by Chris Ward
She started to cry. What he wanted to do was so senseless, but … he was right. She knew how close they were. Calling Jun a brother was Ken flattering himself. Ken was more like a surrogate father, and he had always blamed himself for Akane’s death, even though nothing had been his fault.
‘I can’t support you in this, Ken,’ she said. ‘I can’t give you my blessing and I can’t tell you that it’s the right thing to do. But I won’t try to stop you.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll be fine, I promise. We all will.’
Nozomi was sleeping in an adjoining bedroom. Karin sat on the bed while Ken went in to say goodbye, whispering soft words that she couldn’t hear. When he came back out she stood up and gave him a short bow.
‘Come back to us,’ she said.
‘I will. I love you both.’
Then he picked up a bag he had already packed from beside the door and was gone.
Karin stared at the back of the door for a long time, feeling the sadness building up inside her like water filling up a well. She had to be strong for Nozomi, but she was so, so afraid for Ken. She had a terrible knot in her stomach that told her she would never see him again.
The minibus had stopped outside the hotel’s main entrance. Seven of Jennie’s remaining fourteen guests, including both of the young couples, were packing their suitcases into the bus’s luggage compartment. A handful of other hotel guests had also taken the opportunity to get the hell out of Heigel, and Jennie stood by the hotel door as they finished their loading and climbed up onto the bus. None of them waved. Few of them even looked at her, as if she was the very personification of shame.
None of the staying guests had come out to wave their comrades goodbye. Jennie had heard the mournful murdering of Beatles classics from the karaoke room down the corridor from the restaurant. Some of them were heading for some shocking hangovers tomorrow, as she would be as soon as her last duty was done for the night.
The minibus trundled off, taking its cargo of disappointed tourists back to Bucharest. She hoped that they might salvage something worthwhile from the wreckage of their holiday, even though she felt nothing but a cold numbness permeating her heart.
Hey Jennie, I bet you’ve been waiting for me to email, haven’t you? I hope you’re having a great time over in Europe or Asia or wherever the hell your cheap whore ass has found itself. I just wanted you to know that there’s no hard feelings. You’d kind of run out of gas for me a long time ago, but I kept you along for the ride because, you know, you weren’t a bad sort really. A little boring, but who isn’t sometimes? Anyway, I thought I’d better tell you that I finally had enough of that bastard little dog of yours. I had it put down, but I didn’t have time to take it to a vet so I used a hammer. I hope you won’t mind.
And just in case you don’t believe, me, I have attached a picture.
All my love,
Brianxxx
She hadn’t wanted to open the attachment. It had to be a joke, surely it had to be a joke. He wasn’t that cruel.
It wasn’t a joke.
As the lights of the minibus disappeared up the road outside the hotel, Jennie turned from the door and stumbled off into the dark. She didn’t want to be around people, didn’t want to be around the kind of creatures that could hurt her poor little dog. She’d already drunk all the little bottles she had found in her mini-bar fridge, but had somehow managed to keep herself together long enough to see off the guests. The minibus had been barely a blur in front of her eyes, but now they were gone there was no stopping her. She stumbled into the first bar she came to on the small tourist strip and bought a bottle of wine to take away. The bartender warned her about the curfew that was in place, and she told him with her sweetest smile that she was heading straight back to her room.
She turned down the first alley she came too, intentionally walking away from any lights and buildings, seeking out only the darkness. She swigged from the bottle until she choked and vomited up half her dinner. Then she wiped her mouth and started again.
She reached the edge of the forest before she really started to cry. Once she was under the trees she screamed Pogo’s name at the top of her voice, expelling her misery like a vicious wind.
She finished the wine and threw the bottle away, stumbling to her knees as a thick root pulled her feet out from under her. She crawled along the damp, musty ground, wishing she had the nerve to kill herself, half wishing whatever had killed all those wolves would just appear and do it for her.
‘Come on!’ she screamed. ‘Come on! I’m waiting for you!’
And then she heard it: a rustling in the trees above her head, like something leaping from branch to branch.
She froze, her words cut off her in throat.
(I didn’t mean it oh god I didn’t mean it)
An earsplitting squawk cut through the forest. Jennie clamped a hand over her mouth to stop herself screaming. She smelt damp moss on her palm, felt sweat dribbling down from her brow even though it was only a few degrees above freezing. Her heart thundered in her chest as loud as a tribal drum.
The branches of the trees rustled again, this time directly overhead.
(what a fool I’ve been)
Jennie shoved herself to her feet and began to run, sprinting as hard as she could through the trees, travelling almost blind, the crooked tree trunks barely more than thicker lumps of shadow. Behind her she heard the rustle of leaves again and a thud as something landed on the forest floor and began to give chase.
When she slammed into a tree the wine buzzing through her head took away a lot of the pain, but the impact still knocked her to the ground, rolled her onto her back, and sent waves of dizziness rushing through her head. She groaned and tried to sit up, only to feel rather than see something drop to the ground beside her, a hand snaking out to cover her mouth and drag her backwards.
She tried to scream, but the fingers were strong and held her tight. They dragged her towards the base of the nearest tree, and a thousand thoughts rushed through her head, a catalogue of every stupid thing she had ever done, with running drunkenly into a forest while a murderer was on the loose flashing like a neon beacon at the top. She closed her eyes, waiting to die, when a voice whispered in her ear, ‘Quiet, it’s coming back.’
She couldn’t have asked the stranger who he was even if she wanted to; his hand was still clamped tightly over her mouth. It smelt lightly of iron and was hard, the palms calloused from some sort of physical work.
Then the world exploded into orange fire and something spindly and cowled and birdlike was screaming as flames rushed across its clothes and into its grotesque face, a composition of human hair and eyes over a huge, curved crow’s beak that seemed fused into its flesh. It howled and fell away, rolling through the undergrowth as it beat at the fire chewing up its body. The sound was a mixture of human and bird, like a man screaming through a voice filter. Jennie squeezed her eyes shut and clamped her hands over her eyes to try to shut it out.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ her rescuer said, pulling her backwards. She didn’t resist, just let him half drag, half carry her back through the trees. How he knew where he was going she couldn’t tell, but to her the blackness was near impenetrable.
Then something hard was under her feet and she recognised the cobbles of a path, undergrowth whipping at her knees as she stumbled along at the man’s shoulder, one strong arm around her, pulling her forward.
A creak and then a door opened, followed by a thud as it swung shut. A grating squeal as a bolt slid across.
They were inside something. She smelt damp and moss, but the night sounds of the forest, and particularly that terrible wailing of the creature that had attacked them, were gone.
She heard the fizz of a striking match, and then a small glow appeared. The man became a real silhouette rather than just a shadow, then a real man rather than a silhouette as he pushed the match into an oil lamp and the small, low-ceilinged room filled with a dim light.
He was young, pe
rhaps just a year or two older than her. And even more surprising, he was Japanese.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘You’re safe now.’
In her terror the effects of the wine had almost worn off. His face wavered, but when she concentrated, it eased into focus. ‘Thank you,’ she gasped.
He smiled. It was a kind face, angular, almost femininely beautiful, but there was a tortured look to his eyes.
‘No problem. What were you doing out in the woods? Just a little foolhardy, don’t you think?’
She nodded, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t … thinking.’ She looked up at him. ‘Thank you again. I don’t know what that thing was, but you saved me. Who are you?’
He smiled again. ‘My name is Jun Matsumoto,’ he said.
14
A devil comes to Heigel
‘What was that thing?’
Jun shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I saw enough of it to know it wasn’t the man I’m looking for, but it was something evil, that’s for sure.’ He shrugged. ‘And it was close enough. He’s here, I know it.’
Jennie sipped on the cup of water Jun had given her. ‘What was that thing you shot it with?’
Jun smiled. ‘It was a distress flare. One saved my life once. I guess I have an attachment to them. I carry one with me wherever I go.’
‘Did you kill it?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll go back for another look in the morning. I don’t think it was expecting its victim to fight back.’
‘I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.’
He shrugged. ‘But you’re not. That’s all you need to care about.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No problem. What the hell were you doing out in the woods at this time of night anyway?’
Jennie shrugged. In the light of the lamp, Jun saw her blush. ‘Man trouble.’
Jun laughed. ‘As good a reason as any, I suppose. It must have been pretty bad.’
‘If we’re still alive in the morning I might tell you.’
Jun nodded. ‘Don’t worry, we will be.’ He waved a hand behind him. This is a bear hunter’s hut. It’s built pretty solidly out of stone so unless those things have superhuman powers … we’re probably safe. You weren’t the only one stupid enough to be wandering around in the forest after dark, but I guess I got lucky enough for the both of us.’
Jun pulled a pair of goggles off his head and held them out to her. ‘These are night vision,’ he said. ‘I went out to have a look around. I’d probably be dead except that thing was hunting you, not me. I managed to surprise it.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Wow, you’re quite the hunter. I might be forgiven for thinking you were looking for that thing. Where did you get these?’
He smiled. ‘On the Internet, where else? And I’m not some monster hunter, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s a little bit more complicated than that.’
‘What?’
‘If we’re still alive in the morning I might tell you.’
It was her turn to smile. ‘My name’s Jennie Nakajima, by the way. I’m a tour guide.’
He held out a hand, and when she took it he felt a little tremble in her arm.
The small single-room hut was furnished with a bed tucked up against one wall, and a table and chairs. There were a couple of cupboards stocked with a few dishes and some cutlery, as well as a first aid kit. Jun had been forced to break a padlock to get in, and feared that whoever owned the hut might show up without warning and not take too kindly to his unexpected occupancy. He felt bad about it, but when the other choice had been to stay out in the woods with whatever was making those hideous bird noises it had been an easy decision.
‘You should try and get some sleep,’ Jun said. ‘I’ll keep watch.’
‘I’m not sure I could,’ Jennie said, but as the words left her mouth her head lolled. With the adrenalin fading, her weariness and the effect of the wine were regaining control.
Jun helped her across to the bed. He laid a clean blanket down over the old mattress and within moments she had curled up and fallen asleep. Jun covered her with another blanket and went back to the table. He opened his bag and surveyed his possessions.
It was a pretty pitiful collection. He had one more flare, the goggles, a Swiss Army knife, a rape alarm, and a small square box that when activated emitted a frequency of sound that was beyond the range of human hearing. He had no idea why he had it, but when looking for tools that might help him if he ever found Professor Crow again he’d gone for stuff that he could carry across borders. He bought a new penknife in every airport or border town that Plastic Black Butterfly passed through, but it was a massive hassle.
He pulled open the penknife and began sharpening the blade on a small whetstone he had found in a cupboard. He tried not to think about Akane, but it was impossible. Feeling a sudden bloom of anger, he stabbed the blade of the knife down into the tabletop.
I’m coming for you, Crow. I’m coming for you, and they’ll be no getting away this time.
Andreas Lucas switched off the light behind the bar, did his last checks, and then headed for the door. With the curfew it had been hardly worth staying open, but in Romania the police were ignored at best and ridiculed at worst. Half of his regular customers had shown up as usual and drunk enough for a full house, almost on principle. Then there had been that drunk Japanese girl who’d come in for some wine. He had wished she had stuck around—it was rare for women to come to his little hole-in-the-wall, and the regulars would have like it—but he hoped she had made it back to the hotel safely in any case. He didn’t believe any of the crap about crazy killers on the loose leaving dead wolves everywhere. Old Gretel had got it, but she’d been over seventy, a bit of a local nutter, and close to the end anyway. She’d probably been thieving vegetables out of someone’s garden and crossed paths with a hungry bear. It was rare, but it happened.
He pulled the shutters down and locked the front door, then headed for home. Nestled beneath the imposing bluff that held up Heigel Castle like the Earth offering a gift to God, the town of Heigel was pretty much just two main streets running parallel to each other with several smaller streets intersecting them. One street contained the tourist shops and bars, the other was for the locals. One end of the local’s street headed up through the forest and around the outside of the bluff to eventually come to the castle’s approach road, while the other one headed south back through the Carpathian foothills towards Bucharest to the north-east.
His own humble cottage was tucked in at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac just a few hundred metres from where the bluff jutted out of the ground. He was lucky in some ways that the bluff stood to the north of the town. In summer he got pretty decent sunlight all day long, but in winter the sun barely rose above the imposing rock wall, pretty much leaving his cottage and those around him in shadow for three months straight. It was unfortunate, but as a result it was cheap. In the winter he just made sure to open the bar early.
He was walking back down the main street, away from the single hotel and the handful of tourist shops, now all shut up for the night, when he heard a wretched wailing sound. He turned back towards it and felt a sudden chill of horror pass through him.
A man was sprinting down the street, completely engulfed in flame, holding his arms high above his head as though he were a marathon runner approaching the finish tape. Only when the man got nearly level with Andreas did he realise that it wasn’t a man at all, but some kind of bird, its hands hooked into talons, its face a large, hooked beak seemingly attached to a skinless human skull.
Andreas backed away into an alleyway as the creature passed him, dropping to his knees to make the sign of the cross across his chest. He had never much cared for religion, but if there was a God that could make such a hideous creature blink out of existence then he would gladly offer his allegiance.
A single word fell from his lips like a droplet of blood:
‘Devil….’
Naotoshi gave a
bitter grin as he glared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He’d quickly tired of the silly fun and games that were going on downstairs in the karaoke room, and returned to his sorry excuse of a hotel room to get some rest. Tomorrow was a big day. In the aftermath of the tour falling apart they’d signed up for a forest tour with that clown of a forest ranger Ludvic, a man Noatoshi knew would spin them yarn after yarn while showing them nothing of much interest. Still, if it got them closer to the castle maybe Naotoshi could find his own way in, the tour be damned. He had waited a long time for this.
He went to the window and pulled the curtains wide. His room was on the fourth floor, by request away from most of the other guests in his tour group, with an exceptional view of the bluff to the north of the town and Heigel Castle perched on top of it.
In the morning he had enjoyed the way the sun’s orange hue had made the castle glow as though it were about to combust, but now it was just a dark silhouette against a starry, moonlit sky.
Closed for renovations, what a joke. Naotoshi would have every single person involved with this scam of a tour standing in the queue at Hello Work before he was done. He didn’t really blame the “Tart with the Heart” who was leading them; after all, every tour company dumped someone with a decent face at the head of each group regardless of whether they possessed anything more than a rotten cabbage between their ears. Something about her whole blasé attitude to everything gave him a sour taste in his mouth. He had worked hard all his life without ever getting a break; he resented someone getting well paid just because they had an easy smile and a certain kind of charm.
Up on the bluff, a light blinked on and off in one of the castle’s tower rooms. Naotoshi frowned. It was almost midnight; the castle was supposedly closed for renovations, but what kind of builder—especially in a country filled with layabouts like Romania—would still be there at this time?