The Emperor of Any Place

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  He won’t give up, thinks Evan. He won’t give an inch. You take the island and you hold the island, no matter what. You don’t hand it over to the enemy.

  “Why not set the record straight?” says Evan, his voice mild, as close to friendly as he can manage.

  Griff sniffs. Finds a handkerchief in his pocket and wipes his nose. Evan has heard of handkerchiefs but never seen one in the flesh. It’s ironed. The man irons everything. Nothing that comes near the man with any creases in it gets away from him un-ironed.

  Griff puts the handkerchief away. “Sometime in the not-too-distant future,” he says slowly, “I will be deceased, and everyone can do whatever the hell he wants. For now, I’m going to stick to my guns. Make ’em wait.”

  “Are you sick?”

  Griff looks taken aback. “Do you care?”

  Evan frowns. “You said sometime in the —”

  “I know what I said. I am not sick. I was referring to the law of averages, which suggests, at my age, I am not going to be around a whole heck of a lot longer.”

  Evan nods. He’s as surprised as Griff that he cares. Maybe he just can’t deal with anyone else dying right now.

  His glass has left a watermark on the table. He rubs at it with his finger. “Won’t you care about them making the movie? I mean even if you’re dead and they’re saying you did it?”

  “How am I going to care?”

  “What about your reputation and all that?”

  “Nobody today gives two hoots about a veteran or his reputation. They laud you when you come home from some theater of war. They honor you at the football stadium come Super Bowl Sunday, but they don’t care for soldiers, don’t look after them. Nobody really wants to know about them or the dirty business they’re honor-bound to carry out.”

  Evan stares at his grandfather. He cannot figure him out. The man is the most infuriating thing he has ever come across. He sighs and rests his head on the table. He is overtaken by tiredness. Exhausted. The incident with the gun has taken it right out of him. He realizes he must have been on some kind of adrenaline high, because he can feel the hangover coming on. He feels a little sick to his stomach. His head is spinning. He leans back from the table.

  “You won’t tell me what happened?”

  Griff shakes his head. “I would like —” He stops. Looks down. Traces an imperfection in the grain of the wood. “I would like for someone to believe me. Have a little faith. Take an honest soldier at his word.”

  Evan shakes his head. “I’ve got to go lie down,” he says. Then he glares at his grandfather. “And I’m not running away.”

  Griff acknowledges the statement. He looks beat, himself.

  “We’ll talk in the morning?” says Evan, as he stands. He has to grab the edge of the table, he’s so wobbly on his feet. “Make that the afternoon.”

  Griff looks up at him, all the bluff gone out of him, the glint in his eye extinguished. He looks disillusioned. There is a pallor to his leathery skin that Evan hasn’t seen before. “It’s all there in the story, Evan,” he says. “I was hoping maybe you could see it.”

  “See what?”

  “The truth.”

  Evan is standing in the enclosure, the broken-walled fort of the Emperor of Kokoro-Jima. He looks around him, at the cabana, the palm leaves of its roof lifting with a small breeze, the single hammock in the shadows, swaying slightly, almost as if someone had just risen from it. Something has been eating away at the palm leaves. Some kind of rot. There was nothing about that in the story. He is here. He is here because Griff is here. That’s the way it works. He and the other ghostly familiars are tethered to the soldier by invisible strings, and he — Griff — is here in the compound waiting. Waiting for Ōshiro.

  Evan feels the breeze take his hand, and when he looks, the girl is there, the blond ghost, more sun-spun air than anything else, and yet he can see her face and she is smiling at him. He smiles back at her. Yes. She is Griff ’s ghost as well. One of them. There are others, his extended family. One of these children is his own father. He looks around. They are everywhere, a dozen or more: Griff ’s lineage. The girl ghost pulls on Evan’s hand, and when he looks at her, she points toward the entranceway, the fallen-open gates.

  Ōshiro.

  He has come. Beside him appear his ghosts. He stands at the threshold of his home, staring at Griff. Griff rises. He was crouching over in the northeast corner of the compound. Evan has no idea why, but now he is on his feet. And Evan sees that his face is angry. Why? Isn’t this what Griff wanted? Isn’t this why they are here? Why Griff brought the framed photograph of the treaty? Was it meant only to be a trap? No, that doesn’t seem to make sense. Would Griff lure this man with a white flag tied to his rifle? Evan feels the girl ghost squeeze his hand. He glances quickly at her, sees the same consternation he is feeling, then they both turn toward the gateway just as Ōshiro steps over the threshold.

  Which is when it happens.

  The sand at Ōshiro’s feet suddenly erupts as if he has stepped on a mine, and up through the ground reach hideous grasping claws — talons — wrapping themselves around Ōshiro’s leg. Then there is another explosion of sand and a mighty head emerges from the grave, a hawklike head with fiery eyes. Its beak opens and emits a scream that makes Ōshiro cower — thrown backward by its force. His own scream of pain blends with the monster’s scream of lust. Then wide shoulders of matted and dank fur rise farther from the sand, and a second limb is freed, slashing at the man who falls to the ground, grabbing at his throat.

  Evan wakes up screaming.

  He sits bolt upright in bed. Has no idea where he is. He is still on that island — his ghostly self — where even now the monster has Ōshiro in its clutches. The screaming in his blood subsides, but his heart is pumping like mad. He falls back against his pillow, his hands on his chest, half afraid he will die of shock. But he knows it will not be like that. His father’s death was caused by the thickening in the walls of his heart, and as Evan’s fear wanes and his pulse gradually flattens out, he knows with a certainty that the walls of his own heart are strong — if temporarily way too thin!

  When he feels he might be able to stand, he does. He sways there, still feeling the distant reverberations of what happened. What he knows happened. The answer to the mystery.

  His grandfather is in his pajamas, but he is not in bed nor is he asleep. He is sitting in the green wingback chair, sitting in the dark but for the light from the television screen. He’s watching some old movie on TCM with the sound off. Silvery-gray people float across the screen. They seem miraculous to Evan. Beings from another planet. Fred and Ginger, dancing.

  Griff turns his old head to look at Evan. He switches on the lamp beside his chair, blinks, fumbles with the remote but manages to click the television off.

  “What is it, Evan?” he says, his voice soft. Evan swallows. Griff sits up, stares at him, his eyebrows pulled together with concern. He reaches out with his left hand, the one that trembles, and pats the footstool upon which his feet had been resting when Evan first entered the room.

  Evan walks toward him, a bit like a zombie, and sits obediently.

  “You had a dream?” says Griff. Evan nods. Griff nods. “I heard you scream,” he says. He slowly leans back in his chair, nodding as if he’s had the same dream. He folds his hands in his lap, the right over the left. He waits, patiently, his eyes never leaving Evan’s.

  Evan collects his wits. Rubs his face vigorously with his hand.

  “It was Tengu,” he says, in little more than a whisper.

  Griff stares at him, a vein on his forehead pulsing. Is it Evan’s imagination, or does he see some of the darkness clearing in the old man’s milky eyes? Slowly, he nods. Only once.

  “Tengu killed Ōshiro,” says Evan.

  Griff swallows; his stringy neck muscles constrict. “Did he?”

  That question again. The look in Griff ’s eyes is one of pleading. Evan nods. “I saw it,” he says. “I saw the thing
just erupt out of the ground.”

  Griff holds his eye, wanting to believe him.

  “I’ve tried to tell myself,” says Griff. “It was all so . . .”

  “Fucked up?”

  Griff frowns.

  He wants everyone to believe him, but he doesn’t even believe it himself.

  “You . . . you were there,” says Griff.

  Evan nods. “You said it was all there in the story,” says Evan. “You knew all along we were there: Dad and me and the other ghosts. Is that what you were after?”

  Griff looks befuddled. “What are you saying?”

  “When you found out Leo was talking to Dad. When you knew Dad was going to read the book. Did you hope that he would be able to see what happened — the truth of what happened — because he was there?” Evan waits, but Griff ’s expression is mute. He’s fought enough. “You wanted Dad to be able to see through the words on the page and recall what happened — like I did, just now. You wanted him to believe in you. Just once. Is that it? Is that what this was all about?”

  Griff looks back toward the TV screen. Evan holds him in his gaze, waiting for something, anything. Waiting for intel. And then there it is, but to Evan’s surprise, Griff shakes his head.

  “I thought I killed him,” he says. “Ōshiro: I thought I killed him — me! And then I somehow made up this awful thing. Concocted a monster because . . . because . . .”

  “But when you read the book,” says Evan, “and it was there, Tengu —”

  Griff shakes his head again. “I wanted to believe that I had not — that I would not ever . . .” His voice trails off. Then he finds it again. “I was twenty-one years old, Evan. I’d seen so much. Too much. But what happened on that island . . .” He rubs his face with his hand, takes a deep breath, grips the arms of the chair, and then lets go. Settles.

  “Your father wrote me, just before he died,” he says. “He wanted me to tell him what really happened. He didn’t care about the project, what Leo thought or wanted. That’s what he said. He just wanted to . . . to believe there was some other explanation.”

  “He was upset,” says Evan.

  “He wanted it not to be true — what they thought — hell, what I thought, myself, deep down inside.”

  And now, as Evan thinks back, it makes sense. His father had only seemed to be beating on the same old drum that last night. He didn’t want to believe that his father was a murderer, despite all the things he said. “I know,” says Evan.

  Griff clears his throat. “This lad, Leo,” he says. “He never experienced the island, the way you just did. He believes in his father, believes what he and Ōshiro had to say, but he never experienced it. I asked him outright.”

  “But even if he did experience the island, he wasn’t there when Ōshiro died. Derwood was long gone.”

  “Right.”

  “So how’d you expect him to figure it out?”

  Griff shakes his head, hunches his shoulders. “I wrote your daddy back. But . . .”

  “But he died.”

  Griff nods.

  “Before he got it?”

  Griff nods again. Shakes his head sadly.

  “What did you say?”

  Griff ’s face sours. “Does it matter now?”

  Evan nods. “I think so. It matters to me.”

  Griff stares at him, assesses him. Evan never lets go of his gaze.

  “It’ll be there in the . . . what’d you call it?”

  “On the server. Webmail.”

  “Right. See for yourself.”

  “Just tell me,” says Evan. “Trust me.”

  Griff acknowledges the challenge. “All right,” he says. “I told Clifford that wanting it not to be true was generous of him. I told him that I wanted it not to be true as well, but I wasn’t sure. I asked him to help me out if he could. If he believed what he read about the ghosts, then he was there, too, even then. I asked him for his help, if he could find it in his heart.”

  His voice has gone so quiet, Evan has to stop breathing to hear what he is saying. And when the old man stops talking and looks down, looks away, Evan’s heart, already broken in two, breaks all over again. It would have been all his father needed to end the war with his own father. Just that.

  Griff looks at him, looks away, comes to some kind of resolve. Checks on Evan again, frowning, as if this is all some elaborate trick. But there is no trickery in Evan’s face. Griff ’s breathing is ragged. He’s nervous but not afraid.

  “How much did you see?” Griff asks.

  “You came back,” says Evan. “Back up to the fort. And you were angry about something.” Evan shakes his head, picturing the anger again. “That’s what started it.” He looks at Griff for corroboration. Griff looks down at his hands, the one still, the other subdued.

  “I came back,” he says. He stares at the empty television screen as if he is seeing it there.

  “It was getting gusty out on the water. I was worried about getting caught in a storm. I wanted to leave him as much time as he needed. Ōshiro. I didn’t know his name. I just knew he was there. I’d always known. Kraft was anything but crafty.” He smiles a wan smile. “I decided to keep the operative’s existence and position to myself. There was a war to fight. And then, finally, it was over. He — Ōshiro — deserved to know that.” He glances at Evan. “You see, there is this horrible paradox a soldier lives with: the only other person who really gets him is his enemy. Do you see that?”

  Evan nods.

  “By the time I made it up to the fort that second time, the trees were filled with wind. I remember stopping at the top of the hill and looking out across the lagoon. It was getting bad.”

  He looks at Evan with consternation.

  “That is relevant information,” says Griff.

  “Yeah,” says Evan. “I felt it. In my dream. The wind.”

  Griff ’s frown deepens.

  “Anyway, I got to the fort, the broken palisade, the face of it all overgrown and coming undone. Teeth missing, where the doors had once hung. He wasn’t there.”

  “You got there first,” says Evan, to help him along.

  Griff nods, seems to gain something from Evan’s enthusiasm. Sits upright in his chair.

  “I looked around the place, noticed all the stuff Kraft mentions in the book — how well organized it all was, and yet now overgrown, untended. I found my way to this one corner where there was a little altar of rocks. I’d noticed it when I first went up. Wondered about it. I just stared for a bit. Something told me it was a cache of some kind. Weapons, maybe. Something worth checking, just in case.” He pauses. He looks at Evan as if he’s expecting a rebuttal. Evan just nods. Go on, say his eyes.

  “I moved the top stone, peered inside, and saw these books, several of them. I squatted, flipped through one and then another. I remember suddenly looking up toward the broken gateway, feeling as if I had wandered into a trap. It’s a second sight you develop as a soldier. There was no one there. And so I turned back to the cache. My attention was drawn to a flat tin box with black letters in a red bull’s-eye on the cover. The image was dented, scratched, the words almost obliterated. The letters read: L _C_ _ S_R_K_. I remember that tin, all right. Between the letters, fragments of black were left, a bit of ragged curve, a cross bar. ‘Lucky Strike,’ a cigarette case. I opened it.”

  He stops and shakes his head.

  “There was this snake’s nest of thin chains and flat metal rectangles. Oh, my Lord, I was perturbed to see that. I reached in and selected one of them, pulled it out, separating it from the others. It was a soldier’s ID necklace. This box held a load of dog tags.” He shakes his head. “I read through a number of them. No one I knew, not by name or rank or number. But one or two from my division, all right.”

  He looks at Evan. “Can you imagine what I was thinking?”

  “I think so.”

  “I could feel my blood beginning to boil. Those ghost children you read about. They were there with me. Infernal cr
itters. Well, they pulled away from me, right then, I’ll tell you. I think they were frightened of me — my own kin, if what Ōshiro says is true about what those things are.” Griff shakes his head. He has spent a lifetime not believing any of this. Evan waits.

  “I guess they could just feel the heat rising off me. I snapped the lid closed on the Lucky Strike tin, undid the button on my breast pocket, slid the tin into it, closed the button.” Evan watches him mime the operation, patting the breast pocket of his pajamas. “And, as if on cue, he was there.”

  “Ōshiro,” says Evan.

  “Right. He was staring right at me. Had no idea he was there. Could have picked me off easy. Instead he just cried out.

  “‘No!’ he shouted. In English.

  “I didn’t wait for him to make the first move. He’d had the drop on me, but the fact that he had not taken advantage of the situation in no way inhibited me. I had my rifle off my shoulder lightning quick, aimed right at his chest.

  “He threw up his hands. He had no gun on him, as far as I could tell, but you never know. Christ, one of them, up in Okinawa, wounded — emaciated — wearing nothing but a G-string, pulled a grenade out of it, if you can believe it . . . almost killed —” He stops. Shakes his head. “Wrong set of memories. Let’s just say I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “I indicated the framed newspaper leaning against the pole at the corner of his sleeping place. He knew what I was getting at.

  “‘Yes,’ he said in English. Then he bowed slightly, not taking his eye off me or my rifle. He seemed to struggle for a moment to find a word. He’d gotten both his hands in the air, but one of them was pointing upward as if he were trying to grab at some thought. Finally, he figured out what it was he wanted to say. ‘Over,’ he said.