The Man From Taured: A thrilling suspense novel by the new master of horror (World's Scariest Legends Book 3)

by Jeremy Bates

  I’d last seen Damien two days before I’d boarded flight JL077. A driver usually picked him up from the international school he attended, though I let Bless know I would be picking him up that day. I took him to Dairy Queen for ice cream and to a toy store, where I told him he could select something under five hundred pesos. This was only ten dollars or so, but it was also about what a McDonald’s worker earned for a ten-hour shift in the country. I was trying to instill some money sense into him, because God knows he wasn’t getting any from his mother. She bought him whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, without batting an eyelid. We argued about such parenting issues all the time, yet Bless wasn’t going to change her mindset. She’d grown up a spoiled brat, and she didn’t see anything wrong with our son being one either.

  I should take Damien to Taured next year, I thought sleepily. Next summer, or perhaps autumn, when the leaves are turning, and the air is crisp and ripe with the smells of apples, pears, and mandarins. It’s time the boy connects with his Tauredian heritage, time he gets a sense of life outside of around-the-clock nannies and drivers and golden spoons…

  Moments later I was asleep, and at some point during the night, I began to dream.

  Chapter 6

  Cold.

  So cold.

  I felt the coldness deep within my bones and beneath my skin.

  “We’ve got to warm you up,” Smiley told me. Her wool-knit hat was pulled down to her blonde eyebrows. Her blue eyes shone fiercely. “You can take my jacket,” she added, starting to tug down the zipper.

  “No,” I said, touching her hand to prevent her from undoing her jacket. “We need to g-go.”

  “You’re shivering.”

  “I am fine.”

  “I can’t see your skis anywhere. They must be buried. Should we dig?”

  I shook my head. “Never f-find them. You go. Down to the res-resort. Get help. I will follow your trail.”

  “No way, Gaston,” she said. “Take my skis. You’re the one who needs help. I’ll walk.”

  “I am not leaving you out h-here.” An ice-cold shudder scythed through me.

  “Please, Gaston! Take my skis!”

  “No!” I shoved myself to my feet. “Stay with me then. But we need to g-go.”

  Nodding, she stood and cantilevered her skis over her shoulder, and we set off down the steep slope together. Snowflakes fell in a silent monochromatic drizzle. Our breath fogged in the frosty air. Despite the steel-gray clouds hiding the sun, the ambient glare off the snow forced us to squint. A slow itch began to spread through the front of my thighs. It was almost a fiery sensation and contrasted sharply with the icy numbness in my chest and arms.

  At one point when we stopped to rest, Smiley asked, “Are we sure we’re going the right way?”

  “We came from that way.” I pointed to a sprawling evergreen forest to the east. “As long as we keep going back that way, we should come to a run eventually.”

  “How long do you think it will take us?”

  “An hour? Less?” I checked my wristwatch. It was two-thirty.

  This was not welcome news. Winter nights came quickly and early in Taured. We most likely wouldn’t reach the nearest trail before it got dark.

  As soon as we passed beneath the first boughs of the towering pine trees, the daylight was replaced with somber half-tones and harrying shadows. The snow came to our knees in places, sapping our strength. Soon we began taking turns following in each other’s tracks. When we came to a ridge forty-five minutes later, I scampered up it with a burst of renewed energy, expecting to see a groomed run and a chairlift on the other side.

  What greeted me was more forest.

  For as far as I could see.

  Smiley appeared beside me, panting hard. She gasped in despair.

  “This is not right,” I said. “We should have come to a trail by now.”

  “We’ve gone the wrong way,” she said flatly. It wasn’t an accusatory statement; just a fact.

  “But we came west. We have been heading back east.”

  She looked up at the cloud-covered sky. “Wish we could see where the sun is.”

  “I am sure we have been going east. We just have to…keep going.”

  “It’s getting dark. We probably only have another thirty minutes of light.”

  I didn’t know what to say in response to this. Was it possible we were going to be stuck in the forest overnight? We’d freeze to death.

  Smiley seemed to be reading my thoughts and added, “We should find some sort of protection from the wind. We’ll have each other’s body heat. We’ll be okay.”

  “I should not have let you stay with me,” I told her. “You would have been safe at the bottom of the mountain by now.”

  “Or I could be lost on my own. Don’t think about it, Gaston. But let’s find some shelter.”

  The lee side of the ridge was steep. My controlled descent quickly morphed into a faster and faster run, then a slide—and about halfway down I lost a glove, though I couldn’t stop myself to retrieve it. Smiley tumbled to a stop beside me. She was grinning wickedly.

  “I lost a glove,” I told her. “Halfway down.”

  Her grin vanished. We both looked up the ridge.

  “I’ll go find it,” she stated.

  “There is no time.”

  We came across a large rock wall jutting up from the ground. We dug snow from its base, creating a little burrow where we could both take shelter out of the cutting wind. By the time we had cleared enough snow, the stars had come out and it was difficult to see.

  Abruptly a distant, persistent noise emanated from the rock, the heavy whumping of a bell clotted with mud…

  ∆∆∆

  I opened my eyes, expecting coldness and death, what I’d experienced on the mountain during what would become the longest and most terrifying night of my life. Instead, I was greeted by dull sunlight. For a moment I had no idea where I was. Then I remembered I was in a hotel room. The Narita Airport Rest House—and with this name the events of the previous day returned with overwhelming force.

  The numbers of the retro clock built into the bedside table read 9:30 a.m. Despite sleeping for nearly ten hours straight, I felt stiff and miserable. As I sat up and pushed the covers aside, I heard the noise that had lured me out of my dream:

  WHUD, WHUD, WHUD.

  “Yes, yes,” I shouted. “I am coming.”

  I stood and rubbed my eyes. The sash of my yukata had come undone while I slept. I tied it once again, then opened the door. My two favorite security escorts stood in the hallway. The older one looked as though he’d eaten lemons for breakfast, while the younger sported bags the color of jelly under his eyes from a lack of sleep.

  “I will have two eggs over easy,” I said brightly, “whole wheat toast, two rashers of bacon, crispy, and a glass of orange—”

  “Get dressed,” the old guard grunted.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Get dressed,” he repeated.

  ∆∆∆

  I dressed in my tweed suit that I’d hung in the closet the night before in the hope gravity would straighten out the wrinkles. I brushed my teeth with the toothbrush the hotel provided and combed my hair the best I could with my fingers. When I was suitably presentable, I met my security escorts in the hallway. We walked back to Terminal 1, took an escalator up to the third floor, and passed through the Duty Free and shopping area. In a small room that smelled of fresh paint, a police officer took my fingerprints and mugshot. He made me give a statement about everything that had occurred thus far.

  Finally, I was led back to the dreaded Special Examination Room in which my misadventure had begun fourteen or so hours earlier. I entered the little white cube. The door was shut behind me. I took a seat in one of the chairs. With nothing to do but think, it wasn’t long before I was once more trying to figure out what had landed me in this ugly predicament. People, I presume, were detained every day in airports for any number of reasons. Intelligen
ce, suspicious behavior, and profiling were the big three that came to mind. I certainly wasn’t a spy for a foreign government. I hadn’t acted nervous or suspiciously at the immigration counter the day before. And I hardly fit the profile of a terrorist. To the latter point, I wasn’t flying into or leaving a troubled geopolitical area. This was Japan, one of the safest countries on the planet.

  Eventually all roads led back to Hallie Smith, the British embassy woman. Her disappearing act was simply too out-of-the-ordinary to not be somehow related to my troubles.

  Had she slipped contraband into my luggage when I wasn’t looking back at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila? Heroin or cocaine? A weapon or explosives? Some other banned item? Was she in cahoots with the fat man? Could they only afford one business-class ticket between themselves, so they’d decided to share it, swapping seats halfway through the flight?

  The more I thought about this last possibility, the more frighteningly plausible it became to me. I tried to remember whether I’d seen either of them before the flight at the airport—

  The door to the Special Examination Room opened. For a brief moment, I half expected Hallie Smith and the fat man to be marched inside wearing frowns and handcuffs. Instead, a porcine Japanese man in a dark gray suit bustled into the room with a hurried air about him. He bowed slightly before dumping his weight into the chair across the table from me. Puffing for breath, he said, “Good morning!”

  He seemed pleasant-natured, which boosted my spirits, and I replied, “Good morning.”

  “My name is Yasuo Supa,” he said, setting a clipboard and micro-recorder on the table before him. “You can call me Supa-san. I’m a Special Inquiry Officer at this airport,” he continued in very good English. “I understand you stayed at the Rest House last night?”

  I nodded.

  “It was satisfactory?”

  “Better, I suspect, than the detention facility or whatever it was where they first took me.”

  Supa-san was nodding. “The Landing Prevention Facility,” he said, using a handkerchief to dab perspiration from his forehead. He tucked the hanky away, then used the end of his silk tie to polish the fingerprint-smudged lenses of his dainty eyeglasses.

  “Is something like that even legal? It was awfully sketchy.”

  Supa-san kept nodding. “All major airports have jails of sorts. In Japan, they exist in Narita, Haneda, Chubu, and Kansai.”

  “Who were the security guards who took me there? They were not immigration officials.”

  “No, they work for a private security company. By law, airlines are responsible for passengers traveling with invalid travel documentation, so they contract security guards to transfer any such passengers to a detention facility, or to some other appropriate lodging.”

  “Like the Narita Rest House.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I guess that explains the questionable behavior of the security guards.”

  “Questionable behavior?”

  “They demanded I pay twenty thousand yen for some rice and noodles.”

  Supa-san started shaking his head.

  “Not to mention another thirty thousand yen for the hotel room,” I continued, galvanizing my indignation. “But according to you, it sounds as though Japan Airlines, being responsible for its passengers, should have paid the bill?”

  “They did pay the bill,” he said. “Unfortunately for you, some of the security staff extort money from our detainees in exchange for what they call ‘good service.’”

  “I knew it!” I exclaimed. “Those scumbags. ‘Good service.’ Right.”

  “It’s shameful,” Supa-san agreed. “Shameful for Japan. The Immigration Bureau needs to implement an official monitoring system to oversee the private security companies.”

  I recalled the missing telephone in my hotel room. “Is the Narita Rest House funded by the Immigration Bureau too?”

  “We own some of the rooms, yes. Usually, they’re where we lodge children and minors.”

  I marveled at the extent to which I’d been pawned. Even so, I was gratified that I was finally starting to get some answers. I said, “Can you tell me why I am being held? You mentioned invalid travel documents. Is something wrong with my passport? Nobody has told me what is going on except that it is an immigration matter.”

  “We will address that very shortly, just as soon as my colleague—”

  The door to the room opened and a squat, angry woman in a navy uniform entered.

  Supa-san stood and bowed. The woman bowed in return. They both sat.

  “This is Wakako Shimizu,” Supa-san said, bowing yet again at no one in particular. “She’s an immigration inspector. She will be conducting the interview. Hopefully we will be able to get all the facts and sort this situation out.” He turned on the micro-recorder and slid it into the center of the table. “May we begin?”

  Chapter 7

  “What’s your name?” Wakako Shimizu asked me brusquely. Her wiry black hair, graying at the roots, formed a triangular helmet. Wrinkles and sunspots marred her face and neck, as well as the backs of her pudgy hands. Drawn-on eyebrows framed eyes the color of coal, and her lips seemed locked in a tight, permanent frown. My immediate impression was of a lady who might spend her free time bullying children on social media.

  “Gaston Green,” I replied. “Why am I being detained?”

  “I ask the questions!” she snapped.

  I flinched in surprise. Supa-san’s polite and unassuming manner had caused me to lower my guard. “You can ask your questions, madame,” I told her, “but you do not have to be rude about it.”

  “Do not tell me how to act!”

  “Tell me why I am being detained.”

  “You do not ask the questions!”

  “Relax,” I said, holding up my hands. “I am going to answer your questions.”

  “You will answer them now!”

  “Hey, madame—cool it. I have already told you I will answer your questions. But if this is how you are going to behave, maybe I will not. I am entitled to a phone call, no? Maybe I should call an attorney.”

  “An attorney?” She snorted. “You are not a Japanese citizen. You haven’t been charged with a criminal offence, so you do not have a right to an attorney.”

  An epiphany struck me. “No, I have not been charged—so I am not being legally detained, am I?” I’d watched enough TV and movies to know that often people detained by law enforcement were free to leave at any time during their interrogation, but they simply didn’t know enough about their rights to do so. Consequently, perhaps I’d been free to go this entire time, which was why nobody would come straight out and tell me why I was being held. Emboldened, I stood. “I think I would like to leave now.”

  Both Wakako Shimizu and Supa-san sprang to their feet.

  “Please sit back down,” Supa-san said.

  “You cannot go anywhere!” Wakako Shimizu said.

  I remained standing. “If I am not being charged with a crime, you cannot hold me here against my will.”

  “Of course we can,” Wakako Shimizu said. “Narita is a special area.”

  Supa-san added almost apologetically, “Immigration officials can issue a detention order for an initial period of thirty days when there are reasonable grounds to believe that someone falls under any of the items of Article 24. This can then be extended for an additional thirty days, or until the time deportation becomes possible.”

  I let the bleak information sink in, then said, “So I am being deported?”

  “Stop!” Wakako Shimizu all but screeched. “Stop asking questions! Sit down now!”

  I glared at her, but I sat back in my seat.

  The two immigration officials sat too.

  Wakako Shimizu’s stygian eyes didn’t waver from mine. Summoning civility with what seemed like great difficulty, she said, “Where did you board your flight to Japan?”

  “Manila,” I told her, noticing Supa-san scribbling something on his clipboard. Th
en, so there was no misunderstanding, I added, “The Philippines.”

  “Do you live there?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Ten years or thereabouts.”

  “What is your nationality?”

  “Tauredian,” I said.

  Wakako Shimizu—or just Wacky, as I was beginning to think of her as—frowned. Her eyes hardened to chips of black diamonds.

  “What?” I asked, looking from her to Supa-san, who seemed preoccupied with his notes.

  “I am from Taured,” I clarified. “In Europe.”

  “Where is it in Europe?” Wacky asked.

  “Between France and Spain, in the eastern Pyrenees mountains.”

  “When was the last time you returned to Taured?”

  “You have my passport. Check the stamp—?”

  “Are you refusing to answer the question? You must say exactly, in detail!”

  “Okay, okay, relax.” I worked my memory. “2014, I believe. Yes, it was 2014, six years ago. I went back to celebrate my younger brother’s thirtieth birthday. I think I stayed for about two weeks.”

  “Why are you coming to Japan now?”

  “For work.”

  “What is your job?”

  I hesitated for only a moment before deciding on my answer. “I am an ambassador,” I told her.

  “You are an ambassador?” Supa-san said, leaning forward so his belly pressed again the round edge of the table. “For your country?”

  “For Glenfiddich,” I said.

  “Where is Glenfiddich?” Wacky demanded.

  “In Scotland.”

  “Ah! So you are from Scotland! You lied to us—”

  “I did not,” I said, interrupting her. “Glenfiddich is a single malt Scotch whisky owned and produced by William Grant & Sons in Dufftown, Scotland. Maybe you have heard of it?”