The Emperor of Any Place

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Evan stares at the man with the smug grin on his fleshless lips. In this light he might be a jikininki. “There’s only one thing I can tell you for sure that you and my father had in common,” says Evan. “This big, fat, ugly hatefest.”

  “Ooh, I am feeling the disgust.”

  “Can’t you just let this go?” says Evan. “The war is over. You won. My father is not only out for the count — he’s dead. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  For just an instant Evan almost thinks he sees a flicker of something in Griff ’s eyes. Something like confusion — like maybe nobody told him the war was over.

  Or is it something like grief?

  Not likely. Evan shakes his head wearily and starts to leave.

  And the old man grabs him.

  Grabs him by the wrist. So fast, Evan doesn’t see it coming. So tight, Evan actually yelps.

  “Tell me,” says Griff, his voice low, his eyes sharp as lasers.

  “Let go of my fucking arm!”

  “Sit!” Griff says.

  “I’m not a dog!” says Evan. Then he whips his arm free, steps back, trips on the corner of the coffee table, and almost falls. Collects himself and rubs his wrist with his hand.

  “Tell me what you know.”

  Evan sees it. Sees the difference. He’s not fishing for what Clifford might have said to him. He’s asking straight out. Well, fuck him.

  “You’re crazy,” he says, his voice on the brink of tears. “That really hurt.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, sure you are! You want to know what Dad said about you? That you’re a bully.”

  “Nothing new in that.”

  “Then why’d you ask?”

  Griff leans back. His left arm falls into his lap, covered over by his right, but not before Evan notices how badly it’s shaking. The hard hand that grabbed him, shaking.

  “Because you’re hiding something from me,” says Griff. “Hiding something important.”

  Evan looks down, afraid to give anything away. Really afraid now. “I’m going to bed,” he says, his words not much more than a hoarse whisper. He makes a wide circle around his grandfather, his arms held high so he won’t get grabbed again.

  “And there he goes, folks. Truly, his father’s son. No cojones.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Yes sir, when it comes to fight or flight, Clifford could always be depended upon to choose the latter.”

  Evan stops. Stares up at the ceiling. “I’ll tell you something Dad said. He said he had fought all the battles he ever wanted to in this world just living under your roof for seventeen years.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, that’s so.” Evan turns. “We never fought, Dad and I. You probably can’t believe that, but we never, ever once fought.”

  Griff turns to look at Evan, the smirk gone from his face. “There are things you can’t run away from, kiddo. There are things a man just has to do.” Evan shakes his head and leaves. “You hear me?” Griff raises his voice. “Things you can’t begin to understand,” he says, and that soft-edged, hard-hearted voice follows Evan all the way up the stairs, along the hall to his room.

  “You wanna know who made it possible for y’all to live in such blissful peace? It was soldiers like me. That’s who.”

  Evan’s at his room now. He stops, not because there’s anything in the old man’s words but because he wants him to go too far. Say something that would justify caving his cankerous old face in with some blunt object.

  And as if he knows that Evan is listening, Griff drops his voice. Not so low you wouldn’t hear it, but low enough that you have to listen.

  “You might think you know what happened, but you don’t know it all, soldier.”

  Evan enters his room and slams the door ineffectually. Wall-to-wall carpeting doesn’t allow for worthwhile displays of temper.

  He stands there a moment, breathing hard, trying to calm himself down. He thinks about blocking the door with his chest of drawers. Thinks about leaving altogether — heading over to Rollo’s. No. There is no way he is going to give up this place — this “hostile island”— to the old man. He climbs into bed. Switches off the light.

  You might think you know what happened, but you don’t know it all.

  What do I know? Evan thinks. Not enough. He switches the light back on. Finds the book where it has fallen on the floor. It opens right where he left off. He looks up at his door again, too edgy to read. He puts aside the book and slips out of bed. At his desk he looks for something, a weapon. This is not a house of weapons, but there must be something. Yes! On the bookshelf beside the desk is something his father brought home from a government business trip to Ponds Inlet in Nunavut.

  A walrus penis bone.

  It’s the length of a small baseball bat and about as heavy as one, too. A weapon: something to keep nearby, just in case. He holds it down at his side and turns to face the door and the mirror there looking back at him. He wills the door to open. “Go ahead,” he says to the darkness. “Make my day.”

  It was so long ago, and yet reading Isamu’s story, I am drawn back down into it, a nightmare so vivid it defies explanation. Delusion? Perhaps. But there is a riddle here: what is a delusion shared by two people? The answer: reality.

  I felt the weight of the creature plow me into the soft sand: felt the dampness of its rough hide, the rocklike firmness of muscle sliding under its pelt. I gagged on the swampy odor of the thing. Then came the report of a rifle. The great creature rolled over me, raking my cheek with the claws of its forepaw. I wanted to howl at the pain of it, but the wind had been knocked out of me from the impact. My hand flew to my face, felt the warm blood seeping out through the bristles of my beard. I looked up. The box kite was swirling away into the blue, the aerial snapped and snapping like a manta ray’s tail in the wind as it blew away.

  Another shot rang out and the mottled creature recoiled, its massive shoulder bleeding out something black and as viscous as tar. Its body was taut, back on its haunches but rearing, slashing out.

  Again the gunman fired and I watched the cheekbone of the creature shatter, but still the thing would not leave. It screamed, opening its wicked beak. Yes, beak — for the face that glared at me from between its hunched shoulders was birdlike: a mammoth quadruped with the beak and fiery eyes of a raptor! I fell back, throwing my arm out toward my pack, scrabbling to pull my service revolver from its holster. But then the gunman was stepping over me where I lay, shouting and firing the semiautomatic at the creature, shot after shot, missing most of the time, the sand exploding like tiny mines going off. But the shots that landed finally drove the creature back, until it took a shot to the eye and reeled, falling on its shoulder, before recovering and bounding off twenty feet or so.

  The soldier followed it, screaming some more, his back to me, his entire attention on the monstrous animal, which squealed and squawked, shrill as the grinding of some infernal train wheels breaking on a track. The man fired again and again, and at last the thing took off down the beach, shaking its head as if trying to throw off the dreadful wounds it had taken. It hobbled, then regained its loping gait and at surprising speed took toward the rocks while the gunman aimed and fired again.

  A steely rationality grabbed hold of me. The man’s back was to me, not fifteen feet away. I could shoot him with a very good chance of a direct hit and time to fire again if the first shot didn’t kill him. Any second now this man — my champion! — was going to turn around and see the gun in my hand, at which point the odds in my favor would be drastically reduced.

  Were we enemies or allies? In a split second I had to decide.

  At the sound of the revolver sliding into the holster, the gunman whirled around, his rifle at the ready. He was breathing hard and his face was filled with the same repugnance and fear as I’m sure my own was. My right hand was already thrust into the air, empty, the fingers splayed. The holstered gun hung from the stub of my left arm. I cringed behind this offeri
ng, turning my head. Not wanting to see when he fired.

  It was a horrible risk to take. When no shot came, I dared to glance at him. This soldier who had saved my life had been firing in frenzy at the monster. His eyes still looked possessed, his chest heaved with the exertion; the adrenaline would be coursing through his bloodstream as mine was. He could have easily fired at me without thinking, and who would have blamed him. But he did not.

  Mercifully, he did not.

  My arm shaking, I pushed forward my left arm, to make certain the gunman recognized my intent. Take the damn gun! Did he understand? Yes. With his rifle held at his side, he cautiously approached me and slipped the belt and holster off my arm. With the holster clenched in his fist, he scrabbled back a few yards, but he had spied the knapsack lying on the sand behind me. He gestured to it, yelled something in Japanese. I turned and carefully took the pack by the strap and pulled it toward me.

  The man barked another command. I dropped the strap. I could only guess what he must be saying. Be very careful! With two fingers, I gingerly gathered up the strap of the pack and held it out for the man’s inspection. He shook his head. With his chin he gestured for me to open it and show him the contents. I flipped back the flap and held the maw open for him to see. The man nodded. Go on, he seemed to say. And so, with the sack lying on the beach, I produced, item by item, what was in the bag: fresh bandages, a tube of ointment, a water canteen.

  I held up the canteen. “Water,” I said. “Water.”

  The ragged soldier nodded. He threw the belt and holster behind him, well out of my reach, shoved my handgun into his waistband, and then wiped the wild hair out of his face. He looked back down the beach to where the creature had run and was no longer in sight, then quickly returned his gaze to me. He patted the canteen hanging on his own belt.

  “Mizu,” he said.

  “Mizu,” I said. We both nodded.

  So. We had something in common.

  Each of us took the top off our canteens — I used my teeth — and took a long restorative swallow. Then I remembered something. I placed the canteen on the beach, hollowing out a hole for it to sit upright in. The soldier had slung his rifle over his shoulder and was taking another long drink, with one eye on me. I pointed questioningly again at my knapsack, and the man nodded at me. Go ahead.

  From a front pocket, I slowly drew out a chocolate bar. The man’s eyes opened wide.

  “Chocolate,” I said.

  “Choco . . .” said the man.

  “Choc-o-late, yes?”

  “Cho-co-latu,” said the soldier. He might not have had a word for it, but from the look on his face, he knew what it was.

  I handed him half the bar. And while we ate, both of us scanned the cliff for signs of the creature, not quite believing it was gone, and, in my case, not quite believing it had ever been there. A terrible hallucination — a new layer of Hell.

  But I was beginning to expect the unexpected. Like myself, this soldier had a little troop of child ghosts, buffeted by the onshore breeze. I had reached the point of not really noticing my own followers, the way you don’t notice blackflies in Vermont in May. They’re just there. Then there were the other critters with the red eyes, although none were around just now. And finally, this . . . this thing with hair as oily and matted and as odiferous as a beaver, but twice the size of one of my dad’s prized hogs and with a raptor’s beak and claws. Scarcely believable. More like the imaginings of a sick mind. Yet the claw marks on my face were real enough. Tentatively I touched my cheek. The slashing claws had not cut too deep. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.

  “Daijoubuka?”

  I could interpret the look on Isamu’s face, curiosity, cautious concern.

  “It’s stopped bleeding,” I said, holding up my fingers to show him. Then he looked down at the Gibson Girl strapped to my thighs. I pointed at it, indicating I wanted to get out of it, and said as much, for what good it was worth.

  Again my captor nodded. As quickly as I could with jittery fingers, I loosened the straps. The machine had dug into my ribs when the creature fell upon me. There would be bruises, but as far as I could tell nothing cracked.

  I climbed shakily to my feet. When I was standing, I touched my index finger to my breastbone. “Derwood Kraft,” I said, bowing slightly.

  “Isamu Ōshiro,” said the man, bowing back.

  I held up my dog tag for him to see. He nodded. I placed my hand on my heart and bowed again. “Thank you, Isamu Ōshiro,” I said. “You saved my life.”

  There was nothing to suggest in his face recognition of anything I had said other than his name, but I hoped he had gotten the gist of it. And then I remembered that I did know one word in Japanese.

  “Konnichiwa,” I said.

  “Konnichiwa,” said Isamu. And then he said something else, excitedly, to which I could only shrug, not having understood a word. His moment of elation passed.

  And now what?

  Isamu must have been thinking the same thing. He looked up toward the cliffs again, then back at me. He scratched his scalp with his free hand. Then he waggled his rifle at me, and I understood well enough what the drill was: I was his prisoner and it was time to go. Where, I had no idea, but I was not the one calling the shots. I gave myself over into his hands. Something told me that this act was the lesser of two evils. No, it was more than that: it was the right thing to do. A man saves your life and you give yourself to him.

  I closed the knapsack and threw the strap over my shoulder. Then I disengaged the crank from the top of the Gibson Girl, clipped it in its slot, and hoisted the now-useless machine. Why? The light on the top had come on only intermittently while I was working it. Had I gotten through to anyone? Only time would tell.

  “Oite ikinasai!”

  Again, a gesture made the meaning clear. I lowered the machine to the sand. Then I looked back at the sea and, turning again to him, I asked with a lot of gestures if I could put the machine under the overhang and on a shelf of stone above the waterline. For the tide was coming in.

  I listen to the creature howling to the night — in its death throes, by the sound of it. I hope it is true, but it gives me little comfort and I cannot sleep. I try to concentrate on the proper sounds of night, the breeze, the crickets. But it is as if the crickets are inside me, Hisako; crickets in my liver, my bones, my lungs. I am so angry — angry and frightened. And it is all Derwood Kraft’s fault. Of that I am sure. There was no monster on the island until he came. It must be some kind of witchcraft that this man has brought with him — some gaijin necromancy. I try to shake the idea from my head, try to settle down, and then the monstrous creature howls.

  Tengu. I have heard of the monster in the old stories but never seen one. The island provides . . .

  While Derwood Kraft snores.

  I have rigged up a hammock for him that is also a cage. I wrapped the fisherman’s netting twice around the man after he was settled and then tied it where he could not reach the knots, on his left side, where he has no hand. Very ingenious, yes? The American did not struggle. He almost seemed to welcome it, like I was knitting him into a womb. And sure enough, he sleeps like a baby!

  Meanwhile his little tribe of ghost children gathers around him, like a mist with many eyes. Sometimes I see my own ghosts turn to look at his ghosts, examine their features. Though they do not venture near, they are like real children in this way, shameless in their curiosity, their eyes filled with wonder at the strangeness of these foreign faces.

  What is the man up to?

  I feel as if I have made a terrible mistake. Had I left the monster to kill Derwood, it would have saved me the trouble. Because that is what the man is, Hisako, trouble. What do I need with a prisoner? The island provides everything I could want for, and now this . . . this pestilence has arrived, and I, Isamu, have brought it into my house! The very house I tried so diligently to hide from his view! I must be the fool my father took me to be!

  Mind you, if I kill Derwood Kr
aft, I would still have the creature to contend with. I wonder about that. Could it be that without its master, the monster would perish? If I were to slash Derwood’s throat, would the howling stop? I can tell you, I do not feel comfortable at all with such ideas. I have killed men in the war but never hand to hand. I look over at him, my “catch” in his snug net. Would he be any help in defeating Tengu?

  At least we are somewhat prepared. On the way back from the strand at the tail of the island, we stopped off at the plane and loaded up with ammo and another rifle. I don’t suppose the American could fire one. I trusted him to carry one, although I carried all the ammunition.

  Another howl pierces the night.

  That is not a thing dying. It is a thing wanting us to know it is there and we will never be free of it; a thing that will keep us in its sights even if only with one good eye. A thing that will somehow recover — pluck the bullets out of its grotesque hide with its beak!

  And then what?

  The wind picks up. I cannot sleep at all, Hisako. And so I write by the light of one slim candle. The canvas I have rolled down against the cold slaps against the bamboo posts. It is a north-northwest wind. A cyclone wind. How quickly paradise has been thrown over. I am so full of loathing for this uninvited guest, it is like the flu coming on, making me hot and weak and jittery.

  I tried to lie down again, just now, but couldn’t sleep. I wrapped my jacket — another jacket from another dead soldier — around my shoulders and tried to make myself comfortable: as comfortable as a man can get with a handgun and a loaded rifle in bed with him. My cheek lay against the mesh. I was miserable. Oh, how I miss you, dear Hisako. I feel lonelier than I have felt in the whole time I have been here. What sense does this make?

  I pick up my pen again, quiet my raging thoughts. Derwood Kraft could have shot me. I need to remember that. Was it only that he lacked the courage? No, it took great courage for the man to sheath his revolver and hand it to me. For when I think back on that terrifying ordeal, I recall seeing the man draw his weapon. He might even have shot at the beast, although I cannot be sure of that for so much was going on! But this I know: Derwood did have a gun and he did have my back as a target. Either he could not or would not bring himself to do it — to kill a man. He is a navigator, after all, not accustomed to combat. Is that it? I don’t think so, for did I not also hesitate when I saw the gaijin for the first time? How long did it take me to reach the beach? Many minutes. I’d had a good shot for much of the time, but I did not take it. We are at war! My superior officers drummed that into me. But is there to be war on Kokoro-Jima as well? And if this isn’t war, then to kill a man would be murder. Ha! Such distinctions. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers have died already. It is kill or die — kill and die. What makes it different now?