The stranger pointed to the sword at Kojiro’s waist.
“That won’t help you son,” he said. “There’s about twenty of them at least. And…”
Kojiro looked at the stranger and squinted his eyes. “What?”
“Wolves,” the old man whispered. “They’ve got two bloody big wolves with them. Walk them around like dogs on a leash so they do. Ferocious animals. God knows how they got a hold of ’em.”
The night was getting darker by the second. A thick, godless blanket was descending from the sky, threatening to smother London in its black arms. Kojiro felt increasingly uncomfortable standing there on the street talking to this person. But he also felt sorry for him.
“Where will you go?” he said, picking up the wheelbarrow.
“I’ve lived too long,” the old man said. There was a steely defiance in those bug eyes. It was a glimmer of strength, so at odds with the broken body that stood before Kojiro. “I don’t fear death. Being trapped in this city is worse than death could ever be – it’s like the Hell before Hell.”
The old man dragged his sorry leg past Kojiro. He disappeared down the road at a snail’s pace. Kojiro watched him go – a helpless creature drifting in the open ocean, waiting for the sharks to come.
Chapter 3
Kojiro didn’t see anyone else after talking to the old man.
When he reached the house, he let go of the wheelbarrow and looked up at the Kojiro family home. That same icy shudder went through him, the one that dated back to his childhood. He felt an overwhelming desire to turn around and take his chances on the street.
The building in front of him was a four-floor, brown brick Georgian house that dated back to the late eighteenth century. The basement and lower floors were marked by several bay windows while the upper floor windows offered a picturesque view that stretched across a public park and towards the river. Apart from the bay windows, a mixture of round-headed and square-headed sash windows decorated the front of the building. A rectangular garage door was tucked neatly into the bottom left hand corner of the house.
Kojiro pushed open the steel gate, one of two fixed on opposite ends of a stone wall that surrounded the house. With his energy dwindling, he pushed the wheelbarrow up the snowy cobbled driveway towards the front door. He left the wheelbarrow, climbed the steps and pulled out a set of keys from his coat pocket. When he found the right key, his numb fingers slid it into the lock.
A high-pitched scream echoed in the distance.
Kojiro didn’t turn around but his blood ran cold. He stood there, rooted to the spot. That scream had belonged to the old man he’d encountered earlier – he was sure of it. What a noise. It was a pitiful yelp that suggested the old man hadn’t died gently.
Poor wretch.
Kojiro wrestled with the key in the lock and pushed the door open. Then he hurried back down the icy steps, doing his best not to slip. His tired arms dragged the wheelbarrow up the short flight of stone stairs. It was hard going and several times Kojiro nearly lost his footing, as well as his grip on the rubber handles. He got there eventually, pulling the wheelbarrow inside the house.
He dropped it and closed the door behind him.
The smell hit him immediately. It was a rotten smell that lurched down the back of his throat and he gagged. God, he could almost taste it. It had caught him by surprise this time because his mind had been preoccupied with getting off the street. That happened. Sometimes he’d forget about the smell. Sometimes he’d be waiting for it. Worst of all, he was getting used to it.
Kojiro stood in the hallway. The house was shrouded in perfect darkness but he didn’t dare turn on the light. Better to make it look like the house was just another abandoned shell, at least from out front where God knows what was running around. If there were ghouls out there, he didn’t want them to know he was home.
Kojiro didn’t need the light on anyway. He knew his way around the house that he’d grown up in and he would do even if he’d been away for twenty years. The cream-white walls, the hardwood floors, the classical Japanese paintings that decorated the entrance. He knew there was a door at the foot of the stairs that led into the garage. He reached over and touched the oak door, as if this was his way of saying hello to the house. His fingers slid down the soft wood and onto the metal handle. It was freezing cold and he pulled his hand away like he’d received an electrical shock.
He left the wheelbarrow beside the stairs and walked through the hallway. Familiar shapes were intact such as the wooden desk and chair, still tucked in underneath the stairs like a secret study that nobody ever used.
There was another door – a big fat door – where the hallway ended and the lounge began. He’d go there later. For now, he was following the smell. He always followed the smell when he came back. That rancid smell, it always pulled him into the darkest corners of the house.
He didn’t want to go there. He had to.
His footsteps were like a sledgehammer on the hardwood floor. He passed the Japanese art and the lavish silver-framed mirrors that adorned the wall. Kojiro barely glanced at these things. He went through the massive lounge and dining area, noting that all eight seats were still tucked into the table, waiting in vain for the next meal to be served.
The smell led him to a small kitchen area at the back of the house. This room had been designated for the handful of servants that Kojiro’s father had brought over from Japan back in the late nineties. Kojiro remembered the faces of these servants fondly – they’d always been kind to him and he didn’t think it was merely because his father paid their wages. They were good people, gentle souls – the best human beings who’d ever lived in that house. He’d often wondered what happened to them after the city was sealed off. They’d had little grasp of English and barely any knowledge of the city. Their chances had been slim at best.
This was the room where they took their meals and breaks. It was an overgrown wardrobe, but it had been their space.
Kojiro hesitated at the door. With a sigh, he pulled down the handle and walked into the servant’s kitchen. He clawed at the collar of his coat, like he was a drowning man reaching for a lifeboat. He pressed the collar over his nose and mouth and breathed in the stale fabric. Anything was better than ingesting that smell.
With his free hand, he flicked on the switch at the wall. A pale white light blinked twice, as if the room was reluctant to light up. Then everything became clear.
His mum and dad were sitting at the kitchen table.
They were sitting there because that’s where Kojiro had left them in 2011. The two bodies hadn’t been exposed to an abundance of air or any other factors that would aid decomposition over the years. The room was sealed tight. Kojiro had sprayed the rest of the house with insect repellent on his sporadic returns. He didn’t know why he did these things or why he was so reluctant to let them rot.
Was it a strange sense of loyalty? Love?
The bodies were leaning back on the wooden chairs. Their mummified shapes were trapped in between the thick armrests and the table itself, which prevented them from falling forwards or slipping to either side. They were locked in. Their clothing was intact if a little worn. Both his mother’s teal blouse and his father’s white shirt looked like they were inseparable from the yellowy brown skin of the corpses.
Kojiro approached the kitchen table. His face was buried underneath the collar of his coat. He looked at his mother’s blonde hair. It was like a forgotten doll’s hair – thin and straggly and vanishing. His dad’s black hair had fared worse – there was barely anything left on the mangled head. They were just two piles of dirt with their bones poking out – broken shells, on the verge of crumbling into eternal dust. No amount of care from Kojiro, no amount of bug control or prevention techniques, could prevent it from happening sooner or later.
He looked around for any insects. Flies, cockroaches, spiders – whatever. He saw nothing. Winter was an easy time of year for that keeping on top of that kind of thing. Still
he made a mental note to spray the rest of the house later and to put up some additional flypaper in the kitchen.
He lowered his collar and forced himself to breathe. Then he walked over to the kitchen counter and pulled the window all the way open. Fresh air was needed, just for a little while. After opening the window, he lit a couple of scented candles on the counter, using his father’s old Zippo lighter, the one with ‘Eiji’ printed on the front.
Kojiro pulled up a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.
An icy winter breeze, combined with the raw stench of decay shot up his nostrils.
“Mum,” he said, looking at the female corpse on the opposite end of the table. Then he glanced to his right. “Dad.”
He leaned forward.
“You both look terrible.”
Kojiro laughed, but there was nothing funny going on. Not funny ha-ha at least.
“How many times have I been back here over the past nine years?” he said. “I never stopped long, did I? I haven’t sat down and talked to you both before. No doubt you’re wondering, why now?”
Kojiro stared out of the kitchen window. It was dark but he knew there was a large, wildly overgrown garden out there that led onto a track that went down to the local primary school. It was a route he’d taken many times as a child, both to get to school but more often to escape the house and lose himself in Richmond Park.
“Yes,” Kojiro said, turning back to his parents. “We haven’t talked.”
He looked back and forth between them. His breathing was a little slower now.
“You wouldn’t believe what’s happened in London over the past nine years,” he said. “How much did you know? You remember the London riots, the carnage at Piccadilly. But what else?”
He scraped his fingers along the smooth surface of the table.
“Did you know,” he said, “that they built two walls around the city to keep us in? They call them the M25 because they encircle London just like the motorway. We can’t get out, even if we wanted to. Oh, they haven’t forgotten about us – they drop food parcels across the city once a week. Maintenance crews come in regularly and make sure the electricity and water are running. Cold water. Why do they do it? I assume it’s for appearances’ sake on the outside. I wouldn’t know. But you wouldn’t recognise what this city has become in the past nine years.”
Kojiro fell back into his seat.
“But I don’t mind and neither should you,” he said. “You always loved this house – especially you Dad – and now it’s your tomb. No one’s ever going to come here and take you out of this place, not as long as the M25 is still standing. No plot of earth and lavish headstone will mark your grave. Nor mine, wherever it’ll be.”
The stench was unbearable. A putrid combo of dead flesh intermingled with the lavender coming from the scented candles. Despite this, Kojiro resisted the urge to cover his nose and mouth. He owed them that much.
A long silence followed.
Do you expect us to pity you boy?
Kojiro’s father’s bellowing voice crashed around the kitchen. That’s what it had done in life. That voice. As a child, it had been enough to make Kojiro’s entire body tremble like he was having a seizure.
He trembled now.
“No,” Kojiro said, looking at the shell of his father. “I don’t want your pity. That’s the last thing I want.”
“You look tired Zander.”
“Mum?”
The corpse with the lank blonde hair didn’t move. But that rotten face was looking at him across the table. Her voice was as clear as it had ever been. It was the same high-pitched voice with the underlying trace of anxiety at its root. His heart leaped when he heard his mother speak to him again. Then a great weight pulled him back down, swatting whatever happiness he’d felt away.
Don’t talk to him Alison. He hates us remember? Isn’t that what you said to us boy?
“Yes,” Kojiro said without hesitation. “I did.”
But he looks tired Eiji. You look so tired Zander.
He hates us. Sitting there, talking about how this city went to ruin – that was the best day of your life boy, wasn’t it? You saw your chance that day. Your chance to get rid of us.
Eiji. Please don’t do this.
“It’s alright Mum,” Kojiro said. “Let him speak.”
He punished us Alison. He murdered us in our own home and for what? For loving him? For trying to turn him into a man?
Eiji stop it, please.
Kojiro felt the old anger bubbling its way back to the surface. It didn’t have far to rise to get to the top.
“You haven’t changed have you?” he said, looking at his father. “There was only ever one version of a story with you. Yours.”
You shame me boy. You shame your mother.
“You’re a bastard,” Kojiro said, leaning closer to the stinking corpse. “You ever think about why I did it? You made me do it. You were Eiji Kojiro, the big successful Japanese businessman with the trophy wife on one arm and all the money in the world on another. You had the money, cars, yachts and the mistresses too. Isn’t that right Mum? You had everything you wanted. Why then couldn’t you leave me alone? Why did you try so hard to turn me into another version of you?”
Oh God. Not this again.
Kojiro slammed his fist on the table. The two corpses shook in their seats.
“Yes!” he yelled. “You never did hear a word I said. You remember how you’d sit me down in the lounge when I was a teenager and start asking me about what I was going to do with my life. It would take me ages to summon up the courage to talk about the arts and about the theatre – about the things I wanted to do. What did you do? You laughed. You old bastard.”
But you weren’t serious about that stuff were you Zander?
He looked at his mother.
“Yes I was Mum,” Kojiro said. “But I was too weak to show how much I cared about it. Even though I hated him, for some reason I still didn’t want to be a disappointment. Maybe that’s why I haven’t let you rot yet. God help me. So I went along with your plans for my life, thinking I’d get over it. I put my dreams to the side and went to university and came out as a businessman. But I came out angry too.”
Did you think you were going to be become an actor or something boy? A Hollywood superstar? Are you a homosexual? Is that why you’re so angry?
“No Dad,” Kojiro said. “I wanted to be an actor, that’s all. I wanted to be anything, as long as I didn’t turn into you.”
Zander, that’s no way to talk to your f…
Kojiro froze and his mother fell silent. Was that a noise outside? He turned towards the kitchen door and listened. It sounded like it was coming from the front of the house. Voices?
He pushed the chair back and took a couple of tentative steps towards the door. He heard nothing. Hopefully whatever it was, it had moved on. Maybe it was just his imagination playing tricks again.
Kojiro relaxed a little. He turned back to the two corpses sitting at the table. He coughed into the back of his hand and knew it was time to get away from that terrible cocktail of smells.
“Excuse me,” he said, stepping back into the hallway. “I must do something.”
Chapter 4
Kojiro walked back to the hallway where he’d left the wheelbarrow. He reached down and pulled the tarpaulin cloth off and looked into the metal tray.
He’d done it. He’d got them home safe.
There were six short swords lying in the middle of the tray. They were the same model of sword as the one that was hanging off Kojiro’s waist – a double-edged, single-handed replica of a xiphos, a sword that had its origins in Ancient Greece. The swords had belonged to members of Kojiro’s old gang but now that the gang was defunct, it was only right that he return them to his father’s armoury.
There were many people out there who would love to get their hands on weapons like these. Good weapons. Kojiro had risked his life transporting them through the city alone but fortunat
ely he’d come through unscathed.
At least something had gone right.
He pushed the wheelbarrow to the steel door at the end of the hallway. Pulling the keys from his coat pocket, he unlocked the door. It swung open, leading onto a carpeted ramp that descended down into the armoury. His father had installed the ramp to allow ease of access and the installation of new weapons.
Kojiro pushed the wheelbarrow down the ramp.
The armoury was Eiji Kojiro’s pride and joy. Kojiro’s father had held a zealous fascination throughout his life with ancient weapons, armour and military paraphernalia. The Kojiros had homes in London, New York and Tokyo, and each one contained its own armoury. The London armoury was the biggest of the three. At first, these museums of death and violence hadn’t interested the young Zander Kojiro. These were scary rooms, filled with ghoulish relics of a cruel world. Kojiro’s interest in the martial arts had developed as he got older, both encouraged by his father directly and inspired by a need to protect himself from the man’s bullying nature. These gruesome collections, which consisted of authentic antiques and modern replicas, had taken a hold of Kojiro. Soon he was every bit as enthralled as his father. Particularly with the swords.
At the bottom of the ramp, Kojiro flicked on a switch and a pale orange glow settled over the room. The London armoury had been designed in a neo-classical manner, typical of the Napoleonic era. Bonaparte had been just one of many military leaders that Kojiro’s father had admired.
A long display cabinet sat in the middle of the room. It was about three feet tall and travelled from one end of the armoury to the other. Most of the larger weapons – the swords and shields and spears were kept in there. Smaller glass cabinets, both tall and wide, were scattered along the outer edges. These contained a variety of other ancient artefacts or high quality replicas. Ancient bows, which originated from various cultures, hung on the wall. A complete suit of samurai armour, which dated back to the sixteenth century, was tucked away at the back.
A musty smell arose from the blood red carpet. It was familiar and comforting.
The Future of London Box Set Page 72