The Mists of Osorezan

by Zoe Drake

  The Professor spoke again.

  “He.”

  The syllable burst inside David’s head like fireworks. He closed his eyes instinctively, and brilliantly colored peacock feathers rippled over the screen of his eyelids. Swept by a feeling of vertigo, he staggered, and opened his eyes again. The visible world was unwinding itself, the light inside every object swelling up and obscuring its form.

  “This is the world of Yetzirah, the world of formation, the world of what Plato called Ideal Forms. Here each human houses their subtle body, their astral self.”

  Mental walls gave way inside him. He realized he knew what the word Yetzirah meant all along; it meant that his mind was not his brain, was not his body. His mind extended outward, in every direction, enclosing his body like an invisible sphere.

  David was still reeling from the implications when warm breath brushed against his face and the Professor whispered another syllable into his ear.

  “Vav.”

  A great shower of shadows swept across the landscape like night falling, like a curtain being pulled. Things moved in the twilight, lights pulsated, ever-changing, and David knew they were alive, intelligent, and unbelievably old. A pinwheel of precious neon resolved itself into a humanoid figure wearing a golden crown as huge and ancient concepts fell into place.

  He breathed it in, enchanted. How could he have forgotten? The language of the birds, the language of the angels, the language of the stars, the mystic proto-language that predated humanity itself; the primal vocabulary that summoned things into existence by naming them.

  “This is the world of Briah,” said the Professor’s disembodied voice, “the cosmic process of creation. The heavenly furnace where stars, galaxies, archangels and cherubim are created by the various agencies of the Divine Will.”

  David’s breathing was deep but strangely accelerated. The rhythm of his breathing kept him upright, keeping him anchored on the ground. He still had the temptation to take off running as fast as he could. Air currents eddied and flowed against the angelic gateways of his skin.

  “He”.

  One more hit. One more syllable in a name that shouldn’t be spoken. Something like an earthquake was taking place in David’s head, and above him, the sky began to open like a window. He felt energy rushing out of his body, and his legs and fingers tingled. The feeling of weakness grew until his legs gave way and he sat down on the grass.

  “Behold the world of Atziluth. The world of divine emanation, where all consists of pure Will, and everything becomes one.”

  Panic hit him like a drug. He’d gone too far. He’d never be normal again. The instant he had the thought, he knew it for what it was; fear of losing control. Paranoia. His own insecurity screaming from the back of his head.

  But he still couldn’t bring himself to look up at the sky. He couldn’t turn his eyes upon them, but he felt them, he knew their names. The Cherubim. Those terrible sentiences that filled the Universe with their glory, the cosmic radiation, the background surf that was a swoon of syllables that the human brain refused to cope with,

  Kadoosh–

  Kadoosh–

  Kadoosh–

  The next instant, he was back with the Professor and Namiko. He lay on the grass, arms splayed out, one leg folded underneath the other.

  After a while, he was able to speak. “How did you do that?”

  “Take it easy, David. It’s a lot to grasp all in one go.”

  The young man reached out and took the bottle of mineral water that the Professor still held. “Did you put something in this?”

  “All I did to the water was bless it.” Weiss raised his hand and traced a symbol in the air with his index finger. To David’s surprise, the lines of the symbol hung in the air, like after-images after waving a sparkler.

  “The Hebrew letter Mem,” the Professor said.

  David stared at the symbol, entranced, until it dissipated, the individual lines wiggling into oblivion like glow worms squirming away into the soil.

  Weiss sat on the grass next to David. He took a pen from his inside pocket and began to trace furrows in the nearby soil; a pattern that looked strangely familiar. A column of five circles, each above the other, flanked by twin columns of three circles on each side. Weiss began to sketch an elaborate system of lines linking all of the circles together.

  “This is the Otz Chiim, David. The Tree of Life. The circuit diagram for the wiring of the Kabalistic Universe. Ten planes of existence, or Sephiroph, arranged in three pillars to balance each other. The everyday world of concrete and bank accounts corresponds to the lowest Sephiroph, named Malkuth. The world of the Divine, the Ineffable Name, corresponds to the highest Sephiroph, Kether. The Sephirophs are present at every level of creation. Imagine Malkuth at your feet, and Kether at the crown of your head, like a radio telescope pointing towards Heaven.”

  With the pen, Weiss began to trace a string of Hebrew characters in the heart of each circle.

  “The Tree of Life branches upward and outward from Malkuth, into each of the three other planes of existence that you’ve just experienced. It also branches downward. There is an infernal counterpart of the tree, ruled over by entities that Kabbalists refer to as the Qlipoth.”

  David turned his head. Behind the Professor’s profile, the sky was tinged with dusk.

  “Who are you, exactly?”

  “We are thirty-six individuals who have awoken and know how to unlock the power. The power to heal, David. To heal the Earth’s wounds.”

  Weiss looked down at the symbols he’d made in the soil.

  “Your recent problems have been caused by the King of the Veils. This is our name for a life form that doesn’t correspond to the rules of time and space as we know them. Something allowed it to get a foothold in this world, David. There is a crack in reality and an abomination is seeping its way through to us. This, I believe, is the entity that the ancient Japanese knew as the Baku.”

  The euphoria was wearing off, and the Professor’s speech made David feel very, very tired. “Yeah, I get it. So we’re caught in this big epic battle between good and evil.”

  “No, no, you’re not listening!”

  David looked up, startled by the anger in the older man’s voice.

  “Remember the praying mantis that you saw in your room?”

  David frowned in surprise. “Yeah…”

  “Well, those creatures have a rather interesting way of reproducing, you know. When a male approaches a female to mate, if she’s hungry she may bite off his head and eat the body. While she’s still eating him, it’s common for another male to approach and impregnate the female from behind. While the body of the first male is still warm and twitching. So tell me, is that evil? Is the praying mantis a bad insect?”

  David looked down, not knowing what to say.

  “While we’re on the subject of insects, think about the ants.”

  “The ants?”

  “There’s an area of the Amazon called the Devil’s Garden. For decades it was a kind of biological curiosity because only one kind of tree grows there – the Duroia Hirsuta tree. Nobody understood why, because the Amazon was a place of rich biodiversity. Except for this one small area.

  “Then one day a team of researchers found out why. There’s a certain kind of ant that uses the Duroia trees as hosts – creating colonies inside them for the nest to breed. The ants inject formic acid into the leaves of other plants, killing them off, so that only the Duroia trees can survive.”

  Weiss turned to face David, his eyes burning. “It’s herbicide, David. The ants are actually using herbicide to ensure the survival of their own species. So you might think, why does this happen? Why are insects capable of this kind of thing? Why are human beings intent on wiping out trees, insects, other mammals, for space to lay more concrete? Why are these things taking place at the hospital? What’s the Kageyama Treament actually for?”

  Weiss took a deep breath, looked up at the sky.

  “The an
swer is the same in each case; to clear a living space and ensure the survival of their own kind. The same patterns occur on different levels, David, they repeat themselves. There are forces that want this world, they hunger for it. If they break through into our reality, the human race will no longer exist. Not in a form that we can recognize.”

  The Professor lapsed into silence. Behind them, back where the mountains met the rice fields, it was starting to get dark.

  “As above…so below,” he murmured.

  Chapter Forty

  Cicada Season

  Nozaki got out of the taxi at the main gates. From there, he walked down the driveway leading to the Tokyo Medical Institute, part of the prestigious Tokyo University. The sides of the road were thick with ancient chinkapin oaks, their brown, deeply furrowed bark infested with vines. The boughs of the trees met overhead and formed a canopy, the sunlight split and diffused by the green, copper-like leaves.

  Every time Nozaki came down south, he was reminded how lucky he was that he didn’t live in Tokyo. The capital was a ‘heat island’: the kilometers of concrete and metal trapped the sunlight’s heat, and the over-active churning of hundreds of thousands of air-conditioners threw out damp, fetid air, turning the atmosphere into soup. During the dog days of August, the population of Tokyo sought refuge in air-conditioned spaces – convenience stores, department stores, burger shops, even the trains. Nozaki folded up his summer jacket, carrying it over his arm. He had only walked a few meters and already his shirt felt pasted to his skin with sweat.

  Yet above the ceaseless hum of the traffic was the sound that calmed him down – the sound of the cicadas. From the trees above came the buzzing drone of the insects hidden from view. The minmin-cicada, as they called them in Japan, the name coming from the sound they made. Min-min-min-miiiiiiiin. It came from everywhere around, enough to send you into a trance if you listened for long enough.

  Before him, the rust-red Neo-Gothic façade of the First Building came into view through the branches of the trees, the shining clock in the center of the brickwork like a single glowing eye. The structure was overshadowed by the gleaming steel and concrete bulk of the New Hospital Building in the next block. How intriguing, thought Nozaki. Behind the mask of modern technology the delicate, Kabuki-white face of Japanese tradition could always be found; but here it was the other way around. Behind the appearance of age, the shock of the new.

  Walking into reception was like walking into a European college cloister. He presented his name-card, and was directed through to a series of stone-walled corridors, their low ceilings shot through with pipes and wires running overhead. Following the signs, he turned left and went through a double door, a covered walkway that led him to the New Building, its glasswork shimmering in the sun. It felt like walking from one millennium to the next. In the lobby, he introduced himself again to the immaculately made-up receptionist, and then sat down to wait.

  Roughly five minutes later a white-coated, completely bald man stepped around the corner into reception, walking straight towards Nozaki. “I’m Junji Urabe. Sorry to keep you waiting,” he began.

  Nozaki stood up and bowed. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.” He held out the package he’d brought, still in its department-store wrapper. “Souvenirs from Aomori, sir. Apple cakes.”

  Dr. Urabe asked the receptionist to bring drinks to them, and ushered Nozaki down a hallway to the left. They entered a small waiting room, two sets of comfortable-looking chairs facing each other across a low white table. A painting of wild flowers hung on one wall, while floor-to-wall windows behind the chairs flooded the room with light. Nozaki sat down opposite Dr. Urabe, gauging the man and how he should react to him. Under his white lab coat Urabe wore a white shirt and a tie with the crest of the Yakult Swallows baseball team beneath it. He was in his fifties, but with his piercing eyes and clear skin, looked about thirty-five.

  Dr. Junji Urabe had worked on a post-doctoral fellowship at Tsugaru University, helping Dr. Kageyama with research on what was later to become the Sleep Modulator. Eighteen months ago he had left, moving down south to take up a faculty position at the Division of Neuronal Networks here in Tokyo. His focus had changed from parasomnia to the cognitive and behavioral processes underlying psychological disorders such as bipolar disorder, pain perception, and his current focus, social phobia among the hikikomori – the increasing number of Japanese withdrawing from society and leading solitary lives.

  “Now then,” he began, “You said on the phone you want to interview me?”

  “That’s right, sir. I’m writing for the faculty journal on the early days of the Sleep Modulator project, how the idea was born. That way, people can get a real idea of how much research and effort has gone into the project, so we can appreciate the people who’ve been responsible for its success.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not looking for any reward, young man, but I’d be glad to tell you of what we did. It started out as just monitoring of the sleep process, to examine brain events in real time, to get more of an idea of the purpose of sleep and dreaming. We came up with the idea of moving things along a little.”

  “You mean modulation of brain waves?”

  “And possible control, yes. Biofeedback. Lucid dreaming. Active exploration of the dream-state.”

  Nozaki pressed the ‘record voice memo’ button on his smartphone. “Can I ask you, how did you first meet Dr. Kageyama?”

  “In 2006, I think. We were both contract researchers at Tsugaru University.”

  “What were you researching?”

  “Sleep disorders, you know. Parasomnia.” Urabe leaned forward, warming to his subject. “I remember a story Kageyama told me one night. He was born in the Tono area, south of Aomori, and the place is full of odd little legends and folktales. He told me the legend of the Mayoi-ga.”

  Nozaki frowned. “I haven’t heard of that.”

  “The legend concerned a farmer’s housewife who went into a remote valley one day to look for wild flowers and herbs. In the middle of an empty clearing she found a house, a well-constructed house, with hens and horses in the garden. The front door was open, and she felt compelled to go inside and find out who lived there. In the front room there was a charcoal brazier and a kettle about to boil, lots of gorgeous serving bowls filled with fresh food, but there was no sign of any people in the house.”

  Urabe continued, his eyes distant. “The woman was gripped with a sudden fear, and she fled out of the house and out of the valley. When she returned to her village, she told the ruling elders what she’d found, and the next day she went back with a party of yeomen from the village. They entered the same clearing, and saw…nothing. The house had disappeared. There was no sign to show that a house had ever stood on that grassy bank.”

  Dr. Urabe paused and sipped from the cup of green tea. “That was one of many stories of a Mayoi-ga. The name means a house that you find when you lose your way. The legend of the Mayoi-ga says that when you come across such a house, you are entitled to take anything you like from the range of objects and animals you see. The Mayoi-ga only appears to a person to offer them good fortune, you see. The woman didn’t understand what was happening, and became afraid, and so ran away. When she tried to find it again, it was too late. Dr. Kageyama’s point was that dreams are a kind of Mayoi-ga. When we go to sleep, we lose our way, because we don’t have conscious control over our minds. We come across a magic house, where many images, characters, and events are there to be found. We are entitled to take as much from dreams as we can: as much wisdom, as much knowledge as we like. But because we don’t understand the nature of dreams, we fail to recognize what’s happening, and so we wake empty-handed.”

  “Interesting,” murmured Nozaki after a pause.

  Urabe leaned forward. “In the early days, Kageyama was the one in charge of looking for funding for the Sleep Modulator. It was fairly easy to come up with the prototype; things like this had been on the market for ages. We just took it a step further. Ele
ctrical stimulation of the occipital lobe to create simple sensory impressions. Electrodes on the subject’s wrist, to give a mild electric shock through the median nerve.”

  “To stimulate lucidity?”

  “That’s right; the object was to see if the sleeper would incorporate the stimulus into their dreams.” Urabe took a deep breath. “Dr. Kageyama insisted that he be the first person to try it. I saw no reason to object – after all, there was no way this could harm a person. On that afternoon I helped him put on the hairnet with all the sensors attached and he got into the bed we’d rigged up. A nurse gave him a slight sedative to put him to sleep. Then I sat by the bedside, monitoring his progress.” Urabe frowned as he slipped further into recollection.

  “For the first hour there was perfect calm. He slipped from light sleep into REM sleep, from slow waves to gamma and theta waves. It was when he was in one of the periods of REM dreaming that it happened.”

  “When what happened?”

  Urabe lifted his gaze to meet that of the younger man. “Don’t you know? I’d have thought Kageyama would never get tired of telling that particular story. The earthquake. 2:46 PM on March 11th, the earthquake struck and devastated the Tohoku region. The whole lab shook, things were falling from the shelves, all the glasses fell off the table and smashed. I was standing up, wondering what I should do, if I should try to wake up my colleague – and then Dr. Kageyama had…a seizure.”

  “A seizure.” An image ignited within Nozaki’s mind; the memory of Dr. Kageyama collapsing in the hospital lobby, his face contorted with shock and pain.

  “His heart signs started to fluctuate, and his brain waves, well…there was tremendous activity. The needles were going off the scale.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Fortunately, it stopped. We were still wondering whether we should switch off the machine, but he woke of his own accord. He opened his eyes, and smiled…but there’s one thing I’ll always remember. It was a very strange sort of smile. He looked so…bewildered. Confused for a few moments, but happy. Like a child, almost. Or as if he were seeing the world for the first time.”