by Jacob Whaler
Yakuza.
Matt snorts a laugh to himself at the comical sight. A Yakuza gangster in an Italian suit stomping across the grass on a university campus. The guy probably hasn’t even completed junior high or read anything other than manga books. Why is he walking into the library?
And then something else catches his eye.
There’s a thin red scar running from the guy’s chin to ear. He has a black ponytail lying forward on top of his head.
Exactly like one of the gangsters that tailed him in the airport. Can it be?
Matt freezes and stares in terrified fascination as the man bounds up the library steps and disappears into the entrance on the ground level thirty meters below where Matt is sitting. The drumbeat of his own pulse snaps him back into reality. His fingers drop to the slate and close the files. Without thinking, he jumps to his feet and runs from the open area.
The next two hours are agony as he shifts among the book stacks and desks in the library, always keeping the central space in full view, expecting the Yakuza thug to charge in on a rampage, gun in hand, looking for him.
The sun dips below the horizon, and the windows slowly turn into dark mirrors.
But the Yakuza man never comes.
Just before the library closes, Matt makes his way down the stairs from the fifth floor with a random group of students. Imagining a dark shape and peeping eyes behind every corner, he exits the building from a side entrance and moves quickly across the lawn under a full moon to the edge of campus. Just outside the gate, he drops into the first subway stop without a reason or destination. For some reason, he feels a compulsion to get away from the University. As he stands alone in the shadows on the platform, the hollow whistle of a train approaches. He finds himself slipping inside the train car just as the doors shut behind him. In a few minutes, he arrives at the main station in downtown Sapporo.
Was it really the same man? The more he thinks about it, the less sure he is. Lots of Yakuza have scars and topknots on their heads. They tend to like the same Italian suits. From a distance, they all look the same. But maybe it was him. Maybe he’s tracking Matt, waiting for a chance to catch him alone and make him suffer.
A vague image takes shape in his imagination. His mom in the seconds before the truck transport slammed into her car. A shudder passes through his body.
Perhaps his dad was right. Maybe MX Global has been tracking Matt all this time. Maybe they hired some thugs to murder him now that he’s on his own. Yakuza are just the type to do the job. He imagines his dad opening a message on his jax and getting a video of Matt’s mutilated body lying on the grass. Words appear beneath it, like they did when his mother was killed.
First your wife. Now your son.
Chills rip up his spine. Sweat drips down the inside of his arms.
With his mind stuck in a rut and spiraling down into ever tighter circles of fear, he casts around for a distraction to jar it loose. Then he remembers the dream of the previous night, the one where he saw the park he played in as a child with his mom. The luminous Woman walking through the torii gate and ascending the trail up into the mountain.
An irresistible urge overcomes him. He must visit the spot and follow the trail himself.
On the opposite side of the platform, a train pulls in. A quick glance tells him it’s going in the direction of Otaru, a small town on the coast just twenty minutes away.
There is a spark of light in his mind. The park in his dreams is only a few minute’s walk from the train station in Otaru.
Without further thought, he turns and runs through the open doors of the train. Inside, the car is deserted except for a trio of high school boys in their black gakuran uniforms with the high collars and brass buttons.
He finds an empty bench and rides in silence, watching buildings and roads flow by as if he were standing still.
And then the train slows and stops. He glances up at a bluescreen. It says Otaru Station. The doors open, and he steps onto the platform to get his bearings in this little town sandwiched between the mountains and the sea.
Sensing movement behind him, he jerks around to see a lone hunchback man in a blue uniform sweeping the platform a few meters away. He walks through the station and out the front door into the cool night air. A mountain covered in a carpet of trees rises up like a dark mound half a kilometer away. The little park is at its base. He jogs across the narrow street and heads straight for it.
He can’t shake the sense that he’s being followed. Every few seconds, his eyes dart to the sides and behind, searching the dark corners and alleys. But nothing other than an occasional cat is moving at this time of night. It’s probably just nerves.
The narrow streets and alleys bring back a flood of memories. He pauses in front of the old kakigori shop he and his grandfather visited during hot summer days and can almost taste the bowls of creamy shaved ice they used to eat there. He runs his fingers along the plywood storefront. Its bright red and yellow colors are faded and peel away in the moonlight. He moves past it and puts his nose up against the glass of the bookstore where he used to browse children’s manga for hours on rainy summer days when he was a kid.
Then he looks across the street and finds the park.
It still has the old metal swings he and his mom played on during their summers in Japan. She always wanted to push him, but it was more fun to push her and hear her laughter and screams. His ears catch a familiar sound, and he strains as if to hear her gentle voice in the shadows, but it’s only the wind blowing the swings, metal chains tapping against one of the posts.
He stops and lets his eyes sweep over the park from end to end. Everything is exactly as he remembers it. Exactly as in the dream. Nothing has changed.
Off to the right, there’s a string of low ojizosama child Buddha statues with faded red aprons over their bellies lining the narrow street at the base of the mountain. Two ancient and massive cedar trees, the only ones on a mountain of common pines as he recalls, stand with their trunks covered in moss. Sacred shimenawa ropes of twisted rice straw drape across their middle a couple of meters off the ground like the belts worn by sumo wrestlers. White shide papers dangle down with a zigzag shape symbolic of lightning. Behind the trees, the two red pillars of the torii gate rise out of the ground. And beyond it, a path snakes through the pine forest into the upper reaches of the mountain.
The same path the Woman took in Matt’s dream.
With a trembling hand, he pulls the Stone out of his pocket and holds it on his open palm at eye level. The light blue glow is unmistakable in the darkness.
Recalling that a torii gate marks the entrance to a sacred place, he holds his breath and his eyes drop to his Stone as he passes its red pillars, not sure what to expect. There’s no change, and he exhales. With a final backward glance, the only movement he can see is a swarm of insects swimming in the light of the street lamp. He starts up the deep dirt path to the Shinto shrine at the top. It will take half an hour to reach it. As he ascends, the buzz of cicadas grows softer and distant behind him.
The path rises on long switchbacks past old trees with roots exposed in the dirt like dead snakes strewn at random in the moonlight. Matt isn’t sure what he expects to find at the top. A compelling desire to go and see drives him higher.
Halfway up the mountain, the evening air is disturbed by the snap of a broken twig on the trail below. He strains to see in the shadows, but there’s no movement.
At the top, he walks to the shrine, a simple square building of wood. Like most traditional buildings in Japan, his eyes are immediately drawn up to the roof where the interesting design details are to be found. Resembling a gorgeously curved hat, it is high and steep in the middle with each corner rising to a gentle peak. It might have come down from heaven to rest on the four simple walls of the structure. Stone steps lead up to the entrance. Each one is worn smooth and round from centuries of faithful pilgrimages. Halfway up the steps, he passes two lion-like komainu statues, sitting on their ha
unches like silent sentinels, the one on the right with its mouth open, and the one on the left with its mouth closed, as if engaged in conversation. He sits on the steps between the komainu and looks down slope at the lights of the town below. The moon burns in the night sky behind him.
He tries to imagine what the mountain would look like covered in snow and transformed into a ski run.
Again, there is the sound of a broken twig below him on the path.
Jumping to his feet, he runs to the side of the shrine where the ground is bathed in shadow. As he waits and watches the path, the beating of his heart makes it hard to breathe. The smell of moldy wood plays in his nostrils. Minutes pass in silence.
And then he realizes the absurdity of the situation. He’s come all the way to this mountain shrine for no better reason than the dream of the night before. What did he expect to find? Who or what does he expect to see? Questions he can’t answer.
But he can talk to Jessica and share a bit of humor with her at his own expense. The jax comes out of his pocket. As his back presses into the side of the shrine, his fingers play out a message.
Here I am, sitting on the side of a Shinto shrine on the top of a mountain after dark in the obscure little town of Otaru on the outskirts of Sapporo. No idea why I’ve come here. Just had an urge and followed it. Am I crazy or what?
He jaxes it off and checks the time. It’s close to 7:30 in the morning in Colorado.
Not doing some free solo rock climbing at midnight again are you? You know what happened the last time you tried that.
Jessica’s response makes him laugh out loud. His muscles relax, and he slides down the wall into a sitting position where he taps out a new message.
I remember. Slipped and broke my arm up at Powder Puff Basin. It was a full moon, just like tonight. But don’t worry, My crazy night adventure ends here. I’m heading back to the dorm now. Over and out.
Just exchanging a few words with Jessica calms him down. It’s time to put the craziness of the day forever behind him and return to reality. The whole Yakuza thing is just his imagination. He stands up and walks to the front of the shrine, down the stone steps past the komainu statues. After giving each one a pat on the head, he heads down the path.
As he makes his way, he hears the sound, more clearly this time, off to the right. There is movement behind a tree. His hand digs into a side pocket, pulls out his jax and activates the built-in light beam. He points it in the direction of the noise. It lights up a small clearing in the trees off the trail.
Wading through a mass of knee-high weeds, he reaches the spot where the trees open up. In the middle, there’s a boulder with a flat top the size of a small car. He doesn’t remember seeing it here before. In fact, he doesn’t remember seeing any outcroppings of rock on the mountain. But then again, childhood memories can be slippery.
He looks around for the source of the sound that drew him off the trail, but there’s nothing but a swarm of insects drawn to the beam of his flashlight.
On a whim, he grips the boulder’s rough surface like a rock climber and pulls himself to the top. Then he sits in a lotus position under the stars and moon. His eyes drop down. The Stone feels heavy in the open palm of his right hand.
When did he pull the Stone out of his pocket?
He can’t remember for sure, but jet lag has numbed his mind. And even when he isn’t tired, he often does things by instinct. No planning, no thinking. They just happen.
Out of habit, he begins to count breaths, going from one to ten and back to one, focusing on the rise and fall of his belly. The air moving in, and the air moving out. A wave of relaxation washes through his mind and pulls him away from shore, out into a great sea of calm.
The weight seems to drain out of the Stone on his open palm. There is a sudden absence of sound except for the internal beat of his heart every few seconds. The world is completely silent.
A delicate breeze of air plays across his face, and he slowly opens his eyes to see a tiny gnat hovering in mid-flight inches from his eyes. As its wings move up and down in slow motion, they make a rhythmic drumming sound, like ripples of water on a lakeshore. Their delicate vein structure stands out in precise detail in the moonlight. His vision sweeps across the jewel-like eyes of the insect, the rod-like antennae and hairy legs. All the structures are visible in exquisite clarity. The longer he stares at the gnat, the more he sees.
A universe of infinite design.
A profound sense of warmth and wonder fills his brain.
Pulling his gaze back, Matt watches as the gnat slips away. He casts his eyes from side to side and gazes upon more tiny insects hanging like motionless works of art in the clear night air.
A carpet of dokudami plants spreads on the forest floor around the boulder with their unique odor that hints of fish. With a glance, his eyes take in the pastel colors of their green leaves and white flowers. The more he stares, the deeper his eyes pierce into their surface to the intricate cellular architecture below.
In every direction, deep colors and delicate structures pour into his mind through his eyes, as if it is all under a microscope and open to view. It all seems ordinary and right, though some part of him thrills at the raw beauty cascading down upon his senses. The rich aroma of cedar wood drifts by, coming from the two giant trees at the base of the trail, at least two kilometers away. Breathing in, he distinguishes the fragrance of pine needles and tree sap, fresh dirt and the worms burrowing through it. Burnt incense from a Buddhist temple in the town below.
He opens his body to the flood of sensory stimulation. The scratching of a ladybug’s delicate legs across the rock on which he sits. A flower opening its petals to the moonlight. The heart beating in the chest of a squirrel looking at Matt from an adjacent tree. The delicate movement of insect wings all around him, each with its own rhythmic melody.
With sensory organs amplified and refined by multiple orders of magnitude, he focuses on the images, smells, sounds and tastes simultaneously, holding it all in his thoughts with a completeness and calmness entirely new. His mind and body are melded together into an exquisite instrument for perceiving the world. There is no need to analyze, to question, to resist the flow of truth. It moves through him without effort.
He wonders if he has achieved satori, a sudden flash of awareness sought after by followers of the Zen Buddhist tradition.
Matt dwells on the wonders that lay open to his senses. As if on cue, the flowers in the clearing simultaneously open their petals to the night air.
An intense light floods down from above.
He looks up to see a pair of lustrous bronze feet.
The Woman stands above him, the same luminous being he saw in his dream. The Woman that led him through the dark wasteland. The Woman that rescued him from the howling demons hungry for the kill. The Woman he saw as a sixteen-year-old buried alive by an avalanche of snow at the bottom of Skull Pass.
She is all of these things.
A churning white fire engulfs her from head to foot. Licks and tongues of flame extend outward from her body, like the surface of the sun. For a time, fear saturates Matt’s mind. Fear of this fiery being, fear that the trees and flowers will catch the flames, fear that his own body will be consumed by the heat and light. But his fear quickly turns to simple fascination. The green leaves of the trees, the multicolored petals of the flowers, and his skin are all unscathed. A gnat hovers in front of Matt’s eyes beating its delicately veined wings in slow motion in the midst of the flames.
He looks down to see that he has risen from the boulder and stands a meter above it, face to face with the Woman.
Their eyes meet.
She is silent as a statue. A loose garment of alabaster cloth covers her body, open at the neck. Her hands and feet are naked. Dark hair drops down to her shoulders. He tries to determine her race, but it is indistinct. With a broad forehead, chiseled nose, full lips, almond eyes, and deep bronze skin, she might be African, Asian or European. It doesn’t seem to ma
tter.
A thin blue light clings to the outside of her body.
Matt can’t take his eyes off the brown pupils that look back at him and through him. The Woman gazes in quiet dignity with the hint of a smile. It’s clear she knows Matt is studying every detail of her face. She seems in no hurry to speak. Her eyes drop down to her hand, taking Matt’s gaze with them.
A brilliant white Stone, with the familiar rough shape of a large claw, rests in the Woman’s palm. When the Woman looks back at Matt, their eyes meet again.
With effort, Matt looks away from her face to stare at his own hands, feet and torso, all of them glowing with an internal brilliance. But no matter how hard he tries to look elsewhere, his gaze is drawn back like a magnet to the gentle intensity of her eyes.
They watch each other for a time. No hurry. No awkwardness. Matt feels only harmony, comfort, clarity and affection. He ventures a look at the Stone that lies, cool and weightless, in his own hand. Like the Woman, it is ablaze with white light.
She moves closer and reaches out to touch Matt’s Stone. Warmth surges through his body, and his gaze is drawn to his own arms and legs.
He is enveloped in the same boiling white flames.
Movement within his Stone catches his eye. Its light stirs into shifting clouds. It seems to grow larger and larger until it consumes his entire view.
For an instant, all is blindingly brilliant, and then he sees patches of dark space as a cluster of immense white spheres moves by and recedes beyond him. His senses tell him that he is traveling many orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light into the vast depth of space. Galaxies appear as faint spots in the distance, draw closer and then shoot past, falling away into faint smudges of light before fading completely. He has a simultaneous view of every direction, front and rear, up and down, like riding on a transparent bullet train through the heart of Tokyo at high speed.
