A deep sadness battled with the fear gripping my heart. Still no sign of the mother, and as I pulled into the outskirts, towards the more residential areas, the smallest bud of hope began to grow. She could have easily killed me by now. I didn’t claim to understand how angry spirits worked, but surely after her rampage at HQ, causing one man to die in his high-speed car wouldn’t have been too much work, if that was what she really wanted.
I pulled into my driveway and turned the car off. Silence. Not even a flicker of light in the house. Was the boy okay? The car door sounded especially loud in the silence of the night, and the front door creaked as I turned the handle and pushed it in.
“Rai?” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Rai? You here?”
I stepped into the lounge room. A body sat on the couch in the darkness, staring at the wall.
“Rai?”
The boy turned his head to me and smiled.
“Hey. What are you doing?”
“Talking to Mama.”
My blood froze and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Mama?” I looked around, waiting for her to pounce. “She’s here? Now?”
The boy turned and looked down the hall. Wet, muddy footprints led to my bedroom.
“Stay here,” I said, my heart pounding. I followed the trail, my footsteps careful and deliberate, like trying to avoid nails, and pushed the bedroom door open. It moaned before coming to a stop. Soft moonlight fell on the bed, almost serene in the tense atmosphere that threatened to swallow me whole.
Nobody there.
The air felt damp against my skin, like the humidity one might expect of Rakucho at this time of year, and yet it was cold. Too cold. Like icicles poking my skin all over. Another chill ran down my spine and I stepped back into the hallway.
“What the…?”
The muddy footprints in the hall seemed bigger than before. Wetter. I followed them back down the hall, each getting larger the closer I got to the lounge.
As I reached the end I stopped. My heart pounded, crawling its way into my throat as my stomach twisted. All words died on the end of my tongue. The stench washed over me. The stench of stagnant water. The stench of bloat and rot.
The stench of death.
The mother stood in the middle of the room, the boy swinging his legs up and down on the edge of the couch.
This was it. No more running. I was all that was left. With no more Harada, the boy was safe. He could live his life without fear of retribution just by being alive. By being witness to the murder of his own mother at yakuza hands. All over a single apartment. Over a construction project that Harada hoped would see him rise within the senior management ranks and would now never see finished. All this over one woman’s refusal to give up her home. Her family.
I was all that remained, and my turn had finally come.
36
“Come on, then. Do it!” I forced as much anger into my voice as I could. Whatever it took to drown out the fear throbbing in my head. “I’m right here! The last one! Do it! Kill me!”
Not too long ago her hands had been clenched around my spine, ready to twist and end my life on a secluded section of Higashi Bay. Nobody would have found me until early morning, when the fishermen went about their day. Nobody would have missed me either. Not then, and certainly not now.
“I did what I could for the boy.” My voice wavered. “I want you to know that, before you…” Before you turn me into a human pretzel? Stuff me full of toilet paper? Smother me with my own rug in front of the boy?
Yet the mother’s attention was elsewhere. She knelt before the boy, a pale, bloated hand reaching out for his face. Something glued my feet to the ground, and my screams reached deaf ears. “You leave the boy alone!” I wanted to scream. “He did nothing! He never did anything wrong! He never even had a chance! Leave him be!”
Were they my words, or someone else’s? A distant memory I couldn’t quite recover? Did it matter? She reached out for the boy, grasping his face with both hands, and leaned closer. The boy nodded, listening attentively to something shared between the two of them, and then he reached up, wrapping a tiny hand around her pale wrist.
“Leave him alone!” I screamed again, and the boy turned to face me. He wasn’t scared or frightened for his life. For the first time, his eyes seemed… content. His mother stood up and made her way towards me. Her feet dragged as her neck jerked. Her arms swung and lay limp at her sides, swaying in the air like seaweed in a current. Before I knew it she stood before me, as though pieces of my memory went mysteriously blank, and I jumped back, the force that held me in place finally relenting.
The mother looked down at me. Nobody had ever looked down at me before, and no doubt the fear and confusion in my eyes betrayed me.
“Do it,” I said again. “I have nothing left. You want revenge? Well, do it. Kill me. Just… don’t do it in front of the boy.”
Her eyes peered into my soul. The taste of dirty swamp water filled my mouth once again, and something cold touched my bones. Her eyes locked me in place, only inches from her own. Her flesh, bloated and green, throbbed and shivered, like watching something rot in real time. I feared that if I touched it, it would fall away beneath my fingers, leaving nothing but a grinning skull behind. Yet she did not grin. She didn’t smile, she didn’t snarl; she remained expressionless, only her eyes betraying her true feelings.
Vengeance. She wanted me dead, and the ice sliding along my bones reminded me of it. Something unnatural had invaded my body, and there was nothing I could do about it. A little twist, a little snap, and I’d be gone. Just like that. But vengeance wasn’t the only thing. The ice snaked up my spine, setting my skin alight, and stopped at the base of my neck. Then she stepped back, looked at the boy, and something rolled down her cheek. Not the oozing swamp water coating her dead skin, but something else.
A tear? No…
Then she was gone. As though she’d never been there in the first place. The stench and mud stains on the floor said otherwise, but the moment she disappeared, the icy grip that held me tight dissipated and the familiar warmth of the Rakucho summer began to seep back in. I ran over to the boy and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Hey, hey, you okay? Did she…?” Did she what? Hurt you? I ran a hand over his head, turned him from side to side, lifted his sleeves, but nothing. No visible signs of injury, anyway.
“Mama said it’s okay now.” He smiled. I swallowed.
“She said what?”
“She said it’s okay,” he repeated. “You’ll look after me now.”
“Is that… Is that what she said?”
He nodded. “She said she has to find Papa now. She doesn’t know where he is. When she finds him, she’ll come back.”
“She’ll come back?”
Again he nodded. “Mama says I need someone to look after me. I’m not big enough yet. But when I am, and she finds Papa, she’ll come back.”
The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach sank even lower. She’d be back. Of course she’d be back. I was still alive, after all. Without me, the boy would have no-one. He’d be on the streets all by himself, and unlikely to survive in a place as rough as Rakucho. With me, he stood a chance. The mother knew that. But my life was on borrowed time. His time. As long as the boy was alive and needed me, she’d leave me be. One day she would return, however, and when she did, it would be to finish things. Once and for all.
“I also saw Aunt Kazumi.”
The boy’s words brought me back. “W-What?” My voice cracked.
“She said she misses you. She’ll be waiting, but she has to go now.”
I fought back the tears in my eyes and stood up. The room was empty but for the two of us. Not even the faintest sense of Kazumi. She’d already moved on.
“Say, you wanna take a little trip?” I did my best to keep my voice from cracking.
The boy smiled and nodded. It wouldn’t be long until the
Toyotomi discovered my whereabouts and decided to pay me a little visit. We had to get out of here before then.
“Alright. I’ll grab some food, then let’s go on a nice long drive. Somewhere far from here, yeah? And you can tell me all about what Aunt Kazumi said.”
The boy nodded and jumped off the couch. I looked around the house one last time. Nothing of worth to take with me. Nothing that mattered now, anyway. I grabbed some snacks from the cupboard and followed the boy out the door. The bright lights of Rakucho shone in the distance. The only home I’d ever known. A fresh pang of sadness filled my heart. All those years. All those memories. Never again would I see her bright lights, smell her cheap food, get lost in her maze of back alleys, and fight for my life and that of my brothers. It was all gone now. Never again.
“See ya later, Rakucho.”
37
Getting papers for the boy’s new name was easy. Finding a place to live and start a new life, not so much.
I couldn’t put the boy in an orphanage. I’d been there and done that myself, and wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy. Besides, I didn’t think the mother would agree with that, and inside, I couldn’t bear it either. I left a note for the Toyotomi on my way out, whatever good that might do. A simple “Congratulations on your consolidation of Rakucho.” Enough to get the point across. Would they come looking for me? Perhaps, but I suspected Toyotomi had bigger fish to fry. Like explaining to the Higashi-kai how one of their clans got wiped off the face of the earth overnight and avoiding their subsequent wrath.
We were on the road when news of the massacre finally reached the public. Of course, the police chalked it up to a bloody gang war gone violently wrong, but I sure would have loved to have seen the look on the coroner’s face as he tried to explain exactly how all those bodies died. Not that it really mattered in the end. A yakuza war that ended in the deaths of countless members was only a win for the police, no matter the cause. The public didn’t need to know the hows and whys. Only the end result. Another victory for the good guys! Justice returns to the streets!
“We’ll be keeping a closer eye on gang activities within Rakucho,” the inspector announced to waiting news outlets on TV. “On top of the rising number of murders in recent weeks, cleaning up Rakucho’s streets has become our number one priority.”
“You mean the Rakucho Nightcrawler?” one reporter called out. “Do you have any suspects yet? Have you heard the rumours that there might be two of them now?”
“We’re investigating all possibilities,” the inspector said, scratching his nose. “We’ll keep you updated as the case progresses. Thank you all.”
The streets were long and the scenery unchanging. The boy slept most of the time and drew pictures when awake. The violent swirls of black rage changed to flowers and fish, dogs and trees. It was rice harvesting season, so finding a farm in the countryside looking for some help wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Just something to get us started, our foot in the door. Enrol the boy in a local school, and then find our own little farm somewhere eventually. It would work out. It had to. If it didn’t…
A chill ran down my spine. We wouldn’t ever truly be safe. The Toyotomi could come looking for us at any moment, wanting to finish the job. And one day, perhaps when I least suspected it, his mother would come to claim her dues. I’d do my best to make sure the boy had the life I never had, even to have the family that was taken away from him, but regardless, one day, she would come.
I took a deep breath before letting it back out. Well, at least I would be with Kazumi then.
Then, finally, we could both rest.
WANT EVEN MORE?
Also available in The Torihada Files:
Kage
Jukai
Kirei
Aokigahara: The Truth Behind Japan's Suicide Forest
Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends
Volume One
Volume Two
Reikan: The most haunted locations in Japan
Kowabana: ‘True’ Japanese scary stories from around the internet:
Volume One
Volume Two
Volume Three
Origins
Volume Five
Read new stories each week at Kowabana.net, or get them delivered straight to your ear-buds with the Kowabana podcast!
RATE THIS BOOK
Thank you for reading Kazoku! Please take a moment to leave a few words on Amazon and let others know what you thought. Every single review, no matter how small, helps others find my work and allows me to continue writing more books like this in the future!
Leave a rating on Amazon
JOIN THE NEWSLETTER
Want even more? Join The Screaming Bonsai and never miss out on a release again. Get news about upcoming releases, sales, updates and even pictures of my devilishly cute cats!
http://www.kowabana.net/newsletter/
Join now and also receive an exclusive Torihada Files novella, as well as Kaidanshi, a collection featuring Japanese horror translations, urban legends, baffling crimes, and more that you won’t find anywhere else!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara A. Devlin studied Japanese at the University of Queensland before moving to Japan in 2005. She lived in Matsue, the birthplace of Japanese ghost stories, for 10 years, where her love for Japanese horror really grew. And with Izumo, the birthplace of Japanese mythology, just a stone’s throw away, she was never too far from the mysterious. You can find her collection of horror and fantasy writings at taraadevlin.com and translations of Japanese horror at kowabana.net.
Read more of Tara A. Devlin’s works on Amazon!
FOLLOW HER ON
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
Kazoku Page 16