The Mists of Osorezan

by Zoe Drake

  “What did you see?”

  *

  “Run! Run as fast as you can!”

  Tsuyoshi sprinted to the side of the gulch, zigzagging to avoid the rapidly sinking tiles. David took Mrs. Suzuki by the arm, hurrying her to safety. The dog looked up at David’s face with big empty eyes, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. David felt himself stagger as the slab he was on tilted backwards.

  “We’ll have to jump!”

  To his surprise, the stone didn’t move any further. As he pushed Mrs. Suzuki up onto the gravelly slope, he looked behind him and down through the crack in the stones.

  Another familiar face. The grey goggles and ornaments of the Shakoki Dogu, its huge body now the size of a tower block, stubby arms pressing against the rocky pillar to keep it from collapsing.

  “Friends in high places,” David murmured.

  “Oh thank you so much,” Mrs. Suzuki was saying breathlessly, “I really can’t excuse my slow old feet–”

  “Never mind that,” Tsuyoshi interrupted. “We have to get to the lake.”

  “Hold on.” David recalled the Professor’s words. Dreams themselves were a kind of language. One that could restructure reality.

  “I’ve got an idea that might speed us up a little.”

  In the air, he traced the glowing characters for densha. The kanji for electricity. The kanji for vehicle. Den-sha. Train.

  At their feet, as if they had been there all along, were two sets of metal railway tracks. Then they saw the train sliding towards them, its smooth square head of smoky glass and metal. The sign above the cab’s window held the name of the lake. David could see no sign of a driver.

  The doors hissed open, and David touched the side of the train as they boarded. It felt as soft and warm as an old cushion – not like a real train at all.

  “Doors closing,” Tsuyoshi announced.

  They found the others as the train progressed through the rocky dreamscape. Dreamers and sleepwalkers, all lucid subjects from the Kageyama Treatment. The train was easy to operate if he concentrated: stop, open doors, let the people get on, close doors, move. Kobo Daishi would be proud, David thought with a tight grin. Actually, the Professor would be proud, or at least he should be.

  What was the old guy up to?

  “Look,” someone called.

  Back near the tower, something was moving. A procession of giants, their faces glowing shades of Kabuki red and white, flaming swords held in their hands. Nebuta warriors. Standing nearby, a much smaller human figure, watching the train, his silhouette outlined against the burning sky.

  “It’s Mr. Ishida,” came Tsuyoshi’s voice. The boy was once more standing next to David.

  “It can’t be.” David shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare; he recognized the hair, the build, the necklace of cell phones. “He’s still in here?”

  “They told me he was…”

  “Yes,” David answered, “I know.”

  Moving to the front of the carriage and looking out, David was the first to see it. The shores of the sour, stagnant lake, and the misty mountains beyond.

  “End of the line,” he said.

  *

  Weiss picked up the rifle and rested the stock against his shoulder, squinting along the barrel to take aim.

  Mussolini. Hitler. Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot. Faded, grainy photographs pasted to the wooden ducks that tracked across the mechanical belt, on the other side of the stall. The rifle gave off sharp cracks as it fired, and he watched holes open up in the pictures, smug, authoritarian faces ripped apart by his bullets. Each time a duck was shot, a metallic clang rang across the gallery.

  Weiss put down his rifle. “Well done, sir,” the stallholder said, his broad, bearded face grinning beneath the derby hat. “An excellent score. Now here’s a prize for the lucky Professor.”

  He handed him a gleaming silver chain, with a small object on the end of it. A tooth. The fang of a wild animal.

  The grinning barker pointed over to the right. “To claim your prize, show the tooth to the owners of the next stall.”

  Weiss nodded and left. Around him, the gaudy fairground was a riot of sounds, smells and colors. Screams came from the rollercoasters and the ghost train. The smell of cotton candy hung on the warm breeze. Scores of tiny electrical bulbs on the wires strung from stall to stall glowed in the gathering dusk. Fairy lights, he called them when he was younger. Fairy lights.

  As he approached the canvas flaps of the next stall, a figure within turned and revealed a familiar face, smiling in greeting. An immaculate hotel doorman’s uniform, gloved white hands stretching out towards the professor.

  “Mr. Pickering. So you’re in here as well?”

  “Overtime, you might say, sir,” he replied. “All staff leave has been cancelled.”

  Weiss handed over the tooth on a chain, which Mr. Pickering accepted gravely. He held open the tent flap and gave a deep bow. Weiss tipped his Panama hat to him as he entered.

  Inside, the tent was musky with sawdust and memories. Weiss advanced down a narrow wooden corridor, his eyes gradually adjusting to the gloom. The corridor opened out into a roughly hexagonal wooden chamber, with mirrors fastened to each side of the room. Distorting mirrors. Weiss saw his own image pulled like taffy as he moved. Tiny legs, a squashed, fat body, a head stretched up and out of recognition.

  The mirrors warped and fluttered. Colors that could not be named rippled across their surfaces. When the glass cleared, they were present – three elders of the Lamed Vav Tzadikim. Marcus Jewell, immaculate in black tuxedo and red cravat. Ilona Craig, her face covered with the golden mask that she employed to talk with her angelic familiars. Elemanzer, burning eyes set in a bristling mass of black fur the size of a human. All of them gazed back attentively at Weiss from inside the mirrors.

  “Things are approaching the breaking point,” Weiss reported. “I need to ask if you are ready.”

  Elemanzer spoke, its voice a deep, guttural, throaty purr. “All of the Thirty-Six are in deep meditation.”

  “The paths have been opened,” said Craig. “Adam Kadmon is summoned.”

  “Weiss.” Marcus Jewell’s voice chimed through the glass that framed his face. “There are more orthodox ways to close this threat.”

  “Sterilize the infection? No. No, I insist.” He stood up straighter, returning the stares of the three elders. “I’m still human enough to try to find a better way.”

  There was silence in the house of mirrors.

  “Very well,” spoke Ilona’s voice, from behind the mask’s gleaming, impassive face. “So be it. Join us in the attack, Professor.”

  The three images flickered and melted into the distortions of the glass. Two of the mirrors were now blank. The third held a shining pictogram: the Hebrew letter Shin.

  Weiss strode forward toward the mirror holding the symbol. He pressed himself against his own reflection and the glass parted like water to allow him inside.

  Outside, Mr. Pickering flicked a switch with a white-gloved hand, and the house of mirrors went out like a light.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The Returning Light

  Tetsuo Nozaki stood on the shores of the lake, looking around in wonderment. The water and the mountains stretched out before him, the shore with its curious pyramids of sand dotted around the beach, the sulphurous mist rising from the rocky landscape behind.

  “We’re in Osorezan,” a voice said in the echoing stillness. Nozaki turned and saw David and the others standing beside him. There was surprise in their eyes; he looked down at his own body, saw what they saw. He was naked except for swimming trunks. He had lost all his fat; his stomach was flat and muscular, his thighs were trim, his legs were sleek and powerful. All the fat that had weighed him down during his life had melted away.

  And he knew why. Out in the lake, he heard the voice, the cry from his dreams. He looked out across the water. A pair of arms thrashed and waved, and he heard the cry for help.

  “I have to go
. She’s in trouble, she needs help.” He started forward, but was stopped by David’s hand on his arm.

  “But that’s not Ayano. Whatever’s out there, it’s not her.”

  Nozaki couldn’t take his eyes off the girl in the water. He stared at her hair, her face, her mouth spitting out water to scream.

  “I have to go,” he said helplessly.

  Brushing aside David’s arm, he ran to the lake’s edge, water detonating around his feet as his legs pumped him into the waiting coolness. He dived, hitting the water and breaking through, immersing himself in the lake.

  He swam with powerful sweeps of his arms and thrusts of his feet, twisting his head to suck in air, opening his eyes to peer through the blurry spray and find out where the girl was. There. Closer. Wait for me, he thought, I’m almost there…

  And his hand bumped against something, something warm and yielding, and he twisted around in the water, his fingers groping for a grip on her body, to pull her to him, pull her head out of the water.

  Something was wrong. The skin was saggy, rough and hairy. Beneath the skin was nothing but bone, not the muscle and firm flesh of a young female body. He treaded water, shook his head to clear his eyes, looked down at what he held in his arms.

  He recognized the face at once. It was his grandfather.

  Staring at the old man’s face in shock, wondering at how this miracle had come to be, Nozaki felt something brush his leg. He reached down, and instantly his hand was snagged on something cold and smooth. With difficulty, he plucked it free, and stared at the three livid circles stamped on his forearm. Blood welled up from three angry red welts on his skin, three perfect discs, like the marks left by the sucker cups of an octopus.

  He looked at his grandfather, saw the lips move, the eyes flutter. Something white bulged out of the old man’s mouth – the o-mochi rice that had killed him.

  Nozaki felt a sharp, vicious tug on his leg. He tried to pull it free, but couldn’t, its grip was tight and stinging. Without warning, he was pulled straight down, and the surface of the lake closed over his head.

  In the murky waters, his grandfather’s body slipped out of his grasp, and he watched helplessly as the old man drifted away, dead eyes in a wrinkled face, shriveled arms and legs floating in the current. Nozaki looked down at what had caught his foot. It was thick as a rope, covered with off-white glittering scales, and it led down and down into a vast blackness beneath him.

  He stared in fascination, bubbles of breath escaping from his tightly closed lips. A line of luminous white shot across the darkness below, opening up a volcano of light, a glowing island that spread out in all directions. It grew larger and larger, a brilliant disc of white extending as far as he could see. Far away, another disc was opening in the same way. In the last moment of his life, Nozaki understood what was happening.

  The thing beneath him was opening its eyes.

  *

  David and the others looked out across the waters. There was no sign of Nozaki. The two swimmers had disappeared, and the lake had closed over them, leaving no trace, no mark they had been there.

  “He’s gone,” the boy said finally. “I can’t feel him anywhere.”

  Mrs. Suzuki tightened her grip on David’s arm. “But something’s happening.”

  There was a disturbance in the waters of the lake. David pointed outwards, to where the mist rising off the waters blended with the shadowy mountains. Almost at the limits of vision, the water bubbled, and spray thrashed into the air, as if some huge, protean bulk was about to break the surface.

  “It’s coming,” David said. “We have to draw the circle I told you about.”

  With a stick he materialized for himself, he began to trace the symbols in the sand. The charm of protection from the Book of the Veils. The circular inscription on the cover that would keep the portal closed.

  “Look!” someone shouted.

  Something appeared in the foam, rising from the deep.

  It broke the surface as a glistening dome, a wet and rubbery bulge on the horizon, and then a writhing mass of feelers erupted into view, squirming, spume running off their scales.

  David felt sick. He couldn’t believe it was so big. The only way he could stay sane was to change the perspective – imagine it as something very small, but very close, just in front of his face.

  It slid up from the waters of the lake and unfolded its limbs, black arching things with huge sucker cups on their underside, as thick as the branches of a hideous tree. Its body was a baroque nightmare held together by scar tissue and mucus. Mouths and eyes opened in the colossal trunk, mouths dribbling ichor that steamed and bubbled in the heavy air, eyes that were milky cataracts, gateways to madness.

  It grew, swelling, until it hid the mountains with its bulk.

  “It doesn’t stop, it just keeps coming,” the boy beside him said, hyperventilating. “We can’t fight this, it’s too big…”

  David kept staring in horror. It’ll kill us, it thought. If it killed that guy Mendelson, then we have no chance. It’ll kill us like Ishida, like all the others…

  Wait. They had seen Ishida.

  Why had they seen him? Had someone wished him into existence? Or were those killed by the creature still here, trapped in some kind of limbo?

  Was it possible?

  “Oh God,” someone cried. “It’s seen us. It knows we’re here!”

  *

  Fujita felt himself growing cold. He was alone. Even the Yoshidas had been put to sleep now, although they were not connected to the computers There were only the cultists and their leader Matsuoka, strutting up and down between the beds with his bamboo stick, making the room look some bizarre field hospital of the future.

  It had been quiet, with only the hum of machinery and the collective deep breathing of the subjects, but now Fujita heard something else. A peculiar, sibilant whispering, just at the edge of hearing. A multitude of voices, all overlaying each other. Was he hallucinating?

  “Stop that,” snapped Matsuoka, to nobody in particular. “Stop that muttering.”

  “I’m not saying anything,” said Fujita weakly.

  Now the whispering was accompanied by the chiming of metal coins. He’d heard the sound before, on visits to shrines. The suzunome, the staff of paper and metal held by the priest. If he were hearing things, he thought giddily, how could Matsuoka respond to it?

  He saw the Heralds at the other side of the chamber twist round and face the doorway. Fujita followed their gaze. A woman in white stood there. Oh God, he thought, it’s one of the nurses – how did she get back up here? Why?

  Without a word, the woman ran forward in a peculiar shuffling gait, crouching like a Kabuki player. The nearest cultist gave a horrific yell and swung his sword in an arc that would slice open anyone’s abdomen. The woman crumpled, falling in upon herself, with a sound like paper being ripped apart.

  It was paper.

  A single sheet of paper, fluttering in mid-air like a butterfly. As if it was alive.

  Rin, Kai, Jin, Retsu, the whispering said.

  Fujita jumped in alarm, and almost laughed when he saw Matsuoka and the other cultists had jumped as well. They swung round. The woman was now behind them, standing near Fujita, and she wasn’t wearing a nurse’s uniform, Fujita could see that now. It was a kimono. A pure white kimono, one long sleeve held out towards Matsuoka, the other arm at her face, a long, elegant finger held against her lips.

  Sssssh.

  She swept her hand away from her lips with a brushing gesture. Small, shining things like coins shot across the room, and a cultist fell wherever they struck.

  Matsuoka flung his bamboo stick at her with a cry of rage. Both hands free, he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and charged toward the woman.

  Something danced on the open palm of the woman’s right hand, something that looked like an origami bird with kanji characters drawn on its surface. She blew on it, her calm and beautiful lips pursed, and the bird flew across the chamber faste
r than the eye could follow, hit and spread itself across Matsuoka’s face.

  He fell to his knees, hands dropping the sword and pulling at his face, trying to peel the paper away. It clung like a second skin. His muffled cries turned into screaming, and then choking as he fought for breath.

  Too much, thought Fujita, my brain is closing down and I’m dying. I’ve had it.

  Suddenly, the woman’s face was against his, as she crouched down to peer at him. He tried to speak, but her finger was now against his lips, and her face was before his, two eyes that held his own, two eyes that held the depths of the space between the stars.

  Ssssssssh.

  *

  David raised his hands. He remembered the name; he had seen it on the cover of the dream diary so many times. He knew the stroke order, the meaning of the symbols, the crowning radicals, the elements. He traced it upon the palm of his left hand with the index finger of his right.

  Ayano Yoshida.

  She stood before him in her school uniform.

  She looked real – her face, so much like Saori. She stood at the limit of the circle, but outside of it. She looked at David, then turned her face out to the lake, toward the obscenity that was wreathing itself in mist.

  “Do you know what that creature is?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Her voice reached him across the still air of the beach, even though she hadn’t opened her mouth. “It is the Baku.”

  “I think it’s afraid of you,” David told her. “There are some people who are able to resist it. It can’t control you.”

  She nodded, slowly.

  “These marks in the sand,” David said, indicating the three circles. “They’re part of a spell – an ancient form of writing created to protect those within it. But it depends upon concentration, Ayano. We’ve got to concentrate on the symbols, but it will try to attack us with dreams. Images, and illusions.” He stepped forward, raising his voice. “We need your help.”