“I was given a chance. If I can clean this up, clean up this room, there was never a crime! None of it ever happened!” He brandished a fistful of household garbage bags. “You can’t stop this. It comes from very high up. Very high! You can’t ruin this for me.”
Takuda lowered his sword and grabbed Ogawa by the collar. “Where’s your monster? I’m here to kill it.”
“Kill him? You? Kill him? Heh heee!” Ogawa’s heavy, loose-lipped grin widened. “You’re lucky he’s not here! He’s hunting!”
Takuda released him and sheathed his sword. “Ogawa, you’re a fool. They may let you clean up the mess for them, but if you think they’re going to let you go, you really are brain-damaged.”
Ogawa stared past Takuda’s shoulder. He dropped the garbage bags as he slipped backward into shadow.
Takuda grasped his sword hilt as he turned. He felt the Kappa before he heard it, and then it was too late. It was on his back before he could face it, hissing with pleasure as it wrapped slimy fingers around his throat.
CHAPTER 36
Takuda couldn’t even unsheathe his sword. He reeled, breathless, as the Kappa strangled him from behind, cutting the oxygen to his brain so that he saw bright blue-and-orange dots in the darkness. The Kappa’s beak snapped at his ear as their joined shadow danced and twisted among the I-beams. The LED lantern from Takuda’s forehead fell to the concrete.
Takuda was suddenly too weak to stand, and his vision was narrowing to a dark tunnel. The Kappa was pumping poison into his neck. He dropped the sheathed sword and fell to one knee on the inclined concrete. He stretched his head back to peel the Kappa’s fingers from his throat, and he spotted Ogawa shinning his way up a rusted I-beam.
“Ogawa, help me,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Help yourself, Detective,” Ogawa shouted down. “He hates the metal, he does. Grind him off against a girder there, then climb up here with me.” He climbed another meter. “Of course, that leaves him down there and us up here. We’ll cling to these girders, and that’s as long as our lives will be, heh-heh!”
“Angah khu, tan hrag!” I’ll eat you next, coward.
Ogawa clambered upward into darkness.
Takuda gathered the strength left in his trembling legs. He pushed upright and ran backward, hoping he would hit a girder before he tripped over a corpse.
“Shuu hun. Ha-raa, ha-raa—” Enough, the Kappa whispered as Takuda picked up speed. Sleep, sleep—
They hit an I-beam so hard that Takuda felt the squared edge right through the Kappa’s rubbery flesh. It squealed and released him. Takuda stumbled forward as the Kappa hit the concrete. He scooped up his sword by the hilt and whipped off the scabbard in one motion, almost losing the sword in the process. To stop his headlong fall, he hit another I-beam with his outstretched arm and spun around the beam to face the Kappa, slashing wildly as he spun just in case it had followed him.
The Kappa was nowhere in sight.
It’s not weakened. It’s not weakened at all. There was enough water on the floor for the Kappa to regain its strength. It could do this all day. Takuda couldn’t.
Takuda’s lights swayed with him as he stood panting, trying to regain breath that would not come. Shadows sawed against each other in the bright, white light. Each girder left a greenish trail as Takuda swayed, and each shadow left a purplish trail. The poison had hit his brain, and he didn’t have long. He gripped the hilt with both hands, but his fingertips were so numb he could barely feel the sharkskin wrapping.
“Detective,” Ogawa hissed from the shadows above, “are you alive?”
Takuda didn’t answer. He strained all his senses searching for the Kappa among the I-beams. He felt drunk. His breath was slow and shallow, and he couldn’t quite fill his lungs. He hoped he died of heart failure before he suffocated.
All I need is seven cuts. Seven. Lord Buddha, allow me seven cuts to cleanse this valley.
“Detective, there’s someone up here on the gantry.”
Takuda moved forward slowly, one foot before the other. His bare feet slid on the slimed concrete, past the dead rats and defiled corpses. He was ready to cut in any direction. He was as good as dead, but he still had strength enough to wield the massive sword. That’s why this blade is so heavy and tempered so hard. He finally understood. It was made to be wielded by a man so near death he could only swing it in the right direction such that the sword itself would cut down the enemy by its own mass.
“Detective, someone is coming down!” Ogawa hissed. “Coming down the stairs! Just let them come. While he’s killing them, I’ll slide down and get help! I can save you!”
He tried to smile at Ogawa’s lies, but his lips were oddly frozen. He heard feet clattering on steel. If they’re human, I can deal with them. He walked toward the stairs, sword at the ready.
As if in slow motion, one of the corpses exploded to Takuda’s left. Blood-slimed ribs and strips of purplish flesh twisted in the air in front of Takuda as the Kappa burst from its hiding place inside a human torso. Takuda swung the sword, but his loins twisted slowly, so slowly, and his arms lagged behind his body like streamers in the wind. The Kappa ducked under the blade, its eyes locked on his. As the ribs and gobbets of flesh started to hit the ground at Takuda’s feet, the Kappa stood erect and drew back its long, bony paw. Takuda tried to bring the sword back, but it was too heavy. Its mass continued to twist him sideways, exposing his chest to the Kappa. The Kappa shrieked in triumph as it drove its claws in under his sternum.
That’s it, then. The thought was simple and clear. His life was over. The sword dropped to the concrete. His hands dropped to his sides.
“Heh ho zhe hyah khu kho.” I won’t eat you quickly. It looked him in the eyes. “Kho to heh ha-raa.” You will sleep with me.
Takuda swayed, looking down at the claws digging into his chest. A vision flashed before him: He was lying on the concrete, eyes wide open, awake but paralyzed. The Kappa sat beside him, chewing the flesh from his hip bone.
He looked at the Kappa. It nodded, grinning. “Zhaaaa—”
It was still grinning as he grabbed the fingers protruding from his chest. It tried to pull away, but he held its hand against his body and clapped the handcuff on its bony wrist.
“Iyaaaahhhh!” The Kappa shrieked, dragging Takuda on his belly through the rats and corpses, banging him against the I-beams as it tried to escape the burning steel cuff. The lights were stripped from Takuda’s biceps and thighs, lying behind him like a short trail of fallen stars. He still held the cuff with both hands. The Kappa turned on him, giving Takuda just enough slack to snap the other cuff on his own wrist. He laid his cheek on the filthy concrete. He had done his best.
The Kappa was enraged. It lifted Takuda by the cuffed hand. Now that he was so weak, the Kappa seemed fearsomely strong. It put its long, skinny foot against his bleeding chest and pulled. The cuff would not budge. The Kappa grasped the chain between the cuffs, placed both feet on Takuda’s chest, and pulled. Takuda tensed with the strength left in him as his shoulder began to dislocate. The Kappa snarled with pleasure as it prepared to rip his arm off.
Instead, there was a bright flash, and the Kappa’s own arm fell. The paw gripped the chain for an instant, and then the severed arm rolled into the Kappa’s lap, leaving the one-armed Kappa cuffed to Takuda.
Takuda and the Kappa stared at the stump as the blackish blood gushed. Then they both noticed the point of a dripping blade, a thin and streamlined blade arcing up into the darkness. Suzuki stood at the other end, his bony face barely lit by Takuda’s fallen torches.
From behind the Kappa shone a sudden, blinding light. A figure moved inside it. The Kappa, confused, half turned toward the light, and then its head jerked oddly, sliding forward on its shoulders before it also fell. Twin spouts of black blood arced from the stump of the Kappa’s neck into the blinding l
ight, then thinned and wavered as the dying heart slowed. Mori, lit bright as day with the lantern hung round his neck, flicked the blood from his blade and sheathed it. As the blood ceased, the Kappa’s torso fell backward. Mori stepped backward as if to keep it from soiling his boots.
Takuda pulled the poisoned claws farther from his chest. “Step clear of that head, Priest.” His voice sounded thick and distant, even to himself. “It’s killed me, and now you have to kill it.”
“You’re not dead yet,” Mori said. He knelt and tore open Takuda’s coveralls. Five livid wounds stood out in a tight semicircle on Takuda’s chest.
“Most of this is right over the sternum,” Mori said. “It didn’t even penetrate the bone.”
“It didn’t even try,” Takuda said. “It wanted me alive and paralyzed.” He flinched as Mori squirted saline into the wounds. “What are you doing there?”
“Dr. Fujimoto’s orders. He said ‘irrigate, irrigate, irrigate.’ ”
“It feels worse than the original wound.” He was just beginning to realize that he would live. “You might have to carry me out, but let’s not carry the corpse. I want this filthy thing off me. Hey, Priest, get the cuff key out of my belt, will you? It’s on the leather loop at the back—Reverend Suzuki, stand down. Sheathe that ridiculous blade.”
Suzuki stood with his forearms knotted, fingers clenched on the hilt of his sword. He stared in horror at the Kappa’s head at his feet. “What have we done?”
Takuda tried to push Mori away. “Secure the priest. It’s gotten to him.”
Mori brushed his hand away. “You’ve got to talk him through it.” He continued to squirt stinging water into Takuda’s wounds.
Suzuki’s face was ashen in the bright glow of Mori’s lantern. His face was lined with grief. “No, no, no. What have we done?”
“Priest, look at me. You know it can appear in different shapes, right? What do you see?”
Suzuki continued to stare at the head.
“Priest! Look at me!”
Suzuki looked up mournfully. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“What did you see? Don’t look at it! Just tell me what you saw. A pretty girl? A little boy? An apprentice priest? What did you see?”
“A little b-boy—Shunsuke.”
Mori pushed Takuda onto his back and sat on his belly. “I’m sorry, Detective, but this just can’t wait.” He placed a plastic cylinder like a large marking pen to the left of Takuda’s sternum. “You may feel a slight pressure.” He held the cylinder over Takuda’s heart with both hands and leaned forward to put his weight on it. When he depressed the button, white gas shot out a vent at the side, and burning cold blasted into Takuda’s chest.
Takuda roared and tossed Mori off. Even in the dim light, he saw a new wound in his chest, a circular welt leaking blood and clear fluid. He swore, holding his hand to his chest.
“We murdered a little boy,” Suzuki whispered.
Takuda dragged the Kappa’s headless, twitching corpse toward Suzuki before he realized he was back on his feet. He moved aside so Mori’s lantern would illuminate the Kappa’s head.
Mori stood, brushing off his coveralls. “I need to dress those wounds.”
Takuda bowed to him in gratitude, but he motioned him to stand back. The laundry-pole sword trembled in Suzuki’s fevered grip.
“Priest, this boy you see, there’s something wrong with its mouth, isn’t there? And the shape of the head is all wrong. And if you really look at the eyes, right in the eyes, you’ll see that it isn’t a boy at all. It’s the monster that killed your father.”
Suzuki looked down at it. The creature’s eyes were open, staring. The cracked and leathery beak twitched in a rhythm like speech: the Kappa speaking to Suzuki’s mind.
“Oh, you filthy thing,” Suzuki said to the Kappa’s head. “To make me think we killed an innocent boy! Oh!” Suzuki kicked the head, and it sailed toward Mori.
“Hey!” Mori dodged the head. “Watch it!”
The head bounced off an I-beam and began to roll down the concrete toward the drainpipe. If it started down that slope, it would be in the shin-deep water of the spillway before they could stop it. They would search, but it would be lost to them. Then it would lie quietly in the muck until it found another priest to bring it victims. It would feed off innocents as it slowly grew another body. Then it would hunt, unstoppable again.
Takuda lunged, but he was too weak, and the rolling head was picking up speed. The squirming, child-sized corpse handcuffed to his arm dragged Takuda down like lead. He would never catch it.
The Kappa’s head hissed with glee as it rolled toward the drainpipe.
CHAPTER 37
Suzuki, sword flailing, leapt for the Kappa’s head. Takuda and Mori pulled up short, reflexively dodging the arc of Suzuki’s spastic blade.
Suzuki caught up to the head just before it reached the drainpipe. He tried to spear it with his sword, almost stabbing himself in the shin on the second try. His bungled attempt at stabbing the head diverted it from the drain until he could stop it with his foot. He kicked it back up the slope, where it stopped at Takuda’s feet. It hissed and spat, rolling its yellow eyes at Takuda and Mori.
Suzuki’s sword hung from his fingers. He was breathing more heavily than Takuda was. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Takuda pointed at him. “Sheathe your blade. Now!”
When Suzuki’s blade was secured, Mori released the hilt of his own. He stepped toward them. He let out his breath. “Okay,” he said, looking from Takuda to Suzuki. “Okay.”
They looked down at the head in the brilliance of Mori’s lantern. Mori sighed. “It’s still dangerous, isn’t it?”
It stared back at them, one after another, pouring out pure hatred through its eyes. But it also poured out visions of its long, hideous life.
Takuda saw it as a young man, a monk traveling to the darkest reaches of China. He saw it dragged down into a pool under a secret temple, black water and black prayers entering its mouth and its heart and its eyes. He saw it change to something less than human as the black goddess of the temple made it one of her children. He saw it learn to snap with its new beak and pull the unwitting innocent down to the depths to feast on their soft, sweet entrails. Takuda saw himself, as if in a mirror, as if in a film, bending down and taking the Kappa’s head to his chest, holding it safe, feeding it until it could feed itself again . . .
He blinked. He stepped back as if pulling himself free of the Kappa’s eyes. Mori was staring at the Kappa’s head, entranced. Suzuki was staring too, the corners of his mouth drawn into a frown of concentration
That’s your best trick, filth. In a second, you’ll see my best trick. He bent for his sword.
“Mori, uncuff me. The key is in the back of—”
Then Suzuki stepped back and drew his long, long blade.
“Mori! The priest!”
Mori stepped back into a deep stance as he drew his own blade, ready to dispatch the maddened priest.
Suzuki raised his sword above his head and brought the blade down between the Kappa’s eyes. The thin blade sprang sideways off the Kappa’s rubbery face. It dug a divot out of the Kappa’s slick brow and split its beak, but the head remained intact. Lightning and scenes of green, cloudy water shot through Takuda’s head.
Suzuki frowned at Takuda and sheathed his sword.
Takuda scanned the concrete for his own sword—now was the time. He retrieved his blade and lopped off the Kappa’s cuffed arm at the wrist, just below the handcuff, and the severed claw slid out as well. Takuda let the empty cuff dangle as he gripped the sword for close work and settled into an easy front stance. He let out slack on the hilt as he raised the sword above his head, and then he stepped forward into a “four-point” stance, bringing the blade straight down into the Kappa’s face with all his might.
The impact was tremendous, but even so, the Kappa’s head spread and flattened for an instant before splitting in half. It lay open slowly as coiled cartilage and black, gelatinous blood spilled onto the concrete. The eye facing Takuda winked furiously, focused on him for a second, and then rolled back in its shallow socket.
Takuda saw a vision of a primitive farmhouse and a gray-haired woman drawing water from a stream.
As it dies, it thinks of its mother? Ridiculous. It’s much too late for that.
Takuda addressed the left side of the head. It was harder to split, but it split. For my brother Shunsuke.
The Kappa’s last coherent vision: returning to the village of its birth while it still resembled a man in some ways, walking down the dirt path to that primitive farmhouse to see its gray-haired mother. Then looking into her eyes as it strangled her.
As the right half of the cranium split, the blade struck sparks off the concrete below. For your poor mother.
For my wife Yumi. A shard of the blade whizzed past Mori’s head.
For my parents, for all the parents of the Naga River valley. The blade shattered, leaving him with a cleaver as long as his forearm. It would do.
For Mori’s sister Yoshiko. With the final blow, the tang separated from the blade, leaving him with a bladeless hilt. He let it roll off his fingers onto the concrete.
The Kappa’s head lay cut into seven pieces. They eyes were dead, spilled onto the concrete, and the rubbery skull was empty.
Suzuki poked a dead eye with the toe of his boot. “Just as it’s written on the great mandala of the Nichiren sects, ‘Those who trouble the practitioners of Buddhist Law will have their heads split into seven pieces.’ Who told you to do this?”
“Gotoh, the old village clerk.”
“Gotoh? Really? That old rascal.” Suzuki chuckled as he dropped to his knees. He unzipped his coveralls to reveal the priestly robe and sash.
The Drowning God Page 23