by Doug Lane
Consciousness brought pain, and Richard swooned. He felt medicated. His flesh burned as if seared on a grill. His lips throbbed and he fought to open his stinging eyes.
Stone walls surrounded him, soot-dark. The floor was dry, cracked earth. Small flames neither dispensed warmth nor dispelled shadows. Shackles hugged his wrists and ankles, pinched his skin. He felt a draft and realized he was naked.
He groaned, and a cry that begged pity creaked in answer from the dark.
How had Richard gotten here? He'd been cutting across the Ginza to catch up with the university tour group at the train for Kyoto. He remembered an alley leading away from the lantern lights, the stench of animal offal, greasy puddles. He remembered a strangled cry. Was it his own voice? It seemed like days ago.
From the darkness, the cry coalesced into a word Richard didn't know. "Yurei!"
Figures glided into the torch light. Richard saw elegant blue silk robes festooned with unknown sutras. Cold eyes studied him. The five, all natives, spoke among themselves in Japanese before the leader stepped forward. "Dark Kagiia must be kept. The place is prepared."
They pulled the husk of the moaning old man into the light. His sunken eyes stared without aim. His skin showed the colors of purification. Richard saw the man's face was covered to the eyelids in uneven columns of hiragana and katakana writing, but there was something wrong with the script. Richard tried to conjure a memory, a lecture or reading about protective inscriptions. Was it a Buddhist tenet? He couldn't focus.
Richard watched the robed figures pierce the old man with a curved blade. They bled him into a clay bowl. He sighed in death, and his husk was laid aside. Richard was powerless when the men then raised the bowl to his lips. Blood washed over his swollen tongue and down his throat, hot and sour. They followed it with brackish water. Richard's head buzzed. He was certain they'd poisoned him.
Shackles were unlocked. Richard slid down the wall, crumpled in a pile. He wished for an urge to vomit, but couldn't produce one.
"Dark Kagiia is secure," the leader said. "Life continues."
The robed men tried to assist Richard. He swung a rubbery arm, noticed the shadow on his skin. He stilled, studied himself in the flickering half-light. Feet, legs, groin, stomach, arms - his entire body was dark with lines of writing. The source of the pain in his eyes and lips became clear.
Inside his head, the buzz became a lament, a threat, a bellow. As it grew louder within his skull, Richard studied his hands. His scream mingled with Dark Kagiia's.
Not poison. They'd done something worse: the writing. A spell to keep evil out and inscribed in his flesh.
In reverse.
