They only removed his blindfold after bringing him to the room. Yuko was still with him. Enoh had also been there with two other men. One of them had a gun. The men shared dark, cold eyes with an almost reptilian lack of emotion. The eyes of people that made a business of killing, all emotion suppressed.
“So this is the final stop?” Hosuke had asked.
“Get some sleep. We will have finished debating what we’re going to do with you by the time you wake,” Enoh said.
Hosuke glanced at the bed then nodded in agreement, his thick fingers scratching at his head. He unbuttoned his shirt and threw it to the floor. Then he loosened the belt to his jeans and pulled them over his feet with his underwear in tow, the way kids do, stepping out of each leg in turn. He stood there completely naked, his tanned body impressive. He looked like he had been carved from stone. He turned so that his strong, hairy buttocks faced Enoh, lifted up the sheets and got straight into the bed.
“Come on, you’d better get undressed too,” he called to Yuko. Yuko timidly stripped her clothes before crawling into the bed beside him.
Enoh watched the whole time, grinning. He chuckled. Hosuke pulled the sheets to his chest and turned to meet Enoh’s gaze.
“I’d just been thinking about a nap.”
“I heard you slept--snored--the whole way here.”
“Just pretending. I was counting, keeping track of the time it took to get here.”
“You crack me up.”
“Listen, if you’re gonna kill me do it in my sleep okay? It’s against the rules to do it after I’m up.”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s all I ask,” Hosuke said. He took Yuko into his arms and closed his eyes. Her naked body was warm against him, trembling slightly. She clung to him with all her might. “You don’t need to worry now,” he whispered, softly pressing his hands over her shoulders. He looked like a father comforting his daughter. As he held her, the trembling gradually subsided. Finally, her breathing told him she was asleep. That was the last thing he remembered. He had fallen asleep directly after her...
...and now he had woken up to see a ghost. He saw his clothes, strewn over the floor as he had left them. He pulled his naked frame out of the bed and scratched at his scalp, dislodging a surprising amount of dandruff. His head was itchy. He thrust the fingers of both hands into his hair and gave himself a good scratch. As he did, the door swung open to reveal Enoh. Hosuke turned to look at him, then returned to scratching his head some more.
“Honestly. Don’t you have any manners?” Enoh didn’t sound angry, if anything his tone was of incredulity.
“My head’s itching, okay?” Hosuke shook his head then turned to face the man. His hair fell back down around his face. Hosuke got up, revealing a thick erection between his legs.
“And look at that, like a kid standing to attention.”
“Morning glory, I guess you’ve forgotten about those, old man.” Hosuke used his right hand to push his erection down, then he let go. It flicked back up and bounced off his hairy abdomen.
“Well, it’s not morning now.”
“Night?”
“Evening. You slept for a whole half-day.”
“And you’ve come to a decision?”
“We have indeed.” Enoh stepped into the room.
“And it is?”
“You should probably hear that from Kurogosho’s own mouth.”
“So, I can meet him?”
“Yes. Right now in fact,” Enoh said, motioning his eyes towards Hosuke’s shirt and jeans in the middle of the room. “Put on those foul things and follow me.”
Hosuke put on his shirt then nudged his feet into the crumpled mix of jeans and underwear on the floor. He pulled them up and fastened his belt. Yuko was still asleep, snoring softly. Hosuke turned to look at her for a moment, then swiveled back towards Enoh.
“Come on then.” Enoh pivoted and began to walk away.
“Where’s that scary guy from last night, the one with the gun?” Hosuke called out to the man’s diminutive frame; Enoh was already moving fast.
“A little uncouth to share dinner. They’ve been relieved for the night.”
“Dinner?”
“Kurogosho is going to treat you to some food. He wants to talk with you, it seems, over dinner.”
As Enoh said the words Hosuke’s stomach made a loud, appreciative growl.
3
The hallway was dark, most of the rooms lining it Japanese-style, nothing to help Hosuke gauge the size of the building.
The sliding doors that lining corridor were all shut. The floor was wooden. The two of them walked quickly but the flooring made only the slightest of sounds, like the padded footsteps of a cat.
There was a faint scent of incense throughout the hallway, different from the type used in the mountains the night before, something sandalwood-based. As they moved further, Hosuke began to notice something strange, a tension in the air not unlike magnetism. It hung on the scent of incense like a strand of web from a baby spider diving towards a small flower. It was the same as the feeling he had back in the room. There was a constant magnetism throughout the building, as though the grounds were located inside some kind of spiritual barrier.
Hosuke grunted under his breath, carefully adjusting his gaze so that he was looking upwards. There was something towards the corner of the ceiling up ahead, some thing like a small monkey, clinging to the darkness. It dissolved in the same instant he glimpsed it, dissipating like mist into the air. He saw a spider crawling next to his feet; it had a human face. Then, something like human hair, floated under the ceiling. A tiny human hand scurried over the surface of one of the doors, followed by a blood-red leech giving chase--living, breathing nightmares. Numerous other creatures skittered about, keeping to the patches of darkness. Each vanished the moment Hosuke focused on it, returning as a faint wisp the moment he trained his mind elsewhere. The whole place was alive with apparitions.
“You see them too?” Enoh muttered, maintaining his easy pace ahead of Fuminari.
“Yeah,” Hosuke answered quietly.
The two men continued in silence before Enoh finally spoke again, “Were you born with your abilities?”
Hosuke laughed.
“They appear to be beyond the remit of any normal training,” Enoh continued.
Hosuke answered with his own question, “How long has the place been like this?”
“Ever since it arrived.”
“It?”
Enoh remained silent.
“Kukai, you mean?”
“Indeed.” Enoh chuckled to himself.
“What’s going on here, anyway?”
“Master Kurogosho would hardly approve of me just telling you. If you have more to ask, please ask him directly.”
Enoh came to a stop. To the left was a vast garden shrouded in dark, to the right, a room with closed doors. The door’s surface was painted matte black. The doors looked like a gaping mouth, an empty darkness between the walls.
“Master Kurogosho is inside,” Enoh whispered, turning to look at Hosuke.
The sharp intensity of the man’s gaze hit him like an arrow. Enoh was small, but his body exuded preternatural levels of energy.
Enoh turned to face the doors again and called into the room, “Master, I have brought Hosuke Kumon.” He slid the doors open without waiting for a response.
4
The room was the same in which Yuko had watched Kurogosho and Renobo fornicate in front of her.
On the ceiling was a garish depiction of numerous deities engaged in sexual acts, with Heruka in the center presiding over them; a mandala celebrating the act of sexual union. There were twenty-five pairs in total, each intertwined in unique sexual positions. The composition of the painting reminded Hosuke of what he had witnessed in the Tanzawa mountains just the night before. There was a low table set with food at the center of the small, twelve-tatami room. On the table was a single candle, more adorned the corners of the room
, set inside small votive dishes. The one on the table, however, was strikingly different. The flame came from a single candle, normal in itself, yet the stand that held it was anything but. It was a human skull, domed and unsettlingly white. It had been placed to the edge of the table, the candle lodged firmly inside it. The twenty-five pairs of deities gazed down, dancing under the five sources of flickering light.
Hosuke stared into the room from the corridor, bewildered amazement in his eyes. He looked like a kid about to enter a mystic cave and embark on some new adventure. His eyes shined, unable to contain his growing sense of wonder and curiosity. The expression made him look like a child on the verge of tears. A woman and an old man were seated towards the far end of the table directly before him, both kneeling formally in traditional dress. Their eyes were trained on Hosuke.
“I’m coming in,” Hosuke said.
His voice came out slightly hoarse. He lumbered into the room and Enoh followed in from behind. Enoh slid the doors shut, making a surprisingly loud noise. “This is Master Kurogosho,” Enoh announced, coming to stand at Hosuke’s side.
Hosuke pulled his jaw in and nodded without saying anything. The old man and the woman said nothing in response. The energy coming from their bodies was curious, abnormal somehow. Neither seemed completely of this world. The energy felt like it would be wet to the touch, viscous.
Hosuke recognized the old man from the previous night. He had been seated at the center of that writhing sexual mandala of human flesh. Hosuke had felt the power of the old man’s intensely penetrating gaze, reaching out to him through the flames and the darkness. Now the old man’s eyes were leveled on him again, burrowing directly into his flesh. The old man was sat so that he directly faced him. Hosuke could detect neither hostility nor excitement. The old man just sat with his eyes trained on him, with no hint of evaluation. The look was of a man simply watching, waiting for Hosuke’s true essence to flow into him.
Hosuke, for his part, felt like he was gaping into a bottomless abyss. The power coming from the old man’s eyes matched, even exceeded, that given off by Fuminari’s gigantic body. The force was enough to make him want to avert his eyes, to kneel on the tatami and bow his head in supplication. For any normal person, that would be a far easier task than returning the gaze. The old man’s eyes were powerful enough that a single glance would sufficiently communicate his superiority.
The woman’s eyes, on the other hand, were openly cloying. Her body exuded an eroticism that came at him like a suffocating breeze; Hosuke could tell immediately that the woman had a demented fixation with sex. Her eyes presented a series of questions, nothing else--tell me the size and thickness of your cock, its shape, how long it would please me for--she was already picturing his buttocks thrusting into her, the way her hips would shake in response. She was imagining taking his erection inside her, dreaming of fucking him until she was finally sated. Her blood-red lips curved into an unnerving smile, enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“You look ready to suck out my soul, man.” Hosuke held the old man’s gaze, scratching his head.
“Hah!” the old man spoke for the first time. His voice was deep and sonorous.
“And you, you look like you’re ready to rip my balls off. This is some weird freaking place I’ve landed myself in.”
The woman responded with a shrill laugh.
“Well, Renobo?” the old man asked the woman as she laughed, turning to look at her.
“Mmm?”
“Would you like him to fuck you?”
“I would love him to, in every orifice. Until I can’t take it anymore.” Renobo flicked her narrow eyes back to Hosuke and ran her tongue over her moist, crimson lips. The single gesture would have been enough to make a masturbating teenager cream in his pants. The woman’s every movement seemed engineered to excite lust.
“Take a seat, Kumon,” Kurogosho said.
Hosuke sat himself down so that he faced Kurogosho. He crossed his legs. “I’ll break with the formalities, if you don’t mind. Wasn’t raised so well, you see.”
“Master Kurogosho,” Enoh began, also sitting with his legs crossed next to Hosuke. “Yes, Enoh?”
“He claims to be able to see the shades too.”
“Huh.” Kurogosho’s eyes narrowed. “Well, Kumon, can you?”
“You mean the apparitions?”
“Indeed. I glimpse them every now and again. Enoh sees them everywhere.”
“This place is a veritable horror show,” Hosuke said, looking around. He looked briefly away from Kurogosho, noting an oversized demonic face flicker in and out of existence behind him. The old man’s expression stayed the same. He held it as he glanced again at Hosuke, then turned to look at the woman.
“Well?” he asked. “As an extension of my previous question, Kumon, how about spending a night in the company of Renobo? I assure you, it is this earth’s greatest paradise.”
“I have a tendency to get attached to women I sleep with.”
“Ah yes, so I hear. It is your wish that in return for your working for us we spare the life of this girl, Yuko?”
“That’s not all of it, but yeah.”
“You also have an interest in discovering the nature of the work, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s the gist of it.” Hosuke dipped his head to scratch, his eyes flicking up to stay on Kurogosho. Then he began picking from the table, using his hands. He ignored the cutlery that was already prepared. He carried some of the food to his mouth with his fingers.
“Do tuck in. We can discuss these matters later, if you’d like,” Kurogosho said. He was watching Hosuke as he might a greedy child.
Hosuke paid no attention to the man’s expression, licking his hands as he continued to finger the food.
“Ah, of course. It pains me to interrupt your feasting, but we have prepared some entertainment for you. Would you oblige?”
“Entertainment?”
“Something to communicate the extent of our resolve, you might say, before we commence discussions.”
Kurogosho eyed a signal to Enoh, who immediately stood. He took the doors in his hands and slid them open to reveal the corridor outside. The grounds spread into the dark night beyond. The glass doors that separated the corridor from the outside had already been opened. The sounds of trees rustling in the wind reached into the room as night air blew in. Someone flicked a switch, turning on the lights to the corridor.
Hosuke could see a number of people in the garden. He recognized two of them--Iba and Hanko. Hanko. Does that mean Biku and Fuminari are dead? He considered the idea, wiping the food on his hands over his trousers. “What happened to Biku and Fuminari?” He twisted his upper-body around and asked them directly, keeping his eyes on Hanko.
“For better or for worse, they remain alive. Hanko only took out Shimizu, the one you left in the car,” Kurogosho said.
“Hanko’s not the only freak I guess. Those two come pretty close too, eh.”
“Huh. So you are concerned for your friends after all.”
“Sure, a little.”
“Fine. We shall discuss this at our leisure once tonight’s festivities have ended.”
As he spoke, Kurogosho’s eyes focused on the grounds outside.
Iba caught Hosuke’s eyes. “Long time no see, huh,” he said. His speech was slightly distorted. He gave Hosuke a smile, grimacing. All Hosuke saw were the pink stumps of his gums; the man had no teeth. He was deathly pale.
5
“I assume you know about the business with Iba?” Kurogosho asked.
Hosuke nodded following Kurogosho, Enoh and Renobo as they exited to the corridor. Iba was standing on the grass outside. Hanko was a few steps behind while two other men flanked him to either side, the same two that had pointed guns at Hosuke the previous night. The atmosphere was incredibly tense. Hanko stood rock-still, a whole head taller than the rest,.
“Iba blabbed a little too much,” the old man pronounced, see
mingly to no-one in particular. It was as though he was addressing the wind as it gusting through the darkness, carrying a faint scent of the surrounding larch. “The consequences must be as evident to you, Kumon, as they are to Iba.” Branches, invisible in the night, rustled as though in resonance with the old man’s statement. It was the dry wind of a plateau. “Iba, you will die now,” the words were spoken matter-of-fact. Nothing about the old man’s tone suggested that he had just issued a death sentence.
It dawned on Hosuke what was about to happen. The ‘entertainment’ that the old man had mentioned was Iba’s execution.
“Iba, you have ten minutes. Use the time to run where you please. I will send Hanko once the time is up,” Kurogosho said flatly.
Iba nodded, his bloodless lips trembling.
“Master Kurogosho,” Renobo broke her silence. Her voice was dripping wet. The old man turned to look at her. “Would you allow me to take him first?” Her eyes glistened, cloudy with excitement.
“Aha!”
“I have always wanted to partake of a man on the cusp of death.”
“A fine proposal.” The old man gave her a perverted smile. “Why not! Iba, employ your ten minutes as you see fit. Cavort with Renobo or flee, the choice is yours.”
By the time Kurogosho had finished speaking Renobo had already made her way down to the garden and was undoing her sash.
“Iba, I will be the last woman you take. Revel in my flesh as you prepare to leave this world.” She discarded the sash holding her kimono together. The garment fell open at the front to reveal her pale, stunningly erotic body.
“Ten minutes, beginning now,” Kurogosho called out.
Iba was rooted to the spot, gawping at Renobo’s wan figure with wide-open, hungry eyes. Renobo placed her hands under the kimono and scooped up her heavy breasts, using her fingertips to rub and pinch at her reddening nipples. They hardened instantly, growing thick as a child’s finger.
“Would you like to suck these?” She continued to knead her breasts as she pushed her hips forward, spreading her legs wider. The maroon lips between her thighs peeled open, a smile below the dark shade of her pubic hair.
The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters Page 29
