar.

  * * *

  KUSAKA TOWN NEWSLETTER

  2006年10月31日

  Yori Yamamoto, age 41, expired last night in an accident on the JR line to Kusaka. Witnesses reported seeing Yamamoto running back and forth on the tracks, yelling and swinging at several cars before the fatal accident occurred. At approximately 5:30 p.m., Yamamoto charged the kakueki teisha from Kōchi, attempting to, as the conductor stated, “punch the front of the train.” Yamamoto expired at the scene. An investigation into the mysterious cause of the accident is ongoing. Intentional death has not been ruled out. His sister claimed no knowledge of Yamamoto’s whereabouts prior to the accident, stating that she thought he was still in the house. Yori Yamamoto worked as a driver for the Kusaka Motoring Company for ten years until he took work at the Kusaka Town Hall. He is survived by his sister and mourned by the town of Kusaka.

  * * *

  The police cars were pulling away by the time Moya and I got there. The body and whatever parts could be found were hurried away so the trains could run again. I reached down and picked up Yori’s welding goggles. The left lens was cracked. I slipped them quickly into my pocket because I really didn’t want to see those last traumatic moments. A flock of crows hopped along the ground, bowing here and there to peck at the gore on the tracks.

  “You should leave,” Moya said. “Go to the kaki tree. Wait for me there.”

  “Leave me alone,” I shouted, turning and pushing through the weeds and bushes. Moya didn’t reach out to stop me.

  “You have to see how desperate he’s becoming,” she called behind me. “Kōtenbō knows he can’t break into your mind, so now he’s just trying to break it.”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong!” I yelled, wiping furiously at my face. “Yori was a nobody.”

  “Innocence doesn’t mean anything to Kōtenbō. We’re on the right path here, Koda. Kōtenbō knows it. He’s moving his final pieces into play.”

  I spun on Moya. “Is this a game to you?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Is that what people are to you … you creatures? Pieces in some sick game you play to pass the time?”

  “Koda—”

  “Is that why Aiko died? And Ichiro and Taiki and Yori? To amuse your disgusting boredom?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not like you’re in any real danger. You won’t die! We’re the ones getting poisoned and broken and cut open! Not you! Not Kōtenbō! Why can’t you all just go back to where you came from and leave us alone?”

  Moya looked down at the ground. I turned back to those horrible tracks, my breath coming on in sharp, painful bursts.

  After a few moments Moya said, “Why do you think I won’t die?”

  “Because you’re not human!” I yelled back. “None of you are human.”

  “Death doesn’t only belong to humans, Koda. Death is change and transformation and loss. Everything dies. Humans, plants, animals, stars. Even … us creatures.”

  My vision rocked from side to side. My knees caved inward.

  “If we can find where Kōtenbō is hiding,” she said quietly, “I’ll make sure he never does this again.”

  The crows hopped from one side of the tracks to the next, flapping up here and there to fight over a wet spot. Their beaks were cracked, their feathers missing in big patches. Their eyes were dead and watching. Always dead and watching. I stumbled away from the tracks, pushing the crows out of my mind.

  “Burn them,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Go to the tracks and burn them. Burn Kōtenbō’s eyes.”

  “All right, Koda.”

  “Do it now!”

  Moya disappeared behind me. A few moments later, the tracks along the ground flashed orange from the fireball that devoured Kōtenbō’s desperation. The screaming of birds filled the air. Hundreds of shrill voices flapping and melting into the slow roar of a distant bonfire. I stood in a field near Kusaka Station and watched the flutters of fire that spun up into the dark sky and then plummeted back to earth. The air was sweet and sickening. The smoke drifted up like funeral incense.

  “Everything dies,” I whispered to no one.

  29

  * * *

  NOTEBOOK/FUJIWARA, AIKO

  DATE: 2006年9月4日

  A black bird followed me home today. He stood on a stump and watched me walk into my house. When I went upstairs to my room, he was at my windowsill. I opened the window, but he wouldn’t come inside. Father walked in and the black bird flew away. Father asked if Mother had called. I told him no. He said the three-legged crow would bring her home. He says that a lot. The black bird didn’t return. Nothing stays around this place for very long.

  * * *

  Moya and I walked along the banks
of Kusaka River. The sky was night above us, but we pushed through the cattails and the river grass. We dropped down embankments of slippery rock and jumped over the mud and water and fallen logs.

  I held Yori’s goggles in my pocket. They were cold from the trauma, but I was so focused on revenge that even the pictures stayed away. “Can you kill him, Moya?”

  She looked back at me. “I can stop him,” she said.

  “No. I don’t want him stopped. Not like the Seven Noble Families or blowing up a shrine. He has to stay dead this time. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Can you do that?” I shouted.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Thank you.”

  My face was flushed and red. I removed Yori’s goggles from my pocket and slipped them over my head. They hung around my neck like a pendant. The goggles were cold and dark and full of pictures of trains and body parts, but hating Kōtenbō made it so much easier to control. Moya watched me silently.

  “Do you feel it?” she asked.

  “Feel what?” I shot back.

  “The Tengu Road, Koda. It’s beginning to push in on you.”

  “Nothing’s pushing in on me. I just want to find the tengu. I want to find him and tear out his soul. I want to replace everything he’s ever known with smoke and ash and fire. I can break him, Moya. I can find him and I can break his mind and stomp on it until nothing is left but a black hole.”

  Moya lunged forward and hugged me. I pushed back, but she held on. I struggled, but she wouldn’t let go. Slowly the anger and the emptiness and hatred chipped apart and started to drain.

  “No one I care about is safe,” I said into her shoulder.

  “No one in this town is safe. Not until Kōtenbō is gone. We can stop him, Koda. We can stop him together.”

  “Winning isn’t really winning if you lose everyone along the way,” I said.

  Moya kissed me on the cheek. “You won’t lose everyone. I promise.” She let me go and looked out to the river. “C’mon, little thief, let’s find Taiki’s truck.”

  I nodded and wiped my face as we walked off through the cattails.

  * * *

  Forty meters behind Taiki’s house, we caught sight of the abandoned truck from my cold dream. Shimmering moonlight from the water cast an eerie glow on the banks of Kusaka River.

  “Which barberry bush was it?” Moya asked.

  “That one,” I said, pointing. “I think.”

  We walked over an old footbridge and stood to the side of the thorny bush.

  “It doesn’t look like the entrance to a kappa den, does it?” Moya said.

  I shrugged because I didn’t know what a kappa den entrance was supposed to look like.

  Moya stepped up to the prickly branches. “Shibaten!” she called out. “Show yourself, you ugly little river troll. I’ve brought a suri. We’re hunting the tengu.”

  The barberry bush stayed deathly still. Moya looked up at me.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “You want to take a turn?”

  “I’ve never summoned a kappa before,” I said.

  “Neither have I.”

  “Maybe there’s a magic word.”

  “Do you know a magic kappa word?” Moya said. She motioned for me to step up to the bush. I walked forward a bit and shouted into the branches.

  “O Shibaten! My name is Koda. Um … of the Okita clan. We are a mushroom-growing people.” I looked over at Moya.

  “Oh, keep going,” she said with an eyebrow raised. “You’re doing great.”

  I ignored her and turned back. “I have arrived here on the banks of the mighty Kusaka River to seek your wisdom, O Shibaten.”

  “Dear gods and goddesses,” Moya whispered.

  “My companion and I, we are hunting the ancient tengu known to you as Kōtenbō. I am a human. My companion is a fox. We would like to slice the tengu many times. I will cut his face and also his body. I will wear his feet as boots and his hands as gloves. And we will give you the heart, O Shibaten, for you to bite, or just have, or whatever.” I stepped back. Nothing. “Hmm, thought that would work.”

  “Bite his heart?” Moya said. “Gods, how did you think that was going to work?”

  Deep below the barberry bush came a loud sucking noise. The branches and the leaves shuddered as the earth caved in, pulling the barberry into a yawning black pit. From the mouth of the hole drifted a stench so powerful that Moya and I stumbled backward.

  “What is that?” I said, coughing and covering my face.

  “That is Shibaten.”

  “Did he die in there?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  From the darkness, a child’s arm reached up and clutched the soil.

  “Whoa!” I yelled, backing up against the river.

  The kappa dragged his rotting carcass from the underground lair. He was the size of a young boy, covered in damp scales from the nails of his feet to the mud-soaked ring of hair on the top of his head. He had a chipped and peeling beak where his mouth and nose should have been. His wiry legs, webbed at the toes, barely seemed able to support the weight of the filthy shell hanging from his back. On top of Shibaten’s head sat a cavity of water marked up with dings and dents. His right eye was dead and gray, and even in the fading light it was easy to see the arrow scars dotting his chest and abdomen. Shibaten looked to the left and then to the right.

  “That was a dramatic entrance,” Moya said.

  Shibaten stared at me.

  “Oh, right, sorry.” I started to clap. Because that’s what you’re supposed do for dramatic entrances, right?

  Moya closed her eyes and shook her head so I stopped.

  Shibaten looked back at her and blew air through the holes in his beak.

  “He’s a suri,” Moya answered. “Not a genius.”

  “Did he just talk to you?” I said. “Was that his talking?”

  Shibaten growled.

  “Shibaten says you talk like a squirrel with rocks in its mouth,” Moya said.

  “What? I do not. Wait, do I sound like that to you?”

  “No,” Moya said. “Most of the time, no. But sometimes, yes.”

  “Hey.”

  “Can we just get on with this?” she asked.

  Shibaten sat back on his sinewy haunches and watched us.

  “We want the eyes,” Moya said.

  “I’m sorry, the what?” I said.

  Shibaten growled and scratched at his chest.

  “We know they’re yours, but we need Kōtenbō’s eyes. It’s the only way to find him.”

  Shibaten looked down at the ground. The water in the indent on his head sloshed from side to side, but didn’t spill. His chest vibrated softly.

  Moya took a few steps forward. “The eyes are yours, we understand that, but our deal is simple. Hand them over, and we will kill Kōtenbō. Everyone profits, everyone gains. Unless you want to hide from his crows like a rat in the mud for another two centuries.”

  Shibaten looked up at Moya and grunted.

  “No,” she answered.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “He wants us to buy the eyes from him.”

  “Okay, I’m going to look past the fact we’re trying to purchase eyeballs from a kappa and I’m just going to ask what he wants.”

  Shibaten’s throat began to click. It got louder until he stood on his feet, chest heaving, bellowing from the pit of his stomach that echoed out across the river. Then the night fell silent again.

  “What. In the hell. Was that?” I said.

  “Shibaten’s price.”

  “It sounded expensive.”

  “It was.” She looked down at Shibaten. “No. Give us the eyes.”

  “What does he want?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter—we’re not going to pay it.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Say it.”

  “Fine. He wants Nobu Ikeda.”


  “My gym teacher?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “So he can kill him,” Moya said in an exasperated tone. “That’d be my guess.”

  Shibaten snarled.

  “I’m sorry,” Moya said. “He would like to pulverize his bones and siphon off his life-energy. Which I think would also kill him … so, yes, kill him.”

  “Why kill Ikeda-sensei?” I asked.

  “Really? I thought you had this figured out. It was the Ikeda clan that betrayed Shibaten. Yes, that was your fault, Shibaten. What did you think they were going to do? Let you skip along the river eating their children as you please? Of course they shot you full of arrows. I’d shoot you full of arrows, you little monster. Now, give us Kōtenbō’s eyes or the tengu will kill us all.”

  Shibaten pounded the ground with his foot.

  “You can’t hide from him forever,” she said. “The Seven Noble Families are almost wiped out. What do you think he’ll do next? Just forget about the river troll that stole his eyes? Do you think he won’t poison the river? Or dry it up entirely to find you? Kōtenbō will never stop. He cannot be reasoned or bargained with. Every human and magical creature in this valley will be consumed if we don’t stop him.” She paused, then said again, “Give us the eyes.”

  Shibaten scratched his knees and looked at the ground.

  “Don’t be stupid, kappa. Give us Kōtenbō’s eyes!”

  Shibaten turned his face away. Smoke drifted up from Moya’s shoulders.

  “You won’t survive the darkness that is coming, troll. How can you be so blind?”

  “Tell him we agree,” I said.

  Moya looked over at me. The smoke disappeared. “What did you say?”

  “Tell him we agree to his price.”

  Shibaten’s good eye fixed on me.

  “Why?” Moya asked. “Why would you say that?”

  I stared at the old kappa.

  “You will have Ikeda,” I said. “Is my squirrel babble clear enough for you? I will give him to you, but not for the eyes. Giving us the eyes will save your life. That’s not something we’re going to buy. I will bring you Nobu Ikeda, Shibaten, but in exchange I want a trick.”