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

by Jeremy Bates

  “My assistant, Haruna.”

  “She told me the event we’d organized was cancelled.”

  “We could not have a tasting without the whisky…”

  “Of course. I mean…I feel terrible it was cancelled. The tickets we sold?”

  “Refunded. Don’t worry about it, Gaston. Everything has been taken care of. We’ll do another event together in the future.”

  “Thank you for understanding, mon ami. It has been a very distressing week.”

  “I only wish I could have somehow helped you during your incarceration.”

  “Actually…I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you?”

  “Anything! What is it?”

  “There was a woman I met on the flight over, a flight attendant. We made plans to see each other while I was here. For obvious reasons this was not possible. I fear she thinks I have stood her up. I would like to make it up to her, take her somewhere special tomorrow, somewhere out of Tokyo…”

  “You need a car!”

  I nodded. Toru Matsuoka owned a garage full of rare cars. He’d shown me his collection during one of our previous meetings, telling me if I ever wanted to take one for a spin I was more than welcome. “If your offer still stands…?”

  “Of course it does!” he said. “Was there any car in particular you had in mind? I’ll have someone drive it over right now.”

  Chapter 57

  I parked across the street from Okubo’s apartment in a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1. This muscle car had been the long arm of Japanese law from the mid-seventies to mid-eighties. At that time, Japanese vehicles were light years behind their American counterparts in terms of raw power. Consequently, few other cars in the country could outrun the American-made brute with its big-bore 429-cubic-inch Cobra Jet V-8. It was the apotheosis of attitude, Dirty Harry in the land of the Samurai, and it had more than likely put the fear of God into lawbreakers when they spotted it barreling down on them in their rearview mirror.

  I didn’t know how Toru Matsuoka had gotten his hands on one, or if he’d been responsible for its modification, but at some point after its retirement from service the police siren had been removed from the roof and its black-and-white livery had been painted a metallic silver.

  I didn’t borrow the Mach 1 to take Okubo on a romantic trip outside of Tokyo. The Okubo I was hoping to encounter today had never met me before. She was part of the Taured half of Flight JL077, the Hallie Smith half. And I didn’t remember ever seeing Okubo during that portion of the flight, let alone speaking to her.

  No, the reason I’d wanted the car was so I would not have to stand around on the sidewalk waiting for her to either return to, or emerge from, her building. I could recall clearly how sketchy Tighty-Whitey had looked while he’d been waiting on the sidewalk for me.

  Sitting in a car, I figured, would be much less conspicuous.

  ∆∆∆

  Two hours later and Okubo had yet to appear.

  I knew it had been a long shot catching her coming or going. If she was out, she might not return until the evening. If she was in, she might be snuggled up in a pair of Pooh pajamas with no intention of stepping outdoors all day. Then there was the strong—and disheartening—possibility she was overseas for work. Worst case scenario, she might not even live in this building at all. I knew all too well how something in one dimension could be altered in another.

  I’d toyed with the idea of simply knocking on her door, but since I would be a complete stranger to her, I feared she might simply slam it closed in my face. Catching her on the street, on the other hand, meant she’d at least have to listen to what I had to say.

  Which was?

  The truth.

  She had believed me easily enough the night we’d gotten stoned. I was hoping lightning might strike twice. Of course, I had much more going for me that first night than I did now. We had spent the evening together. We’d told stories and laughed and gotten to know each other, gotten to trust each other. I was not some random character with a story about interdimensional travel…

  The more I played over these thoughts, the more skeptical I became that I was doing the right thing, that Okubo was going to believe me. In fact, she might not even listen to me. She might tell me to leave her alone, or threaten to call the police, or kick me in the nuts and run…

  You’re going to blow any chance you might have with her in this world. She’s going to think you’re delusional, or creepy, or just insane—or likely all three—and you’re going to lose her forever.

  But what else could I do? I was going to be leaving Japan as soon as I got a new passport sorted. If I didn’t approach her now—

  Approach away! But drop the cockamamie story and just do what you did before. Strike up an innocent conversation, make a joke, ask her out. You don’t have to tell her you’re from a different dimension, one in which she died at your hands, no less.

  Okubo emerged from the front of the building.

  I was so startled to see her I could only stare. The rush of adrenaline coursing through me at the sight of her turned to dread as she crossed the street.

  I looked straight ahead, my thoughts racing.

  She stopped at the window and peered in at me.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “Are you waiting for someone?”

  “I—um…” Busted! And on top of this: Too late for an innocent conversation. You’ve really screwed everything up now. “I was…uh…I was just waiting…”

  “You’ve been watching my apartment. Don’t deny it. I’ve seen you from my kitchen window.”

  I glanced past her. Curtains were drawn in her kitchen window, but there was a crack where they met in the middle. With all the bright sunlight bouncing off the glass, she could have been looking out at me, and I wouldn’t have been any the wiser.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “My name is Gaston. Gaston Green.” Tell her. You’ve got no choice anymore. “I—I know you.” I cleared my throat. “I mean, we know each other.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “It is…complicated.”

  “What’s complicated about knowing someone?”

  “I will tell you. But I must warn you that what I have to say may sound very strange.”

  “I’m a strange girl.”

  I laughed at this, knowing just how true it was.

  Okubo didn’t laugh. Didn’t even crack a smile. But something shifted in her eyes. The hard suspicion remained, yet there was uncertainty too, as though she were wondering if she did know me after all.

  “Can we go for a walk?” I asked her. “Around the block? It is a rather long tale I have to tell.”

  She glanced up and down the street, as if searching for a trap I might have set. Then she stepped back from the car and folded her arms across her chest.

  Waiting for me.

  I shoved open the door and got out, my body stiff from sitting in the same position for so long, my injuries protesting at the effort it took to extract myself from the low-slung vehicle.

  Okubo asked with a hint of concern, “Are you okay?”

  “I have been better.”

  “Are the yakuza’s numbers so low these days they’ve taken to recruiting foreigners?”

  She was looking at my bandaged pinky stump. I looked too.

  “It is part of what I have to tell you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Chapter 58

  As we walked down the heat-beaten sidewalk, I described to Okubo how we’d met on Flight JL077, the accusations that my passport was from a country that didn’t exist, the maladroit interrogation and my time spent in the Tokyo Detention House, including how I’d gotten the black eye and how I’d escaped from the hospital. I described the night in Shibuya she and I had shared, the stories we’d exchanged at her apartment. I described the giant Pooh Bear in her bedroom and the Pooh clock on the wall,
the champagne she’d had in the bottom of her fridge, the tin she kept her pot in. I told her that she took me to her brother’s place, that he was a hikikomori and a veritable expert on anything and everything to do with science and science fiction. I explained his esoteric multiverse theory and the possibility there were billions of universes existing in a higher dimension, each separated from the others by distances smaller than that of an atomic neutron.

  By this point we had already walked around her block twice. Okubo had listened to everything I’d said without interrupting.

  A woman pushing a stroller was approaching us on the sidewalk. We stepped onto the road to let her pass.

  When the mother and baby were out of earshot, I picked up where I had left off, explaining how the yakuza had been watching her apartment, how they’d kidnapped and taken me to their boss.

  Given how extraordinary everything else I’d told her had been, and her reticence to ask even a single question, I was surprised when she broke her silence to say, “Shigeharu is a yakuza boss?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I am.”

  “This surprises you more than me being from a different dimension?”

  Okubo’s lips tightened, and she said, “Continue.”

  I described Shigeharu’s headquarters in detail, as well as the man himself. I described how he’d made me cut off my pinky finger because I’d dishonored him, his imperative that I leave the country in the morning, and his threat of what he would do to me if I ever returned. I described my phone call to Okubo, how she’d shown up at the ryokan in the middle of the night, and our harrowing escape through the window.

  Then I described the car chase and how it ended in Suicide Forest.

  “I died?” Okubo said, staring at me in shock, and it was only then, hearing the honest disbelief in her voice, that I realized she believed at least some of what I’d been telling her.

  I nodded, finding it suddenly difficult to speak. “I tried to save you, I tried CPR. It did not work. I was distraught. One of the yakuza heard me and found me. We fought. He had a knife. I have many wounds. I can show you them. Afterward, I attempted to kill myself.”

  “Attempted?” Okubo said.

  “I hung myself with the rope that had been around the neck of the man I had told you about, the suicide. But it broke. The next morning I found my way to a road rather by accident. An old woman picked me up and took me to her house. It was there that I learned I had somehow returned to my own dimension.”

  “How?”

  I told her how I had learned of my return but that I did not know how or why it happened, only repeating her brother’s aphorism that nature had a way of righting her wrongs.

  We had completed two more loops around her block and were now back in front of her apartment building.

  “That is about everything I have to say,” I said, stopping. “If you have any questions, or want me to clear up anything…?”

  Okubo began shaking her head, and I realized with a lurch of despair that I had read her wrong. She didn’t believe me. She didn’t believe anything I’d told her.

  I held my breath and waited for her to confirm this.

  “When I first saw you sitting in your car,” she began, “looking up at my apartment, I was alarmed and frightened. I nearly called the police. But I didn’t, I couldn’t, because the longer you sat down there, and I watched you watch me, or at least my apartment…I felt I knew you, even though I was quite sure I had never met you before. So when you told me we did know each other…I don’t know…it was a surreal moment, and I think…I think I might have believed anything you told me that would explain how I felt I knew you too.”

  “Yet you do not believe what I have told you…?”

  “You know where Akira lives and that he is a hikikomori.”

  I nodded that I did.

  “You know I have a Pooh clock on my bedroom wall.”

  I nodded again.

  “You do understand, Gaston Green, that most people would likely conclude you’re a world-class stalker.” She paused before adding: “But me? I simply can’t accept that any stalker worth his salt would ever stake out a woman’s house in a car like that. You can see it from a mile away!”

  “So you do believe me?”

  “I don’t know what I believe right now…but let’s just say that I don’t not believe you.”

  I sank back against the Ford Mustang. “That,” I said with immeasurable relief, “I can work with.”

  Epilogue

  Two years later

  My mother’s funeral was a solemn and sober occasion.

  She was buried in my hometown’s only cemetery. It was an intimate family-only graveside affair. The minister led the memorial service, my older brother Paul gave the eulogy, and my younger brother Arthur read a prayer. I offered a poem. Then my mother’s casket was lowered into her burial spot next to my long-deceased father, as had been her request.

  After an informal receiving line of aunts and uncles and other relatives filtered past my brothers and myself, people began meandering back to their cars. The plan was to rendezvous at Paul’s house for food and drinks.

  I walked with Okubo and Damien to the sedan we were renting during our two-week visit to Taured and said, “Please wait here for me. I will not be long.”

  Okubo rested her hands on her six-month baby bump and said, “Are you okay, Gaston?”

  “Yes, but there is someone else I need to see while I am here.”

  “Who is it, Daddy?” Damien asked. He was six years old now, big for his age, and missing his two top front teeth.

  “Just wait here with Okubo, mon petit monstre.”

  I kissed Okubo on the cheek, ruffled Damien’s hair, and started away. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the two of them playing pat-a-cake and smiled. These last two years had been the best of my life. Although the distance between Okubo and I, along with our busy schedules, had made it difficult to spend much time together, we’d always set aside one weekend a month to be together. Sometimes I would fly to Japan. Sometimes she would come to the Philippines. Other times we’d meet in Vietnam, Thailand, or Singapore, or somewhere equally exotic.

  After I learned of my mother’s passing ten days ago, we were making plans to meet in Taured for the funeral (it would be Okubo’s first visit to my homeland) when she surprised me by suggesting she book a return ticket not to Tokyo but to Manila. Ever since learning of her pregnancy, we’d talked often of her taking a leave of absence from her airline and moving to the Philippines, but I’d never expected it to happen with such suddenness. Yet now here she was in Taured, having given up her life in Japan to spend the indefinite future with me in a foreign country. It was a terrific sacrifice to make, and I couldn’t have loved her any more for making it. I knew she would be not only a wonderful mother to our soon-to-be born daughter, but also an equally wonderful stepmother to Damien.

  Which was why I had proposed to her the night before.

  We had been out for dinner with my brothers and their wives. After we returned to Paul’s house where we were staying, and tucked Damien into bed, I asked Okubo to join me for a walk. I took her to a nearby park where, beneath the boughs of a gnarled oak I had climbed often as a child, I got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife.

  With these joyful thoughts distracting me from the much starker ones of my mother’s burial, I picked my way through the old cemetery and all the hallowed tombstones poking out of the green grass like so many crumbling teeth. Weathered crypts rose aboveground as well, some casket-styled, some family chapel-styled, a good number featuring large sculptures of angels or other symbolic figures.

  Smiley’s grave was located on the eastern side of the cemetery, where the burial monuments were flat grave markers instead of raised headstones. Hers was one of the flat markers. A bouquet of slightly withered flowers rested against the granite stone base. A bronze plaque read:

  Miley Laffont

  May 16 1979 / November 10
2001

  Our Daughter

  It was the first time I’d visited her grave in more than a decade, and I fought a rage of emotions at the sight of it. A tightness in my chest stole my breath, and I forced myself to exhale.

  Kneeling on the grass before the grave, I lowered my head, remembering the halcyon memories of our youths. Then I said, “I became engaged last night, ma bijou. Yes, for the second time. But this one is for keeps. I wish you could meet her…” I cleared my throat. “I never know what to say when I come here… I am forever sorry for the night on the mountain. It should have been me, not you…” I ran a hand over my dry lips. “There is no changing what happened. But I want you to know that I spoke with you two years ago. Yes, in a different world, you are alive and well. You are a beautiful woman. You live in Paris. You have an adorable young daughter.” I wiped an errant tear from my cheek. “This is all true. You are alive, not in a memory but in person.” Another tear, another wipe. “Maybe life, as unfair as it seems sometimes, is balanced out in the end, in the big picture. That is what I would like to believe. No—that is what I do believe. Goodbye for now, ma bijou. I need to move on, but you will always be in my thoughts.”

  I stood and made my way back through the graveyard to the two people who meant the most to me in this world, and perhaps in many others as well.

  Afterword

  Thank you for taking the time to read the book! If you enjoyed it, a brief review would be hugely appreciated. You can click straight to the review page here:

  The Man From Taured - Amazon Review Page

  Best,

  Jeremy

  Books In This Series

  World's Scariest Legends

  Mosquito Man

  After a woman bangs at the door in the middle of the night, and promptly dies from her injury, a couple's remote cabin getaway becomes a psychological night of terror as they are hunted by an unknown assailant. Now they must go far beyond what they thought themselves capable of if they hope to save their young children and survive until morning.