Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction

by Dominica Malcolm

  Tanuki leaned against a mossy pagoda and pulled his straw hat down off of his ears to fan his face. It should have been one of the Shisa twins running these kinds of errands. Four legs were better than two in any case, and the lion-dogs had made it clear enough over the years that their speed and agility was far superior to Tanuki’s own. He cast his gaze across the garden to where the rubble of the eastern Shisa should have been, but it couldn’t be seen through all the weeds. How pitiable that for all that speed, a twelve year-old boy could end them with one wicked push.

  “Well?” The word rattled down the roof tiles, fell into the clogged eaves and spilled out the side.

  “A moment, please,” Tanuki wheezed and carefully eased his bottom down to the warm grass under him. “It’s not so easy any more, getting from one side of the house to the other.”

  “Perhaps you should consider a life less stationary,” the disembodied voice offered.

  “Well I’m sorry I don’t get out and patrol the garden every night! Some people don’t have a roof they can run up and down on whenever they please.” Of all the nerve. Who had been sitting outside the window all night, risking detection? Certainly not that ugly gargoyle on the roof. He didn’t even have the decency to come down and greet his friend face to face.

  “Forgiveness. I spoke without care.”

  “Of course you did,” Tanuki muttered, but couldn’t stay angry with his friend. Onigawara hadn’t been built to be soft and sentimental. A sentry of hard angles and wild glares could be forgiven for an excessively blunt comment now and again.

  “Give me a moment, I’ll come down.”

  “Take your time.”

  And it would take time. Onigawara couldn’t simply animate like the rest of them. He had to physically pull himself out of his roof tile—a square barely big enough to frame his scowling, horned head. For a creature whose job it was to protect the house, it was a laughably slow process. Then again, he’d had the Shisa twins in to hound and distract any intruders in the past.

  At last Onigawara sat on the edge of the eaves with his tiny stone feet barely extending past the gutters.

  “Do your legs get cramped, spending so much time squeezed into that little tile?” Tanuki asked.

  “Tell me of the master,” the gargoyle grunted in reply.

  “The master has died.” Tanuki stopped fanning his face, and let his hat hang still in his paws. The two shared a moment of silence.

  “Was anyone with him?” Onigawara asked at last.

  “Yes, his daughter Shizuho. She was with him all night, and gave him his last water before he passed. I don’t think she’ll leave his side until Kentaro arrives.”

  Onigawara dropped a second grunt off the roof. “And what of young master Kentaro? Why was he not here to witness his father’s last hours?”

  Tanuki scowled and snapped his jaws, sending his jowls jiggling up to his ears. “He will arrive tomorrow morning. Business, he said, keeps him away, or so I understood from Shizuho’s side of the conversation this afternoon.”

  “I overheard parts of that conversation. Shizuho seemed upset.”

  “Of course she’s upset! He means to have this place torn down before the master is even cremated! Everything will go with it. All of the master’s possessions, everything she ever loved from her childhood. All of it. Gone.” Tanuki slapped his hat against the base of the pagoda and then placed it firmly back onto his head. “That man has no respect. Do you remember how he kicked me over when he was a boy? He called me ugly and laughed when I hit the gate. I still have a hole in my tail. It lets in all sorts of horrible breezes and—”

  “Hush! Something approaches.” Onigawara stood and drew his sword, which thankfully was a process much quicker than removing himself from the roof tile. Tanuki had no interest in playing the distraction, however. He pointed a grin up to the moon and froze back into a two-foot statue.

  “It is impolite to call a person ‘thing’, you know,” a new voice said. A pair of dark triangle ears preceded a small pink nose only by virtue of being taller than the weeds in the garden. The cat they were attached to stepped delicately into sight on its hind legs moments later, looking—as cats are wont to do—arrogant and self-important. With its eyes mostly closed, it stood in stillness and silence to take in the garden, or perhaps to give the garden a moment to take in it. Secretly impressed by the cat’s grandness, Tanuki nevertheless didn’t move until it hit him so hard on the snout that he was forced to extend a leg or risk tipping over.

  “Ow!”

  “Neko-mata,” Onigawara greeted and sheathed his sword. Tanuki would have liked the reassurance of it out in the open, if only to remind Neko-mata that demons—even minor demons—were unwelcome.

  Neko-mata smiled. “Why such dour expressions on so fine an evening? The crickets sing, the fireflies dance, and the scent of death is so delightfully thick in the air I could smell it all the way from the graveyard.”

  Onigawara growled. “It is our master who has died. Keep your distance.”

  The demon raised its paws in surrender, though its smirk remained.

  His smarting snout held in his paws, Tanuki added, “His son means to have our home demolished, and we will likely go with it.”

  The cat swished its forked tail through the tall grass thoughtfully.

  “I see. That is a problem. I can’t imagine you’d be able to escape the humans’ machines; small tile legs couldn’t possibly move very fast. And you,” he said, casting a disdainful look at Tanuki, “dragging along the bulk of so many years reclining on the door step.”

  “That is where the master set me and so that is where I have stayed!” Tanuki barked back.

  Neko-mata smiled, but it went no further than his whiskers. “Well, you could come away with me, if you like. I know of some places that could use another pair of eyes to watch over them. New apartments that aren’t in danger of being torn down for many more years, but have no guardians to speak of.”

  “Absolutely not.” Onigawara stood upon the very edge of the roof, planted his feet and crossed his arms. “I will remain here till I be cracked in half.”

  Tanuki hesitated a moment, but finally nodded his agreement.

  The demon’s tails changed the direction in which they swished. “I could raise him for you. Then you would be masterless no more.”

  Onigawara’s sword was in his hand again with such speed that it might have been conjured there for all the motion that Tanuki saw.

  “You may try, and I shall have you cleaved in half.”

  Neko-mata didn’t move and neither did Onigawara. In fact, the only things moving in the garden were the small, flickering trails of the fireflies, which seemed indifferent to the sudden tension.

  Eventually, Neko-mata shrugged and turned away from the door.

  “Have it your way,” it said. “There is nothing I can do for you.” It brushed past Tanuki with its nose in the air and stepped onto the path that wound around the house.

  They owed the demon something at least for its consideration of their troubles—impractical though they had been. As the cat reached the corner of the porch Tanuki called out, “Thank you for your time all the same. Shizuho was cooking kara’age earlier. There might still be some oil in the fryer if you want it.” Neko-mata didn’t answer, and the upward flick of its tails could have been acceptance or dismissal, Tanuki couldn’t tell. The demon disappeared around the side of the house and no more was heard from it that night.

  The sound of stone sliding against stone drew Tanuki’s eyes upward again. Onigawara had sheathed his sword, and sat once more on the eaves, looking out over the garden.

  “Suppose… that we did go with him.” Tanuki offered after a time.

  “No.”

  “But supposing we did—”

  “No.”

  It was useless to press the issue. Onigawara seemed determined to go to his fate, and as much as Tanuki didn’t want to lose this—the humid summer nights in the garden, the friendly bante
r, and the ease and comfort of having a home and a master to belong to—there was no escaping the inevitable.

  The old ways were fading. What humans once feared no longer affected them today. No one worried about angry weather kami any more. Ghosts had become the stuff of children’s playtime stories and demons the outdated legends of the dark ages. What preyed on the hearts and minds of humans these days couldn’t be warded off by a gargoyle with a sword: who has the most expensive car, the biggest house, the most plastic surgery; whose child has been accepted to which prestigious private school and how many sleepless nights it took to get there. These woes even a tanuki struggled to solve for people who no longer believed a cheap ceramic raccoon-dog had any power at all. For those like Onigawara who still fought against the things that go bump in the night, the lack of faith from those whom he protected must be particularly hard.

  The two friends sat in pessimistic silence, watching the fireflies wink on and off. Nostalgically, Tanuki said, “I count four by the pond.”

  “There are three in the juniper,” Onigawara answered flatly. Tanuki could add no more. There had been a time many years ago when this game could continue for hours. Fireflies had filled the garden then, and the darting lights whizzed by so fast that even in the space of an entire night it was impossible to count them all. This year there seemed to be only seven undulating pulses of light—roughly half of what there had been the year before.

  “Perhaps we will go where the fireflies go,” Tanuki said sadly.

  He lifted a paw for one of the glowing lights, but it vanished before it could settle on his small black pad. One by one the fireflies turned out their lights; in the quiet, lifeless garden, the pall of death was more tangible than ever.

  “Do you think the master’s spirit will be alright without us?”

  “He is not without us.” Onigawara stood and paced the eaves.

  “But he will be, soon.”

  “What happens in the future we cannot control. But we can still protect him now.” Facing east, he paused. “If Neko-Mata smelled death from as far away as the graveyard, then I fear to think what else may have smelled it.”

  “What else? You mean, something worse that a cat demon?”

  “Yes. Death calls to unclean things. We must keep them away.”

  “We? What do we even have to fight with?”

  “I have my sword and you have your stick. Fear not, I have done this before, when the mistress passed away. I can do it again.”

  “You had the Shisa twins then.”

  “I can do it again.” Onigawara stood tall on the edge of the roof, his mouth firm and something that might have been determination or madness in his eyes. Tanuki didn’t want to guess which it was.

  “Fine. Fine, but if you get us both killed in this I’ll… I… I shall never forgive you!”

  “If I get us both killed tonight, then we have nothing to fear for tomorrow, do we?”

  There was a disturbing logic in Onigawara’s words and surprisingly, a good deal of comfort. If he died, at least he wouldn’t go alone. Then again, the gargoyle was confidence incarnate; perhaps they had nothing to fear at all.

  Tanuki stood and began pacing the garden as Onigawara paced the roof, but they remained undisturbed until well past midnight.

  It started with bells. The ringing was faint at first, and Tanuki might have passed it off as the chime of the night watch had Onigawara not suddenly stopped above him.

  “What? What is it? A demon?”

  “Odokuro!” Onigawara hissed.

  “Odokuro? What’s that? Is it bad?” His friend’s sudden quiet was unsettling, and fear began to crawl over Tanuki once more.

  “It is a bone demon. It rises out of decay and neglect to eat the flesh of the living and dead alike—then it takes the bones to add to its skeletal body.”

  Tanuki gaped up at Onigawara. “It’ll devour the master and Shizuho both!”

  “Yes, unless we stop it.”

  “Is it—can we stop it?” The question, once forced out, carried on it all of Tanuki’s fragile courage, and hung it in the air between them.

  “Yes, but I will need your help.”

  “Of course. I’ll run to the shrine—gather a few talismans, maybe even persuade an inari or two to come and help.”

  “No, I need you with me. There isn’t much time. Come, man the eastern wall with me.”

  “How do you know it will come from the east?”

  Onigawara was already off the roof and half way across the weather worn top of the cement wall, making tiny clip-clop noises with his smooth stone feet. “Because that is the direction of the graveyard. That is where it will draw up the bulk of its body.”

  Entirely out of his element, Tanuki nonetheless crossed the garden to the eastern wall. The juniper was his best choice for climbing up; several of its branches hung untrimmed and low. He pulled himself up onto one of the large rocks under it. The stone wobbled unsteadily, and when Tanuki looked down to check his footing, the open-mouth snarl of the fallen eastern Shisa stared back up at him.

  Already unsettled enough for one night, Tanuki put the image from his mind and climbed the tree. The height was dizzying, but there was no time to orient himself. The odokuro—all seven feet of its clattering bone composite body, topped with an enormous skull—came around a bend in the alley and fixed the blue glow in its empty eye sockets directly at their garden.

  “Amatsukami protect us.” Tanuki gasped in awe.

  “There are no kami here.” Onigawara growled and swung his sword in warning before the demon. “Go back whence you came. You’ll take no bones from here.”

  “Bones…” it rasped. “Give… me… bones.” Crossing the alley swiftly on long legs, the demon grasped the wall with both skeletal hands and heaved itself up as if no opposition stood in its way.

  “Away!” screeched Tanuki. “This is our house. Away with you!” He lifted his walking stick over his head and brought it down as hard as he could on an exposed collarbone. The demon didn’t seem to notice. It teetered on the wall a moment and then leaned forward, stretching an arm down to the earth on the other side.

  If Onigawara was perturbed at all by the odokuro’s indifference he didn’t show it. He swung his sword down hard on the outstretched limb and severed it from the rest of the demon in a single blow. The demon gave no sign of pain, but the loss of the limb unbalanced it, and it tipped over the wall and into the juniper, knocking Tanuki down with it.

  For a brief, terrifying moment the ground rushed up at him. His long life outside the front door flashed before his eyes as he made peace with the world—Onigawara included. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, his fall was halted by a well-placed branch of juniper, which snagged in the hole in the back of his tail.

  “Thank you Kentaro,” he gasped. “Your cruelty has saved me tonight.”

  The odokuro thrashed in the tree above him, stuck temporarily in the overgrowth of needles and branches that caught in the crevices of its bone body. The tree wouldn’t hold forever though, and as the demon twisted, the branches creaked and snapped and gave way, piece by piece.

  Tanuki reached for the tree trunk to free himself, but the juniper swung so violently he couldn’t get a handhold. The monster above him loomed closer. Unable to pull itself back up on one arm alone, it snapped off the branches trapping it instead, grinding them to mulch between its teeth. One misplaced bite could easily take Tanuki’s lower half with it.

  Tanuki stretched himself out as far as he could, but the needles of the branch nearest to him danced just out of reach. He tried twisting his tail around but it only lodged the branch deeper in his hollow cavity. He’d about made up his mind to chance rocking back and forth when the branch he was caught on gave a sudden, violent lurch. It tipped him downward and sent him spinning the last few centimetres to the ground, where he finally came to a stop when he collided with the pile of bones sloughed off by Onigawara.

  But rather than scatter lifelessly into the g
arden, the pile clapped and rattled as if laughing at him. Wide-eyed, Tanuki pulled himself to his feet and backed away, jostled and bumped as the scraps of demon collected together again. The bucking bones grew so lively that the ground beneath Tanuki’s feet vibrated with their drumming, and before his horrified eyes they reassembled the severed arm—as whole and complete as if it’d suffered no damage at all.

  “The other hand!” Tanuki cried up to his friend, but Onigawara gave no sign that he heard.