The Mists of Osorezan

by Zoe Drake

  “For the first time,” echoed Nozaki.

  Nozaki couldn’t work up an appetite, but after the interview with Dr. Urabe, he forced himself to eat at a standing noodle bar near Shinbashi station. After that, he returned to the hotel. In the narrow, sparsely furnished room, he took out his smartphone. Yesterday, he had entered a certain company’s name and telephone number into his list of contacts. He dialed it, listening to it ring, and ring, and ring.

  After three minutes, he gave up.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The Tunnel at the End of the Tunnel

  “Have you ever seen one of those stage acts,” Weiss said, “where the performer puts a number of plates on top of a cane and gets them spinning? He starts off with one, then a few, and then he’s got about twenty-five or thirty plates all spinning at once, defying gravity?”

  David stared morosely out of the car window, letting the words wash over him.

  “The audience watch him dashing from plate to plate, grabbing the ones that slow down and look as if they’re going to fall, getting them spinning again. That’s the human condition, David. That’s everyday life. We’re so busy keeping our little plates spinning in the air, we haven’t got time to notice what’s really happening.”

  They had woken up early and taken the car, Namiko driving. So far, both of David’s ‘guardians’ refused to tell him where they were going.

  “What I’m saying is, that’s not normal, and not healthy. Magical consciousness isn’t abnormal at all. What we call everyday life is, in fact, abnormal.”

  “Hyakubun ikken ni shikazu, da yo,” David muttered.

  Namiko laughed.

  “What did he say?” asked the Professor.

  “It’s an old Japanese proverb,” the priestess explained. “It means hearing something a hundred times doesn’t equal seeing it once.”

  Weiss turned around to look at David and grin wolfishly. “You’re catching on, my boy.”

  “Thanks. And stop calling me ‘boy’.”

  Namiko swung the car off the main road and they bumped slowly down a rough gravel path. After another few minutes, they pulled over to the right and parked.

  “You can get out now, David,” said Weiss.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just get out.”

  A warm breeze caressed his face as he stood up, looking around him. Woodlands. The sound of traffic had faded, replaced with the orchestral swell of insects and the humming of dragonfly wings. Before them, the road curved slightly and plunged into a tunnel. A hole had been cut through the mountain; a tunnel that yawned in front of them, the concrete maw illuminated by cat’s eyes and overhead lamps.

  “Well, David,” said the Professor. “Basically, I’d like you to walk through there.”

  David swung his head from the tunnel mouth back to Weiss. “Is that it?”

  Weiss smiled with exaggerated patience. “Yes. It’s a tunnel. You walk through it, get to the other side, and come out. We’ll be waiting for you. Think you can handle that?”

  “How will you get to the other side?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “So where’s the trick?”

  Weiss laughed, waved him away. “Well if there is a trick, you’ll find out when you get to it. Now come along, we can’t hang around all day. Be off with you.”

  David started walking.

  He trod cautiously to the entrance, keeping to the asphalt on the left of the road, and stopped. He turned around. The Professor and the priestess were standing by the car, smiling, watching him, but making no move to get in the car. Namiko even gave him a wave.

  Muttering under his breath, he entered the tunnel.

  There didn’t seem to be anything unusual about the tunnel at all. It had the same boring features he’d seen on any road, in any country; featureless concrete, electric lights at regular intervals, a narrow sidewalk on each side, doors leading to access corridors spaced out along the walls. As he walked further on, he realized the only unusual thing was the absence of traffic. Still, that wasn’t exactly strange in Tohoku.

  The way the tunnel walls curved, David couldn’t see what lay ahead; it was a grey hole, mellowing into distant shadows. A warm wind breathed from up ahead, ruffling his hair. There was a smell that could have been incense.

  He stopped and turned around, looking back. The entrance had shrunk to a tiny glowing pinprick in the distance. “What a waste of time,” he muttered to himself.

  Then the first light went out.

  His eyes registered something, and he stayed where he was, trying to make sense of it. As he watched, it happened again. One of the overhead lights near the entrance went out, throwing an extra layer of shadows upon the tunnel.

  After it happened a third time, David turned away and resumed walking.

  Moving swiftly, casting glances back over his shoulder, he could see it happening. The lights were being snuffed out one by one, and darkness was squeezing the tunnel, like a number of curtains being pulled down one after the other.

  David broke into a jog. Looking ahead, he still couldn’t see the exit, the walls only sloped away and led to more tunnel. Behind him, the darkness was building like a wave. As he kept glancing behind him, it looked like a solid thing, a mass heavier than the concrete of the tunnel walls.

  He shook his head. “Shit,” he muttered breathlessly. “Shit. Shit.”

  He started to run, pumping his arms and legs, trying to find the way out before he got overtaken. The darkness was almost at his heels now, a jet-black flooding tide of nothing.

  And then the light directly above him went out. And the lights in front. Overtaking him, the air became thicker and thicker until the last lamp clicked off somewhere in front of him and he was alone, in the middle of oblivion.

  He stopped running. He was alone, and blind; he couldn’t see in front of him, couldn’t even see his own body. The only awareness came from his ragged breathing as he tried to fight the stitch in his chest.

  He waited. He stretched his hands in front of him experimentally; he couldn’t even see his fingers. “That bloody Professor,” he muttered.

  As he waited in the dark, he gradually became aware of a sound. He held his breath, tried to focus, tried to identify where and what it was. A regular sound, rhythmic, rising and falling. And it was getting closer. Wind? Water? Insects?

  He suddenly realized what it was. The slapping sound of naked feet on concrete. Lots of them.

  “Hello?” he called into the darkness. “Is anyone there?” As an afterthought, he shouted it in Japanese.

  There were gleams in the wall of shadow. Spots that moved erratically, resolving themselves into half-glimpsed shapes – part of an arm here, legs there, what looked like a head with something wrapped around it.

  It was becoming hotter, almost unbearably hot. David was suddenly assaulted by overpoweringly strong odors – incense, sweat, and the unmistakable stench of sulfur.

  He watched as the shapes materialized into a line of running men. Half-naked, dressed only in loincloths and tenugui towels around their heads. Perspiration shone from their chests, their brows.

  As they caught up with David, they parted and streamed around him. Without knowing why, he turned and began to run with them, trying to match their pace. Time and distance had no meaning; it felt like he’d been running forever.

  It was all happening too fast. He refused to accept the reality of what was surrounding him, but he had no choice except move his body in reaction. He felt the heat of the bodies around him, dense shapes in the darkness, and smelt their sweat. Some of those running were female – he glimpsed the smooth luster of the skin of their arms, backs and shoulder blades.

  At almost the same time, he realized with a vertigo rush of disbelief that his shoes had disappeared. He was suddenly barefoot, and the warm, crunchy powder beneath his naked toes – it was sand. How could that be? Where was the tunnel’s concrete?

  Then the voice, coming from all around him
in the dark, cavernous space, and yet also ringing from inside his head. Despite his panic, he knew unquestionably that the voice belonged to Namiko.

  “And in the ancient of days, at the beginning of our world, Amataresu the Sun Goddess, ruler of the Plain of Heaven, whose name means ‘She who shines in the heavens’, despaired at the repeated offences of her brother, Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the bringer of storms. In shame, she hid herself away in a cave and sealed the entrance with a huge rock. The land was gripped with darkness and icy cold. Human beings wept, animals died, crops withered in the fields. The rest of the Kami realized that action was required.”

  In the crowd, David’s ears were assailed by shouting and chanting. Near-naked bodies jostled against him. The running had stopped. The shadowy figures in the hot velvet darkness around him were swaying, bobbing up and down, clapping their hands to the beat of drums. To his left, he could make out a slender figure, obviously female, long straight hair cascading down her back. He was suddenly possessed with an insane, stabbing desire, knowing that she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever encountered. It almost made him forget his terror.

  “On the bed of Ama-no-Yasugawara, the tranquil river of Heaven, the Kami gathered to decide how to free Amaterasu. They tried many things to induce her to come out of her cave, but all failed until the gods enlisted Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto, the Great Persuader, the Heavenly Alarming Female.”

  The darkness was lifting around him. In the ambiguous light, David realized with wonder that the walls of the tunnel had disappeared, and the faint glimmers above him were stars. He began to make out his new surroundings. Trees. Sand stretching away into the twilight.

  The dark, protean entity before him was the sea. As he watched, the waters parted and something alive and silvery caught the half-light: a school of fish, leaping out of the surf just for the sheer joy of it.

  “Under the direction of Princess Ishikori-dome, the Kami plucked stars from the endless night sky and beat them into the shape of a mirror, the Yata-no-Kagami, which they hung from the branches of the sacred sasaki tree of Mount Kagu.

  “And Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto stood before the cave and performed her dance. The dance was her expression of life, her shout of joy at being in love with the world, her call for the sun to return.

  “So beautiful and skillful was the dancer that the Kami yelled, laughed, and wept, until the great plain of Heaven shook with the noise of their exultation. Amaterasu, opening the doorway to her cave slightly, asked how it was that the gods could laugh in the face of such darkness. Uzume replied that they were happy because there was a more illustrious deity than the sun goddess in heaven. Curious to see this new goddess, Amaterasu was shown the mirror and, spellbound by her own reflection, stared while the gods pulled her free of the cave, and a rope of straw was placed across the entrance, that she might never enter the cavern again. And so the sun returned to the world, and all rejoiced.”

  Something was happening on the horizon. There was a glimmer, a pinprick no bigger than a candle flame, but cutting through the darkness of the sea. An unbelievable howl went up from the crowd all around him, a sound animal and yet at the same time, quintessentially human.

  The sun came up.

  It was as if he was looking at it for the first time. The sun. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  The great disc of the sun slid upwards in front of him, and grew. Liquid gold seemed to be pouring down upon his head. A girl with dusky skin laced with an exotic sweat threw herself into David’s arms and kissed him. He shivered with passion. Then she drew herself away and joined the rest of the dance, and David looked up, transfixed, as the disc of light cut in the sky swelled before him.

  Shouting incoherently, he ran through it.

  Still shouting, David ran headlong out of the tunnel, trainers pounding on the concrete. He ran off the road into the long grass, slowing down, then stopping and finally throwing himself to the ground.

  The world spun crazily around him.

  Two figures loomed above him, peering down, and he recognized the faces of Weiss and Namiko. He realized he was weeping, tears streaming down his face, his breath coming and going in huge gasps. He tried to ask a question but couldn’t manage a sound.

  “Use your abdominal muscles to breath, David,” he heard Namiko telling him. “That’s what babies do. When babies cry those muscles get stronger, and so do they. The power center of your entire body is in the abdomen.”

  He breathed in deeply, again and again. “It’s so beautiful,” he sobbed. “It’s so beautiful, but it’s so sad. It’s fucking tragic.”

  “It always is,” Weiss proclaimed. He reached out his arms, helped David to sit up. Namiko squatted down Japanese-style, staring dreamily back at the tunnel.

  “What you’ve just seen is reality, David, it’s the truth,” she said. “Reality as perceived by magical consciousness.”

  “But I’ve spent the whole of my life so far just worrying about mindless shit,” David gasped, tears streaming down his face. “What do I do? What am I supposed to do about the way I feel?”

  “Understand it,” said Namiko calmly, “use it. That’s how it was, in the beginning, and that’s what the legends mean. Dancing for hours in ecstatic rituals that joined our bodies to our souls and our souls to all the other souls. A collective spiritual celebration.”

  David sniffed back the tears, looking at his protectors. He buzzed with adrenalin. Colors, smells, sounds – everything was sharper, and there was so much information to process. “I’ll do what I can,” he muttered.

  “Good.” The Professor patted him lightly on the shoulder. “You’ll need that strength, David. You’ll need it for what’s coming.” He stood up, adjusting his Panama hat, looking off into the distance.

  “Welcome to the world of the Lamed Vav Tzadikim.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Drowning

  One of the questions that David had asked his new guardians was: “Why Osorezan? Why do I keep dreaming of Osorezan?”

  “You have built a construct in your mind, David,” Namiko told him. “Osorezan has been a sacred site ever since prehistoric times. The Ainu came, and they recognized the power residing there, although they did not understand it. The Buddhists came, and built their temple, and showed respect to the powers of the land, although they did not understand what they were dealing with, either. The power called out to you, and your subconscious responded, making it a shelter for your dreamself. It is nothing to be afraid of. In fact, it is one of your greatest allies.”

  Having returned to the therapy sessions once more, David was careful to work references to Osorezan into the debriefing session – but he wasn’t giving them the whole story. Not any more.

  Nozaki was absent. Off sick, the receptionist said. David was being debriefed by a man who had introduced himself as Yamada. He sat across from the sofa looking patiently at David through cheap eyeglasses, his hair cut in classic salaryman style, a big fleshy wart in the middle of his forehead.

  Yamada stared down at the notes on his dreamsign questionnaire and pursed his lips. “We’re looking for allusions and similes between dreams and languages, so let me see…the cobbled streets.” Had Nozaki told him to be on the lookout for any references to fog? Probably. “This definitely seems to indicate an intense atmosphere.”

  “What about the jugglers?”

  “The interesting thing is that you said they weren’t performing, but standing around on a street corner. That suggests to me they’re having a meeting. Comparing notes.”

  “And the clocks?”

  “Well, you heard the clocks all strike twelve at once. That would indicate it’s time for something to happen?”

  “I suppose it would,” David agreed. “Thank you for making things so clear.”

  The assistant’s phone sounded. With a bow and the sword-like chopping gesture that meant ‘excuse me’, he left the room. David shifted in his seat, his hand nervously reaching up to touch the talisman with the si
gil that hung at his throat, concealed by the neck of his T-shirt. Just a minute, he thought. Mr. Spy, that’s what Saori called me. Maybe it’s time I started acting like a spy.

  He turned towards the cabinet.

  Over the last few days, ever since his initiation in the tunnel, David had received what his new guardians called ‘training.’ He had seen enough to understand that he now inhabited a vastly different world. The whys and wherefores still escaped him, but life had become a parade of one mystery after another.

  Perhaps it was time to use that training.

  He stood in front of the cabinet, and held his hands up, palms outwards, about five inches from the cabinet’s sliding glass door. He let his mind relax and slide out of focus. In his mind’s eye, he drew the kanji character for key, and felt lines of force radiate out from his hands, felt the skin of his palms grow warm.

  The cabinet door unlocked itself with a soft click, and slid open of its own accord.

  Conscious thought returned, and with it a rush of emotions – disbelief, pride, and the memory of Yamada, who could return at any time. David reached inside the cabinet. There it was. The folder with his own name on it.

  He walked out into the corridor, the folder in his rucksack, and impatiently shifted his weight from foot to foot while he waited for the elevator. If that guy finds the maps have gone, he thought, and he realizes it was me, then he’ll call me back…he might even have me arrested…

  The elevator took him all too slowly to the first floor. Plenty of time for Yamada to make a telephone call to reception.

  The nurses didn’t give him a second glance as he walked by. The glass doors of the main exit slid open to let him pass and he hurriedly stepped out into the hospital driveway.