by Chris Ward
‘Let’s see if we can coax it out,’ he said.
He made his way carefully up over the rocks, stepping over pools of bubbling snowmelt, and around clusters of tightly packed rocks, any number of which hid tight crevasses ready to trap his feet.
The dark beneath the ice cave was impenetrable. Naotoshi ordered the spotlight switched off with a quick off-screen chopping motion. With the filter on, whatever awful fake creature the crew had hidden up here might at least pass as real.
As he approached, he waited for a man in a bear suit to jump out on him.
‘Well,’ he told the camera, turning back and wrinkling his nose. ‘I think we might have discovered his most recent meal.’
They crept closer, until the overhang of the ice bridge was above their heads. Still no attack, but he could see something now, something lying on the ground in the gloom just up ahead.
‘What the hell is … that?’ Naotoshi leaned over and retched, the sight and smell of what looked like a headless dog overwhelming him. He turned and staggered back out of the ice cave, just as a roar came from above him, and something crashed down through the overhanging ice.
It wasn’t a man in a bear suit. It was a man wearing the skin of a recently slaughtered and gutted black bear. It stank, and as it landed beside him, it began to flail wildly. Chunks of half-melted ice fell around it as its fur-clad arms and legs ripped and scratched at the shingly ground.
The cameraman—perhaps on cue—screamed, ‘Kill it!’
‘Help me!’ came a muffled voice that the camera’s inbuilt boom would send directly into six million households across Japan; proof that either Himalayan Yetis had not only learned to speak, but spoke Japanese with a thick Osaka accent.
‘Get away,’ Naotoshi screamed, shoving the camera aside in one last desperate attempt to save his career, but it was too late. The final shot that the camera caught before the lens hit a rock and shattered, was one that would appear the following morning on national newspapers across the country, of a filthy, desperate face peering out of a fold of skin in the neck of the dead bear.
Sealed into the suit by other members of the team hiding out of shot on the other side of the ice bridge, the poor intern in the suit charged with dropping down on Naotoshi before running off into the dark, had begun to panic when Naotoshi paused longer than expected at the corpse of the dog. The ice had suddenly given way, sending him sprawling to the ground, the heavy skin of the bear’s face blocking the air hole cut into the neck.
Naotoshi never learned the intern’s name. Like the rest of the crew—and even the production staff, most of whom pleaded innocent until after retirement, when the revelations could no longer hurt their careers—he had simply moved on to other projects, laughed about ‘that silly time on Monster Hunter’, and carved himself a workable career.
Within three years, when his money began to run out, Naotoshi found himself working in a convenience store under an assumed name.
In the 1980s his career made a mini revival, but only as an object of ridicule on variety shows. For a while he was even part of a popular comedy segment on one NHK show, where hip pop stars of the day would show up dressed as mythical creatures and scare the hell out of him while he went about his daily chores. Filmed on hidden camera, the popularity began to wane as increasingly sinister costumes were required to gauge the same reaction. Once again, Naotoshi drifted away into obscurity.
With the birth of the Internet, he began to rise once more, hosting a website dedicated to myths and legends around the world, where monster hunters from across the globe could post supposed pictures of sasquatches and Loch Ness monsters, thought-to-be extinct animals and even supposed UFOs. The forums were a snake pit of snarky comments and ridicule, but the ads revenue was enough to fund a few overseas trips where Naotoshi got back to his old love, hunting the origins of legendary creatures, something he wisely kept off-screen.
And so he had come to Heigel.
A little way further down the slope Naotoshi found water, a small pool made by a natural spring bubbling out of the hillside and running into the dry riverbed, which was wider here. He washed the gore from the exploded birdman off his clothes and headed back upslope towards the tunnel entrance, feeling a mixture of disgust and despair. He felt sick by what had happened, but disappointed by what he had discovered.
The monster had been a creation of labs and science rather than nature. Naotoshi had always dealt with the natural world, but now he knew what he was up against.
With his camera back in his bag, he sat on a rock and stared down at what remained of the birdman.
There wasn’t much. There were a few pieces of wing left—some kind of durable plastic tarpaulin strung between carbon rods and controlled by a series of minute mechanical levers and pulleys. There were a few wires that had once threaded their way throughout the man’s body like a fibrous exoskeleton, but that was all. Picking through the mess with a stick, Naotoshi had found no sign of any complex computer equipment.
Naotoshi had already made too many mistakes, and he wasn’t keen on making any more. He was lucky to have escaped with his life, but now he was contemplating going into the castle unarmed, up against a possible army of birdmen and their devilish creator. The odds weren’t good.
Perhaps I should just head back to town and—
A child’s scream broke the casual stillness of the forest. Naotoshi jerked around, looking for the source of the sound.
There, further upslope, heading towards him, the sound of running feet.
The child’s cry came again, and then, a few seconds after, something more hideous, a squawking sound that chilled Naotoshi’s bones.
He began to run towards the sound as fast as his tired legs would let him. He pulled a fallen branch out of the undergrowth and used it to hack the foliage out of his path, aware that it was a sorry excuse for a weapon.
As he climbed out of a steep bowl carved by ancient groundwater in the lee of three huge trees, he saw her: a young girl, perhaps under ten, racing through the undergrowth. Not far behind her came another birdman, moving with a slight limp, as if it had fallen somewhere.
‘Over here!’ Naotoshi shouted, using his native Japanese before he could think to use a more likely-to-be-understood English.
To his surprise the girl looked up and turned in his direction. As she bolted downslope towards him he saw she was Asian, slightly built, but with a beautiful oval face now contorted into an expression of terror.
The girl had perhaps decided that any human was safer than what was following her, and as she reached him, Naotoshi grabbed her and shoved her down to the ground out of sight. The creature, losing her among the trees, rushed on past them, heading away downslope.
‘Quickly, this way,’ Naotoshi said, pulling her up and pushing her in front of him. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. I just killed one of those things.’
‘Mummy!’ the girl screamed, and Naotoshi just sighed, not wanting to think about what might have happened to the girl’s mother.
‘We have to hurry,’ he said. ‘It could come back at any moment.’
A screech from further down in the forest confirmed his assumption. He turned to look down through the trees and saw it running back up. As the girl screamed again, Naotoshi pointed through the trees towards the clearing.
‘See that hole? Get in there and stay there. Whatever you do, and whatever happens to me, don’t let it see you.’
‘Don’t leave me.’
As they reached the clearing, Naotoshi felt the weight of the camera in his bag and sighed. What a fitting end this might prove to be, but there was no time to set the camera up. But what did it really matter? At least if he died to protect the girl he would go out doing something worthwhile. Perhaps in time he would be remembered for that.
The girl had already crawled under the roots as Naotoshi turned to face the oncoming birdman. As it reached the clearing and squawked into his face, its huge black wings billowed out behind it like gig
antic black curtains. Naotoshi shivered. Could being faced with a true vampire be more terrifying than this? His arms and legs were shaking. The piece of wood in his hands felt made of jelly.
He had killed one of the birdmen already, but that had been plotted and planned. Even then he had almost failed. Now he was out in the open, an old man, against a vicious and terrifying enemy.
He stepped forward and swiped the branch at it, but the creature knocked it aside with one powerful arm. Naotoshi tried to get a hold of its beak, but claws raked his back, knocking him to the ground. Twisting over, he started to crawl away, only to feel bony fingers gripping his shoulder and pulling him upwards.
He waited for the killing blow to come, hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much—
‘Get away!’
The creature released him and he dropped to the ground, rolling over to see the little girl standing defiantly in the middle of the clearing, waving Naotoshi’s branch towards it. With its huge wings billowing out above, leaving the whole clearing in shadow, it was impossible to think of the creature as a man; it resembled a dragon from a nightmare.
‘Leave him alone!’ the girl was shouting, swinging the heavy branch in a slow arc towards the creature’s head. With consummate ease one clawed hand plucked the branch out of her grip and flung it away.
As the girl turned to run, claws took hold of her shoulders and pulled her close against its body, the wings wrapping around her to form a kind of cradle, lifting her up.
For a brief second the creature stared down at the frightened girl as if it was a child it had once known.
(he remembers. Oh god, the man inside that thing remembers)
Then it lifted its beak and screeched up at the sky.
‘Let her go.’
The birdman ignored him, turning back towards the hollow under the tree.
Naotoshi pushed himself to his feet as the birdman headed for the hollow with the girl struggling in its arms. The creature was tall and strong, but the hollow was tight for someone carrying a hostage. Naotoshi started to run after them, then noticed his camera bag lying on the ground not far from the cave entrance. The camera and his other equipment had spilled out, and the strap of the bag had been stretched out during his fall. Lying there on the ground, it looked rather like a noose….
As the creature bent to enter the hollow, Naotoshi ran forward and snatched up his bag, leaping up on to the cascading mass of roots. He dropped the strap down through a hole into the path of the creature, looping it over the birdman’s head.
As the strap went taut, Naotoshi pulled backwards with all his might, twisting it around his wrists to jam the birdman’s head against the underside of the mesh of roots. The girl jumped free and disappeared into the dark, but with its wings wrapped around the front of its body, the birdman was unable to free its arms to cut through the strap held tight across its throat.
It took several minutes to die. By the time it finally gasped its last, Naotoshi’s strength had gone. He slumped to the ground beside the dead birdman, sweat soaking his body, his head spinning from the exertion. It was a couple of minutes before his heart began to slow and he could even push himself up, still gasping for breath.
The birdman lay dead beside him, a black lump. Naotoshi looked around for the girl, but she was nowhere to be found. He shouted for her, but she didn’t answer. She had not run back past him, so she had to be inside the tunnel.
Danger led that way. On his own he didn’t care, but he ought to take the child back to the town and safety before he went any further.
She couldn’t have gone far.
He crawled past the dead birdman and found himself in a tunnel lit only by the light from the clearing. It immediately began to twist and turn, cutting back on itself through crevasses almost too tight for him to pass, and the light was quickly replaced by an inky blackness.
‘Little girl? Where are you?’ he called. ‘Are you there? Little—’
An explosion shook the tunnel behind him. In his desperation to find the girl, he had forgotten what had happened to the first birdman. The second had self-destructed, its body perhaps using a timer based on body temperature or blood flow. He hadn’t even thought to pull it out of the entrance, and as he doubled back he found the tunnel blocked by debris.
Angry with himself, he turned to follow the girl but something in his trouser pocket jagged into his leg as it caught on the tight rock. It was the smaller of his pocket computers. As he pulled it out and switched it on, he gasped as the dim screen light lit up the face of the little girl standing just a few feet in front of him.
‘Oh, there you are.’
She smiled and stepped forward, reaching out to take his hand. ‘Thank you for saving me,’ she said, forcing a weak smile. ‘Come on. I think it’s this way.’
34
Hope and hopelessness
Ludvic the forest ranger sat in a corner of the dungeon cell, his knees crossed in front of him and his back against the cold stone, the chill of hundreds of years of misery sinking into his bones. He ached from bruises all over his body, from teeth loose in his mouth, and eyes puffy and sore. Even worse than the beating though, was that he felt utterly miserable.
After birdmen had surrounded the whole group in the lower part of the castle and thrown them indiscriminately into the cell, the tourists, upon realising Ludvic had led them into a trap, had unleashed a surprising level of fury which he had felt too ashamed to fight off. Content to soak up their barrage until they tired, he now sat ostracised on one side of the cell while the rest of the group—six old women and four old men—sat together on the other, talking in quiet voices.
‘I had no choice,’ he whispered over and over, but even if the Japanese could understand him, he didn’t think they cared.
With the only light in the room coming from a dim orange bulb enclosed in a wire mesh frame, he had no idea of the passing of time. It had been just before lunchtime when they began their arduous climb up through the tight, twisting tunnels beneath the castle, but as he frequently dozed off and woke again, hours could have passed, with the nervous chatter of the Japanese tourists the only constant.
The sound of a key rattling in the lock was so jarring it stilled the tourists’ chatter and made Ludvic lift his head.
A birdman stepped into the room. ‘Come,’ the creature said in a sharp, gravelly voice.
Ludvic stood up and walked towards the door, aware of the eyes of the tourists on him. He couldn’t look back at them, so he followed the birdman out and stood obediently while the creature locked the cell door again. The birdmen hadn’t bothered to shackle Ludvic, and for a few brief seconds he considered taking the creature on, but there were others waiting back down in the shadows: one, two, three or more, their spindly bodies shifting shadows in the dark, like giant bats hiding in a cave. He might be able to beat one, but there was nowhere to run and the others would be on him in seconds.
‘This way.’
The birdman led him down a dim corridor and up a flight of stairs. Ludvic had been inside Heigel Castle a hundred times, but he had never seen these lower levels. No doubt blocked off from tourist view, the dirty-smelling, miserable dungeons were a stark, unwelcome opposite to the bright and vibrant chambers in the higher part of the castle. Now, with the castle under the control of the man who called himself Kurou, they had been reverted to their original use. Several times the groans of distant suffering had echoed through the corridors, and Ludvic wondered if he would soon be joining those miserable prisoners, whoever they were.
The birdman led him into a room with a single chair in the centre.
‘Sit.’
Ludvic briefly considered using the chair as a weapon, then decided against doing anything foolhardy and did as the creature instructed. As he sat there, the birdman walked in a circle around him, its arms folded, looking for everything like a military interrogator, were it not for the protruding beak and the hands that were too long and hooked to be human.
‘My nam
e Maaak.’
‘Mark?’
‘Maaak.’
‘Okay, Maaak. What do you want?’
‘Romanian I speak. I from Budapest. Saved from streets of Budapest.’
The conversation had already begun to feel surreal. ‘I’m pleased for you, Maaak. What do you want?’
The birdman suddenly turned on him, beak pushing close to Ludvic’s cheeks, Maaak’s eyes alongside Ludvic’s own. ‘How many tourists on bus?’
Ludvic frowned, then did a quick count of the people he remembered from the cell, those who had attacked him.
‘Ten,’ he said.
Maaak slapped him across the face. ‘No. Eleven. You fool. Master angry.’
‘It wasn’t my fault!’
‘Your fault.’ Maaak slapped him again, this time harder, enough to knock Ludvic onto the floor. As he sat up, his face stinging from a blow far harder than such a lithe figure should have been capable of delivering, Maaak leaned close again. ‘Your punishment. Soon decided.’
The interrogation was apparently over. Ludvic was made to stand, and Maaak took him back to the cell, shoving him inside and locking the door again.
As Ludvic took up his position in the corner again, one of the Japanese started asking him questions in broken English.
‘What … they want?’
Ludvic, who hated speaking English unless there was money involved, just shrugged. ‘Someone escaped,’ he said.
The Japanese began to talk amongst themselves, and Ludvic frowned as their chatter began to build into a frenzy of excitement. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember the group before they entered the tunnel, trying to think past the fear that had gripped him with the disguised birdman standing at the back, beside… beside a sour-faced old man who had disappeared into the trees shortly before they went into the tunnel.