The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters

by Baku Yumemakura

  A woman appeared after a few minutes, walking alone, away from the station. She was a slender-faced, youngish woman of about 25. There was something ruthless in her eyes, but not unpleasantly so. There was nothing to suggest that she was a streetwalker, no sign of dilapidation. Her makeup was immaculate, not too thick. She had been out drinking but made sure to have reapplied her lipstick. She was pretty. She looked like the type of woman that was strong and independent.

  A door to one of the parked cars swung open as she walked by. A man got out and bowed politely. “Excuse me, but could you help me find the nearest station?” the man said; he was blocking her path.

  It was suspicious. The car had been parked there the whole time, so it did not quite make sense that the man would be lost. He looked around quickly and, satisfied that no-one was around, lunged forward, covering her mouth with his hand. He began trying to push her into the car. The woman thrashed in resistance, but her cries were muffled, a second pair of hands emerged from the car and pulled her in. She was inside the car in less than five seconds. As soon as the door shut, the engine started and the car began to pull away. She sat trapped between the two men in the backseat, arms pinned down.

  “Make a fuss and you die,” the man that had spoken to her on the street growled, his hand still over her mouth. “Understood?”

  The woman used her eyes to tell him that she did. She had no idea what was happening, but she knew she did not want to end up dead. There were three of them including the driver. She regretted not having put up more of a fight before she had been bundled into the car, but it was too late now; she was inside, the door was closed. She would bide her time. She was frightened, but lucid enough to make the decision.

  Just as the car was about to shift into third gear, a man appeared in the headlights. He was a giant, massive, wearing jeans and a hemp sweater. He stood in the middle of the road with his legs casually apart, hands in his pockets. The driver blared the horn and slammed on the brakes.

  “Out of the fucking way, asshole!” he shouted, opening the window. The man smiled at him mockingly. “Can’t you fucking hear me?” the driver raged.

  “I hear you just fine.” The man’s voice was utterly composed. It was clear enough that he had not stopped the car by accident.

  “Well get the fuck out of the way then!”

  “Sure, if you let the woman go.”

  “What?”

  “I saw you force a woman into your car.”

  “It’s none of your business.” The man that had covered the woman’s mouth said, opening his window.

  “Actually, it is,” the giant answered. His huge frame seemed to tower over the car, muscles bunched tightly against the fabric of his sweater; it must have been specially made, nobody would mass produce sweaters that size. He was a whole chest taller than the car. He looked like he could pluck it into the air if they tried to run him over. It was not just that he was oversized; he emanated an abnormal sense of power.

  The woman could just about make out his face. His eyes were narrowed against the dazzling beam of the headlights. She did not recognize him.

  “So, how about you let Ryoko Kitano go?”

  She had been caught off guard; the giant had just called out her name. Who the hell were these men, what did they want with me?

  The moment he heard her name, the driver gunned the car forward. But the giant’s frame disappeared just as the car was about to smash into him. Something impacted the front windshield, and the driver’s view disappeared as the glass shattered, becoming opaque. The car screeched to a halt and a loud thud echoed from the roof. The driver looked into the rear-view mirror and let out a squeal. The gigantic man stood there with a smile on his face.

  “Fucker!” The man considered what had happened. The giant had leaped up just as the car was about to hit him, then pushed off the front windscreen and the roof to land behind them. There was a sizable dent in the roof, only to be expected if that giant had landed on it. Two men got out of the car: the driver and the man that had grabbed Ryoko Kitano from inside.

  “What do you want?” The driver took a step closer, but the giant moved first. He pulled his right hand from his pocket and slammed it down on the man’s neck, all without a word. The man collapsed, stiff as a pole. He had not even made a sound. The other man tried to run, but the giant grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him into the air, pulling him in until they were face to face. The giant’s strength was unbelievable. The man dangled in the air, a whole 30 centimeters off the ground. His toes were level with the giant’s shins. The giant’s black-gloved hands tightened around the man’s collar.

  “Sorry to put you out like this. Tell me, which of you three is the boss?” The man pointed to the car as he gasped for breath. “Humph.” The giant laughed and chucked the man to the side. The man’s head made a painful-sounding thump as it smacked backward into the asphalt. The giant walked over to the car and tapped a finger against the backseat window.

  “Hand the girl over.” His voice resonated through the air. The car doors were locked.

  “D..don’t come any closer. Try anything and she gets hurt, okay?” The man’s voice was shaking. He had a mountain knife in his hand. The woman looked pale. The giant glared in through the glass window.

  “That’s the spirit.” His thick lips formed a menacing smirk. The raw sense of power was on a different scale than the man with the knife.

  “G..go home! If you don’t--”

  “Hah! You’ll what?”

  “I’ll knife her.”

  The giant rocked with genuine laughter. “Fine. But in return I’ll rip off your ears and nose. Then, I’ll make you eat them. I look forward to hearing how they taste.”

  “I’m not messing around!” The man readied the knife across the pale skin of Ryoko Kitano’s throat.

  “Do what you want, as long as she’s still able to talk.” The roof of the car exploded with sound; the giant was hammering his fists into it. The man’s throat was stuffed with a scream.

  The giant continued to pound the roof. The attacks were relentless, like an avalanche of boulders, then they stopped. The giant was peering into the car, grinning. The door suddenly flew open. The giant’s thick hand flew inside and wrapped itself around the wrist the man held the knife in.

  The man screamed like a girl. The giant wrenched him clean out of the car before speaking to the woman. “Come on out.” She clambered out, watching him with confusion. “Good work opening the locks there. I was about to try smashing the window.”

  “You didn’t think he’d stab me?” she asked the giant, her face still pale.

  “As I said, I didn’t mind as long as you could speak.” Ryoko gaped in stunned silence. “A joke... I knew he wouldn’t go through with it.” Still holding the man by the wrist, the giant pressed a finger into the base of his neck. The man’s body went immediately limp. The giant cast the man over his shoulder. He walked a few paces before turning back to face Ryoko Kitano. “It’ll be best if you don’t go back to your apartment for a while. There’ll be more of these guys coming.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “If you want answers, go back to your room and get ready to leave for a few days. Then come with me.”

  “How can you guarantee I’ll be safer with you than with these guys?” she asked, staring into the giant’s eyes.

  “A good question. And I have no intention of making that guarantee.” He smiled. There was danger in his smile; a ferocity that could not be hidden. If it was not for that, she suspected that smile would steal the hearts of most women.

  “If you decide not to come with me, I still need an hour of your time tonight. I have some questions about Yoichi Munakata. Either way, you should get out of your apartment. You need to sell it and move somewhere safe.” Ryoko did not know how to reply. “So, what’ll it be?”

  “I’ll come with you.” The mention of Munakata’s name had strengthened her resolve.

  “I’m parked just up
from here, a white Bluebird. Come when you’ve made your arrangements.”

  As he was walking away, Ryoko Kitano called out to the giant, “I forgot to ask your name.”

  “Senkichi, Senkichi Fuminari,” he said levelly before continuing on his way.

  2

  The Bluebird pulled out.

  Ryoko Kitano was in the passenger seat across from Fuminari. The hostage was in the trunk. She had changed into jeans and a roughly knit summer sweater. The coarseness of the design matched his. He figured she had chosen it for that very reason.

  She had turned up with a single, slightly oversized travel bag. Fuminari had only needed to wait for 20 minutes. She was smart, she had probably used the time to make a few calls, get changed, and pack everything she needed. Fuminari doubted that most women finding themselves having to leave home with some guy they had never met would be able to get all that done in just 20 minutes, but Ryoko had managed it. Something about her reminded him of Kumiko. “Hmm.”

  Ryoko caught Fuminari smiling. “What?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Just thinking of a woman I used to know.” A shock of pain seared through Fuminari’s left hand as he gripped the steering wheel, the ghosts of his missing fingers, illusory pain. The itch was a constant reminder that they were gone. Fuminari scratched at them, massaging the glove as if they were still there. Somehow, it helped lessen the pain.

  “Where are we going?” the woman asked.

  “Hakone. I rented a house. You’re free to bunk there for a while if you don’t have any other options. You’ll be able to get on with your work, too.”

  “Work?”

  “You’re a designer, right? I assume you can’t just stop working without getting shit.”

  “It’s okay, I just finished up a big project, we actually had the wrap party today. I did have a couple of flyer jobs, but I canceled them. It’ll be a hassle for my sponsor, but I’d been thinking of getting out of those for a while anyway. Worked out quite well, I guess.” The woman was decisive. She stopped talking and sat in silence. It felt as though she was silently urging Fuminari to say something.

  After a while, they merged onto the Tomei Expressway. Fuminari followed it until Gotenba; he was going to use the Otome Road to Sengokubara. “When was the last time you saw Munakata?” he asked.

  “The night of the 4th of July,” Ryoko said. The 4th of July, the last day Fuminari had spoken with him. They had been in contact over the phone earlier that afternoon; Ryoko had met him after.

  “How do you know Munakata?” she asked.

  “I’d asked him to do a job for me, but lost contact a couple of weeks back. The last time we spoke was on July 4th, after lunch.”

  “Same as me.”

  “You spoke to him last. You said you met up at night. Were you together until the 5th?”

  “Yes”

  “Did he give you anything to keep hold of?”

  “To keep hold of?”

  “A memo perhaps, a photograph, anything. Ring any bells?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You were lovers, right?”

  Ryoko was silent for a while before speaking again. “Not in the strictest sense. We had a physical relationship. We were pretty fond of each other, but I don’t think we were lovers. Maybe you’d say otherwise. We had, you know, an adult relationship.”

  “Either way, you were one of Munakata’s only friends, male or female.”

  “So it seems. But I don’t remember him giving me anything in particular.”

  “Right.”

  “Let me get this straight, both you and the guy in your trunk came looking for this thing that you think he might have given me?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Ryoko turned to face him. “Does it have something to do with ‘Panshigaru’?” she said slowly, putting emphasis on the word.

  “Yes, exactly. How do you know the name?”

  “He had mentioned it.”

  “What did he say?” Fuminari’s tone took on a harsh edge.

  “Um, hang on...yeah that’s right, I remember!” Ryoko said, the pitch of her voice rising.

  “You remember what?”

  “You wanted to know if he’d left me anything.”

  “You remember something?”

  “Possibly. But it wasn’t something he left me, not exactly. He forgot something in my room,” she said.

  “What?”

  “A pamphlet for some religious cult, a booklet-type thing.”

  “What was its name?”

  “Right, let’s see...the L.L.S. The Life and Light School.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I’d like to tell you it’s in my room, but it’s not. Not anymore.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know. It was stolen I think.”

  “What do you mean, stolen?”

  “Someone broke into the apartment while I was out. Messed up the whole place. They took 30 thousand yen in cash and a camera. That was when the pamphlet went missing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think so.”

  “And the police?”

  “They were hardly concerned about the cash, let alone the pamphlet. They didn’t even add it to their list, just said they couldn’t imagine why anyone would steal a pamphlet, that I’d probably just lost it. I was fine with that. I mean, it was just a pamphlet.”

  “They got it wrong. The pamphlet was the real target, the rest was just to make it look like a regular break-in.”

  “But who wanted it?”

  “Whoever pays the bills of the unconscious guy in the trunk.” Fuminari dug his teeth into his thick lips.

  Illusory pain pulsed through his left hand.

  3

  There was a single bed in a small room.

  The only other furniture was a small table and a chair. There were no windows, but the room had two doors. One of the doors led out of the room and could not be opened from the inside, the other opened freely, leading to a bathroom with a toilet and a sink. There were no windows in the bathroom. A single carpet had been pulled across the floor, not quite furniture. It had a curious design, like a mural you might see at an esoteric temple in Tibet or Ladakh. It depicted gaudy and vivid renditions of male and female deities engaged in various modes of sexual intercourse. Some were having mutual oral sex, a few of the male deities mounted their female counterparts from behind.

  A young girl lay on the bed, Yuko.

  She had been abducted while out walking, thrown into a car and brought here where she had been locked up ever since. The lack of windows and clocks meant that she had no way to track the passing of time. She had tried to keep track of the number of times she was brought food, but she still had no idea how long had passed between meals. She was fed three times a day, maybe four. Of course, she had no clue why she was kidnapped. All she could gleam from the men that visited her was it was somehow related to Biku.

  She could guess. Her visitors were, without exception, men--some young, some almost elderly. With each visit they would rape her. Sometimes they would turn up while she was asleep, crawl into her bed, force her to turn over, and raise her buttocks before penetrating her from behind.

  Why is this happening? She had cried at first, but no-one paid any attention. When she attempted to resist, the men would pin her down and rape her all the same. She could scream and attempt to resist them, but they would force their way inside her regardless, and because her body was already privy to the joys of sex, it would automatically respond. It had only been the first couple of times that she had actually felt nothing.

  A woman had visited once. Her skin had been abnormally pale and her eyes narrow and slanted. There had been a cloying sense of unearthliness to her. She had arrived with two young men in tow and ordered them to remove Yuko’s clothes. She ran her pale hands over Yuko’s naked flesh. Her hands had been soft, almost sticky; she had clasped her red lips over Yuko’s nipples, teasing them with her ton
gue. Yuko had been unable to keep her moans in check as cold pleasure tingled down her spine. When the woman pulled away, she had just stood there, running her sticky gaze all over Yuko’s body.

  “She seems suitable,” she had said, the two men nodded in response. “I think we have our next girl.” Yuko remembered the words, whispered as the woman left. Yuko had no idea what the woman had been referring to. That had been two, maybe three days ago now.

  As she slept, Yuko dreamt of a single man, of his ruffled hair. Although she had only been with him once, he had been oddly charming. She had dreamt of him a number of times since her imprisonment, but she was unsure why. It could have been the peculiar scent of his body--yes, that was it. It was the smell of freedom, of a wild animal. His name was Hosuke Kumon.

  She dreamt of him now. Hosuke’s lips glided softly over her skin. Just as he was about to enter her, she heard the familiar creaking of the door. She wanted to hold onto the dream, but a male voice forced her from it. An old man was standing next to her bed. He slid open the belt of his trousers and pulled out his penis. It hung down, flaccid, like a shriveled caterpillar.

  “Suck it,” he said in a deep voice. Yuko got up from the bed and sidled onto her knees before him. Without a word, she took the man’s penis in her hand and guided it to her mouth. She was in her underwear. She flicked her tongue over the tip as she rubbed her fingers up and down his shaft. The man uttered a groan as she fingered the bridge of flesh below his anus. His cock began to harden inside her mouth. She released it when it had grown too big to fully take in.

  “Not yet.” The man pushed it back toward her mouth. As Yuko opened her youthful lips, the man grabbed her by the head and thrust his penis deep into her throat. She retched, almost throwing up, but the man pumped his hips regardless. Tears began to pour from her eyes. After a long while he finally pulled away. “Undress,” he ordered.

  Yuko stripped off her underwear, revealing young breasts and smooth white buttocks. The man shoved her back onto the bed and pulled her so that she was poised on its edge. He took an ankle in each hand and hoisted her legs upward, spreading them in a wide ‘v’. Yuko’s pink flesh lay exposed below her fine pubic hair. He hooked her legs over his shoulders and took his cock in his hand, thrusting into her. She was still dry. If he hadn’t been soaked in her saliva it would have been impossible. He thrust deeper, chafing her the whole time. Yuko closed her eyes and drew an image of the man in her dreams. She imagined Hosuke crying, his smile faltered. The old man shook as he came. He muttered something as he pulled up his trousers.