the end
Postscript
This Vampire Hunter D novel was a first for me. Before it became a book, it was made available as part of a company’s digital content. It was intended for cell phone users. While it was being serialized I didn’t receive any feedback at all from readers through the person overseeing it, so I had no idea whether or not it was popular as I just kept on writing. It may be because of the medium that it ended up being over five hundred handwritten pages in length.
Time marches on, and now when a book comes out in paper form, an electronic version is sure to be released simultaneously. In the American market, the Vampire Hunter D books are also released in two forms . . . and though I love paper books, unfortunately, the electronic version performs far better. Going down to the bookstore and not only finding the volume you were looking for but also flipping through books and magazines of other genres was a pleasant way to while away the time . . . but I suppose that era has passed. Press a single key on your PC, and whatever you want will arrive the next day . . . compared to the convenience of that, a round trip to the bookstore may seem bothersome and irrational, but I kind of miss it.
Due to the way it was produced, D—Throng of Heretics put me into a different flow of writing. Tracing back through my faint memories, I recall that the set number of lines each time wasn’t that great, of course. However, I wrote every single day, without a break, until I finally had it done. I would send them a few days’ work at a time, during which time I’d work on other writing, but since the volume wasn’t all that great I’d quickly forget about the next batch. And then the next few days would fly by. Normally I just write a new book from start to finish, so some days I can do dozens of pages, and other times I’ll go ten days and only get a single page done, but it doesn’t matter as long as I make the deadline. However, when every day was a deadline, there were times I’d realize I had only an hour left. And depending on my physical condition or my mood that day the book could be completely different, since I was in a position where I absolutely had to write a few pages every day.
While writing D—Throng of Heretics, I felt like something was chasing after me. As I recall, I somehow managed to finish on schedule. I suppose I should’ve shouted, Hurray! I haven’t had an experience like it since, but after years of writing novels the same way, I sometimes miss the way I worked on D—Throng of Heretics.
Hideyuki Kikuchi
April 18, 2016, in the middle of the night
While watching Vampire Hunter D on DVD
Island in a Sea of Fog
chapter 1
I
Meg was taking a break on top of a cliff that overlooked the sea and the entire village. The thought of the chicken pot pie she’d bought in the town of Piercenun along with heavy-duty hooks and lines made her stomach rumble. If Toma could’ve heard it, he’d have asked her to break up for sure. Just below the sixty-foot-high cliff lay the “god wood,” and beyond that was the village. The houses on the beach she’d been looking down at for seventeen years were, to this girl with her heart full of the springtime of youth, almost frustratingly unchanged. Still, the cramped bay and tiny boats in the distance set against this backdrop of sea and sky couldn’t help but make Meg’s heart quiver with emotion—even if she felt like a sucker all the while.
It was a clear, cloudless day, the sunlight-studded sea truly losing its borders until it too seemed a part of the heavens. However. There was just one thing. One black point that seemed to be a sarcastic god’s way of saying, Nothing in this world is perfect. The scene touched her heart so deeply as she sat on the cliff not because of the panoramic view but in spite of it, Meg thought, occasionally frightened by the workings of her own mind.
Boldly taking a seat on the edge of the cliff, Meg looked down on the sea and the sky, where a kitten-like cloud had formed, as she pulled the chicken pot pie from its tin wrapping. Clearing her throat, she turned her eyes back to the sea and sky. They were changing.
“Huh. What’s that?” she said somewhat fearfully, yet she still managed to bite into her lunch, as she was still a growing girl. As she chewed in mute amazement, something from the distant horizon came swiftly creeping toward the beach. The azure and ultramarine that filled Meg’s field of view were becoming a different hue. The white of fog.
Meg wrapped her arms around herself. A trembling was rising from the very marrow of her bones. And she believed it wouldn’t stop until the fog had cleared again. She knew the reason.
“It’s coming from the island.”
Meg didn’t say anything more. It was too dreadful to put into words. But in her head, like the applause that followed the climax of a play by the regional thespians, a number of words were already running around. It’s from Undead Island.
“In the old days, we got the fog a lot,” a pale-faced man said in a tone so strained the words seemed to have been extracted by torture. He was very old, with white hair and a hoary beard. Though he was stooped over and needed a metal cane to walk, his eyes had a gleam that said he burned with a vitality all his years couldn’t hide. Perhaps it was fueled by fear.
The old man was at the west end of a stone embankment that enclosed the narrow bay, and behind him close to ten more people stood in the light of the sun. From the badges on their chests it was clear that three of them were the sheriff and his deputies, and of the other five behind them, one was a girl who from the looks of her garb was either from this village or another nearby. The rest were men who, even as they beheld this scene like a paean to the life-giving powers of sun and water, had a lingering and ill-suited air of blood and murderous thoughts about them. Any Frontier resident over the age of three could immediately tell what they were. Bounty hunters.
“The men of this village were called ‘wave braves.’ It means they’re people of courage who don’t fear the sea.” The pale old man’s faltering voice had a mysterious power that couldn’t be attributed to failing memory as it flowed through the group. “The seas might be rough, whirlpools churning or lightning splitting the sky, but these are men who’d think nothing about heading out in a battered old boat if need be. But that fog—the fog from the island—made men like that bolt the doors to their houses, put out the lights, and hold their breath. The fog from Undead Island—even now, nobody rightly knows what it is.”
“Okay, that’s enough of the ‘nobody knows’ foreplay,” said a tough and determined man that anyone would’ve taken at a glance as the leader of the badge-wearing contingent. Once the old man’s story broke off, the lawman left some breathing room before he said to him, “We’ve put up with that all the way here from your house. Now spill it. Back in the day, what happened when the fog came rolling in? You said it wasn’t like the situation we’ve got now. So, how was it, then?”
A sort of tension sprang up around the old man. Invisible to the eye, it was the concentrated attention of the girl and the quartet of bounty hunters.
“Every time the fog showed up, everyone turned into Nobles.”
The girl alone gasped, while the battle-hardened men showed no change at all. Rumors about Undead Island had spread quite far across the Frontier. Turned into Nobles—the horrifying import of those words was clear to the old-timer as he said that. Fog pressed in from the sea one night to turn everything milky white, a few villagers got pairs of raw, swollen teeth marks on the nape of their necks, and then they in turn sought the blood of their family and neighbors.
“In the seventy-two years I spent in the village,” the old man continued, “the fog hit us three times. And every time, a couple of people would go after their families for blood, and them and all those they bit got stakes through their hearts. And the only reason we managed to slay the predators in fog so thick we could barely see our hands in front of our own faces is because, aside from the first few people turned into Nobles, those drained of blood only became Nobility the night after they joined the dead, and the fog’s incursion ended quickly enough. When we got the second wave of it, fi
ve folks total turned into Nobles first. Four of them were put down soon as the fog cleared, but the last one escaped into the sea.”
On hearing that, the sheriff was just about to shout, “Hold it right there!” However, it was actually one of the bounty hunters who spoke up, a giant of a man even more powerfully built than the sheriff and as hirsute as the old man—only in his case the whiskers were jet black. His name was Garigon.
“Hold it right there, Mister Former Mayor. Freshwater or salt, I thought Nobles and those they’ve turned weren’t supposed to be able to cross running water.”
“Me and the four villagers I was with all saw the man swimming out to sea by the light of the moon. Ever since, we haven’t put any stock in the legends about running water.”
“So, did that fella head off to Undead Island?”
“I don’t know. No one was about to follow him.”
“And did the fog really come from the island?”
The old man nodded. “Back before I was even born, and I’m talking more than a hundred years ago, there was a bunch of villagers who went out to the island to see if maybe folks could live there. Their report was pretty surprising. When they came back, they said that setting aside the facilities left by the Nobility, Undead Island could be called a paradise on earth, filled with plants and animals, the sea around it a treasure trove of fish and shellfish, and with all the fowl you’d care to shoot. But what whipped the village up more than anything was the way they said soil out on the island was real well suited to farming. As you can see, mountains border the village on three sides, so they’ve only fishing to rely on for their daily bread. Now the men might’ve been too proud, but the women they left tending the homes wanted a life of working the unshaking soil instead of an existence on a sea that’ll turn wild at the drop of a hat. Less than two weeks after the survey party came back, seven families from the village—thirty people, all told—decided to cross the sea and take up permanent residence on the island.”
“On Undead Island?” one of the sheriff’s deputies murmured. Although the head lawman and his two underlings wore standard-issue gun belts, the hands poised to reach for their weapons all trembled faintly.
In contrast to that, the bounty hunters actually seemed to be enjoying the old man’s tale, and the youngest of them—a boy who still looked to be in his late teens—was twanging the short bow he had under his left arm as he said, “I never heard this story before. Now things are getting interesting. You know, I’ve heard a lot of talk about Undead Island, but it’s always kinda fuzzy on the details. Is there really one of the Nobility’s spaceports out there on the island?”
“There’s something like that. Only it seems not a single soul from the survey party or the settlers who came later ever set foot inside it. All there ever was on that facility were reports about the outward appearances. Based on those, it seems it wasn’t a spaceport. But then with the Nobility, you never can tell.”
“Hmm. Back then the fog didn’t roll in, I take it.”
If it had, and the results had been similar to the present situation, there probably wouldn’t have been any talk of establishing a settlement.
The old person confirmed this with a nod, saying, “Not that I’ve heard.”
“What happened to all those settlers, then? Did they pull up stakes and come back?”
It took a while for the old man to respond.
“They’re still out on the island.”
“Meaning what—they got wiped out?” asked the third bounty hunter. In his right hand he gripped an eighteen-inch short spear.
The old man shook his head. Two expressions occupied the deeply wrinkled face weathered by wave and wind and sun: fear and a smile.
“Seems they’re not dead,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?” This question came from Garigon’s lips.
“You see, the first time the fog hit, one of the Nobles who attacked the village had been part of that group of settlers.”
II
When the old man said “Noble,” he wasn’t talking about their station. This was a term of derision cast on all their ilk—including humans who’d been turned into bloodsuckers. What the old man was telling them was that the Noble who attacked the desolate little fishing village under cover of fog that first time was a former villager.
“That place’s been called Undead Island since long, long before the village was built. But we didn’t really feel it in our hearts until that second down on the beach when the fog cleared and flames from our torches showed us the face of one of our own. See, that first fog had come exactly a day after we lost regular communication with the settlers.”
“Had the Nobility risen again?” the fourth bounty hunter inquired, his lips seeming to curl in amusement. White teeth gleamed in a suntanned face. A repeating rifle was slung over his shoulder.
“That’s all we could think of. The day after that first fog, the village banned all passage over to the island. Just the same, a number of folks with blood ties to the settlers broke the ban and sailed out, but not one of them ever came back.”
Only those unfamiliar with the Frontier and the Nobility would be foolish enough to label that travel ban cruel. Even now, with the Nobility in extreme decline, the fear of them remained a deep black stain on the brains of the populace.
“But why did the Nobility come back all of a sudden?”
Garigon’s query might’ve been directed at himself, yet the rest of them unconsciously focused their gaze on the old man once more.
“No way to know that without crossing over to the island,” the former mayor said, his reply carrying a terrible resignation and weariness.
Even these rough men who’d left mountains of corpses and spilled rivers of blood were momentarily left speechless.
After that brutal silence, the sheriff finally said, “That’s why we’re here. Could we trouble you to set us up with a boat?”
The old man shook his head from side to side.
“Boats are a fisherman’s life. I can’t let somebody else just take one out. Not even if the owner’s gone now.”
The lawman was at a loss.
“Supposing you were to take one out,” the old man continued, “the area around Undead Island’s still notorious for all the accidents where you get these three different currents colliding. I’ve been putting out to sea since I was all of three, and my father and his father both warned me about getting anywhere near there. Truth is, I nearly died out there twice. No way on earth you can do it without somebody from the village along.”
“We were hoping you could help us out there. Yesterday, as soon as Meg here notified me and we had confirmation of the situation in the village, I immediately got in touch with anyone in the nearby towns or villages who hails from this village. No one but you would even hear me out. Now, I realize coming out here wasn’t easy for you. Chalk it up to shit luck if you must, but give us a little help here.”
“You’re talking to a man who turned his back on this village. After forty years serving as mayor, all of sudden I couldn’t take any of it anymore. Not living in poverty, not the raging sea, not a miserable little village that only survived by the grace of God. Sheriff, you think anybody’d be happy with a man who ran off and abandoned his own family dragging his sorry ass back here and letting other folks use their boats? For starters, I won’t allow myself to do it!”
Though the old man’s tone was one of complete exhaustion, it was underpinned with a will of iron.
“Damn, but this is the strangest thing,” Garigon said, twisting his body around so he could look back at the village behind them. “More than a hundred villagers, from little babies up to grannies and grandpappies, all disappearing in a single night.”
Everyone had already turned in the same direction. Before them, houses of wood and plastic sat in unsettling stillness in the midday sun. Two days earlier, fog had crossed the sea in the afternoon, and apparently someone within it had taken everyone away. When the sherif
f and others raced there the next morning, they found not a single soul—a village so dead, in fact, there was no sign of so much as a dog or cat.
“Meg,” the sheriff called out, and the girl turned to face him. “I know we’ve been over this time and again, but is that really what you saw—every last person from the village walking out to sea on top of the water, headed out to Undead Island?”
The lawman had a stern look in his eye that told her he wouldn’t hear any lies, and the girl nodded to him, but just then a dazed look surfaced on her face. Ever since witnessing the coming of the fog she’d done her level best not to let fear get the better of her, but the threads of willpower steadying her had suddenly been snipped, throwing them into disarray. The change was so great the sheriff himself twisted around for a look to the left—staring off at the cliffs towering over the other end of the bay some fifty yards distant. What Meg saw should’ve been there. But there was no one. And none of the others seemed to have seen it. However, when Meg took another look, all she could think was that some sort of incredible being had been there. Something that could raise her fear-fraught psyche in rapture.
“I saw,” Meg said, nodding absentmindedly. The reply seemed to come from a husk robbed not only of its mind but of its very soul. “I saw a really gorgeous man.”
Meg had left the town of Piercenun about noon and run into the sheriff’s office all pale-faced that same evening. A one-way trip between Meg’s village and the town of Piercenun would take a girl like her an hour and a half on foot. Apparently the girl had run the whole way, and according to her wheezing, breathless tale—
Tearing down the stone steps from the cliff toward the fog-shrouded village, Meg headed toward her house without the slightest hesitation. Though she was well acquainted with the strange and terrible occurrences connected to the fog, that only helped her concern for her family and the desire to save them claw their way to the surface.
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