Tale of the Dead Town (17 page)

“Where do you think you’re going?” the Hunter asked.

“You don’t know how to work the exits on your own, do you? Let me help you.”

“You’re wounded.”

“I couldn’t win that girl’s heart. At least let me do something that would’ve made
her happy.”

D looked straight into the other man’s eyes and saw the perplexing emotions that swam
there. “How long did you spend in that village?” he asked.

“Not long. Six months.”

“The two of them were lucky to have you.”

“Thank you.” The physician’s eyes glittered. A look of pride shone in them.

-

The barrier’s voltage is dropping rapidly!”

As if in response to that last cry, shadowy figures that’d been headed away surged
toward the town again.

“How goes inputting the course into the computers?” the mayor shouted.

“It’s finished.”

“Take her up then!”

“We don’t have enough thrust, sir!”

“I don’t care. Just do it!”

“Roger.”

As pale figures cleared the outer wall, pouring down like an avalanche, the town escaped
the bounds of earth. It bobbed up into the air as if that were its sole purpose. Still,
a few shadowy figures came down the inner wall. The last thing they ever saw was a
gorgeous young man who gave off the most unearthly air. Running every last intruder
through the heart, D lowered his longsword and turned.

The mayor was standing there. “My journey has only just begun,” he said. “As soon
as the dawn comes, the vampires will be destroyed. I’m sure the remaining townsfolk
and I will somehow manage to keep the town running.”

“This is a dead town,” D said quietly. “Where will you go? And for what purpose?”

The mayor laughed. It sounded ghastly. A figure leapt at him from behind, its fangs
bared. The mayor’s fingertips sank into its heart, and the figure fell at his feet.
It was Laura.

Off in the distance, the wind howled. The dawn was still far off.

“There’s a plain a dozen miles from here. You and your friends get off there.” The
very sound of the mayor’s voice was dark and distant.

-

Saying not a word, the trio watched the departing town. Where would it go? No trace
of the formula had been found on Pluto VIII’s body . . . Where could he have hidden
it? Would the mayor ever find it again?

D stroked the muzzle of his cyborg horse. It was one of three the mayor had left with
them.

“What’ll we do about the girl?” the physician said, believing Lori to still be asleep,
but when he looked over his shoulder he found her awake.

Her eyes gazed across the plain at the blue dawn. Her pale finger moved across the
sand. The two men read what she’d written.
I’ve heard the sound of the wind and the songs of the birds
, it said. So, that was the perspective the girl had after seeing life and death up
close? As her long hair fluttered in the morning breeze, Lori’s shadow was etched
distinctly on the ground.

“A mile and a quarter ahead of us is a town. The two of you should go there together.”
Saying that, D got on his steed.

“Where will you go?”

Giving no reply, D advanced on his horse. Mount and rider quickly dwindled as they
headed off, bound for the mountain ridges that grew bluer by the minute.

-

-

This is my first new postscript for the English editions of my books.

I’d like to thank my readers in America and elsewhere for supporting D for so long.
Due, no doubt, to the two animated features, sales of the novels have been good, and
the author is overjoyed. I can’t sleep with my feet toward the anime directors. (According
to Japanese custom, sleeping with your feet facing someone you are indebted to means
you aren’t grateful to them. Well, since I don’t know where either of them lives,
I may actually have my feet pointed toward them . . . )

I’ve loved horror and sci-fi since I was a kid, and I never missed one of these kinds
of films when they were showing in my hometown (which was a desolate port town like
Lovecraft’s Innsmouth.) Even when I had a fever of about a hundred and four, I acted
perfectly fine in front of my parents, and, once I was outside, I staggered over to
the movie theater. (The film was
The Brides of Dracula
.) Hammer’s
The Revenge of Frankenstein
was showing on the same bill with a rather erotic French film, and the woman at the
ticket booth said to me, “For a kid, you’ve come to see a pretty lewd movie.” But
I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about and went right on in. Unfortunately,
the erotic film proved more interesting. (Laughs.)

As I was born in 1949, what left the strongest impression on me were the Hammer horror
films from England. In particular, I’ll never forget the impact
Horror of Dracula
had on me when I saw it. Gripped by the fearsomeness of Count Dracula as portrayed
by Christopher Lee, every night I slept with a cross fashioned from a pair of chopsticks
by my pillow.

Mr. Lee and Peter Cushing, who played the part of Van Helsing, became my favorite
stars. Though I never did get a chance to meet Mr. Cushing, about ten years ago I
met Mr. Lee and got his autograph when he came to Japan for the Tokyo Fantastic Film
Festival. Wow, was he huge! (I’m not quite five foot seven.)

But the first time I ever saw Dracula and Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, mad doctors,
and the rest was in a horror/comedy production by Universal called
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
. Made in 1948, the film was screened in Japan in 1956.

All of the monsters who were to decide my future were in this one film. How lucky
could you get? I think I was some-how fated to write about them. And the way I completely
missed
Horror of Dracula
the first time it showed in my home-town but caught it when it came back for another
showing a few years later was nothing short of miraculous. Once again, it was destiny.

This is how the hero known as Vampire Hunter D came to be. I was thirty-three when
I gave life to him, and I continue writing about his adventures twenty-two years later.
Not only in novels now, he’s spread to animation and games, and plans for his Hollywood
debut and an American comic version are progressing nicely. However, more than anything,
it pleases me that the novels have found acceptance and an audience with you.

I’m quite proud of
Tale of the Dead Town
and the action I penned as D does battle with the Nobility against the wondrous backdrop
of a floating city. Please sit back and enjoy it, just as you’d watch a scary, fun,
and thrilling horror/action movie.

Until we meet again. From under distant Japanese skies, to all my readers abroad.

-

Hideyuki Kikuchi

October 14, 2005
,

watching
Horror of Dracula

-

I

-

The moon was out.

No matter how dangerous night on the Frontier had become, the clarity of the night
itself never changed. Perhaps supernatural beasts and fiends alone had pleasant dreams
. . .

But there was someone else here who might have them, too. Here, in the middle of a
dense forest, he slept.

As if to prove that night on the Frontier was never silent, voices beyond numbering
sang from the tops of the demon’s scruff oaks or from the dense greenery of a thicket
of sweet mario bushes.

Though the sleeper’s dreams might be peaceful, the forest at night was home to hunger
and evil. Spraying poison to seal their opponent’s eyes, dungeon beetles were known
to set upon their prey with sharp teeth no bigger than grains of sand. A swarm of
them could take a fifteen-foot-long armored dragon and strip it to the bone in less
than two minutes. Sometimes the black earth swelled up, and a mass of absorption worms
burst out, crawling in all directions. Over a foot and a half long, the massive worms
broke down soil with powerful molecular vibrations and absorbed it through the million
mouths that graced the nucleus of each of their cells. Usually they’d latch onto a
traveler’s ankle first and melt the foot right off before pouncing on more vital locations
like the head or the heart. How could anything escape them when their very touch ate
through skin and bone alike?

Colors occurred in the darkness as well. Perhaps catching some odd little noise in
the sound of the wind, the snowy white petals that opened gorgeously in the moonlight
trembled ever so slightly as the flower sprayed out a pale purple mist, and, as the
cloud drifted down to earth, tiny white figures floated down with it. Each of them
carried a minute spear, and only those who’d made it through the forest alive knew
that they were evil little sprites from within the flower, with poison sap made from
petals.

And of all the blood-hued eyes glittering off in the darkness a little way off, and
further back, and even deeper still—nothing—was merely an innocent onlooker.

While everyone who went out on the Frontier might not know it, those who actually
lived there realized the forests weren’t a wise place to choose for a night of restful
sleep. They were aware that the plaintive birdsong was actually the voice of a demon
bird that muddled the senses, and that the gentle fog was in fact mist devils trying
to sneak into their victims’ bodies. If they absolutely had to sleep in the forest,
people would keep a bow with an incendiary-tipped arrow in one hand, and shut their
eyes only after zipping their asbestos sleeping bag up over their head. Sprite spears
and the teeth of nocturnal insect predators couldn’t penetrate a half-inch thickness
of that cloth, and, if a traveler drank an antidote derived from the juice of hell
berries, they didn’t have to worry about demonic fogs, either. Their head, however,
would be aching the next morning. If, by some chance, the attacks should persist,
then the bow and arrow came into play.

However, the traveler now surrounded by all these weird creatures seemed completely
ignorant of the threats the woods held. Lying on a bed of grass, the moonlight shone
down on him like a spotlight. While his face couldn’t be seen for the black, wide-brimmed
traveler’s hat that covered it, the deep blue pendant that hung at his chest, the
black long coat, the high leather boots with their silver spurs, and, more than anything,
the elegant longsword leaning against his shoulder left no room for muddled conjecture
or doubt. All those things were meant to adorn someone beautiful.

However, part of his description was still lacking. Watch. When the monstrous creatures
blanketing the ground come within three feet of the traveler, they rub their paws
and pincers and begin to twitch uncontrollably, as if checked by some unseen barrier.
They know. They understand. Though the traveler sleeps, something emanates from his
body—a ghastly aura declaring that any who challenge him will die. The creatures of
the wild know what the young man actually is, and the part of his description that
is absolutely indispensable: He is not of this world.

The young man in black went right on sleeping, almost as if the poisonous mists of
the sleeper grass smelled to him like the sweetest perfume, as if the indignant snarls
of the ungodly creatures sounded to his ears like the most soothing melody.

Consciousness suddenly spread through his body. His left hand took hold of his hat,
and, as he sat up, he placed it back on his long black hair. And anything that looked
upon him realized that unearthly beauty did indeed exist.

People called him D. Though his eyes had been closed in sleep up until this very moment,
there wasn’t even a tiny hint of torpor in them. His black, bottomless pupils reflected
another figure in black standing about ten feet ahead of him. Well over six and a
half feet tall, the massive form was like a block of granite.

A certain power buffeted D’s face, an aura emanating from that colossal figure. An
ordinary human would’ve been so psychically damaged by it that they’d spend the better
part of a lifetime trying to recover.

In his left hand, the man held a bow, while his right hand clutched a number of arrows.
When bow and arrow met in front of that massive chest, D’s right hand went for the
handle of his longsword. The elegant movement befitted the young man.

An arrow whined through the air. D stayed just where he was, but a flash of silver
rushed from his sheath and limned a gorgeous arc. When the smooth cut of his blade
met the missile’s beautiful flight in a shower of sparks, D knew his foe’s arrows
were forged entirely from steel.

The fierce light that resided in his opponent’s eyes looked like a silent shout. The
instant their respective weapons had met, his arrow was split down the middle, and
the halves sank deep into the ground.

D stood up. A flash of black ran through his left shoulder. The black giant had unleashed
this arrow at the same time as his second shot. Perfectly timed and fired on an equally
precise course, the arrow had deceived D until it pierced his shoulder.

However, the black shadow seemed shaken, and it fell back without a sound. He alone
understood how incredibly agile D had been, using his shoulder to stop an arrow that
should’ve gone right through his heart.

As his foe backed away, D readied himself. Making no attempt to remove the arrow,
he gazed at the giant’s face with eyes that were suspiciously tranquil. D was reflected
in his opponent’s eyes as well.

“Don’t intend to tell me your name, do you?” D’s first words also held the first hint
of emotion he’d shown. An instant later, the hem of his coat spread in midair. The
blade he brought down like a silvery serpent’s fang rent nothing but cloth as the
black figure leapt back another fifteen feet. As his foe hovered in midair, the
twang
of a bowstring rang out. With as mellifluous a sound as was ever heard, the long,
thin silhouette of the Hunter’s blade sprang up, and D kicked off the ground with
all of his might.

His foe was already partially obscured by a grove a hundred yards ahead. The few hundredths
of a second it’d taken him to draw back for his third shot had proved critical.

Still not bothering with the arrow in his left shoulder, D sprinted into action. Inheriting
much of the Nobility’s powerful musculature in their legs, dhampirs could dash a hundred
yards in less than six seconds. With his speed, D covered the distance in under five
seconds, and he showed no signs of slowing. However, the shadow had been lost in the
darkness. Did D sense that the presence had abruptly vanished?

He kept on running, and, when he halted, it was in precisely the same spot where his
foe had disappeared. D had noticed that the deep footprints that’d led him that far
ended in the soft grass.

His opponent had vanished into the heavens or sunk into the earth—neither of which
was especially uncommon in this world.

D stood still. Black steel jutting from his left shoulder and fresh blood dripping
from the wound, D hadn’t let his expression change one bit throughout the battle.
But the reason he didn’t extract the arrow wasn’t because he didn’t feel the pain
of it, but rather because he simply wasn’t going to give his foe an opportunity to
catch him off guard.

Frozen like a veritable statue, he broke his pose suddenly. Around him, everything
was still and dark. The air of their deadly conflict must’ve stunned the supernatural
creatures, because not a single peculiar growl or cry could be heard.

D’s face turned, and his body began moving. There hadn’t been any road there from
the very start, just a bizarre progression of overlapping trees and bushes. Like an
exquisite shadow, he moved ahead without hesitation, finding openings wherever he
needed them. There was no telling if it would be a short hike or a long, hard trek.
Night on the Frontier was a whole different world.

The wind bore a sound that was not its own whispers. Perhaps D had heard it even at
the scene of the battle. Beyond the excited buzz of people and a light melody played
by instruments of silver and gold, he could make out a faint glow.

The stately outline that towered protectively over the proceedings looked to be that
of a chateau. As the Hunter walked closer, the outline gave way to rows of bright
lights. Presently, D’s way was barred by a gate in the huge iron fence before him.
Not giving his surroundings a glance, D continued forward. Before his hands even touched
it, the gate creaked open. Without a moment’s delay, D stepped onto the property.
Judging by the scale of the gate, this wasn’t the main entrance.

Ahead of him was a stone verandah that gave off a shimmering light. The glow was not
due to the light of the moon, but rather it radiated from the stones themselves. In
the windows behind the verandah were countless human figures. Some laughed gaily.
Some danced with elegance. The sharp swallowtails of men’s formal attire flicked back
and forth, and the hems of evening gowns swayed. The banquet at the mansion seemed
to be at its height.

D’s gaze fell to the steel jutting from his shoulder, and he took hold of it with
his left hand. There was the sound of tearing flesh as he yanked the steel out, vermilion
scraps of meat still clinging to it. As fresh blood gushed from the wound, D covered
it with his left hand. It sounded like someone was drinking a glass of water. All
the while D kept walking, climbing the stone steps of the verandah and then reaching
for the doorknob. The bleeding from his shoulder hadn’t stopped.

The doorknob was a blue jewel set in the middle of golden petals, and it turned readily
in his well-formed hand.

D stood in a hall filled with blue light. One had to wonder if the young man realized
that hue was not the white radiance he’d seen spilling from the windows. Perhaps the
mansion was mocking D, because now only two figures danced in the room. The girl must’ve
been around seventeen or eighteen. The fine shape of her limbs was every bit as glamorous
as her dress, which seemed to be woven from obsidian thread, and each and every strand
of the black hair that hung down to her waist glittered like a spun jewel. The light
melody remained. Her partner in tails was also reflected in D’s eyes. Still turned
the other way, his face couldn’t be seen.

D stepped further into the hall. It was clear the mansion had been meant to draw him
there. If it had only two residents, one or both of them must’ve arranged this.

The girl stopped moving. The music ceased as well. As she stared at D, her eyes were
filled with a mysterious gleam. “You’re . . . ?” Her composed voice made the light
flicker.

“I seem to have been invited here,” D said as he looked at the back of the man who
was still facing away from him. “By you? What’s your business? Or where is he?”

“He?” The girl knit her thread-thin eyebrows.

“If you don’t know who I’m referring to, perhaps that man does. Well?”

The man didn’t move. Perhaps her partner was fashioned from bronze, and made solely
to dance?

Asking nothing more, D plowed through the blue light to stand just behind the man.
His left hand reached for the man’s shoulder—and touched it. Slowly, the man turned
around. Every detail of the girl’s expression—which couldn’t be neatly classified
as either horror or delight—was etched into the corner of D’s eye.

D opened his eyes. Blue light graced his surroundings. It was the pale glow of dawn,
just before sunrise.

Slowly, D rose from his grassy resting place. Had it all been a dream? There was no
wound to his left shoulder. Where he was now was the same spot where he’d gone to
sleep. The cyborg horse that’d been absent from his dream stood by the tree trunk
to which its reins were tied.

As the Hunter took the longsword and sheath in his left hand and slung it across his
back, a hoarse and strangely earnest voice said, “No, sirree. That was too damn real
for a plain old dream. Hell, it hurt
me
.” The voice must’ve been referring to the steel arrow that’d penetrated the Hunter’s
left shoulder. “That mansion was calling you, sure enough. And if they called you,
they must have business with you. Bet we’ll be seeing them again real soon.”

“You think so?” D said, speaking in the real world for the first time. “I saw him.”

“Indeed,” the voice agreed. But it sounded perplexed.

Setting the saddle he’d used for a pillow on his horse’s back, D easily mounted his
steed. The horse began walking in the blue light.

“How about that—it’s the same!”

What the voice meant was this locale they’d never seen before bore a striking resemblance
to the place in the dream, suggesting . . . that the source of the voice had the very
same dream as D.

In a few minutes, the horse and rider arrived at an empty lot surrounded by a grove
of sizable trees. This was where the mansion had been. A banquet in endless warm,
blue light, light that spilled from the windows as men and women danced in formal
wear, never seeing the dawn. Now, everything was hidden by the green leaves of vulgar
spruces and the boughs of poison firs. Giving the landscape a disinterested glance,
D wheeled his mount around. Beyond the forest, there should be a real village settled
almost two hundred years ago.