The Devouring God

by James Kendley

  Takuda looked at the needlelike tower at the beach, kilometers to the northwest. Suzuki gazed at the billowing summer clouds.

  “When the Korokan was built, it was at the beach. You see? The beach was here. Now the water is a twenty-­minute drive away. It’s landfill. Reclaimed land.”

  Suzuki nodded. “All that beach to the northeast, Momochi, where that needle-­sharp tower stands next to the shiny new baseball stadium? That was all ocean a few years ago. We fill in the bays to make more land.”

  “And what happens when we hit an island?” Mori asked.

  Takuda decided to play, partly because he thought he knew where Mori was going. “We usually end up with a hill.” Takuda searched through the trees. “See there? See that hill way over there? It’s a shrine way up at the top of a long set of concrete steps just north of Nishijin. That shrine used to be on an island, I’ll bet.”

  “It’s not exactly at Nishijin, but that’s the idea,” Mori said. “Sometimes we end up with hills, but sometimes the islands aren’t that high.” He sank to his knees on the boilerplate. He drew a sheaf of papers from his hip sack. “Here’s a copy of a map of the bay from the twelfth century, the one Yumi found in her bicycle basket. Come look.”

  Takuda stood so that his shadow cut the glare on the paper. It was strangely thin copy paper, so dark that the black boilerplate beneath made it harder to read, glare or no. Suzuki stood off to the side, looking at the mountains to the south.

  Mori concentrated on Takuda. “Here’s where we are now,” he said, pointing at the map. “The old Korokan was right here, where the old baseball stadium is now, and this little inlet of water became the castle moat a few hundred years later.” He pointed out in the bay to the west. “Here’s that shrine you’re talking about, the one on the hill that isn’t in Nishijin. That hill used to be an island.”

  Takuda grunted. On the map, the island was rendered rising conically from the bay with a tiny shrine and two windswept pines perched atop.

  Mori’s finger drifted back east. “This is the island of the Devouring God.”

  It was an irregular patch on the map, an errant blotch outlined in red ink. The only marking was a clearly modern notation in English: twelfth-­century location, conjectural.

  “Priest, is this your father’s writing? Would you recognize his writing in English?”

  Suzuki said, “I’m not sure it’s his.” He hadn’t even glanced at the map. Perhaps he’s pored over all this in private, Takuda thought.

  Mori continued: “Here’s a prewar map. The street names are different, but it’s recognizable. It’s not one-­to-­one, of course, but the scale is close enough to do an overlay. Notice how much farther the land extends out into the bay.”

  This was a map from the days when the castle had come and gone. The land was a puzzle of trapezoidal properties cut with major roads. The conical shrine-­island had been absorbed, with neatly plotted land extending outward to meet it, but the smaller island was still a blotch in the bay, much smaller in proportion to the rest of the map than in the twelfth-­century version. The map itself carried no notation for this island. The modern, handwritten notation, in English, said: Site of Baron Asano’s 1925 footage, confirmed by M. and P.

  Mori laid it over the twelfth-­century map, centered on the red-­circled island. The beach was much closer to the island in comparison.

  “You see what’s happened here,” Mori said. “We’ve been doing it for centuries. That’s how Japan gets new coastline. That’s how we get new airports and bridge footings.”

  “Eventually, Japan will be one big island,” Suzuki said.

  Mori snorted.

  “Let’s forgive the exaggeration,” Takuda said. “What does this mean to us, Mori? Where’s this Devouring God island now? How close is it to shore today?”

  Suzuki unfolded a cheap tourist map. “The proportions aren’t perfect, but the scale is close enough, and it has the landmarks we need. Castle ruins here, your shrine up on the hill here . . .” He slipped the tourist map beneath the tracing paper and lined up his landmarks. Then he sat back so Takuda and Mori could examine his work.

  They saw the progression: the beach continued to move northward from the twelfth century to the early twentieth century to the present, and the red-­inked island, the Island of the Devouring God, was now landlocked.

  “Okay,” Takuda said. “That’s where we are right now, that’s where the island used to be, so it should be right over . . .” He raised his eyes to the northern horizon. “Let’s see . . . wait a minute . . . no! No, no, no!”

  He turned away and walked to the southern end of the platform, staring out at the purple mountains.

  Suzuki looked down at Mori. “What? What’s happening?” He scanned the northern horizon. “What did he see?”

  Mori pointed north. “Look straight north. See, right past the little junior college?”

  “I don’t see a junior college.”

  “Right in front there, there on Meiji Avenue. Peaked green roof, broken clock.”

  “Oh! Able English Institute. Yes, I see it.”

  “Look behind it, a little to the east.”

  “There are just a lot of . . . oh. Oh, no.”

  A few blocks behind the college with the broken clock stood a squat, gray building. Just barely visible at this distance was a red Z in a red circle, the corporate symbol of Zenkoku General.

  “That’s right next to the cafeteria where you retrieved the Kurodama from the girls,” Mori said.

  Takuda turned. “What do you mean, right next to it?”

  “I mean, right next to it. If you look on the map, they seem to be adjoining. They might have adjoining walls.”

  Takuda sat on the rubberized surface. “So that’s where it came from originally. It’s been trying to go home.”

  Mori said, “Counselor Endo had us right in the building. Foundation of everything we do indeed!”

  “Cornerstone of the organization.” Takuda could have spit. “If I had even looked up when I was coming or going from that cafeteria, I probably would have seen the Zenkoku logo.”

  “No, not from the street. It’s too tight. You have to be up high, like this. But it wouldn’t have mattered. There was no way to know where that island was, or how it had been absorbed, until we put all this together.”

  “I was right,” Suzuki said. “Right around the corner from the Officers’ Hospital, where they ate the American airman’s liver with soy sauce.”

  Mori sighed.

  “Allegedly,” Suzuki said. “Maybe this isn’t the first time it escaped the basement. Maybe it wasn’t involved at all.”

  Takuda turned to Suzuki. “The basement, you say. Why the basement?”

  Suzuki frowned. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The cafeteria where the foreigner taught the girls is in the basement. The Zenkoku classroom where he taught employees is in the basement. The foreigner is the link. I’ll bet the cafeteria used to be a lunchroom for Zenkoku staff, and I’ll bet it shares a wall with the basement of the Zenkoku building.”

  Takuda looked at Mori. “Does this make sense?”

  Mori looked solemn as he folded maps. “I suppose it does.” He handed the bundle to Suzuki. “From what we know, the Kurodama usually doesn’t attract ­people who don’t touch it, but Thomas was sensitive. Whether that’s related to his mental illness is unknown. But at least one of his private students was sensitive as well. She stole it back from him and took it to the cafeteria.”

  Suzuki cocked his head at the high summer clouds. “You know what Counselor Endo was lying about?”

  Takuda and Mori glanced at each other.

  Suzuki shaded his eyes as he gazed toward the Zenkoku building. “He said he needed the Kurodama back to keep his sales team sharp, but he went on too long about how he hated the copy editors, a truth to cover the lie.”


  Mori opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it. He stared at the Zenkoku building as well.

  “He’s experimenting with corporate assets again,” Suzuki said. “Just as he was with the Kappa.”

  Mori shook his head. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “We’re going to do the same thing Counselor Endo did,” Takuda said. “We’re going through the wall.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Thursday Morning

  Takuda, Mori, and Suzuki drifted along the sidewalk, ghostly shapes in the predawn stillness across from the Able English Institute. Mori and Takuda wore their Ota Southern Protection Ser­vices coveralls, and Suzuki was in his robes. Mori and Suzuki carried their swords in fishing tackle tubes, and Takuda carried his staff slung over his shoulder.

  “A cruiser already came around twice,” Mori said. “It’s two hours before the first bus. I think we should move along.”

  Takuda led them across the deserted avenue past the side entrance to Able English Institute and into the dense warren of side streets beyond.

  “So we’re just going to walk along, fishing tackle slung over our shoulders like boys on holiday,” Mori said.

  “Exactly,” Takuda said, swinging his staff over his shoulder and swaggering in the pale fluorescence of the streetlights. “Just a few guys out for a stroll. We could whistle to make the apartment dwellers think we’re burglars passing signals.”

  Mori snorted.

  Takuda led them past the Zenkoku building on its east side. “That’s where we’re going,” he said. Then he led them around to the cafeteria. There was a narrow, trash-­strewn alley between the buildings.

  “They don’t adjoin,” Mori said. “We’re back to square one. Are we going to dig underneath the alley as well?”

  “They don’t adjoin above ground,” Takuda said. “We’ll see in a moment what we’ll need to do.”

  The front door was barred and padlocked, with a sign that told them the cafeteria was closed for renovation. The kitchen door was sealed as well. They walked around the building twice before Suzuki spotted an unbarred window on the second floor.

  “Let’s go,” Takuda said, crouching down to boost Mori up to the windowsill.

  Mori pried the ancient casement open with a dagger Takuda had never seen. Still full of surprises, this Mori.

  Takuda pushed the gawky priest up the wall and waited. He only had time to glance at the alley around him before the female end of a stout electrical cord fell at his feet. He tested his weight against it. Mori had obviously anchored it well, so he began to scale.

  He pulled himself through the window and brushed off his coveralls, as if he wouldn’t get dirty retrieving the Kurodama.

  I’ll be lucky if it’s just grime from a windowsill when we’re done. . .

  He had tidied and straightened and untied the electrical cord from his staff when he noticed the stillness of his companions.

  They were staring into the shadows of this upstairs room. The skeletons shone in the darkness.

  “What the hell has happened here?” Mori said.

  Suzuki pointed at the door. The characters were visible in the light from the corridor, reversed on the frosted glass:

  Southern Medical Supply

  A Zenkoku Company

  “They’re plastic,” Mori said, running a finger down a shining femur. Takuda’s eyes were accustomed to the darkness now; he saw the racks and shelves of synthetic skeletons and anatomical models lining the walls. He had a fleeting memory of Thomas’s inside-­out sculpture of Kaori Nabeshima. He pushed the thought aside.

  Mori slid to the glass door. Takuda saw the dagger flash, and the door swung open at his touch.

  The stench of chlorine filled the stairwell. At the bottom of the stairs, the cafeteria door was propped open with a Wet Floor sign.

  “You should have seen the bodies down there,” Takuda whispered as they crept down the stairs. “No amount of bleach could clear that up.”

  “Sounds like a sushi place I used to visit in the Naga Valley,” Suzuki whispered back. Mori chuckled, to Takuda’s surprise.

  The lights stuttered on at Mori’s touch. The concrete floor was completely bare. There was a strong smell of disinfectant, not chlorine. Something industrial and pleasant, perfumed cleaning solvents. Takuda let out his breath. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it against the stench of blood and entrails that had filled the air the last time he had been in the cafeteria.

  Takuda pointed. “Kitchen to the south.” He turned. “Front door to the north.” He turned again. “We just came from the stairwell to the west, so . . .”

  He turned again. In the east wall, a section of paneling was outlined in darkness, with a yawning gap at the bottom. The panel hung on hidden tracks, a “pocket door” of the type popular in the 1950s. Takuda slid it aside, and the darkness gaped before him.

  It took longer to find the light switch in this room. No linoleum or carpet had ever covered the bare cement. A single rough-­hewn table stretched the length of the room. Benches of time-­darkened cedar hunched beneath it.

  Suzuki wheezed a husky laugh. Takuda and Mori looked at him, then their gaze followed his: High on the wall before them, the fare was painted in broad strokes on cedar shingles. Most of the shingles were hung facing the wall because the dishes were sold out, but a few items remained.

  Hocks.

  Shoulder.

  Tongue.

  Liver.

  “Not chicken liver,” Takuda said.

  “And not beef tongue,” Mori answered.

  “And that’s just the leftovers from the last special dinner,” Suzuki said. “I’m glad we don’t know what’s on the shingles they’ve turned to the wall.” He turned to Takuda, smiling. “It will be a pleasure to end this dinner for good. We’re like spiritual health inspectors, shutting down the worst restaurant in the world.”

  “You’re like a child playing some damned game,” Mori said. “Let’s see if we can get through this wall.”

  Suzuki pointed toward the northeast corner. “There we go. Another door.”

  Takuda slid the door aside to reveal another yawning darkness. It took all three of them to find the light switch this time.

  When the fluorescents stuttered into life this time, they found themselves standing in a long, narrow kitchen.

  “Another kitchen,” Mori said, “for those special dinners.”

  The twin sinks were ancient, chipped porcelain. The drain boards were tin. The oven, range, and ­rotisserie were massive affairs built from the same steel used to occupy Manchuria.

  The south end of the room was the solid steel door of a massive walk-­in freezer. Suzuki moved toward it, and Mori made to stop him, but Takuda put a hand on Mori’s arm. “Let him look,” Takuda said.

  The freezer door swung open when Suzuki pulled, and the plastic scrub brush that propped it open fell onto the floor. The freezer was empty, with nothing on the shelves, nothing on the meat hooks. Clean and dry, not recently cleansed like the main dining room.

  “This is the place . . . I just know it,” Suzuki said. He ground his teeth; Takuda winced at the sound.

  Mori tapped his foot on the drain in the floor. “Who the hell has a floor drain below sea level?”

  “Someone who plans ahead . . . and pours a deep, deep foundation. Around two separate lots,” Takuda said. He pointed to the east wall ahead of them. “That’s plain brick right there.” He moved his finger southward, where the bricks became rougher, less regular. “Back there, it’s dressed stone.”

  “It’s behind the stone,” Suzuki said. “I can almost smell it.”

  Takuda said, “I think there’s nothing but brick between us and the basement of the Zenkoku Sales building, and we’re underneath the alley between the buildings.”

  Mori just shrug
ged and nodded at the bricks.

  Takuda turned to the wall with the butt of his staff at the ready. At the first blow, a brick cracked, leaving a crater of shattered clay and chipped paint. Half of it came down into the sink. At the second blow, it broke free of its mortar and buckled inward. At the third blow, the brickbats shattered, leaving a dark rectangle. Takuda ran his staff into the hole until it hit the inner wall. “It’s only about twenty-­five centimeters inside here. Maybe they were going to fill it with concrete.”

  He ran the staff back in the rectangular hole and broke a brick out of the inner wall. After they killed the lights in the kitchen and dining room, Takuda peered in with his flashlight.

  “I can’t see anything,” he said. “A little reflection a long way off, like a glint off a high window.”

  “That’s it,” Suzuki said. “Make a hole big enough, and we’ll be in.”

  Takuda knocked out bricks one at a time, widening the hole downward, hoping that would keep the wall stable. “It’s just occurring to me that this isn’t a supporting wall for the building, but it might be holding up the alley.”

  Mori stood on the drain board and tapped the ceiling. “It’s solid, very solid, like plaster on lathe.” He took out his dagger, but Takuda told him to stow it.

  “Let’s just hope it’s strong enough to hold up a few feet of earth.”

  When Takuda had made the hole large enough, he helped Mori through, then Suzuki. The lights went on in the basement of the Zenkoku Sales building.

  It was a large, rectangular basement. Folding tables and chairs stood stacked against the far wall. The bare concrete floor sloped downward to a steel-­grated drain running the length of room. A track in the ceiling ran parallel to the drain in the floor.

  “Looks like they had some special dinners here as well,” Mori said, gesturing toward the track. “A real assembly line.”

  “No, this was for kitchen prep,” Suzuki said. “A long time ago, these basements connected.” He pointed toward a section of brick just below the section Takuda had knocked out. Those bricks protruded slightly from the rest. “They filled it in from the cafeteria side.”