by Kim Newman
The sack came loose and she staggered our way. Kostaki nodded to me.
‘Here, let me,’ I said, taking off the makeshift hood.
Her face was a sight. Unsurgical cuts through her cheeks gave her an ear-to-ear grin. The inside of her mouth was vivid red velvet. Her chin virtually detached as she smiled, showing rows of yellow shark teeth and a slither of black tongue.
‘Do you think I’m pretty?’ she asked.
16
YOKAI TOWN, DECEMBER 20, 1899
Our new dorm sisters, the slit-mouthed woman and the long-haired girl, are Kuchisake and Zhang Fa. The dapper gent they arrived with is Gokemidoro. He has gone to the men’s dorm. He doesn’t know it yet, but Goké is the man the sleeping Princess has been looking for. He speaks English, Portuguese and Spanish. Before the mouth in his forehead opened – rendering him unfit for government service – he was a translator in trade negotiations. Another yōkai with fabled powers of persuasion. He claims modestly that he wears dark glasses because otherwise everyone who looks at his eyes falls into a daze. He runs himself ragged because those he fascinates can’t move, breathe, eat, walk or sleep without his say-so. Pull the other one, I suggested – it’s got bells on. After all, he got netted and poured into this pond.
Kuchisake is fairly famous and completely insane. Even the Mantis thinks she’s unreasonably vicious. Like many yōkai, she sings a sad song about how she came to be the way she is – which in no way excuses her predilection for mutilation. Japanese vampires are often not turned so much as twisted – permanently disfigured by fathers-in-darkness who leave makers’ marks on their get. On no account is Kuchisake to be allowed scissors. Her compulsion is to slit faces to make others look like her and she has an idée fixe about scissors. She scorns knives, swords or other blades, because she loves the snipping-scything sound. To limit her exposure to temptation, I’ve removed the surgical scissors from my instrument wallet and hidden them in my coat pocket.
Zhang Fa, originally from China, is sweeter natured but has to be jogged or jostled so she stays awake. If she falls into a deep sleep, her hair becomes bad-tempered and tries to choke her. She is of the kejōrō bloodline, who are traditionally prostitutes though she works as a server in teahouses. She can hold six separate cups in tendrils of her hair, which would be more impressive if someone hadn’t invented the tray.
What interests me most is how they got here. Someone is keeping lists and ticking off names. Yōkai are being collected. It fell to me to get more intelligence by the surprisingly little-used espionage technique of just coming out and asking.
The least-mad yōkai in the dorm is Topazia Suzuki, so I picked her. As she warmed blood-threaded sake for us, I asked her how she came to be in Yōkai Town. Her tail stood up straight and she looked away for a moment before deciding to talk.
‘Some of us can pass outside,’ she said. ‘Kuchisake stayed free for so long because she can wind a scarf around her mouth.’
Not because she’s ashamed of the way she looks, by the way. She’s proud of her grin. No, she wears scarves and masks because she likes to get close before unveiling. She loves the fear and revulsion in people’s eyes as she asks her question. To which there is no right answer. She slashes with scissors whatever you say.
Topazia looked across the room. Kuchisake, wearing a surgical mask I’ve given her, was playing a version of Go with Drusilla. They use living or dead insects instead of stones. The living ones add a random element by not staying where they’re put on the grid. I’ve told Dru to be careful with scorpions but they are pieces of superior power – like chess queens – so venomous pests scuttle around the place.
‘Others of us look like trees, mushrooms or monkeys,’ Topazia continued. ‘We cannot hide in a crowd. We were brought here first. For our protection, they said. The grounds of the temple are sanctuary for yōkai. Like your cathedrals.’
Topazia reads European books in the original languages and translation. She particularly admires French writers – Émile Zola, Eugène Sue, Victor Hugo.
‘I came of my own accord,’ she said, sadly. ‘Imprisonment was presented to me as salvation. I knew we were being lied to but I still came. The alternative is unpleasant. Most of us have died once and changed into what we are. Few of us wish to die again, even to be with Lord Buddha. Majin knows ways to end any of us, even those who are hard to kill. Behind the temple is a shrine where Lady Oyotsu keeps markers for yōkai who are done away with. The ones who fought hardest, the most powerful – they are gone now. Majin sometimes just brings the heads.’
So, that was why yōkai stayed put. As ever, it was fear. Even the fearsome fear something. Here, it was the Demon Man.
‘The Lieutenant,’ I asked, ‘is he yōkai?’
Topazia spat sake on the floor and chittered – an animal sound. ‘Something else, something old,’ she said. ‘And bitter. Anyone who puts trust in him is a fool.’
‘None of us exactly trust him,’ I said.
‘Not in here, not yōkai. We know him for what he is. The way he chooses to feed us is a reminder of how contemptible we are. He bathes in our hatred, for we cannot tell it in the world of men and women. Out there, they trust him but should not. He doesn’t serve their cause – not the Emperor, not the knights of the Black Ocean.’
‘Is he a follower of Taira no Masakado?’
Topazia flinched at the name, turned her head round in a near full circle to see who might be listening, and continued. ‘Taira is an excuse. A paper banner. Majin’s only master is Enma Daio, ruler of Hell. Even to him, he is no loyal retainer.’
Lights reflected in Topazia’s watery, beautiful eyes. I glanced up. O-Same was rolling across the low ceiling. Her two fireballs are like eyes. She listens too.
Topazia shivered, rippling her neck fur. She said no more about Majin and his master in Hell. She gave me sake.
We sent spies out there. It follows that Majin has spies in here. Kostaki wondered how someone like O-Same could be imprisoned. Perhaps she can’t. Fire – even more than air and water – must eventually run free. The questions Kostaki didn’t ask nag me. What can living fire want? What are her dreams?
O-Same’s fire-eyes slid slowly between beams. I smelled heated sap, sweet and rancid. The walls and ceilings of the dorm are scorched where she has touched. The sliding doors (shoji) which she has no hands to open have burned-through corners. A type of yōkai – mokumokuren – can disguise itself as a door or a mat or a wall and wrap an unwary visitor in reed-like strips which sting like jellyfish fronds and draw blood. Is O-Same a natural enemy to such creatures?
‘Those who came after you, were they arrested?’ I asked Topazia. ‘Brought here in chains like Kuchisake and Zhang Fa?’
Topazia got out of answering by dropping a sake dish, which broke on the floor.
‘Another dead soldier,’ said Dru.
Topazia looked puzzled. I began explaining the European superstition to her.
‘No, poppet,’ said Dru. ‘I mean what I say. Not cracked crockery – that’s plain for all to see and need not be mentioned. No, listen. It’s just happened. A soldier. A real one, with musket and medals. Done down, and truly dead.’
* * *
A paper rope was tied to the steps of our dormitory. It was strung through Yōkai Town, looped around trees, posts and statues.
Kostaki untwisted a stretch, which tore in his hands. It was a long scroll covered with kanji.
‘General Nurarihyon’s letter,’ I said.
‘In writing to emperors, it’s best to be brief,’ the Captain commented. ‘Such persons dislike reading and always seek excuses to kill you. The more words you set down, the more likely you’ll end up strangled with them.’
I didn’t disagree.
Dravot shouldered his way through fog to join us. I told him what Dru had said about another dead soldier. He rolled his eyes and shrugged. He’s firmly of the ignore-the-ninny party.
Kostaki was already following the scroll. He has taken to list
ening more closely to Dru – a sign of oncoming dementia or visionary genius. Abura Sumashi and Kasa-obake were ahead of him, the potato-head and living umbrella playing the game as if the rope were hung with lanterns and bells and a feast of sweetmeats awaited them at the end of it.
Under a streetlamp, peering at a tangle of the scroll, we found Kawataro, the kappa lord who is paying court to Christina, and four of his retainers. The green-faced, child-sized creatures look like frogs clamped into turtle shells. Reputedly adepts of ninjutsu, they are noisier than any shadow masters I’ve met. You don’t notice real ninja even after they’ve beaten you up. Lord Kawataro is a power in Yōkai Town, a rival of Lady Oyotsu and somewhat pompous, especially for a pint-sized amphibian with disgusting feeding habits. His castle island is half-sunk, lopsided thanks to collapsing foundations. Topazia tells me he was vehemently against taking in foreign vampires, though he modified his opinion slightly when he saw the Princess. If he had his way, he’d exclude Topazia too – she’s from Hokkaido, an island he deems insufficiently Japanese. His household guard is the closest Yōkai Town has to a militia or police force.
‘Stay back, gaijin,’ Kawataro ordered.
His kappa ninja snapped to, raising weapons. Each posed with his speciality slicer, thumper, basher or stabber – katana (sword), bo (quarter-staff), nunchaku (chain-sticks), sai (twin three-pronged knives).
Kostaki warded them off with a flash of silvered steel, quarter-drawing his carrack. All the brows-knit posing and fancy metal in the world doesn’t make up for having the reach of an eight-year-old. Kostaki could fell all four of them with one pass. And, if that didn’t take, Dravot had a revolver in his greatcoat pocket.
The kappa with the sai snarled.
Dravot laughed and sang ‘A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go’.
‘With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach, “Heigh ho!” says Anthony Rowley.’
Kawataro’s retainers circled us, angry at our foreign jabber.
‘Yours is the one with the two bits of wood,’ said Dravot.
I could take the nunchaku from the mean-eyed perisher, but would get a broken arm out of it. Even healing quickly hurts.
‘You’re French,’ Dravot went on. ‘’E thinks you’re goin’ to eat ’is legs with butter and parsley.’
‘Most chefs would recommend butter and garlic,’ I said.
‘But we don’t talk about that, eh?’
No matter how they decorate their shells like armour or strap on fearsomely crested suibachi helmets, the kappa militia look like mean-eyed children playing soldiers. Treating them as funny is a mistake, though. The tips of their tongues slither like snakes, poking out of lipless mouths, suckers pulsing greedily. By nature, the riverbed-dwelling trash vampires are crafty, libidinous, cruel and none-too-fastidious. The apt term is ‘bottom feeder’. Dravot hadn’t seen what a kappa did to the dishonourable official in Suicide Garden.
O-Same flared overhead, following the scroll-rope as a bird in flight follows a road or river. We all looked up.
‘Let’s avoid a needless fight, my lord,’ I suggested. ‘Impress Princess Casamassima by acting firmly after giving the matter due consideration.’
That was the right name to drop. Lord Kawataro raised his stubby green fist and opened it, stretching the webbing between his fingers. His retainers stood down, sheathing or putting away their accessories.
I was relieved not to have a broken arm.
Dravot needs to appreciate our uncertain situation. His soldiering was done in the British Empire. He could sneer at native customs and trample on idols because the Great White Queen’s army and navy would back him up. A bully knowing his bigger bully of a father will finish any fight he starts. It’s not like that now. If the Sergeant is decapitated or boiled in Japan, Lord Ruthven won’t send a gunboat. And Gilbert and Sullivan got one thing right – here, chopping off your head is considered a mercy.
We trudged through the snow. O-Same lit the way ahead for us. As we had all guessed, the scroll led to General Nurarihyon’s hut. Green fog hung about the marshy place. Reeds were broken all around. The scroll wrapped a stone idol then lay on the steps like a carpet. Kanji were blurred where the paper was soaked.
Abura Sumashi and Kasa-obake were already there, refraining from entering. They weren’t the only amateur investigators on the case. Gokemidoro and Kuchisake followed us, drawn by all the activity. As new arrivals in Yōkai Town, they’re still more curious than wary. They were in the same coffle. Perhaps they’re walking out together. The idea of them spooning – her ear-to-ear mouth locked onto his tongueless head gash – made me giggle and feel queasy at the same time. Was Kuchisake so taken by Goké’s extra mouth she hadn’t tried to expand it with scissors? Or did she just not see how to cut?
Goké took out a cigarette case. He stuck two in his (regular) mouth and lit them with one match, then gave one to Kuchisake. She poked it into one cheek slit and smoke puffed out of the other. Goké offered the case around. The kappa with the katana took one. He choked on the first lungful of smoke. Dravot chuckled and nearly started another showdown.
We all looked warily at the General’s hut.
A curtain of silky cobweb hung over the entrance. I remembered the face-backed goblin spiders of the temple grounds. This web was thicker, whiter, more like rope than string. And somehow foul.
Lord Kawataro croaked an order.
The kappa with the bo tore through the web. Deliquescing strands stuck to the pole. The samurai hopped and screeched, trying to scrape the mess off. Instead, he smeared it over his shell. His comrades had to duck as he swung the staff around.
‘Careful, Sonny Jim, you’ll ’ave someone’s eye out,’ said Dravot.
‘He is impressed with your martial skills,’ I interpreted.
Goké was about to correct my translation but I gave him a warning look. He signalled acquiescence with his cigarette.
Kuchisake fumed, smoke seeping from the full length of her mouth. Now the yōkai woman was jealous of me. Considering what she did to people she had nothing against, an unwelcome development.
I felt in my coat pocket. My scissors were still there.
We couldn’t all get into the small hut at once. Kawataro and Kostaki entered, shoulder to hip. Kostaki took one look and ducked out again, summoning me. I hurried up the steps and into the low-ceilinged space. I had to wade through knee-high webs. It was dark until O-Same floated overhead. She cast firelight through a lattice canopy.
Under frosted layers of web was the General.
I needn’t have brought my medical bag. There was no question of him not being dead. Dru had, for once, spoken simple truth. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I can’t help thinking of her flash of candour as more misdirection. It’ll be back to fairy talk and riddles next time.
Nurarihyon was shrunken and dry, cracked skin wrapped around a skeleton. He had four puckered holes in his neck and chest, bigger than usual fang-punctures. His skull was caved in like a rotten melon. All his blood was gone, and most of his flesh. A honey smell with a rancid aftertaste hung in the air.
‘Are his eyes moving?’ Kostaki asked.
‘He has no eyes,’ I said. ‘It’s her up there…’
As O-Same hovered, fire shadows shifted in Nurarihyon’s empty orbits.
All his soft tissue was gone. I should say he’d been injected with potent acid that turned his insides to a gruel that could be sucked through tubes. Some spiders or wasps do that to smaller creatures. No yōkai I knew had the habit, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn of some new species. Something fearsome, which could ignore Nurarihyon’s demands to desist. Surely, at the last, the venerable soldier would have summoned his powers and tried to compel his murderer to leave him alone.
The General’s hut was desecrated. His tea-bowls were scattered fragments. His low writing-desk was smashed as if by a blow from a giant’s hand. That made me think of Kannuki, but the clumsy oaf wasn’t a likely karate master. Silky, sticky discharge lay ove
r everything like the sperm of a dozen candles.
‘Look,’ said Kostaki, holding up the dead yōkai’s sticks of fingers.
Kawataro shouted to us not to touch the honoured General. He called us barbarian defilers of corpses.
‘Remember, he sucks cows’ arses,’ I told Kostaki.
Kostaki signalled to Kawataro to look closely at the dead man’s hand. The General’s fingers were black with ink. Kawataro looked from the hand to a broken screen that was within Nurarihyon’s reach. He scraped away a swath of web to show scrawled kanji. A dying testament in any militia’s book. The vital clue that closes the tricky case, better than distinctive cigar ash no fool would scatter on the body of his inheritance-withholding uncle or the smashed watch that establishes what the alibi-shielded murderer would like you to think was the time of death. A clear accusation from beyond the grave.
‘What does it say?’ Kostaki asked.
It was hard to make out.
‘Kaban wo motta kawaii on’nanoko,’ I ventured. ‘Pretty girl with a… purse, or bag. Something like that.’
Kawataro took a Colt Peacemaker out of the waistband of his hakama and aimed at me. Not a traditional samurai weapon, but he’s noticed their shortcomings on the eve of the twentieth century and has decided to keep up with the times. I assumed the single-action revolver was loaded with silver bullets.
‘What now?’ I said.
Kostaki pointed to my medical kit.
‘“Pretty girl with a bag”,’ he said. ‘It’s what they call you, Geneviève.’
17
YOKAI TOWN, DECEMBER 21, 1899
I was impressed by the respect shown me while I was being unjustly arrested. Seldom have I been so politely accused of a murder I didn’t commit.
I stepped out of General Nurarihyon’s hut ahead of Lord Kawataro’s Colt. Kostaki stopped Dravot pulling his Webley and facing off against the kappa. Turning Yōkai Town into Tombstone would help no one. Least of all me.