In daylight, Fuminari could have done the same. Even in the dark, he probably could have used something to deflect the attack. But this thing had just plucked it out of the air. It was then that Fuminari realized he was facing a beast, an opponent of a completely different class than any he had faced before.
Fuminari felt a sudden surge of aggression from the darkness. Something soared across the clearing, flashing sharply in the moonlight. Fuminari ducked, instinct taking over. The piercing light sliced the air above his head. The knife he had just thrown moments ago impaled the trunk of a tree behind him, only the hilt was visible. The shadow rushed in leaving no time for Fuminari to retrieve the blade. Fuminari grabbed the shovel and launched his own attack. The two terrible forces collided in mid-air. There was a crack as the handle of the shovel snapped cleanly across the middle.
The thing appeared human, but its form was massively distorted. Its back was hunched at an odd angle; its arms and legs were bent out of shape. Fuminari could not make out any more detail in the dim moonlight. It stood poised on two legs ready to fight. The pose was unconventional, not from any particular school of martial arts. It had naturally taken the stance after springing back from the airborne clash. Fuminari stood facing the creature at the center of the clearing. It was immense. Even though its back was half bent, it was almost the same height as Fuminari.
Fuminari felt himself trembling. He had brought the shovel down hard, aiming for the thing’s head, but had no idea where it impacted. And not just that, the creature had accepted the blow and, at the same time, launched two powerful kicks. Fuminari had only barely managed to avoid them. He felt lucky. He had the advantage with the reach of the shovel, yet the beast’s legs had skimmed across his flank like a black hurricane covered with an ice-cold sweat. Fuminari was not afraid; he felt only a burning sense of joy. He had found an opponent that he would have to fight with all his might, all his energy. I will kill it, he thought. Whatever happens, I am going to kill this abomination. I have to kill it.
He had an erection.
He hurled the shovel’s handle at the creature. It dodged, leaving a slight opening for Fuminari to unleash a powerful roundhouse kick that connected hard. The power behind the kick would have been enough to instantly kill an untrained opponent, but the creature deflected it with unbelievable force, in the same moment sending a black mass hurtling toward Fuminari’s head: the thing’s fist. Fuminari raised both arms to block. To his terror, the blow knocked his upper body backward. The creature flowed gracefully into the air, the black outline of its body seemed to swell double its original size. Fuminari let himself fall back into the grass and flipped straight back to his feet. He had taken a shallow blow to the shoulder, but it had been enough to make it numb. The creature’s strength was unreal. It would be easier to go hand-to-hand with a bear. The creature let out an animal howl. It was no human sound. It was the sound of the gatekeeper hounds of Hades tearing free from their chains.
The nightmarish battle commenced. During its course Fuminari became convinced his opponent was the devil itself. The creature did not slow, even when he landed a heavy blow to the body, its thickly knotted muscles casually absorbed the force of the attack. The creature did not use its fists as weapons, it used its nails. They lacerated Fuminari’s back and tore into his chest. If the creature gained decent purchase, its nails would easily claw out huge chunks of flesh. It had bottomless reserves of energy.
There’s no fucking way I’m gonna let this thing kill me. Fuminari felt himself weakening; he bit down on his lips, marshaling his strength. He was covered in blood. His shirt was soaked red and torn to shreds.
He went for its eyes. He was willing to sacrifice a leg in exchange for the eyes. He desperately searched for an opening. This was no hooligan’s squabble, a normal man would have lost his sanity by now. This was a fight to death against an outlandish monster, a relentless onslaught of intolerable physical and mental tension. It was enough that he was still conscious. The only thing that spurred him on now, barely, was the burning obsession he had developed with this monster.
There would only be one chance and Fuminari was going to have to force it. He raised a bloodcurdling scream and launched himself into the air. His left leg burned in agony as his attack connected. Fuminari ignored it. As soon as he landed he fired his left hand upward, putting his full weight behind it, slamming it into the monster’s face. He felt hot chunks of flesh being torn apart. Fuminari landed and vaulted backward. His hand burned, it felt like he had plunged it into a pool of molten lava.
Unable to bear anymore, Kumiko turned on her torch. The beam flowed over the monster’s face resolving its features. She let out a high-pitched scream. The flashlight tumbled away. In that instant, Fuminari and Kumiko had both seen what was in its mouth. They had seen part of a bloodied human hand.
Fuminari’s left hand was missing a couple of fingers. The sound of dried twigs snapping echoed, repellent across the darkness. The creature was chewing on his fingers. Fuminari heard a horrific scream emerge from his mouth. The scream was filled at once with fear, anger, and a dizzying hatred. Then Kumiko was at his side, mountain knife in her hand. She had pulled it from the tree. She tugged at his arm and started to run. He was still screaming as he blundered after her, left leg dragging behind, half deranged from anger. His body had long become numb to the pain. The leg seemed broken along with two...maybe three ribs. His whole body felt like it was on fire.
The beech trees receded from view. There was a snap of cold wind as the sound of water blustered up from the darkness below them. They had reached a small opening at the edge of a cliff. There was nowhere left to run. The monster lumbered slowly into view. The knife was still in Kumiko’s hand, the same knife she had used to slit Muto’s throat. The monster moved to attack. Fuminari had stopped screaming; he watched Kumiko’s back, listless as though his soul had been sucked clean away, only partially realizing that she had positioned herself between him and the beast.
She charged at it.
The creature flicked its left hand across her head. Something flew into the air, smacking into a nearby tree with a damp thud; flesh, from Kumiko’s cheek. The single attack had sent her crumpling to the ground.
Fuminari desperately sought to gather his senses. Almost collapsing, he used his left hand to retrieve the knife from Kumiko’s motionless hand. He pulled himself back up and threw himself into the creature’s chest as it charged at him, arms spread. The creature wrapped its arms around him in a bear hug together with the knife in his hand. The stench was repulsive. Fuminari could not breathe, he heard another rib snap. Wielding the knife in his trapped left hand, he stabbed frantically at the monster’s abdomen, but the creature’s hold was relentless, crushing. He twisted his wrist sideways and sliced the impaled knife along its stomach, driving it back and forth. His hand was soaked in blood, but he had no clue if it was the creature’s or his own. He was beginning to lose consciousness.
So this is how I die, he thought. Fuminari was unafraid of death. He had killed enough people in his life to know there was nothing to be afraid of, but at this moment, he could not bear to die.
Why? he thought in passing. Because this fucker’s still alive. The answer presented itself as his life ebbed away.
The idea that this monstrosity would live, chewing on his fingers, while he would die, was unbearable. He released the knife. It held fast, still impaled in the creature. The hilt was somewhere near Fuminari’s hip. He wrapped his arms, his hand missing its fingers, around the thing’s back. A half-smile flashed across his features even as he grimaced with agony. He summoned all his remaining strength, even his love, and brought the beast into his embrace. The knife pushed deeper, far deeper into the creature’s abdomen. The creature howled with pain. Suddenly, the intense pressure of its hold relaxed and Fuminari was able to stagger free. A cool breeze rushed upward from his feet. A good wind.
The sound of water. A half moon in the sky. The creature towered before him. It a
ttacked. Fuminari leaped up into the blackness of the night.
Two
Bewitching Biku
1
Mt. Koya. Two in the morning.
Jichiei lay in the monks’ quarters near the Hall of Lanterns. As he dreamt, he heard a scream in the distance. It was horrific. He had not heard it inasmuch as it seemed to have originated directly inside his skull, as though the raw fear it contained had been transmitted into his mind instead of through physical vibrations. The backwash stroked at his consciousness, chillingly real.
Jichiei woke. He opened his eyes and saw only darkness. He was sweating, a cloying, cold sweat. His skin had broken out in bumps. The ghost of the scream hung in the air as an unholy stench, like the wake of some unseen demon. Jichiei took deep, measured breaths lying with his eyes wide open. A thick darkness cloaked the space between his bed and the tall ceiling.
He listened for any sounds, but the oppressive silence was only punctuated by the soft rapping of rain. Jichiei focused on the sound, and gradually the tension in his pores started to fade; he felt the cold sweat begin to warm. Darkness flowed into his open pupils, wrapping itself around his insides. Am I imagining things? If so, the scream had originated somewhere inside him. I’m exhausted, he thought.
Jichiei had always been highly sensitive, but years of training at the temple had sharpened his senses to the point of a fine glass needle. He sat up. The shadow of the shoji hovered as a pale-white glow in the darkness before him. He could hear the regular breathing of Seicho still fast asleep across the room. I am jealous of this man, he thought. Seicho had a temple. He had a guaranteed position to return to after finishing his training. Jichiei had no such place.
“To become a monk you need certain qualities,” Geshin’s words from five years ago, when Jichiei was new to the mountain. Geshin had shown extraordinary ability. Even then, despite being only around 30 years old, he had already attained a high-ranking position within the order. It was as though his body released a constant flow of energy, like an aura. He had been the only monk at Mt. Koya with whom Jichiei had forged a close bond. Maybe I just lack whatever quality it was that he spoke of, Jichiei mulled over the idea.
And now, Geshin had left the mountain. Jichiei did not know his reasons for leaving. There had been rumors, of course, that he had been banished after breaking some taboo, or that he had lost his mind and there had been nothing for it but take him away. He did not know what the truth was. He sighed as though releasing the darkness that had accumulated inside him.
That was when he heard the sound. It had not been his imagination. A heavy, booming sound like two boulders colliding. It came from above, from the direction of the Hall of Lanterns. Everything became silent.
Jichiei slowly got to his feet and stepped outside. The fog was thick. Heavy drops of moisture hung stagnant in the air, almost large enough to be rain. The pattering had been droplets of condensed fog dripping from the temple eaves. He was unable to see anything through the mist. It filtered the gleam of the lanterns in the distance, turning the lights into shining halos of milky-white phosphorescence. His breath was visible; it was June, but this was the mountains 900 meters above sea level. Over the course of a year, the temperature at Mt. Koya averaged five degrees below that of the outside world.
Jichiei set out, tracing along a dark path of dampened stone. A forest of ancient, thousand-year old cedars lined the sides of the cobbled path leading to the inner sanctuary. Between the trees were dense collections of stone monuments, huddled together. Each was a grave, there were close to 100 thousand in total. A number of the gravestones had been fashioned into five-story pagodas, some as high as ten meters. They towered like huge stone monoliths.
It was a magnificent gathering; there were graves of the Heian nobility, of the feudal lords Uesugi, Takeda and Tokugawa from the Warring States, even nameless peasants had graves here. The weight of distinct layers of history was stacked one on top of the other. The whole area of necropolis encompassing the massively ancient trees emanated a powerful, humid energy--a Psychic Barrier.
Beyond the Hall of Lanterns was the inner sanctuary, the resting place of Kukai. The mausoleum had become his home after he attained Buddhahood over 1200 years ago. Kukai, the man also known as Kobo Daishi, was the founder of the Shingon Sect; his charisma transcended mere legend, reaching almost mythical status.
Jichiei stood on the verge of the Mimeyo Bridge, beyond was a flight of stone steps. The Hall of Lanterns was at the top. His night robes had grown heavy with moisture absorbed from the fog. Since coming outside, he had been fighting an unpleasant sensation of weightlessness. It was not fear, more like he had been cast naked into the energy that had accumulated in the air around him. Something was disturbing the area’s delicate balance. There was something foreign--a sense of magnetism that lightly hugged his skin. The layers of energy were in flux. Jichiei was certain that the changes originated from the energy field’s center, from Kukai’s shrine. Should I call someone?
No, I need to find out what’s happened first.
Jichiei clasped his hands together in prayer and stepped onto the bridge. There was a sudden rustling in the darkness, the sound of people running through the woods behind the shrine. Jichiei broke into a sprint. He was halfway up the stone steps to Lantern Hall when he heard something shuffle in the darkness above the top of the trees. Something crashed onto the steps before him--a dark, nebulous lump. Jichiei skidded to a halt, pitching forward as he took in the fallen object. It flinched. It was large and spindly, like an oversize bug antenna. It was alive, but its arms and legs were too long to be human. Jichiei was unable to see much in the darkness, but the thing was clearly aberrant, as though something once normal had been purposefully twisted into this form; a misshapen, human-sized black spider.
It started to move, its motion like that of an arthropod. It stood before him, a physical embodiment of anxiety, lust, horror, and all the muddy dregs of human consciousness; the deep-seated, slumbering source of nightmares. A ghostly pair of eyes glared out from the center of the black mass, trained on him. Jichiei felt his hairs prickle. It took flight, flowing elegantly upward. Jichiei screamed at the top of his voice. The creature leaped over his head and Jichiei’s scream died. His neck had been wrenched to a grotesque angle. His body collapsed onto the stone steps.
By the time the other monks rushed to his side, he had already stopped convulsing. He lay face up, mouth frozen in a silent scream, eyes staring at the sky. His head hung parallel to his shoulders, broken.
2
It was a puzzling room.
The layout was atypical, neither Japanese nor Western in style. The space was shrouded in deep curtains of darkness. A peculiar scent drifted through the air, faint, almost not there at all. It was Kokujinko, the incense used by the Shingon sect during the Rite of Kongobu. Inhaled through the nose, it felt like it would dissolve the human body into darkness from the inside.
The fragrance that extends to the corners of a thousand worlds, greater in value than the riches of three thousand realms. Such is the heart that aspires to Buddhahood.
It was the incense mentioned in the Kegon Sutra.
The ceiling, floors and walls of the room were unified black. There was a faint light, but it was absorbed into the pervasive blackness of the room, isolated in the darkness. The light burned in a small votive dish on top of a black metallic stand that had been set up on the floor toward one of the walls over a jet-black rug. The equipment was reserved for ritual use. The room had no other furnishings. The single light served to deepen the darkness of the rest of the space.
An illustration adorned the wall nearest the flame: an image of a Bodhisattva, it had been outlined exclusively in gold. A golden peacock’s wings were spread wide, spanning the distance from one wall to the other. Its tail feathers overflowed onto the ceiling; the Bodhisattva was positioned on a lotus leaf, which towered behind its back.
It was a single-headed image of Myo’o. The deity was depicted wit
h four arms, each holding a single object: a lotus flower in bloom, a fruit from the Bijapuraka plant, the fruit of happiness, and a peacock’s feather. Its face was slender and feminine, eyes half-closed. Its mouth was slightly parted in a coquettish smile. It was known as the Kujaku Myo’o, one of Buddhism’s guardian deities. Its outline glowed hazily as it floated in the darkness, giving the impression of being rendered in fluorescent paint. The half opened eyes of the Kujaku Myo’o focused on the center of the room where a couple lay intertwined on top of a black rug. Their pale skin reflected the soft candlelight; their flesh was stark white, even in the yellowish light. They appeared to be suspended in the darkness of space. Presiding over them was the golden glowing image of Kujaku Myo’o.
The woman was on top and the man. She had her back to him leaning forward with her face buried in his crotch. Her head jerked furiously between the man’s slightly raised thighs. She looked young, her face was almost childlike--more a young girl than a woman. She looked 16, maybe 17 years old, no more than 20. Her youth was apparent from her closed eyelids and the soft hair on her cheeks, but the way she held herself was in contrast to her outwardly girlish looks: her legs were spread open, exposed before the man’s face, weak light or not.
Her eyebrows knotted into a frown. She seemed to be in pain as she eagerly worked her mouth. Even frowning, though, she was unnervingly beautiful. There was sophistication even in the midst of her audacity. The frown bolstered that image.
The man lay almost completely still as though the girl was attending to him, but that was not the case. If anything, the man was working her into a frenzy. Her intense focus on the object in her mouth was an attempt to fight the ever stronger surges of pleasure. Each time the tip of his penis touched her throat she made a delicate, groaning sound, and each time the noise was stifled by the object packed into her mouth. Of course, the groan was not from pain, rather a natural way of responding to the pleasure her body experienced.
The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters Page 3