Dark Lanterns Read online

  *

  Masa heard someone's voice calling him, but he was busy killing the girl. It was Kyoko's voice; his wife's voice. The large double bed had split into two smaller twin beds, and Kyoko was asleep in the other one.

  No, She was not fully asleep. As Masa turned his head, he noticed her eyes glint like chips of liquid crystal.

  Regardless, he couldn't leave what he had started. The girl's wrists were tied, but she was not yet cuffed to the bed. Her full mouth was breaking into a grin wider and wider beneath her closed eyes, as if she were resisting the temptation to laugh. Masa couldn't breathe; the excitement swelled up inside him like a fist clenching itself in his chest.

  Nobody's going to find me, he thought. It was important not to forget that, and to remember the night sky - stop the traffic. Stop the traffic, for the prices that never seem to change, never change in the world where you DREAM-

  Twisting his head to one side, he saw Kyoko had left the bed and was standing up. In her underwear, pulling on one of her habitual Mild Seven and letting the smoke escape like steam. Masa got up from the bed to defend himself, and realized both beds were now empty. Where had the girl gone? Through his confusion, he heard the sound of the toilet flush. Oh, there. She'd be back in a moment to get killed.

  "You can see the lights above the waterfalls -"

  Kyoko faced him, her mouth set in a flat line of resolution, the eyes reflecting a hatred that he never knew existed. "I will never forget this," she said in a low monotone.

  Masa woke up screaming. He was back in the same hotel room, and the girl tied up next to him was still dead.

  *

  Masa raised his head and turned away from the shrine, breathing in air reeking with the animal stench of sex, his eyes linking with the eyes of the girl standing in front of him.

  She was completely unlike Kyoko. She was taller, big-breasted, round-faced, the fullness of her lips the same crimson color as the shrine torii gate. Her hair was permed, and short, set back from her forehead with a headband. The tight cocktail dress beneath her fur jacket balanced well with her pumps, and the black velvet choker around her neck.

  Masa's throat was too dry for him to speak. The girl's lips moved, but no sound came out. They stared at each other in the intimate ring of silence within the shrine of Inari the Fox Goddess.

  *

  Masa awoke, and he was still in the hotel room. He sat up and gingerly slid off the edge of the bed, standing and stretching, turning to look upon his handiwork. The girl was silent and still in repose. An arrangement of ikebana, or a haiku, perhaps - a form defined by its restrictions. Her beauty was defined by its immobility, its stillness.

  Its perfection.

  The arrangement of her arms and legs as he had placed and tied them were in harmony, free from the motion and panic of the coming dawn. It was, Masa noted with a flush of sexual excitement, still breathtakingly beautiful.

  *

  In the organic neon heart of Tokyo, in the area between the Bunkamura complex and Shibuya station, lay what used to be the decadent area of Maruyamacho. In an era now beyond human memory, girls in kimonos holding wax paper parasols would wait in the foyer of the inns and taverns, waiting for their master's patronage.

  The presence of the girls, their whitened faces and their fashionably blackened teeth still lingered. They lingered in the hanging scrolls placed in the dozens of Love Hotels sheltered in the side alleys leading off the Dogenzaka street. Like a concubine hiding her smile behind her elegant paper fan, the essence of Marumayacho hid itself behind a veil, the coquettish Love Hotels hiding themselves from the department stores, the restaurants, the everyday boutiques, nestling in the messy knot of alleys between the Dogenzaka street and the Bunkamura complex.

  Here, the ornate facades of the Love Hotels betrayed the grand, deluded dreams of the owners and patrons, their elaborate follies imitating the grandeur of Renaissance Italy, of ancient Egypt, of the Sun King's Versailles, or the translucent paper doors behind bamboo groves recalling a vanished Japan. Delinquent fantasies turning themselves away from the public gaze, like flowers that bloomed only at night, secrets that revealed themselves only to the lost, the curious ... or those who knew what they were searching for.

  Doors to the Love Hotels lay down cellar steps, up grand staircases, through arches of carved plastic flowers, behind cunningly automated waterfalls. The legend REST OR STAY always glowed beside the door, and the prices always remained unchanged, heedless of economic trivia. Commonly, deep in the night, an extra hieroglyphic flickered into life above the others, reflecting the fact that the hotel had room for no more fantasies: FULL.

  Among the Love Hotels, among the jumbled collection of architectural conceits breathing warm, invisible heat into the blue sub-tropical night, rested the tiny shrine of Inari - the Fox Goddess.

  It was situated near the intersection of two alleyways, set back from the sidewalk in a deep recess. Masa stood before it, his eyes taking in the stark crimson geometry of the carved torii gate framing the shrine, the same crimson painted upon the patient jaws of the stone fox statues that guarded the entrance. He withdrew the package in his rucksack and slowly unwrapped the cakes of inari-zushi, sugared rice wrapped in bean-curd, taking care that none slipped from his trembling hands. Placing the cakes as offerings before the main altar, below the fringe of twisted sasaki fiber and hand-written paper charms, Masa pulled two sticks of incense from his bag and lit them, sinking them into a small pot of sand on the altar, their heavy, oily smell spreading out into an October night already saturated with smells metallic, rancid and animal.

  Masa put the palms of his hands together and bent forward, into the position of prayer. He whispered the incantation he had memorized. He concentrated, his lips moving, until he lost track of how many moments had passed.

  When he opened his eyes, he could sense a change, a slight but unmistakable variation in the temperature of the steamed air. He turned his head, aware of his surroundings once more.

  The girl was standing behind him.

  *

  The world ended for Masa as suddenly as it had begun. He opened his eyes, shocked by the apocalyptic roar of the voice that woke him, his body shaken by the rough hands that gripped his shoulders, fingernails scratching through the loose fabric of his clothes. "You bastard," the voice screamed, "You've killed her! You've killed her!"

  Masa was back in the hotel room. The girl handcuffed to the bed was still dead. The door was in pieces, and a uniformed policeman was venting his rage by kicking the fragmented door out of its frame, the sledgehammer lying on the floor nearby.

  The second unformed policeman, was leaning over Masa, alternately pushing him back on the bed and then pulling him up. The policeman's face filled Masa's vision, the lips pulled back in disgust, as he roared out accusations again and again. As Masa feebly put up his hands in a pathetic gesture, he stared at the flared nostrils, the stained teeth, the sallow, pockmarked skin of the face that continued to shout accusations at an almost incomprehensible speed.

  "This isn't real," Masa croaked. "It's still part of the dream ..."

  "Dream? You're going to wish you were still dreaming!" The cop stepped back, pulling Masa off the bed and bringing him to his feet. Masa swayed against the cop, struggling for balance, his legs weak as if he hadn't used them for days. The cop roughly shook off the hands that reached out for support.

  "Look at this," the cop called across to his fellow officer. "Look at this pervert here. He took this poor girl to a Love Hotel - probably been stalking her for a few days, then had a few drinks to a bar, I wouldn't be surprised if he slipped something into her glass, eh? Then he brought her here and did this. When he finished, he curled up beside her and went to sleep. Like he's just done a good day's work. You know they have cameras here, don't you? Making movies on the side? It's common knowledge. Look at your handiwork!" The cop gripped Masa's chin and thrust his head forward, towards the bed and the figure that lay there. "You did this! Are you prou
d? Was it good for you, pervert?"

  Masa knew the girl's figure well enough, In the dream, he had memorized the position of her limbs, the silent, pleading expression on her face. It was just as he had remembered it.

  "She's not real," he mumbled, through the fingers clenched around his jaw. "She's a fox. Let me go. She's not dead, because she's not real."

  "She's a fox." Masa felt the grip on him weaken, and he was released, swung round slightly to face the cop who ad held him.

  The cop was only little taller than Masa himself, the fabric of his uniform stretched across his powerful arms and shoulders. The narrow eyes were shaded by the peak of the officer's cap as his gaze screwed itself into Masa's appearance. The face, a composition in bad skin and clenched muscles, was not a face that could know love, Masa thought. It was a face uniquely fitted for punishment.

  "You said she's a fox," he repeated.

  "Yes. Yes, she is."

  He breathed heavily, a thin sound of air squeezing itself in and out. "Sato!" he called.

  "Yes, sir."

  "I think I heard someone outside. Go and check the corridor again."

  "Yes, sir."

  The cop left, without questioning. It occurred to Masa, through his rising panic, that it looked like a well-practiced drill. The officer facing Masa regarded him blankly, his chest rising and falling slowly with each breath.

  "Get on your knees," the officer hissed.

  Masa shook his head numbly.

  "Get on your knees!" the officer roared, his hands lashing out to box Masa's ears. He then grabbed fistfuls of Masa's thick, sweat-matted hair, twisting it, forcing him down to kneel on the carpet.

  "You thought you were screwing a ghost," the officer said in a surprisingly low voice, almost a whisper. "A fox spirit. Is that it?"

  "Yes. I did. I know it's insane."

  "So are you insane?"

  Masa did not reply.

  "I know what you are," the officer hissed. "You've wasted your life in pursuit of some fantasy. You had this corruption, this virus inside you, and you knew it. You knew that you weren't like other people, like normal people; oh no. You wanted to kill someone. You couldn't get rid of the urge; it just grew, and grew."

  "Yes," Masa whispered back. It felt good, somehow, to have it all reaching an end. "Then I met someone in a bar in Kabukicho. An old man who told me about the Hotel. The Hotel with no name, owned by the foxes. He said that if you get inside, you can do anything you want, because none of it's real." Masa licked his lips.

  "So you paid your dues, and you got yourself an invitation." The cop straightened up. "This old guy ... who was he?'

  Masa trembled; it was cold in the room. Reality was cold. "I can't tell you."

  "His name!"

  "I can't tell you!" Masa yelled, tears boiling up in his eyes. "If I do, the foxes will kill me, and I'll be their slave in the spirit world. Forever!"

  "Is that so."

  There was the sound of a button popping open. The smell of leather and metal.

  "I'm going to tell you what happened," the officer continued in a cool, even voice. "You became violent, and then attacked me." He walked slowly around Masa, taking his time, his shoes sinking into the carpet without a sound. "You tried to take the gun from me, and you had the strength of someone ... possessed." His voice broke into a chuckle. "In the struggle, the gun went off."

  Masa felt his throat close in on itself. He shut his eyes, the last image he saw the bland anonymity of the policeman's uniform, a wall of drab navy blue.

  "So you refuse to give me the name?"

  "Yes."

  "What do you want, pervert?" The cop said, almost gently. "What do you really want?"

  "I want to stop feeling like this," Masa whispered.

  The gunshot was surprisingly distant, echoing around him like a truck backfiring. Masa reeled, falling forwards onto his face, his hands grazing themselves against not the fur of the carpet but stone, opening his eyes and seeing sidewalk, feeling the sudden rush of stark daylight, noise and cool air surrounding him, a world that had sprung into sudden activity out of the cloistered silence.

  The next sound was the pumping of a truck's air-horn, as Masa reared his head to stare at a radiator grill, the front of a truck emblazoned with a delivery company logo, the driver within the cab cursing and gesturing for Masa to get out of the way.

  He got to his feet and stumbled to the side of the road. The truck went on its way with an impatient sigh of airbrakes. Putting his hand to a nearby wall to steady himself, Masa recognized the building as one of the Love Hotels he had walked past.

  On his way to...

  With ...

  He rubbed his eyes, his face, feeling the growth of one long night's stubble, aware of a clamoring dryness in his throat. The smell of raw garbage wafted from an overfilled collection point.

  In the morning haze, the cruel laughter of the crows filled the sky, the Love Hotel's architectural conceits drab and forlorn in the cool sunrise. At the corner of Masa's vision, a flicker of movement - an animal, turning its back, a bushy tail. It might have been a cat, a stray dog.

  As Masa turned to see who or what had been watching him, the animal ducked around the side of a building and was gone.

  "Listen," Kaori said in a conspiratorial voice. "Do you really want to know the future?"

  Across the restaurant table, Ritsuko's throat tightened in anticipation. Kaori leaned forward through a cloud of menthol-tinged cigarette smoke, the shades of her make-up deepening in the discreet half-light.

  "In one of my astrology magazines, I found this really interesting form of fortune-telling. It's one of the oldest there is — and it's so simple."

  In the slight pause that followed as Kaori lit up another Kool, the other girls Mio and Miyoko, making up the four at the lunch table, chorused their need to know more. Ritsuko breathed in sharply, taking in the menthol, the fragrance of the red wine, the faintly scented candle smoke.

  She glanced around, without turning her head. The almost entirely female clientele of the Queen Alice restaurant sat in various poses of contentment, picking thoughtfully at their food, nodding their heads together in dignified conversation. Ritsuko was one of them. She knew that now. The exclusive and very expensive Queen Alice was about to reveal its secrets.

  "This form of fortune-telling," Kaori went on, "is called tsuji-ura. All you need to do is walk out one night, or daytime, on a busy street, and just walk down it. You listen to what the people around you, the passers-by, are saying. You piece together fragments of conversation, taken completely at random, and put them together in your mind like pearls on a string. You will eventually acquire ... vision, the article said."

  Mio and Miyoko reclined in their seats with respectful murmurs of interest.

  Ritsuko tried not to frown. Was that it? How could you foresee your own future from the chance comments of perfect strangers? It seemed — well, pointless was far too impolite for it.

  However, Kaori seemed to know what she was talking about. She subscribed to a half a dozen astrology magazines. The designer boutique where Kaori worked, on the Omote-sando, was close to the store where she bought her healing crystals and her aromatherapy oils. (Ritsuko knew it cost a lot of money to find your spiritual side. Just like everything else.)

  Her friend talked more of the techniques that she had found, accentuating her speech with waving her fingers and fluttering of long, artificial eyelashes. Offering rice cakes to a rod placed in a pot of soil. Prayers addressed to the Kami of the Crossroads. How the Kanji of the verb "to tell" was similar to that of an old-fashioned boxwood comb.

  Ritsuko leaned back in her seat, pushing away the remnants of the exquisite chicken-and-wasabi set lunch. She took out another Kool, took a couple of puffs to get the taste, and carefully crushed it out in the ashtray. Around her, the beautifully dressed customers seemed to be nodding in agreement. Yes, they were saying, you should listen to Kaori. It's important.

  "And that's how you
find the name of your true love," Kaori finished.

  "Then it's a shame Ritsuko's married," Mio said slowly.

  "And with such a cute, loveable child," Miyoko added.

  Her child.

  Ritsuko paid the bill for the four of them, to show how much she appreciated their coming, even though her friends made a noisy show of protesting. They bustled out into the crisp November air, all promising to meet again soon.

  "Give our regards to your husband!" Mio called.

  Ritsuko cursed the train as she ran, her high heels striking the platform like gunshots, trying to push herself and her shopping bags into the crowded interior just as the doors hissed shut. She squeezed herself on with a muttered "sumimasen" to everyone in general, pulling her shopping bags in so they didn't get caught in the door. Alighting at last in Denenchofu, she picked up a taxi at the taxi rank and began the last stage of her journey home — the small detached house she shared with her husband and child.

  Baby's all right, she said to herself, in the taxi. Baby's all right.

  But all the time she felt a growing sourness, a dryness spoiling the aftertaste of the gourmet cuisine. Why should she be made to feel like this? Why couldn't she enjoy her precious time alone with her friends?

  She heard the noise from outside the front door and dashed in, awkwardly pulling off her boots in the genkan. There, in the bedroom, lay her wailing baby, crimson with discomfort, lying helpless in its own misery.

  "There, there," she said, kneeling down to pick the baby up, trying to smother its screaming with her breasts.

  Baby's face was so hot she could feel it glowing through her Versace dress. "There, there. Mommy's here now."