“A dog? No… A tanuki?” Rokuhara muttered.
“A tanuki…?”
Rokuhara’s expression was one of disbelief. Before I could ask him what he had seen, I had my answer.
The creature’s body was bathed in the red glow of traffic lights that reflected off the surface of the road. It lifted its snout into the air. Its face, which was now pointed toward us, seemed unnaturally flat. The creature—it could have been a dog; it could have been a tanuki—smiled. Its exposed teeth were like millstones, and like the tumorous growths that had filled the elevator, it bore a human mouth. The beast shook out its wet fur before disappearing into the bushes.
I made eye contact with Rokuhara, who had finally taken his hand off the emergency brake. We both shook our heads. I turned my eyes toward the spot where the beast had vanished. Something was there; it was box shaped and square, sitting by the side of the road and exposed to the rain. Rokuhara and I pulled off the road and parked along the shoulder.
I stepped out of the car and opened my umbrella, the rain beating aggressively at the thin plastic panels. The rain bounced off the ground and immediately soaked into my pants and shoes, making my legs feel heavy. A gerbera daisy had been thrust into an empty plastic bottle beside the rusty guardrail, surrounded by little candy and toy boxes, the cardboard growing soggy by the rain. Another large black box stood to the side, as if looking down on the others, the rain ricocheting off its surface. It was a suitcase, probably large enough to fit a whole person inside. Rokuhara placed his own hand on the shaft of my umbrella, indicating with his eyes that he would hold it for me while I investigated the suitcase.
I clucked my tongue, pulled out a set of white gloves from my pocket, and put them on. As I crouched low, the slew of rain from the umbrella formed a barrier in front of my face. I took a deep breath, then released the clasps on the suitcase. The lid opened without resistance. Numerous boxes were inside. The suitcase had been tightly packed with palm-sized, wooden boxes with intricate marquetry. A Chinese lantern plant had been painted with a vermilion brush on the surface of each box. While the images appeared to have been hand-drawn, they were as elaborate as mechanical prints. The lantern plants on the boxes seemed to ooze and swell as the rain hit them, reminding me of the grotesque aberration from the elevator.
“Chìlìng Suíshēn bǎomìng,” Rokuhara said as he crouched down next to me and picked up one of the boxes, turning it over to read the words on the back. “It’s the phrase Taoist wizards write on the talismans they place on the faces of jiangshi, hopping vampires. Not in authentic practice. It’s something that shows up in posters and on merchandise for cheap knockoff zombie flicks.”
The words had been brushed on the back of the box in the same vermilion color.
“What a shabby foundation for a cult…”
I rose to my feet, and Rokuhara stood up along with me. We got back into the car without saying another word.
We decided to turn back around for now and check out the situation at the dam once more. While we were traveling down the road, Rokuhara spoke.
“Those Chinese lantern plants were probably meant to be a stand-in for the lanterns sent to greet the dead during Bon. Shabby or not, when enough people take refuge in a thing, certain elements begin to accrue of their own accord. Perhaps enough to even create monsters.”
“So basically, the mayor of the sunken village turned to a new cult in hopes of reviving his dead son. But the cult spread disturbing talismans, which caused the village to warp.”
Rokuhara nodded.
“The strange occurrences happening in the village now are probably due to the reemergence of the cult. If the cult can be chased away, the issues should resolve.”
“Rokuhara, how much influence do you hold in the department these days?”
“…A decent amount for my age.”
“Enough influence to deal with a cult?”
Rokuhara’s profile as he nodded was reflected in the window next to him. I could see something red shining through the glass. At first, I assumed it was just the glare of a traffic light. But…there were no traffic lights around at the moment. In fact, there was nothing red nearby at all. No signs or streetlights of any kind.
I heard a gummy smacking noise, like something had just bounced off the window. No, not bounced. Something was stuck to it. A huge sticky pair of lips was now pressed against the glass. I instinctively slammed on the gas.
“What do we do?” I asked Rokuhara.
Another wet smack. This time, the glass on my side of the car grew dim. I refused to look.
“Whatever you do, don’t stop,” he instructed.
The smacking sound became a deluge. The pedal grew stiff under my foot. I could feel the car losing speed.
The windshield was completely red. I watched as the cracked red lips gnashed their yellowing teeth together. This was bad. The lips writhed incessantly. I kept my foot pressed on the gas, but the car wasn’t budging. The sound of the rain outside had been replaced by a steady din of whispering voices. I tried not to listen, keeping my eyes fixed on the steering wheel as I continued to step on the gas. But the voices were growing insistent. I recognized the sound, the voice the giant lips were speaking with. I heard the glass begin to crack. The voices grew louder, and the interior of the car filled with tepid breath. I was going insane.
And then it was all gone. The lips on the other side of the windshield had vanished. Instead of rain, the glass was wet with sticky ichor. The wipers made a pass, as if they had suddenly remembered what they were there for. I almost convinced myself it had been a hallucination at first, but a dry lip mark and the crack where the teeth had scraped the glass remained.
“Are they gone…?”
Rokuhara stared straight forward in shock. I could see a dark shadow behind him past his shoulders. I leaned over and peered out the passenger seat window. A long, straight shadow, like a massive tree, was standing there. It was a leg. A large pitch-black leg shrouded in what seemed to be mourning clothes, stiff and straight. I craned my eyes upward. It was a human-shaped shadow, so tall that it played havoc with my sense of depth. In fact, it looked about four meters tall exactly. As I stepped on the gas, the car began moving again, as if nothing had occurred.
The car glided into the dam’s parking lot. The windshield wipers were still moving, but there were no more raindrops to brush away. When we stepped out of the vehicle, the rain had finally stopped.
We passed the now-familiar guard and entered the monitor room. As we stepped inside, the young worker glanced at us with a mixture of confusion and relief.
“I— Um, I’ve been watching from the monitoring camera ever since…but as far as I can tell, that thing that fell down the elevator shaft has disappeared without a trace for now, at least.”
The worker pointed at the monitor, seeming frazzled. Only the silver elevator box, faintly visible from the shadows, appeared on-screen. I glanced toward the next monitor. The black shadow stood there idly, just as before. Its legs were submerged in the water, and the golden glint of its eyes pointed our way.
A powerless and gentle god, only capable of sending off the dead.
I had a feeling it had only appeared to the villagers in the first place because it had been unable to stand by and do nothing while the insidious cult prevented the dead from taking their final journey. To scare the humans into abandoning the cult and the polluted village as well.
I remembered the severed end of the fallen elevator cable, which looked as if it had been sliced through by some sort of blade. It probably hadn’t given out under the weight after all. The god may not have been able to do much, but it must have found some way to make the elevator fall.
I stared at the god on the monitor screen and nodded. I was sure it could see me. Even with the village submerged, it had remained to watch over the people. Forever staring at the surface of the water, like a mariner waiting for passengers who would never come. For souls in need of guidance and for humans to finally arrive and settle this mess.
Beneath the rushing water, the golden lights seemed to tilt, wavering ever so slightly. As if with the most indiscernible of bows.
When we stepped outside, a ray of sunlight finally peeked out from in between the parting clouds. We got into the car.
“It’s good that we came here. This seems like a case that will get properly solved for a change,” Rokuhara said, his lips curling up into a smile.
“Yeah, it was a real hoot,” I answered curtly.
The case may have been relatively decent this time around, but my choice of partners had been abysmal. I’d take a hundred aberrations any day over this guy. Maybe it was that unlucky tear-shaped mark beneath his eye or maybe it was his thin face, but the sight of Rokuhara and all the memories he dredged up did a number on me that no monster with a few cheap parlor tricks could ever hope to match.