The Gate of Sorrows (71 page)

Galla motioned with her chin toward the open door behind them. “See to the boy.”

It took Kotaro a moment to comprehend. Gaku Shimakawa! He rushed back into the room.

Gaku was out cold, curled up in a fetal position on the floor, still bound hand and foot.

“Do you think he saw?”

The room was torn apart. Clearly something very violent had taken place here. But there were no traces of Papa and Mama, or the tattooed man, or Glitter Kitty. There was no blood. They had simply vanished.

The only corpse in the house was Mika’s.

Galla bent over the boy. She caressed his cheek, still hollow with terror. She put the tips of three fingers on his forehead and pressed hard. His eyelids, which had been screwed shut, fluttered for a moment.

“Now he will have no memory of us.”

But he would remember Mika. He would remember what had happened to her and why. He would remember the horror he experienced. Unbearable fear, and even greater feelings of helplessness and guilt.

I’m sorry.

Why are our expressions of regret so short?

There was a window in the room. The double curtains were closed. Kotaro parted them an inch or two and peered out. All the lights were on in the house next door. Beyond it was a four-story condominium. All the lights seemed to be on there too, and an unusually large number of people were out on the balconies, looking straight at Kotaro. The neighborhood must have heard the screaming and howling.

“The police will be here soon.”

Another uncanny case of disappearance—four at once this time, and all of them soon to become suspects in a murder-kidnapping. The survivor’s story would sound made-up and hard to believe. He fainted, and when he woke up, the kidnappers had disappeared …

The only person who might be able to read the signs, other than the two wolves, was Shigenori. Doubtless he’d be furious with Kotaro. Again.

A siren wailed far off. It grew louder. Kotaro closed his eyes and listened.

It would be the last sound he ever heard in this world.

Where are we going?

Kotaro walked in darkness. How long had he been following Galla?

He heard his own footfalls. He wasn’t treading on soil. The surface was hard and smooth, cool to the touch. With each step, his talons clicked faintly. They were curved, claws to pin the flesh of prey and never release it, like a carnivorous dinosaur.

He knew he had transformed into something strange. Fangs, claws, a huge body. The darkness was so complete that if someone had grasped the end of his nose he wouldn’t have seen them, but he could feel his body. It was enormous. With each step, ponderous muscles slid and shifted in his back and shoulders, in his arms and calves.

Galla led the way. She was invisible, but he knew exactly where she was.

Something glowed, blue-white lights burning steadily but wavering with the rhythm of her tread. Flames. In the stygian darkness Kotaro walked on, guided by lights burning in the eye sockets of the Skulls of Origin like will-o’-the-wisps. The lights swayed up and down, leaving a trail on his retinae. Their graceful trajectory beckoned him on.

Out of nowhere, he remembered something that had happened ten years earlier, an overnight hiking trip with his family to the mountains near Tokyo. They’d spent the night at a famous hot spring inn.

Not far from the inn there was a creek where fireflies swarmed on summer nights. They’d stayed up late, and with the other guests had been guided by the inn owner to the creek to see the fireflies. Little Kazumi had been frightened by the dark mountain road, and Kotaro held her hand all the way.

The little waterway was alive with lights, as though a dipperful of stars had been scattered along the creek and the stars were alive and swarming, pulsating with a rhythm like breathing.

Asako and Takayuki were entranced. Kazumi was wide-eyed with wonder. Kotaro had been holding her hand firmly, but now she pulled away, overjoyed, reaching out gently for the dancing lights.

Kotaro’s eyes were drawn from the clouds of fireflies by a solitary pair of lights—perhaps a male and female. As he watched, they floated away from the swarm and plunged deeper into the forest.

He had followed them, his steps quickening out of curiosity. He was convinced that he’d been chosen, that they wanted to show him something special, something even more beautiful. When he followed, they flew on; if he paused, they swooped back toward him, rising and falling, urging him onward.
Come. Come with us.

At first the ground was uneven. He’d proceeded cautiously, but soon he stopped paying attention. As long as he was with his fireflies, he felt no fear. They were so kind; sometimes they almost flew against his cheek.
Yes, yes, come with us. Come.

Suddenly they spiraled high into the air. He was about to bound after them, but a pair of strong arms bear-hugged him from behind.

“Watch out, son!”

It was the owner of the inn. He was wearing a hard hat with a light like a miner’s helmet. His face was stern. “Look down.”

Kotaro’s eyes followed the beam of light. He’d been climbing a slope along the creek. At the top was a sheer drop into darkness. He was about to walk right over it.

“I was chasing fireflies,” he said sheepishly.

“Those weren’t fireflies. Real fireflies don’t play tricks. The mountains are full of things that aren’t what they seem.”

Like the darkness.

Why had that memory come back to him just now? The fairy lights of the skulls rose and fell slowly ahead of him.

“Stop!”

A voice rang out, clear and strong. Kotaro stopped. His reverie popped like a soap bubble. Once more he felt the weight of his huge body.

“Kotaro Mishima, go no farther!”

Who was it? A man’s voice. It was familiar. Someone had followed him along this road in the dark. The voice came from behind.

“This is your last warning. You must not go any farther.”

Galla spoke. She sounded surprisingly close. “Leave us. The defiled have no place here.”

The voice came back. “Guardian of the Tower! I call to the weak, to one whose place is in the Circle.”

“Then you miss your mark. The weak do not walk this road. Only those with the strength of a Guardian can walk this road.” Then, to Kotaro: “Come.”

He stood indecisively, chewing his lip. He felt his fangs.
It’s U-ri’s master, Ash. The man in black with two swords. The wolf.

“You remember,” the voice said.

The road ahead and back was pure night. There was only the voice, calling him.

“That means you’re still human,” it said with a tone of relief. “Kotaro Mishima, I ask you to remember yourself.”

He wavered.

“Remember U-ri.”

U-ri. A mysterious girl, full of strange stories. Black hair. Petite. Beautiful.

“She told you about her brother. You remember, don’t you? You’re traveling the same path. That’s why she’s worried about you.”

That story. I thought maybe it was phony. Now I know it was real.

“Is she there?” He finally found his voice.

“She’s not strong enough to come this far. Even with my skills and knowledge, I can only go as far as the foothills of darkness. A wolf is no match for a Guardian of the Tower.

“That’s why I can go no farther. Kotaro Mishima, remember! You are a person, raised by a mother and father, with friends and people who love you. A person, with a person’s life.”

He stood rooted, thinking. But something clearer and more vivid kept intruding, filling his mind: the sensation of biting through Glitter Kitty’s neck.

I’m not a person anymore.

“I’m a killer, Ash.” He turned to face down the road. “I’m a monster now.”

Yes. I can feel my fangs in my mouth when I talk.

“What you see and feel,” the voice answered, “may not be real. You’ve been bewitched by the greatest power in the Circle, so powerful and primal that it’s beyond good and evil.”

Bewitched. Someone else had said that to him once.

We were bewitched by a demon.

Kotaro swayed and almost lost his footing. His talons clacked on the stone.
This body is a pain in the butt.

He lifted his hands in front of his face. He couldn’t see a thing. All he knew was the weight of them. The mass of a giant body. A frightful smell, the stench of a beast. The reek of blood. His fur was steeped in it.

How can he say I’m still human?

Kenji had become a killer as well. Now Kotaro would take the same leap. He had a debt to pay. He would pay it without regret.

“I can’t go back.” He turned toward Galla. The skulls beckoned. “Say goodbye to U-ri. Thank her for worrying about me,” he called over his shoulder.

“There’s still time. Come back and tell her yourself.”

“I’m not going back, Ash. I’ve made my choice.”

“Kotaro Mishima!” The voice was breaking up, like someone on a radio with a fading signal. “Ko-taa-rooh Mi-shi-maa!”

The voice faded and disappeared. Absolute silence descended, a silence like gravity itself. As Kotaro closed his eyes and gave himself over to it, he felt a profound sense of peace.

He walked on, led by the skulls.

The road climbed slowly upward, became steeper. His talons scraped the stone. The path curved, became a clockwise spiral. He knew its cold, smooth surface now.

It dawned on him. He and Galla were ascending a gigantic spiral gallery. And he could see, but not because his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. They had merged with it.

To his left: a great void, a vast expanse of nothingness, of pure emptiness. Along the right margin of the gallery: a file of columns, each one immeasurably larger than the largest skyscraper. Kotaro looked up at them—it was like something seen through the multifaceted eyes of a moth.

He stood transfixed. His metamorphosis into a monster was complete, but he still had a heart capable of wonder.

This world was surpassingly beautiful, beyond the limits of mind. This was not scale that was meant to impress. It was not even scale that rendered an onlooker small and insignificant. It was scale beyond any human standard of reference.

Nor could the columns have been fashioned by human beings. At first they seemed to soar straight upward, but on closer inspection he saw that their surfaces followed complex, gently undulating curves. His eyes, now part of the darkness, saw how they glowed with the oily sheen of obsidian and the gleaming luster of marble.

The columns marked the edge of the gallery and the boundary with the world beyond. Galla and Kotaro were alone on the sloping road, but beyond the columns, the darkness was charged with a multitude of presences—the fluttering of wings, the murmuring of voices. A sharp shout of triumph. A cry of astonishment. There were no words, at least none that Kotaro could make out.

The voices were not human.

The chirping of birds, the snarling of beasts, the moaning of the wind, waves breaking on a distant shore. The voices of living creatures and of nature itself. Each voice seemed to contain both without being either.

Something scrutinized him from the darkness. It drew back, then the tip of a wing slashed the space just ahead. For a moment he saw a creature much like Galla in her true form.

That means, in the darkness beyond
—

“These pillars support the Tower of Inception.”

Galla spoke without turning her head. She kept walking at the same measured pace. “Beyond them lies my region.”

The column alongside them erupted with a blinding light. As the light flashed from the base and hurtled upward, an enigmatic pattern seemed to levitate from its surface before sinking into darkness.

The light illuminated the column, yet nothing around it. The darkness beyond the pillars was impenetrable and vast, extending to untold distances. Doubt began to gnaw at Kotaro.

An abyss of endless night … ?

A region so sacred, so noble, that even Ash and U-ri were barred from entering it. Yet it was a world of darkness. This was not the hazy image he had been imagining. The birthplace of the souls of words must surely be pure and bright, something like heaven.

“Darkness is the reason for our existence. We
are
darkness, so that there may be light. At the head of this gallery stands the Tower of Inception, one of the two regions that preside over the Circle. This place is its shadow.”

Something sprinted across his path, treading on his foot as it sped away. Kotaro was astonished. Where had it come from? Where had it vanished to? And where had he felt that touch before?

That horrible foot pad. The cursed breath. It was a hound of Tindalos.

“Why are these monsters here?” he called to Galla.

“They come and go freely.”

“Why do you let them run free just outside your region?”

“Fear not. They will not attack you. Not as you are.”

“I guess you’re right. I’m a monster too.”

And he would spend eternity here, living alongside them. Would “living” even be the right word? Simply existing, perhaps?

What kind of existence did Galla have here? What about the other inhabitants of this region sealed in darkness? Was there some form of society? He turned the question over in his mind before he discarded it, shaking his head.

It was meaningless. How could entities that were real but did not exist form any sort of society? How could entities that were only real when someone in the Circle acknowledged them as real live as people lived?

But then again …

What about Galla’s relationship with her son, Auzo? The one she had called her second self? Was it a relationship between mother and child, like human beings had? Like that between Kotaro and Asako? Or Takako and Mika? Did they share the same flesh and blood? The same sorrows and joys?

At the thought of Mika, the monster felt a sharp twinge in his chest. He gnashed his teeth and called up that memory—the sensation of Glitter Kitty’s head nestled in his jaws, and how easily her spine had snapped. The gush of hot blood and her scream the instant before he bit her in two.