The Ennin Mysteries: Collected Stories 26-30

by Ben Stevens

  ‘They suspected the existence of… Well, something, my lord,’ I said carefully. ‘The words they actually said to me were ‘evil spirits’, so clearly they did not actually have too much of an accurate idea, concerning the type of creatures living there in that cliff.

  ‘But this was part of the unspoken agreement, after all. These things would remain out of the village, out of sight if not mind, so long as they were allowed to ambush whatever guests leaving the inn they saw fit. That was all; the villagers did not need to know anymore about them…’

  Nishidake gave a great sigh, and held up his large hands almost in despair.

  ‘I wish to find these things, and rid my territory of them once and for all. But, well… I am hardly the most powerful of daimyo, Ennin. This I reluctantly admit. I have a relatively small amount of samurai; and I know that those entrances in the cliff face lead into any number of natural tunnels and caves… We could be searching in there for weeks, and find nothing. I have not the manpower, for the type of investigation this incident requires…’

  Only for a moment did I share the daimyo’s obvious sense of despair. Then I suddenly remembered something…

  ‘My lord,’ I said, ‘if it pleases you, I think I have a way of finding these revolting creatures, and so finally a chance of putting a stop to this long cycle of death…’

  ‘And your plan is, Ennin…?’ returned Nishidake at once.

  7

  Once the gaijin sailors in the nearby coastal town had listened to my plan (I spoke, of course, through a translator), they agreed that their dogs could be ‘rented’. They also insisted on accompanying me and several of Nishidake’s samurai – my armed escort, for I’d had to again go back along that long and lonely coastal path in front of the cliff, only this time not alone – back to near the village, stating that they wished to be part of the hunt, could control the dogs more effectively, and also that they had those weapons, those ‘guns’, which can fire metal shot, through some sort of flint mechanism, in case the creatures we were after made a surprise attack.

  I attempted to impress upon these foreign sailors the full horror of all that had happened, but they regarded me with barely-disguised disbelief. Unless we did actually find those creatures, it was possible that Nishidake and his samurai – perhaps even the villagers themselves – might also soon come to consider me as being fanciful; possibly even a liar.

  Yet there was still some blood upon the ground, there in front of the cliff face, from where my horse had been so revoltingly butchered, those creatures scooping its guts from out of its belly even as it lay there kicking in its death throes. This bloodstain remained my sole proof, as it were, of all I’d so recently experienced, at around dawn that morning…

  Carrying a number of flaming torches, and with the dogs straining at their leashes, we entered into one of the caves. There were over twenty of us, a mixture of Nishidake’s samurai (the daimyo himself was also with us) and the gaijin sailors. We moved quietly, even the dogs emitting hardly any sound. They were clearly well-trained hunting dogs; they’d picked up the sent from that bloodstain left by the butchered horse, and were now following it.

  Truly, their sense of smell was to be marveled at. This way and that way the tunnel wound, sometimes branching into two; but the dogs led the way, their muzzles continually sniffing the rocky floor. Soon the air grew stuffy and a little hard to breathe, and my claustrophobia – the one ‘phobia’ from which I certainly do suffer; as you know, Kukai, from those adventures you have entitled The Cursed Temple and The Empress and the Monk – really began to trouble me, when suddenly from somewhere ahead we heard the faint sound of snarling, and that ‘screeching’ which at once sent a chill up my spine.

  ‘Quiet now… quiet…’ whispered Nishidake; and though they did not understand exactly what he was saying, the gaijin sailors obviously knew its meaning. Slowly, now, we moved forward, our swords and guns at the ready. The daimyo’s orders had been to take as many of these creatures alive as was possible; I believe he wished to try and communicate with them himself, to see if they really were more animal than human…

  We turned another twist in the tunnel and there they were. Crouched in the darkness which our torches now vaguely illuminated, their red eyes gleaming. Could these accursed things see even in the dark…? There were crudely constructed wooden barrels; one was missing its top and I saw that it was full of water (I presumed seawater), which I then realized was being used for the purpose of pickling the limbs and other pieces of human flesh with which this barrel had been stuffed.

  In any case, we had interrupted the cannibals during their mealtime. Two of them were snarling at each other, each grabbing at either end of a long tube of intestine which may well have come from my horse. Otherwise, there was no other sign of the creature; perhaps it had already been completely consumed.

  Bones covered the floor, however, together with pitiful rags that had once been kimono and other items of clothing, and also any number of coins – the money from past victims…

  One of the gaijin sailors gave a fierce yell, at the same moment as one of the creatures saw us and thus emitted a wild shriek. All at once became a nightmare of semi-darkness, flashing swords and barking dogs and guns, razor-sharp nails and snapping teeth. I saw one of the gaijin go down, yelling out in pain and terror even as one of the creatures tore out his throat with its teeth. At once, I ran the hideous thing through with my sword.

  It is pointless to continue with a full description of all that took place during those hellish few minutes. Even one of the dogs did not escape with its life. But we were armed and at least twice as many in number as those creatures, and although we killed maybe half of them, still we were at last able to subdue a few of the hideous specimens with the foaming mouths and the long, filthy, matted hair, tying them up hand and foot and finally carrying them – much to my great relief – out of that twisting network of dark caves and tunnels, into the daylight.

  There the villagers were gathered; they gave a gasp of horror as they finally saw, for the first time, what they had allowed to kill so many innocent people.

  The creatures were lain – still bound – upon the rocky shore, any number of questions then being shouted at them. But it was hopeless: they clearly had no idea of what was being asked of them (how they had come to be like this, and so on). They just glared at their interrogators with their red eyes, and snapped with their sharp but blackened teeth at anyone foolish enough to come near them. One of the creatures was the one whose hand I’d cut off just that very morning, his bloody stump barely congealed.

  Finally, disgusted, Nishidake turned away, and gave the order for his samurai to conclusively deal with the captured creatures. They were thus butchered with swords, still lying there upon the shore, their bodies then being thrown into the sea.

  The gaijin sailors insisted on going back into the cliff face, with their dogs, to see if they could find any more of those things. The foreigners seemed almost to regard this as being like some strange sort of sport. But although they made several trips, over a number of hours, not one more creature was found.

  Finally I returned to my group, and making a rather hurried trip to the shrine we left the village shortly afterwards. The villagers attempted to give me some sort of financial ‘reward’ as I left, but I refused it; indeed, I could barely even now look at them. The thought of them in the past, bowing to some defenseless group of travelers – often no doubt with children – and thanking them for their patronage, all the while knowing that this group would shortly be proceeding along that lonely coastal path, made me feel as sickened as the memory of those creatures devouring my horse, and then sitting there in their darkened underground lair with its crudely constructed, wooden barrels full of human flesh conserved in brine…

  As a footnote to this disturbing case (finished my master), I heard later that it had been suggested that the cannibals had their origins in a somewhat ‘wild’ man who’d taken to living in the cliff caves s
ome years earlier, together with his wife who some accounts state ‘was as viciously inclined as he’.

  They had children and gradually, through incest, the number of ‘members’ of this family swelled, at the same time as they became completely feral, developing a strong liking for raw flesh – preferably human.

  Finally, these gibbering, shrieking creatures were no longer fit even to be called ‘human’…

  In any case, you may write about this case if you so wish, Kukai. I leave it entirely to you…

  The Yellow Killer

  1

  It was the loud weeping and wailing which drew my master and me to the edge of the river, away from the forest path along which we had been walking. There we saw a remarkable sight – a miniature ‘floating village’, as it were, with huts constructed from bamboo, ferns and other such materials, readily obtained from the surrounding forest, placed on top of a number of thick logs lashed together with rope.

  The people crying were gathered around a body lying upon the riverbank. They – like the corpse – were wearing only loincloths, with the women preserving their modesty by also wrapping something around their chests. The language in which they were yelling was Chinese; not that I speak this tongue, but my master is fluent in it (as the regular reader will know, from such cases as The Cursed Temple and Buddha’s Hammer), and so I have heard it being spoken enough times to at least be able to recognize it.

  Nearby sat an irritable-looking man, dressed considerably better than the others in a kimono. He suddenly shouted something at those men and women who were obviously in mourning, although they paid him not the slightest attention.

  ‘He is Japanese,’ murmured my master, as we approached.

  ‘But how can you tell, master?’ I enquired.

  ‘Because his Chinese is terrible,’ came the simple reply. ‘Even while attempting to berate his workers for being (and I quote) ‘…lazy, good-for-nothing pigs, wailing over a bastard who tried to steal from me…’ he made several fundamental mistakes in his grammatical construction.’

  ‘So that man – this Japanese man, wearing the kimono – he is these people’s… boss?’

  ‘So it would appear, Kukai,’ returned my master, as the man in question noticed us for the first time.

  ‘What is it you want?’ he asked rudely, raising his voice in order to be heard above the loud grieving. None of the Chinese men and women were paying my master and me any attention.

  ‘We heard all the… commotion,’ returned my master carefully, ‘and so we came out of the forest, to see if we could be of any assistance.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the man curtly, ‘but we need no assistance from anyone. Now, I would not like to delay your journey to wherever you are going a moment longer…’

  Barely repressing a sigh of irritation, my master turned to the men and women kneeling around the corpse, and said something to them in Chinese.

  They instantly stopped crying to look at him in amazement – an expression also adopted by the man in the kimono. My master said something else, and five or six of the Chinese laborers (for such was their general appearance) hastened to answer.

  With a slight, sympathetic smile, my master raised one hand; and after a few moments, only one man spoke – the eldest-looking of the group, perhaps somewhere in his early fifties.

  My master listened, nodding his head, and then quickly and quietly translated for me –

  ‘They are Chinese laborers, employed by that Japanese man – his name is Tsuda – to work in the various silver mines that are located throughout this forest. They float downstream upon this remarkable contraption of theirs, until Tsuda finds a likely place where they can moor up.

  ‘He directs them to the mine, and there they labor for as long as he sees fit. It’s hard, sometimes dangerous work – some of these mines are old, with shafts that are in danger of collapsing – but they receive a certain share of any profits, which will allow them to live comparatively well, when the day finally comes that they can return to China.’

  My master said something else to the laborers in Chinese, as I saw Tsuda’s face become dark-red with anger. The same middle-aged man as before replied; and then my master said to me –

  ‘They were ‘recruited’, as it were, by this gentleman named Tsuda from a remote coastal region in eastern China, where there is widespread poverty and frequent famines. If they returned with him to Japan, promised Tsuda-san, he could promise them wealth – if they were first prepared to labor long and hard, for several years.

  ‘Some of these people,’ finished my master quietly, ‘have left family back home – wives and children. And now one of their number lies dead…’

  ‘He was a thief, trying to steal from me,’ declared Tsuda, his eyes glaring at us. ‘He sneaked out during the night, to go to the mine and to see if he could discover where I had hidden the silver that had been smelted just yesterday.’

  For a moment my master appeared thoughtful, and then he nodded.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Silver is contained in veins in the rock, but it is commonly combined with traces of iron, along with various other metals. To obtain the silver, you must first smash up the rocks with a hammer – smash them almost to powder – before using an intense heat to melt the debris, adding a little lead as you do so.

  ‘The lead bonds with the silver, causing it to separate from the iron and other metals. And when this silver and lead compound is again subjected to intense heat, the lead evaporates, leaving behind only the silver.

  ‘This may be cooled in a crude ‘block’ form, which is then what, I suspect, you have hidden somewhere in the vicinity of the mine – along with other such blocks, naturally – for you or an associate to collect later.’

  The look of anger had quite disappeared from Tsuda’s face, replaced instead by an expression that was a cross between admiration and general suspicion.

  ‘You are… in the silver mining business yourself?’ he asked quietly. ‘What you have just said – if a little simplified – is hardly common knowledge, after all.’

  ‘Oh no,’ returned my master cheerfully. ‘But I have always had an interest in chemistry – in science in general. I like to acquire knowledge, of whatever sort. That is all.’

  ‘Who are you?’ grunted Tsuda. ‘I mean, you know my name…’

  ‘I am Ennin.’

  A sudden grunt, along with a slight jerk of the head, perfectly informed my master and me that Tsuda was fully acquainted with this name.

  ‘And this is my faithful servant, Kukai,’ continued my master.

  ‘Yes, yes – the one who transcribes all your cases together,’ muttered Tsuda, sparing me a second’s glance. ‘Well, I tell you now, Ennin, there’s no great mystery for you to investigate here. Just the death of a man who was trying to steal from me – after all I’ve done for him, and these other Chinese!

  ‘So you may as well just be on your way – you, and your servant. Good day.’

  ‘But how did he die?’ demanded my master, ignoring entirely the attempted dismissal.

  ‘Does it matter?’ shrugged Tsuda petulantly. ‘Maybe his heart just gave out – I’ve really no idea.’

  ‘Really, Tsuda-san! It seems you have no great care for the general welfare of your workers! Indeed, I suspect that this is why you went to such lengths to obtain foreign labor – for the simple fact that you may work these people, and treat them, in a manner that even the most impoverished of Japanese peasants would consider entirely unacceptable!’

  With this stinging remark, my master turned his back upon Tsuda, and said something in Chinese to the laborers. With beckoning hands, they implored him to come closer – to inspect the dead body for himself.

  My master did so with a reluctance he at least attempted to conceal. I stood by his side, trying not to breathe. It was a hot morning, so that although this man had only died at some point the previous night, the corpse was already beginning to show signs that it should be buried right away.

>   ‘There are the usual scars and abrasions you may expect to find on a laborer’s body, Kukai,’ declared my master. ‘And also a number of mosquito stings, obviously recently received.’

  Suddenly my master knelt down, to stare closer at something on one side of the dead man’s neck.

  ‘But this… Is this a bite, a sting? I’ve never seen anything quite like it – and directly on the jugular…’

  Doing my best not to inhale the slight, sweetish reek of corruption, I too knelt down and looked at what my master had observed. It seemed to me as though something had ‘punctured’ the neck – something large…

  ‘Master,’ I breathed, ‘surely it can’t have been something fired from… a blowpipe…?’

  The look my master gave me was one I had rarely (if ever) seen. For once, it told me, my hesitant theory might well be the correct one… I glanced away from the corpse, at the dense forest that grew right up to the narrow riverbank… The countless trees and bamboo groves suddenly seemed a lot darker, a lot more foreboding, than they had before…

  What, exactly, was hiding out in this forest – and possibly observing us right now?

  With a brisk shake of his head, my master stood back up and said something to the laborers.

  They replied, and he interpreted –

  ‘I asked them about the bites and stings on this man’s body. They say that when they work, they have numerous katorisenko placed around them – that green-colored coil which burns slowly, emitting smoke which serves to keep mosquitoes, wasps and other such irritants away.

  ‘Especially in summer, even underground, this is all but essential for those laboring outdoors – even if the smoke is sometimes irritating to the lungs and eyes.

  ‘In any case, by having katorisenko located around the mines where they labor, and also on board this remarkable floating village of theirs, these people are able to remain reasonably free of bites or stings. Obviously this man – who these people tell me was called Li Wu – could not light a katorisenko as he stole around the nearby mine last night, for the simple fact that the strong smell of smoke might give him away, if anyone happened to be nearby…’