Only the floor was different. At his feet formed a checkered, nine-by-nine surface. Above that materialized hard-edged, geometric playing pieces. It was a shogi board. Its pieces were arranged in their starting positions, and awaited a first move.
Johnny stretched out his right foot and placed his big toe on one of the pawns, then pushed it forward. To his surprise, an unseen hand responded to his move, and countered with an advance of a pawn on the opposite side. Johnny looked up at his opponent: The watchmaker, Pinion. He was back at the shogi parlor in The Lugs. The old man who had sat silently in the corner was there, watching them. What was his name? Johnny struggled to put a finger on it, but couldn’t recall.
“Your move,” Pinion said.
“This is a hallucination,” Johnny replied.
“Does that mean you’re not going to play?” Pinion asked. “You might as well. The game’s just beginning.”
Johnny looked at him for a moment, then back down at the board. He blinked a few times, then put his big toe back down on the same pawn he had moved previously, and moved it forward again.
“I always enjoyed a good game of shogi,” Pinion said, moving his bishop. “The old coots at the parlor were never much of a challenge. Sometimes I think they lost to me on purpose, though.”
Johnny responded to the bishop by moving his rook to the open file. “They’re not so bad,” he said after taking his foot off the piece.
Pinion rested a finger on his chin and thought about his next move. “No, they’re just fine. But I got tired of the same old games, so I taught my son to play instead. He was a genius. In a few short months, he was devising new attacks and giving me a run for my money. By the time he was a teenager, he had me beat. It was exhilarating.”
Johnny and Pinion exchanged a few attacks, leaving Pinion with the upper hand. He moved his bishop deep into Johnny’s back line, but as he did so, his hand changed from large and square to smooth and rectangular. This new hand flipped over the bishop, turning it into a ryūma, the dragon horse. When Johnny looked back up, he saw Mutsumi Baba. A cigarette in one hand, and a glass of Louis XIII in the other.
“Your strategy is all wrong here, Tokisaki,” she said, blowing out a puff of smoke from her lips. “You keep reacting and defending, but that’s not enough. You need to take the bull by the horns. Attack.”
Johnny looked back down at the board. It seemed farther away somehow, and he had to stretch his foot as far as it could go to reach his rook and press it forward.
“That’s the spirit,” she said. “Always attack, Tokisaki. Even in defense, strike out with all of your might.”
“How’s Jack?” Johnny asked. His whole body felt as if it were afloat now. He could see the board, but could no longer comprehend his position.
“You’re losing focus,” she replied. “The board, Tokisaki. Don’t take your eyes from it. Watch each piece. Discover their intent. Each one of them has a purpose, and it’s your job to find it.”
Johnny shook his head and turned his full attention back to the board. He stretched his leg out again as far as it would go, but when at last he touched his rook with the edge of his big toe, another foot came crashing down upon his own. The blow sent shockwaves of pain through his body, causing him to cry out in agony.
When Johnny looked back up, the room had changed. It was dark, and the light of a full moon shone through a large set of windows from behind him. He was in Dr. Tonimura’s office again. The top of the hospital. The air was ice cold, and when he looked down at himself, he saw that he was naked.
The foot that had crushed him kicked away the board, sending its pieces flying. Johnny turned his gaze forward, and saw none other than Ayano Hanekawa standing naked before him. Johnny’s eyes followed the curves of her body until it reached a circular glass window just above her left breast.
He stared at it for some time. It was similar to Mari’s in some ways, but also different. Somehow less complex, less elegant, and much, much busier. It ticked away with the speed and force of a steam engine, filling his ears with the sound of clockwork.
“Look at what they’ve done to you, my dearest,” Ayano said, stepping closer to him. Her face was the picture of a grinning demon, and the hairs on his neck stood erect as she ran her soft hands over him.
“What do you want?” Johnny asked.
Ayano set a finger on his lips and hushed him. “I’ve never met a man like you,” she said. “So passionate. So reckless. You shot me, do you remember?” she said, pointing to a small scar an inch above her movement.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “I remember. Didn’t seem to work out too well.”
“Ah-ha-ha!” she giggled. “I couldn’t forget that feeling. That rush that you gave me as I experienced my second death. Before that moment, I was just a lost girl with a clockwork heart. But after that, I knew I had to have you.”
Ayano stepped over Johnny, then pressed her warm body against his. “Don’t worry,” she said as she mounted him.
“I’ll make sure that those rats don’t send you downstairs,” she groaned in pleasure. Johnny couldn’t resist. His whole body had turned to jelly, rendering him helpless. Words would no longer form in his mouth. His tongue would no longer heed him. There was only Ayano, naked in the moonlight as she screamed in climax before letting her head fall against his chest.
“Mmm,” she giggled as she tapped a finger against his lips. “Thank you for that, my love. Try to stay alive, won’t you? Ninomiya’s been naughty, locking you up and drugging you like this. I’ll have to pay him a visit.”
She dismounted him and took a few steps back. “I’ll leave the door open on my way out. Sleep now, my dear. We’ll be together soon enough.”
The colors of the room began to fade, along with the figure of Ayano. Johnny watched until everything turned black, leaving him at the edge of his sanity.
Thirty-First Movement
Butterfly
When Johnny next opened his eyes, he was alone. The walls of his prison were bereft of color, and though his body still ached, the only pain he still felt sharply was a blunt twinge at the top of his right foot. He was slow to notice the changes, only realizing that his binds had been cut when he reflexively rubbed his heavy eyes with his hands. Only then did he have the cognizance to stand up and check his surroundings.
The room was empty, and the door was open.
The sudden jolt upward immediately caused a spell of lightheadedness, which ended with him on all fours throwing up what little contents his stomach had. Despite the powerful heaving, no one came to check on him. No guards, no indications of life, nothing. Johnny stayed still upon the stone floor until the dizziness passed, then slowly propped himself up using the tall wooden chair he had been shackled to.
The table behind his chair that Ninomiya had used was barren, and finding no items of interest in the room, he tip-toed his way to the door, stopping only when he noticed a smooth red sheen reflected off the hallway floor. Johnny kneeled down and swept his fingers across it. Blood, still warm to the touch. Enveloped in silence, he peeked his head around the corner and into the dungeon’s narrow corridor.
Johnny had become no stranger to death, but what he witnessed in that hall was a massacre of such brutality that, had he anything left inside him, he would have upended it at that very moment and collapsed to the ground. Bodies, at least a half dozen, sprawled out on the floor. A river of blood flowed all the way down until it reached the door of his cell.
His shoes had been taken, and all he had left were the clothes on his back. Johnny had no choice but to breathe deep and wade through the carnage. At first, he thought to move quickly. Each step he took stained his feet crimson, but he couldn’t bring himself to hurry. The guards had been no victims of a quick, merciful death. They had been cut up and mauled as if by some forest-dwelling beast. Long, deep gashes lined their necks and torso’s. Some were missing
limbs. Others were missing eyes.
Halfway down the hall, he heard the faintest sound coming from one of the adjacent cells. A low groaning that he would have never noticed if not for the stillness of death that he traversed. He checked the door, but the handle was stiff and unmoving.
“Hello?” a muffled voice from within asked. “Who’s there?”
Johnny turned back to the bodies. One of them must have had a key, and though it pained him to do so, he began rummaging through their blood-stained pockets one by one, until he found what he was looking for: a heavy iron key-ring still gripped tightly in the hand of the guard farthest from him.
He wrested the keys from the guard, then quickly returned to the door and tested each key until one slid in and turned without resistance.
“Nakahara?” Johnny gasped as he stepped through the door.
“Hāfu? What are you doing here?”
“Someone let me out,” Johnny said, coming to his side. He kneeled behind Nakahara and began tugging at the ropes that bound him.
“Let you out?” he asked. “You mean you’ve been locked up in here too?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Not sure for how long. They injected me with some kind of hallucinogen, but I don’t know when that was, or even what time of day it is now.”
“Bastards,” Nakahara said. “They’ll get what’s coming to them.”
“I’m afraid they already have,” Johnny said. “The guards outside are all dead. Someone killed them and let me out.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Johnny managed to loosen one of the knots and began working on the next. “How long have you been here?”
“Ninomiya’s clowns picked me up that same day after we met at the cathedral.” Nakahara spat on the floor in disgust.
“The cathedral . . . ” Johnny whispered. “I’m sorry, Nakahara. They took you in because they saw you with me, didn’t they?”
“Don’t be sorry about anything,” Nakahara said. “I made my own choices, just like you made yours. And don’t worry, I didn’t tell them a damn thing about you. Not even your opening moves in our game of shogi, ha!”
Johnny couldn’t help but smile. “You didn’t have to protect me. Hell, they got me anyway.”
“It was the right thing to do,” he said. “This town’s been led astray for too long. And it’s all that swine Ninomiya’s fault.”
Johnny finished untying him, then stood back as Nakahara stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles finger by finger. Nakahara’s cell was much the same as Johnny’s. A stone cube with one chair in the center and a small table situated behind it. Unlike his own, however, the table here was far from empty. Nakahara’s personal effects had been neatly laid out upon it. A pack of cigarettes, the golden lighter that he had lent to Johnny after their initial meeting in The Lugs, and a quarter-sized bronze medallion.
“What’s this?” Johnny asked, taking the medallion in his hand. It was terribly faded, but the details could still be made out. On the face was a picture of a shrine as seen head-on. There was nothing outstanding about it, but when he turned the coin over, he found a distinct marking of watch hands pointing at the eleven o’clock position.
“This is . . . ” Johnny began. “You’re one of Shimotsuki’s men. But I thought they all died in the collapse?”
“I see you’ve learned much of Sonnerie since we last met. It is true. Most of the priests, including the Eleventh Index, were in the temple when the earth gave out from under them. But me . . . ”
Nakahara stopped, and rested a pensive fist against his forehead.
“I was a priest back then. I should have been there. Had I any pride, I would’ve died then and there with my brothers and sisters. But that morning, The Eleventh himself sent me out on some banal errand to the local market. My life was saved by a trip to the store for potatoes,” he sighed deeply.
“Were there any others?” Johnny asked.
Nakahara looked up at him and shook his head. “The only other was the Index’s young daughter, still a newlywed at the time. She should have taken his place, you know. She was next in line. And though I begged her to do it, she turned me away. ‘My father is dead,’ she said. ‘And so is the office that he occupied.’”
Johnny’s mind turned to Aiko Tonimura, the woman who had hired him. The heiress of two houses, forced to abandon her bloodline roots.
“Why keep the medallion?” Johnny asked after a few moments of silence.
Nakahara shrugged. “It keeps me grounded. It reminds me of who I am, and where I came from. A priest of the Namazu Shrine. A servant of Joji Shimotsuki. No matter what decree Ninomiya shits out from his high tower. I am, forever and always, a man of the Eleventh.”
Johnny put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Well then, a dungeon is no good place for a priest. Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
“Right,” Nakahara nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Just one thing,” Johnny said. “It’s a massacre in that hallway. You might not want to look down.”
“Nonsense,” Nakahara said. “I will face whatever is out there with you. There’s no need for coddling.”
“Okay,” Johnny said. “Let’s go.”
He passed the coin along with the lighter and cigarettes over to Nakahara, who pocketed them quickly as the pair made their way out of the room. Despite his bravery, Nakahara’s face quickly turned sour at the carnage in the hall. It was no fitting sight for a man, and they hurried through it until they reached a stairwell leading upward.
Johnny had hoped the slaughter might have been limited to the detention area, but as they began their ascent, he quickly realized that hope was in vain. The draconian staircase was bathed in stains and blots of crimson.
“My God,” Nakahara whispered as they climbed. “Who could have done this?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny whispered back. “And I’d rather not stick around to find out.”
“Poor bastards.”
“I thought you said they got what was coming to them?”
Nakahara’s breathing started to become labored as they climbed ever higher. “Yeah,” he managed. “But heavens, these boys didn’t stand a chance.”
A few minutes into their ascent, Johnny smelled something different than the foul miasma of death they had come from. Fresh air. Crisp and chilly in his lungs. He quickened his pace until the staircase ended abruptly at a closed ceiling above.
“Here,” Nakahara said, pointing at the wall behind Johnny. “This button oughta do it.”
Nakahara gave it a press, and immediately the hatch at the top of the stairwell began opening upward.
“Good work,” Johnny said. They took their final steps up until they emerged in a medium-sized shed filled with dirt and gardening equipment. The one window in the shed revealed a pitch-black night sky, and the sound of crashing ocean waves from below was clear.
Johnny filled his lungs with as much fresh air as he could carry. His strength had started to return to him, despite his collection of cuts and wounds. Nakahara followed close behind, and did much the same as Johnny upon reaching the top.
“Hey Tokisaki,” he said after he had caught his breath. “What was the name of that opener you used on me back at the shogi parlor?”
“It’s called onigoroshi,” Johnny replied. “Why?”
“You’ll have to teach it to me once we’re out of this mess. I can finally show those old coots at the tables who the real master is!”
“Sure,” Johnny smiled. “Come on, let’s go.”
The door to the garden shed opened without convincing, and the two men stepped outside into the night. Johnny wiped as much blood as he could from his feet on the wet grass, but after only a few seconds, his appendages grew numb from the cold, and he immediately regretted his decision.
To their left, just
a few short meters away, was the cliffside and the ocean below. Johnny scanned the area for any sign of life, but found none. The cathedral loomed in front of them, obscuring the clocktower from view, and to their right stood the white dogwood tree and the garden that surrounded it.
“I know where we are!” Nakahara announced. “The main road is just over there. We can follow it down to The Bezel and sneak back to my house.”
“I can’t,” Johnny said. “I need to get into the cathedral.”
“Why?” Nakahara asked. “We don’t know what’s going on in there. Whatever killed those men below could still be around.”
“I know,” Johnny said. “But they took my things. My notes, my revolver. I need to get them back.”
“Who cares about any of that stuff?” Nakahara argued.
“Look,” Johnny turned to him. “Even if we get back to your house, then what? We won’t be safe hiding out. They’ll come for me eventually, and once they notice you’re missing, they’ll put two and two together. There’s no choice but to press forward now. We have to get inside the cathedral.”
“Ugh,” Nakahara protested meekly. “Alright, Tokisaki. You take the lead. Hopefully we’ll find you some shoes while we’re milling around.”
Johnny gave him a nod of affirmation, then turned back toward the cathedral. The lights inside were on, but no one appeared to be home. The garden area was mercifully free of corpses, but once they had passed the greenery, a different scene came into view. Out of the corner of his eye, Johnny spied the slightest of movements. He grabbed Nakahara’s arm and dropped down out of sight, then watched.
The giant doors of the cathedral had been left open, and the light emitted from within revealed a single man, crawling away from the entrance with a stream of blood in his wake.
“Come on,” Johnny said, taking off ahead of Nakahara.
Clocktower Page 28