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

by Jeremy Bates

  “Because he is a hikikomori! He does not leave his house. Who does his grocery shopping? Does he order Uber eats every day?”

  “Uber?” She gave me a blank look.

  Uber had operated in Japan since 2018. I’d used their services countless times before. The fact Okubo didn’t know about the company meant this was yet another inconsistency between this world and mine.

  “It is a food delivery service,” I said simply.

  “Ah,” Okubo said. “Like Zoom.”

  “Yes,” I said, whatever Zoom was, though I figured it was this world’s Uber equivalent.

  “I don’t know if Akira uses delivery services. He gets his food and anything else he needs from a woman my parents hired. We call her a rental sister, though I don’t know if that is the best translation. She leaves food at his door, as well as a note, asking how he’s doing and all that. Sometimes he replies with a note of his own, or if he needs something.”

  I pictured this transactional relationship and marveled at the absurdness of it. “Did your parents ever object to you becoming a flight attendant?”

  “They didn’t care what I did. In their view, it is the husband who is the breadwinner. They assumed my husband would take care of me, as they assumed Akira would take care of his wife. That is why, as their only son, they piled all their hopes and dreams of success onto him.”

  “It must have been tough on you as a teenager with all this going on at home.”

  “It was not fun. I tried to stay out of the house with my friends as much as I could.”

  “I think I now understand your affection for the laid-back bear of the Hundred Acre Wood.”

  “Comfortably imperfect,” she said.

  “Words to live by,” I said.

  ∆∆∆

  Tama Center station was decorated top to bottom with Saniro characters. As Okubo and I exited we passed beneath a huge mural of Hello Kitty and Keroppi dressed as Keio Line station masters.

  “Am I missing something?” I asked, perplexed.

  “Yes—Sanrio Puroland is a short walk from here.”

  “Hello Kitty country,” I grumbled, glad she didn’t suggest detouring to the theme park.

  Tama Center, I discovered, was home to large and blocky commercial and municipal buildings, though it was also a suburban area and a world apart from the hustle and bustle of downtown Tokyo. You still had shopping arcades and convenience stores and restaurants galore, but there was an abundance of greenery too, and everything just felt a lot more peaceful.

  Okubo and I walked up a large set of stairs and through a heavily wooded park that would have been pleasant to picnic in under other circumstances. A few minutes later we came to an incongruous brown-brick apartment building. Okubo led me up the staircase to the second floor and knocked on a door with a Do Not Disturb sign in the style of a noren curtain hanging from the brass handle.

  “Oniisan! Doa wo akete kudasai!” Okubo called, asking her brother to open the door.

  I heard the sound of a deadbolt turning, a chain clattering free of its track. The door swung inward.

  Given Okubo’s brother had led a hermetically sealed life for the last ten years, I had imagined him as an anemic, Golem-like wretch. Yet the man who greeted us was clean cut with a healthy complexion. He was dressed in neat jeans and a fitted red turtleneck.

  Seeing me, his almond-shaped eyes flashed wide with alarm.

  He slammed the door shut.

  Okubo knocked loudly, explaining that I was her friend and in trouble and needed his help.

  “You have just alerted the whole building,” I remarked.

  “I keep forgetting how good your Japanese is,” she said.

  From the other side of the door: “Shusshin wa doko desu ka?”

  Okubo said, “He’s asking where—”

  “Yes, I know.” I raised my voice. “Yōroppa desu.”

  “Doko no kuni no hito?”

  Okubo said, “He wants to know which country in Europe—?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t tell him Taured.

  Okubo explained to her brother that my origin was a complicated matter, and it was why we had come to see him.

  A few seconds passed before the door swung inward once more.

  “Hello,” Okubo’s brother said, eyeing me curiously. “Come inside. Quickly.”

  Chapter 36

  Akira closed the door behind us and engaged the deadbolt and chain. Looking around, I felt as though I had stepped into a self-storage unit rather than someone’s living quarters. Floor-to-ceiling plastic containers holding who knew what towered everywhere, alongside endless stacks of cassettes, magazines, books, clothing, and more.

  After a curt introduction, Akira led us down a narrow pathway through the clutter to a clearing in the center of the room that contained a glass desk and leather executive chair. On the desk stood three large flat-screen monitors, a custom-made computer chassis, two high-end laptops, as well as a scattering of electronic accessories: surround-sound speakers, a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, a mechanical keyboard, a mouse glowing with LED lights, an external hard drive bay, a USB hub, and some other stuff I didn’t recognize.

  In other words, a geek’s paradise.

  “Nice setup,” I remarked.

  “I spend most of my time here,” Akira said in fluent English. “Did my sister tell you? I don’t go outside much.”

  “Ever,” Okubo amended.

  There was no furniture to sit on, so the three of us remained standing around the desk.

  “I panic when I interact with other people,” Akira told me. “Not you, don’t worry. I was surprised to see you on my doorstep, but that was all. You are fine.”

  “Why am I fine?” I asked.

  “Because you’re a foreigner,” Okubo told me.

  “Yes, foreigners I have little problems with,” Akira said. “All my friends online are foreigners. American, Chinese, European, Australian—they do not judge me.”

  “That is why your English is so good,” I said.

  “Oh, thank you,” he said, bowing. Then: “I haven’t had a real guest in such a long time I have forgotten my manners! Just a moment.”

  Akira ducked into another room.

  I eyed the random items piled high around me. “I feel like I am in a china shop. One wrong move…”

  “And it all comes crashing down? I know how you feel.”

  Akira returned shortly carrying a tray with a Japanese teapot and three white mugs. He set the tray on the glass desk and filled the mugs with green tea.

  “Thank you,” I said, accepting a cup.

  As we sipped without speaking, an awkward lull built, which Akira broke by saying, “May I ask what kind of trouble you are in, Gaston-san?”

  I glanced at Okubo for guidance on how to broach the subject.

  “Gaston is from an alternate dimension,” she stated bluntly.

  Akira’s eyebrows shot upward.

  I felt like slapping my forehead, but Akira did not laugh. He merely studied me with interest.

  “Go on,” Okubo said. “Tell him everything. That’s why we’re here.”

  I explained my story from beginning to end.

  “Remarkable,” Akira said simply when I’d finished.

  “Do you doubt me?” I asked.

  “Should I?”

  “What I have said is true. Every word. I ask because I know how it sounds.”

  Akira sipped his tea thoughtfully. “Do you believe in the Big Bang theory, Gaston-san?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “As do I. And if I can believe that all the matter in the cosmos—trillions of stars and planets and so much else—was at one point an infinitesimal tiny singularity, then I can also believe in something as fantastic as interdimensional travel. Besides,” he continued with a small shrug, “I have believed in the multiverse theory long before I met you. So although someone from a parallel universe showing up on my doorstep may be a surprise to me, the idea that oth
er universes besides my own exist is not a surprise at all.”

  “See, I told you he’d believe you!” Okubo crowed triumphantly, punching me on the arm. “How many universes do you think are out there, oniisan?” she asked her brother.

  Akira frowned in thought, and for the first time I noticed fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and lips. “A theory called inflation suggests that in the moment right after the Big Bang, space inflated rapidly before slowing down and creating the bubble in which the Earth, the Sun, the Milky Way galaxy, and billions of other galaxies reside today. If you accept this, there’s no reason to think it was an isolated occurrence. Picture what happens when you pour Coca-Cola into a glass. Our universe may be just one of those bubbles in a cosmic fizz.”

  “So you’re saying there could be thousands of other universes?” Okubo said.

  “Thousands, millions, billions. Perhaps an infinite number. Another theory—one of the most popular today—comes from quantum physics. Proponents of it believe the universe splits in two each time there’s a so-called quantum event. With such quantum events happening more or less continuously, the argument goes, the number of universes continues to increase ad infinitum.”

  “What’s a quantum event?” Okubo asked.

  “When something quantum happens,” Akira answered.

  “Duh,” she said.

  “It’s an event that is virtually impossible for the human mind to experience.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Can you try being less obtuse?”

  “It’s something that could not have happened according to the laws of classical physics.”

  “For example?” I said.

  “Classical physics describes the world in terms of definite outcomes. Think of Newton’s laws of motion or gravity. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, describes the world in terms of probabilities. Simply speaking, quantum mechanics argues that something can exist in many states at once. An electron, for example, can spin both upward and downward at the same time. However, when we observe the particle, we cause a quantum event to occur in which the particle adopts only one state at random. In the example I gave, it would be either spinning up or down, not both.”

  “Because it knew we were watching it?” Okubo said skeptically. “It’s just a cute little electron!”

  “I’m not saying it has a consciousness or awareness,” Akira said. “We simply don’t have the technology that would allow us to observe the state of the electron passively. The measuring equipment we use has an active physical effect on it.”

  I said, “So in any given situation, every possible outcome can occur at the same time?”

  “Not can,” Akira said. “Does. Each in its own separate universe.”

  “And this applies not only to subatomic particles but everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “You mean like us too?” Okubo said. “So right now I can kiss Gaston. But if I don’t, there’s a universe in which I kissed him?”

  Akira nodded. “The present universe gives rise to two daughter universes: one in which you kiss Gaston-san, and one in which you don’t.”

  “And I’m stuck in the one in which I don’t…” she said gloomily.

  “Unless you did kiss me,” I said. “Then you would be in the other one, the happier one.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “This is too confusing! I want to be in the universe where I understand all this!”

  Akira said, “Imagine your reality as a straight line and your alternate realities as branching lines that continue branching off of themselves.”

  She opened her eyes. “So you’re saying right now there’s another version of me out…there…somewhere?”

  “No, Okubo, in these parallel universes, there could be infinite versions of you.”

  “The parallel universes would not all be identical to one another, would they?” I asked.

  “Some would be,” Akira replied. “Some would differ by a single particle’s position. And some would be very different. In one universe, you might have gone to a bar with some friends and got so drunk you didn’t remember how you got home, whereas in another you only had one drink, danced and mingled, and met your future wife.”

  Or you and your wife fall asleep one night in front of the TV instead of having sex, I thought abruptly and darkly, and your son is never born…

  “So there’s a universe right now in which I won the lottery?” Okubo asked hopefully.

  “And one in which I’m not a hikikomori,” Akira said gravely.

  “One in which we’re here having this exact conversation?” Okubo said.

  “And one in which we are not here,” Akira said, “because in it you never met Gaston-san.”

  “That would be awful!”

  Blinking aside thoughts of Damien, I gave her a smile.

  “As I mentioned,” Akira said, “every possible outcome can and does occur at the same time. At every branch point, a new universe is created.”

  “Into infinity,” I said, rejoining the conversation.

  “If space-time is flat and continues forever, then, yes, into infinity. Hence the infinite universes and the infinite versions of you.”

  “Which means…” I said, trying to wrap my head around the mind-bending science, “we have just had this conversation an infinite number of times.”

  Chapter 37

  Akira refilled our mugs with tea.

  “So is the name of your country—Taured—the only anomaly in this universe, Gaston?” Okubo asked me. “Or is there other stuff you’ve noticed?”

  I hesitated a beat before saying, “When I was speaking with my mother yesterday, she spoke to my father in the background.”

  Okubo frowned. “So?”

  “My father died when I was twenty-four.”

  “What! Oh, Gaston, I’m—I’m so sorry. I’m…” She lowered her eyes before raising them almost immediately. “But—well, that’s exciting, isn’t it? Because he’s alive here!”

  “Exciting?” I shook my head. “I would not use that word. I never got along with him. He was not a good person. I doubt he is any different in this world.”

  “I can relate to how you feel,” Akira said sadly. “My father and I—”

  “Today is not about you, oniisan,” Okubo interrupted. To me, “Even if you never got along with your father, Gaston, I still think this is a great opportunity for you. Your father is alive. Maybe you can make up with him, or maybe you could—”

  “I want nothing to do with him!” I snapped. Seeing the hurt on her face, I added more gently: “I do not want to speak with him, chérie. Not right now.”

  Okubo nodded. “I’m sorry. I understand.”

  Akira asked, “Are there other differences between your world and this one, Gaston-san?”

  “Some,” I said without elaborating.

  “Is John Lennon alive in your universe?” Okubo asked.

  “No.”

  “Were atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?” Akira asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did September 11—”

  “We should stay on topic,” I said brusquely. “For the most part, everything in this world seems the same as it is in my world.” Except your son was never born, Gaston. That’s a biggie. That’s one hell of a biggie.

  I asked Akira, “Have you ever heard of a case such as mine?”

  “Someone phasing between universes?”

  He nodded. “It happens all the time.”

  ∆∆∆

  Okubo and I reacted with exclamations of surprise and demands for him to elaborate.

  “A simple Google search for ‘multiverse portals’ will bring up countless websites and blogs and forums documenting firsthand accounts from interdimensional travelers. It is a subject of great interest these days, especially to those into religion and mysticism. Because if infinite copies of this universe exist, then it’s hard to make the argument that your life is singular and fleeting.”

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p; “Immortality,” I stated.

  “An alluring concept, certainly.”

  “Unless you hate your life,” Okubo said.

  “You are forgetting,” I told her, “that there would be a universe in which you loved your life.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut again. “Brain freeze!”

  “Regarding the international travelers,” Akira said, “London has gained a reputation as the Grand Central Station—or the Clapham Junction, I should say—of interdimensional travel. Portals are popping up all over town there. But they’ve popped up all over the world. Let me show you.” He sat down in the leather chair. “I’m sorry, I don’t have much furniture…”

  Okubo and I moved behind him to see the monitors.

  Akira clicked open a browser. His fingers flew over the keyboard. A few more clicks of the mouse and a page titled “Green Children of Woolpit” appeared. According to the story, in the twelfth century the villagers of Woolpit, in Suffolk, England, discovered two children, a brother and sister, in one of the many wolf pits that gave the village its name. Both had greenish-colored skin, spoke an unknown language, wore odd clothing, and initially refused to eat any food other than raw broad beans. The boy became sick and died, but the girl survived and integrated into the village. After learning to speak English, she explained that she and her brother were from a place where it was perpetually twilight. They had been herding their father’s cattle when they heard a loud noise, and the next thing they knew they were in the wolf pit where they were found.

  The webmaster went on to dismiss any historical explanations for the tale and argued that the children had come from a parallel dimension.

  “You don’t have green blood or anything do you?” Okubo asked me.

  “Of course I do,” I replied. “What color is yours?” To Akira, “That is an interesting story. But the twelfth century was a long time ago. Can you search for something more recent?”

  Akira navigated to a different website. He scrolled through several articles, allowing us glimpses of haunting and otherworldly drawings, then returned to the first one. It concerned a woman named Carol Chase McElheney. While driving from San Bernardino to Perris, (both in California), she detoured to Riverside, her hometown, which she hadn’t been back to in decades. Upon reaching the street she’d grown up on, she couldn’t find her house, and all of the other homes were smaller and more rundown than she remembered. She drove to the street her grandmother used to live on. It too was different than she remembered. Frightened and confused, she went to the cemetery where her grandparents were buried—only it wasn’t a cemetery but a fenced-off lot overgrown with weeds.