by Ben Stevens
And of course, it was necessary even during the day to light a lamp, the winter sky outside overcast and grey with yet more snow, more icy sleet… The trees all around stark and bare, black and foreboding against the horizon…
We again took tea in the afternoon. I gathered even through the murk fast enveloping my mind that this was something of a ritual of the samurai’s, with attendance required from anyone also staying within this house.
And yet I did not want to stay here in this wretched place – I wanted to leave, immediately – to flee. But would the curse find me, wherever I went…?
Later my master prepared that bitter-tasting drink, and I lapsed into an exhausted sleep once again wracked by hellish dreams…
The following morning came with a startling surprise – a visit from a messenger sent by the Empress herself. Ever since my master had destroyed the malign influence the evil monk named Sesshu had held over the Empress (as described in the adventure I entitled The Empress and the Monk), my master often sent notice to the Imperial Court, concerning his current whereabouts. This was so that he might be contactable, in the event of an emergency where his assistance was urgently required.
(This was not, it must be said, an arrangement which greatly pleased my master. I feel he almost considered that it affected his freedom somewhat. Yet as this request had come directly from the Empress herself, it could hardly be refused.)
The messenger had come by horse, and had clearly ridden hard for several hours. I gathered that he was in fact the third rider – for this message had thus been carried in relay, since the first horseman had ridden out from the Imperial City late yesterday afternoon.
The message was sealed, and the messenger declared that his orders were to wait while my master opened and read it, in case he wished to send a reply.
My master requested the use of a private room while he read the message, with only the horseman in attendance. And then that messenger was galloping away, dispatched (I was somehow certain) on some errand by my master.
‘What I reluctantly suspected is indeed so,’ sighed my master a little while later, when we found ourselves alone before the late afternoon ritual of the green tea.
‘We will not shave any more, Kukai, and we will contrive to look as haggard as possible. Indeed, I might make a point of talking further about what terrible dreams I have been having of late,’ declared my master then, with both his words as well as the look in his eye making me wonder if he’d not somehow been separated from his wits.
What on Earth did he mean? And yet, it would hardly take much effort for me to appear troubled. Indeed, it was all I could do to at least try and maintain a placid expression. Such was that painting’s continued effect on my general state of mind, coupled with the talk of it carrying such a horrible curse…
The messenger returned the following day, spoke briefly with my master (again in private) and then departed.
We had tea as usual that afternoon, with the samurai who looked at us as though we were dead already. In accordance with my master’s strange words of the previous day, we both had facial stubble, while my master had a wild, disturbing look to his eye that I had never seen before. Not even when he had been in the most extreme danger, with the odds seemingly hopelessly stacked against him…
‘I never thought that a mere… painting… could stir such things within me,’ said my master, as we sat at the low table. He was staring down at his cup of tea as he spoke, his jaw shaking slightly. My own thoughts felt strangely blurred, a nameless horror as always just out of focus. A crushing sensation of dread pressing down on me, so that I thought at any moment I might lose all my wits or…
Or die – from fear itself, one dark, icy night inside this oppressive house. Die because I had seen that cursed painting – die just like the samurai’s favorite servant named Miura had.
I was all but certain now – and the trembling took hold in my own face and limbs. The legend was true; it was fatal just to look upon that foul portrayal of hell itself.
‘I warned you, Ennin – I warned you,’ said the samurai, his aged, horror-stricken eyes looking as though they would start crying at any moment. ‘Miura knew the legend was true… The reason why he ensured no one else saw that picture in his room, even as his body and mind weakened and he moved ever-closer towards death…’
My master moved his gaze up from the table with almost painful slowness.
‘Why?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Why was the… picture… even in his room?’
‘I do not know,’ returned the samurai, shaking his head and averting his own gaze. ‘It was addressed to him, delivered wrapped in paper… That is all I know…’
And then another grey, dark, freezing day turned to night. I drank that draft my master insisted on making for my health – as though that now was of any importance – and I lay trembling, exhausted beyond all reason and yet terrified of sleep, and the nightmares it brought. Not just for me – but for my master, also, it seemed.
Proof – if any further proof was necessary – that the story of the painting entitled Jigoku having a curse upon it was entirely true.
And with this, the certainty that my master and I were about to become its latest victims.
5
And then it was our last day alive. All the world outside seemingly made of ice. The day darkening even as we sat drinking tea in that room with the low table. Both my master and I had hair upon our faces, whereas before we had always been clean-shaven. I could not help but give slight, yet convulsive movements of my limbs, so fragile was my mental state. The nightmares (which even now make my mouth go dry when I recall them) threatening to drive me to utter insanity – and yet tonight was the last night I would be able to dream.
Never again would I wake up, after tonight. Soon I, and my master, would be sleeping the eternal sleep of death…
My master had been staring down at his tea, saying nothing. An oppressive silence in the room. The samurai obviously as deeply disturbed as his two ‘guests’ – and yet he was not the one who faced death that very evening, upon going to sleep.
Suddenly, in a voice somehow firmer than it had been before, my master said –
‘Did he tell you it would take seven days to work, Fujiwara?’
The samurai stared at him with eyes that suddenly showed surprise, as well as horror.
‘What… what do you mean?’ he breathed.
‘The poison,’ returned my master, his voice hardening still further. ‘The poison you have been putting in the cups out of which my servant and I have been drinking. Tasteless, reputedly undetectable; and yet, it always causes the tea – or whatever liquid it is placed in – to take a slight, yet curiously cloudy appearance.
‘You don’t imagine, do you,’ continued my master, ‘that I fail to check for such telltale signs, whenever some food or drink is set in front of me? I have accumulated a certain number of enemies, you know – and I see now that one of them, once again, earnestly desires my death.’
‘What are you… what is this?’ murmured the samurai, his face turning white as he slowly began moving away from the table, heading towards one wall.
‘A poison that accumulates inside the body, so that the victim experiences great mental distress before finally expiring in their sleep,’ continued my master, as I stared askance at him. ‘The dose can be varied, depending on how much suffering is intended. On this occasion, the dosage was expertly calculated to last exactly seven days, therefore making it seem as though this painting entitled ‘Hell’ had claimed a further two victims.
‘However, a curious antidote is offered by the bark of the very same tree whose berries are used to make the poison. This is fortunate, as whatever the season bark, of course, always remains. Had I required the berries to make the antidote, of course, I could not have played out this game.
‘That said,’ my master went on, now turning to face me, ‘the antidote cannot wholly offset the mental disturbances caused by this poison, which havin
g been made ‘unlethal’, as it were, can still cause significant suffering to the brain – usually resulting in vivid nightmares, and such. My apologies therefore, Kukai, for I know how you have suffered. But today was the last time we shall have to imbibe this poisoned draft.’
So shocked – and entirely bewildered – was I by what I was hearing, that I believe I could do nothing except give a strangulated gasp in response.
‘I do not know what you are talking about, Ennin…’ stammered Fujiwara. ‘I fear you are becoming – ’
‘Enough!’ my master yelled, bringing his fist crashing down onto the low table. This was as angry as ever I had seen him, his eyes blazing at the aged samurai.
‘I detected the hand of Sesshu in all of this, right from when I realized that the tea was poisoned,’ my master continued. ‘Idiot that I was… The affair of the merchant reputedly murdered by his nephew, with this murder fiendishly disguised to appear as suicide? That I should have thought that that seventeen-year-old boy could come up with such a plan…
‘It was Sesshu who assisted him – who planted the idea of murder in his head in the first place, so that he could obtain the inheritance this murder would give him. And then, of course, I would be summoned by the widow – who had her doubts that her apparently wealthy and contented husband should have suddenly taken his own life – and then I would be ready to be summoned here, with my servant, to investigate this nonsense of a ‘cursed painting’.
My master again brought down his fist on the table, but softer now, his gaze a little tragic as he stared at his former friend.
‘That you should have allowed your servant to be murdered by Sesshu, Fujiwara… You – the once- great and brave samurai, reduced to such base lies and cowardice…’
Fujiwara was now openly crying, huddled against one wall.
‘Forgive me, Ennin – forgive me,’ he sobbed, covering his face with his hands, his voice so wracked with emotion that it was hard to understand what he was saying.
‘May Buddha forgive me, and the soul of Miura, which doubtless cannot rest... But I swear, at first, I never knew he meant to harm Miura… There was the picture, which he showed us, one foul and dark afternoon when he was just suddenly inside this house, appearing like smoke…
‘Yes – that picture,’ rasped the samurai, moving his hands away from his face to stare at my master with eyes that were like deep wells of horror. ‘After we saw it – tricked into seeing it – he said that only he could save us from the curse… He gave me a potion; he said he needed to spend time alone with Miura…’
‘Idiot,’ said my master, his voice cold and empty. ‘You did not think that he was preparing to kill your favorite servant in cold blood? With the same poison that he then instructed you to use on us? And that this ‘potion’ he gave you might as well have been mere water, for all the protective properties against a ‘cursed painting’ it had?’
‘Ennin, his eyes…’ murmured Fujiwara, still crouched almost childlike against one wall. ‘His voice… I am old, not nearly as strong – physically or mentally – as I once was… I felt my brain go numb, my insides seized by an appalling fear…
‘And the colors of that painting, so fresh, as though… As though it was a thing almost somehow living, as all around the wind blew and it grew cold enough nearly to crack stone; and there he was, always in the semi-darkness, that voice hissing in my ear…’
I had started at Fujiwara’s comment concerning the ‘freshness’ (hardly the exact word I want, although it will have to suffice) of the colors of the painting. For the very same thought had so recently occurred to me.
But then my master said flatly –
‘The messenger, sent by the Empress herself, brought me word that Sesshu had escaped from the small island where he’d previously been marooned, as punishment for attempting to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne.
‘This escape had recently been discovered, as a ship carrying several heavily-armed samurai was periodically sent to check on him. Seeing no sign of activity on the island, they consequently went ashore to discover that he was gone. How remains a mystery, although I suspect he somehow managed to obtain passage on one of the pirate ships which infest those waters.
‘Back on the Japanese mainland, it is obvious that he first managed to find this ‘lost’ painting of Tajima’s – and then forced the famous artist Tomino to ‘refresh’ its colors. I cannot prove this last point, but I know that Tomino is the only artist talented enough to successfully complete such a feat. In any case, from here I sent the messenger to Tomino’s hometown – and that is no great distance – and he returned saying that Tomino has been missing for some time.
‘I have no doubt that once Tomino had completed the task he’d been ordered to do under threat of death, he was murdered anyway and his body disposed of somewhere it will never be found.
‘That done, Sesshu took the painting and headed for this area…’
‘He said… he said that he alone could protect me from the curse…’ murmured the samurai. ‘That if I didn’t do exactly as he said, no matter what this was, I would die and go to hell itself…’
The anger had by now quite left my master’s eyes. He shook his head with obvious despair and confusion, looking at this former close friend of his.
‘Then why, why would I and my servant need to be poisoned, if this curse was all it took to kill someone within seven days?’
‘He said that you… that you are not like other men,’ continued the samurai, slowly rising to his feet. He was wearing a thick purple kimono, of the type commonly used in winter. ‘Of your servant… I don’t know… I could hardly think, I…’
Fujiwara shook his head, paused; and when he spoke again his voice was noticeably firmer, the words more concise –
‘Forgive me, Ennin – please. Remember me how I once was; not as this poor, old, weak, brainwashed fool who stands before you now. I have faced seemingly certain death in battle many years ago; felt my bones crunch and my teeth crack in combat; but against that foul demon in human form, his very eyes and voice like those belonging to a serpent, I was as helpless as a baby.
‘And so I caused the death of my favorite servant, and very nearly the destruction of one of my oldest friends and his servant. And this the only defense I can claim – that my very mind was not my own. It had been taken over by that… that vampire…’
With this final word, Fujiwara stuck one hand inside his kimono and, with lightening speed, produced a knife.
‘No!’ yelled my master, immediately starting to move towards the samurai. But before my master could reach him, Fujiwara stabbed the knife directly into his own heart. Blood immediately spilled from his mouth as he pitched forwards first onto his knees, before falling face down on the tatami mat.
My master knelt beside him, almost cradling Fujiwara’s head in his lap.
‘Sesshu…’ said my master then, in a voice which caused my very blood to run cold. ‘Sesshu…!’
6
Had my master not been so well-known throughout Japan, I believe that this business with the ‘cursed painting’ and the dead samurai named Fujiwara might have gone badly for us. The magistrate sent by the daimyo of that area was an extremely inquisitive man, who asked many questions and who clearly was not satisfied with the answers my master gave him.
‘Why, exactly, would this man named Sesshu – who you claim is behind everything that has happened in this luckless household of late – wish to go to such convoluted lengths to have you killed, in any case?’ demanded the magistrate.
This was a question that had also occurred to me; and, strangely, my master did not appear able to provide any satisfactory answer. Another mystery concerned the young male servant who had first fetched us from the inn to come to this house, and who had been missing ever since Fujiwara had plunged the knife into his own heart.
Finally – almost, it seemed, grudgingly – the magistrate gave us permission to proceed on our way. We set off walking, the snow and
ice still all around but the worst of the winter weather (the howling sleet storms and such) now over.
My master was silent for some time; and I, of course, did not speak either. Finally, as we followed a path which cut through a rather dense, woody area, my master said irritably –
‘That I had to feign ignorance to that fool of a magistrate! But to attempt to explain to someone as officious as that the real reason why Sesshu used that painting…’
Another silence followed. Then unable to bear it any longer, I said –
‘Master, forgive me, but I – ’
‘Firstly,’ said my master abruptly, ‘it appealed to Sesshu’s warped sense of humor that one of my oldest friends should be the author of my death – and so yours, also. Ever since I defeated him at the Imperial Court, Sesshu has sworn my destruction.
‘And the case of the merchant and his apparent ‘murderer’, the nephew (something I could not even begin to try and explain to that pigheaded magistrate – and after all, regardless of Sesshu’s planning of the crime, the nephew was, technically-speaking, the actual killer)… Well, this just allowed Sesshu to exercise that foul brain of his, which had probably been stifling somewhat, due to his enforced solitude on that otherwise uninhabited island…
‘In any case, the young servant who went ‘missing’ immediately after Fujiwara stabbed himself was doubtless the one who Sesshu bribed or otherwise persuaded to grant him access inside the house in the first place. I strongly suspect that he was listening behind the sliding door, when I informed Fujiwara as to how I knew the cups of tea were poisoned.
‘Immediately he took flight, leaving the house and perhaps heading in the direction in which we are travelling now. But he would not have got far – Sesshu would have seen to that, quickly silencing the servant forever…’