The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters (50 page)

Darkness flooded in to reclaim space from the headlights. The dark forest seemed to push back, compress around the chassis as a heavy silence came down around the vehicle. A wind gusted through the upper-levels of the trees, yet the rustling of the branches seemed only to heighten the sense of quiet. It was like being submerged at the bottom of the ocean.

The driver-side door opened and a man got out. He was in black trousers and a black shirt. He alighted the vehicle and stood on the grass, his motions smooth and completely lacking in waste—graceful. It was Biku.

The passenger door opened and another man got out. He was shockingly large, in jeans and a khaki shirt. The shirt was big, but it could not hide the bulk of the man’s muscle. His body exuded an energy matching that of the darkness itself. His build was heavy, but he moved with incredible economy. It was Senkichi Fuminari. He was not alone. There was a woman slung over his shoulder, an elderly woman—Renobo. She wore one of Ryoko’s dresses, laughing quietly to herself. There was a crossbow over Fuminari’s other shoulder.

The dark forest air was ripe with the pungent stench of vegetation. The smell was like sweat, something wrenched from the bowels of the flora. The two men closed their doors. They shared a glance and, without breaking silence, began to walk.

Their plans were already made. Fuminari led while Biku followed from behind. The forest floor rose in a gentle slope. They trekked through undergrowth scattered with hidden rocks, root colonies and fallen trees, always heading upwards. The two men displayed an easy familiarity for the terrain, using only torchlight to progress as they might if they were strolling over flat ground.

They were in an area of the forest located about one and a half kilometers from Kurogosho’s residence. Soon they would have to kill their lights. Then, they would have only moonlight to guide them. The ground was dotted with purple bellflower and columbine. Their trousers grew heavy from the knees downwards, becoming sodden as they walked through the dewy grass.

They came to a stop around half a kilometer from the residence. It was already decided that Biku would scout ahead while Fuminari hung back with Renobo.

Biku had memorized the building plan inside-out. The residence was surrounded by a wall of two-meters plus. Kukai’s
sokushinbutsu
was in a room on the first-level basement, near the southern-gate. Biku would first survey the outside and confirm that the exterior was in line with the schematics. Then, he would trace a full circle and confirm the positioning of any guards. Given the chance, he would climb the wall and venture into the grounds themselves. Biku hoped he might be able to get to Kukai, but neither of them believed it would be that easy. At the very least, he wanted to confirm that Kukai was still there. That was their goal for the night. Fuminari’s bulk meant that Biku was better suited for stealth. Biku suspected that Hosuke Kumon might be somewhere inside. He hoped he might make contact.

They had no intention of storming the building to kill everyone on sight. When the time came, they might benefit from an extra two or three to their number, but two was enough for their current goal. Anyone else would only slow them down. And they had Renobo, insurance for if anything went wrong. There were places where they might have left her, but doing so brought the risk of Panshigaru finding out, particularly if Biku had to contact his colleagues to drop her off. They were dealing with people that had no difficulty in breaking into his apartment and abducting Yuko. They might have already infiltrated the people he was likely to contact.

Having lost Shimizu, Biku had decided it was best to bring Renobo along. She would be a hostage if things heated up, and they could always just kill her if the situation demanded it. The wind was blowing stronger now. At the forest floor, nothing much had changed, but higher up the branches of the beech trees had begun to sway.

There it is
.

Biku stopped dead. Fuminari stopped with him, noticing it too.

“Can you sense that?” Biku asked softly. He flicked his head-lamp off.

“Yeah,” Fuminari answered, killing his light.

“This is it…” Biku muttered.

Something similar had happened two years previously, when Hanko had pursued Fuminari across the Tanzawa mountains. Fuminari had sensed the beast’s aura and asked Kumiko if she could feel it. She told him she couldn’t, but that his behavior made it clear they were being followed. The thing they sensed now, however, was not tracking them. The forest itself was bristling with extraordinary energy. The darkness was frayed and prickly, as though pumped with electricity. The energy felt dense and heavy, pooling in discrete pockets.

“This is the same as outside Mt. Koya’s Inner Sanctuary,” Biku said.
Kukai was there after all
. His eyes lit up. Yet, it felt slightly overcharged. Lacking the signature calm of the sensation at Mt. Koya.

It was waking up.

The two men continued without torchlight. With each step, the feeling grew in strength. It felt like entering a cloud, vertically-stacked and swollen with preternatural energy. More than just an aura, the feeling was becoming an atmospheric dissonance. The hair on Fuminari’s arms stood on end. Renobo’s laughter shifted up a pitch.

Fuminari was the next to stop.

He could see something in the undergrowth ahead; a coiled, black, fog-like thing. It vanished each time he tried to look at it, like it had never been there. Then it came back each time he looked away, even when he shifted his gaze by only a fraction. There was clearly something there, and it was moving. It seemed to resemble human hair. It was crawling over the grass, advancing towards them on number of vaguely-defined, spidery legs. A wrinkled, monkey-like face appeared inside it, eyes flashing open for a moment before the creature shivered and faded away.

“What the fuck?” Fuminari exclaimed.

“The miasma, it appears to be congealing,” Biku commented.

Biku’s face appeared to be floating, a pale shape in the darkness. He started to walk again. As they continued they saw another of the hair-like things, then another. One hung suspended in the air, perfectly still despite the wind.

“Something is stirring,” Biku said.

But what?

Renobo’s laughter had become even more shrill. Fuminari pulled her down from his shoulder and covered her mouth with his hand. A lizard with a human face was crawling over his cheek.

5

Hosuke was sat around the dining table with Kurogosho, Enoh and Katsuragi.

They had just finished eating. Mugs of coffee steamed on the table before them.

“So, how about it?” Hosuke asked Kurogosho.

“How about what?” Kurogosho fixed his eyes on Hosuke.

“Yesterday’s proposal. Will you join me when I dive into Kukai tonight?”

“After seeing the marks on your back today, the idea seems a little…”

“Scary?”

“Indeed.”

“You’re afraid. At the same time, you’re interested—right, old man?”

“Quite.”

“So how about it? I got those marks ‘cause I fucked up. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

“And what was the nature of your mistake?”

“I tripped over something and woke it up. Things would have been fine otherwise.”

“Is that so?” Kurogosho peered at Enoh and Katsuragi.

“The risk is, I believe, twofold,” Enoh began.

“Go on.”

“The first risk pertains to Kukai. Only Hosuke knows what happened in there. The danger may be greater than he suggests.”

“And the second?”

“...exists if Hosuke is being duplicitous.” Enoh turned to Hosuke.

“I’ve got nothing to hide man…”

“I wonder.”

“Listen—even if I did have something up my sleeve, it wouldn’t help me get out of this place. I’ll be unconscious on the Psyche Converter bed. The moment I try to pull something you kill me. Think I plan to stage a lovers’ suicide with this old crony?”

“Your reasoning is plausible.”

“Hah!”

“What are you planning? The plausibility feeds my suspicion.”

“Tell me…what did you see in there?” Kurogosho asked.

“I saw a passageway,” Hosuke replied.

“A passageway?”

“Yeah, a passageway. I don’t have another word for it. Wherever Kukai went—the other side, nirvana, heaven, whatever—his mind would have left a passageway. A kind of trail behind it. If we follow it, it will take us to where he is.”

“And what are these haunts?”

“I don’t really know. I can guess though, based on what I’ve seen.”

“Please.”

“After Kukai crossed over, an energy came to inhabit the passageway.”

“An energy?”

“The same as the one around Mt. Koya. There was always a magnetism to Kukai’s
sokushinbutsu
. A quality, that collects energy from around it. Enoh, you have probably noticed this.”

“I have.”

“For over a thousand years, huge numbers of people arrive to offer worship to Kukai. Do you understand the significance of this? Why do you think those people would chose to visit Kukai?”

“Ah, of course,” Enoh nodded.

“That’s right,” Hosuke’s lips curled. “They come to get all their shit off their chests, transfer it into Kukai.”

Kurogosho, Enoh and Katsuragi all glared, wide-eyed at Hosuke.

“So over a thousand-plus years, all that shit grows a will of its own. That’s what those monsters are inside of Kukai. Nothing that approaches consciousness, not even instinct. They’re something altogether more primal—a manifestation of human excess that only exists to consume.”

“Huh,” Enoh grunted.

“Their original form was pure energy, the stuff trapped in the corners of houses, out there in the mountains. That’s in the beginning
.
But the stuff in Kukai has been slathered time and again with the dregs of confession and greed. It’s become distorted beyond recognition.” Hosuke peered up at Kurogosho. “That’s my personal take on the things, of course.”

“And to reach Kukai, we must slip past these creatures while they sleep?”

“Exactly. Chances like this don’t come up too often. You could bear witness to Kukai’s immortality. I seem to remember you saying you were ready to die, old man, if it were necessary to achieve immortality. If the marks on my back scare you, fair enough. Well…” Hosuke gave Kurogosho a testing look, “how about it?”

Just then, someone knocked at the door.

“What is it?” Enoh asked.

“It’s Hanko and Jakou’in. They are missing.” A male voice spoke out from behind the door.

6

A virgin forest of birch, beech and maple extends away from the larch trees surrounding Lake Megami.

The forest floor is covered in a dense layer of undergrowth, mostly bamboo grass, criss-crossed with occasional fallen trees, fertile ground for thick colonies of moss. A shadow was crouched now, boulder-like, concealed in the darkness beneath one of these trees. It was the dead of night. The wind howled like an agitated spirit, ringing through the branches of the surrounding woods. A couple of falling leaves landed on the dark form. It remained still. Completely unmoving like this, the form could have been a rock—but this was no rock.

This was a man—Senkichi Fuminari. He breathed in silence, calibrating each inhalation. His right shoulder was pressed against the tree, in his arms he held a woman—Renobo. Although it was more accurate to call her Miwa Ishibashi. They had forced her into a black dress. Where her skin was visible it was grotesque and covered with endless wrinkles. As she was now, Renobo was an elderly woman in her eighties. Her true age was somewhere in her early seventies, but she appeared a decade older. This was the woman’s true form.

Only her teeth remained perfectly white, appearing unpleasantly false. Her skin had lost its previous vitality and luster, retaining only her abnormal pallor. Her breathing was light, a tiny flute-like sound. Fuminari had his thick left arm around her neck, tensing from behind. Her right hand was over his groin, massaging him from over his trousers. Her long, narrow eyes still carried a hint of the Renobo of old.

Fuminari’s upper body was covered in khaki. His intense focus banished any lusty impulses that might have come from Renobo’s hand between his legs. He had two knives on his waist, a crossbow at his feet. Biku had gone on ahead to survey the inside the residence. The residence—the palatial building that was home to Kurogosho. Fuminari was located somewhere behind it.

Biku’s Land Cruiser was a kilometer back through the woods. They had made the initial climb in the vehicle, then walked the remaining distance. Renobo had given them details of the building’s interior; these were copied onto the map Fuminari had with him now.

“Fuminari,” Renobo said, her voice frail. “Do you really believe the two of you can take us on?” Her voice was broken.

Fuminari said nothing.

“Let me suck you off, right now,” she said.

“Pipe down,” Fuminari answered.

“I can make you
hard
…”

“Look, shut the fuck up or I’ll smash your teeth in and rip those fucking lips off.”

Renobo fell silent but her hand kept moving.

Fuminari listened to the wind. He sucked in air, it was full of the stench of grass. As always, it reminded him of blood. He let the thought linger for a moment. There was a sound, something faint. Not too close, not far away. Footsteps on the grass, parting the undergrowth, coming gradually closer. The sound carried a weight to it—whatever it was it had bulk to rival Fuminari’s own. He felt a cold rush of excitement run down his spine.

No fucking way…

He tensed, his entire frame stiffened.

A spark of baleful energy sliced through the air, gone in an instant. Through the darkness, the thing had come to a halt. It had noticed him, just as he had noticed it.

“Make a sound and you die,” Fuminari whispered into Renobo’s ear.

He turned to face where the footsteps had stopped, concealing his aura. He heard the rustle of the wind. There was, he remembered, a waning moon in the sky. But the light was too weak to reach the forest bed. The dark trees blended with the night before him.