by Kim Newman
Kostaki skirted the grounds of the Temple of One Thousand Monsters, where the Princess had set up shop. It was the spiritual centre of Yōkai Town – much more so than Dorakuraya’s desecrated church.
His circuit complete, Kostaki came back to the gate. Snow fell from the peak of the giant statue’s helm as a guard swept the observation platform. An icy, uncomfortable perch.
Lieutenant Majin wasn’t up there, which didn’t mean he wasn’t inside.
Head bowed so his huge hat concealed him, Kostaki approached the statue. When he wandered too close, he was shouted at. He kept walking into the shadow of the giant until bayonets were raised, so the guards wouldn’t realise he knew the Japanese for ‘stop, demon’ and ‘stand back, foreign devil’.
He heard ‘foreign devil’ a lot.
He let the guards shout a while longer, then withdrew – as if the whims of his foreign, devilish mind had brought him here but changed like the wind and impelled him to wander somewhere else. He backed away, smiling as broadly as Albert Watson. The expression cracked his face.
After taunting Majin’s statue, he passed the gate. It was easy to open the gate from the other side – not easy at all from here. It opened at set times, morning and evening, so workers and traders could come and go. Carts trundled to and from Mermaid Ancestor Place, the busy mercantile strip close to the gate. Produce brought in from outside the walls could be had at fluctuating prices. All the traders were thieves, each with their pet bribed guards and jealously guarded smuggling routes. A certain amount of black-marketeering was tolerated, even encouraged. Blood of doubtful provenance could be bought.
Consignments of philtres and blessings – mixed at the temple, under the direction of the Abbess – were sent out to merchants in the city. Yōkai medicine was admired, even by those who shunned its makers. Along with salves and tonics, the temple exported other valuable products. Lady Oyotsu was mistress of subtle poisons and curses. There was a market for yōkai magic and mischief too.
On the street, snow was trampled to discoloured, treacherous slush. On the grounds of the Temple of One Thousand Monsters, it settled thick and pure. Drusilla Zark knelt by the gate, scarecrow-black against white drifts, putting the finishing touches to a small, sinister snowman. The umbrella yōkai hovered over her, the handle of the Princess’s parasol tethered to his rim. They looked like two mushrooms growing together on a tree trunk.
Kostaki slowed his pace. Miss Zark troubled him. She was mad – but, as the English poet had it, only north-north-west. When the wind was southerly, she knew a hawk from a handsaw – though he wouldn’t be surprised if she used a hawk as a handsaw, or said one when she meant the other, or fed cut-in-half worms to a joinery tool, or did or said anything else which came to her mind.
Around her, his knee was on fire.
She might be what others called ‘awa’ wi’ the fairies’, but she knew things.
Miss Zark saw he wasn’t drinking. On the Macedonia, when they first met, she had looked at him a moment, hunched her shoulders and pinched up her cheeks, and – in Romanian, and his mother’s voice – said ‘you won’t grow strong if you don’t finish your turnips’. Lady Geneviève looked at Miss Zark sideways, understanding what she’d said but not what it meant. The Princess frowned as if the woman had interrupted a perfectly reasonable conversation by flapping her arms and imitating the call of a yelkouan shearwater.
It was a mistake to think of Miss Zark as a child. Or an idiot. She was sly, thoughtful, sometimes sweet… and a killer. She finished her turnips.
She patted her snowman’s cheeks, miming the application of powder. The figure was faceless, squat and strangely proportioned. At its base, child’s shoes stuck out.
He waded through drifts and eased Miss Zark aside. The umbrella yōkai drifted off.
If Miss Zark had hurt anyone, there would be consequences. She smiled at him, lips rouged and sticky.
He broke apart the snowman’s head and uncovered a doll’s cracked face.
‘Dolly wanted to be wrapped up cold,’ said Miss Zark. ‘Not wrapped up warm, but cold – rolled in a snow blanket fit for a queen. Snows fall but queens reign. Every flake is different but all fakes are the same. Are you a fake or a flake, Captain Kostaki?’
It ought to be a relief she hadn’t snatched and bled some child. But the doll’s dead face was disquieting. Why did they give such things to children? Fat faces, hard like polished bone. Big eyes, dead as glass. Dolls were ghosts. You grew bigger, but they didn’t. They waited patiently. When you were lying in your last bed as a very old lady, they would creep on the counterpane – knowing you’d not forgotten their secret names. China hands like little knives. Teeth like needles. Spiteful and eager to pay you back for all the years put away in the wardrobe.
Those weren’t his thoughts – as a boy, he hadn’t had dolls, but wooden horses and carved ships.
The spiteful dolls were Drusilla Zark’s.
Not this one, though. He recognised it. It was the doll Tsunako Shiki, the Japanese child-vampire, had hidden behind. He looked about, wondering if the Shiki girl was nearby. Did he see a dress slipping behind a tree? There were no little footprints in the snow.
‘You mustn’t mind her,’ said Miss Zark. ‘She’s fresh as paint and twice as smelly.’ She smashed another snowball into the doll’s crusted shroud, burying that damned face. ‘Up in a balloon, boys, up in a balloon,’ Miss Zark sang, ‘won’t we have a jolly time, sailing round the moon…’
The umbrella yōkai danced back to them as Miss Zark sang, twirling the Princess’s parasol.
In Moldavia, they burned witches. In Britain, they gave them a spot on the bill between Mr Memory and Little Tich. Show your appreciation with a big hand… for summoning the spirits of the departed to locate lost watches or foretell tall dark strangers.
Miss Zark had been right to repeat that message, though – everyone in Britain had fallen under the shadow of a tall dark stranger.
Kostaki turned on his heel.
‘It looks like Geneviève… will need saving,’ said Miss Zark, directly and sensibly. ‘But you should think twice and not get tangled. It looks like Geneviève… will get broken. You should keep your weapon where it is. Not pull it and wave it about like some we could mention. Word to the wise, Captain Kostaki… won’t we have a jolly time, sailing round the moon…’
He looked at Miss Zark. She was poking twigs into her snowman’s head, humming to herself. She wasn’t sensible and direct any more. Those moments were only ever fleeting. It was no use asking her to explain, any more than it had been any use pressing her on that ‘one of us’ dying nonsense that troubled Lady Geneviève. Miss Zark had said all she would on the subject and tripped on to her next fancy.
Where was Lady Geneviève?
Kostaki knew she was making her own surveys. While he looked at walls, buildings and guard positions, she introduced herself to many yōkai. She brought her medical bag and offered to treat ailments as best she could. She had the Abbess’s blessing to set herself up as a doctor. Lady Oyotsu was professionally curious about Western medicine.
‘It looks like Geneviève will need saving,’ Miss Zark had said. ‘It looks like Geneviève will get broken.’
He should think twice and not get tangled, eh? Keep his sword where it was?
Miss Drusilla Zark knew much about him – but she didn’t know him.
He never finished his turnips, no matter what his mother said. He had chewed them to pulp and kept them in his cheeks till he was away from the table where mush could be spat into a stream or trodden in mud.
He had best go ‘get tangled’.
* * *
When Kostaki intruded, Christina Light made an ‘Oh, what is it now?’ face. When he asked after Lady Geneviève, her disposition did not improve.
‘I suppose she’s gliding about somewhere,’ said the Princess, ‘inflicting help on some poor soul too polite to shoo her off. That’s your lady’s general habit. If she puts in an appearance,
should I say you’re looking for her?’
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘Can I be of any help? What a silly question. Of course I can’t. I’m just a newborn and you wouldn’t rely on anyone under four hundred years old. What is it the advertisements say – “accept no substitutes”? For your mysterious purposes, only la Dieudonné veritable will suffice.’
Princess Casamassima and the Abbess were taking tea in the temple, nodding at each other. The Princess, veins glowing, risked shaking her head clear off to compete with Lady Oyotsu’s serpentine oscillation. Lady Oyotsu stretched to peer at Kostaki, as if peeping around a corner. She smiled, showing her blackened teeth.
Kostaki saluted and left the women to their tea.
He stepped into the gloom of the late afternoon. The lantern-lighter hadn’t been round yet. The mist was thickening. In the distance, a tram clickiticlicked over tracks.
He sometimes had to remind himself that beyond the walls of this enclave was a city with trams, telephones, electric streetlamps, kinematograph exhibitions and the cakewalk. Yōkai Town was frozen in its comforting, chilling pool of no-time. Most yōkai were elders, like him. He’d stayed with the Guard and the Templars because those masculine orders afforded shelter from bewildering, uncontrollable changes, which were – only a few years on – already superseded, forgotten and replaced by even more dizzying, dazzling modernities. He should be comfortable in this preserve, but for the earthquakes… and the intimations that the place couldn’t last much longer. A new century was imminent and tearing off a big calendar page was always a temptation to the young, the warm, the newborn. Time to throw out old curtains, burn dead wood and push great-grandfathers onto ice floes.
Miss Zark had wandered off, but her snowman was still here. Or was that her snowman? Kostaki could have sworn the doll’s burial mound was on the other side of the temple fountain.
Knowing he was being ridiculous, he grasped his sword-hilt.
You should keep your weapon where it is.
He advanced steadily, in a wide circle rather than a direct line. He trod carefully, easing his carrack out of its scabbard by inches.
Not pull it and wave it about like some we could mention.
Hush, strega! he told the Miss Zark in his mind.
The snowman was bigger than it had been. Not the size of a fullgrown person, but larger than a doll.
Was this some new yōkai? Kostaki had heard much about Yuki-Onna, the Snow Queen. Did she have snow courtiers? A Snow Queen’s Guard?
He neared his quarry, sword raised. One stroke would sever its snowball head from its snow-boulder body. Shoes still stuck out from under the pebble-buttoned snow skirt. More bows and buttons showed than he remembered.
Miss Zark hadn’t given her snow golem much of a face, but Kostaki made out a little bulb nose and the thin line of a mouth.
Two plugs of snow popped out as big black eyes opened. Nictitating membranes blinked sideways. Then the eyes focused on him.
Arms exploded out of the crust of snow and he was showered with pellets of ice. He tried to bat away the chunks with his sword. He stepped back.
The snowman’s skeleton shook itself like a wet dog, scattering lumps of snow and shaking out many skirts.
It was Tsunako Shiki.
The vampire girl emerged from her snow shell, exaggerating with clutching hands and shaking shoulders, pantomiming a buried newborn’s first crawl from the grave. She mewled like a thirsty baby, then tittered infuriatingly.
Kostaki didn’t sheathe his sword.
No matter how girlish this one looked, she was tricky. Dangerous.
The Shiki girl’s white dress had a superfluity of ruffles, pleats and ribbons – suitable for sitting in and being admired, not moving around in and getting mussed. Certainly not for being buried inside a snowman. A white band held back her unruly ringlets. She looked more like a doll than her doll did – and where was that thing now? If it crawled up his back, he’d hack it to flinders.
She wore whole white rabbits as mittens. Hollowed-out, stiff-furred skins sleeved her forearms to the elbows. Her quick hands worked the heads like puppets. She made the dead bunnies look at each other and at him, rolling red button eyes and sticking out stiff leather tongues.
Laughing again, she turned an agile cartwheel and scrambled off – bounding on all fours, kicking up divots. It was as if her mittens had quickened and run, dragging her behind. Rabbit outriders for a doll queen.
He let his sword click back into the scabbard. Another damned nuisance. He followed Tsunako’s spoor. Tagged in a playground game, he was ‘Sally It’. Hell’s breath! Something else of Miss Zark’s! He had caught her the way warm brats catch the measles. Spots of her childhood floated in the soup of his own memories. He hadn’t played girls’ games. He played war, as all boys do – and fought real wars when little more than a boy. Dracula broke his wooden sword and gave him a real one.
He hadn’t officiated at funerals for dead dolls or pinched the silly Barley piece’s fat arms until she cried, or piled mama’s cloak, papa’s ulster and the butler’s havelock on her shoulders – topped off with two hats and a bonnet worn like tiers of a wedding cake – to make an entrance at a masquerade ball in costume as a coat stand.
Kostaki was still looking for Lady Geneviève. She couldn’t be far away. He also wondered where Miss Zark had got to – more out of an inclination to be somewhere else than concern for her safety. After an earthquake or deluge, Miss Zark would skip off, happy as ever. The mad and the incomprehensible were always unscathed when everyone else was crushed under rubble.
This susceptibility was what came from his long fasting. He was starved of blood, so he was feeding in other ways. He was taking on burdens that weren’t his. Sustenance but not nourishment.
The rabbit tracks petered out at a crossroads.
The Shiki girl had stopped playing bunnies and moved on without leaving a trail. Swinging from tree to lantern-post to building like a spider monkey? Or had she sprouted frilly bat wings and flown to the moon? It didn’t matter. She was just another distraction.
The smell of spilled blood made his fangs sharp. Red thirst clawed his gorge. His knee hurt. Something nearby bleated.
‘Mestre, mestre…’
Kichijiro shivered against a covered well. Rags torn and bloodied. Missing one sandal. He’d been whipped recently. His head was bandaged. Weals on his back glistened with ointment.
‘Who did this to you?’ Kostaki asked, in Portuguese.
‘I deserved it,’ said the Renfield. ‘I failed Mestre Dorakuraya. He was correct to chastise me and I bless his name. Flagellation mortifies the flesh but purifies the spirit.’
‘Not the whipping,’ said Kostaki, impatient. ‘The treatment. The bandaging. Who did that?’
‘An angel,’ said the Renfield. ‘A mestra with pale gold hair… and a black bag.’
‘Lady Geneviève?’
Kichijiro nodded. He had scratches on his neck. Not from Lady Geneviève’s – or anyone’s – fangs. Dorakuraya’s long, hard nail-barbs had stuck into the Renfield’s throat.
Kostaki wanted to lick the weeping wounds as a cat licks milk… no, that was Drusilla Zark again. She was the lapper and licker. She popped blisters between her teeth. When no one was looking, she’d stick her finger in bloodspill – as she used to stick her finger in cake mixture – and suck it clean.
When Kostaki was drinking, he was an honest biter. He opened veins and drank deep.
The Renfield shrank from him.
Kostaki felt his own fang-teeth against his lower lip.
‘Where is the Lady Geneviève?’ he asked.
‘The House of Broken Dolls. On Yokomori Street.’
Kostaki knew of the establishment. A brothel where worse than ordinary vice was practised. As Dravot drolly put it, a house of ill repute with a bad reputation.
If Lady Geneviève went to such a place, someone was hurt and needed treatment. There, getting hurt was likely.
/> It looks like Geneviève… will need saving. It looks like Geneviève… will get broken.
In the House of Broken Dolls?
Kostaki had a clear moment, and saw he was playing a game. The weird Miss Zark was part of it, also the weirder Tsunako Shiki. Sly, watchful Kichijiro too. He wasn’t Renfield only to Dorakuraya. Too many vampires in Yōkai Town and not enough minions. Kichijiro was anybody’s servant, anybody’s whipping boy.
Kostaki was ‘Sally It’. He was tagged and searching… and there would be a surprise at the end of the trail. A reward or a forfeit.
His worry was that Lady Geneviève didn’t know this was a game.
* * *
On Yokomori Street, Kostaki bumped into the elastic-boned Whelpdale. The English vampire was backing away from a doorway, blowing kisses at three geisha who clung to the frame. Their kimonos slid artfully off pale, shapely shoulders. They had fluttery hands, hair done up in elaborate snail-shell spirals, pins and combs with falls of silk flowers attached, and smoothly convex, featureless faces. Whelpdale’s chest was semi-inflated. He had the look of a satisfied customer.
He turned quickly and recognised Kostaki.
‘Captain Kustardi,’ he said, touching his hat. ‘I, ah, was paying a business call… leaving samples of my new lines, as it were.’
His carpetbag was full of crude illustrated books: Decadent Girls Who Sell Lingerie; My Nine Nights in a Harem.
‘I’d not have expectorated to come upon yourself in, ah, this knobbage patch, sir…’
Whelpdale swiftly got over being surprised in his vice. After all, Kostaki was in the red lantern district too. The publisher must suppose an equivalence of sin. Unembarrassed, he tapped an elongated finger to the side of his nose.
‘I can thoroughly endorse the House of Silent Ease,’ he said, intimately insinuating. ‘Queer to the kiss, those blank fizzogs… but, all else is in working order. Who wouldn’t apprecialise a wench who don’t jawjaw at you after the pokery has been jiggeried? Yes, I shall award this hostelry four stars in the Blue Baedeker. That’s a guide I publish, Captain. Hints for the discerning gentleman tourist in foreign parts. Parts here are foreign indeed, should you catch my meaning and I suspicion you do.’
