The Mists of Osorezan

by Zoe Drake

  The girl still didn’t say anything, but frowned in concentration. She moved her face downward, turning around slowly where she stood, observing the letters scrawled in the circles.

  From the beginning of time, the professor had said, signs and symbols had dictated human thought. From Adam naming the animals. From the figures painted on prehistoric cave walls. Everything that existed first existed as thought, as will. So it followed that everything in life that had ever been given form was a sign or symbol of an intention.

  Ayano stretched out her left arm, and drew symbols with her hand, kanji characters that hung and glowed in the air. David screwed up his eyes as he sought for meaning within them. The stroke for a branch held by a shaman. Water that chased away evil spirits. The combination of ‘darkness’ and ‘water’ – meaning water too dark or deep to see through. The kanji for opening. The hiragana letter for ‘ki’.

  “Umi-biraki,” breathed Mrs. Suzuki. “It’s a ceremony that Shinto priests perform on the beaches every July. They pray for a safe summer season.”

  The kanji characters hung in the air around them, glowing with a fierce inner light, and on the sand David saw the arcane script from the Book of the Veils begin to burn with the same light. Around them, the mist writhed and coiled like snakes.

  But it did not penetrate the circle.

  “Hey!” Tsuyoshi called. “Where’s he gone?”

  David turned to face him across the sand. “What’s wrong?”

  “There was someone here a moment ago,” the boy stammered. “He’s gone. He disappeared.”

  David swung his body in a circle, trying to take in the figures that stood with him against the chaos outside the circle. “Did the mist take him?”

  “I don’t think so. The mist can’t get in.”

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs. Suzuki. “I appear to be next.” The woman was becoming transparent. Putting her hands around her dog for protection. Mrs. Suzuki gently melted into the air. She disappeared with a tiny surprised yelp from the Chihuahua.

  Tsuyoshi looked at David. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe everyone’s waking up, back in the lab.”

  One by one, the sleepwalkers on the shore were disappearing. Fading away into the air, their solid shapes becoming transparent and then invisible.

  Tsuyoshi was the last to go. “Sensei, gambatte,” he called, and vanished.

  There was only David and Ayano.

  Across the waters, the vile miasma continued to pour from the creature’s many mouths. It drifted around the circle, an acrid yellowish cloud, bringing the stench of a thousand opened cesspits. Deep, rumbling sounds came from within it that sounded grotesquely like something trying to speak.

  He looked at Ayano again.

  Behind her, inland, another giant figure was rising.

  A humanoid in shape, difficult to see, taking form out of the very substance of the landscape itself.

  It was a man. His feet were planted on the dry stony floor of the Shio no kawa, and its legs were the weathered stone of the Jizo statues, wide and firmly balanced. The body was the fusing of the distant mountains and the sky. The figure held out its arms towards the lake, and its hands were a shimmering heat-haze in the sky. The colossal figure moved, leaning forward, its giant legs taking it towards the lake.

  The head. He could not look upon the glory of its head, that shone as brightly as the sun.

  “What is it?” he called to Ayano. The girl was silent, joining him in staring up at the sky.

  He looked up at the figure, now almost standing over the circle on the beach where they stood. It was impossibly huge, big enough to blot out the sky except that sunlight seemed to be pouring from its body as well.

  As David gazed at it, comprehension dawned. The figure was alive. There was a hard, fierce light burning in the giant’s abdomen, and as David stared, he thought he could see writing. A chain of Hebrew letters, five of them. A word came to him on a breeze: Tiphareth.

  Weiss was in there, he realized. Somehow the Professor’s consciousness was part of this thing. Not only the Professor, David could sense dozens of intelligent minds driving it – somehow, all the thirty-six members of the Lamed Vav were alive in this creature.

  Another ancient, arcane name came to him, as if he had known it all his life: Adam Kadmon.

  The creature stepped into the lake. It strode up to the abomination that was the King of the Veils and faced it.

  Then it put its arms of light around the beast and squeezed.

  The King of the Veils roared, and the sound ripped the air, and the beach shook beneath David’s feet. He looked down, and suddenly the teeth, skulls and bones of countless animals lay scattered around him, all along the sand.

  The creature from the lake writhed as the entity known as Adam Kadmon began to crush its bulk with its grip. Cascades of yellow mist poured like noxious steam from the countless mouths, but before the colossal struggle was hidden from view, David could tell that the King of the Veils was shrinking, its many tentacles wilting, feelers lashing in panic.

  David’s ears sung with a great hissing, a sound like the voice of a colossal serpent, like a red-hot sword being plunged into water. The sibilant sound pressed unbearably upon his ears, deafening him.

  Ayano lifted her hands, stared at him, her eyes saying goodbye.

  There was a sudden, burning sensation upon the skin of his chest and then he was falling, falling through the sand that gave way beneath him, falling into emptiness.

  David was stretched out on his back. Shapes formed around him. Human figures in the half-light, one standing, one crouching nearby. The jumbled furniture of the storeroom. The dusty floor beneath him. The burning sensation on the skin of his chest.

  He coughed.

  “David!” said a girl’s voice, so close to his ear. “David, you’re all right!” Then her face was against his.

  “I’m fine,” he croaked, “but it’s so hot in here…”

  Over Saori’s shoulder he saw Professor Weiss, in the shadows, smiling his patient smile. The old man raised a hand, his fingers making some unreadable gesture.

  And David fell back into sleep.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Spark Seekers

  A black-framed photograph of Ayano Yoshida took central position on the altar in the memorial hall, surrounded by Buddhist inscriptions in formal kanji. Wreaths of flowers lay upon the tables at the front where the speakers sat facing the congregation, the speakers being Saori Yoshida, her parents, and Mr. Fujita, as was standard for a Japanese memorial service. What was not standard was the constant click and flash from the Japanese media representatives at the back, behind a line of uniformed policemen and funeral hall employees.

  One week after the end of the siege, the Yoshidas were holding a special memorial service for Ayano.

  Sitting near the front, David ran both hands back through his hair. Despite the rest he’d had over the last few days, he still felt tired, and the tingling on the skin of his chest irritated him considerably. He studied the faces of the hospital delegation, the middle-aged men in black suits who sat near the largest line of wreathes, their faces stoic and unreadable.

  The first person to speak was Saori. The pale skin of her arms and face standing out against her black dress and hair, she looked coolly around her and began her speech.

  “When a Japanese person points at themselves,” she said, “they point at their nose, at their face. Face is very important to the Japanese. This is what others can see, so this is who we are, we think.”

  She hesitated, and glanced at her parents. Mr. and Mrs. Yoshida sat off to one side, their faces deceptively calm, her father’s left hand resting on his wife’s arm.

  “The scientists tell us that the process of thinking is performed by the brain, but do we point to our brains when we indicate ourselves? No, we don’t. We’re still not sure where the personality is, where the soul is. Is it in the brain? In the body?”

  David
kept looking back at the entrance to see if the Professor had arrived. He’d had to go back to England – ‘on urgent business’ – but Namiko had promised him he would return for the service. He thought once more of Ayano, and her face when they had met on the beach, the beach between worlds.

  “So tell me, doctors,” Saori continued, “Where is my sister Ayano now? She was a happy girl, always smiling. But where is she now? Her body has been burned and her ashes are lying in the Yoshida family grave, but where are her memories? Where is that special something that made her the beautiful person she was?”

  A movement in the crowd caught David’s eye. A woman near the front with short black hair had lowered her head, pulling out a handkerchief, putting it to her face to hide her tears. David knew her. He had been at her husband’s funeral the week before. Aiko Nozaki.

  Saori looked down, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “Japanese ghost stories have scenes of reconciliation at the end,” she said. “The living apologize for their crimes, and the dead rest in peace. But this is different. Even if Ayano forgives you, forgives you for carrying on the Kagyama Treatment after her death, I will not. I won’t forget. And I will never forgive. This – this is not finished.”

  The tears finally flowing, she turned away, toward a door at the side of the hall and walked through it. Her parents, on their feet in obvious surprise, hurried after her, the camera flashes of the press capturing their movements.

  David was on his feet, as well, and the whole of the congregation started to stand up. He moved forward, and at the same moment felt a hand on his shoulder. “Best to let her go for the moment,” a voice said.

  He put on a polite smile and turned around. “Professor. Glad you could make it.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?” Weiss looked at him, his face unsmiling. The old man seemed to be short of breath, and he wore his white linen suit; but at least he had taken off his hat.

  After the ceremony was concluded, David moved to the back of the hall, Weiss silently following.

  “Professor!” Namiko Gozen, wearing the conventional black dress and white pearls, rushed over to join them. A man in a black suit was at her side: Fujita.

  “Quite an interesting development, don’t you think?” she said.

  “You mean Saori? It was a fine speech. I wonder what they made of it.”

  Weiss jerked his thumb at the hospital delegation. The grim-faced suited men were leaving the hall, ignoring the flashing cameras of the press, heading for the shelter of their limousines outside. “Mr. and Mrs. Yoshida said that Saori’s waiting in the back room,” Fujita told them, “away from the media.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about Dr. Kageyama,” David said.

  “He’s been taken to a private clinic in Hokkaido,” Fujita told them. “The official story is, he’s suffering from nervous exhaustion.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” Weiss smiled, and as David looked at the old man’s face, anger flared up inside him. Anger so sudden and intense that he couldn’t speak.

  “Anyway, Mr. Fujita,” Weiss continued, “I’m glad you’ve made a full recovery.”

  “Thanks to Namiko here! She’s been looking after my health and I’ve gone back to work. Criminal lawsuits against both the hospital and the Heralds, and this time, it looks like I’ve got the courts on my side.”

  Namiko grinned. “I think he’s going to be a lot busier from now on.”

  David leaned impatiently toward Weiss. “Professor, can we talk outside?”

  “Of course. Excuse us, will you?”

  David didn’t want to go outside. He wanted to stay with Namiko and Fujita, to ask for advice, to talk about Lisa and going back to England, but he couldn’t.

  Not any more.

  He thought again of March 11th, the great wave coming in from the sea to destroy everything in its path. Those poor Japanese, the world’s media had said in the aftermath. Look at how patient and stoic they are, lining up without complaint for shelter and food and medical supplies. How they take the disaster in their stride, and endure the hardships so they can get back to their normal lives.

  David remembered all those TV reports he had seen, and the memories left a rank, sour taste in his mouth. Sometimes, he realized, there are things that cannot be endured.

  Sometimes there was no normal life to return to.

  *

  Outside the hall, Professor Benjamin Weiss watched the limousines drive away, followed by the press vans, obviously intent on tailing the medical officials back to Tsugaru University Hospital. Across the courtyard stood a giant stone Buddha, the stonework polished and new. The calm grey face of the Buddha gleamed in the sunshine.

  Beside him, using his Sight, he could see David’s aura twisting in confusion, as the young man fought with the feelings inside him. Weiss began to speak:

  “And nothing can we call our own but death

  And that small model of the barren earth

  Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

  For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

  And tell sad stories of the death of Kings.”

  David’s voice, soft with suppressed anger; “Is that another quotation from the Zohar, Professor?”

  “No, it’s Shakespeare, actually. King Richard the Second.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” David asked.

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me this was going to happen.”

  Weiss turned his head. The young man unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it open. There it was. The angry red scars he’d seen at the hospital had faded into deep black lettering, but it was unmistakable.

  The language of the Book of the Veils. The same spell that had been carved into the rocks at Shingomura.

  “What am I going to do,” David said, his voice showing he was close to tears. “Where am I going to go, with this on my chest?”

  Weiss’s eyelids drooped. “There must always be a physical anchor for the seal,” he said. “That’s why Achaz carved it upon a sacred mountain. There must be a seal upon this side of reality, to close the portal. The rock at Shingomura was damaged too severely to put it back together.”

  “So what happens when I…what if anything happens to me?”

  “Well, that’s what we’re here to take care of.”

  “I can’t go around with a bloody great tattoo on my chest!”

  “I meant what I said, David. We have the resources to help you, if you let us.”

  There was silence for a moment. “You knew this was going to happen,” David said.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, but when I put you to sleep there…”

  “That’s not what I meant.” David’s voice sounded as if he could barely control his anger. “Back when I first met you, you talked about what I’d seen. The praying mantis coming through the window. I didn’t realize at the time, but I didn’t tell you exactly what I saw, so how could you have known it was a mantis? How could you have known unless you’d put the image in my head yourself?”

  Weiss stopped walking and turned to face David. The young man was breathing heavily, his face red. “There wasn’t time,” Weiss began.

  “So you scared me into joining your crusade.”

  “David, when you’re asleep you’re in a certain state of consciousness. When you awaken, and find yourself in this world that we can see, this world of cars and shopping and stone Buddhas, you think you’re awake. But your inner self is still asleep. The wars going on all around the world right now are being carried out by groups of people who are actually asleep. If their inner selves could wake up, then they’d stop fighting.”

  David stared back at him in silence, his jaw working.

  “To really wake up, David, first you have to realize that you’re asleep, as if you were still in that lucid dream induced by Kageyama’s machine. Then you have to remember yourself – but this time your true self, your inner self. The Lamed Vav can help you do that. Come back with me, come back to England, and we ca
n help you. We can find you a place to live, and a position somewhere so you don’t have to worry about money.” Weiss lifted his eyes to the heavens and asked silently for forgiveness. “We can even, if you permit us, offer you a new name. A name only known to others like us.”

  “What about my family, my girlfriend?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, David, you’ll be all right. We’re not a cult. You’ll see them as often as you want.” Lies, lies, a little sad voice inside the Professor’s head whispered. How many mitzvahs in your life have you broken, for the sake of the Thirty-Six?

  “I’ll think about it,” David said finally.

  “You do that. You know how to get in touch with me.”

  The young man turned away and strode off, away from the flowers and the stone lanterns and out of the gates, without looking back.

  Weiss stood by himself, staring at the face of the giant stone Buddha across the courtyard. He looked past it to the mountains, so sacred to Japan, and the holy cross that was formed by the lines of the earth and the mountains meeting the boundary of the sky.

  “Wake up,” he murmured softly.

  THE END

  OF “THE MISTS OF OSOREZAN”

  Hi, Zoe Drake here. I hope you enjoyed reading The Mists of Osorezan! If you’re in the mood for more Japan-based spooky reading, then the next release from Excalibur Books in the “Nihon Gothic” series of standalone supernatural thrillers will be “Dead Hand Clapping” – a gritty tale of a bizarre serial killer hunting his victims through Tokyo’s seedy underworld, where ghosts are real and both love and hate reach out from beyond the grave…

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