by Wen Spencer
The open stage of the kaguraden was worn bare by hundreds of years of use. The sliding doors of the back wall had been painted with a mural nearly worn off. Only the suggestion of green treetops and mountain ranges remained. Shrine maidens in brilliant red trousers and crisp white short kimono tops had gathered along with musicians in kimonos. They went still in surprise as Nikki came up the stairs, dripping wet.
The oldest of the shrine maidens padded up to Nikki. “You wait.” She pointed across the square to the gift shop crowded with tourists.
“Sumimasen,” Nikki bowed and apologized.
“Akane, she is my honored guest,” the boy said in English.
The woman gasped slightly, her hand going to her mouth. She whispered something in Japanese.
It triggered an oddly stilted conversation.
“She has a sword that needs to be purified,” the boy continued in English. “Burn what she is wearing.”
“What?” Nikki cried.
The woman asked a question.
“You smell of blood,” the boy said. “You will need to be purified as well as the sword.”
“I’m a size eight. Do you know how hard it is to find jeans in Japan for me? Girls are like little twigs here!”
“You can wear a yukata.”
Nikki squeaked in protest. “I—I—I stand out enough.”
The woman asked another question in Japanese.
“You’re a blond-haired, blue-eyed female, traveling alone,” the boy said. “You couldn’t stand out any more than if you wore a monkey suit. A yukata won’t make a difference.”
Nikki noticed that none of the shrine maidens was actually looking at the boy as he spoke. Most of them were staring at Nikki as if she’d grown two heads. She supposed that a dripping-wet woman with a sword would get that reaction. She wished she understood what the shrine maiden was saying to confirm that she wasn’t the only one seeing the boy.
“You can stop at Isetan at the station,” the boy said. “I promise you there will be a pair your size.”
Could he promise that because he was Inari, god of good fortune? Or was he just a schoolboy saying whatever he needed to say to get her to cooperate?
The shrine maiden said something in Japanese, and the others stirred out of their confusion. Before she even knew what was happening, she was led back to a prehistoric bath and four women were attempting to strip her.
“No, no, no!” She smacked away their hands as she flashed suddenly to her first compliancy hearing, where her mother had done everything in her power to put Nikki’s hypergraphia into overdrive. For some stupid reason, the laws allowed “emergency hospitalization” for seventy-two hours before a commitment hearing. “Harrowing” didn’t even come close to describing the showers that the orderlies put her through for three days prior to the hearing. She swung up the katana to block their attempts, gripping the hilt in a way that should translate in any language. “Don’t touch me! Don’t fucking touch . . .”
. . . she was kneeling in the kaguraden as the shrine maidens danced around her to drum and flute. She was dressed in a white yukata, smelling faintly of soap. Her hair was gathered into a ponytail, still damp against the back of her neck. The katana lay on the worn wooden floor in front of her. Atsumori knelt beside her.
“I told you not to do that,” she growled and started to rise.
“That was not me.” Atsumori spoke in a rush, motioning for her to stay kneeling. “Lord Inari did not want you to harm his servants. You should not have threatened them with the katana.”
She glared at him but gravity and her knees forced her to sink back into a kneeling position. “You should have stopped him.”
“I cannot.” Atsumori bowed his head to the floor. “I know I told you that I would protect you, but the truth is that I am not a match in power to Lord Inari. He is a god. I am a simple samurai.”
Or a complex psychosis brought on by years of abuse.
She glanced about her for some indication that someone else was aware of Atsumori.
The shrine maidens were dancing in solemn practiced moves in a circle around her to the beat of a deep drum. A flute thrilled through a thin, wavering melody. The maidens held in their hands a wand decorated with zig-zagging folded paper streamers that they occasionally waved over her head. Despite the music and the rustle of the wand, the ceremony was strangely quiet. She felt an odd crawl of electricity snake over her body, making all the fine hairs on her arms stand up.
Her fingers fidgeted, overwhelmed by all the weirdness and stress of the day. The need to write was beginning again. She clenched her hands tight.
“I can’t take much more of this craziness,” she whispered. “After this, we go to Osaka, get my passport and bank card, and go to Nara. Agreed? No attacking yakuza on our own.”
“I will not force you,” Atsumori said.
Which was not the same as agreeing, but she would have to be content. There was a good chance that she was merely arguing with herself.
11
The Cleaners
The annoying boy, who may or may not have been the god Inari, had disappeared, leaving her with only the shrine maidens, who were in awe of her. They whispered to her shyly in a mix of Japanese and mangled English. With Atsumori translating, she managed to understand that the white yukata was actually just for bathing and they wanted to swap it for a rich purple one with white rabbits. The outfit came complete with a wide obi belt that was white with pink cherry blossoms, white tabi socks, and sandals. Knowing that yukatas could run anywhere from fifty dollars to several hundred, she felt odd accepting it, but apparently her own clothes had already been burned. Even her bra and panties were gone. As she suspected, she’d been too wide in the hip for the underwear that the shrine maidens tried to provide. She felt weirdly naked.
“Lord Inari said you could buy clothes at Isetan.” Atsumori vanished into thin air as she left holy ground.
She paused a moment, slightly dismayed by his disappearance, and then marched resolutely toward the small train station that was not much bigger than a ticket machine sheltered by a lean-to. “We’re going back to Osaka. I need my passport and bank card.”
Nikki felt like she was losing it. She’d spent so long being told that she was insane while everything around her was normal, that this roller-coaster ride through impossibilities was shaking her to her core. It did not help that she’d lost almost everything she owned. Nor that she was the only non-Japanese person she’d seen all day. Or that the only person that she could easily communicate with might only exist in her own madness.
She clung to what she knew was undeniable truth. Gregory Winston was dead. The shrine had burned. Misa was dead. Wait, scratch that. She didn’t know for sure that Misa/Yuuka was dead, because so far her only source for that was Atsumori.
She could nearly hear her doctors murmuring, “You’re weaving a web of deception to support the implausible.”
Of course, they were denying that her mother was being unfair to keep her locked up for basically a harmless illness. Not once had she ever threatened anyone or done anything that could be dangerous to herself. Of course, that could be different if she ever actually took the medicines that the doctors prescribed for conditions she didn’t have—anti-depression medicine given to a mentally healthy person made them suicidal.
“No, that’s what my mother wants: for me to admit I’m crazy and meekly take the pills and sit in a white room all day, stoned out of my mind.”
She’d fought through years and years of being outnumbered, against any number of quacks who wanted to milk her mother for money, with the entire social machine at their backs. What a few gods and the Japanese underworld compared to that?
It did not help, though, that her stress-induced hypergraphia made it so hard to believe she was completely sane. Even if she could stop the hypergraphia, she still needed to write, because it was the only way she had to make money—unless, of course, she started prostitution or returned to the United States
.
“I’m not going back.” She realized that she was chewing on her fingernails and jerked her hand away from her mouth. She pulled out her notebook and found a pen. She flipped past the two last scenes, both featuring her new possible hero, the Scary Cat Dude. At some point she wanted to type them into her computer, but not now. Retyping scenes didn’t satisfy her hypergraphia. She would get the need out of her system and then go back to Osaka, get her passport . . .
Had the Scary Cat Dude really been to her apartment?
If she wasn’t writing the truth, then there was still a dead body—possibly—in her apartment—that might or might not be a supernatural monster or a police detective. She took a deep breath and let it out.
She would assume that everything was true. A tanuki came to her apartment disguised as Detective Tanaka and she . . . Atsumori had killed him. Scary Cat Dude had been to her apartment. He had made arrangements for the dead body to be removed. The important question was: did Scary Cat Dude take her passport and bank card? In the scene she’d written, he hadn’t, but she had stopped writing before he left her place. He could have taken her purse, or he might have left it there for even scarier people to find. Or maybe “the cleaners” would take everything she owned out of the apartment. How thorough were these cleaners?
She laughed bitterly as she realized that she couldn’t believe any of it had happened as she wrote it. It was all horribly ironic that she felt like she would need to be insane to believe the proof that she had never been crazy. She scrubbed at her face, trying to figure out what to do about her passport. If Scary Cat Dude or his cleaners had taken her purse, then going back to the apartment would be pointlessly dangerous. Everyone who was looking for her apparently knew where she lived: the police, the yakuza, and the mystery organization.
The only way of knowing was to extend the scene, but then the only reason for doing that was if she believed that she was writing the truth.
She eyed her notebook. All she had to do was write and believe. The last was going to be the hardest part.
He took pictures of the girl’s Post-It Note wall as he quickly dissembled the collage of multiple-colored pieces of paper. Ananth had sent him to the apartment merely because she was a person of interest to the police and their leads had dried up. There had been no mention of her being a Talent. At this moment, he seemed to be the only person who realized she might have powers, and he intended to keep it that way. If the truth came out, someone else would be assigned to find the girl and he’d be back to chasing dead ends.
After he took down the Post-It Notes, he searched through her luggage for any traces of her writing. She had packed a dozen notebooks full of small but beautifully fluid handwriting. At the top of every page was a person’s name, their color code, and whether the notes had been retyped into her computer. He stuffed the notebooks into a plastic shopping bag. He also found a flash drive in the zippered compartment of her suitcase. He shuffled quickly through the various loose flyers scattered throughout the room and he took any that had handwriting on them. He searched her purse; it yielded another flash drive, her passport, and her wallet with a New York State driver’s license. He put all three into his coat pocket; he didn’t want her leaving the country.
The door opened behind him, and he had his gun leveled at the new arrival before he recognized the fashionably scruffy man. “What are you doing here, Chevalier?”
He used Japanese since the Frenchman acted as if his limited French was a sign of a mental defect. What’s more, Chevalier viewed any conversation in English as confirmation.
Chevalier waved an unlit cigarillo to take in the small room, the tanuki’s body, and the hallway behind him. “I’m babysitting this gathering of monsters.” The Frenchman put the cigarillo into his mouth and muttered around it. “It’s clear, mon petit monstre.”
Denjiro Sato drifted into the room, radiating his normal noble disdain toward everyone and everything. His first name meant “good ancestor” and he was proud of his bloodline that he could trace back to the supposedly divine bloodline of the Japanese emperors. Ironically, though, Sato was one of the most common last names in Japan. Sato acknowledged their presence with a cold look and then crouched down to examine the dead tanuki.
It would be easy to believe that someone had paired the two out of a twisted sense of humor. Chevalier and Sato were polar opposites. Chevalier’s habit of leaning against any surface that would support his weight disguised his six-and-a-half-foot height. He had the French elegantly messy look down to a science, from his artfully tousled hair to his tailor-fitted suit with the half-buttoned shirt. He favored thin, leaf-wrapped mini cigars that reeked more than normal cigarettes. Scents clung to him, mapping out a day of coffee, cigarillos, soot, and blood. Apparently the pair had been following in his wake, cleaning up dangerous evidence. It was obviously fraying Chevalier’s temper. The man didn’t like being reminded that his greatest worth came from being dense as a rock. It often reduced him to glorified babysitter for more dangerous Talents like Sato.
On the other hand, if Sato was annoyed by the situation, it was hidden under his normal mask of aloofness. Nothing marked its day on him. Every strand of his long black hair was in place. His salaryman shirt and suit were neatly buttoned despite the heat. He would seem more regal, though, if he wasn’t only five foot five. Face locked into neutral, Sato carefully searched the tanuki’s pockets.
“Why are you still here, Monsieur Minou?” Chevalier spoke without taking the cigarillo out of his mouth, a ready excuse for his perfect Japanese. “Weren’t you told to find the girl?”
It was tempting to shoot the man just for the insulting nickname, but he wasn’t sure if he could take Sato. He holstered his gun. “I’m working on it. It looks to me that she’s bolted.” He nudged the abandoned suitcase as proof. “I’m trying to figure out where she’ll run to.”
Chevalier laughed as if the idea of him doing deductive reasoning was amusing. “Pour penser, il faut un cerveau.” The Frenchman leaned against the door and took out a lighter.
“Don’t,” he growled at the man.
“Ah, right, the legendary nose.” Chevalier lit the thin cigarillo anyway. “A tanuki in an Armani suit knockoff? What’s this world coming to, Monsieur Minou? All the monsters acting like they’re human.” The Frenchman grinned as he breathed out smoke; he was like a schoolboy poking at a caged lion with a stick, so pleased with his own courage.
Sato also ignored the baiting. He was probably well used to the taunting. “What’s this girl’s connection to Winston?”
“She’s American.” He volunteered the information only because they would probably already know it. Chevalier snorted, confirming his guess. “I don’t know any other the connection.”
“You didn’t find anything to link her to him?” Chevalier asked.
“The tanuki.” He fed them more information that they already knew. He was taking point on the search only because there were no solid leads. He would only stay in the point while the risk of an ambush outweighed finding anything useful. “Its scent was all through Winston’s apartment. It had to have been the one that left the smeared paw prints in the fresh blood. It killed Winston last night and then came here tonight for the girl.”
Sato gave him a long, measuring look. “It was killed by the katana.”
“I could tell the killer used a blade,” he admitted and added truthfully, “I didn’t find a weapon other than the tanuki’s knife. You sure that it was the katana from the shrine?”
Anger flashed through Sato’s eyes, but the man kept it off his face. “Of course I’m sure.”
He nodded as if it were new information to him. “The tanuki must have found a connection between Winston and the girl before it killed him.”
“Or it was just following the police reports like we are.” Chevalier idly opened the refrigerator beside him, eyed the contents, and took out a can of Coca-Cola. “It would explain the time delay between killing Winston and attacking the girl
.”
He hadn’t considered that possibility. Yokai were solitary creatures that coexisted alongside humans on the same level as house spiders, cockroaches, and feral cats. If the tanuki had information from police reports, then most likely it was working with humans, something they’d never seen before. It would explain, though, the number of robberies that they were investigating. “The tanuki came looking for the katana.”
Chevalier laughed as he cracked open the Coke. “And found it the hard way.”
Sato stepped across the body, carefully avoiding the pool of blood to retrieve the tanuki’s wallet from the bathroom. Before he could examine it, though, Chevalier snapped his fingers and held out his hand. Sato gave the Frenchman a long hard look and tossed the wallet to him.
Chevalier juggled Coke, cigarillo, and wallet to check its contents. The Frenchman grunted as he found the billfold empty. “Did you loot him?”
“Whoever killed him did. I’m assuming it was the girl.”
Chevalier grunted again, unconvinced. “Really, why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be trying to find this girl?”
“She’s had at least an hour’s head start, and we’re one block from the subway.” He gave the room one last scan to see if he missed anything. If he found anything new, he would have to share the information. Once he left, though, something important might be destroyed in the cleaning process. What was the lesser of the two evils? “She’s got cash to travel. Using the automated ticket system, she could head for any point in Japan without leaving a paper trail.”
Chevalier tucked the wallet into the breast pocket of his suit. “I’ll have our people pull surveillance camera footage, starting with this station.”
