by Emby Press
Byron barely heard the accusation. His senses were keyed to that intrusive quality in the atmosphere. He felt like a hare that senses the fox nearby, but only now recognizes the cause of its agitation. He knew what that eerie change in the climate meant now. That intrusive vibration was death.
“Stark’s cell, it’s the third from the end of the hall, isn’t it,” Byron declared suddenly.
Caffran stared at him in shock. “How’d you…” Before he could articulate his surprise, Byron was rushing down the corridor. Biting down on a curse, the detective hurried after him.
When he reached the cell, Byron knew he was too late. A body was lying facedown on the floor, the body of a big, powerfully built man. A pool of blood was slowing spreading from the head, breaking the grey monotony of the jail. Byron didn’t need to be told that the body was that of Stark. As Caffran ran up to the cell, the detective took one look at the body and shouted for the guards.
It was only a minute before a guard raced over and unlocked the cell. Hurriedly, Caffran dashed in and turned Stark over. Even the detective was horrified by what he saw. Suicide in the jail was rare, but it did happen. When it did, the death was typically the result of hanging or a slashed wrist. Stark had given the Phoenix police something new for their records.
The ex-Marine had bitten off his tongue and choked on his own blood.
*
It was almost midnight before Byron returned to his office. Dealing with Stark’s suicide had been only partly to blame. Even as Caffran was taking down his statement about what they’d found in the cell, a still more serious incident was reported to the detective. Daimler, the pawnbroker, had slipped the men assigned to watch him. More, the man had been found in an alleyway, slashed and mutilated. Exactly as Stark had described it in his last letter.
Only there was no way Stark could have killed Daimler. He’d been securely locked away in jail when the murder took place. Caffran’s theory about the crimes had been discredited in the most savage way imaginable.
Byron took no joy at seeing the arrogant detective humbled. There was still a force at large, something Stark had unwittingly unleashed. Something that would kill again if it wasn’t stopped. Caffran’s failure didn’t change that gruesome fact.
As he opened the door to his office, Byron was surprised to find Beverly lying on the couch, an old Navajo rug drawn over her as a blanket. It was one of the most frustrating things about the desert that it could be so hellishly hot during the day and then try to do its best to freeze the marrow in a person’s bones at night. He shook his head in silent appreciation of his secretary’s devotion, though he wondered what could have been so important as to compel her to stay so late.
Creeping through the outer office so as not to wake Beverly, Byron noticed the newspaper lying on his secretary’s desk. It was opened to the classifieds. Byron had placed an ad after leaving Daimler’s the other day, hoping to attract the notice of whoever had purchased the katana from the pawnshop. He hadn’t mentioned any specifics and certainly nothing about ghosts and curses. Mention of a reward for a personal possession that had been misplaced would go much further to accomplish his purpose.
While he was looking over the paper, he heard a low groan and the sound of the blanket sliding to the floor. Even with her hair tussled and her clothes rumpled, Beverly managed to affect a certain degree of poise as she stirred from her sleep.
“I was trying not to wake you,” Byron apologized.
Beverly slipped off the couch and stretched her cramped body. “Just be sure to sign off on my overtime,” she said, not quite managing to stifle a yawn. She glanced at the clock on the wall and frowned. “I overslept. I was going to call your lawyer at ten. Caffran kept you away so long I thought for certain he’d arrested you.”
“Nothing like that,” Byron said. “Caffran brought me down to gloat at cracking the case. He wasn’t happy when things took a turn he didn’t expect.”
“Did he find the sword?” Beverly asked. She looked around for her shoes then shrugged and walked across the office in her stockings. A wave of her hand moved Byron away from her desk. She opened the top drawer and removed a slip of paper. “I ask because you had an answer to your ad. A Mr. Delmar called inquiring about the reward. He sounded authentic on the phone, but if Caffran found the sword…”
Byron took the paper from his secretary and glanced at the phone number she’d written. “Caffran didn’t find the katana,” he told Beverly. “He found the man it originally belonged to. Then lost him again.” His expression darkened as he met the questioning look in her eyes. “His suspect killed himself in his cell.”
Beverly’s eyes widened with surprise. “How awful,” she said. A sudden thought came to her as she recollected something she’d read in a recent article from a European journal that she’d clipped out for Byron’s archives. “That means it’s over? These murders, I mean. If this psychokinesis theory is right, then this man who killed himself could have been the source of whatever force has been doing the killing.”
Byron tapped the paper with Delmar’s number on it. “There may be something to psychokinesis,” he told Beverly, “but we have conclusive proof that whatever power this man Stark unleashed, it persists even after his death.”
“Then Delmar is in danger of being killed,” Beverly said.
“Anyone who takes possession of that katana is in danger,” Byron told her. He quickly averted his eyes, but not before Beverly noted his expression.
“Oh, Byron, you can’t mean to…” she stopped and sat down, her body shivering at the fright that had come upon her. “Do you even know what this force is? Do you even have any idea how to stop it? Because if you don’t, you’ll just be throwing your life away for nothing!”
Byron took her hand in his, pangs of guilt stabbing through him as he felt the tremble still quivering through her. “I have an idea of what it might be. Stark’s letters, his description of the murdering ghost. He said it wore a long toga and had no feet with a face like marble and eyes like coal. That suggests something to me, and if I’m right, I know a way that has traditionally always worked to exorcise such a malignant spirit.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Beverly demanded.
Reaching into his pocket, Byron drew out a tiny silver case embossed with a Maltese cross and a pair of swords. He shook the little box so that Beverly could hear the contents rattling inside. “If I’m wrong, at least I have the knowledge and the tools to make a fight of it. That’s more advantage than most people.”
Acres of flowers gently swayed in the crisp desert wind just south of Baseline Road. The Japanese flower gardens weren’t as extensive as they had been before the war. Like the rest of the Japanese-Americans living in the western part of the United States, those dwelling in Arizona had been removed to internment camps for the duration. On their release, many of them found they’d lost their affection for their old homes and moved away. Others found that their property had been foreclosed upon or otherwise stripped away from them during their incarceration. A rugged core, however, remained and stubbornly continued to grow flowers under the baking desert sun.
Byron stared out across the fields, appreciating both the beauty of the flowers and the tranquillity of the setting. The distant presence of palm trees and saguaro cactus provided an incongruous note of discord, and the bleak brown mass of Camelback Mountain on the horizon left no illusion about where he was. This was the image of the Orient, nothing more.
Byron tried to keep that in mind as he passed through the round gate and stepped into the walled yard of Frank Hashimoto. A cherry tree spread its branches over much of the yard, providing shade to a little pond filled with koi. Stone lanterns and carved temple dogs rose from intricately patterned beds of flowers. The house standing at the centre of the yard looked as though it might have been lifted from the middle of Kyoto. Sloped tile roof, the raised wooden foundation, paper partitions – everything echoed a Japan that had been fading away even in its native land.
Just as he was crossing the red wooden bridge that spanned the koi pond, Byron saw the door of the house slide open. A bald, middle-aged Japanese emerged. He wore the robes of a Buddhist monk, a string of prayer beads hanging around his neck. As he stepped down from his house, the man put on a pair of sandals. He folded his hands together and bowed his head for a moment, then came scrambling across the yard towards his visitor.
“You are Mr. Byron Flay?” the Japanese asked, his English betraying only the slightest element of accent behind it. “Yoshi said that I should expect you this afternoon.”
Byron bowed to the monk. “I am honoured that you are willing to receive me, Master Hashimoto. I know it must be a burden to invite a gaijin to your home.”
Hashimoto smiled and a brief laugh rumbled through his chest. “We are not in Japan, Mr. Flay. I am Nisei, just like your friend Yoshi. When my parents left Japan, they took only the good things with them. They, and the Buddha, taught me that all men are the same under the skin. It is the quality in their hearts that defines their value.”
The smile flickered and Hashimoto’s eyes fell to the box Byron held under one arm. “Yoshi told me about your problem. That is the sword?”
Holding the box out to him, Byron let the monk open it. “I met Yoshi during the war. He always spoke very highly of you and, should we say, your abilities.”
Hashimoto stared down at the katana, the last of his bucolic attitude fading from him. His expression grew steadily more grave as his eyes studied the weapon, inspecting the guard and the sharkskin hilt. “There is no mystery about my ability to identify this sword. Any student of the history of swordmaking in Japan could tell you about this blade. In English, you would call it ‘Moonkiller’. It was forged in the 15th century for a samurai named Nakadai Oneda. The sword is the soul of a samurai, it is his very essence. They become one, as integral to one another as flesh and bone. A good soul will make a good sword. An evil soul creates an evil sword. Nakadai was the most notorious villain of his time, a fiendish warrior without mercy or scruple. No man could stand against him in battle or match his swordsmanship. His evil ended only when his enemies caught him in the house of his favourite mistress and set it aflame with him inside.” Hashimoto lifted his eyes and gave Byron a stern look. “I can understand how such a blade could cause such misery, but how is it that this infamous sword is so far from where it belongs?”
“I can offer only speculation on that point,” Byron said. “We know it was owned by a man who served with the Marines in the Pacific. From that, I speculate that he captured it from a Japanese officer and brought it home as a memento.”
Hashimoto nodded his head. “A memento mori, of sorts. The Imperialists were very fond of evoking the samurai legacy to incite the passions and pride of Japan. All of the nation’s officers were presented with a sword before being sent to fight. Most bore nothing more than a shin-gunto, a factory-made facsimile of a samurai’s blade. Some, however, the descendents of the true samurai, carried with them a true katana, family heirlooms passed down through generations. Your Marine must have captured this weapon from a descendent of Nakadai himself. When he took that sword, he took more than he sword. He took the soul of Nakadai.”
“Why if it is such an evil blade did its evil remain passive for so long?” Byron wondered. “Stark owned this sword for at least ten years and it never manifested any sinister powers. It wasn’t until he killed his wife with the blade that the spirit was unleashed.”
“You answer your own question,” Hashimoto declared. He strode towards his house, beckoning Byron to follow. “Evil isn’t something that announces itself in thunder and lightning. It is subtle, asserting itself with dark whispers and malignant thoughts. It is the thief in the night who steals into a home and bides its time so that it can take whatever it wants. Only when it is too late is evil revealed. All these years, the spirit of Nakadai has been whispering to the man who captured the sword, poisoning his mind. It is significant that this Marine killed his wife with the sword. That is doubtless the moment that freed Nakadai’s ghost. It is said that Moonkiller’s first victim was Nakadai’s wife, a woman he had come to find an obstacle to his ambitions but one whom he couldn’t divorce for fear of offending her father. His solution, according to legend, was to kill her himself and leave her body where the blame would fall upon Edo’s Eta community.”
Byron followed Hashimoto into his house. The room he was lead into was something of a shrine, a great hall with a pinewood floor and paper walls. Light came from a few electric lanterns strung from the beams overhead, but that was the only thing that smacked of modernity within the chamber. At the far end of the room, a great bronze statue of the Buddha reposed on a stone pedestal, an urn of joss sticks smouldering on the floor before it.
The shrine drew Byron’s attention only until he noticed the pattern that had been drawn on the floor at the centre of the room. It was a strange octagonal shape, with the characters representing the mystical elements drawn into the convergence points of each angle. At first glance, he thought the shape had been drawn with chalk, but as he noted its gritty texture he realized it had been made from salt.
“Nakadai has become an onryo, a vengeful ghost,” Hashimoto explained as he walked to the shrine and bowed before the Buddha. “Such an old and malignant spirit will not submit easily.”
Byron followed Hashimoto. “Then perhaps all we can do is pray for success,” he said, taking a joss stick and lighting it from the tip of one already smouldering in the urn. “When Stark freed the onryo, I believe he established a connection with Nakadai. That is how he could foresee the murders before the ghost attacked.”
“An interesting idea,” Hashimoto agreed. “But as you yourself have observed, the Marine’s death doesn’t put an end to Nakadai’s bloodlust. The connection has been made already. His katana has been used for a ruthless murder. It is that profanation that gives the onryo its power.”
“How long before we can expect the ghost to manifest again?” Byron asked. From his own researches, the spectre of Nakadai was behaving with far more viciousness and frequency than most apparitions. “I am worried that if we can’t stop the onryo quickly, it will kill the last man who owned its sword.”
The monk gave Byron a grave look. “There is no saying how quickly Nakadai will demand more blood. You have, of course, realized that after the last owner, you are the next he would have as his victim?”
“I chose to accept that danger,” Byron said.
“There are things we can do to try to stop Nakadai,” Hashimoto said. “But if we do, it is a certainty that the onryo will become enraged. It will forget this Delmar and come for you.”
Byron felt his heart go cold as he imagined the havoc Nakadai could wreck upon his body. He could see in his mind his body lying slashed and mangled in Hashimoto’s garden. Just the same, he also knew he had to try to put the murdering ghost to rest. “If we have a real chance to exorcise Nakadai’s spirit, then I cannot let fear sway me.”
Hashimoto nodded and walked towards the octagon. “I prepared this circle when your problem was described to me.” He held the box towards Byron. “Remove Moonkiller. Place the katana within the octagon. The blade must point to the character for steel, the hilt must rest above the symbol for water. Doing so will bind the sword, fixing not only its substance but its essence within the octagon.”
Carefully, Byron removed the katana and arranged it as Hashimoto requested. He noted with some dismay the caution the monk exhibited, never allowing himself to come into direct contact with any part of the sword. It didn’t bode well for Hashimoto’s confidence that the onryo could be subdued that he was so wary about the blade.
Once the sword was in place, Hashimoto anointed it with a tiny brass censer, tapping beads of water all along the blade and clear down to the butt of the sharkskin hilt. He repeated the process, tapping away until he reached the tip of the blade once more. Setting aside the censer, he sat down on the floor and clapped his hands to
gether with such force that the sound seemed to rumble through the whole house. As the echoes faded away, the monk began to chant.
Immediately, Byron felt the atmosphere within the hall become thick and oppressive. The lamps seemed to loose their vibrancy, as though the light from their bulbs had to fight its way through some obscuring fog. A chill crept into the room, the temperature dropping with such speed that Hashimoto’s breath was visible as the monk prayed.
Byron knew the sound he heard wasn’t anything truly audible, but rather something that reverberated inside his own mind. Yet it felt more real to him than anything else. It was the boom of war drums, the ancient taiko of Japan, a rolling thunder of violence that crashed and roared all around him. He recited fragments from the Key of Solomon, abjurations against the demons of air and wind, hoping the eldritch spell would diminish the pounding drums. He was relieved when the sound began to lessen, but soon wondered if he could take any credit for the diminishment of the cacophonous thunder.
Slowly, something was taking shape just beyond the octagon. Like a mist gradually forming against glass, a figure began to manifest. Byron likened it to the way a picture took shape within the confines of a photographer’s darkroom. Only this was a three-dimensional image, a thing with at least the illusions of solidity and substance.
The ‘long toga’ Stark had tried to describe in his letters was revealed as a white kimono, the cobweb mon of Nakadai’s daimyo etched in black over the heart. A black sash circled the waist beneath which were thrust the scabbards of a katana and the shorter wakizashi. The face was colourless, all life and vitality drained from it to leave the skin pallid and drawn. Nakadai’s features lacked the stamp of cruelty and malice that Byron had expected, instead they were cold and rigid, possessed of a hideous serenity. The onryo’s face was that of a man who felt neither joy or guilt when he killed but rather the icy detachment of someone simply doing what he felt was necessary.