by Riley, R. Thomas; Zoot, Campbell; Chandler, Randy; Kauwe, Faith
"No need," Charlise said. "In a few months the effect will wear off. The ratz will eventually just die, the Venenum will lose potency and it will stop spreading."
The screeching of hundreds of zombies grew louder and Martin turned to face a truly unrelenting army eating itself and moving toward him.
"Bye, now," Darmstadt said.
Martin figured this must really be it. He'd been shot in the head by a gun from another dimension, and that had given him the tentacles. He'd had gods as his clients and fought with monsters out of the pages of fairy tales. But he could see no way out of this fix.
The gang of ratz rolled over itself like a ball of kicking roaches breaking and coalescing as it crashed down a hill. Martin closed his eyes and waited. He thought about Wilbur, the monk, going so calmly into nothingness. He didn't think he could do the same.
Then as the burnt stench of death wafted over him, he felt something bubbling in his chest. It was like an envelope had been sewed under his skin full of drill-bits that were whirring at high-speed through his veins. He screamed before anything touched him and his tentacles emerged from out of his body at enormous size. Where they had been bitten were two gaping, monstrous mouths, lined with teeth like a lamprey. The tentacles burst out the cemetery and swept the street in front of him, squeezing the ratz into a giant pulpy mass of bone, flesh, and viscera. The lamprey-like mouths chomped at the pile of once-humans at incredible speed. Within moments, the street was empty. The tentacles had grown to such a girth that they had even put out the flaming trees.
Then suddenly they broke off Martin's chest, suckers turning black and ashen, mouths spitting up fiery trees and belching sulfur before all of it crumbled into dust.
Martin puked on his black suit, wiped himself and took out his gun.
"You were saying?" he said to Darmstadt.
“How...the hell?"
"What the hell, actually," Martin said. "I guess you didn't test the effects of your spray on trans-dimensional appendages. Looks like the ratz bites acted like steroids on them. You're both coming with me."
"That's it?" Charlise said. "Please explain what just happened..."
“Let me see,” he said, tying their hands together and pushing them up against a tombstone. "Tentacles arise. Tentacles change. Tentacles cease. It's just the way things are."
THE KITSUNE
by A.K. Amesworth
I got a name, but you don't know it. Be happy about that.
'Cause if you know my name, it means your life hit a fork some time ago and now you're in a world of hurt, a world where it's SNAFU and you're completely screwed, hoping that what you heard isn't real, praying that what you saw isn't true, and willing to search me out to fix your problem.
I've got the old Jew Meierwitz to thank for that, I guess, but that's a whole other story. This story's about the sergeant and his wife, the kitsune-spirit he asked me to find. He hired me to find her because I can kill demons. And I'm good at it.
***
The message from the sergeant came through Shima. Hideo Shimabuku was an artist. He didn't tattoo with the gun, but did tebori with hand-made bamboo, long sharp needles. The needles were painful, but for me they were an inoculation against pain, a talisman against the evil. Every Wednesday morning, I checked in with Shima in his den down in the basement of the music store on Second Street in Sho-Tokyo, J-Town in Los Angeles. After he told me for the fifth week running that he didn't need my handyman services this week, he let me know that he did have a message for me, though, left with him by a soldier who fought with his son in Europe. Shima bowed deep and handed the note to me with both hands, the way Father used to deliver bad news to his bosses.
The low bow meant the person who gave him the message was someone of respect; it also told me that I needed to bow low to Shima as well. I hated it. After Executive Order 9066, after Heart Mountain Relocation, even after the 442nd, and certainly after coming home, I didn't want to bow to anyone, any more. My shit luck then to be born Japanese. Issei, nisei, sansei, it didn't matter if you were fresh off the boat or third generation American—if your elder bows low, you bow lower
The note was simple enough: “Yamura-san. It has been almost five years since Hurlach. Too long. Much too long for a favor to be asked, I know. But I need help. I am here in Los Angeles at the Kansai. Please. I have no one else to turn to.” The note ended with the kanji symbols for arigato gozaimasu, “Thank you very much,” and his family name. To remind me who he was, he put a tiny “442” under the kanji.
Kuso. Shit. Like the mention of Hurlach wouldn't remind me of him, hell, and what we few had found in that Dachau sub-camp.
***
The rest of my Wednesday round of fix-its was fairly fruitless—only Watanabe, the old man who makes the red bean cakes in the window of the cafe on First Street, needed any work done, and that was just a fake shoji screen installed as a window covering—and afterward, instead of heading back to my apartment, I went to the Kansai, a rundown hotel up on San Pedro, a couple of blocks north of First. The guy who ran the front desk must have known me. He waved his hands in front of him. He kept repeating, “Tottoto dete ike!” while shaking his head violently. I continued heading to the desk with my dumbest second generation nisei, English-only, shrug and told him that I didn't understand, but I knew full well, even with my limited Japanese that he was telling me to get the hell out of there. He knew if I was there, some sick trouble was, too. At the desk, I put both hands palm down on the wood, so that he could see the scars on my hands and forearms, and I said, “Sumimasen,” excuse me. “I received a message from one of your guests, Army Sergeant Kenji Tachibana, to meet him here.”
The clerk glared at me for a moment, then sent a bellboy up to get him. When Sarge came down the stairs, his smile on seeing me was erased by whatever the clerk said into his ear, said just loud enough to let me know that he was speaking Japanese. Tachibana-san then bowed to the clerk, shook my hand, and ushered me out of the Kansai as quickly as his metal-braced right leg would let him.
***
We slurped our soba in almost complete silence at the udon stand down the block from the Kansai, trading only the most harmless of recent personal history. If this was all that the sergeant needed, I was glad to spend the four bits on noodles and be done with it. We didn't talk about the war and we avoided family until we were standing outside the Nippon Mah Jong Club further down on Pedro.
“The hotel clerk is a very unhappy man,” Tachibana said as we were watching through the window at the sanma threesomes slapping down their tiles, “as unhappy as I am.”
“He has reason to be. His hotel will be gone within a year.”
Tachibana-san snapped to face me, a look of panic crossing his face. “Do you know this. . .” He let the words hang in the air as he gestured slightly toward his forehead.
I smiled. “Nothing like that. Most of the buildings on that block are going to be demolished next year so they can build a new police headquarters.”
Tachibana nodded. “Oh. I thought—”
“That the Yudai-jin— the Jew—gave me the power of vision as well?”
“So sorry.” Sarge looked embarrassed. He knew about the talisman and its power. It'd be an easy jump for a desperate man to think it might give me the power to see the future.
If only it had.
I said, “Don't be. What's the cause of your unhappiness, Tachibana-san?”
He turned to look through the mah jong window again; he must have known that I could still see his face reflected in glass, but it was a way for him to avoid my eyes. “I returned to Honolulu after the war. A friend of my sister's, a beautiful woman named Mai, had returned from her camp here on the mainland. It seemed right and I married her. We had a child, a boy. We named him Abe,” he pronounced it Japanese, two syllables: AH-beh. “But we called him Abe,” here, he made the name sound like Lincoln's nickname. I understood. Sarge's first name was Kenji, and we both knew that while all the Japanese were rounded up to
gether, those with the Americanized first names were always looked on with a little less suspicion. There was no reason to burden a number one son with that. “Six months ago, she left me. Left Hawaii. Came here to Los Angeles, from what I could learn. I need you to find her. I want my son back.”
“You're here. You could look for her yourself.”
“I wouldn't know where to begin. Who do I ask? What do I ask? I don't know.”
“Any detective could help you find Mai. Why me?”
“Mai is not. . .” He stopped mid-sentence. I could have helped him out there, but I didn't. “I'm not sure. She isn't. . .” I wanted to hear him say it. “I don't think she is human.”
***
I didn't ask him what made him think his wife wasn't human. There was a joke in there somewhere, but it would have been lost on Sarge and on me—he was hurting and I've seen far too many non-humans to find it funny anymore.
I did ask him what he knew that could help me find Mai. There wasn't much. She had their three year-old son with her. Tachibana handed me a bent and scratched old photo: she was average height and build, long black hair, which she wore up. According to Sarge, she usually dressed in kimono like in the picture; but that was in Hawaii, he said, and this was Los Angeles, so that might not be the case now. She might look different.
A picture and a boy. Not much to go on.
***
Mai had to get food. She would have to go out at some point and work to get the money to pay for that food. And that would mean she'd probably need someone to watch the child. There were a number of middle-aged or old women, oba-chans, who would care for and become substitute grandmothers for the children of single mothers, mostly war widows. My plan was to hit the hotels and flop-houses in J-Town, and just ask around.
My luck for once was good and at the second stop the next morning, at the Miyako on First, I found Kazuko Ueda. She was an older woman who cared for most of the children at the Miyako. I could smell the miso soup and daikon, pickled radish, of my boyhood; it gave me a smile, which only grew when Ueda-san had me sit while she served me lunch and she bent my ear about Abe, while a handful of small children ran around her apartment.
“That poor boy is wonderful. Abe. Smart. Even at three, he has that spark in his eye. You know what I mean. But the mother—” Mrs. Ueda cut herself off. “I don't speak ill of people.”
“But you don't approve.”
“Sometimes, she will leave him here for the night. No warning. She comes home smelling of cigarettes and sake and cologne. Then she'll take him for the rest of the day.” She shook her head. “That's why you don't see Abe here today.” She looked down, avoiding my eyes. “But she pays on time.”
***
Ueda-san wouldn't give me Mai's address. But now that I knew where she kept the kid, the rest was easy. Dr. Ito had an office on the third story of the building across from the Miyako. The year before, I'd helped out Ito with a problem—I got his daughter back from a kappa sprite who lived in the LA River—and he owed me, so he let me stay in his office and watch the hotel.
The next morning, a woman matching the sergeant's description and picture pulled a young boy into the Miyako. I hurried downstairs and waited for her to leave the hotel, and I followed her. Her step was light, almost gliding, but it also seemed skittish. She seemed to be darting from shop to shop, running errands, definitely not working. A little shopping, then into Yachiyo Restaurant down on Second. I followed her in, and sat two booths away. When she ordered a full lunch, the bento special, I figured I'd have time enough to do the same.
I watched her. She didn't talk to anyone. No one talked to her. After ordering, she simply stared off, not reading, not doing anything other than looking out the windows. She was a beautiful woman, maybe a little Hawaii mixed into her Nihon. Her face seemed to change shape with each turn of her head. From the side, her features seemed sharp and angles, but the front was all round and softness.
Just before her lunch arrived, she ducked into the women's restroom. After her bento box arrived, so did mine. She didn't come out of the restroom. After thirty minutes, I was done with my lunch, and I went to the men's room walking past the women's door as slowly as possible, hoping to hear something. With no success, I had to run the charade out to its end, and actually go into the men's room. When I came out, I looked out and saw her table still empty, bento untouched, and I stayed in the hall area. A young woman in a dull gray kimono came toward the hallway, and I bowed to her.
“Sumimasen,” I said. “I'm really sorry. But I was taking a woman out on a lunch date. And she went into the restroom a while back, but I haven't seen her come out. Would you mind telling me on your way out, if you see her?”
She covered her mouth with both hands and gave a small giggle, bowing. When she came back, she bowed again and smiled and told me that there was no one in the restroom.
Damn it. I had Mai, and she disappeared on me. I should have been surprised. But I wasn't. Goddamned disappointed, but not surprised.
***
I decided to not go back to Ito's and watch for her return. I decided to get drunk instead. At the Kansai, I apologized to Sergeant Tachibana and promised to do better tomorrow. I asked Sarge if he wanted to join me for a scotch or seven, but he said he didn't want to.
His loss. I headed up to the northern-most reaches of Sho-Tokyo, to where pool halls and bars outnumbered legitimate businesses. With any luck, I might find Mai there, getting her smell of smoke and drink. I got thrown out of the first pool hall after four scotches; I didn't respond well to an issei internee telling me my time fighting with the 442nd made me a yanki rather than true Japanese. By the time I'd thrown the fourth or fifth punch, the owner—a guy I'd done favors for—tossed me out. Bastard can get rid of his own tenjooname-demons from here on.
I stumbled into the jazz club on the corner. This could be the place. From the door, all I could smell was smoke and liquor, though more scotch than sake. For the last five years, I've hated the smell of smoke and ash, because of the memories and nightmares they brought. But that night, I breathed in deeply and smiled. It smelled good. It might still have smelled like death to me, but a death I wouldn't mind tonight.
I went up to the bar and ordered a double scotch and turned to look at the crowd. It was hard to get a good view of anyone in the tightness of the smoky room, but I scanned the faces. I paid for my drink and began to move through the room toward the bandstand where the three-piece was grooving.
Off to the side, three men burst into a single guffaw, joined by the high-pitched laughter of the woman with her back to me. Her black hair was up, and her neck was slender. Pale, almost as white as the inner robe of her kimono. I could see why the three had congregated around her. Then she turned.
It was Mai.
She began to move, the three men following like a pride toward a door near the back. I tried to weave my way through the crowd to follow, but they seemed to glide while I was mired in the mud. She took them through the door. I needed to catch up, but when finally I got to the door, I was blocked by a huge nisei. In the homeland, he might've been sumo. Here, he was just dumb muscle. I tried to get past him, but he held me back with one beefy hand. When I resisted, he pushed me back. When I came again and threw my scotch in his face, he brought that hand back up, this time folded into a boulder. I tried to block it, but the scotches had taken their toll and I was on my ass. I scrambled up, and started to make a charge for him, but I felt a hand on my upper arm, and a cool whisper in my ear, “No. Don't.”
***
I hadn't seen Kumiko since Heart Mountain, when I had an eighteen year-old's crush on her. I remember waiting for my military papers to be approved, working in the carpentry hut. She'd bring us water and whet-stones. I used to love to watch her walk away, watch her thick calves extending down below the hem of her plaid skirt. I remember my mom had an expression for those kinds of calves: daikon ashi, radish legs. Thick, strong. And since that day, sexy as hell to me.
&nb
sp; Kumiko had helped me up and back to the bar, where we drank and caught up, and I fantasized about those calves. I didn't tell her so, but I don't think she would've minded. Maybe that was real, or maybe it was the scotches talking, now a chorus in my head. But if they sang in my head, they sang in hers as well, and we walked arm in arm back to my apartment, seven stumbling blocks, then three flights of stairs up, and fumbling in a darkness lit only by the reflected blinking red light on my ceiling from the flashing traffic signal below my window.
Her skin was as soft as I had imagined it. Cool to the touch. Sweet to the scent, but slightly salty, sweaty to the taste. When her hair came down, I rose up, and we spent the next hour in the throes of what I hadn't done with someone I cared about since before Heart Mountain. After self-imposed internment celibacy, war-time whoring, and meaningless one night stands since I came back, this was religious, almost otherworldly. I could feel her sensing it, too, forcing herself to bite my pillowcase instead of crying out. When I finally exploded, it was like every bad thing I'd done for the last five years had just been swept away.
They hadn't, but it felt that way.
As she ran her fingers across Shimabuku's hikae masterpiece across my chest, I could feel her tracing the design of the talisman that Meierwitz had given me when I liberated him from Hurlach. Shima had done a great job of hiding it as the eye of the dragon in the center of my body mural. She didn't ask what it meant, and I was glad that I didn't have to either lie or explain any of it, not the talisman, not the Yudai-jin Meierwitz, not even Hurlach. I drifted to sleep, hoping my dreams wouldn't be filled with any of those thoughts, either.
***