Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “When it’s over, it’s over,” said Kyoya.

  “But why did Semiramis—?”

  Mephisto said in answer to Sayaka’s question, “You are safe. She could not overpower you, and so her own karma delivered her to that inevitable end. The light overcame the dark. It seems the old warlock was not wrong after all.”

  “You mean Doctor Faustus,” Sayaka said, looking up at the physician’s comely countenance. “And the warrior Semulia,” she added, turning her thankful and trusting eyes on Kyoya.

  The earth shook.

  From the terrace, Mephisto glanced down at the world below. “Look. The energy it sucked out of Demon City is shaking this palace apart.”

  Kyoya had seen it coming as well. He could feel it in his whole body.

  “When it comes to trifling with the powers of Demon City Shinjuku, Demon Palace Babylon turned out to be a small fish in a vast ocean.”

  Mephisto’s normally impassive voice was touched with a strange note of feeling. Pride, perhaps. Because he was the Demon Physician.

  Fissures ran beneath their feet. “A fifty foot drop, but looks like one of those out of the frying pan things,” Kyoya said casually. “The fire’s blocking the way out. I don’t think we can stave it off until the rescue helicopters arrive.”

  Mephisto looked at Kyoya. “So how did you get here from the Himalayas?”

  “Funny question coming from some old guy who goes floating around in the air and whatnot. Teleportation. One of the secret arts of the yogi.”

  “How about one more time? And I’m not some old guy, if you please.”

  “Sure. I’ll give it a shot.” Kyoya got to his feet as the flames encircled the three of them.

  Sayaka asked, “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got it under control.”

  Sayaka smiled to herself. She had every confidence in him.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  Original Demon City Shinjuku Afterword

  The main idea for these novels first came to me back when the genre of heroic fantasy caught my attention in high school. Right then and there, I was seized with the desire to create similar fictional worlds of my own.

  Alas, combining the awe-inspiring past from tens of thousands of years before together with alternate realities from other dimensions proved too much for my meager powers of imagination to then render realistically on paper.

  But a world where magic and monsters held sway and a lone swordsman survived by his wits and talents alone—that did hold a special allure for me. And why not set it in what, for all intents and purposes, is the present day?

  The end result was this book.

  An area being brought to the verge of utter destruction by an earthquake is the premise of Go Nagai’s best work (in my humble opinion), Violence Jack, in which the Tokyo region is devastated. John Carpenter’s Escape from New York turns the city into a crime-ridden wasteland.

  I generously seasoned those offerings with the spice of “horror” and have hopefully found among my readers fellow kindred spirits happy with what I’m putting on the menu.

  Right now, I’ve got a mountain of material stacked up on my desk.

  Dracula, Frankenstein, witches, werewolves, serial killers with split personalities, limbs with minds of their own, monsters born out of thought, man-eating portraits, starships (I’d sure like to hop aboard the United Planets cruiser C57-D from Forbidden Planet), dragons, underground empires, cowboys and outlaws, famous cops and detectives, quick-draw gunfighters (guys like Shane), ninjas, martial artists, zombies (but not really zombies).

  For many writers, these characters wore out their welcome a long time ago. But they look at me and shake their heads. “You can’t destroy us. Whether we live or die is up to you.”

  I think of myself at times as a kind of warlock, bringing them back to life by writing stories. And all the greater reward if my readers find enjoyment in my alchemy.

  Last of all, sincere apologies and boundless thanks to the editorial staff for waiting so patiently while putting up with my negligent self and recalcitrant pen.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching Bela Lugosi in Dracula)

  July 24, 1982

  Original Demon Palace Babylon Afterword

  I have brought Kyoya-kun back to life.

  As you all know by now, he was my first leading man. And Sayaka was my first leading lady. Add to the mix Doctor Mephisto, and the prototypes for all my novels to date can be traced back to this maiden work. That might take a few of my readers by surprise, but that’s how it is.

  Everything I have now can be found in Demon City Shinjuku, and Demon Palace Babylon continues where it left off.

  What kind of effect have these six intervening years had on these characters? Much the same effect that they’ve had on the author.

  To be honest, it’s been tough writing this afterword too. Hardly thirty seconds have passed since I put down the last word and phoned “Mr. I” at Sonorama to tell him I’d finished.

  I haven’t thought of anything else. I can’t really summon up the feelings. If nothing else, I would ask that you read this novel together with its prequel.

  How have Kyoya and Sayaka and Doctor Mephisto changed? Maybe they haven’t changed at all, because the author hasn’t progressed at all in the meantime. In this case alone, though, I don’t have a problem with that.

  This is part two of my maiden voyage. Please take the time to enjoy it. Right now, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching The Monster Squad)

  July 8, 1988

  Omnibus Edition Afterword

  It probably goes without saying at this point, but Demon City Shinjuku was my debut novel, followed in due course by Demon Palace Babylon. Though I have spun off a number of other series in the Demon City universe, the original protagonist only mounts the stage in these two works, first published by Sonorama.

  For the past twenty-two years, Demon City Shinjuku has stayed in print as a pocket edition. It was beginning to look like it would continue on that way even after I died. It has now been released as a paperback novel, and an omnibus edition to boot.

  The emphasis from here on out is on publishing unabridged novels. And to that end, I’ve begun marshaling my most powerful reinforcements around me.

  Rereading these two, I’ve been a bit surprised at the differences with the rest of the Demon City series. While the tools, gadgets and machines of near-future science fiction abound in novels I’ve written for other publishers, such as Demon City Blues, they remain at the core horror action. Flowing through all of them is the life blood of the bizarre.

  In contrast, in these two books from Sonorama, the SF&F setting is far stronger. There are plenty of zombies and warlocks and ghosts and gremlins, to be sure, but also anti-gravity, androids and a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation—an assortment of dramatic devices that usually wouldn’t appear in my beloved horror genre.

  When I was writing Demon City Shinjuku, the horror novel genre was at its nadir. I can’t help taking a little pride in swimming against the tide, but would have nonetheless been conscious of such market forces.

  And then there’s that. Without bothering to check things out for myself, I picked up my pen and proceeded to make a big mistake right from the beginning of my debut work (did you catch it?).

  Hey, but isn’t that what editors are for? Hello?

  That wasn’t the only one. The names of movie theaters and the like—the “Shinjuku Globe Theater” — there’s no trace of them left. They’ve all been updated. To those who thought the originals nicely preserved a sense of that era, I recommend the pocket editions.

  And yet these two works haven’t grown old. They are suffused with the pressing ambitions of those times, as if I’d written the last ninety-four pages of Demon City Babylon in a single day.

  The day before the deadline.

  Of course, there’s no way I could pull that off. But from the moment
I wake up until I pick up the pen, I always have the feeling I could. That’s how the writerly muse works.

  When I’ve finished the morning’s writing, my feeling of satisfaction is not leavened by the least bit of fatigue. Still, from one day to the next, I seem to hit the wall at around ten pages.

  I have one particularly indelible memory going back to Demon City Shinjuku.

  At the time, I wrote at my desk, the manuscript piling up next to me. Unlike now, I wasn’t feeding pages right into the fax machine. Ten or twenty sheets stacking up beside me is nothing. A hundred or two hundred—now that was a pile of paper.

  I hadn’t accomplished anything like that before in my writing career and couldn’t help patting myself on the back. “Not bad, if I say so myself.”

  That was twenty-two years ago.

  So now Demon City Shinjuku again steps onto the stage in an all-new edition, with a detailed map and afterword, and a few of my thoughts preserved from when I was just getting my feet under me as a writer. Please read and enjoy.

  Hideyuki Kikuchi (while watching Escape from New York)

  April 1, 2005