Summertime of the Dead

by Gregory Hughes

  ‘I won’t leave you there. I’ll come back for you, I promise.’

  I limped through the small park where we used to play as kids. It was dark and empty and it made me feel miserable, but then something beautiful happened. It was daylight and the sun was shining and Miko was standing by the slide!

  ‘I thought you were dead!’

  She laughed a little. ‘No, we’ve been on vacation.’

  ‘We’ve been on vacation, Yukio,’ shouted Hiroshi, running past.

  But then the darkness came. ‘Don’t be afraid, twins. I’ll protect you!’ I said. But my voice sounded strange. I think my jaw was broken. Then the world spun and I had to sit down on a bench. When I looked up the park was empty and the sunshine had gone. But my head wouldn’t stop spinning. ‘I’ll rest for a minute. Just a minute.’

  ‘Up!’ said the Lump. ‘Up!’

  I shuddered and woke up. There were no lights on in the apartment blocks and no cars on the road. And I was cold. I’d never been so cold. And my head was pounding. ‘I have to get home.’ I felt that sharp pain again as I got to my feet. But I gritted my teeth and limped through the park. And then with all the strength I could muster I forced myself up the hill. I was determined to get home, but then I collapsed on the pavement. It felt nice lying down, and if I stayed still my head didn’t hurt. But then I was startled by a passing car.

  ‘Get up! And don’t stop until you’re home!’

  I got up, and ignoring the pain I forced myself on. I just kept going and going and then suddenly I was there. I couldn’t believe it. I opened the front door and went inside. I’d made it!

  I went to climb the stairs but I collapsed halfway up. I lay there and rested my head. ‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘You’re almost there.’ But I couldn’t get up and I felt so sleepy. ‘A samurai would get up,’ I whispered. I got up then and went to my bed. I rested my head on the fluffy pillows and pulled the white duvet over me. ‘Yukio, it’s us!’ I could hear the twins calling me from the street below. ‘I’m going to get up now, Miko. As soon as I can open my eyes.’ Suddenly the pain jarred me awake. I’d been dreaming and I was still on the stairs. Very slowly I started to crawl upwards. I used my hands and my good leg, dragging my bad leg behind me. When I reached the top I crawled along the landing. And then I crawled into my room and collapsed.

  It was almost light when I came round, and as soon as I did I felt pain. My knee was in agony and my head was throbbing. And my face felt like it had something growing on the side of it. But at least I’d stopped hallucinating. And I was glad. I’d seen some terrible things. But then, to add to my woes, the ringing started up in my ears. As if things weren’t bad enough! I got up and staggered to the window in the hope that it was a train going by. And that’s when I saw them. And there were so many of them. They came down the street in two columns, one on the right side and one on the left. They stayed close to the houses and they communicated in hand signals. They looked like ninja. Small men dressed in black body armour and wearing black helmets. But they weren’t carrying swords. They were carrying long firearms, which they held in front of them. Following behind was a plainclothes policeman who I recognized as Maki. I saw more armed police climbing over the backs of the houses. And then, through my pain, I felt fear. Because I knew that this was it!

  ‘Yukio.’

  I turned slowly, like an old man, and going out on the landing I looked down. Grandmother was putting the bolts on the front door. ‘They’re here,’ she said.

  So she knew. She’d probably known all along. But when she saw my face she looked shocked. ‘My brave grandson, what have they done to you?’ Her eyes closed tight for a second and then she opened them. ‘No matter. But now you have to do the right thing. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother,’ I said. But my voice sounded like it was coming from far away.

  ‘Good. I would not want you to dishonour the family name.’ And then she did something she’d never done before. She bowed to me, and she bowed so low.

  But I felt weak. ‘I’m sorry, Grandmother, I do not think I can bow back.’

  ‘That’s OK, Yukio. Just remember this: I have always loved you, even though I never showed it.’ Her face hardened but her eyes filled with tears. ‘Go now. Do it before they come.’

  I returned to my room and took the short sword from the wardrobe. Then I took off my shirt and tried to kneel down, but my knee wouldn’t bend. Biting down I forced it to bend and then I knelt on the tatami floor. ‘Do it quickly and the pain will end!’ I faced the photograph of the twins and the statue of the Buddha and took the sword in both hands. But when I saw Hiroshi’s face I realized something. I realized with absolute horror that he could never forgive me for killing his nun. And somehow it made what I had to do easier. I raised the sword and turned the blade towards me. Then, with all my remaining strength, I stabbed myself in the lower stomach. The agony! I pulled the blade up and across my stomach until it sliced open.

  My eyes bulged and blood shot from my mouth. Blood and intestines splattered on the floor. Then everything went black and I fell.

  17

  I have to stand on a chair to look out the window, and when I do the cold wind blows in my eyes, but I’ll do it for hours some days. There’s not much to see, just the grounds and the high hospital walls, but if I pull up on the bars I can see Mount Shokanbetsu. Last night’s sunset turned it a beautiful pink colour and today it’s completely covered in snow. And it must have snowed down here last night because the ground looks a little frosted. The patients here are mostly women and they wave at me sometimes if they see me at the window. But I never get to meet them and there’s no one out there today, it’s way too cold. But it’s February and we’re seventy miles north of Sapporo, so cold weather is all you can expect.

  I came so close to death. For the first few months I wished I had died. I still do some days. It was worse when I was in the proper hospital. I woke up one time and my mother was standing over me. She blamed herself, of course, because she went off and left me, and that made me feel worse. But I never thought about her, not once, and I never thought about how much it would hurt her. And by the look on her face it hurt her a lot.

  Her pilot boyfriend kept looking out the window like he couldn’t wait to get back into the skies, and so after a few visits I told her she should go back to Vancouver. She cried then, but I think she was glad to be leaving. The media were hounding them everywhere; they even followed them to the airport. She wrote and told me that she’d come again next summer, when things had died down, and that she’d stand by me no matter what happened. She also told me that she’d bought a headstone for Grandmother’s grave.

  Grandmother put a steel pin through her heart before the cops could get through the door. She would have liked that. She would have found it fitting to die with honour like some old empress whose castle walls had been breached. And I know she was sick at the thought of getting any older. I think she might have done it anyway. Maybe I just gave her the excuse.

  But I miss her now, a lot more than I thought I would.

  The twins’ grandad died soon after in a cheap flea-bitten room he’d rented in Yokohama. He was holding one of Miko’s dolls and one of Hiroshi’s paintings. It was five days before anyone found him. The coroner said that he’d sat by the window and waited for death. He was a good man and he didn’t deserve to die alone. But my mother made sure he was buried with the twins. At least that was something.

  Grandmother left everything to my mother, even though they never got along. Everything except the house, that is, which she left to Yoshe. Yoshe came to the prison hospital in Kobe, but I wouldn’t see her; my mind was still bad then. Any time the detectives tried to question me I just sat there stone-faced and wouldn’t speak. I was so defiant. And I couldn’t believe how deranged I was. I told the psychiatrists that I was a samurai warrior reborn from a hundred battlefields, but they didn’t seem impressed. They just scribbled in their files, and closing the cell door
they walked away. And there was me shouting after them, ‘I fought the Mongols at Hakata! I besieged Kumamoto Castle in the Satsuma Rebellion! And I fought on the side of the shogunate in the Boshin War!’

  No wonder they thought I was insane.

  My phoney lawyer, Mr Himura, who had a face like a skull, was the only person who was ever glad to see me, no matter what mood I was in. The case was getting big attention and he was always giving interviews on what, he said, was the reason for the killings. He blamed violent video games and he appealed to the government to have them banned. But the truth of the matter is that I never played video games, violent or otherwise, and I told him so. ‘Leave your defence to me,’ he said. And so I did.

  Sometimes he brought his daughter with him, who also acted as his secretary. She looked like she’d been startled by a ghost and her face had frozen in fear. And whenever he answered his phone, which was about a dozen times a visit, she made a point of telling me how much fan mail had arrived, and what horrible things people had said. I couldn’t stand her. I couldn’t stand him either. They were more deranged than the patients. But it didn’t matter in the end. The psychiatrist’s report said that I was mentally incompetent to stand trial. The judge at the court hearing said that I should be held in a secure unit for an indefinite period, and that’s when they sent me up here. And it’s not such a bad place. The food’s OK and the staff are nice, and they let me walk in the grounds most days. It’s just the cold and the smell of the disinfectant I can’t stand. And they get you up so early. Why they get you up so early when all you do is sit around I don’t know. But at least I’m away from Mr Himura and his creepy daughter.

  As soon as my wound healed that clanging sound came back. It was so bad some days I’d lie there for hours with a pillow over my head. Eventually they got around to checking my hearing, but they couldn’t find anything wrong. One of the psychiatrists said that it was brought on by something in my subconscious, but they’re always saying things like that. If they can’t say something clever they don’t say anything at all. But one day it stopped and it never came back. And this is the reason why.

  Towards the end of that summer, Yoshe came to see me. I wouldn’t see her at first but I was glad that I did. Yoshe, who’d been a friend throughout my childhood, never said anything about the killings. She never even mentioned Natsuko, and I knew it would have hurt her that I’d killed a nun. She just gave me a kiss and a big hug, like I’d done nothing wrong, and when she talked to me she held my hand. That’s when she told me about the Lump.

  When I was arrested the Lump’s parents, not wanting to get involved, took Hatsu on holiday. They left the Lump with an old couple and told them they’d be back in a few weeks. Yoshe said that my name was never mentioned in the media, because I was too young, and so the Lump couldn’t have known anything about it. And so she was distressed when she found out she wasn’t going to Tokyo. She’d been looking forward to it so much. But the old couple were kind and they did their best to make her feel at home. And after a while she seemed fine. But the next day at school some of the girls stole a doll from her. The Lump became so distraught that the old couple were sent for. And seeing her condition they tried to contact her parents. But they were somewhere in Singapore and couldn’t be located. That night the Lump was so upset she couldn’t sleep. And so the next day the old man went back to the school to see if he could find the doll. But apparently the girls had put it in the incinerator. The Lump seemed more agitated the next day and she kept checking her cell. The last thing she said that they understood was, ‘Yukio.’ Everything she said after that wouldn’t come out. She tried to speak. She tried to tell them what was wrong. But the words were frozen inside her.

  But that night she went to bed and fell asleep. The old couple, having had little sleep themselves, went to bed as well. But the Lump’s phoney parents had been so eager to get away they had forgotten to mention that she sleepwalked. The Lump got up in the middle of the night and headed down the road to the station. She was still in her pyjamas and she had her cell in her hand. The driver said she was looking at it as he came around the bend. He said he braked hard and tried to swerve but he still ran her over. All the neighbours rushed from their houses to free her body, which was trapped under the car. They talked to her and held her hand to let her know that she wasn’t alone. And they put blankets over her to keep her warm. But my lovely cousin, Mikazuki, who I still lovingly call the Lump, died before the ambulance arrived. And so, in the end, the way of darkness did bring a great price. The greatest.

  Yoshe held me before she left. And she promised to visit me twice a year until the day she died. But I was so devastated I couldn’t even say goodbye. I never spoke, or ate, or moved for more than two weeks, I just lay there. Because I knew that if I hadn’t done what I did then the Lump would have been sent down to us. And me and Yoshe and Grandmother would have looked after her. Then the Om wouldn’t have been taken away from her. And I know how much that severed head meant to her. And I know she’d have wanted to speak to me once it was stolen. When I close my eyes I can still see her distraught face checking her cell, frantic for me to call. But I never did call, even though I promised. And that, more than anything else, killed me.

  When they couldn’t get me to eat they sent for a Buddhist monk. But I didn’t like the look of him. He was ugly and stern and his round glasses made his eyes look mean. But he told me that he was sorry for the Lump and he sounded like he meant it. And then he asked me was I sorry for the people I’d killed. I said I didn’t know. And so he told me to think about them and we’d talk again.

  Natsuko was the first one I thought of. She was one of the kindest people I’d ever known. It was a pointless, senseless killing and I couldn’t believe that I’d done it. And she probably didn’t want to die; she probably just needed help. And then I realized that at some stage in that dark summer I must have gone insane. Because I’d never have harmed Natsuko if I was in my right mind. That’s when I started to go through the files and the papers that Mr Himura had left. There was a report from Kako’s social worker, who said that the thing he hated most was coming home to an empty house. Sometimes his mother would leave him alone for days. That’s when he started hanging out with the Tanaka girls, but they weren’t without their problems either.

  They had had to be taken away from their mother at an early age because she was putting cigarette burns in them. They grew up in homes or with foster parents who didn’t care for them because they were so badly behaved. The only family they ever had was Uncle Benni and Matsu – but she wasn’t around for long. One social worker said that Louise was teaching herself to read because she never learned how. And a psychiatrist’s report said that Riko had suffered from a mild form of schizophrenia all her life. And she had fought against it in order to get better, but she never did.

  There were other things as well. The old guy who had a daughter in a wheelchair had wanted to leave the yakuza for years. But there was nothing else he could do, and he needed the money to support her. His young apprentice, who only had his mother, was reported to be a loving son. Even one of the bodyguards I’d killed at the girls’ apartment gave up his weekends to work with young offenders. No one had anything good to say about Yama, of course. Even some of the Tanaka clan were glad that he was dead. And his probation officer said that from the day he was born he was stone evil. But I don’t see how that can be true. There must have been a time when he chased butterflies around a garden, just like Yoshe’s baby boy. And when I thought about the Tanaka girls, they must have played with dolls and sung like Miko. And Kako must have laughed like the Lump when somebody chased him. The people I’d killed were just children grown up. And when I saw them that way I saw my true self. My earliest memory is of me on my mother’s shoulders. I was reaching for the red autumn leaves and I was so happy. And yet I grew up to do what I did. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t a warrior or a samurai. I was just a murderer. And murder is a dirty thing.

 
; And so I suppose the Lump saved me for the last time. It was through her death that I thought about the people I’d killed. And it was only when I was sorry that the ringing stopped. I’ll always miss her, but she was too beautiful a person for this world.

  I heard a key in the door and I turned to see Nina looking through the glass panel. She’s a blonde, blue-eyed Norwegian who speaks terrible Japanese. But she’s always happy and so everyone likes her.

  ‘How are you, Yukio?’ she asked, handing me my medication.

  I got down from the chair. ‘Fine,’ I said, and swallowed the tablets with a little water.

  ‘Your visitor’s here!’

  She always makes everything seem exciting.

  ‘You OK to see him?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  Lee, an orderly the size of a sumo, came in and put a pot of tea on the table. ‘Any trouble out of him, Nina, and I’ll use my latest karate technique.’

  He gave me a dirty look and punched his fist into his hand. He reminded me of G.I. Joe, the way he was always fooling around, but he was a really nice guy. And he always gave me his manga when he’d finished reading them.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any need for brutality, Lee,’ said Nina, joining in. ‘Maybe we could just tie him up and tickle him to death.’

  But when Detective Maki appeared in the doorway they straightened up.

  ‘Would you like me to stay, Detective?’ asked Lee.

  ‘No! Couple of old Tokyoites like me and Yukio! We’ll be fine. Right, kid?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be just down the hall if you need me,’ said Lee.

  ‘Anything you need, Detective, just let me know,’ said Nina, and leaving the door ajar she followed him.