The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters (25 page)

Fuminari let out a beast-like growl in response to the last sentence. Everyone turned to look at him. He was biting into his lips, his whole frame trembling. “This is it!” He stood up and slammed his fist onto the table, his giant frame shuddering. “This is what I saw!” His eyes burned like wild fire. The expression was terrifying, the kind that makes a person avert their gaze.

“So this supposedly will be carried out on 3rd August?” Biku asked.

“And I know where.” Fuminari’s voice was unnerving, a subterranean rumbling. Ryoko turned to look at him. His eyes were bloodshot, streaked red. “The Tanzawa mountains,” he spat the words, snarling. He looked like a man possessed.

Thirteen

Chaos at the Dark Ritual

1

The sun was already low, dipping close to the ridge of the mountains.

The sky was still bright, but the surface of the man-made reservoir between the mountain walls was already veiled under a thin darkness. They were at Lake Tanzawa.

The lake had formed when the Miho dam was erected to block the meandering course of the Kawauchi River that flowed through the deep heartlands of Tanzawa. The lake’s borders stretched over three valleys, tracing the lines of the rivers Yozuku, Nakagawa and Kurokura as they flowed into the dam. A Land Cruiser raced along a bridge strung above the water’s surface. The vehicle’s headlights shone through the mountain air, bouncing off the asphalt as they cut lines in the deepening darkness. Tetsuo Shimizu sat behind the wheel. Senkichi Fuminari was in the passenger seat, his vast frame taking up almost all of the available space around it. Biku and Hosuke Kumon were in the rear. They had come around forty kilometers since leaving the Tomei Expressway at the Oi-Matsuda interchange. After clearing the bridge, the Land Cruiser took a left and immediately entered a tunnel. The road snaked parallel to the Yozuku River, leading towards Asase.

Fuminari’s eyes were fixed ahead and heavy. His mouth was shut tight, thick arms folded together. His huge chest rose and fell under them, in time with his soft breathing. He was watching the gradual encroach of the darkness. With it, he saw a mix of images, all from what he had witnessed in the dead of night at Nishi-Tanzawa. The wash of naked couples fucking in the firelight, the chorus of their lusty moans. The incense that reached down a person’s core and sucked out every base desire. The stench of blood. He could still hear the woman upturned on the cross, screaming as her heart was being hacked out. The ritual had been vile, beyond the realm of imagination.

Among the religions of ancient India, there was a group that came to be known as the Samvara. The ritual Fuminari had witnessed originated within this particular group, although the details had been a grotesque deformation of the original format. The word ‘Samvara’ is Sanskrit, sometimes translated as ‘ultimate pleasure’. Other translations include ‘forbidden,’ or ‘religious discipline’. Fuminari had internalized it all. He had studied every scrap of material Shimizu had collected.

Samvara, the peak of sexual pleasure, the joining with the universe. The Rishu Sutra explains the pleasures of sexual experience as being ‘equal to [that of being] a Bodhisattva.’ The word is synonymous with ‘ultimate pleasure’. India’s Samvara religions are essentially forms of Tantric Buddhism. Tantric Buddhism, an occult religion that follows the left-hand path. What, then, are religions that follow the left-hand path? Such religions are symbolized in the goddess Kali, wife of Shiva the malevolent creator of Hinduism, venerating a sexual energy referred to as ‘Shakti.’ This energy is also known as ‘Kundalini’ and symbolized by a snake; it is said to exist within every living, evolving organism.

Left-hand path religions are built around the core belief that sexual pleasure awakens the power of Kundalini within us, therefore enabling the development of an elevated state of consciousness. A known example of Samvara religion in Japan is the Tachikawa School, established by the priest Ninkan towards the end of the Heian Period as a tributary of Shingon Buddhism. The Tachikawa School believes that enlightenment can be achieved through the intoning of Shingon sutra while consummating sexual union; the school’s focal points of worship are skulls on which they paint their own sexual fluids, employing 128 individual brushstrokes. The Rishu Sutra is one of the central texts of the Tachikawa School.

How were such rituals carried out in ancient India? A witch-like group of women known as the ‘Dakini’ are known to have performed a central role in the tantric rituals of the Samvara religions. One such ritual, named the Secret Rite of Heruka’s Descent, was held in places distant from population centers; mountains, caves, forests, confluence points of rivers, temples, abandoned ruins; locus points of ‘ringa’ (sexual energy) together with the ‘sumasana’, mass cemeteries outside of villages, usually located deep in forested land. The sumasana were a scattering ground for bodies, littered with bones bleached white from the sun. Sometimes bodies that had died from disease or execution were burned, often they were just left to rot. Some of the bodies would be left half-burned, others would be missing heads or their limbs. At nightfall, the graveyards would glow with an eerie phosphorescence, bringing animals to feast on the remains. Perhaps the ghost-like forms of Rakshasa or Vetala would have kept company among such beasts. These sumasana were a natural fit for the Secret Rite of Heruka’s Descent. A Samvara sutra known as the the Jnana Siddhi reads as follows:

Followers of the True Way of Samvara must consume red meats, first dried then fused with the Heart of Bodhisattva [male and female sexual fluids] and swilled in large quantities of water [blood]. They must eat the meat of humans, horses, cows and elephants in order to free themselves from blind discrimination and obtain the Siddhi of truth. Kill all creatures born into the Sanu [this world, the world of the dead, the world that is neither]. Steal the riches of others. Speak in lies and deceit. Such deeds cause the masses to burn in terrible hell, yet they shall bring enlightenment to the yogi [follower]. By achieving unity with the divine Upaya, the yogi profits society and for this the yogi is absolved of all crimes which the same society may accuse. Nothing exists of evil once [the devout] achieves the unification of Prajna and Upaya.

Outside of the five meats outlined in the sutra, there is another well-known grouping of five, those of the five nectars. The nectars are said to consist of five fluids excreted by the human body: urine, feces, phlegm, mucous, and menstrual blood. The sutra instructs that the path to enlightenment is opened through the ingesting of these nectars and the carrying out of frequent acts of evil; the very same acts that would result in a layman being cast into hell. The sutra goes as far as endorsing incest with one’s mother, sister(s), and/or daughter(s).

The ritual would begin on the tenth evening of the crescent moon. The yogi would travel along dark roads with the women that formed the Dakini until they reached the open clearing of a sumasana. There would already be a gathering at the clearing, a mass of people creating an endless cacophony of sound using cymbals, gongs, and drums of all types and sizes. The noise would excite the crowds as they reveled in drink, song and dance. Eventually, a signal would be made and a single man would emerge from the throng--the Ajari, or high priest.

The Ajari’s body would be frosted white, covered in the ashes of bodies burned at the sumasana. His hair would contain decorations fashioned from human skulls and he would bear a necklace of human bones. He would begin to draw in the ground, using a mixture of cow manure and fluids drained from the temples of elephants in heat; later he would add a second layer of manure, this time mixed with human ashes and samples of the five nectars. In this way, the Ajari would cover the grounds of the clearing with a series of rectangular divisions. These divisions would occasionally be decorated with viscera, removed from the dead bodies strewn around the grounds. The Ajari thus created the framework of a mandala, sectioned into twenty-five rectangular segments. At the center of the mandala was a single rectangle in the middle of which the Ajari would paint an outline of an eight-leafed lotus flower to represent Heruka’s throne. A naked male and female couple would filter into each square, then begin to engage in intercourse. In total, there would be twenty-five Dakini and twenty-five Yogi.

Each couple that was part of the living mandala would then rotate partners, moving in sympathy with the movement of the constellations. This circular movement was known as the ‘samsara'. The samsara--the Buddhist cycle of life and death.

2

Fuminari realized that his body had tensed all over.

His muscles had pulled tight without him knowing. He tried to relax, rid himself of the tension; he focused on the sensation of blood flowing through his veins, hot and enveloping like boiling water. The tires of the Land Cruiser were no longer running over asphalt. The path now was rough, jagged with exposed rock. Thick belts of summer grass rose ahead of the car, flashing by in the headlights. Having passed through Asase, the Land Cruiser had made a right turn and entered a narrow, tree-lined mountain road.

It looked like the road was still in occasional use. The edges of the road had visible wheel marks while the center, untouched by tires, was a straight line of grass. The Land Cruiser continued forwards, its bumper pushing the tall grasses flat as though scooping them into its underbelly. The road was too rough for any normal car to pass. Street cars rode too low, their underside would be cut up by the jagged edges of exposed rock. They were flanked on either side by dark mountains that looked like giant beasts backing towards them, beckoning Fuminari into a crushing embrace.

Someone was snoring directly behind him, Hosuke Kumon. It was as though the man had no concept of nerves. Fuminari knew he would be sleeping like a child, his mouth hanging open; he knew it without having to turn around. Biku would be next to him, wearing his usual cool expression. Fuminari fancied that there might even be traces of a smile on the man’s woman-like, crimson lips. He had no intention of making the effort to turn around and check, of course. Even if he did, it would be too dark to make out their expressions. His back could sense it well enough.

The hour was deepening, slowly making the transition from evening to night. Yet the narrow road winding through the valley was already dark. Dense pockets of towering cedars lined either side of the road. The sound of running water slithered between the cycling boom of the diesel engine, through the darkness down and off to the right. A mountain stream was flowing just beyond the cedar-packed slopes. There was a powerful stink of foliage, carried on the air as it blew through the open window, sap from the grasses, from the trees and leaves dissolving into the air.

The wind was a continual stream against Fuminari’s cheeks. Now and then the tires of the vehicle would squeeze the sap from something on the road, causing the scent of foliage to ramp into an unusually powerful stench. Fuminari recognized the smell as that of human blood. Not real blood, he knew, but the smell blood had become inexorably linked with the scent of sweating flora in his imagination. He noticed that his body had tensed again. His muscles contracting without his notice.

“Fuck!”

He bit his lips together and embraced the energy, tensing harder still, as though putting himself in a stranglehold. The spaces between his muscles vented hot air as they contracted, releasing a stifling heat that warped the air as it billowed out from his frame. He felt an irresistible force threatening to boil over, welling up from somewhere deep inside him. Ghostly secretions of pain seared through his left hand.

The Land Cruiser had stopped. The mountain road ended directly before them. The deep roar of the diesel engine died away, causing an unexpected quiet to descend over them. The silence felt oppressive, a constricting force spewed from the guts of the surrounding mountains. Cedar branches rustled in the darkness above.

“This is the place,” Fuminari grunted as he opened the door and hauled his huge frame out of the car. The valley was tightly compressed this deep into it. The area around them formed a small clearing, with barely enough space to turn the Land Cruiser around. It felt like they had reached the mountain’s stomach after it had ingested them. Even now, Fuminari expected the thick undergrowth to spray them with sticky gastric juice. He saw that the stars were out. The remaining three followed him out of the car; Shimizu, Biku, then Hosuke. They were all in the same clothes, black and designed for the mountains.

“How far from here?” Biku called out.

“Two, maybe two and a half hours. If we need to, we could probably make it in an hour and a half. Depends on you guys.” Fuminari threw Biku and Hosuke an evaluating glance. He was tempted to test them, really find out just how good they were. The urge was there, to go as fast as he could, to get them out of breath, to see how long they could keep up. But he realized he had no idea of how it might go. He was confident in his strength and in his knowledge of the mountain. At the same time, he suspected there was a real possibility that he might be the first to break. He was burning to find out. But he wouldn’t try it now. Now was not the time.

“We’ll leave the pacing to you,” Hosuke said flatly. His eyes were tinged with mysterious flashes of energy visible in the darkness. It was as though a feral energy, like a wild animal’s, was permeating through him.

Shimizu opened the vehicle’s trunk and took out some headlamps together with some smallish backpacks. The packs contained the bare minimum of equipment they would need for hiking through the mountains at night. The other three men walked over to him.

“I don’t need a pack,” Fuminari growled, taking a headlamp. “These will do.” He held two large mountain knives in his huge hands. He attached the leather sheaves to the belt around his waist and pulled one of the knives out, bouncing it between his hands a few times. It was clear that he was skilled in their use.