The Gate of Sorrows (45 page)

Keiko gave a shriek of astonishment and turned to flee, but her legs would not move. She toppled backward and tried desperately to scuttle away, still facing the monster, screaming continuously, no words, just wave after wave of piercing screams. Kotaro saw them with this left eye.

no no no my god please help me scared scared scared scared Sei-chan help me what is it why am I no no no no

The demon spun lightly, leaping closer. Its scythe was a whirlwind.

Kotaro saw what happened with both eyes. He saw the blade pass through Keiko’s waist in one smooth motion, slicing her slender torso in two. There was no sound and no gout of blood.

Her eyes met his. They were wide open, as though she were planning to flee the next moment. There was no pain or fear, only surprise.

For hardly more than a second she sat there, cut in two. The upper half of her body twisted back to look in wonder at the demon, still trying to move its arms and scuttle away. The lower half was stretched out on the concrete. Her shoes were half off. Kotaro could see her right calf spasm violently.

The next instant, she began to disappear, her body dissolving into tiny grains of sand—no, more like mist—from the cut that divided her in two. The mist, like sparkling ice particles, flowed toward the scythe. Kotaro saw this clearly, yet it took no more than an eyeblink for her to disappear.

He suddenly remembered a book Kazumi loved when she was little. It had a picture of a mother sucking up ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. Kazumi had kept asking Asako if ghosts were really burnable trash.

Keiko had been sucked into the demon’s scythe like a ghost sucked up by a vacuum cleaner …

A blue-white gleam flashed across the crescent blade. The scythe laughed like a living thing—once, then again and again. With each laugh, light flashed across the blade from one end to the other, like a chemical reaction in progress. Or—

Like something
being ripped apart and consumed.

Keiko Tashiro’s craving.

The gleam died away. The demon examined the blade curiously, then swung it again in great arcs that completely encircled it.

The tip of the scythe flashed inches from the end of his nose. Kotaro’s legs gave way. He landed on his buttocks on the concrete. An arabesque of cold, blue-white light, like an intense fluorescent glow, seemed to hang in the air as the blade dipped and soared.

As she swung her scythe, Galla began to emerge again. Long hair the color of obsidian. The huge finger bones webbed with thin green membrane shape-shifted into the proud wings of a black raptor, fitting for a warrior whose kingdom was the night.

Kotaro’s breath came in juddering gasps. He couldn’t seem to get enough air. He rotated his shoulders and rounded and stretched his back again and again. Slowly he stopped wheezing and regained his breath.

He was soaked in cold sweat. His face was dripping, not just with perspiration but with tears and drool.

Galla’s transformation was complete. She drew the blade close and studied it in wonder.

“Her craving was strong.”

Kotaro could see it had grown larger. He sensed it was sharper as well. The tip glowed with a pale light, like the North Star.

“The craving of a killer.” He spat the words and tried to stand. His legs trembled. Somehow the muscles wouldn’t work.

Galla stowed the scythe behind her. She stepped toward Kotaro without a sound and extended a hand. He took it and stood up, but after a moment fell to his knees, toppled backward and sat down again. He needed time to recover.

“Sorry. Guess I’m a little shaky. That was pretty shocking.”

Galla nodded. “That was my true form.” Her voice was gentle.

“I know. That wolf I met told me about it. I was more or less prepared, I guess. That wasn’t what shocked me, though. I didn’t think your true form would be a gargoyle. In our region, gargoyles are legendary demons from Europe. How did a mythical creature from our region end up in the birthplace of the souls of words? It makes your region seem like, I don’t know, something out of a fantasy novel, or a movie about the Middle Ages.”

Galla smiled—a full, warm smile. “You have it backward.”

“How?”

“Before your legends arose, there was the birthplace of the souls of words. The creatures you call gargoyles are a pale reflection of the guardians of the Tower of Inception. So it is for your other creatures of legend. The amazement and fear and dread inspired by contact with beings from other regions fired the imaginations of people in this region. From those contacts came a multitude of strange creatures. Those you regard as benevolent are called gods and spirits and fairies. Those you fear are demons and monsters.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Wasn’t Galla’s world a legend, a product of the imagination? A place that was real, but not in the real world? How could such a place be older than human culture?

Kotaro was turning his neck this way and that, trying to get out the kinks, when he saw something sickening on the concrete nearby. At first his brain refused to recognize it.

It was a human fingernail—a cheap shade of pink the color of Keiko’s nail polish. She had ripped it off when she was trying to scuttle away from the demon.

“Take it with you,” Galla said. Kotaro looked up. She towered over him, leaning forward to peer at the grisly keepsake. “A prize for the hunter.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. I don’t even want to touch it. I don’t need a trophy. I’ll never need anything to remind me of what I saw tonight.” He paused for a moment. “She
was
evil, wasn’t she, Galla?”

Her strong craving led her to kill. In Kotaro’s region, a person like that was called evil.

“It is not for me to decide what is and what is not evil,” Galla said coldly. “You chose this path, now you wear the look of guilt. If guilt is what you feel, return the eye to me. You have had your vengeance.”

She reached out to him. The pointed tips of her fingernails closed in on his left eye.

“You have done enough. You found your killer. The woman is avenged. You have good reason to be content.”

Kotaro shrank back and clapped a hand over his left eye. Galla was right. He had achieved his aim. But … but … he’d only begun to explore his new abilities. He still didn’t know what he might learn from a world where words could be seen.

He slid anxiously backward on the concrete. Galla’s long fingers stopped in midair, motionless.

“Keiko Tashiro wasn’t the Serial Amputator. She was using his crimes for her own purpose. When I came to you with my deal, I said I wanted you to harvest the real killer’s craving. Keiko was a fluke.”

The killer was still at large. He might be closing in on his next victim at this very moment.

“We made a deal. I want to hunt down the Serial Amputator. I swear I’ll find him. If we work together, anything’s possible. Don’t you agree, Galla?”

The warrior towered over him like a dark wall filling his field of view. Her skin was pale as starlight and seemed just as far away.

“Galla, please. I can help you.”

She stared down at him. “Why do you wish to help me?”

“Because I promised to.”

“I see.” Far above his head, Galla smiled faintly. “So your craving is to fulfill your covenant.”

“Why not? We’re gonna catch a serial killer! That’s gotta be good.”

“Desire is neither good nor evil. That is why questions of right and wrong are not my concern. Are you truly ready to follow me?”

The black wings engulfed him. He plummeted into the abyss, spiraling downward on cataracts of darkness …

The street in front of his house.

A radio was playing somewhere near an open window. Four bell-like tones announced the arrival of midnight on this night in late May.

Kotaro stood rooted to the spot, breathing quietly. He had a feeling he’d fall over from dizziness if he took a step forward.

As he stood quietly, he noticed a movement in the shadow of a power pole down the other side of the street, in front of the Sonoi house. Someone was there.

Aunt Hanako? If she was putting out the trash this early, there’d be more trouble in the neighborhood. Kotaro focused his eyes, trying to see better. Reflexively, he took a step forward.

Whoever it was, the figure reacted instantly. It dashed out of the shadows and raced off down the street.

It happened too fast; all Kotaro could do was watch the figure run away. Judging from the build, it was probably a young male. He looked like he had something in his hand. What was he doing when Kotaro saw him?

Maybe it was Gaku? Gaku Shimakawa? BMOC at Aoba Middle School, until he blew his high school entrance exam. Was he trying to see Mika?

Suddenly he remembered Yuriko Morisaki’s final words
: Keep a careful eye on Mika. The trouble she’s dealing with isn’t over.

He approached the power pole and examined it with his left eye. It was flecked with silvery grains that looked like sand. As he watched, they dissolved into the night.

Are those traces of words?

But Kotaro was too tired to tackle another mystery this night. He turned toward his house on unsteady feet. He was faint from hunger.

He had to get a grip. His quest wasn’t over. He had to get strong.

Kotaro Mishima was on the hunt for a serial killer.

Kumar returned to business as usual. Seigo came to the office every day. On the first day of normal operations after the funeral, it rained without letup—a rain of tears, someone said, but the tears for Ayuko had already dried. This was June rain, seasonal rain, nothing more. The rains of early summer had arrived.

A week had passed since Kotaro had hunted down Ayuko’s killer. He’d held his breath, but nothing he’d read or heard during that week, at Kumar or anywhere else, suggested that anyone might have noticed her absence. Seigo seemed the same as ever. Maybe Kotaro had been expecting something big. He felt let down.

Had the police simply overlooked Keiko Tashiro? Wouldn’t they at least be able to tell, from those silly letters she’d sent, that Ayuko’s murder was a copycat crime? If so, Kotaro had been right to deal with her himself. If he’d waited for the police to find her, he’d be feeling like a fool about now.

His shift started at three, with a break at seven. When evening came, he decided to pick up something at a convenience store, but when he got on the elevator, a stray impulse made him touch B2.

Kumar’s heart—the server room—was on B2. That was where the mainframe lived.

He stepped off the elevator into a dimly lit, featureless lobby. His ID card wouldn’t even get him past the first security level, a gunmetal-gray steel door. There was a login terminal next to it; otherwise the tiny lobby was empty. The air conditioning was cranked way past comfort level, though Kotaro had heard the server room was a sauna. Kumar used a lot of computing power, and it put out a lot of heat.

There must be hundreds of millions—no, trillions of words flowing behind that door
 …

But there were no words from the Serial Amputator. Even if he hadn’t broken his silence before, it seemed strange that he would keep quiet once Keiko stole his thunder. People who commit sensational crimes crave attention. That was one of the basic rules of profiling.

Everyone in Kumar was searching determinedly for clues. They’d already found hundreds, maybe thousands of posts that looked like potential leads, and passed them to the National Police Agency.

But every one was a bust. “I did it.” “I know who did it.” All the intriguing posts were bogus, people looking for attention or supposed eyewitness information that turned out to be completely off target. However well-intentioned, people couldn’t help dressing up what they thought they’d seen with false details.

It is hopeless.
Galla’s silver threads flowed suddenly across Kotaro’s left field of vision. He almost cried out in surprise.

“Give me some warning, will you? Are you watching me or something?”

The voice of the one you seek may be hiding in this vast river of words, but so too are the voices of countless other sinners.

Voices. Thoughts. Individual stories. Black body bags full of writhing maggots.

Even I cannot hear a single drop in a waterfall. This hunt is futile.

A multitude of sins. That was how much evil, or attempted evil, was flowing in that endless river. Evil as fashion statement; evil as entertainment.

“You just need something to go on, right? Like with the woman,” Kotaro muttered. He eyed the steel door. “We could search for people with a connection to one of the victims. Look for any that seem suspicious and read their stories. Even without a confession, if we work together, we’ll know the bad guy when we find him.”

That was Shigenori’s theory, anyway. The victims knew the killer. They had to have known him. The question was—how did he get close to four people in locations all over Japan?

“I’ve got to do what Kenji did—get out and use some shoe leather.”

That is the way of the hunter. Trace the spoor of your prey, however faint
.

The silver threads disappeared.

It was time to get to work. Kotaro turned to the elevator, but before he could punch the button, it started downward from the first floor. Someone was coming. He dashed into the stairwell.

He’d been avoiding the stairs since Ayuko died. The memory of her high heels clicking as she went from floor to floor was too strong. But this was no time for nostalgia.

He was dashing up the stairs to the lobby when his smartphone chimed.

Speak of the devil. It was Shigenori Tsuzuki.