A Natural History of Hell: Stories (8 page)

“Get me out of here,” she said in a harsh whisper.

“What’s wrong?” he said and moved quickly to the edge of the bed. She kneeled on the mattress next to him and grabbed his arm tightly with both hands.

“We’ve got to leave,” she said.

He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. It wasn’t perfect anymore. He carefully removed his arm from her grip and checked his watch. “It’s three a.m.,” he said. “You want to leave?”

“I demand you take me out of this place, now.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“Either you take me now or I’ll leave on foot.”

He gave a long sigh and stood up. “I’ll be ready in a minute,” he said. She went across the corridor to her room and gathered her things together.

When they met in the hallway, bags in hand, he asked her, “Do you think I should let Grandmother Chinatsu know we’re leaving?”

“Definitely not,” she said, on the verge of tears. She grabbed him with her free hand and dragged him by the shirtsleeve down the hallway. As they reached the main room of the house, she stopped and looked warily around. “Was it the dog?” he whispered. The coast was apparently clear, for she then dragged him outside, down the porch steps, to the silver car.

“Get in,” he said. “I have to put the top up. It’s too cold to drive with it down.”

“Just hurry,” she said, stowing her overnight bag. She slid into the passenger seat just as the car top was closing . He got in behind the wheel and reached over to latch the top on her side before doing his.

Michi’s window was down and she heard the creaking of planks from the porch. She leaned her head toward her shoulder and looked into the car’s side mirror. There, in the full moonlight, she could see Grandmother Chinatsu and Ono. The old lady was waving and laughing.

“Drive,” she shrieked.

Riku hit the start button, put the car in gear, and they were off into the night, racing down a rutted dirt road at fifty. Once the farmhouse was out of sight, he let up on the gas. “You’ve got to tell me what happened,” he said.

She was shivering. “Get us out of the woods first,” she said. “To a highway.”

“I can’t see a thing, and I don’t remember all the roads,” he said. “We might end up lost.” He drove for more than an hour before he found a road made of asphalt. His car had been brutalized by the crude paths and branches jutting into the roadway. There would be a hundred scratches on his doors. During that entire time, Michi stared ahead through the windshield, breathing rapidly.

“We’re on a main road. Tell me what happened,” he said.

“I got up to use the toilet,” she said. “And I did. But when I stepped back out into the hallway to return, I heard a horrible grunting noise. I swear it sounded like someone was choking Grandmother Chinatsu to death in her room. I moved along the wall to the entrance. The panel was partially open, and there was a light inside. The noise had stopped so I peered in, and there was the shriveled old lady on her hands and knees on the floor, naked. Her forearms were trembling, her face was bright red, and she began croaking. At first I thought she was ill, but then I looked up and realized she was engaged in sexual relations.”

“Grandmother Chinatsu?” he said and laughed. “Who was the unlucky gentleman?”

“That disgusting dog.”

“She was doing it with Ono?”

“I almost vomited,” said Michi. “But I could have dealt with it. The worst thing was Ono saw me peering in and he smiled at me and nodded.”

“Dogs don’t smile,” he said.

“Exactly,” she said. “That place is haunted.”

“Well, I’ll figure out where we are eventually, and we’ll make it back to Numazu by morning. I’m sorry you were so frightened. The field trip seemed a great success until then.”

She took a few deep breaths to calm herself. “Perhaps that was the true spirit of autumn,” she said.

“‘The Story of a Ghost,’” he said.

The silver car sped along in the moonlight. Michi was leaning against the window, her eyes closed. Riku thought he was heading for the coast. He took a tight turn on a narrow mountain road and something suddenly lunged out of the woods at the car. He felt an impact as he swerved, turning back just in time to avoid the drop beyond the lane he’d strayed into.

Michi woke at the impact and said, “What’s happening?”

“I think I grazed a deer back there. I’ve got to pull over and check to see if the car is okay.”

Michi leaned forward and adjusted the rearview mirror so she could look out the back window.

“Too late to see,” he said. “It was a half-mile back.” He eased down on the brake, slowing, and began to edge over toward the shoulder.

“There’s something chasing us,” she said. “I can see it in the moonlight. Keep going. Go faster.”

He downshifted and took his foot off the brake. As he hit the gas, he reached up and moved the mirror out of her grasp so he could see what was following them.

“It’s a dog,” he said. “But it’s the fastest dog I ever saw. I’m doing forty-five and it’s gaining on us.”

They passed through an area where overhanging trees blocked the moon.

“Watch the road,” she said.

When the car moved again into the moonlight, he checked behind them and saw nothing. Then they heard a loud growling. Each searched frantically to see where the noise was coming from. Swerving out of his lane, Riku looked out his side window and down and saw the creature running alongside, the movement of its four legs a blur, its face perfectly human.

“Kuso! Open the glove compartment. There’s a gun in there. Give it to me.”

“A gun?”

“Hurry,” he yelled. She did as he instructed, handing him the sleek nine millimeter. “You were right,” he said. “The place was haunted.” He lowered his side window, switched hands between gun and wheel. Then, steadying himself, he hit the brake. The dog looked up as it sped past the car—a middle-aged woman’s face, bitter, with a terrible underbite and a beauty mark beneath the left eye, riding atop the neck of a mangy gray mutt with a naked tail. As soon as it moved a foot ahead of the car, Riku thrust the gun out the window and fired. The creature suddenly exploded, turning instantly to a shower of salt.

“It had a face,” he said, maneuvering the car out of its skid. “A woman’s face.”

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Please.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Now,” she said, “who is your employer? Why would he send you to such a place?”

“Maybe if I tell you the truth it’ll lift whatever curse we’re under.”

“What is the truth?”

“My employer is a very powerful businessman, and I have heard it said that he is also an onmyoji. You know him. In a moment of weakness he told you a story about an affair he had. Afterward, he worried that you might be inclined to blackmail him. If the story got out, it would be a grave embarrassment for him both at home and at the office. He told me, spend time with her. He wanted me to judge what type of person you are.”

“And if I’m the wrong kind of person?”

“I’m to kill you and make it look like an accident,” he said.

“Are you trying to scare me to death, you and the old woman?”

“No, I swear. I’m as frightened as you are. And I couldn’t harm you. Believe me. I know you would never blackmail him.”

She rested back against the car seat and closed her eyes. She could feel his hand grasp hers. “Do you believe me?” he said. In the instant she opened her eyes, she saw ahead through the windshield two enormous dogs step onto the highway thirty yards in front of the car.

“Watch out,” she screamed. He’d been looking over at her. He hit the brake before even glancing to the windshield. The car locked up and skidded, the headlights illuminating two faces—a man with a thin black mustache and wire-frame glasses, whose mouth was gaping open, and a little girl, chubby, with black bangs, tongue sticking out. On impact, the front of the car crumpled, the air bags deployed, and the horrid dogs burst into salt. The car left the road and came to a stop on the right-hand side, just before the tree line.

Riku remained conscious through the accident. He undid his seatbelt and slid out of the car, brushing glass off his shirt. His forehead had struck the rearview mirror, and there was a gash on his right temple. He heard growling, and, pushing himself away from the car, he headed around to Michi’s side. A small pot-bellied dog with the face of an idiot, sunken eyes, and swollen lower lip was drooling and scratching at Michi’s window. Riku aimed, pulled the trigger, and turned the monstrosity to salt.

He opened the passenger door. Michi was just coming around. He helped her out and leaned her against the car. Bending over, he reached into the glove compartment and found an extra clip for the gun. As he backed out of the car, he heard them coming up the road, a pack of them, speeding through the moonlight, howling and grunting. He grabbed her hand and they made for the tree line.

“Not the woods,” she said and tried to free herself from his grasp.

“No, there’s no place to hide on the road. Come on.”

They fled into the darkness beneath the trees, Riku literally dragging her forward. Low branches whipped their faces and tangled Michi’s hair. Although ruts tripped them, they miraculously never fell. The baying of the beasts sounded only steps behind them, but when he turned and lifted the gun, he saw nothing but night.

Eventually they broke from beneath the trees onto a dirt road. Both were heaving for breath, and neither could run another step. She’d twisted an ankle and was limping. He put one arm around her, to help her along. She was trembling; so was he.

“What are they?” she whispered.

“Jinmenken,” he said.

“Impossible.”

They walked slowly down the road, and, stepping out from beneath the canopy of leaves, the moonlight showed them, a hundred yards off, a dilapidated building with boarded windows.

“I can’t run anymore,” he said. “We’ll go in there and find a place to hide.”

She said nothing.

They stood for a moment on the steps of the place, a concrete structure, some abandoned factory or warehouse, and he tried his cell phone. “No reception,” he said after dialing three times and listening. He flipped to a new screen with his thumb and pressed an app icon. The screen became a flashlight. He turned it forward, held it at arm’s length, and motioned with his head for Michi to get close behind him. With the gun at the ready, they moved slowly through the doorless entrance.

The place was freezing cold and pitch black. As far as he could tell there were hallways laid out in a square, with small rooms off it to either side.

“An office building in the middle of the woods,” she said.

Each room had the remains of a western-style door at its entrance, pieces of shattered wood hanging on by the hinges. When he shone the phone’s light into the rooms, he saw a window opening boarded from within by a sheet of plywood, and an otherwise empty concrete expanse. They went down one hall and turned left into another. Michi remembered she had the same app on her phone and lit it. Halfway down that corridor, they found a room whose door was mostly intact but for a corner at the bottom where it appeared to have been kicked in. Riku inspected the knob and whispered, “There’s a lock on this one.”

They went in, and he locked the door behind them and tested its strength. “Get in the corner under the window,” he said. “If they find us, and the door won’t hold, I can rip off the board above us and we might be able to escape outside.” She joined him in the corner and they sat, shoulders touching, their backs against the cold concrete. “We’re sure to be safe when the sun rises.”

He put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. Then neither said a word or made a sound. They turned off their phones and listened to the dark. Time passed, yet when Riku checked his watch, it read only 3:30. “All that in a half-hour?” he wondered. Then there came a sound, a light tapping, as if rain was falling outside. The noise slowly grew louder, and seconds later it became clear that it was the sound of claws on the concrete floor. That light tapping eventually became a clatter, as if a hundred of the creatures were circling impatiently in the hallway.

A strange guttural voice came from the hole at the bottom corner of the door. “Tomodachi,” it said. “Let us in.”

Riku flipped to the flashlight app and held the gun up. Across the room, the hole in the bottom of the door was filled with a fat, pale, bearded face. One eye was swollen shut and something oozed from the corner of it. The forehead was too high to see a hairline. The thing snuffled and smiled.

“Shoot,” said Michi.

Riku fired, but the face flinched away in an instant, and once the bullet went wide and drilled a neat hole in the door, the creature returned and said, “Tomodachi.”

“What do you want?” said Riku, his voice cracking.

“We are hunting a spirit of the living,” said the creature, the movement of its lips out of sync with the words it spoke.

“What have we done?” said Michi.

“Our hunger is great, but we only require one spirit. We only take what we need—the other person will be untouched. One spirit will feed us for a week.”

Michi stood up and stepped away from Riku. He also got to his feet. “What are you doing?” she said. “Shoot them.” She quickly lit her phone and shone it on him.

Instead of aiming the gun at the door, he aimed it at her. “I’m not having my spirit devoured,” he said to her.

“You said you couldn’t hurt me.”

“It won’t be me hurting you,” he said. She saw there were tears in his eyes. The hand that held the gun was wobbling. “I’m giving you the girl,” he called to the Jinmenken.

“A true benefactor,” said the face at the hole.

“No,” she said. “What have I done?”

“I’m going to shoot her in the leg so she can’t run, then I’m going to let you all in. You will keep your distance from me or I’ll shoot. I have an extra clip, and I’ll turn as many of you to salt as I can before you get to me.”

Turning to Michi, he said, “I’m so sorry. I did love you.”

“But you’re a coward. You don’t have to shoot me in the leg,” she said. “I’ll go to them on my own. My spirit’s tired of this world.” She moved forward and gave him a kiss. Her actions disarmed him, and he appeared confused. At the door, she slowly undid the lock on the knob. Then, with a graceful, fluid motion, she pulled the door open and stepped behind it against the wall. “Take him,” he heard her call. The Jinmenkin bounded in, dozens of them, small and large, stinking of rain, slobbering, snapping, clawing. He pulled the trigger till the gun clicked empty, and the room was filled with smoke and flying salt. His hands shook too much to change the clip. One of the creatures tore a bloody chunk from his left calf, and he screamed. Another went for his groin. The face of Grandmother Chinatsu appeared before him and devoured his.