The Haunted Onsen

by Phil Gabriel

  Turning to me, she said, “Will you tell Koji-san? He will be so happy!”

  My poor, innocent, genius, generous magician student. Instead of telling her no, I asked, “How long would it take you to recalculate all of these entries?”

  Finger to her chin, Akiko said slowly, “Using the math app on my iPad, about three or four hours.”

  I shook my head. “With magic, never trust the results of any device; from simple calculators to the most modern supercomputers, all can be corrupted by greater powers. How long would it take you to do the calculations by hand?”

  Akiko thought for several minutes, unwilling to give an incorrect answer. “About twelve hours,” she said. “It might go faster at the end because the preliminary calculations would already be set up.” After a pause, she asked, “Is that interference why we don’t use artificial intelligence?”

  I nodded, “The only device that could have done these types of calculations without supernatural interference was Babbage’s Difference Engine.”

  “Too bad we don’t have a Difference Engine,” said Akiko.

  “Oh, I’ve got one. But it’s in Las Vegas.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Why didn’t you show it to us when we visited your home?”

  “It’s not in my home,” I said. “It fills two floors of an industrial warehouse. It takes three precision machinists to keep it working, as well as a temperature controlled environment. In any case, it’s not available to us.”

  “Still,” she said, “I could complete the calculations, and you could give the results to Koji-san.”

  Time for her to learn the rules. “We won’t help him without a Deal. Remember, as a magician, your time and skills are very valuable. Giving away the results of your hard work will only cause problems. If Koji-san can come up with something we want, we can trade your chart.”

  She gave that nod that indicated she would follow my lead but still didn’t agree with me.

  After the perusal of the map, we moved it to Koji-san’s desk and sat to discuss terms. I wasn’t about to let him weasel out of a fair trade. The fact that one of the first targets of the angry onryō would be him would push him to make a fair Deal.

  “Recreating or reinforcing the existing wards won’t work,” I said. “Building a new ward can’t be done in the time you have left. The only option I see is to induce the ghost to pass on.”

  “Pass on?” asked Kitty-Sue.

  “Move on,” I said. “Go on to the next phase. I can open the door for ghosts. They can then choose to go through.”

  Akiko shook her head. “He won’t choose. He knows what waits for him,” she said in a voice that indicated that nothing pleasant waited. “There’s no way he will go through voluntarily.” As a ghost and a magician, Akiko had a very good idea of what waited for the ghost samurai. She knew a lot more than me about the afterlife. Unfortunately, she was very tight-lipped about the next world. The dead keep their secrets very well.

  Over the next hour, we hammered out the details of the Deal. Koji-san kept trying to modify the arrangement. I thought it was pretty simple; if we managed to eliminate the threat from the samurai, the onsen and the glade surrounding it was mine.

  Koji-san’s objections were a series of restrictions, many of which I couldn’t abide. Could I guarantee that the ghost would be exorcised? No. Could I guarantee that no more people would die before the ghost was eliminated? No.

  There was something else going on. I was ready to renounce the Deal and leave when Koji-san made a comment.

  “This should be simple for you,” said Koji-san.

  “Simple?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Koji-san. “You are a powerful magician. And you could have the assistance of the favored of the kitsune queen.”

  Could have? What did he mean? With a sudden flash of understanding, I turned to Kitty-Sue and said, “Kitty-Sue-san, would you please help me in this endeavor? Your assistance would prove invaluable.”

  “I would be honored to help you and the Hakone magical community. The queen wishes it to be known that she always stands ready to render aid.”

  That damn queen. Sticking her pointy nose into my business again. Still, from Koji-san’s speech, it appeared that her “approval” was mandatory.

  Koji-san took a few moments before speaking. “And how will you and the kitsune clan divide this prize?”

  “Divide?” Oh yeah, if Kitty-Sue helped, I would have to give something up to her clan for requesting her help.

  If the kitsune queen wanted in on this Deal, she could scamper her nine-tailed ass down here and pitch in. I squelched that thought before it could show up on my face. Instead, I decided to be diplomatic.

  “We’ll iron out a timeshare arrangement,” I said. “After the menace is eliminated.” Then the thought of the regal, composed, nine-tailed kitsune queen stripping naked and bathing in my—our—onsen distracted me for several moments. I shook my head to clear the thoughts.

  Koji-san’s eyes brightened, and he smiled. Looking at Kitty-Sue, he said, “If the queen allowed us to let it be known that she is a patron of the onsen, it would be a great boost to our reputation.”

  Damn, why couldn’t I have been born a royal instead of a handsome magician? But Koji-san’s smiling face made me rethink our conversation.

  Of course, it made sense. A gaijin magician working in Japan to do something they couldn’t do would be a severe loss of face. The same gaijin magician, assisting the kitsune queen’s favorite niece, was a much better story. Now with the new arrangement, Koji-san’s objections were overcome, and the Deal was formalized.

  “Great,” I said as I shook Koji-san’s hand. “We’ll go first thing in the morning to interview the ghost.”

  4

  Picnic With an Unruly Spirit

  Back in the present, the formidable kitsune was nowhere to be seen. So much for assisting.

  Once my left arm was back to a functional state, although still weak, I pushed at the timestream, slowing down the world. Just before the attack, I had started to make a warded circle in the clearing with the intention of trapping the angry spirit. Maybe I could use my speed to complete and spring the trap.

  Keeping low to the ground, I scrambled through the forest towards the incomplete circle. Keeping my center of gravity low to allow rapid changes in direction, I headed towards the clearing. Crossing the perimeter of the glade, from forest to grass, brought another volley of arrows. Prepared this time, I easily evaded the slow projectiles. By circling the glade around the hot spring in the center, the onsen, I gradually moved up until I was back where I had started my aborted warding circle.

  Unfortunately, the samurai bowman was too smart to stand in my circle. I couldn’t trap him there. Still, the circle, once completed, was proof against spirits. Maybe I could still get some use out of it.

  I hurled myself into the circle and started the spell that activated the ward. I was followed by more arrows. Thankfully, I was able to dodge them while the circle formed. At my back, I felt the unseen presence of Akiko. With an ethereal twang, the ward popped into existence.

  Standing at the center of the circle, I regarded the bowman. He sent more arrows my way, but all bounced harmlessly off of the ward, fading away before touching the ground. I dropped the pressure on the timestream, and reality started flowing normally. I smiled grimly at the samurai, then stepped to the edge of the ward, closing the distance between us. Maybe now he would listen to reason.

  Instead, he dropped the bow and drew a sword, racing forward. He would soon bounce painfully off of the ward. I hoped he would calm down enough to start a dialog. The ripple of light along the steel blade of the samurai sword made pretty patterns in the air as it sliced towards my head. I turned, more to examine the blade than to attempt evasion. I pushed time again to allow a closer inspection. Looking closer showed the sword to have that realer-than-real look of an enchanted object. Damn, the sword wasn’t ectoplasm! It could easily pierce my ward.

&nbs
p; I frantically pushed harder against time to slow the overhand strike enough to allow escape, as the sword cut right through the bubble and swept past my ear. A long lock of my hair, dark at the roots, white at the ends, drifted to the ground, a reminder of how close the sword had come. My opponent’s sword hand bounced off of the ward, but he never lost his grip on the hilt. He was incensed that his sword could pass, but he couldn’t. Now we knew what had happened to the missing sword: the ghost had stolen it back from his executioners.

  I stepped back to the center of my two-meter-wide circle, safely out of range of the sword. He unleashed a flurry of slashes at my ward, hoping the sword would destroy my protections. But I had wrought well—his sword could pass, but he couldn’t. After probing the ward for several minutes and finding no way to get at me, the samurai drew himself into a ready stance and made a long speech. I understood nothing he said, despite my studies of Japanese.

  “He says you should come out of that coward’s hole and fight fair,” whispered Akiko in my ear.

  Fight fair, I wondered, remembering the same challenge from an alpha werewolf. Why is it that only those who have you outmatched are interested in fighting fair? I had no intention of fighting fair. I hadn’t done it in over fifty years and wasn’t about to start then.

  “Why can’t I understand anything he says?” I murmured.

  “He’s speaking in an older dialect of Japanese,” she replied. “I’ve only heard it in old samurai movies.”

  “Can you help me talk with him?” I asked.

  “I think so—” Akiko began, but she was interrupted by another statement by the samurai.

  “He says if you won’t fight on equal terms, he will consider you his prisoner. He says he can stay here for eternity to ensure you starve in your prison,” Akiko said.

  Since ghosts don’t sleep, his threat was serious. I examined the swordsman using mage vision. His aura was muted pastels, with a core of bright red. The red core exuded a ribbon that wound up his chest and ringed his neck. His armor, had it been real instead of ectoplasm, would have made a nice display in a museum. The sword had some intriguing patterns on it, indicating that it was a shintai, a magical artifact used to house a spirit. My ghost apprentice, Akiko, also had a shintai I had fashioned for her. With a shintai as an anchor, normal exorcisms wouldn’t work. My first plan to perform a standard exorcism was discarded.

  The thought of fighting fair briefly entertained my thoughts. I did have a very special sword in my satchel: Princess Blade, forged of a nearly unbreakable metal. I was fast, strong, and fairly competent; with Princess’ help, I was exceptional. We could have an old-fashioned duel. The problem with that was that he was already dead. I had no idea if my magic sword could harm a ghost. It might be that he could be run through with no harm. I, on the other hand, was made of flesh and blood. A good running through would certainly ruin my day. Not my idea of a fair fight at all.

  Also, Princess, once unleashed, had a nasty habit of killing everyone in the area. She was not the right tool for the job. I wasn’t quite ready to pull the pin on the grenade that was my magic sword.

  Weapons are tools: used either to intimidate or eliminate an enemy. In the face of the samurai’s preferred tool, I saw no reason not to use my preferred tool, a .45 automatic with enchanted rounds that would surprise any supernatural entity I was likely to come across. I had spent a lot of time preparing the rounds after my last encounter with Jorōgumo, a giant spider-slut, who nearly ended my life.

  Weapons are tools, but so is diplomacy. I decided to give that a try. I reached into my satchel and extracted a blanket, which I proceeded to lay on the ground, followed by a small porcelain hibachi, followed by a simple tea set, known as chadōgu, as well as an assortment of snacks. The samurai’s eyes widened as he watched me pull out items that could not possibly have fit inside the small satchel. Obviously, he would have to rethink his plan to starve me until I acquiesced to fight fair.

  Laying the material on the ground, I asked the invisible Akiko, “Akiko-san, could you join us and prepare tea?”

  She stepped from behind me and willed herself into visibility. I was surprised to see that she had adopted a very conservative mode of dress. She was wearing a long formal kimono. She was dressed as a maiko, an apprentice geisha. Her long, black hair was bound up in traditional style with the addition of two dangling kanzashi hair ornaments. Her feet were shod with the old-style wooden shoes called geta. Her expression was serene, without a trace of the smiling young lady I had come to know. The only modern touch to her attire was the red-framed glasses she wore. Something bothered me about her kimono until I realized it was wrapped right over left, instead of the standard left over right. I mused that it must be a fashion choice.

  Akiko bowed deeply to the samurai and introduced herself. She then performed introductions between the samurai and me. Thanks to whispered instructions from Akiko, I knew exactly how low to bow to the swordsman. Too low, and I would be acknowledging his superiority; too little and I would be proclaiming myself his superior. That would only lead to more needless conflict.

  I found out his preferred name was Arashi Shichiro Takeda. Just as I kept my true name hidden beneath the Scott Freeman facade, samurai were famous for having hidden names. He probably wasn’t even a seventh son, as his name would suggest. Having his true name would have been helpful in an exorcism, but it wasn’t strictly necessary.

  “If Takeda-sama would agree to a truce, my master and I would like to invite you for tea,” said Akiko in Japanese. For an instant, I wondered why I could understand her version of feudal Japanese, but not his. More of her increasing mastery of magic and languages. My apprentice had come a long way from her first, schoolgirl, English.

  A short nod from the samurai indicated he would hold to the truce. Not the trusting type, I kept my alertness high. He sheathed his sword in his belt. I noted he positioned the sword horizontally, the hilt by his left hand, the scabbard sticking out directly behind him. As touching a samurai’s sword was considered a grave offense, leading to a duel, his positioning of the sword showed that he was quick to take offense. This was further confirmation that he was an asshole.

  I cautiously dropped the ward, allowing him to approach. I could reset the ward in an instant if he attacked. He sat in a seiza position, kneeling with his feet pointed backward. Although it looks uncomfortable, it allows a quick leap, either to avoid or initiate an attack. I sat in the same manner, lowering myself at the same time, grateful that I had spent so much time on rejuvenating my knees and hips.

  Akiko approached the blanket, then knelt down and proceeded to prepare tea for us. As she worked, she chatted with the samurai. From my rudimentary Japanese, I could follow parts of her story. How she was a wandering spirit who met by chance a wizard who helped her break the bonds of her earthly link. I noted she used the modern term for wizard, uiza-do; which required a bit of explanation. Continuing her story, she stated that the wizard found that she had some small measure of talent in magic and accepted her as his student. She quickly proved she was talented by lighting the charcoal in the hibachi with a gesture and whispered word.

  The grace with which she prepared the tea service was almost hypnotic, every movement measured and precise. An outdoor tea ceremony is called a nodate. As she worked, she discussed the beauty of the small glade that housed the onsen, the brightness of the flowers, and many other subjects. After a pleasant period, she finished preparations of the green tea.

  Setting a small tray with the tea on the ground in front of the samurai ghost, she bowed her head and offered that the tea was almost ready.

  The swordsman scoffed and passed his hand through the tea set, proving that earthly drinks could neither nourish nor warm him. Akiko responded with a gentle smile, placing one hand on each side of the tray. She then whispered the trigger word for Schrödinger’s quantum duplication spell, the first spell I had taught her. After activating the spell, she pulled her hands apart. As her hands separated, one
tray remained in each hand; the right-hand tray had a faint translucent quality denoting it was no longer on the earthly plane. Akiko took the ghostly tray in both hands and offered tea to our guest. He extended a finger gingerly and gently touched a small teacup. When it resisted his touch, he took the cup into his joined hands. He seemed to relish the warmth of the teacup and spent several moments inhaling the aroma of the hot green tea. He waited for me to pick up my teacup before tasting his own. His theretofore expressionless face relaxed slightly, the furrow between his eyebrows smoothing out.

  Akiko then brought out some snacks to accompany the tea. While she was performing the duplication spell, the samurai leaned in quickly and snatched the glasses from Akiko’s face. Akiko’s graceful gestures became fumbles, and the spell she was working sputtered and died.

  The samurai pretended not to notice, peering through the lenses, which did him no good, as they were bound to Akiko. He handed the spectacles back with a muttered apology. But I saw the glint in his eye. He had identified a weakness in Akiko’s magic.

  Akiko returned her glasses to her face and continued the duplication spell. I noted that she didn’t choose sweet snacks, probably because the excessive sweetness of modern snacks would be overpowering to someone from his time and place. When offered the ghostly snacks, the swordsman waited for Akiko and me to taste the sweets before partaking himself. Not a very trusting type.

  Throughout the tea ceremony, Akiko kept up a continuous stream of gentle conversation. She would occasionally address a comment to me in English, letting me know what they were discussing, but the majority of her focus was on our ghostly guest. I knew she would give me a complete rundown later.

  I knew better than to interrupt with my broken Japanese, littered with twenty-first-century expressions that would only confuse the samurai. I learned long ago that people judge you by how well you speak their language. Better for him to admire the grace, eloquence, and magical abilities of Akiko, my humble student.