Phantasma: Stories

by Charnock, Anne

  Mr. Kayanage, the gunshot wound victim turned out to be the owner of the gallery. All of the art had been stolen, which was curious as he was currently displaying a new unknown artist whose pictures of post-bomb Hiroshima were half collage, half painting. Hardly worth its resale value. She thought of the moth standing sadly over the old man on the floor. She went to the hospital to ask after him.

  Mr. Kayanage was still unconscious. She tried to convince the nurse that she was his niece, but it was no go. As she walked down the hall, past the nurses’ station, she peeked into the room where he was staying. There was an older woman at the foot of his bed holding his feet and perched on his food table over the bed, the white moth stood watch. She stopped for a moment and the moth looked at her, imploringly. A nun-grip pinched her elbow and a nurse hustled her past the room and down the hall.

  If only she could interrogate that moth. “Please, my Uncle.” The lie came too easily.

  “Ma’am, the woman in there? That is his wife and she doesn’t know you. These folks have enough trouble. Poor guy. All of that art gone, place ruined.”

  “Can you at least tell me if he’ll make it?”

  “We’ll know more in the morning.”

  ***

  It turned out the five-and-a-half (they never did find the bottom of that half-man) men were from Eguchi, Inc., an import business that once had smuggling charges brought against it, which were later were dropped. The half-man was Mr. Eguchi himself and George had his work cut out for him getting any information out of them. They’d been doing business in the States for decades and were well respected.

  When George said, “Be my date?” she was a little surprised and she scrambled for some sort of answer. For a way to ask him to be clear about his intentions. She’d been trying to figure out how she felt about him, when he said, “My fake date.”

  She wanted to punch him, but while they played this stare-down, this bluff, she was not about to be the first to fold. “What?”

  “Mr. Eguchi has agreed to meet me with his wife for dinner. He told me to bring a date. Maybe you can get a read on him or something.”

  “I thought Mr. Eguchi was torn in half on the floor of that gallery.”

  “That was his father. This is the son.”

  “Ohh, and what does he stand to inherit?”

  “Exactly, so come to dinner with me.”

  ***

  The house was in Bel Air. George picked her up a full hour early just in case. He was a bit clichéd in his fuss over how nice she looked—that jaw-dropped-eyes-widened cliché. Her black dress was a simple sleeveless number and she knew it looked good.

  There was less traffic than he thought and they arrived half an hour early. George turned off the engine and they sat.

  He fumbled, all cop-logic composure gone, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, I just couldn’t think of the right way to say it. How have you been?”

  He meant since her mom died. It had only been about six months.

  “I’m okay. School’s kept me busy.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it and she thrilled like a stupid teenager. It’s just a dangerous job, it wasn’t like he was bad for the planet or anything. His work helped people. And she’d be a lawyer, so they’d make an okay living. Maybe not buying a house here, but . . .

  “Goddamnit, George.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what to expect from you any given minute. I wish you’d just make up your mind.”

  The moth was there. Hovering over the hood of the car, dark gray in the low light.

  George, oblivious, said, “I keep trying to tell you that . . .”

  “Shhh!” she whacked him on the arm and got out of the car. The moth hovered. “What now?”

  The moth flew to the left, toward the house. It wanted to show her something. She followed.

  George was out of the car. “Sak, what the hell?”

  “I have to follow.” It was enough information and he knew her well enough to take her word for it, right? He knew she “saw” stuff, but the moth was too much to explain. And these were the quiet spaces where things started to become apparent, make sense. There wasn’t room for bickering over what kind of moth, which was exactly the sort of thing George would ask.

  The gate to the enormous stone cobbled driveway was open, hidden in the high hedge walls. These were “don’t look at me, I’m a movie star” high walls. Soft pools of light from the post-modern glass and stucco house reflected off the stonework drive. A fountain dribbled softly somewhere inside the gates. The moth flew up to the front door and waited.

  George locked his car and scrambled to keep up. Just as Sakura was about to reach for the bell, George said, “Wait, we’re early,” and the moth swerved right, flying down a path around the side of the house. She followed it and George followed her.

  They walked through a side courtyard which held another fountain, a fire pit and high-call teak lawn furniture, past a wall of bamboo, and down a path toward a guesthouse. It was long, low-roofed and its walls were entirely of glass. The moth flew through the front door and Sakura tried the doorknob, which gave.

  They stepped into a beautiful, mid-century high-ceilinged room with dark wood floors and white, art-covered walls. The lights to the home turned on and they froze, waiting for someone to appear, but no one did.

  George hissed at her, “This is a really bad idea.”

  “Shhh!”

  The moth flew through a doorway into a small room. They followed. This time Sakura turned on the light.

  There was a small desk that backed up to a window outside which a wall of bamboo was tastefully lit. In a glass case in the center of the room, about the size and shape of the one at the gallery, stood a netsuke. No larger than a walnut, an intricately carved ivory moth with its wings outspread, originally designed—no doubt to decorate a society lady’s purse—sometime in the 18th or 19th century.

  Netsuke were worth, at their most valuable, about ten thousand dollars. This was clearly not the answer to those dead men in the room. This house, this neighborhood, the furnishings suggested a budget which ten thousand dollars wouldn’t dent. The moth hovered behind the case and looked at Sakura. She stepped toward the case and unlatched the front of it.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” She’d forgotten that George was there.

  “I need to hold it.”

  “Hello, alarms?”

  But the moth, and the netsuke, and a new scene, a little foggy just outside her range of vision overrode any concern. She reached in and lifted the netsuke, and an alarm did sound in the distance, but quickly faded when she saw the netsuke on the floor of the gallery, all of its art in place. Things shifted again in a dizzying whirl and then she was in an expensive-looking office space. There were men speaking in Japanese around her, angry and panicked.

  It was an office in a high-rise. She knew it was a city in Japan, but couldn’t make out any distinguishing buildings outside the window. Kyoto maybe? Five men in expensive tailored suits from an older era—mid-twentieth century?—stood behind a desk. Sitting in a chair, seemingly non-plussed, was a woman, dressed simply, as if for a day in the city, the length of her white skirt and the tapering at the waist suggested 1960s. Why was she so composed?

  There was a pounding on the door. Sakura recognized none of the people in the room, but in a case at the center of a table set up for a meeting—glasses of water, notebooks—stood the same small netsuke of a white moth.

  Was this simply a business?

  The men in suits pulled out guns.

  Akiko, for that was her name, said, “Father, you should have taken the deal.”

  “I won’t be ruled by thugs. Fifty years we’ve run this business without caving to thugs. This family has strength, longevity. What’s the worst he will do?”

  “He’s going to kill you, Papa.”

  The doors burst open and the two guns in the room fired, but were quickly silenced by a machine gun that strafed all but the woman. He
r composure gone, her hand flew to her mouth and she screamed.

  Sakura looked over at those left standing. They had semi-automatic machine guns and through the dust stepped the elder Mr. Eguchi. He was much younger than the photo Sakura had seen in the police station. His eyes were cold, exacting.

  Akiko rose to her feet, her voice cracking with rage and tears. “You weren’t going to hurt anyone.”

  “Be quiet, go downstairs and get in the car.”

  “You told me you would only threaten them. That it was the only way to end things peacefully.”

  “This was so we could be together,” he said.

  Her voice lowered and she spoke carefully. “I never agreed to that. This was supposed to be so you would leave me alone.”

  “We will be together. You were born into this great family, you need to marry into another. That art buyer. You’re thinking small.”

  “That art buyer and I were married last night.”

  Art buyer? Kayanage? This woman was Kayanage’s wife. This woman, the netsuke, the moth that wouldn’t leave the old man’s side. Sakura had the odd thought that Kayanage must have been quite something as a young man to win this woman’s heart.

  The burst from the machine gun made her scream, but her scream made no noise. Akiko collapsed to the floor, her skirt soaked with blood flooded from her ribcage right below her breasts. Sakura wanted to run to her, but a shotgun ratcheted behind her and with that noise she was back in the room in Bel Air, holding the netsuke. She wheeled around and a different younger man who looked very much like Mr. Eguchi was standing there, a well-dressed woman at his side, and a man in a security uniform held the shotgun aimed at George, which made no sense as she was the one holding the netsuke.

  “The entrance is around front.” Mr. Eguchi was calm, unruffled, but guarded.

  Sakura said, “Your father. He killed all of them,” George grabbed her arm—as if that could stop the conversation—because she and Mr. Eguchi had moved somehow beyond this space, immersed in that moment in the past, its weight and ramifications.

  Mr. Eguchi stood still, expression unchanged, but Sakura saw the blood drain from his face as the moth moved behind him, hovering. Did he know she was there? The moth? She. Sakura knew this now.

  His face moved to a question, but somehow thought better of it. He lowered his head, saying, “Was this revenge?”

  Sakura was in the gallery again, felt the rage, the fear, smelled the blood, heard the screams. She saw the black cloud and something within it, a large hovering humanoid form, was that a skull? All black, tearing, shredding. Cracking bones and the wet, terrible noise of ripping flesh.

  “Goryo.” The word came out of her mouth before she’d fully processed it and she was back. She looked at Mr. Eguchi who was frightened. She continued, “Akiko’s father. The man your father killed. He was transformed into a Goryo. It was vengeance.”

  George said, “Sakura, we really should go. We’re trespassing . . .” He always would adhere to protocol, even in complete chaos.

  Mr. Eguchi ignored him. “Goryo are made up. Myths to scare children. To write off real evil in the world.”

  “What killed your father was not human.”

  George said, “Sakura. Really.” From the reprimand in his voice, Sakura knew this was just a passing crush. It would have been nice.

  She continued, ignoring him. “There were no tools involved in the way those men were murdered, torn apart.” She had learned long ago never to talk about what she had “seen.” Her focus was always getting at the central truth. But the truth in this case was beyond imagining.

  She murmured, “Mukai. Akiko Mukai. Her father was Eiichi.”

  Mr. Eguchi leaned his hand out to his guard, lowering his arm and the shotgun. He said, “Leave us.”

  George said, “Mr. Eguchi—”

  Sakura turned to him. “I’ll be five minutes.”

  “This is a police investigation. There are statements to be taken.”

  Sakura looked up at George. His cheeks flushed red and his face so set in regulation-type anger. She smiled and said, “George, I’ll meet you outside.”

  Mr. Eguchi looked at George who knew well enough to go.

  When they were alone, Eguchi moved to his chair and sat. He held out his hand. “I don’t take you for a thief.”

  She clutched the netsuke harder. “It’s not mine to give.” And, like that, the moth was gone. It was just the two of them in the room, which made her conviction waver. “It’s not yours either. This was stolen from that gallery. By whom is unclear.”

  He shrank in his chair. “He told me to leave with it. With the movers and the rest of the art. He didn’t want me to be witness to what should have only been a shakedown. He gave me the netsuke to take with me.” He breathed in, held it a moment and said, “He loved her, my father.”

  “No, he didn’t. He wanted her. That’s different.”

  This sixty-year-old, elegant businessman’s face caved in like that of a small boy. “Father always told me the tale of Akiko, the moth who was a woman’s spirit who never left her lover’s side. When he gave this to me, he said it would be his way of holding onto her. After she died.”

  Her voice gentled. This poor guy hadn’t done anything. He’d inherited a family business he’d never understand. “She was never his to hold onto. I need to return this to its owner.”

  He didn’t argue.

  She said, “You understand?”

  He nodded and she got up to leave. As she got to the door, he said, “Is it over? With the goryo? Will it come back? Does it want revenge on my family?”

  Sakura turned to him, so small in that chair, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t ever really know. Only what they show me.”

  ***

  She held the netsuke tight all the way home. It warmed to the heat from her hand.

  George fumed and huffed and it took him until Beverly Hills before he sputtered, “What? So I’m supposed to drop this investigation because a supernatural spirit killed five people in Little Tokyo?”

  Sakura closed her eyes and ran her thumb along the carved wing of the netsuke. She had a tremendous headache, not helped by the fact that they never did have dinner. “I don’t know, George. I don’t know anything. And I’m sorry it’s screwed things up for you. It’s not like I can control this.”

  “How do I even write this up?”

  “Does anyone know you went to Eguchi’s house?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  He blew air through his teeth in frustration. He sounded like a teenager.

  She said, “Can we stop for a burger? My head’s spinning.”

  ***

  Fortunately there was no one with Mr. Kayanage when she stepped into his hospital room. No one except the moth who stood on his pillow, feathers ruffling with each of his shallow breaths.

  She sat in the chair next to the bed, suddenly exhausted. She said to Akiko, “I’m sorry. I’m so tired.”

  The moth understood. Sakura leaned forward and put the netsuke into Mr. Kayanage’s hand, which lay on its side with an IV trailing from it. His hand closed around the object and . . . was that a smile? She couldn’t be sure, she just knew that a certain peace had entered the room.

  She squeezed his hand, nodded to the moth and left. She knew that he wouldn’t make it through the night. And that soon they would be together again.

  Sakura stepped onto the curved drive of the hospital, and shoved her hands deeper in her pockets as she walked home through the absurdly chilly Los Angeles night, hoping she had some food in the refrigerator. George never had stopped for that burger.

  ***

  Kate Maruyama’s first novel, HARROWGATE was published in 2013. Her short work has appeared in Arcadia Magazine, Stoneboat and Controlled Burn as well as on Salon, the Rumpus, and other journals. She holds an MFA in fiction from Antioch University Los Angeles where she is now affiliate faculty and teaches with Writing Workshops Los
Angeles. She writes, teaches, cooks and eats in Los Angeles where she lives with her family.

  THE ADOPTION

  by Anne Charnock

  Author’s Insights:

  “The Adoption” is part an ongoing writing project in which I imagine how human relationships will change as scientists innovate in the field of human reproductive technology.

  What changes will occur when a woman can choose an artificial womb in preference to carrying her pregnancy? What social consequences will occur when we can make a baby by fertilizing an egg with synthetic Y chromosome? Or make an egg from stem cells? Or fuse two eggs to make an embryo?

  My fictional characters, with all their individual quirks and complexities, must negotiate the ethical issues surrounding these foreseeable advances. Rudy and Simone, in “The Adoption”, are much in love, but they have different emotional needs stemming from their childhood experiences. As a consequence, they take an unusual approach to starting a family. They face choices that might be intriguing and perplexing to a present-day reader.

  In my forthcoming novel, SLEEPING EMBERS OF AN ORDINARY MIND, I imagine how innovations in reproductive technologies will play out in the twenty-second century, helping to foster an era of gender equality.

  And, in my current work-in-progress, a novel, I’m creating a complex web of characters whose love-lives reflect a new landscape of human intimacy. “The Adoption” will form an early chapter in this novel.

  EDITOR’S NOTE: British spelling and punctuation standards have been retained in Ms. Charnock’s story.

  ***

  Don’t say bottle babies, Rudy tells himself, though he fears the slang is already imprinted.

  Simone sits in the control seat as always. The car turns into the grounds of the clinic and scrunches along the gravel drive, making Rudy feel anxious on Simone’s account. They sweep through a forested perimeter and emerge to see a glass block of a building.