The Hell Screen - [Sugawara Akitada 02]

by I. J. Parker

  He tried twisting. At the cost of another wave of pain to his shoulders and wrists, he managed it. A wasted effort. It was too dark to make out details, and his hands were in the way. Straightening his body with another painful effort, he slowly transferred his weight to his feet again, rested, and thought.

  Had Yori made good his escape? Had he found his way home? Probably not. He was only three years old and two miles from home, in a strange neighborhood. He remembered Takenori’s warning with a shudder. How long would a small child in expensive silk robes last among people who attacked grown men? His heart contracted with fear and grief. Poor child! Poor boy! Sent out by his own father to face more horrors.

  Still, it was marginally better than to have let him fall into Noami’s clutches. Any one of the cutthroats roaming the street of the western capital at night would take more pity on a child than that monster.

  Besides, there was a chance, a very small chance, that Yori would find help. Even if he did not reach home, he might find someone who would listen to his story and come to investigate. But Akitada thought about how long he had been unconscious, and knew that help would have come by now if the boy had found a friend. Besides, Yori had not been aware of the danger his father was in. And who would listen to the babblings of a lost child in the middle of the night? If only Yori was safe, it was enough. Somewhere inside, because he would freeze to death in this cold. Akitada had begun to shake so badly that the rope vibrated and he could see the bare twigs above him trembling among the icy stars. Strangely, death by freezing was less upsetting than the pain he was in and the thought of his torturer’s return.

  He found himself gasping for breath again and shifted his weight for a few minutes’ relief. He could no longer control his shaking. The thought that he would soon be past caring about escape was almost welcome.

  But either the instinct to survive or some perverse pride intervened, and he began to tug at the rope to test its strength. It bit cruelly into his wrists and sent shock waves of hot pain along his arms and into his shoulders, but he persisted. Hemp rope was stretchable. If he got enough slack to ease his arms and shoulders, he might also have enough purchase to loosen the knot around his wrists. He pulled and jerked and twisted. Then he rested and began again. Now and then he stopped to check his progress. Then he started the whole process over again—pull, twist, rest—until he lost all sense of time. He could feel the warm blood running into his hands and dripping down his arms and back. Strangely, it did not hurt as much as before, and the moment came when he could bend his elbows a little and move his head.

  At that moment, Noami returned. Akitada saw the light of his lantern first. It gleamed eerily through the dense stalks of bamboo. Then the painter appeared. In addition to the lantern, he carried a large basket, which he dropped before Akitada’s feet to raise the lantern.

  “Ah, you’re awake,” he said, his eyes glowing like live coals in the flickering light. “Tsk, tsk. Look at what you have been doing to your wrists! Does it hurt very much?” He jerked sharply at the bonds, while his eyes watched Akitada’s face intently. “Cold enough for you? Yes, I expect it is. Not cold enough for a freezing hell, though. But I can always paint in the snow and ice later.” He set down the lantern and began to remove painting supplies from the basket and set them out neatly before Akitada. The basket he turned upside down to seat himself on. Some time was taken up by adjusting both basket and lantern so all of Akitada’s strung-up body was well lit, and Noami could see it from the proper angle. When he was satisfied, he began to rub ink and water.

  All of these activities the painter accompanied by a steady flow of chatter. “I don’t like to disappoint a man of your stature,” he said, as he let his eyes travel over Akitada’s body. “Both figuratively and literally. Those are very nice muscles. I am strong for my size, but I hate to think what trouble you would have been without the sleeping draught.”

  Akitada managed only a faint growl from behind the stinking rag in his mouth.

  Noami laughed. “I would enjoy a conversation, but it’s not advisable. I live like a hermit here, and I doubt anyone would pay attention to your screaming, but then you never know. By the way, your son seems to have disappeared. I was sorry to lose him. A child is always much more effective in conveying horror than a grown man, though a nobleman of your stature should make a rather neat point. On the other hand, Yori was such a charmingly pampered child. A child of a noble house. All my previous subjects have been the spawn of untouchables.”

  Without his efforts to stretch the rope, Akitada was beginning to shake again. His relief at Yori’s escape from this maniac was tempered by the knowledge that, even if he managed to loosen the rope enough to free himself, he would by then be in no condition to defend himself, let alone walk away. Dear heaven, what did Noami have in mind?

  “I expect you are afraid,” the painter said, sketching rapidly with his brush while casting sharp glances at Akitada. “Yes, I can see it in your eyes.”

  Akitada attempted a glare and another grunt of protest.

  “No? I don’t believe you. Your situation is quite hopeless, you know. You cannot get away from me, and soon even your sturdy constitution will succumb to the frigid temperatures.” He glanced about him. “Regrettable that the snow did not last. But what I need for my last panel, for my hell of ice, is the suffering produced by freezing to death. You, my lord, will be immortalized.”

  Akitada did not think that he would freeze to death very readily. Perhaps the man would be satisfied with some sketches and untie him when he was done. If Noami was the slasher, and there was little doubt he was, he had never actually killed any of his victims, though some had died from their wounds. Some remnant of his Buddhist training probably caused him to shy away from actual murder.

  Noami paused to stare at Akitada. “You asked for this, you know,” he said. “If you had not started snooping at the temple, we might never have met. But you could not leave it alone. You had to come here, claiming to be a customer! Hah! I’m not such a fool that I could not tell you wanted to inspect my studio for evidence. Then I caught you back at the temple, asking more questions. I suppose the abbot asked you to investigate? I thought he looked at me strangely after he saw the first panels of the screen. Imagine my shock when I came to your house and saw a girl there that I’d used as a model for the hell of knives. I heard you calling me a slasher, a common criminal! That was when I was sure that you were about to call in the police, and I could not let you do that. Not before my screen was completed.”

  Akitada’s foolish hope that Noami might be satisfied with a few sketches collapsed. Noami would not let him go. There was nothing left now but the feeble hope that Yori somehow would make people understand where his father was.

  “Hmm,” said Noami, looking at his sketch critically and nodding. “This will have to do. More extreme suffering will have to wait till later.” He held up the sketch for Akitada to see.

  Akitada did not recognize himself in the pitiful, twisted creature suspended from a bare branch. Was his face really so contorted? He attempted to straighten up.

  Noami grinned. “My compliments on your self-control, by the way. Your position must be quite painful by now.” He rose and came to check Akitada’s bonds again. “Tsk, tsk. You’ve been pulling on the rope. All you accomplished was to tighten the knots on your wrists. Your hands are already blue and quite swollen. I doubt if you have any feeling left in them. You should be safe enough.” He suddenly cocked his head and listened, then turned abruptly and padded off into the garden.

  Akitada immediately returned to jerking on the rope. He discovered that he could manage ten sharp pulls before the pain on his wrists and arms became too great and he had to rest. At least he had some leverage by now. Sweat was running down his face despite the cold. He thought at first it was blood, that somehow the cold had thinned his skin until the slightest exertion cracked it wide open. Relieved that it was not, he began his routine again. There was a little more slack th
an before. Blood started trickling from his wrists again, but he did not care and gave more and harder pulls on the rope. By now his whole torso was a mass of fiery pain, and he was almost certain he had dislocated both of his shoulders, but he finally had some hope that he might have enough purchase to loosen his bonds or break the rope.

  He had hardly thought this when the painter reappeared, muttering to himself. He was carrying two heavy pails and some rags. The pails he set down next to Akitada and, dropping the rags into the first pail, he began to wash Akitada’s body down.

  Although he was thoroughly chilled already, the shock of the icy water was so great that Akitada groaned and flinched back violently. He could not fathom the purpose of this bath. If Noami wanted to get rid of the blood, he had no need to wet his head, chest, and abdomen.

  When Akitada was completely wet, Noami moved the second pail next to Akitada’s feet, then bent to lift them into the pail.

  Having his legs knocked out from under him pushed Akitada forward, his whole weight suddenly suspended again from his raw wrists and damaged shoulders. He screamed in agony, a muffled groan because of the gag, and closed his eyes against the excruciating pain which ran down his arms to the rest of his body like hot lightning. When his feet touched ground again and took the weight from his arms, the relief was so enormous that he did not realize right away that Noami had inserted his bound feet into a pail of freezing water halfway up his shins. He shrank into himself, then flinched violently as Noami draped the icy cloths about his bare body, covering him from his head to his hips.

  When the wet cloth slapped against his nose and cheeks, robbing him of sight and air simultaneously, his terror was so great that he reared up, and the back of his head somehow struck Noami. He heard a sharp cry, and then felt a vicious blow to his head, which made him sag abruptly. He almost wished for unconsciousness at that moment, but Noami had been careful. He still needed him, needed him conscious and in agony.

  Akitada could not see, but when Noami had struck him he had loosened the wet cloth on his face enough that he could breathe. He heard Noami muttering as he moved about.

  “There,” he said suddenly quite close to Akitada’s ear as he adjusted one of the wet rags, “that should freeze nicely to your skin in the next hour. Not quite as natural as chaining you in a frozen pond, but I expect to see much the same expressions of pain and fear. It is very difficult to arouse certain emotions through art, but people will see my hell screen and be terrified. Nothing moves one’s heart like utmost terror and pain in the faces of other creatures. Terror has many faces, you know. Its variety would surprise you. I am quite curious how you will look when I return. If the effect is as fine as I hope, you will occupy the foreground, a lesson to all sinners. Through my art, the terror of one person, you, becomes the terror of all who see you, and terror is the only emotion which moves men’s hearts from sin. Thus a small sacrifice produces a great good. Now do you under... ?”

  The rest was drowned out by the gush of icy water from the other pail. It hit Akitada squarely across head and shoulders and soaked his whole body.

  Without another word, Noami left.

  The cold was unbelievable and produced a totally new kind of pain, perversely almost akin to burning. Not in all those years in the snow country had Akitada felt such deadly cold. He tried to think back to the stories of people who had barely escaped freezing to death. They had become sleepy and felt nothing after a while. So Noami would be disappointed after all. Akitada thought that he was beginning to lose sensation in most parts of his body already. Then the memory of amputated limbs came to him. Those who had not died in the frozen north had lost hands and feet, ears and noses to the cold. Ice was as effective as a sharp knife.

  Movement and physical exertion had warmed him earlier, and he tried to move again, to pull against the rope, but his muscles were stiffening, cramping, refusing his commands. For the first time he considered seriously the fact that he was about to die. To die slowly, forgotten in this overgrown bamboo grove, while a demented artist sketched his final moments. To die without a single act of courage or affirmation. The thought of being mocked in death, and again mocked after death by the thousands who would pass by Noami’s masterpiece, revolted his very soul.

  He began his struggle again, straining, his teeth grinding against the rags in his mouth, his own groans filling his ears till they drowned out the rustling of the bamboo and the distant sound of temple bells marking the hours. He gained enough purchase that his arms and shoulders could move a little and he celebrated that moment with a brief period of rest during which he attempted to move his fingers and wrists. Without them he could not work the knot loose. But his exertions were in vain. He had no idea if his fingers were capable of movement, and his wrists hurt too badly. But the physical effort had counteracted the freezing water against his skin, and one of the rags had actually come loose and fallen.

  He considered his situation. Once or twice during some of his more violent efforts of pulling against the rope, he had brushed the bark of the tree trunk behind him. Perhaps he could get close enough to rub the rope against it.

  Belatedly he remembered the bucket he stood in. He had lost contact with his feet when he stopped feeling them. With a convulsive kick forward, and a resulting new tear to his shoulder muscles, he overturned the bucket. He barely felt the ground under his feet, but the bucket touched his ankle. If he could get his feet on top ...

  It took another vicious pull on his arms and shoulders to raise his legs. He missed, sliding off the wooden surface of the bucket with the soles of his feet. Clamping his teeth into the gag, he tried again, clung precariously for a moment; then somehow the bucket must have rolled slightly and settled into the mud under him. He stood on it, supported totally by his feet, but swaying weakly, perilously, on its curved surface.

  The resulting slack had brought his tied wrists close enough to see that the rope was knotted too tightly to undo, even if he could have moved his hands, which no longer resembled human hands at all. He blocked the thought of losing both hands from his mind.

  Instead he concentrated on severing the rope some other way. If the trunk of the tree was immediately behind him, he could lean backward against it. If not, he would tumble off the bucket again. He tried not to think of the pain which would follow, and reached back. And touched the tree. He leaned back cautiously, feeling the sharp bark against his back, letting it support some of his weight. But there was very little slack in the rope now and pushing his bound wrists up and down against the bark of the tree required him to stretch upward from his shoulders and against the pull of the rope. Each movement sent new arrows of pain through his shoulders and caused him to teeter on the bucket beneath his feet.

  He persisted. The bucket settled more deeply into the mud, and at some point of the continuous push and pull he dislodged the cloth covering his face and sucked in a deep breath of clean air and gazed at the stars. The relief brought tears he could not stop.

  The rubbing motion became automatic, the pain a fact of existence, proof he was alive. He was hardly conscious of the moment when the sharp bark of the tree bit into his skin.

  And then the rope parted and he fell.

  He fell hard, totally unprepared for freedom, and lay there for a time, too stunned to form any plan for further action. Above him rose the massive trunk of the tree, splitting into black branches and twigs against the midnight blue, star-spangled sky.

  After a while, he rolled on his side and brought his arms down, cradling them against his chest. Lowering his arms in itself was exquisitely painful, and even after that agony dulled, there was more pain, though the worst spasms were different from the earlier ones. He rested some more and tried to move his fingers again. Evidently the rope, once severed, had parted completely, because his wrists, black with blood, were free. He tried to warm his hands against his belly and could feel them moving. Thank heaven.

  He next thought of getting rid of the gag. He tried raising his hands
to his face, but was unable to make his fingers take hold of the fabric and instead rubbed the side and back of his head against the ground. A protruding tree root shifted the cloth strip enough that he could force the gag from his mouth with his tongue.

  He vomited, but felt better afterward, and struggled into a sitting position. The strip which had held the gag in place still encircled his head, covering one of his eyes. He pushed it up and off and looked around. The tree stood in the middle of dense bamboo. The sky above had paled and the stars were becoming faint. Almost dawn. How much time had passed? Noami had said he would return in an hour. Akitada could call for help now, but that might simply bring his tormentor back, and how was he to deal with him in his present condition? His ankles were still hobbled together; he could not untie the knot, because his hands were useless. Besides, his knees shook so badly when he tried to stand that he fell down again.

  He must crawl, hide somewhere in the garden, give himself time to recover more strength, perhaps untie his legs.

  He crawled, slithered, rolled, more like a snake or worm than a two- or four-legged creature, deeper and deeper into the bamboo thicket, until he reached the boundary wall and could go no farther. Here he sat up, leaning his back against the wall, and rested.