“Brace for it!!” Fuminari yelled.
He flattened the accelerator again, this time releasing the clutch. The Land Cruiser lurched backwards as the immense power of the engine kicked in. Wheels bit into concrete and the spare tire on the rear door smashed through the back wall of the garage. The wall consisted of a large square of wood with a series of boards nailed over it.
The Land Cruiser punched through the whole thing in one go—there was a thud, then the sound of Ryoko shouting, boards splintering to pieces. Accompanying it all was something like a scream. The great, metal-bodied beast exploded into the night among reams of black smoke.
“They’ve gone through the back!”
Male voices, armed men shouting from the other side of the door to the garage. Fuminari shifted gear. The car’s headlights cut a dazzling beam through the darkness. He plunged the accelerator down and spun the wheel to the left. He was not aiming for the road. He was going for the woods.
Undergrowth rose to brush against the belly of the Land Cruiser. It lurched, jumping in starts as it spiked off rocks concealed in the grass. It pitched, heaving massively. Each time the headlights would veer down towards the ground before swinging upwards to pierce dark sky. Endless rocks thudded into the undercarriage. Heedless of all this, Fuminari gunned deeper into the woods. They were only making headway over the rough terrain because of the sheer immensity of the Land Cruiser; any normal car would have been decimated. Fuminari’s plan was to cut through the woods, a shortcut to the road. But he had to avoid trees. This slowed them, despite the closeness of the road.
The headlights caught a black, human shape, ahead and off to the right. A woman, dressed in black with her face covered.
“Jakou’in,” Fuminari groaned.
Something was running up behind her. A man, holding a gun. The trunk of a birch tree rushed into view ahead.
“Shit!”
Fuminari spun to the right. The headlights turned to face the woman directly. The man had his gun up in both hands.
“Get down!”
Fuminari floored the accelerator. There was gunfire, only vaguely audible under the sound of the engine. Then a sharp, penetrating clang. The right-side mirror was suddenly gone.
The man had managed a single shot before the Land Cruiser was on him. He had dived to one side, knocking the woman down. She lay before them, crumpled in the grass and cradling her stomach. She was just about to go under the Cruiser’s tires when something huge appeared. It swept her into the air.
“Hanko!?”
As Fuminari roared Hanko was already in the air, the woman tight in its arms. There was a tremendous crash on the hood, then something heavy pounding against the Cruiser’s roof. Hanko was nowhere to be seen. Fuminari knew what had happened—Hanko had retrieved Jakou’in and leapt upwards, kicked off the hood and landed on top of the vehicle.
“Hanko!” Fuminari growled.
The vehicle skidded onto road. Fuminari wanted nothing more than to get out and face Hanko, there and then. But it was impossible while someone was out there with a gun. They had not started the fight, this was an attack and they were in the middle of an escape. Ryoko was with them, and Biku would not let him stop the Land Cruiser. He knew what he had to do, regardless of his anger. It tore him apart, but he stamped on the accelerator.
Their assailants would not have parked near the house. Otherwise, they would have noticed their presence, asleep or not, so they would have parked a distance away, covering the final section on foot. No cars gave chase.
Fuminari’s insides hurt from his longing for Hanko.
5
A woman crouched in the grass, wearing black.
She was clutching her stomach and moaning quietly. It was Jakou’in. Hanko was standing at her side, but the beast’s eyes were not on her. Instead, they were trained on the man standing in the grass a little further on. More than just trained on—glowering at. It was the same man that had knocked Jakou’in to the ground in his attempt to dodge the Land Cruiser. The man held Hanko’s gaze, eyes afraid.
“What’s wrong? Hanko?”
His voice was shaking. A cloud of dark flame hung over Hanko’s body.
“I didn’t…mean to hit her.”
His cheeks were twitching. Hanko took a quiet step forwards. The man whimpered.
“That’s enough, Hanko!” It was Jakou’in, calling out.
But the man had raised his gun before she finished, pointed the barrel at Hanko. Hanko’s right fist flashed through the air. A gunshot thundered through the dark. The man’s arm had been pointed towards Hanko but it now hung broken, snapped between the elbow and the wrist. His gun was pointed at sky. Fractured bone stuck out from the man’s flesh. The man stared at his twisted arm, unable to take in what had just happened. Blood trickled from the edge of the protruding bone, but the man did not begin to scream until the grass was stained with blood. An enormous hand came down over the man’s head. Hanko’s other hand held the man’s shoulders.
The man’s screaming stopped abruptly.
“What happened here?”
A few of the men from the house caught up with them, they were walking over from the direction of the cottage.
“What the…”
The man that had spoken tried to ask again, but the sentence died in his throat. He swallowed a breath. He saw one of his men standing before Hanko, his back to them. The man’s head was twisted backwards, with Hanko’s hand still clamped above it. His mouth was open, frozen in mid-scream. Blood pooled inside, already trickling out the sides, running down his neck to disappear below his collar. There was something white towards the back of his throat. It was the man’s spine.
Twenty-four
The Beast’s Quickening
1
The room was filled with a gently stimulating aroma.
A blend of various brands of incense with a base of kokujinkou. It lacked the intensity of the type used during the dark ritual, engendering instead only subtle arousal and a general sense of well-being. The room was completely black. The color veiled the walls and ceiling, the floor, carpets, table, and sofas. Even the smaller furnishings and tools were black. The only variation was in the depth of the color, traversing the spectrum from deep gray to something close to blue. The wooden table was tinged red, like rosewood. The room felt like a sick obsession, oppressive somehow.
The one deviation came in the form of a painting hanging on one of the walls, drawn with garish primary colors that made it stand out, conspicuous against the collective blackness. It was a religious image, depicting Heruka mating with the goddess Varahi. It glowed softly, as though it had been drawn from fluorescent ink. The light felt like a metaphor embodying the deities’ experience of Samvara.
There were four people in the room: Hosuke Kumon, Enoh, Kurogosho and Katsuragi. They sat on two black leather sofas separated by the dark-rosewood, square table. Kurogosho was facing Hosuke wearing a traditional Japanese kimono with Katsuragi to his right. The sofas were conservative and substantial, even big enough to support Fuminari’s immense bulk. Hosuke sat with his legs crossed, the remaining men sat upright. He was barefoot, the dirty underside of his feet visible. He rested an elbow on one knee, supporting his chin in one hand, his thick, stone-like back bent forwards. He was fiddling with his nose, flicking at it with the fingers of the hand under his chin. Enoh was watching him, trying to suppress a grin.
“Three days from now,” Kurogosho muttered deeply.
“Yeah,” Hosuke answered flatly. He looked down to the table, still cupping his jaw in his hand. Some papers were on the table. “Noon. In three days,” Hosuke confirmed.
He plunged his left hand into his mess of hair and began to scratch, not for the first time. It was his habit of old, but he had been doing it more than usual. Still watching him, Enoh finally smiled. He chuckled under his breath. Hosuke noticed.
“What’s so funny, Enoh?”
Enoh replied by chuckling some more. “Nervous, Hosuke?”
“Nervous?”
“Perhaps nerves is not quite the right word...”
“What are you trying to get at?”
“The anticipation. It’s killing you right?” Enoh said, grinning widely now.
Hosuke snorted, neither confirming nor denying the fact.
“You’re all worked up. You want to dive into Kukai as soon as possible.”
“Hah!” Hosuke peered at Enoh, then looked back at the table.
He was all too aware of the state of his mind without Enoh, or anyone, having to point it out for him. The excitement was intolerable. He felt constant shivers running through his mind, his veins pulsed and boiled. He felt like a piping-hot erection, blood rushed through his body with a heavy, thumping beat. It happened each time he thought of Kukai. Even now he felt the urge to get up and run around the room, to shout like a kid.
“Must it be in three days?” Kurogosho asked.
“Yep,” Hosuke answered.
“Enlighten me as to why.”
“I took off my Psyche Suit inside Geshin. I can’t dive until the damage’s gone.”
“Three days is enough to heal?”
“It should be.”
It was clear to everyone in the room that despite what he was saying, all Hosuke wanted was to dive into Kukai right away.
“Damn Geshin to hell,” Hosuke muttered to no one in particular.
“And noon? That is the best time?” Kurogosho’s eyes bore into Hosuke’s with the intensity of a young man.
“I don’t want to die yet, alright?” Hosuke let go of his chin and rubbed his right hand over his nose. “I don’t know if Kukai’s alive or not, but it’s clear something’s inside him.”
Hosuke’s spine tingled as he said the words. He remembered the events of a few days ago. Some thing had launched itself at him, all teeth, in the very moment he had attempted to connect with Kukai’s mind. The image was still clear—the maw of a blood-starved creature. The terrifying violence. The red teeth.
He had not physically seen it, of course. What he recalled now was his own interpretation of whatever it was that had actually attacked him. It had happened in a flash—the fangs caught in time, frozen under a strobe and emblazoned on his mind. Imagined, but all the more real for it.
The thing had grabbed Hosuke’s feelers and tried to ride them in to attack him directly. He imagined the others had all succumbed to those demonic fangs—first Geshin, Tamura, then the Diver that had attempted to dive into Kukai here in the residence. Hosuke had seen the black, maggoty things in Geshin’s mind, just as he had in Tamura’s.
The black creatures were a part of whatever it was that had breached their minds. After invading their thoughts, it had left a part of itself grafted to them, like the drool of a bloodthirsty carnivore. They were like herbivores that had had their insides devoured by some carnivorous monster, only the slobber in the vacant pit of their bellies to show for it. The spittle—the black maggots—that was a diluted form of the creature itself.
Devour!
Devour!
Devour!
They had been remnants of a single, frozen intent, the obsessive desire to consume everything there was. It had been more than desire—more like a physical urge. Something dark and primal. Whatever had birthed them, it resided inside Kukai. Perhaps it was Kukai himself, it was too early to tell. But if it was, if that thing was the end result of a living Buddhahood...
“How is Geshin?” Hosuke asked.
“He is back to his normal state,” Enoh answered.
“You know he’s on the edge of total insanity, right?”
“So it seems.”
“It’s no fucking surprise. You should have seen the state of his mind after that thing from Kukai had ravaged it.” Hosuke looked ready to spit on the table.
“And what is there, inside him?” Kurogosho asked.
“I have no fucking idea.”
“You say it drove Geshin mad, that it ate Tamura’s mind…”
“Yeah.” Hosuke had already outlined what he had seen inside their minds.
“When you say eaten, should I take that literally?”
“Sure. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s close enough.”
“Okay.”
“The haunts go quiet, a couple of times a day,” Hosuke said.
He was staring at the ceiling. A few days earlier Hosuke had requested that Katsuragi and Enoh measure the frequency and clarity of the appearances of the haunts. He did not want statistics from some machine, so he had requested the people most sensitive to them to record the periods of the day that felt their presence the strongest.
According to the results, the haunts appeared to go quiet twice a day. An hour and a half, sometimes two hours from noon and midnight respectively. The number of haunts almost halved during these periods. Hosuke had decided that he would dive first during one of those periods. From noon, in three days’ time.
“Man, the data was a fucking blast.” Hosuke gestured to the papers on the table, turning to look at Katsuragi.
“It was difficult to believe, despite putting it together myself,” Katsuragi said.
He spoke from behind silver-rimmed glasses, a thin man in his mid-forties. He looked like he might be a little too intelligent, and restless to boot. He led the team that would monitor the Psyche Converter during the dive. The report on the table was his, the collated results of scans of Kukai’s brain activity performed over the preceding few days.
2
The activity of the mind can be observed as discrete patterns of electricity that move through the brain.
The brain is essentially cells, linked together by a network of nerve fibers and synapses. The patterns of this activity—brainwaves—can be measured using an EEG scanner. The brainwaves measured are not electrical impulses as emitted by the brain, but rather shifts in the electric potential difference between any two given points in the brain. This potential difference is recorded as being either extremely weak or normal, in microvolts. The brain’s electric potential difference is defined as normal when it falls between 10 and 100 microvolts. Such brainwaves are measured by attaching electrodes to the skin and connecting them to a polygraph device. This magnifies the electrical signature to produce and record recognizable waveforms.
Human brainwaves fall into five generalized categories of wave: gamma, beta, alpha, theta and delta—from the highest to the lowest frequency. Gamma, beta and alpha waves are produced during waking consciousness. Theta and delta waves are generated during periods of sleep. Periods of higher excitement result in higher frequencies, periods of lower excitement result in lower frequencies. Gamma waves are produced during periods of intense stimulation, exhibiting the highest frequency among the five categories, measuring between 30 and 50Hz. At the same time, the potential difference exhibited is the lowest, measuring between 10 and 20 microvolts.
Beta waves are produced during average periods of stimulation, and are mostly observed during intellectual activity. Alpha waves result when the mind is awake and stable. Beta waves tend to downshift to alpha when a person relaxes and closes their eyes. Theta and delta waves occur during periods of sleep, among which delta represents the deepest levels. Measured between 0.5 and 4Hz, the frequency of delta waves is far less than the frequency of gamma waves. The potential difference, on the other hand, is greater and reaches between 50 and 100 microvolts. Computers are able—through a process known as brain mapping—to project these wave patterns onto a screen as an image, a color interpretation of the patterns and frequencies.
The report on the table that Hosuke Kumon, Kurogosho, Enoh and Katsuragi had gathered around was the result of such technology, the collated results from scans taken of Kukai’s brain activity. Katsuragi had led the testing. He looked pleased with himself, especially after having Hosuke compliment the results.
“As I said, I found the results to be quite astonishing.” He tipped the silvered rim of his glasses with his right index finger, observing the reaction
s of the others. “We are discussing Kukai’s mummified remains—the thing’s more gone than a smoked fish. If degrees of death existed, he’s a veritable fossil.
“At first, I attempted a conventional methodology. It led to nothing—no wave patterns, no advanced mapping. I had expected this, of course. It was disheartening, but also a relief.”
Katsuragi was exerting visible effort to hold his excitement in check.
“There is an interesting device, something designed recently with the purpose of capturing the brainwaves—that is, the electric potential difference—of cacti. The inventor is quite an enigma himself. Based in America, he has been pushing the argument that cacti have feelings. To prove it, he purpose-built a machine to carry out his experiments.”
Katsuragi was becoming increasingly excited. He was watching Kurogosho, anxious to gauge the man’s reaction.
“The man is an American called E. Smith. Following his tests, which were quite intriguing as they were, NASA got involved, picking up his machine for further development. They established a ten-year plan to use the machine to increase wheat yields in the U.S. by 20%.”
Katsuragi’s glasses slipped down his nose. He repositioned them, then continued.
“The machine they developed was able to read the electric potential difference of plants down to the micro microvolt—less than one millionth of one millionth of a volt. I used this machine on Kukai.”
“Ha ha,” Hosuke grinned unconsciously. A tell for the excitement building inside him.
“When we measured Kukai, the machine registered brainwaves, an electric potential difference, of between 0.02 to 0.08 micro microvolts. There was nothing to suggest that the reading was that of actual brain activity.”
“How could anyone expect a dried-up and shriveled brain to function…right?” Hosuke said.
Katsuragi nodded.
“As I outlined in my report, the reading did not come solely from Kukai’s head. It was evident wherever we checked.”
Katsuragi seemed to be talking to Hosuke rather than Kurogosho; it seemed easier for him to speak that way.
The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters Page 44
