The Mists of Osorezan

by Zoe Drake

  Mircea Eliade had once written that symbols revealed the most profound aspects of reality, about which most human beings could theorize but not fully comprehend. Not unless they stopped being human, Weiss knew.

  He stood at the window, closed his eyes and began to pray. If only Marcus would reconsider his decision to sterilize. If only there were a way of translating the Book before the Kageyama Treatment did.

  If only he didn’t have to lie to David.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Going Nowhere

  Hideaki Fujita reached over to the empty passenger seat, unwrapped another strip of chewing gum, and lifted it to his mouth. He needed something to occupy himself barreling up the Sanriku Expressway, driving to his appointment, kilometers of anonymous concrete passing him by.

  The mixed woodlands between the towns were filled with sick-looking, spindly cedars planted too close together, their upper branches blocking out the light to the younger plants and the forest floor. Living in Sendai, he didn’t normally come up as far north as this; but since the March 11th disaster he had become familiar with surroundings of decay and neglect.

  About an hour before, he’d noticed that each small town he’d driven past had been heralded by a junkyard. Farms and rivers gave way to untended waste ground choked with weeds, and then walls of rusting, battered car bodywork stacked meters high, and after that the shops and suburbs of the town. The relics of the great tsunami could still be seen, all over the north; they served as grim reminders.

  A couple of years ago he’d been involved in an illegal dumping case on the border between Aomori and Iwate prefectures. A small mountain of industrial waste, cinders, sludge, discarded oil and plastic containers, all of it bleeding toxins into the soil beneath. Fujita and his team had calculated there was enough waste in the heap to almost fill the Tokyo Dome. They had eventually tracked down some of the polluters, down in Tokyo, but of course they’d already declared themselves bankrupt. The arguments over who was going to foot the bill for cleaning it up were still going on. But that was a different job, a different employer, and a different kind of law. His eye flickered to the clear plastic folder on the passenger seat, and the name printed on the document within: Yoshida.

  This job was something else entirely.

  *

  Nozaki had arrived at the hospital after lunch. He had a session of being an exam scribe scheduled for the afternoon; something he would be able to concentrate on, something he hoped would distract him from the current unpleasantness.

  A vain hope. He should have realized there would be a summons from the hospital’s emperor.

  Dr. Kageyama was on the phone when Nozaki entered the office. The younger man remained standing, his hands clasped in front. After the neurologist finished his call, he scribbled on a notepad for a few moments before offering the younger man his attention.

  “I have been informed that some people have misgivings about this project,” Dr. Kageyama began. “That’s why I’m going to call a meeting.”

  “A meeting,” Nozaki said respectfully. “A meeting for whom?”

  “For all the subjects involved in this project. I’m going to invite them here and listen to what they have to say. If the majority are having doubts about the safety of the treatment, then I shall terminate this project.”

  “Dr. Kageyama,” Nozaki blurted out in automatic protest, “Nobody’s asking you to terminate the project–”

  “But if they’re worried about their own health and safety, then it would be for the best, wouldn’t you say? Nozaki, I’m aware of all the hard work you’ve put into this project. Of course I am. But you share these fears, don’t you? Come on, admit it. You’re having doubts.”

  Nozaki cast his eyes to the carpeted floor, his face burning with shame. It had been useless to try to conceal his actions, after all. “I’m very sorry, Doctor. I cannot excuse my behavior. I shall offer my resignation, if you wish.”

  “Nozaki, do not talk of resignation!” Dr. Kageyama, said animatedly. “I fully understand your doubts, and I do not want you to leave. I am simply telling you that there is no point in lying, either to me or to your own conscience.”

  Nozaki lifted his head once more in shock, a dozen questions forming in his mind. “Sir, are the media going to be present at this…meeting?”

  “Oh no, no, no! This isn’t a press conference, so don’t worry about any bad publicity. Think of it as an informal get-together, a bit of a chat. Much better than one of our subjects having a fit of nerves and running off to the weekly magazines with some half-baked ghost story.”

  Ghosts? Nozaki thought in panic. Why would he say that? Was it true what they said, that he knew everything that happened in the hospital? “I understand, sir,” he said at last. “So when will you be having this meeting?”

  “As soon as possible,” Dr. Kageyama said crisply. “Definitely this week. I’ll have my secretary call the subjects, and arrange an evening when most people are free.”

  The underground hospital car park was in the deepest, oldest part of the hospital. Although the overhead lights were frequently out of order, it had become simply too troublesome to complain about them. But, after all, this was Japan; this was a safe country. There were no muggers or car thieves hiding beneath a hospital’s main building, waiting to leap out of the dark.

  That was why Nozaki was caught off guard.

  Halfway to the car, a voice called his name from the shadows. He twisted around in shock, with a wordless cry.

  They stepped out of the unlit spaces between the concrete pillars. They had been waiting for him. A gang. There was the foreign boy, yes, the treacherous foreign boy. Another patient stood next to him; Ishida, he thought in dismay. Standing together. They had conspired behind his back, and now they were ready to attack him.

  Beside them stood another foreigner, a tall elderly man in a white linen suit, next to a middle-aged Japanese woman. Lawyers, he thought with a sinking heart. But it wasn’t the strangers who made Nozaki catch his breath. Standing next to the foreign boy, still in her school uniform, was – it was–

  Nozaki experienced a moment of pure bliss, and pure panic, mixed together. The girl was no longer a dream – no longer a memory, residing in the twilight world between the land and the sea. Suddenly she was real and a being of flesh. Everything he had been told was wrong; ghosts were real.

  Then he realized, his brain working frantically, the Yoshida girl had a sister. Yes, he’d seen this person before, at the funeral. What was her name? Sayaka? Saori?

  “Mr. Nozaki,” Ishida began, “There’s something that needs to be discussed.”

  “Oh really?” Nozaki averted his eyes from the Yoshida girl, stabbed a finger at David. It was difficult to get the words out. Shock had turned his lips and tongue numb. “Well, there are several things I’d like to discuss with you. First, this boy is a thief. I believe he stole some important documents from my office!”

  “If you mean the brain maps, then yes, it’s true,” the boy said in Japanese. “I’m very sorry for that, but it was the only way we could get evidence of what’s really going on here.”

  “We? Who do you mean, we?” It was now sinking in, the significance of them all drawn together. The Yoshida girl, standing so close to the foreigner–

  “Why is she here? Do you all know each other?” The parking lot was spinning around him, and he found his control slipping away, the nerve he had tried to maintain every day. “She put you up to this, didn’t she? It was her idea. So that’s why you joined the program! All this time, you were nothing but a spy!”

  “Mr. Nozaki, if you would only listen…”

  “Listen? You’re going to listen to the police, that’s all I can say. I’m going to call them right now.”

  “Mr. Nozaki.”

  It was her voice. The voice held him, stopped him reaching for his cell phone. She stepped forward, her eyes upon his. “Mr. Nozaki, the Kageyama Treatment is doing something to people’s brains, and you know it i
s. You know something is wrong. Please admit it.”

  He was trembling with rage and frustration. “What do you want from me?”

  “We need you to help us,” said David. “We think you might have evidence, in the brain scans and the other records from the Project. Evidence that can tell us what’s really happening.”

  “And why people are dying,” Ishida said bitterly.

  Nozaki stood with his head down for a while. Finally, he walked to his car, opened the door, and sat sideways in the driver’s seat, his knees facing out of the car. The others followed and stood around him.

  “Jaksystems Corp,” he said finally, “It doesn’t exist.”

  “Who’s Jaksystems Corp.?” asked David.

  “The firm that designed the software for the current model of the Sleep Modulator. It’s a dummy company. It doesn’t exist, apart from a web site, and a telephone number that’s never answered.”

  There was silence while the implications of what he’d said sunk in. It was Ishida who finally spoke first. “You mean you’ve been using machines on us and you don’t know who programmed them?”

  Nozaki put his head in his hands, his fingers covering his face. “Only Dr. Kageyama knows,” he said quietly.

  Ishida stepped forward, his fists clenched. “You bastard!”

  “Wait. Wait, wait.” David stepped in to physically hold Ishida back. Let him hit me, Nozaki thought. It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters.

  “Mr. Nozaki, you need to tell us. Tell us as much as you can, and tell us now.”

  And so he told them.

  He sat in the driver’s seat, his legs out of the car and the small group standing around him in a rough semi-circle. He told them of his discoveries of the past three weeks. It was difficult at first, but as he kept talking, as the words kept flowing, he imagined himself growing lighter and lighter, as if his body were about to float up to the ceiling like a child’s discarded balloon.

  The elderly foreigner was particularly curious about the March 11th tsunami and the Sleep Modulator prototype. After going over Dr. Urabe’s story for the second time, the old man let out a low, hissed exclamation.

  “He says that’s how it got in,” David translated.

  “How what got in?”

  “Dr. Kageyama is…not Dr. Kageyama.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nozaki almost screamed with frustration. “Of course he is!”

  The old man spoke once again, and David translated. “The Professor says Dr. Kageyama never woke up after that experiment. He’s still asleep now. Sleepwalking.”

  Nozaki stared back at them in disbelief. Then he recalled what Urabe had said. How the head of the project had behaved so strangely after being released from the equipment; how he had looked at the world around him like a child. As he listened to David’s words, a chill clamped itself around his heart.

  “Dr. Kageyama has been asleep for years. He never woke up, and he’s still dreaming.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Whispering Corridors

  They stood for a moment looking at the school’s locked and silent buildings. Grim, baleful architecture, the five-floor façade above the main entrance almost a single mass of windows, glass rectangles blinded by closed curtains. At the side entrance, the big metal gates were shut, and between the bars David could see no movement around the main building.

  Namiko led Weiss and David over to the gate, pulling something out of her satchel. She held up a thin sheet of paper with something written on it, Japanese calligraphy rippling across the creamy surface, and she touched it to the lock. Seconds later, the gates slid open to her touch.

  “That’s handy, Andy,” David said, forcing a smile.

  She turned to him with a frown. “Who is Andy?”

  Their footsteps crunched on the gravel in the main driveway. Weiss held something up at chest height, a slip of paper covered in curious designs and symbols. Namiko walked beside him, all in white, her hair once more in braids and coiled up at the top of her head. The black and yellow police tape was still in place around the security guard’s booth.

  “We walk through the corridors of the world, and we shall not be seen,” Weiss said quietly.

  They entered the main lobby and stopped. Through the glass of the hatch to their left, David noticed two of the middle-aged female secretaries, their heads bent over their desks. They didn’t look up from their work at all.

  David felt as if he hadn’t been here for years, even though it was only eight or nine days.

  They turned right, and David indicated the opening to the main staircase. “Up there,” he said. “That’s where it happened. The students held a séance with that Ouija board thing and then set it alight. And that’s where I saw the…”

  “We know,” grumbled Weiss. “Let’s get on with it.”

  Going up, their sports shoes made no noise upon the stairs. Turning into the corridor, the long pale space opened up before them, sunlight reflecting off the spotless floor, a cave of shadow at the far end.

  They were outside the classroom where David had suffered his waking nightmare. He held his breath as Weiss slid open the door. There was nothing out of place within; the forty-six desks in regimented lines, the blank blackboard, the lockers and mirror at the back.

  “What do you think?” asked Weiss.

  Namiko nodded slowly. “Any place where you have so many adolescents of the same sex together is a cause for concern. The problem is sensation divorced from understanding. This is not a place of education, it’s a place of false discipline and seniors not worthy of respect. It’s a place where hallucinations and hysteria can easily take hold.”

  David frowned. “But none of the girls had the Kageyama treatment.”

  “It didn’t matter,” added Weiss. “You infected them, David. Your nightmares leaked out into the world of the Anima Mundi and contaminated a group of sensitive and vulnerable young girls.”

  David sighed. “Yeah, I guess I went through them like a dose of salts.”

  He looked out at the view through the window – the trees beneath, the school gates, the park opposite and the mountains far in the distance.

  “Do you remember what Nozaki said about microtubials and entanglement?” Weiss said. “At the quantum level, entangled particles can interact with each other even though separated by time and location? That’s how it’s happening. One brain can affect other brains. Not only that, but images on a TV or computer screen.”

  David looked up. “So that’s why Nozaki saw his own grandfather on a security monitor?”

  “The image was taken out of his mind and imprinted onto the camera. Or perhaps, it would be more accurate to say he infected the camera.”

  David stood silently, looking around the classroom, as if seeing everything for the first time.

  “Well if that’s clear,” said Weiss, “give us a hand with these desks, could you?”

  The three of them began to move the desks out of the center, lining them up at the back and sides of the classroom.

  David once attended a meditation class when he was at university, and one thing he remembered the instructor saying was to try keeping a positive image of yourself. David closed his eyes, thought of himself and Lisa together, thought of his parents, his brother and sister. I’m going to get through this, he thought, I’ll get through this and there’ll be time to see my family and laugh and do all of those normal things together. I promise, Lisa, I’ll buy you a big bunch of flowers, and–

  “I think it’s time to start,” Weiss said in a hoarse, expectant voice.

  David looked at Namiko. She hadn’t said or done anything, but she drew the stares of the two men with her silent air of concentration. She gave the impression that she was aware of everything in the room and the surrounding corridors, picking up and analyzing signals at the subliminal threshold.

  She began to construct her altar. On one of the desks, placed alone in the exact middle of the room, she placed candles, a bamboo fram
e with the familiar lightning-shaped paper strips wrapped around it, and tiny dishes that she filled with salt and rice wine from a flask.

  The Professor walked to the blackboard and picked up a stick of chalk, as if he were about to start a lecture. He drew a symbol on the board that was unmistakably Hebrew and then stepped back.

  “Eric Mendelson’s name within the College was Ayin,” he began. “The fifteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It means ‘eye’. External, superficial appearances, and the ability to see beyond them. Our beloved Eric, vigilant watcher that he was, was unable to foresee his own death.”

  Weiss folded his hand around the chalk and squeezed. David watched the grainy white powder seep out from the old man’s fingers. “Or maybe he was. Maybe he knew what was about to happen, and he chose to give his own life to stop it.”

  He brushed the white dust from his hands, picked up another piece of chalk and held it up.

  “It’s time for you to draw the circle, David.”

  The young man nearly choked. “Me? But you said this is an exorcism. No, I’m not ready for this yet, I need more practice. You do it, and I’ll help as much as I can, but…”

  “Now listen to me, boy.” Weiss advanced, until he stood face-to-face with David. “We haven’t got time to wait until you think you’re ready. There’s only one way to learn and that’s by doing things. If the ritual is going to work some kind of change, that will include change in yourself.”

  The old man opened his bag, and carefully removed the parchment codex wrapped in plastic. The Book of the Veils.

  “You remember those scans of what you laughably call your brain? Well, they include something called the limbic system, and that’s the center of attention-focusing, interpreting and evaluating. All sensory input passes through the limbic brain before being sent to the cortex for analysis. It’s emotional evaluation that informs our behavior, not a reasoned one.”