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

by Jeremy Bates

  “Aside from my father’s Black Bottle as a little boy? Yes—Rosebank 12 Flora & Fauna.”

  “What’s the best whisky you’ve ever had? Objectively. The ones you promote don’t count.”

  I thought about this. “I suppose a Silver Seal forty-two-year-old Bunnahabbain.”

  “Favorite place in the world to have a whisky?”

  “Is this a game?”

  “Don’t stop.”

  “In a comfortable armchair, in front of a peat fire on an autumn night, with a good book.”

  “If you could have a whisky with anyone in the world, who would it be?”

  I was about to nominate a hammy Scot before changing my mind. “I think,” I said, “I would have a good time enjoying a dram with you.”

  Okubo’s cheeks burned red. She surprised me by downing her entire beer in a series of impressive and declamatory gulps.

  “You are thirsty!” I said, regaled.

  She raised a hand and waved Toro over.

  “What are you ordering?” I asked.

  “Whisky.”

  Chapter 28

  Okubo deferred the ordering to me, and I selected a glass of Tyrconnell for her and Glendalough for me.

  “Do I swish it?” Okubo asked when Toro delivered the drinks.

  “No, you smell it first,” I said, lifting the snifter to my nose.

  She did the same. “Whoa!” she said, leaning back.

  “Do not sniff it like wine, ma choupette. It is much higher in alcohol and can make you woozy.”

  “Ma choupette? I know chérie. But what’s ma choupette?”

  “Well, chou means cabbage…”

  “You’re calling me a cabbage? What, do I have a big head or something?”

  “No, I mean… The closest English translation, I suppose, would be pumpkin.”

  She thought this over. “Pumpkins are cute. Okay, I like it. You can call me ma choupette—as long as you don’t call all the other women you know cabbages…?”

  “Only you, chérie.”

  “Good.” Okubo took a second, hesitant sniff at the top of the glass.

  “Yes, better,” I said. “Now you can swirl a little and take another sniff.” I demonstrated. “See how it is taking a while to drip down the sides of the glass? That means the liquid is viscous.”

  “What about the color? It’s pretty dark.”

  “Darker usually means it has been aged longer. Okay, now we drink.”

  I sipped the Glendalough. It was mellow with notes of cherry and spicy butterscotch. Okubo sipped the Tyrconnell and made a sour face.

  “You do not like it?” I asked, surprised.

  “It’s good! Just strong!”

  “Try mine.”

  We swapped glasses. The Tyrconnell was fruitier, with hints of vanilla.

  “Wow!” Okubo said, smacking her lips. “They taste so different!” She started coughing.

  “But good?”

  She cleared her throat. “Great!”

  I was pleased she approved. “Add in a tale about your twenty-first birthday,” I said, “or your first trip overseas, and you have the perfect drink.”

  “I think maybe I’m already drunk, because I have no clue what you’re saying.”

  “Everybody loves a good dram of whisky,” I clarified, “but what they love most is a dram and a good story to go with it.”

  “Okay, Gaston,” she said, “tell me a good story then.”

  How about a man landing in a foreign airport only to be told he is from a country that doesn’t exist? What I said was, “I have been doing too much talking. I think you should tell me a story.”

  Okubo shook her head. “I don’t have any stories.”

  “You must! All the passengers you meet? You must have many stories.”

  “All right, fine,” she said. “Once I presented the standard breakfast meal to a first-class passenger. He was a large man dressed in ornate clothing, and he yelled at me in a thick accent: ‘Bring me the mother!’”

  “The mother?” I said, perplexed.

  “When I asked him to explain what he meant, he kept pointing at his omelet and shouting: ‘The mother! Bring me the mother!’”

  “He was asking for chicken!”

  Okubo nodded. “Was that a good story?”

  “Short—but good.” I sipped the whisky. “Do you like being a flight attendant?”

  “It’s demanding, that’s for sure. Trust me, I’ve seen it all. Grumpy mothers with their screaming infants. Female honeymooners shooting every flight attendant dagger looks. Bratty kids. Sleazy drunks. But it is also very rewarding, especially given the scarce alternatives for Japanese women in the workforce.”

  “The gender discrimination?”

  She nodded. “Japan is historically and culturally a patriarchal society. Women are often treated like second-class citizens. It’s become internalized in all of us. Do you know what my grandfather wrote in his diary on the day my mother was born? I beat my wife again because she gave birth to a girl. He was angry he had two daughters and no son to continue his bloodline.”

  “Japan’s made a lot of progress since then.”

  “Economic progress,” she said. “Definitely. Maybe more than any other country. Unfortunately, this has not included equal opportunity for women. In most office jobs, female workers get paid much less than their male counterparts and are often expected to make tea for them and tidy up after them. They are told not to have children because their maternity absence will augment the workload burden on all the others. During the last recession it was common for big companies to simply announce they would not be hiring any women that year. And none of this is likely to change any time soon…which is why I became a flight attendant in the first place. I understood I would be in a subservient position. But at least I would receive greater prestige than, say, if I worked in an office building, where subservience would be expected of me anyway.”

  “And you get to travel,” I pointed out.

  “That used to be a big perk,” she replied. “I used to love staying in hotels between long-haul flights and having all-night pool parties with the other staff.”

  “All-night pool parties?”

  “Oh, you would love it, Gaston! All the beautiful young flight attendants…”

  “Perhaps you could take me to such a party one day?”

  “You wish!” She laughed. “Anyway, what was your question? Do I like being a flight attendant? Yes, it’s been a lot of fun. Exploring different countries during layovers. Meeting interesting people. Once, the captain let me and another flight attendant into the cockpit to have a feel of steering a Boeing 777. Don’t worry, I was highly supervised.”

  “Flying a 777!” I exclaimed. “And you said you had no stories!”

  Okubo pressed her lips together impishly. “Actually, I was just thinking of another story. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Would love to,” I said.

  “A few days ago I was on a long-haul flight back from Manila, in the galley, doing my makeup, when this passenger pushes in through the curtains.”

  “Ah,” I said, swallowing whisky. “One of those passengers.”

  “Yes, one of those passengers,” she agreed. “And a foreigner too. He began talking to me in Japanese—”

  “Show off.”

  “He asked for a glass of whisky. I poured him one. But he kept talking to me.”

  “Insufferable.”

  “No, he was charming. And handsome.”

  I grinned. “Imagine your luck!”

  “Cocky too,” she said, grinning back at me. “And then he asked me for my number right then and there.”

  “Surely you did not give it to this scoundrel?”

  “I did. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t think he was going to call me—but then he did. He took me out for a drink.”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “As a matter of fact, I had a very good time.”

  I met her glittering gaze. “D
are I ask what happened after that?”

  “I asked him back to my place.”

  “I cannot imagine he turned down an invitation such as that?”

  Okubo only held my eyes with hers.

  I stood. “I will get the bill.”

  Chapter 29

  We walked back to Shibuya station through the manic nightlife. The energy in the air was palpable, rivaled only by Shanghai, Seoul, London, and a select few other megacities. It was a world apart from the austere quiet I had experienced in the Tokyo Detention House, and I vowed I would never return to that depressing place.

  The eastbound Yamanote Line train arrived precisely on time. Okubo and I squeezed into the packed car for the brief ride. From Ebisu it was a pleasant ten-minute trek to her place. She lived in a multiple-unit building differing little in style and design than all the others in the area. Although there was an elevator, we took the stairs to the third floor. Her apartment was at the end of the corridor.

  “It’s not very big,” Okubo warned me before opening the door.

  I followed her into a small vestibule, where we took off our shoes. She tucked the footwear into a cabinet and led me down a short hallway. On one side was a shower and laundry room, on the other, a bedroom, inside which I glimpsed a futon, dresser, mirrored closet, wicker floor lamp—and a huge Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal.

  The end of the hallway opened to a living room with butternut walls and a compact kitchen.

  “No tatami mats,” I said, tapping my socked foot on the polished parquet flooring.

  “Easier to clean,” she said.

  “But not as pleasant to sit on.”

  “I use chairs.” From a cupboard above the kitchen counter she withdrew two wine glasses. “All I have chilled is champagne. Is that okay?”

  “Good with me.” I opened the gray space-saver refrigerator, saw a lot of leafy vegetables and leftover takeaway food, and grabbed the bottle of blanc de blancs on the bottom shelf.

  “Do you want to sit outside?” she asked me, tugging back a curtain to reveal a sliding glass door and cramped balcony. Two chairs overlooked the darkened neighborhood.

  We sat and poured the sparkling wine.

  “This is quite pleasant,” I said, stretching my legs. “Quiet.”

  “You should hear the crows in the morning.” Okubo reached beneath the small metal table separating us and set a tin box on her lap. She opened it to reveal a baggie of marijuana and rolling paraphernalia and several pre-rolled joints.

  “I did not think Japanese smoked pot,” I said.

  “We’ve used it since the pre-Neolithic period.”

  “Modern Japanese. Where did you get it?”

  “Roppongi. I met a couple of off-duty American soldiers there a few weeks ago. One of them kept talking about how many people he’d killed before he was transferred to Okinawa. I think he was pretty messed up.”

  “Killing people will probably do that to you.”

  “He was really drunk too. He gave me the pot to roll a joint, and then he and his buddy went dancing. When my friend and I went looking for them, we couldn’t find them anywhere.” She shrugged.

  “What if your neighbors complain about the smell? Drug laws are so strict in Japan. I do not want to end up…in prison.” I almost said back in prison, which would have been a definite mood killer.

  “Don’t be a wimp, Gaston.”

  Okubo lit one of the joints and inhaled, wafts of skunky smoke floating away into the night sky. She passed the joint to me. I took a few quick tokes, passed it back.

  “Good?” she asked.

  I was holding smoke in my lungs and could only nod.

  We passed the jay back and forth in silence until it was finished. As I watched Okubo crush the roach out in a ceramic ashtray, I realized I had a major buzz.

  “Really good,” I said.

  Okubo giggled. Clearly she agreed.

  “These American soldiers…” I said. “Strong lantern-jaw types?”

  “You’re cute when you’re jealous.”

  “I am not jealous. I do not know why you keep saying that.”

  “So jealous!” Okubo adjusted her chair so we were facing one another. “I want to hear a story from you,” she said. “I told you two of mine already. It’s your turn.”

  “That one about the chicken hardly qualifies as a story. It was barely longer than a knock-knock joke.”

  “The second one was good,” she insisted. “So come on. Your turn. Tell me a story. A good story.”

  And in my psychedelic state of mine, I thought, Why not just tell her? In fact, it seemed like a good idea right then. What did I have to lose? I could always cop out and say I was kidding if things got too weird.

  “Once upon a time there was this businessman,” I said, swapping first-person for third as she had done earlier. “He regularly travels to different countries for his job.”

  “Promoting whisky, by chance?” she asked slyly.

  “The man’s most recent trip was to Tokyo. He had been there many times before, but on this particular occasion, he was held up at immigration.”

  “Smuggling drugs!” Okubo said playfully.

  “Passport fraud,” I said sternly.

  Okubo’s eyes bugged. I could see her thoughts ticking as she determined whether I was alluding to a real event or not. “Passport fraud…?” she repeated.

  “The immigration officers claimed the man’s passport was from a country that did not exist. They questioned him in a little room all day long. The man insisted they were mistaken. His country existed. Only he could not find it on a map.”

  “What!” Okubo was on her feet. “I need a cigarette for this. Do you smoke?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “Hold on.”

  She swayed with her first step, regained her equilibrium, and ducked inside, returning a moment later with a pack of Marlboro Lights and a canary-yellow Bic lighter. “Okay, keep going,” she said, plopping back down in her chair and lighting a smoke.

  “Eventually the immigration officers gave up their interrogation. The man was placed under arrest and taken to a detention center. It was like an army boot camp. After two days the man could not take it anymore and attempted an escape. While in the prison yard, he attacked a guard. The other guards beat him into unconsciousness.”

  Okubo glanced at my bruised eye. Her brow furrowed. The coltish curl of her lips turned downward into an uncertain frown.

  “As the man had hoped,” I continued, “he was transferred to a public hospital to receive treatment for his injuries. Supervision there was much laxer than in the detention center. He was able to slip past the police officers posted outside his room and escape.”

  Okubo was regarding me with an unreadable expression.

  “Your cigarette, ma choupette,” I said.

  She’d forgotten about it. The desiccated tobacco leaves and paper had burned away almost to the filter, leaving behind a precarious tower of ash. She stubbed it out in the ashtray.

  “Although now free, the man had nothing,” I said. “No money, no credit cards, no way to support himself. He resorted to stealing someone’s wallet—something he had never done before in his life. With the illicit money he bought street clothes from a Don Quijote, hired a room in a manga kissa—and took a beautiful woman out for drinks.”

  Okubo was still regarding me with that unreadable expression. I sensed she wanted to laugh but couldn’t quite bring herself to do that.

  “You’re convincing, Gaston,” she said, settling for a wide smile. “I almost believed you. Almost.”

  “Almost believed what?” I asked her.

  “Everything you’ve just told me!”

  “It is all true,” I said simply.

  “You were sent to a detention center?”

  “Yes.”

  “The guards gave you that black eye?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you escaped?”

  “Yes.”

  You could h
ave heard a bedbug sneeze in the dead air.

  Then: “Holy crap, Gaston!” Okubo said. “You really are telling the truth, aren’t you?”

  “Have you ever heard of Taured?” I asked.

  “Taured?” She shook her head. “No, what’s that?”

  I steeled myself for her reaction. I’d gone too far to back out now.

  “It is the country where I am from,” I said.

  Chapter 30

  “Taured,” Okubo said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s the country where you’re from?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Neither had the immigration officers,” I reminded her. “Which was what started everything.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In Europe. Have you heard of Andorra?”

  “Sure.”

  “That is where it is.”

  “In Andorra? How can a country be within another country?”

  “It is not in Andorra. It is Andorra.”

  “Taured is Andorra? That makes no sense, Gaston.”

  “In one…” I struggled for which word to use. In the moment, dimension seemed too far out there. “In one…reality,” I continued, “in this reality, Andorra is Andorra. In another reality, in my reality, yes, Taured is Andorra.”

  Okubo slumped back in her chair, appearing both confused and bemused. She lit a fresh cigarette and said, “I don’t understand. I think I’m too high for this.” She glanced at my glass of wine, which was still full. “What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked glibly.

  I blinked. “Tomorrow?”

  “Work. Don’t you have work to do to set up the whisky tasting on Thursday?”

  She’d switched off, I realized.

  “No, no work,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  A bubble of silence ensued, though it was not of the comfortable sort we’d experienced earlier while smoking the joint. It was heavy and perhaps hostile and neither of us could reach past it.

  Okubo, I noticed, was rapidly tapping her right foot.

  “Thank you for the evening,” I said, standing. “I should be going.”