The Devouring God

by James Kendley

  The rusted pulleys shrieked as Suzuki slid the warehouse door closed behind him, cutting himself off from Takuda’s view. When it slammed against the concrete stanchion at the end of its track, it hung on its pulleys, its steel sheets shuddering and booming as if they contained a tiny thunderstorm.

  The whole situation was faintly ridiculous. It reminded Takuda of period dramas in which robed nobles secluded themselves behind paper-­paned doors to prepare for battle, but Suzuki was no warrior, and he wasn’t preparing for battle. He was the battle. In the abandoned warehouse with the Kurodama, now whole again, he was grappling the oldest, strangest, most seductive evil they had ever faced.

  And his plan was to eat it.

  Or it will eat him, Takuda thought, and then everything will be lost.

  “This is insane,” Mori said. “We should catch a ferry to Busan and just dump it on the way.”

  Takuda shrugged. Despite everything, he felt serene and hopeful. He had been drugged, Tasered, maced, and slashed. A concrete wall had fallen on him. Yet he was alive and whole, and the three of them had gotten this far. It was all up to Suzuki, the daydreaming priest closed up with the Kurodama. It was out of Takuda’s hands.

  “We could break it into a hundred little pieces,” Mori said. “We could encase each one in concrete, in little film canisters. I can get boxes and boxes of those. Then we could dump them into the bottoms of lakes and bays and canals and crevasses where they could never come together again.”

  Takuda closed his eyes, imagining a huge and subtle web of evil, the pieces calling to each other across the kilometers and across the years, affecting not just a handful of schoolgirls or a few salesmen but every man, woman, and child in the archipelago, turning Japan into a land of cannibals, savages, murderers. Not again, came the unbidden thought.

  He shook his head. “It just won’t do.”

  “How about a kiln? I know a potter over by Children’s Hospital who would fire his kiln up for us, if we paid for the propane. I’m sure he . . .”

  “A kiln?” Takuda was incredulous. “It’s bad enough at room temperature. Let’s not go heating it up.”

  Mori folded his arms. “Deep water. We hire a fishing boat and get it out to a trench. A drop-­off. It would at least buy some years. Decades, maybe centuries.”

  Takuda turned on him. “Centuries to spawn monsters in the deepest oceans to bring it back to bloodletting. No, it has a mind of its own, even if it isn’t fully awake, and it won’t lay down for temporary solutions. Neither will I. I don’t want it out of the way. I want it dead.”

  “Then you’ve gone the wrong way with the priest,” Mori said. “He doesn’t have it under control. He’ll come out of there grinning and chattering, ready to strip the flesh from our bones, and I’ll have to strike him down because you won’t do it, or maybe he’ll stay in there and start working on himself, flaying to the bones until he bleeds to death. We don’t know. We don’t know what happens when we leave someone alone with that thing.”

  Takuda nodded. He was sure Mori had not seen the fire blazing behind Suzuki’s eyes. He could not see Takuda’s new . . . fangs? Tusks? No, Mori had no idea what might be happening to the three of them. Takuda decided it wasn’t the time to tell him. Instead, he said, “It’s nice to finally get confirmation that you don’t want the priest dead, either by his own hand or by some other agency. There is some comfort in this situation after all.”

  Mori scowled. “You’ve already given me the lecture, and you pushed me around and disarmed me this morning to soften me up. I hear you. I should be nice to the priest. But I tell you, leaving him alone with that thing is not being nice to him. It’s going to kill him. The ferry is right over there.” He pointed east. “Ten minutes by taxi. We don’t have our passports, so we could just grab a ferry for Nagasaki or the Goto Islands.”

  Takuda was tired of the conversation. “I’m going to grab us some food. You just keep out of sight and cover the door.” He turned, hopped off the loading dock, and strode off across the parking lot. He felt Mori’s eyes on his back. As he turned the corner and headed toward the shops, he felt other eyes on his back. He saw nothing, but he knew they were there, in the forests of pallet stacks and among the rusted forklifts and empty cable spools, up on the rooftops, in the gaping windows. Suzuki was wrong. They had been followed, and they were being watched, but the watchers wouldn’t move on Mori. That would be against the rules.

  Or so he hoped.

  Takuda was two blocks away before he realized he had left his staff leaning against the loading dock. He didn’t even feel the need for a weapon anymore. He was in a different kind of fight.

  While he walked, he ran his tongue over his fangs, smoother than his other teeth, and felt with his fingertips the new bone and emerging horns. He only noticed the differences when he felt for them.

  A man can get used to anything. He passed his own pop-­eyed, demonic reflection in a shop window. Almost anything.

  It was the first chance he had to think about the presence in the back of his head. It was part of him and yet it contained him, like a puzzle picture where foreground and background shifted places. It was new, and yet it was old, like a place just discovered that he had always known. It was the source of all déjà vu.

  The darkness in his head stirred at that thought, but it remained silent.

  Takuda directed the thought to the stirring: What are you?

  It remained still, and the stillness enraged Takuda. His body coursed with the silent fury he had felt when his only brother, Shunsuke, had been pulled cold and dead from the waters of the Naga River valley. He clenched his fists with memories the pain and suffering he and Yumi had gone through when their only son, Kenji, was pulled from the same waters many years later. A deep growl rose from his throat.

  Takuda had worked too hard and sacrificed too much to be possessed by some phantom. Who did this this thing think it was, that it would occupy his mind and speak from his mouth without explaining itself? It could not be. He would not allow it. He would cut out his own heart before surrendering. He remembered the triumphs, the times when he had pushed through the pain to do a man’s job, like the time when he had been poisoned by the Kappa in the Naga River valley, his blood full of a psychoactive poison that had bent his mind in a spiral of grief, and he remembered how Reverend Suzuki’s voice in his head had brought him back from the brink of suicide, pushing him onward to face the beast . . .

  Sweet merciful Buddha, Takuda thought. That wasn’t Suzuki in my head. That was you.

  The darkness within remained silent.

  The mind that watched as if in slow motion the split second of the car crash, the mind that noted with dispassionate satisfaction that Takuda’s body had survived a fifteen-­meter fall into a cave full of human bones, the mind that assessed the heat and noted the damage as Takuda wrestled a fire demon into the surf . . .

  The dark mind had always been there, always part of him, always protecting him. It was not awakening. It had always been awake. He was now just awakening enough that he could hear it and feel it.

  His frightening strength, his luminescent scars, his nascent horns and budding fangs—­the changes in his body were just reflections of his true nature.

  Takuda slowed to a stop in the middle of the busy sidewalk on Meiji Avenue. The realization hit him like a hammer. He wasn’t becoming a monster. He had always been a monster.

  CHAPTER 36

  Thursday Morning

  When Takuda got back to the warehouse, Mori had his ear pressed to the warehouse door, and he didn’t hear Takuda as he climbed the loading dock stairs. Mori jumped when Takuda spoke.

  Mori cursed with an Osaka gangster’s flourish, straight from the movies. Takuda had to laugh. He needed a laugh, and the thought of what he must look like with his bulging eyes and wicked fangs made him laugh even harder.

  Mori was beside himself. “
You think this is funny? What the hell is wrong with you? Suzuki is in there screaming and crying and carrying on. It’s driving him insane. We need to get in there.”

  Takuda put the bags of food down on the concrete. “You should have pulled up some crates to sit on at least. Have you done anything while I was gone but stand there with your ear to the door?”

  Mori was beyond listening. “I can’t get the door open. He’s locked it from the inside.”

  Takuda sighed and took out one of the boxed lunches. He doubted Suzuki would eat, but there was a can of hot tea to help him wash down the Kurodama. As he reached for the door handle, a length of pipe fitted vertically to the steel plating, Takuda wondered himself why he was so casual about this situation. Trapped with their backs to the water, obviously watched by the enemy, dependent on the victory of their weakest link, why did he feel such a deep-­seated and resounding . . . joy? Yes, joy. There was no other word for it.

  Takuda rejoiced silently for a second and then he wrenched the door open. It resisted briefly from the inside, then gave with a snap and a splintering of wood and squealing protest from the pulleys above. Takuda crossed the threshold into darkness, kicking aside the shattered broomstick Suzuki had used to jam the door shut.

  The warehouse was a filthy tin shed attached roughly to concrete stanchions, the kind of metal box that’s a few degrees warmer than the outside, winter or summer. Soiled sleeping mats, sake bottles, and plastic food containers were piled in the corners. Suzuki had cleared the floor, and he sat on a stack of pallets in the center, an emaciated Buddha on a makeshift dais, weeping like a child.

  Takuda approached Suzuki. “Priest,” he whispered, “can you do this, old boy? Can you end this thing?”

  The sobbing priest raised trembling hands bandaged with strips torn from his brocaded sash, the silken symbol of his vocation and ordination. The silken strips were soaked with blood.

  “It resists,” Suzuki wailed. “It is stubborn and uncommunicative. It is very old, and it cannot fathom that its own end has come!”

  Suzuki’s laundry-­pole sword lay unsheathed and bloodied at his side. A full third of the blade had broken off. The remaining length was so deeply scratched and marred that it could never be fully restored, even if the squared end were ground off to form a new tip. Takuda was pleased to see the beautiful antique ruined. Good riddance to it. Suzuki had always cut himself more than he had cut anything else. He was hopeless as a ­swordsman.

  “Priest, I brought you food. Do you want something?”

  Suzuki laughed till his face was purple and tears streamed down his cheeks. “I’m so hungry I can’t stand it. Every bite I take just makes it worse. I’m a hole! I’m the eye of a cyclone! I’m a blazing furnace!” He shrieked and rocked back and forth on the creaking pallets, his bandaged hand on the hilt of his ruined sword. “Oh, oh, I’m so hungry, but if I stop for a snack now, all this evil will turn into needles of volcanic glass in my belly! I can’t stop for . . . what is that, chicken cutlet?” He peered at the box lunch in Takuda’s hand. “It smells like chicken cutlet.”

  “We’ll save you some,” Takuda lied. He placed a can of hot tea on the corner of the pallet, within easy reach. “Just in case you get thirsty.”

  Takuda bowed and backed out, still bowing. He really should have kowtowed and crawled away backward, he thought, because Suzuki was doing such a hard job. For a split second, he wondered if that was the Kurodama talking, worming itself into his mind. The dark presence stirred in the back of his mind, spinning off a single word: veneration. Takuda smiled. Yes, veneration is finally due this addled priest.

  At the door, he glanced up, and he was arrested for a second by Suzuki’s blazing stare.

  “You’re a good man, Detective,” said the skeletal Suzuki. He sat ramrod straight in his ruined robes, gazing at Takuda. “You’ve always done your best for me.”

  Takuda bowed again as he slid the door closed. He was suddenly very glad that Suzuki and he were on the same side.

  “Man, he looks weird,” Mori whispered. “Did you see it? Is he eating it? How much is gone?”

  Only then did Takuda realize that he had not seen the Kurodama at all. He told Mori, just to see the younger man’s horror and disbelief.

  They ate their lunches with their legs dangling from the edge of the loading dock like a pair of children, accompanied by shrieks, howls, and cackling laughter from the warehouse. Takuda ate his own lunch, Suzuki’s, and a chicken cutlet and pickled radishes from Mori’s. He thought he might have to be careful about eating with his new fangs, but his whole face seemed to have accommodated nicely. While he ate, he watched the rooflines of adjacent warehouses. He saw shimmering movement, and he saw shadows against the pale blue summer sky, shadows that had no referents in the daylight world. He pointed out the distortions and the host of gathering shadows to Mori, who did not see them.

  “Maybe you’re just seeing the heat rising from those clay tiles. It gets pretty hot up there.”

  Takuda nodded as he watched a wayward shadow sneak toward them, darting from one darkened space to another. He borrowed Mori’s sword. “Maybe they’re just curious about the feast in the warehouse,” he said as he jumped down to the tarmac and unsheathed the sword, sending reflected sunlight toward the fleeting shadow. It darted away toward a jumble of loose cable. “Maybe they’re just harmless scavengers.”

  “Maybe your imagination is a little overactive,” Mori said.

  Takuda sheathed the blade and handed it to Mori. “We’ve been out here all morning, and we haven’t seen as much as a security guard. You know we’re being watched.”

  “Not by shadows.”

  Maybe not only by shadows. Takuda bowed in agreement. It wasn’t worth arguing with a blind man.

  “You’re treating this like a game,” Mori said as Takuda climbed back on the dock.

  “I am,” Takuda said, “because Counselor Endo has taught me to do so. You’re a brainy fellow, so you might enjoy imagining we’re in a giant game. Each of the players has different strengths and weaknesses . . .”

  “Attributes.”

  “Attributes, yes, like good to evil, or neutral to ­chaotic . . .”

  “That’s alignment. You’re talking about alignment, not attributes.”

  “Okay, yes. Alignment. But attributes are also important.” Takuda stifled a sigh of frustration. “They are all continua, though, right? Like perfect good to absolute evil, omnipotence to impotence, like that.”

  “There could also be special attributes. Special powers.”

  Takuda considered. “Let’s leave that alone right now. Let’s say these powers are all reflections of the same thing. Power is power, no matter how it manifests itself.”

  “Like the ability to push ­people around or . . . like appetite.” Mori’s smirk was only in his voice.

  Suzuki’s sustained, juddering screams interrupted Takuda’s deliberations on slapping Mori unconscious. He folded his hands in his lap. “If the priest walks out of there alive, will you grant that appetite can be power?”

  Mori stripped off his glasses, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, sorry. I’m sorry. Please continue.”

  “Our biggest weakness is awareness. Our lack of awareness. That’s where we’re almost off the charts. Or barely on the charts. You know what I mean.”

  Mori frowned. “Self-­awareness, or other-­awareness?”

  “Both. I get glimpses.” He told Mori again what he saw in mirrors and about his vision at the old moat, the dark fires of sacrifice sending pillars of suffering to the empty heavens. He didn’t mention the animal spirit in the bar girl’s body. He didn’t know where to start.

  “But glimpses don’t tell us what we are or what our enemies are. We are ignorant, so ignorant, of ourselves and the invisible realms around us. That’s how Endo plays us accordi
ng to rules we don’t understand.”

  Mori stared off at the roofline, where he probably saw nothing unusual. “We don’t even know what there is to see. There are five worlds that we know of: the world we were born into, plus the one only you can see, the one you almost see, the unseen . . .

  “And on the other side, the gloriously bright, upon which we cannot yet bear to look.”

  Mori blinked. “The priest says there are somewhere between ten and thirty-­one worlds, but that’s storybook Buddhism . . .”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  Mori turned to him. “So if we’re playing the priest’s game, what’s the point?”

  Takuda didn’t miss a beat. He couldn’t afford to. “The point is to send enemy players back to ‘Start,’ straight to hell so they can burn off their evil karma. Then they’ll come back to the neutral middle so we can help them past us, all the way to the other side of the board. We’re here to help them leave the game altogether.”

  Mori looked him full in the face. “You think we’re saints sent to help others achieve enlightenment. You know how crazy that sounds, right?”

  “That’s the problem with such low self-­awareness,” Takuda said. “We don’t know yet whether we’re saints on the way down or demons on the way up.”

  Mori gaped at him.

  Takuda shrugged. “I think it’s an important distinction. Something to think about anyway.” He elbowed Mori and pointed to the long, black car speeding toward them through the deserted warehouses. “I’ll bet you a bottle of sweet potato liquor that’s Counselor Endo. Time to stow away this talk of games, because the black king has arrived. Let’s see if Suzuki can demote him to pawn.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Thursday Afternoon

  Mori came to Takuda’s side. “We’ll split up and hit them from the blind spots. You take the back, and when Endo gets out, slam the door on him. Take him out. I’ll get Ogawa.”