by Zoe Drake
He returned to the apartment, his hands washed and smelling of soap, the cistern gurgling away behind him. Pointing to the talisman, he said, “Is this anything to do with Kabala?”
“You know Kabala?”
“I’ve heard of it. Something to do with those colored cords that people wear around their wrists, isn’t it?”
He heard the Professor mutter something like, give me strength.
David pressed on. “How about Namiko here? Is she a Kabbalist too?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“So what’s Kabala got to do with Shinto? You said she was a Shinto priestess.”
The man took a step closer towards David. Reflexively, David moved backward. He didn’t know what to feel. Whose hands had tied this around his neck? The man’s or the woman’s? Touching his body while he lay there senseless?
“You’re a teacher of English, aren’t you?” The Professor asked.
David nodded sullenly.
“How old is the English language?”
David frowned. “Well, it’s…well, what we call modern English is about, I don’t know…” he struggled to recall memories of Chaucer and Shakespeare from his College days. “Maybe six hundred years old.”
“It didn’t exactly spring into existence fully formed, did it?”
David sighed and walked to the fridge, taking out the carton of orange juice. Shaking it, he realized his visitors must have bought groceries for him as well. He took out three glasses from the cabinet and filled them up. “No, it was derived from Old English, which was a mixture of Latin, French, and other European languages, like Anglo Saxon.” There are a few Anglo Saxon words I can think of right now, David thought to himself in exasperation.
“Someone once said that the English language is like a river,” the Professor commented. “Many streams from many different sources, all flowing together to combine into one, mighty river, which eventually empties into the sea. You might say the same thing about spirituality and mysticism. Many streams carrying parts of the truth, leading us towards the Ultimate.”
David looked at him closely and held out a glass of orange juice. The old man took it and smiled in thanks.
“So what kind of investigators are you?” David asked. “Insurance investigators?”
Namiko took the orange juice with a grateful itadakimasu then told him, “Actually, we’re healers.”
David sat down. He couldn’t resist sneering. “Sorry, I’m not a very New Age person. And if you’re healers, couldn’t you do something about my headache?” He put his hand to his temples for emphasis.
Without hesitation, Namiko moved around the table and put her hand on his forehead. David flinched in surprise, but didn’t move away. She stayed still for several moments, her eyes closed, her lips moving, whispered syllables falling into the air.
She took her hand away. David blinked several times, straightened his back, took a deep breath. To his reluctant surprise, he felt better. He could concentrate, he could see and think clearly; he was full of energy.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
Namiko smiled. The Professor grinned. “It’s magic, David.”
David laughed. He couldn’t help himself.
“I’m glad you’ve got a good sense of humor, David, but actually, I’m not joking. You know how to work a computer, don’t you?”
“Yeah, course I do.”
“Computers are able to do what they do because of programming. Magic is the programming language that underlies reality, and the two alphabets of this language are symbol and ritual.”
“Yeah, but come on, magic doesn’t really exist, does it?”
The elderly man laughed. “Well, that depends on how you define magic, isn’t it? Is it the natural magic of the Renaissance mage? The theurgic model of the Platonist philosophers, such as Iamblichus? Magick with a K, as developed by Crowley?”
David shrugged. “Don’t know about them. I mean, you know…magic magic.”
The old man smiled, sat back down on the sofa with a sigh. “Have you got a girlfriend, David?”
He immediately bristled. “Yes, I have actually. What’s that got to do with you?”
“Well, you know how hard it is to create a magical moment in a relationship, then. But it can be done. Under the right conditions.”
Namiko turned her head in the direction of the desk. Lisa’s picture. “Is she here in Japan with you?”
“No. She’s back home.”
“Where’s home for you, David Keall?”
“Brentwood. Essex.”
The Professor leaned forward, his eyes intense. “I know what you’re doing here, David.”
“Oh, yeah?” David was starting to feel threatened. Any more of this, he thought, and he would ask them to leave. “So what am I doing here?”
“You’re an outsider, aren’t you? Out here they call you a gaijin. Everyone can see you’re different, so you don’t have to worry too much about blending in. But haven’t you ever felt what it’s like to be a gaijin in your own country? You have, haven’t you? That’s why you’re here.”
David recoiled, looking for Namiko for support. She leaned across the table towards him. “We know why you went to the hospital, David, and it is the same reason we did. You want justice.”
“You’re the whistle blower,” added the Professor. “You are the heroic one, David Keall, and we know how special that is. You’ve got the quality that the majority does not have.”
David stared back at her, his mouth open but no sound coming out.
“Now take it easy,” the Professor drawled. “It might be time for another nap.”
“But I feel fine, I don’t want to–”
The old man smiled, but with unmistakable authority. “Sleep, David.”
It was morning.
David opened his eyes, shifting his head so he could see into the next room. The paper panels over the windows were glowing; another hot day. He became aware of his body – his neck and shoulders ached where he must have lain in the same position for some considerable time.
He couldn’t see or hear anyone.
He got up, staggered through into the front room, rubbing the grit from his eyes. Sure enough, nobody here. No Professor Weiss. No Shinto High Priestess. For one moment, he thought he might have dreamed them both, and the thought suddenly chilled him – until his hand jumped to his throat and found the little metal disc held there on its cord. No. He hadn’t dreamed it.
Rubbing the cord thoughtfully, he reached around the back of his neck and untied it. I’ll take a shower, he thought. That’ll clear away the cobwebs. He peered at the talisman thoughtfully, the curious symbols shifting in the light. He placed it carefully on the table, opened the fridge to take out the orange juice.
Someone would be dropping by soon, he thought, and yawned massively.
The sound was deafening.
The sound of smashing glass and torn paper – and the shock hit him as he realized the sound was inside the apartment.
He turned and saw what was making it.
In the window frame, the paper screens were being pushed apart by something coming through the glass. Long, thin sticks, like metal scaffolding but bright green, covered with thorn-like bristles. They filled the window. A flat, triangular head, the same shade of green, rotating to turn its bulging compound eyes upon him.
Pulling itself through the window, the giant praying mantis unfolded its jagged limbs and raised its smooth, terrible head towards him.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Isness
The glass smashed on the kitchen table as David dropped it, turned and bolted for the door. The mantis was faster. Telescoping its body in a way that shouldn’t have been possible, the blade-tipped arms shot out across the living room and kitchen, and both of them snapped shut around David’s left wrist.
His scream was terror mixed with pain–
Through the glass of the kitchen door he saw a rectangle of daylight, a silhoue
tted figure in jacket and hat standing in the parlor, one hand held out towards David. Through the door he could hear chanting in an unknown language, the words booming inside his head like a rush of blood.
And he was free.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the mantis was gone.
Professor Weiss pulled open the kitchen door and walked through. “Are you all right?”
David stood in the kitchen, rubbing his left wrist, trying to stop the shivers going up and down his whole body. “It was another dream – another dream…”
“Why did you take off the amulet?”
“I wanted to take a shower,” he stammered through chattering teeth.
The old man shook his head. “You’re not cured, my young friend. You might feel better, but I’m afraid there’s a long way to go. I advise you to wear that amulet at all times. For your own protection.”
“Or I’ll see bugs coming through the windows.” David had to sit down, his legs were about to give way.
“Something like that.” The professor put a bag of groceries down on the table, checked his watch. “Anyway, let’s get some breakfast. We’re going on a little trip later.”
With a land area of nine thousand square kilometers, and a population of one and a half million, Aomori was one of Japan’s least populated prefectures. Perhaps it was the stretches of lonely wilderness that gave it the unearthly atmosphere, the feeling of being cut off from modern reality. This was the region of stone circles and pyramids, legends and ghost stories, relics from Japan’s prehistoric past and place names bequeathed from the Ainu.
Now Namiko had told them they were on their way to another of the region’s relics. The Shakoki Dogu.
“‘See how many hidden causes there are,’” The professor was saying, comfortably sat in the passenger seat of Namiko’s car. “‘Hidden from the comprehension of human beings. There are lights upon lights, none more clear than another, each one dark by comparison with the one above it.’”
“That sounds deep.”
“That’s a quotation from the Zohar, David. The thirteenth-century text that summarizes the Jewish mystic teachings known collectively as…” The professor hesitated, pronouncing the final word with relish. “Kabala.”
“Yeah, whatever.” David resumed his gloomy staring through the side window.
Their drive took them through one of the Aomori orchard districts. David was familiar with the sight by now, but it had surprised the Professor; scores upon scores of apples, still on the trees, all of them individually wrapped in blue paper. It was a Japanese custom to promote good coloring and protect them from pests.
Out of the green and blue orchards now, they drove through a landscape on the point of disintegration. Aging farm buildings, plaster bleached by the sun and peeling away from the walls. Tin huts and old cars rusting away in the long grass. A white building where half of the wall’s plaster had cracked and peeled away, exposing the wooden skeleton beneath. A derelict bus, its exterior paint blackened, its windows empty of glass, its wheels removed and replaced with four large oil drums.
“You were telling us about the Kageyama Treatment,” Namiko prompted.
“I told you all I know. They claim to be doing sleep research but what they’re really doing is messing with people’s heads.”
“Did they explain how the treatment works?”
“The device is supposed to modulate your brain waves, calm them down to relax you.” David laughed a mirthless laugh. “I didn’t look very relaxed when you first saw me, did I?”
“Modulate brain waves, you said?” The Professor turned around and gave David a sharp look. “How do they do that?”
“They make you wear a kind of a hairnet with electrodes all over it. Then the subjects go to sleep in rows of beds.”
“They were lined up in rows of beds, in a huge room like an operating theatre,” The Professor said softly.
“Yeah, it looks like that. How did you know?”
“Who is this Dr. Kageyama?” Weiss asked.
“The bloke who came up with the Modulator. I’ve never met him. He’s a bit of a recluse, I’ve heard. Northern Japan’s eccentric genius.”
“Is he now…”
“So what are we going to do?”
“Sometimes being is more important than doing, David,” Namiko said, without taking her eyes off the road.
“Yeah, but the hospital is actually making people sick. It’s driving people mad. That’s what you came here to find out, isn’t it?”
“If you want to do something, you’ll have to honour the spirits of the land,” she replied. “Recruit their help.”
David sighed in irritation, lay back and closed his eyes.
“We’re here,” she declared.
The object known as the Shakoki Dogu had first been found by a farmer plowing his field. It was an ancient artifact; a curious clay figurine buried in the earth, dating back to Japan’s Neolithic Jomon era but totally unlike anything else from that period. The squat humanoid figure was dressed in an ornate costume, the most remarkable feature being the elaborate headgear and oversized goggles.
In the Eighties, the Aomori prefectural government had erected a statue upon the field where the artifact was found. The three travelers stood at the edge of the field, looking at the statue and the billboard next to it, relating the tale of the discovery in Japanese and English.
Stories about the Shakoki Dogu told of its remarkable similarity to a terrestrial space suit, which led to speculations that the figure was modeled on an ancient extraterrestrial, a visitor from an alien world. Looking at the statue now, David could understand why the stories had started. Standing against the blue August sky, its oval head was dominated by the giant goggles that turned its face into a mask, and the strange designs on its squat body resembled pipes for air, seals, zips, wiring.
The statue stood totally alone in a clump of pampas grass, its figure hunched, its short arms sticking out from its body.
“Tell me about the Baku, David,” asked the Professor.
The young man looked away, rubbing his face, trying to keep the memories of the last few days from all rushing back at once. “The Baku is a creature from Japanese mythology. It appears in your dreams and eats things…and people. When you wake up, you find out that the people eaten in the dream have disappeared in real life. Some Japanese tried to appease with it, like when they had a nightmare they would say Baku kurae, which means Baku please eat my dream. They hoped the Baku would take away the nightmare so they could sleep easier.”
“Ah yes,” murmured the Professor. “Ah yes, things are starting to become clear.”
David squinted at the Professor in the sunlight. “You don’t actually believe that stuff, do you?”
“I do indeed. But we know the Baku by a different name. We know it as the King of the Veils.”
“The King of what?”
The Professor turned to look squarely at David. “Actually, we specialize in this kind of thing.”
“Look, you keep mentioning ‘we’. Who are you talking about?”
Namiko joined Weiss at his side. “We are the Lamed Vav Tzadikim, David,” the old man said. “We are the ones with the task of bringing humanity to its senses. When the time is right.”
David sneered. “What, you’re telling me you’re some kind of secret society? With only two of you?”
Weiss laughed, breaking the somber mood. “Our numbers are thirty-six, David. We walk through this world unseen.”
Namiko took a plastic bottle of water from her bag, and offered it to the Professor. Weiss indicated David. “You first.”
Suddenly David was conscious of the dryness in his throat. He took a deep swig from the bottle.
“I was talking about magic,” the Professor continued. “Magical ritual causes well-defined changes in consciousness. Changes into states that are not normally obtainable, and that create effects considered, by most people, to be impossible.”
David handed the bot
tle back and raised a hand to his brow. It came away slick with sweat. “So, all you have to do is to read a spell from your magic book – and bingo?”
“No.” The professor’s voice sounded hollow. “The power comes from both the symbol and the person with the power to bring that symbol to life. That could take five minutes or five days – it depends on what I choose to call magical consciousness. Let me give you some proof, David. A little demonstration. A show of what the Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable Name, is capable of.” And then he leaned closer to David, turned his head and whispered a single syllable:
“Yod.”
David looked back at the Professor. The older man said nothing more, just stood there smiling, a wistful smile on his face. Namiko stood behind him, every now and again turning to sweep the empty landscape with her gaze, as if she was Weiss’s personal bodyguard.
Fort some reason, David could still hear the syllable Yod, like an echo trapped inside his eardrums. It was accompanied by a ringing, then a buzzing, a faint hum like gathering power. He rubbed his face. Tingling wet perspiration broke out all over his body. When he took his hands away from his eyes, everything looked weird.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Look around you,” answered Namiko.
“Watch,” said professor Weiss. “Use your eyes for the first time.”
David looked around him.
Everything he saw was alive. The landscape was suddenly filled with a meaning that previously he hadn’t been aware of, but now he was sure it was there. In plain sight. Everything was alive.
David was fully alert. He heard every sound, he detected every change in the light or shadows around him. He was gripped by a feeling of urgency, of impending action, and had a sudden urge to run full pelt across the road and into the empty fields facing him.
“This is the world of Assiah,” came the Professor’s voice. “The world into which spirit has descended, the world that we experience with our five senses. The world of humans, animals and elementals.”
David turned and looked at the Shakoki Dogu. It glowed like it had its own internal furnace, and there was a hint of alien eyes behind those stone goggles.