The Sword of Kuromori

Poyo unclamped his jaws from the biker and sniffed the air. His eyes grew wide and he bounded over to Kiyomi, whimpering. She picked bloodied, matted hair out of her eyes and pulled herself up on to the bike.

The creature released its lips from the now-still biker and leered up at Kenny, who was rooted to the spot. Blood dribbled down its chin and it began slithering towards him.

‘Run!’ Kiyomi yelled.

Kenny sprinted to her, hurdling the fallen bikers who lay groaning on the ground.

The creature reared up again. Its coat flapped open and Kenny glimpsed rippling coils covered with tiny scales.

‘What is that thing?’ he said, scrambling up beside Kiyomi.

‘Nure-onna,’ she said, wobbling on to the bike. ‘Bad news. Let’s go.’

‘What, and just leave those guys here for its dessert? We can’t do that.’

‘OK, it was just an idea.’ Kiyomi groaned and reached down into a side panel. ‘Here,’ she said, withdrawing a can of Pringles.

‘You’re going to eat crisps now ?’ Kenny said.

Kiyomi pressed her thumb against the end of the can; the fingerprint reader bleeped and it popped open.

‘Whatever you’re doing, can you hurry it up?’ Kenny said. ‘That thing’s getting closer.’

The nure-onna slithered over the three bikers and advanced towards Kiyomi and Kenny. The scritching sound of its scales on the asphalt set Kenny’s teeth on edge.

‘Aim for the head,’ Kiyomi said, handing Kenny the contents of the Pringles can: a short sword in a scabbard as long as his forearm.

‘This? You want me to fight that thing with this – this pocketknife?’ Kenny said, pulling out the blade halfway. It was exquisite, brightly polished, with Japanese lettering engraved on it.

‘Well, duh,’ Kiyomi said, putting her hand to her head and pulling it away, sticky and red. ‘Look, it’s your idea to stay and fight. I’ve got blood in my eyes and I’m seeing two of everything, otherwise . . .’

‘All right, all right,’ Kenny said, moving away from the bike. ‘But I’ll take any help you can give.’

The forked tongue licked at the air. Kenny backed away and the nure-onna closed in. He clutched the wooden scabbard tightly in one hand and gripped the short sword in the other.

‘Uh, you,’ he said. ‘Freaky snake-woman thing. You probably can’t underst–’

‘I know who you are, Kuromori-child,’ it hissed.

Kenny froze. The awful serpentine voice had sounded inside his head; its lips hadn’t moved.

‘And I know why you are here . . . but you will not succeed. A thousand starving yurei cry out for vengeance. You will not stand in their way.’

The nure-onna slithered closer, swaying as the snake body undulated beneath the raincoat. Kenny held his ground, trying not to look at the beady eyes, the long wicked fangs or the flickering tongue. He glanced into McDonald’s, through the windows behind the creature, but no one seemed to have noticed anything unusual happening in the car park. He was on his own.

Turning and running seemed a good idea, but the nure-onna was almost upon him. ‘Kiyomi . . . now would be a good time to do something . . .’ he muttered.

‘Poyo! Kame!’ Kiyomi said.

The tanuki shot across the car park like a guided missile and sank his sharp little teeth into the creature’s tail. It shrieked and in that instant Kenny rammed the scabbard into its open mouth, forcing the wooden case down the open gullet. The nure-onna gagged and Kenny whipped the blade across its neck, slicing through flesh. A startled expression stayed on the nure-onna’s face as its head bounced across the ground and the body flopped at Kenny’s feet, writhing and churning.

Poyo spat out a chunk of tail and retched in disgust, trying to dislodge the taste. He leapt back, startled, as the body crumbled to a fine dust.

Kenny lifted the raincoat with the point of the sword, but it was empty. He wiped the blade on the coat, picked up the scabbard, slotted the sword home and handed it back to Kiyomi. She started up the motorcycle and the engine hummed softly.

‘Come on, we should go,’ she said, scooping up Poyo. ‘One dead biker is going to attract attention. Or are you still going it alone?’

Kenny took in the scene around him: three wounded bikers lay moaning on the ground; one was still; the empty raincoat flapped; and the fine dust eddied away. ‘That thing, it was after me, wasn’t it? These guys just got in the way.’

‘Something like that, yes.’

‘And there are more . . . things out there too? More of them after me?’

Kiyomi nodded, her lips pressed tightly together.

‘OK, I’ll come back with you. You’re very persuasive,’ Kenny said and he climbed on to the motorcycle behind her. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘look at the trouble you get into when I’m not around.’

Kiyomi elbowed him, hard, and then opened the throttle, pulling out of the car park so fast that Kenny had to fling his arms round her waist to keep from falling off.

‘Oww!’ Kiyomi said, squirming away from the huge servant’s grip as he applied antiseptic to the cut on her head.

‘Oyama used to do sumo,’ Harashima said, as if this explained everything. He was pacing the floor in front of the screen covering the TV monitors.

‘So who were those guys, the ones who jumped you in the car park?’ Kenny said, putting down his hot chocolate and pinching his nose to stifle a yawn.

Kiyomi’s face twisted in disgust. ‘Bosozoku,’ she said. ‘A biker gang.’ She glanced up at her father, whose face remained impassive. ‘I got into a race with one of them a while back, beat him easily. He said I’d cheated and wanted my bike as payment. Fat chance.’

Kenny nodded. ‘So they were waiting for you?’

‘Yeah, bunch of cowards. I could have handled them if they hadn’t snuck up on me.’ Kiyomi touched her scalp, felt the broken skin and pulled her hair back down to cover it. ‘Feels like a taiko drummer inside my head, but I’ll live,’ she said. ‘You did pretty well, though. Where’d you learn to fight like that?’

Kenny turned away. ‘You don’t spend seven years getting shunted from one boarding school to another without learning how to defend yourself.’ He was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Plus, my grandad taught me a few moves last summer.’

Kiyomi tilted her head to appraise him. ‘You were lucky. You have poor technique, no balance. If those guys could fight properly, you’d be mincemeat.’

Oyama cleared the medical kit from the table, bowed and left.

Kenny waited for someone to say something, but both Kiyomi and her father seemed comfortable with the silence.

‘Sir?’ Kenny said, when he could stand it no more.

Harashima inclined his head to acknowledge him.

‘I came back, like you wanted, right? So, what happens now? I mean, you must have a plan, to stop this thing. How’s it going to happen? How are all those people going to die?’

After a long pause, Harashima replied, ‘I don’t know . . . exactly.’

‘Then what do you know? If I’m supposed to help you, I need to know what I’m being asked to do.’

Harashima nodded. ‘You are right, Kuromori-san. You deserve answers and you will have them, only not now. You are exhausted. You have had a long and . . . eventful day, with much to take in. You will rest now and in the morning you shall have answers. Is that acceptable?’

Kenny yawned a huge jaw-splitting yawn that made his face hurt. ‘OK. I’m too tired to argue.’

‘Oyama will show you to your room.’

The huge servant returned and motioned for Kenny to follow him.

‘As for you, my child, remain where you are,’ Harashima said to Kiyomi, who had been sneaking towards the door. ‘You have some explaining to do.’

Kenny awoke. Light was bleeding into the room through small square windows and he knew he was dreaming. He had always been able to tell when a dream was a dream. ‘Lucid dreaming’ was what scientists called it. Sometimes Kenny was able to influence the outcome of a dream, but not tonight.

He was lying on a camp bed in a metal hut with corrugated-steel walls that curved overhead. The tinny sound of Frank Sinatra crooned from a radio outside. Kenny rolled off the cot, yawned and stretched. He was wearing an olive-drab service uniform with brass buttons.

Outside, under a forbidding grey sky, he saw that he was in an army compound with chain-link fences, barbed wire, jeeps and off-duty soldiers heading out in small groups. The American flag drooped from a pole.

Kenny strolled out through the gate and the contrast couldn’t have been greater. He had crossed into a devastated wasteland where once a city had stood. Rubble from burnt-out homes and shattered roof tiles covered the ground to such an extent that Kenny could not tell where the road was supposed to be. He wandered past hundreds of silent, hollow-eyed Japanese people, huddled in groups, dressed in little more than rags. The luckier ones had fashioned huts from cardboard, rocks and chicken wire. An old man bathed in rainwater collected in an oil drum. A young girl accepted a kiss from a teenage American soldier in return for a Hershey chocolate bar. An elderly man traded a priceless Japanese sword for a bag of flour.

Quiet sobbing carried across the gloom. Kenny listened and followed the sound to the nearby ruins of a house, picking his way through the wreckage. He pulled open the broken door and saw a girl crying inside. She knelt with her back to him, but he could see that her hair was long and black and she was wearing a plain, white kimono.

‘Kiyomi?’ he croaked, his throat dry. ‘Is that you?’

The girl slowly turned towards him and Kenny cried out. She had no face; only a blank, featureless mask, as smooth as eggshell. He backed away, but the ground crumbled beneath him and he felt himself falling, dropping into an endless black void, tumbling over and over.

After what felt like an eternity, he landed with a crash at the bottom of a huge chasm. Kenny gingerly picked himself up, dusted down his fatigues and peered into the gloom. That was when he realised he wasn’t alone. There was something down there with him in the dark. Something huge. Something ancient. Something evil.

Kenny woke with a start. His heart was pounding and his clothes were heavy with sweat. He was lying on a futon but the house was dark and still. He checked his watch, which was still set to Pacific time. 12:23. That meant it was almost four thirty in the morning, local time. The night sky was a pale indigo, heralding the approach of dawn. Kenny sat up and rubbed his face, afraid to go back to sleep. He had never experienced a dream as vivid as this before. It was unnerving, as if his subconscious mind was trying to tell him something – but what?

Six kilometres to the east, in Shinjuku’s skyscraper district, lights burned in the corporate headquarters despite the earliness of the hour. The visitor exited the lift on the sixtieth floor and knocked once on the heavy walnut door.

‘Enter,’ came a voice from within and the visitor hurried inside.

Seated behind a mahogany desk and dressed in a black pinstripe suit was a stocky Japanese man. His thinning hair and sagging jowls placed him near retirement age. He set down the dossier he was reading. ‘Miyamoto-san, it is good of you to come at short notice. What news?’ the older man said.

Miyamoto bowed deeply. ‘Shacho . . . ’ he began, then hesitated. ‘The boy, sir, he got away.’

The older man cocked his head. ‘He . . . escaped? From Sato? How? He must have had help.’

‘He did, sir. Details are as yet unclear, but it would appear that Harashima-san may have been involved.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Two police cars, one truck and two motorcycles were destroyed. We had a road closure for three hours.’

The senior man nodded. ‘Yes, that sounds like Harashima all right.’ He sighed and stood stiffly. ‘Do we know where the boy is now?’

‘He is hidden from us. His being gaijin makes him harder to track.’

The older man dabbed his forehead with a silk handkerchief. ‘What of the boy? Is it true?’

Miyamoto nodded. ‘Sato tested him. He has the Gift of Sight.’

‘And to think we had him in our hands.’

The man shuffled round to a small cage perched on a filing cabinet. Inside, a fluffy, toffee-coloured ball lay curled on the sawdust. ‘The father?’

‘Arrested yesterday afternoon. He doesn’t know anything. He was simply there to meet the boy at the airport.’

The older man reached into the cage and gently lifted out the hamster. It sat up sleepily in his palm. He tickled it beneath the chin and fed it a pumpkin seed. ‘What charges are you holding the father with?’

Miyamoto shrugged. ‘We’ll probably go with possession of drugs. No one ever questions that when it comes to gaijin. We can make it stick.’

The man carried the hamster to a sideboard opposite. A fish tank sat on top, but no water was inside.

‘So, here we are – a few days away and now this boy arrives . . . this boy who can see,’ the older man said.

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ Miyamoto ventured. ‘It doesn’t mean he is the one, does it, sir?’

The man lifted the lid from the fish tank and set it aside. ‘I don’t believe in prophecies,’ he said. ‘You’ve read Macbeth. Prophecies only come true when men act on them. Do nothing and who can say if anything will happen?’

‘But, sir, if there is any chance . . .?’

Something unfurled itself from within the tank, light reflecting from its tiny scales. The man dangled the hamster by one leg.

‘We have the boy’s father,’ he said. ‘Even if, by some miracle, the child is able to retrieve the sword, he will never be allowed to use it.’

There was a flash of movement, a piteous, muffled squeak and the hamster was gone, held in the jaws of the snake, which settled down to digest its meal.

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