The Drowning God

by James Kendley

  Takuda hunched his shoulders in the drizzling rain and turned to the trail. The first fifty paces was littered with cigarette butts, alcohol containers, pornographic comic books—­the leavings of garden-­variety juvenile delinquents. The trash ended in a small clearing where the trunk of a fallen cedar blocked the path. Here was a small fire pit and a small mountain of beer cans and saké jars. In the clearing, the hard-­packed earth was free of trash. The kids apparently threw it all into the fire.

  As Takuda climbed over the fallen tree, he saw that the tree had been felled with axes. Someone had worked very hard to block the trail.

  On the other side of the felled tree, the forest had nearly retaken the trail, but there were old footprints in the soft bed of cedar needles. Takuda wasn’t the only one to use the path this spring.

  The path led to the transfer station, a cement platform between the local line and the rusting tracks of the spur. The spur line had been disused for decades. A tiled roof supported by rotting wooden pillars ran the length of the platform. At the end of the platform squatted a ticket office big enough for one employee and a kerosene heater. The ticket window had been filled in with plywood. A faded, hand-­lettered sign requested that disembarking passengers drop their tickets into a slot long since boarded over.

  The station and everything around it cut sharp angles in that gray midmorning light. On the local-­line side, a sheer retaining wall of wet concrete blocks rose at a forty-­five degree angle. On the spur-­line side, a stand of bamboo shone green through the drizzle. The face of Eagle Peak humped with remains of terraced fields, some overtaken by kudzu vines. Houses of time-­blackened cedar with heavy tile roofs crumbled above those abandoned terraces.

  At the base of the mountain, tracks choked with underbrush and debris led to the tunnel’s black, gaping mouth. He squared his shoulders and walked toward it, ready to enter the darkness once again.

  CHAPTER 26

  The tunnel mouth yawned like the maw of some primitive cave, a lair for savage beasts. The rusted gates hung from their hinges with no evidence of chain or lock. Water covered the gravel railway bed almost up to the black-­slimed concrete ties.

  Mori didn’t say anything about water. The old woman did me a favor.

  Detective Takuda put on his waders and packed his slacks tightly into the tackle tube. After a moment’s thought, he put in his keys, handcuffs, badge, notebook, and cell phone as well. The sword barely fit. He watched the tunnel mouth the whole time.

  The rusted rails curved away into dead black.

  Spring wind died as Takuda stepped under the mossy concrete arch into still twilight. He looked over his shoulder at the platform behind. He felt somehow as if he had crossed more than a few slimed railway ties to enter this tunnel, and going back to the platform wouldn’t bring him back, not all the way.

  What nonsense! It’s just a shortcut. It’s foolish for a grown man to be afraid of the dark. He stretched his shoulders and tilted his head one way, then the other, just to feel the vertebrae pop. In a smooth motion, as if he had done it all his life, he reached between his shoulder blades and drew the sword from its scabbard in the tackle tube. Just to be on the safe side.

  It had seemed like a reasonable way to get into the valley. He couldn’t take the high road for fear of being spotted, and he couldn’t hike over the mountains in less than a day. This would be shorter. Takuda figured that the tunnel through the mountain’s shoulder had to be less than two kilometers long. If the tunnel was less than two kilometers long, it would be a twenty-­minute walk. Feeling his way along the slimed ties would make it half an hour. Anyone could do that. Miyoko Gotoh could do that, leaning on her broom.

  Five steps into the tunnel, Takuda was in shadows. Ten steps into the tunnel, he couldn’t see anything beyond the tiny pool of light from his penlight. The water on either side of the tracks was impenetrable black. The silted gravel between the ties seemed to absorb the light itself. The only sounds were his breathing and the grating of his spiked fishing boots.

  He was surprised that he was afraid. He was used to the dark, and he trained for it. When a suspect could not be flushed out into the light of day, Takuda’s work took him into the shadowed lairs of gangsters, pimps, and drug addicts. These ­people, by the time they became hazards to public safety, seemed to prefer living in the twilight underworld.

  His colleagues had sometimes compared dark-­seeking criminals to cockroaches, but more than once, Takuda had knocked on a darkened door with a crash squad crouched at his back, and he had survived by taking every threat seriously. No matter what else these suspects had done, they had managed to bring the battle to their home turf, where they knew the terrain and controlled the conditions. Such clever fighters were hardly cockroaches.

  No, he had walked into the dark too often to be afraid of the simple darkness. He would live or he would die. It was the unknown he feared, not the dark.

  Not the unknown, not anymore. Now it’s just the suspense.

  None of it really made sense. Why was he the one to walk the dark tunnel? Why did everyone just accept that he would? Yamada, Mori, Suzuki, even Yumi. They all just assumed he would follow the trail to the end of his career. Everyone just assumed that it would come to this, and everyone was letting it happen. The only ones actively opposing it were the ones who stood to lose out financially. The others just let him destroy himself.

  The whole thing was insane. Everything his family had wished for him, everything he and Yumi had worked and sacrificed for was coming to an end. His parents had died of grief—­cancer had been a symptom, not a cause. Takuda had mourned them daily, in his heart. Now, for the first time, he was glad they were dead. At least they hadn’t lived to see what was happening to him.

  He would lose his position, his livelihood, his status, his retirement. He would lose everything, including the respect of his colleagues. In a different age, he would have had to commit suicide as soon as the job was done.

  Times had changed, and he had already decided to live. That will stink things up, won’t it?

  Water glinted in the corner of his eye.

  He stopped and played his flashlight beam over the inky surface. This water shouldn’t be moving. A fish? A turtle? There had been a ripple, but it had gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  How deep could this water be? His hand tightened on the sword. It was about two meters from the rails to the tunnel wall. If the gravel fell off from the ties just as it had outside the tunnel, then the water couldn’t be more than half a meter deep.

  Fifteen minutes more? Twenty minutes more? There was no way to tell. No matter what, he would get out of the tunnel sooner by staying on the tracks. He returned his flashlight beam to the rails in front of him. He resisted the urge to run. He trusted his physical abilities, but running in complete darkness with a drawn sword should be avoided if possible.

  He walked onward, scanning the water on either side of the rails. Maybe it had just been a drip from the ceiling. He resisted the urge to play the flashlight beam on the tunnel ceiling. He conjured again in his mind’s eye the rippling water: concentric rings as from a falling droplet? No, it had been a wavelet, almost triangular, caused by movement from beneath the surface.

  He let out a deep breath, and it rattled out of his chest. His heart was thudding.

  Three steps later, the water seemed to creep up the rails as the grade of the rail bed changed. Ten steps later, the rails disappeared under the surface. Beyond, there was darkness, the black face of the water.

  Takuda, up to his ankles in water, heard a faint sound behind him, like a ripple, a single droplet. The stench of rotting fish wrapped around him. He turned, pointing the flashlight back the way he had come. Beside the track, a shape rose from the water.

  Takuda knew what it was.

  In a way, he had always known what it was.

  It was like a boy, but it was not a boy.
Its head was much too big for the spindly neck. Its arms were much too long, and its huge hands hung limp by its bony, wide-­splayed knees. It was altogether sexless.

  Takuda moved the flashlight beam up to the head. The skull seemed spongy and misshapen, with lank, dark locks hanging like strips of seaweed. The eyes were too large and too far apart. The mouth was a gaping wound hardened and cracked at the edges.

  “Azhi,” it hissed. It shuffled toward him slowly beside the track. The sound was meaningless, but Takuda understood anyway: big brother.

  And deep in Takuda’s chest, there was a satisfaction, a glow. It has stolen my brother’s voice, and it tries to look human. It really is a devil. In that instant, with his heart in his mouth and blood ringing in his ears, Takuda’s life became whole again. Everything made sense.

  He held his sword low, almost behind him as he backed along the tracks into deeper water.

  “Demon,” he said. “Murderer. Monster. Come to me. It’s been a long time.”

  The creature hissed with pleasure. Its mouth contorted into something like a smile. Takuda was going to deeper water, just as it had hoped.

  Takuda tightened the lanyard of his little flashlight around his wrist. The water was past his knees. He was going exactly where the creature thought it wanted him.

  Legend had it that the creature was strong enough to pull a horse underwater. Takuda knew from painful experience that it had poisoned talons.

  The water was up to his hips, and the creature was slowly closing the gap. He smiled to himself despite his hammering heart. It’s going to have its hands full. If I get a good grip on it, I’ll tear it to pieces right here.

  He let the flashlight dangle as he gripped his sword with both hands. With a strangled shriek, the creature dove for him.

  Takuda whipped the sword through the water, and the impact jolted him backward. The creature had impaled itself under the left shoulder, and it writhed on his blade. The flashlight beam shuddered on the roiling black water as Takuda struggled to keep his balance. As he regained his footing, he dug in with the fisherman’s boots and heaved the squirming thing into the air.

  It wasn’t a little boy. It wasn’t a boy at all.

  He didn’t dare release the blade to take up the flashlight, but in the quivering half-­light, he saw enough: The cracked and blackened beak snapped at him, and the long, paddle-­like hands swished past his face. Bandy, knotted legs pumped in midair, searching for water with the long, webbed, feet.

  Webbed human feet. Taloned human hands. Frog-­lidded human eyes. And a human mouth, ruined and tortured, now a snapping beak.

  Lord Buddha help us. This thing was once a man.

  The talons swung closer as the Kappa slid down the blade toward him. He dug his feet in deeper and coiled in upon himself, concentrating all his power at his center of gravity. At this time, at this place, drawing strength from the mountain, from the water, from all corners of the universe, he was stronger than twenty men, stronger than fifty. With every bit of that strength, he coiled himself even tighter. Then he picked a spot on the tunnel wall and exploded toward it, releasing his entire energy as he slung the creature from his sword.

  The creature hit the wall. The impact made Takuda’s ears ring and drenched him in fish-­stinking muck.

  He wiped the foul liquid from his eyes and regained his little flashlight. The Kappa had exploded against the wall, but he needed to make sure there was no life left in the pieces. There was more than biology keeping the thing alive, and he needed to be sure it was gone for good. Perhaps he should collect the pieces and take them to Suzuki.

  He rinsed the creature’s foul blood from the sword and wiped it dry before he sheathed it and capped the tackle tube tightly.

  Black ooze ran down the wall, but the creature had disappeared. Takuda stood dripping in the tunnel, not moving a muscle. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t have simply dissolved into muck and filth. It had hit the wall very, very hard, but skin and talons and bones should still be near the surface of the water even if they had slid off the wall.

  As he stepped forward into waist-­deep water to find the broken corpse, he felt the motion behind him.

  The claws bit into Takuda’s boots at the ankles, and the Kappa pulled his feet out from under him.

  He flailed and went down in the hip-­deep water as the Kappa clawed its way up his body. The flashlight flickered and died, and the last thing Takuda saw was the Kappa reaching for his face through the murky water.

  CHAPTER 27

  Takuda spun and spun in airless cold, tumbling blind as water filled his nose and his ears. The creature turned them both as it clawed its way through canvas and rubber. Takuda’s hands reached for the monster even as he fought for balance in the darkness. He caught a slick, bony elbow, but it jerked away from him. His hands slid off its scale-­slimed ribs as the creature dug at his midsection, and the claws raked at his chest through his fishing outfit.

  Takuda curled into a ball to keep the creature away from his throat and his liver. And in a ball he sank, with the creature swirling around him, trying to wriggle under his guard.

  Even as he realized he might drown in that unlit tunnel, memories of chasing his brother and his son through murky water came rushing back sharp and clear: We’ve been here before, the Kappa and I. But I was just a boy then. The beast has a surprise coming.

  Takuda’s rounded back touched down on gravel. He rested there lightly, buoyed by the air in his lungs and in his rubberized waders and by the squirming of the monster. Every time the beast reached in, he parried, deflecting the claws with his shins and forearms. He let go with his mind and allowed his arms and legs to take care of themselves. He was fighting blind, but the creature had two arms, two legs, and a biting mouth, just like any other fighter.

  The creature paused, just for an instant.

  It renewed its attack from the left, then tried to dodge in on Takuda’s right. Frustrated at every turn, it tore at him in a full-­on frontal assault. Takuda could hear its rattling hiss through the water itself.

  Not used to fighting grown men, are you? It makes you angry when it’s not an easy kill. Make a mistake, and I’ll tie your rubbery bones in a knot.

  His lungs screamed for air, but he could wait. Water was trickling through his nose to the back of his throat. The urge to cough was almost overwhelming. He let it overwhelm him, then wash over him, then recede. He could wait.

  The creature’s fury seemed to spend itself. Again, it paused, just for an instant, and again, it attacked from the left.

  Now.

  Takuda’s left hand closed on the creature’s throat, and his right hand caught its flailing left arm. He rolled it onto its back, with its head against the steel track. The creature screamed in the water.

  Now all I have to do is live long enough to kill you.

  Its feet raked at Takuda’s belly, and its free arm flailed. Takuda pulled its captive arm across its body, twisting the creature facedown, away from him.

  Takuda needed air. His head throbbed. Blue-­and-­orange spots swam inward from the edges of his vision, disappearing in the center, into a hole, a tunnel, a dark tunnel within a dark tunnel within a dark tunnel—­

  Beast first, then air.

  Takuda worked his left foot into the gravel until his fishing boot wedged beneath the rail. Then he planted his right foot on the back of the creature’s head, digging the steel spikes into its slimy flesh. It shrieked in the water.

  Takuda exploded to the surface. He coughed and gagged, blowing outward with empty lungs. That was the hardest part—­not taking that first gasp of air until his throat was clear.

  When he finally inhaled, it was a sweet breath, even tainted with mold and decay and the stench of rotten fish. He gasped and retched, wiping water from his eyes. It was good to be alive.

  He stood gasping until his head cleared and his
breathing slowed. That gave him precious seconds to think, standing in the dark, his weapon in a tackle tube somewhere in the waist-­deep water, a mythical water beast pinned beneath his boot—­

  Now what?

  The creature squirmed, gaining a foothold in the gravel. Takuda shoved his boot into its neck, grinding its face against the rail. Even standing out of the water, Takuda heard it screaming. It sounded almost like a human sob. Almost.

  It screams because steel—­burns it? Weakens it? What a strange thing. The shackles Suzuki had given him—­of course. Iron shackles.

  He needed iron or steel to bind this creature, but his handcuffs were in the tackle tube. They might as well be on the moon. Handcuffs would have made it simpler, but he could wrestle it . . .

  . . . out of the water. He would hold it out of the water. It would grow weaker with every step.

  It was a sorry plan, but it was the only plan he had. The beast had been run through with good steel, slammed against the wall with enough force to pulp a human, and had its head pinned between a steel rail and steel spikes until its screams had died down to a plaintive mewling. It was waiting to slash him to ribbons if he let down his guard.

  There was nothing else to be done. He couldn’t pin it to the rail forever, and it certainly wasn’t going to drown.

  “Let’s see how you do out of the water, little fish.”

  He plunged his torso under the surface and grabbed the creature above its slimed, bulbous elbow joints. It was a grip that would have splintered a man’s bones and split the skin, but the fish-­flesh squirmed under Takuda’s fingers. Too strong. It’s too strong. Then he pulled its elbows together and tightened his grip as if to squeeze the Kappa out of its own skin, and the beast shrieked in the murk.

  He took his boot from the back of its neck and hoisted it up out of the water and above his head in one motion. It howled and squirmed, flailing its long, web-­toed feet.