The Mists of Osorezan

by Zoe Drake

  “Sumimasen.” Excuse me…

  Ah well, he thought, the game was up. At least he had tried.

  But it wasn’t Yamada. It was a youngish man with an intense expression and several mobile phones slung around his neck on colored J-COM straps. Someone David had seen before.

  “I’ve seen you,” the man said. “Talking to the other patients.”

  “Ah, yes. I’m very sorry.”

  “They won’t talk to you. They’re too scared, you see. They know something’s happening but they don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to face the truth.” He smiled grimly. “But me, well…I can’t take it anymore. My name is Ishida. Please, come with me.”

  They went to a coffee shop out of sight of the hospital. Inside the overly bright exterior, traditional Aomori pottery on shelves lining the wall, hidden speakers playing a violin symphony at low volume, they sipped iced water and spent the first few moments avoiding each other’s eyes.

  Ishida’s head was bowed. He stared down at his hands, laid flat upon the table, either side of the glass of water.

  “You’ve had them, too,” he began, his voice flat. “The dreams. The nightmares. Seeing things at all times of the day and night.”

  He looked up, expressionless. David nodded in agreement.

  “When you first joined the Kageyama Treatment, didn’t you feel healthier? You could concentrate, think more clearly, sleep better? My dreams were so powerful. Rich and colorful. Almost better than the real world.”

  The owner of the shop returned with two pots of tea, set them down silently and then politely withdrew. When he was out of earshot, Ishida continued.

  “March 11th, 2011. That was the day the Tohoku region was hit by the earthquake, and then the tsunami, and then the nuclear meltdown. My grandparents lived in Miyagi prefecture, and they were killed in the tsunami.” Ishida stared at him intently. David began to feel uncomfortable, and he felt his cheeks reddening.

  “In the years since then, I’ve had recurring nightmares about the disaster. I thought the Kageyama Treatment could help me, and my dreams got better for a while, but then they got worse. Last week I had one nightmare that was so vivid…completely real.”

  He looked down at the table again, his voice hoarse with emotion. “It was another dream of March 11th. I was working on the roof of a house, with my family – my wife and my parents, busy with decorating below, on the first floor. Then I saw the tsunami approaching in the distance. The sea, rushing towards us. I shouted to my family below to come up here where it was safe, but they couldn’t hear me. They didn’t move. The tsunami hit, and the water crashed through the doors into the front room, and kept coming, sweeping in debris from outside. It smashed all the furniture, knocked everyone off their feet…”

  Ishida stared down at the untouched tea. “The day after that dream my father died,” he said suddenly. David lowered his head and offered words of sympathy. “He passed away in his sleep. We held the funeral at the weekend. He wasn’t in the best of health, so we thought it was a heart attack. I’d never heard of someone dying of a heart attack in his sleep before, but we couldn’t think of anything else it might have been. After all, it sounds so convenient, doesn’t it? His heart stopped, so it was a heart attack.”

  David nodded his head, willing the other man to go on. There was something odd about the light in the café, he thought, something bothering his eyes; there seemed to be some kind of a dark haze around Ishida’s head, a rippling haze, like the shimmering of hot air in the desert. He rubbed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what Ishida was saying.

  “But I wasn’t satisfied with that. I went to the police, I went to the head of the hospital, and I demanded an autopsy. My wife and my mother were furious with me, but I insisted. You see, in Japan it’s customary to have the funeral as soon as possible. Within two days is the usual length of time. An autopsy was almost unheard of. Still, I insisted, and what the doctor told me…”

  Ishida lifted up his head, tears in his eyes. “The doctor said my father’s larynx closed up during the night in some kind of spasm. His blood flow couldn’t pick up any more oxygen and it put an overwhelming strain on his heart. It created a vacuum in his lungs, they called it…” Ishida pulled an Internet printout from his vest pocket, which had an English translation typed on it – “A pulmonary oedma.”

  David gave a deep sigh. “What could have caused it?”

  Ishida stared back at him, his eyes glittering. “The doctors said this kind of thing happens in some cases of drowning. The breathing passages seize up with shock, and the body can’t take in oxygen any more. There’s no water in the lungs, so they call it…dry drowning. My father drowned. While he was lying in bed, at home.”

  David stared back at him for a long moment.

  “Mr. Ishida…was there anything else that struck you in the dream as strange? Something like a smell, a sound, or maybe…a mist of some kind, a kind of smokiness in the air?”

  “Yes.” Ishida blinked back the tears, nodding fiercely. “Yes, there was. When I looked down into the water, I saw my father drowning. There was something else down there with him. A kind of cloud in the water, coming up from underneath, like the ink from a squid, and it swallowed him up while I watched. The cloud swallowed his body.”

  “Then what did you see?”

  “The cloud faded. It followed the pull of the water and it flowed away, but before it vanished, I saw my father as his body turned around inside it. He pushed an arm out of the cloud, out of the water towards me. But…”

  Ishida put his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes, as if he were trying to remove the memory of what he had seen.

  “There was no skin on the hand. Just bone. Bones of the arm, and then I saw ribs, a skull. It was…”

  “As if the cloud was eating him,” David finished the sentence. He remembered the security guard.

  “Yes,” the man whimpered. “You’ve seen it too! I knew it. The autopsy was three days ago and I haven’t slept since. I’ve been on coffee and stamina drinks to keep me awake. I daren’t go to sleep. I can’t.”

  David searched the man’s deep-set tragic eyes. They were brimming over with fatigue and grief.

  And fear.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  A Nightmare Shared

  Their end is enmeshed in their beginning, and their beginning in their end. The Professor lifted up his head, wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow, coming back to his senses from the absent-minded state he had drifted into.

  “We were talking about circles,” he said to David. “Well, I think we’ve come full circle here. In the past there’ve been experiments on animals and injured humans that showed living brains don’t actually need a cortex to survive. Animals don’t need one because they operate on instinct, generally speaking. Human beings who’ve suffered injury to their cortex lose cognitive interest in the future. They are in a state, as the hippies used to say, of ‘being here, now’.”

  It was quiet in David’s apartment. Unusually quiet. David was sitting across the kitchen table, the sink behind him, something approaching fear in his eyes. Namiko sat over on the Professor’s left and even she looked tense.

  Reaching into his briefcase, Weiss took out the Achaz Codex and began to remove the black silk wrapping.

  “So that’s the Book of the Veils?” David asked. “That’s what it’s all about?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it’s that dangerous, shouldn’t you be handling it with gloves or something?”

  Weiss smiled. “Or maybe sugar tongs? You won’t die of fright if you touch it, young man.”

  He put the Codex down on the table and his hands went to the scans lying to the left, the maps of brain activity picked out in glaring blue, red and orange. He leaned forward, tracing parts of the plastic transparency with a long, bony forefinger. “Well, you can see from these scans that the hippocampus and amygdala are much larger than usual.”

  “Er…what does that mean?”
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  “Those areas are the oldest parts of the brain. There are three main parts: the cortex, that handles conscious thought and problem solving; the mid-brain, that handles emotional response; and the old brain, located near the brainstem. This is the ‘animal’ part of the brain. It handles automatic functions like breathing, and also hunger, sexual response, aggression and fear.”

  Namiko looked from Weiss to the brain maps and back again. “And this ‘animal brain’ has been affected?”

  “I think so.”

  David shrugged. “I’m still none the wiser.”

  “The brains of the sleep research patients are being artificially stimulated, but it’s not the patients who are benefiting. Something is using them. These fifty-odd brains are being used as a kind of…engine, as it were.”

  Weiss sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. “Consider language as a computer program running in our brains. Think of the Book of the Veils as a computer virus that overwrites the program of human consciousness and replaces it with a kind of mimetic machine. A sequence of ideograms that have only one purpose.”

  “And what’s that?” David asked after a pause.

  “The book that we have is the one that contains instructions to seal the portals between our world and the King of the Veils. The book that the Heralds possess will open it. I think the hospital is using those sleeping brains as a kind of engine to translate the Codex, and provide the creature with energy, without the patients being aware of what’s happening.”

  “Spyware,” David muttered.

  “What’s that?” asked Namiko.

  “Spyware is software that’s been installed in someone’s computer without their knowing. It’s put in there by a hacker, using a Trojan horse virus program or something, and it turns the computer into a slave.”

  “A slave?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I read in the papers. Spyware can allow the hacker to control other people’s computers, get their passwords, delete their files, or use their computing power to attack other computers and websites…oh, no.”

  Weiss looked at David’s shocked face.

  “It’s in my head, isn’t it?” The young man said.

  Weiss looked back at the maps. It all fitted; the young man had described, almost perfectly, the theory Weiss had arrived at. “Yes, I think that’s what’s happening.”

  He tried to give David an encouraging smile, only to see that the young man’s face had turned pale. Damn, he thought. Curse me for an insensitive old fool. “That’s why it’s vital that we stop the treatment as soon as possible and try to help these people. You’re already on the mend, David, you’re on the road to recovery.”

  The young teacher’s hands were actually trembling. “But my brain’s damaged – you said so yourself!”

  “Absolutely not! This isn’t like oxygen starvation or anything like that. I promise you, David, these effects are reversible.”

  “And you’re sure of that?”

  “Yes.” Weiss closed his eyes. If only I were, he thought.

  He stood up, nodding to Namiko. She moved her chair closer, took the young man’s hand. “We can do this, David. One man on the inside, two on the outside. We’ll be there for you.”

  David nodded, his face grim. Under his breath, the Professor whispered one word.

  “Samech.”

  *

  “Saori,” David said, “I think we might be ready. We’ve got something on the hospital. One of the patients says he’s prepared to testify that there’s something wrong with the Kageyama Treatment.”

  They were in a family restaurant close to the Yoshida household. The waiter came with their food, raw minced tuna over rice and clear soup with clams. The fish-smelling steam rose up from the bowls and writhed in the restaurant’s cool air. Saori looked at the food in silence, her face pale, as if she was going to be sick.

  “Are you all right?” David asked.

  She shook her head, not to say no, but as if to wake herself up. “I think so.”

  “He’s willing to testify that it’s harmful,” David continued. “Once he says something, it might persuade the other patients to support us.”

  Saori was still staring down at the soup. “Once one person has stood up, the rest will follow. That’s a very Japanese trait.”

  “So that means the hospital might suspend the project. That’ll certainly help, but it still leaves the people in charge, Dr. Kageyama and his assistants. They might go somewhere else and start the project all over again. Maybe we can get to this person Nozaki.”

  “How?”

  “I think he’s worried about Dr. Kageyama. He’s having doubts. But there’s something…I’d like to ask a big favor of you, Saori.”

  She set down her chopsticks with a fragile clicking sound. “What is it?”

  “I’d like you to come with us to the hospital when we confront him. Tonight, if you can.”

  “We? Who else is coming?”

  “There’s me, the other patient, and a couple of people I know…they’re kind of consultants.”

  “You have solicitors?”

  “No, they’re kind of…” David laughed, searching for words. “Spiritual advisors, I suppose.”

  “They are healers?” Saori leaned forward slightly, a sly smile lighting up her mouth. “Naruhodo, ne. I see.”

  “If we all go to see Nozaki, as a group, he might be taken off guard. Then he might start seeing things our way.”

  She nodded slowly.

  David hesitated, then cleared his throat. “Saori…why don’t you eat something? Your soup’s getting cold.”

  *

  Weiss soaked in the bathtub, trying to compose himself. His mind went to David. The young man is so desperate, he thought. So vulnerable. Weiss looked around the sparse furnishings of the bathroom and for a second, the walls seemed to writhe like heat haze above a summer highway.

  He was being summoned.

  The bath over, Weiss put on his ceremonial white robe and carried the wrapped Book of the Veils to the hotel bed. With his dagger he carved a circle in the air around him and sat down on a chair in a middle of the circle. Breathing deeply and rhythmically, his eyes closed, he felt each of his energy centers charging in turn. Malkuth, Yesod, Tiphareth, Daath and Kether, the light of his aura throbbing with the beat of his heart. Weiss sat in harmony with the Middle Pillar, rainbow flashes of light melding and blurring around his body. His physical body became heavier and heavier, but a part of him was growing lighter and lighter with each passing breath.

  He felt his astral body rise and separate from his physical body, and the sphere of rainbow light moved with him, carrying him like a soap bubble. He was now floating above his physical body. Engulfed in his sphere of light he continued to rise, through the ceiling, through the hotel floors with their human lives in constant transit, through the roof, up into the darkness of the night sky.

  The plane of Briah coalesced around him and took shape before his eyes. He stood in a wasteland, surrounded by immense stone structures. Ruined white limestone walls and terraced hills stretched away into a mist in the distance. The walls were covered with reliefs and designs; eagles, pumas, dragon-like lizards and serpents. To his left, colossal stone heads grew out of a rich jungle floor, their helmets shattered and their visages scarred with the passage of the ages. He saw that the land was divided into four wedge-shaped quadrants, meeting at the exact place where he stood.

  He heard the voice of Marcus Jewell, like the beating of an iron drum…

  “There are thrones beneath the earth, with Kings seated upon them. The Kings of Edom murmur in their sleep, and the world shudders. One of them is about to waken, Resh. Are you prepared?”

  Weiss looked up, and he saw them, standing before the toppled remnants of a fortified wall.

  Marcus Jewell. Bell, Book and Candle. The Spellbinder, the Snakedancer, the Hawk, the Jaguar, Wala-Undayua, the Green Man, Pendragon…the assembled Thirty-Six. Namiko was at the front, in her white robe and h
eaddress with two candles mounted upon it burning at her brow.

  Drifting before Marcus Jewell was the shadow-shape of Orobas, who had followed Weiss as bidden.

  “I have located the second Book,” Weiss said.

  “But you do not possess it,” Jewell stated bluntly.

  “Not yet. But within a few days, I shall.”

  “Perhaps the human race doesn’t have a few more days, Resh.”

  Weiss saw the forms of those standing before him shift slightly in the still air. “What action are you taking, Marcus?”

  The eyes glittered in the smooth, mask-like face. “Sterilization.”

  “No. I absolutely forbid it!”

  Jewell’s composure slipped for a brief moment. “You, Professor? You forbid me?”

  Weiss paused, looking away from the other’s burning eyes. An unreal wind whispered through the shattered stone temples before which they stood. Namiko moved to stand next to him and look back at Marcus. “We have a proposal, Marcus Jewell,” she said. “An alternative.”

  “Name it.”

  “To summon Adam Kadmon,” the Professor stated.

  He felt a ripple of thought go through the ranks of the senior College members. “Summon Adam Kadmon?” Jewell said quietly. “In order to do what? Engage in battle with one of the Kings of Edom?”

  “Marcus, I entreat you. There are too many lives involved here for another callous act of sterilization. Not when we’re so close to the transfer point. Summon the Quintessential Man, Marcus.”

  “It will take the combined effort of the entire Thirty-Six.”

  “For the sake of our friend Ayin. For the sake of those still alive, infected with the Achez virus.”

  The wolf-like smile of Marcus Jewell was almost as terrible to behold as his anger. “I will consider it and contact you, Resh. Hasten the day.”

  “Hasten the day,” Weiss and Namiko replied in unison.

  Weiss opened his eyes and saw the drabness of the hotel room once more. He sat upright in the chair and put a hand to his forehead. It was bathed in perspiration. He sat there and thought for a while. He stood up slowly, his back complaining, his guts sending warning stabs of pain through his lower torso. He raised his dagger, circled counter-clockwise, removing the protective boundary. His eyes rested once more upon the black silk wrapping of the Achaz Codex.