Hideki’s eyes, Satoshi thought, were remarkably steady and sober. “Eating shit? It was a gaki,” said Hideki. “A hungry ghost. Must be wandering from gaki-do for some specific reason; maybe it was someone who lived around here and has unfinished business. When they don’t eat shit, they eat corpses. It’s a kind of curse. They were so greedy and single-minded in life that they get condemned to be always hungry after they die, and to seek after foul things, and never realize what’s nourishing, and never be satisfied. The object of their life’s greed is perverted into a craving for something foul. It’s strange, though: people usually don’t see them. I guess you must be … favoured.”
Satoshi realized he was rubbing his forehead, and stopped. “I had the impression it didn’t know I was there at first,” he said. “I don’t think it appeared to me. More like I caught it in the act.”
“Weird,” said Hideki. “I wonder why you’re so favoured, though. It’s not as if you’re a very good Buddhist or anything.”
“How do you know all this, brother?” Satoshi asked. “You’re not much of a Buddhist either. Have you seen a gaki before?”
“Once or twice,” said Hideki, and Satoshi thought there was something studied in his casual voice. “I’ve had an odd life, you know, before coming into your service. Things have happened to me that even my honoured mother doesn’t know about.” He signalled for a waiter to bring another cup and flask, then filled both cups when the man had gone. “Well, now, you’ve had your fright for the year,” Hideki said, more amused than before. “Whenever Masahiro starts getting on your nerves, just think of this gaki fellow and you’ll be glad to be where you are. It’s not worth it, wanting things too much, getting all knotted up when you don’t get them. Just live your life happy, brother, and you won’t end up eating shit from outhouses for all eternity!”
An odd mental picture flashed through Satoshi’s mind — his brother, crouched beside a privy pit, scooping feces out of the hole. He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head, to banish the vision.
Then he opened his eyes wide. “Oh.”
Hideki paused in the act of raising his sake cup. “What?”
“My dream,” said Satoshi, leaning forward suddenly. “Bunya-san was right — this is a problem with spirits! This gaki thing I saw in my dream wasn’t in an outhouse; it was in a rice field. Bending over and picking something up.” He rested his chin on his hands, feeling a little more smug than shaken. “Do you see what I’m driving at?”
Hideki stared at him a moment, then nodded. “Of course,” he said, his face lighting up in a rather goofy-looking smile. “Well done, Satoshi! They fertilize the crops with night soil here. The gaki, which is condemned to eat shit for all eternity, eats it all before it can get into the soil and be fertilizer. So of course the crops fail! It makes perfect sense.”
“Remember, Bunya-san said they put extra fertilizer on, and it didn’t help?” said Satoshi, smiling himself. “It was just an extra treat for the gaki.” He thought a moment more, then felt his face droop. “The thing is, though,” he said, “what are we going to do about it? How do you get rid of a gaki?”
Hideki cocked his head. “My guess is, the rituals they’ve done to exorcise evil spirits haven’t worked, but the villagers know something strange is going on,” he said. “Didn’t you think Bunya was holding something back, that day when we first got here and he was explaining the problem to us? I’ll bet they know something’s here, even if they don’t realize what it is, or that it’s eating all their fertilizer. And every summer they’ll have held their segaki ceremony at the O-bon festival, to get rid of hungry ghosts. It obviously doesn’t work with this one.”
Satoshi made a face and drank more sake. “Bunya-san said they’d tried every prayer and exorcism they could think of,” he said. “So we’ll have to do something else. Wish I knew what.”
Hideki poured more into his friend’s empty cup. “Have a drink, brother,” he said. “Have a drink.”
The blood sprayed, bright lacquer-red in the late-afternoon sun. The head bounced once when it hit the black soil. Red drops began wobbling down rice stalks; the too-rich smell of shit filled Satoshi’s nostrils as dying men voided their bowels onto the hungry fields. There was surprisingly little noise. Good samurai died silently, making a final statement about their bravery, even as the victors took the losers’ heads to prove their own courage.
And I am too afraid to look at the man I just killed. Satoshi was aware of a strange sensation: he seemed to be floating above himself. I am dreaming, he realized.
And I know that I am dreaming.
Satoshi’s dream-self appeared to freeze. Bend down, Satoshi thought, and his dream-self shifted the heavy, lacquered armour up his chest and bent from the waist. I am not going to frighten myself awake tonight, he thought.
At his command, his dream-self gripped the hair on the back of the head and lifted. And this time he forced himself to look as he turned the head around, willed himself to not just see the dead face but to remember it.
Masahiro.
The world went dark, and Satoshi found himself awake. His face was cold, but sticky with sweat. This dream’s previous visits had left him with a thudding heart, but that didn’t afflict him now. A sickness in the base of his stomach was the only physical reminder, beside the cold sweat, that he had just dreamed of usurping his brother.
And there was no doubt in his mind that this was what the dream had been about. Masahiro had been dead because murder was the only way Satoshi was going to replace Masa at the head of the clan.
Satoshi sat up. Beside him, Akemi shifted slightly, murmuring something muffled by the comforter that covered nearly her entire face. No, he thought. Not this time. Let her sleep, and face yourself by yourself.
He got to his feet. There was just enough light coming from the flickering charcoal in the brazier that he could find his riding boots and his coat; picking them up, he walked to the inner shoji screen and let himself into the main part of the big farmhouse. Down the hall was another shoji, opening to the outside. Wrapping himself up and putting on his boots, Satoshi sat on the step, feet on the frozen mud, and tried to decide whether the dream had been warning or invitation.
“You probably ought to spend a little less time tumbling your new concubine,” Hideki said as the two of them picked their way down the path from Bunya’s house to the centre of the village. “You are obviously not getting enough sleep, brother: you look like hell.” He popped a pickled plum into his mouth, spitting out the pit with a happy face.
“Good morning to you, too.” Satoshi thought about eating and his stomach flipped. A drink would be good, though. “In this case you’re wrong, though.” Hideki arched an eyebrow. “I only made love to Akemi once last night, right after we went to bed.”
“Too much shochu last night, brother?”
“What do you mean? First you think I’m too much in her, now you’re complaining that it’s not enough because I was drunk last night? Consistency, Hide-kun, please.”
“I’m not required to be consistent. I’m only required to give you a hard time, to remind you that you’re mortal and only the younger brother of the daimyo.”
Satoshi felt his jaw clench. A vision of the blood-spattered head jumped into his mind.
“Oh,” Hideki said after a moment. “That seems to have gone beneath the skin. What’s the matter, brother?”
“I had that dream again, Hideki. Last night. Couldn’t get to sleep after.” Satoshi found his hand straying to the hilt of his katana, and pulled back.
“The dream you won’t tell me about. Except that I see it seems to have something to do with your brother. Well, that’s easily understood; I have nightmares about Hirota-san myself.” He paused to eat another pickled plum; then, with the pit still in his mouth he said, “We could always do this another day, you know. Give you a ch
ance to get some sleep. I’m not saying we have anything to be worried about — that gaki is a shit-eater and he doesn’t seem violent — but, just in case, it might be better if you were sharp and alert.” He spat the pit down the path. Something in the tall grass scrambled away, the better to hide.
“No,” Satoshi said. “I don’t see any point in delaying this. You tell me that gaki are seeking after something.”
“Something they wanted, or craved, in life. Yes.”
“A greedy ghost. The leftover of a greedy life.”
“And this has what to do with Nikawa village?”
“Who are the greediest people we know of, Hideki?”
Hideki grinned broadly. “I assume you aren’t including Prince Isao in your assessment.”
“Yes, but only because he’s not dead. Yet.” Satoshi found himself smiling, too. That was the best thing about Hideki; it was almost impossible to stay gloomy in his company — even when he behaved as badly as he’d been behaving this week. “So what people besides princes are mostly greedy?”
“Merchants,” Hideki said. Then, after a pause: “Oh.”
“Exactly. The rice merchant, Kentaro. Dead just over two years — about as long as the harvests have been failing here.”
“But surely if it was that obvious, Bunya would have figured it out already. And, if he has, why is the gaki still here?”
Satoshi jostled his friend lightly as they reached the small wooden bridge and crossed over the river into the village proper. “It can’t have been all that obvious, Hideki, because you didn’t figure it out.” Hideki glowered at him, but it was a poor impression of anger. “I don’t think Bunya-san had figured out that part. I guessed, the first night, that he was hiding something. But I don’t think he knows enough about gaki — or the spirit world in general — to know anything more than that something very strange is happening here.”
Ahead of them was a building nearly as large as Bunya’s house, albeit without any sense of refinement to its design, and no shoji at all to let in light without also allowing the prying eyes of passersby. “What I haven’t been able to guess, Hideki, is what it was the gaki was trying to find. And I think that until we know that, we won’t be able to exorcise the ghost.”
“And you’re going to find it out.”
“Yes. If I have to put Kentaro’s sons to the torture, I’m going to find out what it is that his ghost is searching for.”
Torture, it developed, wasn’t necessary. Satoshi and Hideki had no sooner announced the reason for their interrogation than his two adult sons and their wives were all prostrate on the floor in front of Satoshi, begging for his forgiveness and his help. “If our father is a ghost we know what he’s looking for. But we don’t know where it is,” the eldest pleaded, “and that’s the truth, lord.”
“And what is it he’s looking for?” Satoshi was so pleased at having guessed the identity of the ghost that he had to remind himself to look angry with these merchants. Merchants were the lowest form of human life in the world — in fact, some argued, plausibly, that merchants were a different species entirely from the samurai.
“Silver, lord,” the eldest said. “And we are starving because the miserable old wretch wouldn’t tell us where he’d hidden his hoard.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Hideki said, pitched so that only Satoshi could hear. “Misers often become gaki. It’s a sort of punishment for their greed.”
“In this case, it would appear that Kentaro isn’t the only one being punished.” To the sons he said, “You do realize that I could have the lot of you executed for keeping the truth about this silver hidden from me.” The women wailed at that and beat their foreheads against the floor.
“Are you serious?” Hideki whispered in his ear. “Are you really going to cut down your best potential sources of information?”
“Of course not. I’m not interested in killing anyone.” The words came easily enough; the realization of their absolute truth came as a shock. What’s the dream about, then? “But I’m not going to let them know that. I want them on edge, Hideki. They think they don’t know anything, but whatever hold the gaki has on them might slip if they’re frightened enough.” To the rice merchants he said, “Get up. I want you to show me every place in this house and the grounds that you’ve searched. And we’re going to dig up your privy.”
Two hours later Satoshi wondered if his proud self-confidence had been misplaced. The rice warehouse turned out to have a multitude of secret hiding places, but every one of them was empty. The privy, which the family had not even thought of searching, proved to be a messy, smelly frustration. Whatever else was down those pits, there was no silver.
“Your father,” Satoshi said, “was a nasty, vile man.”
“Agreed,” said Hideki. “I want a drink. A big one.”
And we didn’t even shovel, thought Satoshi.
“At least one man is going to benefit from this, then,” the rice merchant said. “Goro be damned, anyway.”
“Damned?” Goro was the proprietor of the River House. “Why begrudge his success?”
“Because it should be ours.” The merchant looked sullen, a petulant child. No wonder they’re despised.
“That seems a selfish attitude,” Hideki said. Bits of sticky rice flew from his mouth: somehow he had got hold of a rice ball. “You people don’t own everything, you know.”
“We did. Or at least we should have. Father and Goro were partners; Goro built the River House with money Father provided. Title to that tavern was supposed to come to us.”
Hideki said, “You’ve made a serious accusation against an honest man.” Are you really concerned for Goro, or is it for the fact that he doesn’t charge you for the sake and shochu you drink, Hideki? Satoshi asked silently.
“Bunya-san told us that Father had stated, in his presence, that on his death the title to the tavern was to go to Goro. But that doesn’t make sense!”
It suddenly did to Satoshi. “Come on,” he told Hideki.
Hideki didn’t arrive at the River House until the last of the silver bars had been washed clean and placed on the small but very valuable stack in front of the tavern’s privy. Satoshi’s hands were still clean, though he’d been so sure of himself he would gladly have done all the digging, no matter how foul. As it had developed, his enthusiastic haste had pulled the merchant’s family behind him, and they had in turn attracted others, so that, by the time Satoshi had explained to Goro what had to be done, there was no shortage of people ready to do the work.
“You’ve been drinking and eating too much, brother,” Satoshi said, laughing, when his friend finally strolled around to the back of the tavern. “You’ve missed all the fun.” He pointed to the stack of slender bars; they resembled nothing so much as miniature grave markers.
“It stopped being fun,” Hideki said, “as soon as you solved the mystery. I didn’t see the point of rushing up here when I already knew what you’d find.”
That was rude, Satoshi thought. Or incredibly selfish. “And how did you know I’d turn out to be right? I wasn’t sure myself.”
“Yes, you were,” Hideki said. “You just didn’t want to admit it to yourself. I’m not Masahiro, Satoshi. I recognize how intelligent you are. As soon as I saw the expression on your face when you heard about the River House, I knew you’d solved it. The only real question was, where up here would the silver end up having been buried?”
“You mean you didn’t guess that it would be under the shit in the privy?” Satoshi cocked his head, grinning. “Why do you think I insisted on searching the privy at Kentaro’s?”
Hideki frowned. “I still don’t understand.”
“Let’s go back to the beginning. You’re the one, Hideki, who told me that gaki ate disgusting things as a substitute for what they’d craved in life. Either shit or corpses.”
He walked over to the silver and picked up a bar. “At first, I guessed that the gaki had eaten the shit from the fields, which had caused the crop failure. Then I realized Kentaro was the gaki — he was a greedy man, and he had died at the right time. So the question was, what had Kentaro craved in life, that his curse had perverted into a craving for shit? I didn’t know, but Kentaro’s sons told me: silver. So it only remained to tie the two things together. Why did the gaki, searching for the silver, turn to eating shit, and not corpses? Because he hid the silver somewhere near shit.”
He turned to Kentaro’s sons. “You have my sympathies. He could not have been an easy man to live with.” Satoshi saw Masahiro’s glowering face, heard his bitter, snarling voice. I know something of that, I think.
“Thank you, lord,” the eldest said. “We are very grateful to you for all that you’ve done.” The man’s eyes, Satoshi saw, were not on him at all, but rather stared at the silver. That’s a very unpleasant expression to go with such a supplicant tone.
“I think that perhaps you have misunderstood me here,” Satoshi said. “The silver is not staying in Nikawa.”
“What?” Several people said the word simultaneously. Hideki, Satoshi noted, was not among them.
“You want to be rid of the gaki, don’t you?” Satoshi pointed to the fields across the river. “You’ll never get another good crop if you don’t, and that will mean the daimyo will remove you from this land.”
He turned to Kentaro’s sons. “The fact that your father didn’t tell you where the silver was stored meant that he didn’t want you finding it — apparently not even when he was no longer alive. So he hid it away from his house, and then took steps to keep the River House — and the silver — forever even from you, his children.”
Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction Page 7
