The Devouring God

by James Kendley

  He shouted for Yumi. In the second bedroom, Suzuki and Mori’s room, the wall had seemingly exploded inward. Shards of cheap, cardboard-­backed sheetrock littered the floor. Maybe she escaped. Takuda dropped to his hands and knees to peer through the hole between two vertical beams.

  The apartment next door was an abattoir. Blood had spattered every surface he could see. The feet of the emergency workers were covered with white, pull-­on booties, but these were already smeared crimson and brown.

  “Yumi!”

  A face appeared in the hole—­Kimura.

  “Hey, look here. Special consultant or not, you can’t just wander around in there. This is police business!”

  “This is my apartment. I live here. I’m looking for a woman.”

  Kimura’s face fell. “You live here? I mean, there? That apartment, 201? And you’re looking for a woman. Ah. Wait right there,” he said, fumbling for his telephone.

  Takuda stood. The trip to the apartment next door was dreamlike, slow motion, like running underwater. His mind was racing even as he stood up. She got away from Suzuki into the gambler’s apartment—­could Suzuki have squeezed in after her? The two officers he had brushed off were on him again by the time he got to the doorway of the bedroom; he brushed them off again, destroying more wall and one of the sliding doors in the process. She can’t be dead. She’s smarter and quicker than Suzuki. Takuda ran to the door, but his body didn’t seem to respond quickly enough. He could even feel the pulling of his wounded hamstring and the multiple new cuts from the girls in the cafeteria, all the cuts seeming to pull him backward as if scar tissue were somehow heavier than unmarked flesh.

  More officers crowded the entrance pit. They had come up the stairs from the parking lot, and they all wanted to talk sense to him. He simply vaulted over them this time. Their hands followed him as if supporting him, and he shook off their grasping fingers as he lit on the concrete landing. He ran into the open door of apartment 203, and the stench of blood and emptied bowels hit him in the face. So much blood. This thing is so hungry. It’s even hungrier than Suzuki.

  He strode through a crowd of protesting officers toward the back bedroom, where Kimura stood with his back to the door. Next to Kimura lay a pile of butchered meat. It had been a woman.

  Yumi.

  Cut edges of flesh had begun to darken. It was an incomplete job; the corpse was flayed, but the exposed bones were not removed, not set up in a shrine to cradle the Kurodama. He must have been interrupted, Takuda thought. It must take longer doing it on your own, passing it back and forth to yourself to make up for the other six. . .

  His knees touched the straw matting. Then his hands. He had floated down like a feather. There was no place to fall that was not covered in clots and shreds of Yumi, so he closed his eyes and stayed on his hands and knees, breathing slowly and evenly so he didn’t pass out in the spattered remains.

  The large, still voice said, Take your time. It will all still be here when you compose yourself.

  “He says he lives here, right next door,” Kimura hissed into his phone. “I need you to call your friend Ota. Get him down here so we can keep this contained . . .”

  Takuda raised his eyes. In the corner was a blue plastic sheet covering a body. They cover Suzuki, but they don’t bother to cover Yumi. I’ll kill them all for that. He thought to rise and whip the plastic off Suzuki to cover Yumi, but he saw small, almost dainty feet in men’s black socks sticking out from under the sheet.

  Suzuki has feet like paddleboats.

  “That’s not the priest,” he said. “The priest is still loose. You have to catch him. You have to stop him.”

  Kimura jumped. He turned just as a rough dozen strong hands grabbed Takuda by his arms, his legs, his collar, and his midriff. They were going to carry him out.

  “Wait, wait,” Kimura said. “You thought this was your priest?”

  “I thought the priest . . . yes, I thought it was him. Tell them to release me. I can identify these ­people.”

  The officers argued with Kimura, telling him what Takuda had done to them, until Kimura finally waved them off in an imperious and very insulting manner. They bowed stiffly and correctly as Takuda rose from the soiled matting, wiping blood from his palms with a discarded booty.

  Kimura pulled the plastic aside. The gambler stared at the ceiling. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.

  “That’s the resident of this apartment,” Takuda said. “I don’t know his name, but I know he’s been here several years.”

  Kimura grimaced. “You don’t know your next-­door neighbor’s name?”

  “My wife and the priest talked to him. The priest gave him money. I had to work. I didn’t have the time to socialize.”

  “You missed your chance.” Kimura let the sheet fall. “His name was Inaba. He killed himself as the first officers crashed the door. And this one . . . are you ready? There’s no face. You’ll have to find some identifying mark. If we have to roll her over, you’ll have to wait, or we can do it from dental records.”

  Through the horror, over his heart hammering in his chest, Takuda had one clear, precise thought: If that’s not Suzuki, this might not be Yumi.

  He walked cautiously toward the head of the flayed corpse. All but concealed in half-­gelled gore and chips of bloodied bone, the matted hair was gray, much grayer than Yumi’s. The mottled flesh was not her flesh; the hands were not her hands.

  “It’s not her,” Takuda said. “It’s not my wife.”

  Kimura said, “Well, that’s a relief. That would have made things much more complicated. We assumed it was Inaba’s wife, although it will take some forensics work to determine without doubt. I’m sure that was a horrible shock for you—­won’t you take a seat for a second?”

  Takuda sat on the only blood-­free spot he could see, a squarish area that must have been shielded from blood by a low table or part of a sleeping mat.

  “It’s really a ridiculous coincidence, isn’t it? Are you serious? You live in a place like this?”

  “I’m a security guard.”

  Kimura frowned deeply. “We were told you were some sort of consultant. You didn’t even suspect that you lived next door to the starfish killer?”

  “You think he was a serial killer?”

  “The victim is female. There’s a lot of exposed bone. It fits the profile. Are you really just a security guard?”

  Takuda sighed. “I never said I was anything else. What about the knife?”

  “We think that’s why he broke into 201 . . . your apartment. There’s no knife in your kitchen.”

  “We only had one.”

  “I think it’s in an evidence bag now, even if you ever wanted to use it again. I certainly wouldn’t.” He motioned for Takuda to stand. “Come on. Let’s get you some fresh air. You’ve had a shock. This is quite gruesome even for me, and I’m a detective!”

  Once Takuda was on his feet, Kimura hustled him out of the apartment. “Forensics, you know. Everyone has a job to do. We’ll see if the landlord will handle the repairs to your apartment and the replacement of the flooring. Once that plaster dust gets into the straw mats, it never comes out.”

  Takuda stepped past the disapproving patrolmen out onto the landing, and a wave of nausea overtook him. As he leaned over the railing, trying to keep from vomiting, the huge, still presence in his head gently mocked him: Relief is too much for you. You know how to be alone and afraid, but simple happiness is beyond you. Actual joy would probably kill you. And it boomed silent laughter that echoed back through his life to a time before his birth.

  Takuda spoke back to it with his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his jaw clamped to keep his breakfast down: How would you know anything of joy?

  It retreated with a rushing like water, but there was mirth in its passage.

  When he opened his eyes, Mori was at
the bottom of the stairs.

  “Come on,” Takuda said, holding the railing as he descended toward the parking lot. “They aren’t in the apartment. They got away somehow.”

  “Who?” Mori stood back to make way for him. “Yumi and the priest?”

  “Maybe they weren’t even there when the attack came.”

  “Attack?”

  Takuda pulled Mori into the parking lot, away from the steady stream of uniformed officers going in and out of the apartment. He hissed to Mori, “Endo delayed me at the satellite office. Someone went right through the wall from the gambler’s apartment, into the priest’s bedroom. Next door, the gambler’s wife is hacked up to look like the jellyfish killings. As if the gambler did it with our kitchen knife and then he killed himself when they entered his apartment.”

  “Why did they enter his apartment?”

  “I didn’t ask why they broke in. It doesn’t matter why. Endo knew it was coming. He stalled me at Yoshida’s office, but he was listening for the sirens. That’s what brought me back.”

  “The police radio brought me. They were so hot to get here that they even broadcast the address. Half the prefectural police is here, and all the city police. Chief of Detectives Ishikawa is down at the corner trying to bring some order to it, but it’s chaos. I just walked right through.” Mori shook his head as if he had bees. “Where are Yumi and the priest?”

  “I don’t know where they are. Maybe Endo’s ­people needed them to leave with the Kurodama because they can’t touch it themselves. The rules.”

  Mori threw his hands above his head in frustration.

  “I need your brain now, Mori. I need you to think. Where would they take it? If Endo needed Yumi and the priest to carry it somewhere, where would that be?”

  Mori sank to his haunches with his head in his hands. “Aaahhh, let me think, let me think.” He ran his hands through his hair. “First, I don’t even know what’s happened. Is it still active? The Kurodama?”

  “Endo says it is. He says it’s a mind, and that it’s exacting revenge.”

  “I told you so. I told you it was a bad idea to leave the priest alone with it. He’s so weak-­minded that it probably possessed him. Or maybe it lured the gambler through the wall.”

  Takuda grabbed him by the collar. “Think! Where would they take it?”

  “I don’t know how to figure out where they’re taking it.” Mori shook himself free, still squatting. “Endo dropped hints about where it was, but not where it was supposed to be . . .” He looked up suddenly. “He dropped hints about the cafeteria, but also . . .” He stood so quickly his knees popped. “We need the priest’s papers. That map. The old map and the tourist map. It’s . . . Endo gave us everything we need. He gave us too much probably. I know he did. We just need to sort it out to figure out where they took it . . .”

  A familiar voice came from behind them: “Where who took what?”

  CHAPTER 30

  Tuesday Morning

  Takuda spun. Yumi and Suzuki stood two meters away with their arms full of shopping bags.

  Takuda held Yumi tightly as uniformed officers swarmed around them. The groceries lay scattered at their feet.

  She struggled in his arms. “What has happened? What’s going on here?”

  Mori was badgering Suzuki. “Where is the Kurodama? Did you take it with you? Speak up, Priest!”

  “It’s on the table in the apartment,” Suzuki said. “Release me now. Control yourself, please!”

  Yumi pushed Takuda away. “Tell me what’s happened! There are police everywhere. They wouldn’t let us in the parking lot until one of them recognized the priest.”

  “The gambler in 203 was taken by the Kurodama. That’s going to be the official story anyway,” Takuda said.

  Yumi pulled free of him but still held his hand tightly. “He . . . what? Old Inaba? He was taken? Possessed?”

  Takuda told her everything he knew.

  Her eyes set hard when she heard about the hole in the wall. “And the Kurodama is gone.”

  Mori had released Suzuki. “So I assume the two of you left the apartment to get the priest some food.”

  “It was a great deal,” Suzuki said, “too good to pass up. The assistant manager of the Marukyo by the station came by to tell us we had won the grocery lottery. Everything we could gather and carry out ourselves for one thousand yen, but we had to be at the store in ten minutes.”

  Takuda and Mori exchanged a glance. “You decided to leave the shards behind,” Takuda said.

  “I was starving,” Suzuki said. “I couldn’t stand it. But we didn’t want to take that thing out in public, whether it was dead or not. And you said the counselor couldn’t do anything about it, not directly. So we thought it would be safe in the apartment by itself until we decided what to do with it.”

  “I just wanted to get out,” Yumi said. “Between that thing on the table and the priest complaining of his hunger pangs, I just couldn’t take any more.”

  Takuda turned to Mori. He was gone, nowhere to be seen.

  “Yumi, Priest, where did Mori go? He was here just a second ago.”

  They looked in all directions, but all they saw was Chief of Detectives Ishikawa striding toward them, his face set as grim as a kabuki mask. “Did you call this in? Did you? We got an anonymous tip that your neighbor was killing his wife, but no one else is home. Every other apartment in the building is empty.”

  “Maybe they won the grocery lottery, too,” Suzuki said helpfully.

  Ishikawa ignored him. “You’ve engineered this whole thing, haven’t you?”

  Takuda squared his shoulders. “Baseless accusations aren’t your style. Someone told you all about us, just this morning, right?”

  Ishikawa sneered. “You deduce all this based on your distinguished career as a detective. A detective who quit in disgrace. All you do is go around making messes for others to clean up.”

  Takuda smiled. “You received a dossier of some sort.”

  “I did,” Ishikawa said. “You need to stay as far away from police business as possible from now on. Unfortunately, this morning, you’re in the middle of it.” He held up an evidence bag. It contained a bamboo-­handled kitchen knife.

  Bright red blood had pooled in the bottom of the bag. Endo’s thugs had actually used his kitchen knife to butcher his neighbor.

  “Do you recognize this knife?” Ishikawa was waving the bag. His face was an angry purple, making Takuda think of venous blood once again . . .

  “It looks like our kitchen knife,” Yumi said. “It’s a very common kind of knife, though, the kind you buy at Daiei or Topos.”

  “We’re not responsible for this,” Takuda said.

  “You show up everywhere, even on the security tapes of the mental hospital where Thomas Fletcher died, but I can’t prove it because the tapes were mysteriously wiped clean right in our evidence room.” He drew a breath. “So now your near-­indigent neighbor proves he was the jellyfish killer or the starfish killer or what-­the-­hell-­ever. Meanwhile, his neighbors, who were there every step of the way, had nothing to do with it.” He brandished the evidence bag. “Except you had everything to do with it, didn’t you?”

  Takuda tried to show no expression at all. Suzuki rattled plastic behind him.

  Ishikawa looked them over. “Stay close. Tell your Mori I said so. Don’t skip out, or I’ll hunt you down like rats.”

  “We won’t,” Suzuki said. His mouth was full. “We love Fukuoka.”

  Ishikawa stared at Suzuki for a second over Takuda’s shoulder, and then he spun on his heel and strode back to the apartment.

  They stood in the parking lot as the forensics team finished in their apartment and the coroner’s team carried the body bags out of apartment 203. Uniformed officers continued to keep the reporters out of the parking lot. Takuda ignored their shout
ed questions.

  Suzuki continued to devour the groceries.

  Finally, a small knot of uniformed patrolmen wearing white surgical masks descended the stairs. They surrounded Kimura, who turned from one to the other of them, confused. He asked them where they were taking him, and they refused to respond.

  “There it is,” Takuda said. “They’ve got it, and they’ve got Kimura.”

  The patrolmen hustled Kimura into the back of a van. As he clung to the doorframe before they pushed him in, Takuda saw a bright blue sparking. Kimura’s hand clenched on empty air, and the patrolmen bundled him in.

  Two patrolmen carried cloth bags tied to the ends of sticks.

  “The Kurodama,” he hissed. “They’ve got it, and they’re taking Kimura as well.”

  Takuda sprinted toward the van. The last man at the door of the van spotted him: the head of the Zenkoku Security force, now dressed as a city policeman. He slammed the van door and drew the old Russian pistol. Takuda set his heels to dodge right, but pain shot down his leg. He dropped to one knee in the parking lot, meters from the goal.

  Ogawa grinned down at him as the van pulled away. He held a long, forked device, an enhanced cattle prod. He leaped into the driver’s seat of a black sedan. As Takuda struggled to his feet, the sedan sped through the cordon after the van, scattering reporters and patrolmen in its wake.

  They sat in the Lotus Café waiting for Mori to show up. “It’s getting worse,” Suzuki said. “I’m hungry all the time now. There’s obviously something wrong with me.”

  Takuda was relieved that Mori wasn’t there to agree. “You both did the right thing, leaving the Kurodama in the apartment. It might have gone badly if you had been carrying it.”

  Yumi looked at him severely. “You don’t call that going badly? We’ve been doing this too long, then. You’ve forgotten what it looks like when things go well.”

  He flushed. “Well, at least the priest didn’t leave you alone there. No telling what would have happened then. And he hid his sword. That’s a good thing. You wouldn’t want to get caught with it.”