You got a Call from the Other side

Something may be quite comforting, by and large: even if you have been taught Buddhist and Taoist wisdom –and that clearly gives you pre-eminence upon human trivialities -you may not be spared of having stupid ideas.

Like, bringing home your little niece, her eyes-burning overalls and her whims when you have a nasty allergy to anything aged less than eight.

I’ll spare you the details about our trip, the crossing of the few streets from the kindergarten to my brother’s house. I looked like a damn fool and I don’t like it. I find rather funny to be able to catch a yôkai by its nose and tell him it’s unwanted here and not being able to handle a five-years-old snotty kid. She ran away from me twice, nearly ended crushed under a bus -said bus brakes screeching and calling me every name under the sun-, and she hit me repetitively in the ankles with her red shoes calling me “mean” –that is so true, my niece-. As I am quite optimistic, I was able to see the hand of destiny within this ordeal: I shall never reproduce. Definitely.

My sister-in-law Miyumi opens the door. She looks me up and down for a long time and allows herself to smirk –I remember this smirk quite well. When I saw it at the wedding, I had a small sadistic thought about my brother. He was going to have a hard time.

“Well, well… Looks like you’re nearly a man now? I wouldn’t have bet any money on that…”

Was that SO LONG AGO?

“No need to look so stunned. Last time I saw your face, Satoru-kun, it was hidden under layers of teenage acne.”

Told you she was a sweetie…

“Talking about youngsters, here is your offspring.”

Miyumi looks at her daughter, almost surprised.

“How did she follow you up there?”

Smiling, I remove the fuda stuck on Naoko’s face and dispel the magic.

“You know how I am, I have my little thing to make them behave.”

“I hope for you, dear brother-in-law, that she will not have any nightmare.”

As if I was doing after-sales service… I let my niece running at her mother and she invites me to come in. The main feature in Kanata’s home decoration is a total lack of home decoration. There is barely a vase, furniture looks quite ordinary and looks like entry-level-cheap-price product, walls are blank, layout is practical. I sit on a rock-hard sofa and Miyumi offers me a tea so dark I can clearly see my own face in it.

“Is there a problem with Naoko? You were quite evasive on the phone.”

“Maybe. But I need some information before. What happened last week?”

“Last… ?”

She tightens and casts a glance at Naoko, playing at some distance. She leans to me.

“Did she talk about it at school?”

“Precisely, no. But it may be linked to weird events happening at school. They asked for me this morning and I find rather odd that I picked out your daughter’s name… especially when you know about her ancestors.”

“Naoko has no onmyôjitsu tendencies. We talked about that with ôka-san.” My sister-in-law’s face is clouding over. She still looks bothered by my job, as if everything supernatural gives her the jitters. I make a disapproving sound with my tongue.

“She “sees”, doesn’t she? She told you before about weird people crossing the house… she hears wailing next to cemeteries. Even if you ask her to shut her mouth, you can’t hide such a gift forever.”

Miyumi looks at me, still silent. Sometimes, I feel like she pities me. Kinda. And I don’t think that is nice of her. Kanata never told me about his wife’s antecedents, but when I watch such a reaction she reveals me more about her than if I was reading her secret diary. I guess she had a very “delicate” face-to-face with a spirit.

Slowly, I repeat my question:

“What happened a week ago?”

“Naoko, go to your room.”

As the kid looks like she’ll protest, her mother puts her on a spit with her gaze and she flees without further ado, toys loaded in her arms. It’s only when she leaves that I realize actually how much this living-room is cold, empty, nearly scary. One may even expect to see… ghosts? As I know Miyumi, I guess she never left Kanata choosing anything here. I really look forward to leave… I certainly put my sister-in-law ill at ease, but, so she does to me. When she finally speaks, she looks at me straight in the eye:

“Sunday evening, a car accident occurred in front of the house. I heard tires screeching, but I was busy, and Kanata-kun was working in his office. Naoko went by the window to watch, and couldn’t be heard for about half an hour. I wondered where she was and I finally found her outside, next to the road. I didn’t grasp immediately what happened, when I noticed blood on her hands…”

***

This morning, while I walk Naoko to school, I find she looks somewhat quieter. Arguing with her parents last night was quite stormy but it was when I had to tell her about this fuss that I really found myself walking on thin ice.

Actually, she accepted the facts way easier then her genitors.

Walking, she keeps on looking over her shoulder as we cross the road to the kindergarten, and I sigh heavily.

“Yes, it is following us. Stop fidgeting.”

“Will it flee if I fidget?”

“Maybe…”

To be true, I could have said anything to stop her moving like a flea high on cocaine.

Shimi and the receptionist’ faces dries as I enter the school, at least until I tell them my job here is nearly done. Especially when I tell them that I have good news.

Once in the classroom with Naoko, I kneel next to her while she sits on these colorful little chairs and she starts to silently take felt pens out of their box. At this time of day, the sun is not yet bright and the building is totally empty. Shimi closes the door when I wave at him and casts a puzzled look at us.

“What now?”

“Now, we wait.” I tell him quietly, leaning to Naoko’s drawing table. Waiting. That’s what I usually do. I am quite familiar with the exercise. Awkward silence, a bit lazy, fells slowly in the room and Shimi finally comes near his pupil too.

“What are you drawing, Naoko?”

I show him the children’s drawings on the wall, the kid’s sheet and its black fuzzy shape.

“Her cat. Isn’t it, Naoko? You’re drawing Shûya, are you not?”

She nods without letting go of her pens and keeps her gaze on the paper. Her face is tense and she frowns as she tries to draw the ears.

“I don’t understand what the…” the institutor sighs. I command him to be silent and raise a finger to tell him to prick his ears. At first, there is only Naoko’s pen scratching, because the street rumor can’t be heard from here.
It’s low, but still audible if you’re paying close attention: a gentle scratch, coming from the playground-side door.

“Here it is. Your guest...”

I stand up with a light spring, stop Naoko’s pen using the tip of my fingers and nod to her. She stands up too and takes my offered hand.

“You weren’t allowed to let him enter your room, true?” I say in a soft voice, eyes nearly squinted. I have to keep my distances if I want it not to run away…

Slowly, I cross the classroom, hand in hand with my niece. Shimi looks at us, nearly frozen. Even the dumbest can feel these moments: when the “other side” is on touch, on your fingertips, departed not yet gone, deads watching us, sometimes with kindness. And sometimes not human.

Animals too.

I stop at the door and look at the girl.

“So you never opened to him. Not even the front door. And Sunday… he was run over by a car. And you told yourself you were a bad girl, letting him outside to die. Was it what happened, Naoko?”

She says nothing, looking straight before her. She’s afraid, she guesses that’s not a living being scratching nearly furiously now behind the blue plastic door. I kneel before her.

“It wants to enter. That’s all. It can follow you, but it will enter only if you open the door. It is not angry.”

I can hear the sound growing louder, becoming plaintive meows, and I can now feel the little ghost’s aura… so it was this raw, rough feeling I had when I opened the door. An animal’s aura…

Naoko steps a few seconds, looking hesitant, then she comes closer, raises on her tiptoes and opens the door. I feel my stomach twisting as Shûya’s soul enters the classroom, and I breathe heavily to prevent staggering. They often think –wrongly- human souls to provide a stronger influence than animal souls. Based on my experience, I can assure you I would rather enter in a human cemetery than in a pet cemetery.

A few awkward seconds, and Naoko looks in the air, smiles and holds out a hand that I immediately pull down.

“You can’t touch him.”

“What did you do?”

Shimi came behind us and looks at me with a totally incredulous face. Lucky him, he suffered no aftereffects and probably wonders if he has to call men in white for both the uncle and the niece. Getting up, I suddenly feel dizzy as “Shûya”, now guarding Naoko, looks at me with a pensive glare. I stand still.

“Kondo-san?”

Won’t he leave me be? Well, I can understand that witnessing one of your pupils marveling at a draft may be disturbing. Shûya arches its back when the institutor comes closer.

Smiling like a salesman who just flogged ten pounds of rotten soy bean, I put my hands on Shimi’s shoulders, seizing the moment to keep him away from the kid. Her guardian spirit watches me, ears flat on its head and emitting a sort of low growling –purring, I suppose-.

“Congratulations! Your class has just won a guardian. What a chance for you, to be at the cutting edge of esotericism. Every tarot and feng-shui adept will have their brats tied to your apron. So then, my advice: put a cat-flap on the door. Ghosts are creatures of habits, you have no idea how much they are homebody.” I explain him, then I slip in a secret tone: “By the way, if I was you, I would go low on punishing Naoko during the next weeks… let’s say months. Guardians can be easily upset. Will you remember everything?”

He stares at me with the look of an anchovy dying in a pot of salt.

“Well, I was saying that for your door.”

Shimi briskly frees himself from me and raise his voice.

“Will you explain anything to me, in the end? What were these noises we heard?”

“Man, what a slow one… I’ll say it again so listen closely: Naoko’s dead cat.”

“That is not funny.”

So you think my face when she opened the door was a prank?

This guy asked for an onmyôji to exorcise his classroom, but he can’t imagine a cat’s spirit coming back for its owner? Maybe he would have found it easier with a furious oni?

“Okay, look, I don’t have the whole day and I admit I don’t want to kick your heels. We’ll do as if. Let everything boil down and call me back when you understand by yourself.”

Another smile to Shimi. No improvements for his dead fish face looks. On her side, Naoko casts a contrite look at Shûya.

“How will I explain that to mommy?”

I clear my throat and roll my eyes.

“If I was you, I would wait a bit before telling her. Waiting until you’ll be legal would be a good idea.”

The idea of telling my sister-in-law about the spirit guardian her daughter got is definitely more than she and I can handle.

Then, i'm leaving for Saitama (my family home). See you later.
_____________________________________

Licence de l'image

Certains droits réservés par walknboston

Show is over

Not a single line in the weekly newspaper in spite of the flock of journalists attending the show on the Tokyo’s courthouse parvis: even after years of practicing, I’m still impressed by the way my respected employer is able to cover up any mess I got involved into.

That said, I must admit that being the second world power, they can hardly leak about shintô priest used as a ghost buster, they would look like damn fools even before Americans.

This morning, the Minister phoned to remind me that “would be better to provide appropriate information about my trips and missions on business out of the governmental jurisdiction” –meaning: would be nice of you to let us know when you’re gonna create mayhem without us asking for it, duck- I unctuously answered that I shall soon think about a GPS transplantation. Failing for subtlety, it occurred to me he hanged a bit rudely.

In case you were wondering, no I did not paint crimson the courthouse stairs, nor did I rampage part of the building by mistake. But I did meet my mysterious “sponsor”, the one who has nearly burnt my lasts useful brain cells. And I went quite… disappointed, truly speaking.

Mainly because I was a mere spectator as I didn’t take any part in what happened. Truth is, the fact irks me a little. Being able to send back a soul where it belongs, to blow up a building without a single sweat drop, and finding yourself powerless and inefficient in front of an “ordinary tragedy” is deeply frustrating.

The wise would say “better to know about your own limits”.

Bullshit.

Good heavens, what’s the use of all these years of training?

Usually I make my entrance when it’s already too late, to minimize loss, like guys paid to throw away plague-stricken corps in order to avoid survivors’ further contamination. Ok, they were useful. But they didn’t have to spend ten years of their lives learning Taoist magic, dipping into frozen baths and hours of meditating cramps.

So I don’t give a shit for the Minister’s call.

***

At dawn I arrived in front of the courthouse, and stood there against one of the trees guarding the front entrance, waiting for my sponsor, determined to wait all day long and merge with the trunk if needed. I wonder if my pen pal would leave me alone if I didn’t show up because of the drizzling. Nothing would please me more than trashing away computer and keyboard, but I sincerely doubt that would solve the problem.

A few people are passing by: magistrates, white necks walking at full throttle without even looking at me, a group of girly students giggling and glancing at me –seems that I am the sort of man who appeals to this age group of the fair sex, I bet it comes from my trendy “hobo” look. Whatever sinks your boat… - and I’m waiting here, empty-headed, waiting for the shiki on my shoulder to react any time something vaguely unusual is passing by.

Ha. I can feel a touch of perplexity saying “what’s a shiki?” No, I didn’t adopt a faithful dog (although the Minister’s counselor, always sniffing on my heels…). It’s a bit more subtle.

Here’s a detailed description for curious ones: a shiki or “servant spirit”, is an embodiment of the onmyôji’s mind and psyche, a living extension in a tangible shape. Used for scouting -it can sneak in closed places or travel quickly on far distances- and also for fighting. It is generally shaped like an animal or a little demon, depending on whom or what is invoking it. Mine look like birds or little mammals.

Short-description: animal-looking invocation useful when I am in an intense laziness state and I don’t feel like fighting or moving by myself.

Once semantic issues are solved, let’s be back to our course of things: courthouse, it’s raining and I’m taking roots.

My phone cell tells me it’s nearly eleven in the morning, I’m dozing, sitting under a drizzle which will probably send me back to my sickbed with galleons of cough syrup when a piping voice calls me out.

“Why are you on the floor?”

I hate kids. What does she think I am doing, head tilted and eyes closed? Mimes? Opening an eye, I cast a more than hostile glance at an eight-years-old miniature.

“I’m playing dead.”

“Then you’re doing it wrong. It ain’t the way it should be done”, she says with pedantry.

“Sure?”

“You will catch death, true.”

True indeed. My jacket and t-shirt are soaked wet in the shoulders area. Rain drops are running along the leaves and keep dripping on my head. I stood up and shake myself a bit, sighing heavily, still staring at the kid. I don’t have the know-how with the children part of mankind, besides, I don’t have it either with the other part. Maybe because I don’t scare them. Yet.

Maybe because they can see more than meet the eye.

“And you, may I ask what are you doing here?” I say, methodically wringing my jacket. “Your mother never told you don’t talk to strangers?”

“Mommy is not here with me. She’s there.”

She points at the courthouse, in front of which a small flock is gathering. Judging by the army of mikes waving, they do not look like magistrates. As a rule I don’t work with judges, so I admit I didn’t inquired about the latest mainstream trial –what’s the point in court-appointed attorney for a demon?-. My shiki looks troubled when the brat holds out her hand to touch him, and I absent-mindedly cluck my tongue to ease him.

“I want to play with kitteh!”

“Is your mother among the journalists?”

I turn to see the doors opened, framing two figures holding each other, and suddenly I feel like sinking under water.

It’s not a suffocating feeling –that I can endure- but a sucking up sensation burying me under a cold and heavy blanket, my heart pounding in my ears as the only sound in the silence around me… total silence while less than two yards from me a swarm of journalists is snapping away, jerking mikes at the couple climbing down the stairs. Slowly, stunned, I look down and see the kiddo taking my hand and dragging me to the bottom of the stairs.

My shiki snarls, startled as if in agony and I’m finally following her as if I was not the one ordering my legs to move. I should be freaking out, looking for a way to free me…

But no. Not for this soul.

We step together at the bottom of the stairs and our eyes look at the group, at the man and the woman answering the journalists’ questions. Especially the woman, talking about her daughter, about the punishment her murderer deserved, finally convicted by justice after long months struggles… her husband is adding so, saying he’d never had guessed about the kid’s institutor, and thanking the media and policemen for their job and support…

I’m not bonding with others, that’s a fact and I have a lot of hard time trying to understand what people hides in his inner self, at least while he’s still alive. But here, the child’s hand squeezing mine, hearing the false cries in the mother’s voice makes me feel sick as I never were.

“I loved Aya” she utters in front of a female journalist having eyes only for her.

“So then, why did you kill her?”

My voice is easily heard over the hubbub, and it is not entirely because of my lungs. A heavy silence falls on us while my question fades into the air and they turn to face me one by one, like automatons. One feels so alone before these glares and minds craving for easy, so much more popular moving answer than for the miserable truth. One feels alone when blaming a mother for killing her own daughter, even when said kid is holding tightly your hand, silently asking for justice.

“You won’t answer?”

However, if my voice is so cold, it is entirely because of me. I do so to hide my sudden weakness, this fucking feeling stuffed into my gasping throat as I’m stuck between Aya’s aura squeezing me and the slowly awakening terror of the mother, suddenly able to catch a glimpse of her dead daughter by my side: I can see her pupils expand with fear. Bruises, blows, blood stains… and the deep dark look ghosts have when they come back to bother you. Drives you crazy.

I don’t react when Aya’s mother collapses with a cry, convulsing, calling for her husband. Accusing, she shouts he left her alone, not taking care of the «burden » Aya grew to, him wanting to keep her in spite of her disability… I close my eyes, I try not to see this restless mob… pressure is slowly turning down as the ghost finally let go of my hand and I fall on my knees, gasping, chilled to the bones.

“Sorry. I didn’t wanted to hurt you,” Aya whispers, smiling. “Mommy wasn’t able to hear me but it was easier with you. Sorry.”

Take a deep breath, don’t let yourself been distracted. If she attacks her mother, I can’t let her do so, as a rule: only livings settle scores with the livings. I stand up.

“You want to fight?” she asks, backing off.

“That is not entirely up with me.”

I finally notice her crooked legs, nearly blurred. She looks at them, undecided.

“So these were the reason?”

“Looks like so.”

On the stairs, the mob begins to move, some journalists are looking at me again… damn, I don’t want them into the bargain!

Suddenly Aya moves her little face closer to mine and flings her arms around my neck.

“Thank you.”

I stood here, definitely frozen by her kiss on my forehead, as she seems to melt in the ever-pouring rain.

***

In the end, journalists weren’t able to catch up with me, but running when you’re soaked wet and just-hugged by a revengeful ghost is like running a 110-meter hurdle with a cannon ball locked to each ankle. Surely I could have looked for Aya’s file, could have tried to understand… and I think that’s what everybody would have wanted.

But I alone have felt each of Aya’s feelings, and I have no interest in her desire to understand or to get answers. I feel even less affected as I was only a mere communication channel. That’s not my first time, but they were teenagers, not a child in a wheelchair.

That sounds not like a frankly romantic ending… but what could I do?

The hell with it, I’m no different from a grave digger. And I’ve never saw any of them crying at burials.

Free show tomorrow

After passing a week of high fever buried under my blankets, I find myself rather happy to be able to bear a stand-up position for more than thirty seconds. That being so, I still don’t look very fresh but I’m vaguely working, therefore allowing me to take care of an e-mail quite… unexpected.

I was talking earlier about the altered use one can do of my mailbox, entrusting me with oh-so-prestigious missions, and about the sort of answers one is entitled to expect when one takes an onmyôji for a nutritionist or a feng-shui chiropractor. So I was slightly convinced that the email I received was along the same lines than the one much talked about (when my sinuses tried to kill me): no sender, no title, no signature, just a word.

Come.

Indeed, if I happened to be a shaman-chiropractor, that email could only possibly have been a hoax, a mail sent by error, potentially a computer bug. However, in an onmyôji mailbox… but my head was more than 102°F with fever and I admit I didn’t think it twice before sending the mail to its right place : in the trash box.

Then happened… how can I say … a little “problem”.

Next to nothing.

To describe it to you the best I can, let’s say a truck full of nitroglycerin came crashing with the remains of my brains in a first-ranked seat sounds and lights show. Without usherette or popcorn.

I woke up to find myself face to face with the carpet, with stiff aching muscles, burning eye sockets and an unbearable humming in the ears. I probably stayed unconscious for one or two hours, huddled up on the floor before my chair. Getting up, I had the rather irritating enjoyment to find blood stains on my carpet, probably coming from my eyes and ears –pity they were my only facial openings that were not pouring down liquids last week-. In spite of the illness I managed to understand that my cold wasn’t worsening to a lethally tropical disease –the only tropical plants I mix with are in ministries, and they’re scrubbed with bleach.

So I opted for the most rational option: unplug computer and go back to bed, thinking stained carpet, damaged brains and said disturbing email would be nice enough to wait for a few days.

This morning, here we go again: second email, same mold, but with a second word.

Come tomorrow.

Without being a computer super crack, it seems to me that if virus may induce black out of the computer, it rarely blacks out the user himself. No blood in the cdrom drive nor in the power cable –I checked.

On can say that you wouldn’t venture yourself in meeting someone who can knock-out a master of Taoist magic with a single pile of pixels, don’t you? Even more when it’s no nicely notified.

Well, firstly my rhinustuff-pharyngitia-colditis-thingy helped him a lot.

Secondly, I hate being given orders and more, being beaten when I don’t want to cooperate. Really truly hate it. It bugs me very much, drives me aggressive. Anyhow, a master onmyôji never indulges himself in gratuitous violence, and, why, ain’t it perfect timing? He did the first move. Therefore I’m allowed to retaliate with barbarically aforethought action.

In order not to end up dripping blood on the carpet, I created a small kekkai around me and answered the mail, using his synthetic and uncluttered syntax:

Where ?

I barely had time to hit the “send” button that the answer popped in, in the form of an address I acknowledged as Tokyo’s courthouse. Perfect.

I restrained myself from sending a “why” to my pen pal. In fact I kinda like to go and see what’s up by myself, must be my muck-rake side -the only part of my character fully satisfied by my job-.

I’ll be there indeed.

And the smartass who thinks he can take my head for a can would be well-advised to have a solid good reason for calling me out. Otherwise an onmyôji fight in front of the courthouse should be picturesque (and will help in keeping a low profile).

In any case he’ll be put on a show.

If the Head Fits

Three days of peace don’t happen very often, so I allowed myself free time to tell you about another story. Story I’d like to start by ranting -you may know that I have a full case of rants in my bag- against these greedy irresponsible drudges also known as real estate developers. You know, them, dissecting landscapes, quantifying and assessing. Them, unable to understand that temples are not only cheesy space-consuming buildings… History? Culture? Is that sellable?

I’m not in the property business, but at least when you build something somewhere I think you have to ponder contingencies of yôkai or ghost neighborhood. Doing so would definitely be better for these… people’s business -I admit I almost have used a slightly less polite qualifying… But they say, Master must not swear. Or not too much.

***

Generally speaking, newly built houses are a kind of place I can actually rest in. They’re not crowded by filthy auras and unwanted presences. Well, if that was the case of the one I’d like to talk about, my presence would not had been required in a hurry at nearly eight in the evening. In my area of work, overtime is a quite abstract concept, unless you assume usual working hours as my normal sleeping hours.

I wasn’t alone because my employer wanted to go to the scene with me. Sounded fun when I found said employer was Kanata.

He has not been presented yet, so I’ll jump at the chance: Kanata is my nine-years-older brother. He and I have strictly nothing in common, from ideals to daily life. His main quality is being perfectly ordinary, and he mainly fails in his appreciation of me. At least, for the last that’s something we share.

As I’m kneeling to look over the place where a corpse used to be, he’s running at me holding a security helmet, assuring me I must put it on because that’s the procedure.

“Seems it has not been of a great assistance to your worker, this procedure you make a fuss of,” I answer, and I hear him taking a deep breath (maybe preventing him from carving said helmet into my skull. I have this ability to irritate him with a single sentence).

I was in an already bad mood after a short discussion –not to say bloody argument- with two stubborn cops in charge of watching the crime scene. I had to show them my governmental permit. This is my personal autograph book, with all the Japanese political and administrative bigwigs signs, allowing me to enter any police prefecture, taking the superintendent’s cafe latte from his own hand and asking him where is the sugar on top of that (to make it clear, I know that because I actually did it).

One of the cops stays with us; on the evidence of his inquisitive eye-looking I guess he doesn’t want me to put a spanner in the works. In his defense, I don’t really look like a coroner. However, self-righteous in his varnished brown shoes, Kanata plays perfectly the part of the real estate agent oozing literally with the idea of telling his clients there’s a corpse in their home-sweet-home to be.

When he phoned, big brother was a bit out of his nerves, and between respites I think I had had the main thing: a building painter met the wrong kind of person in a house under construction. Even I should acknowledge that this is terrible advertisement, except if you like yellow journalism.

“The body was there. Nothing has been touched” says the cop and I instantly understand why Kanata smelled the dirty trick. Lack of blood stains or punch-up evidences can occur on a crime scene. When a head has been separated from the body and is nowhere to be found, it becomes harder to believe. And when ballistics and physics give up too and pretend they don’t care, that’s when I take part for the greatest displeasure of hard-nosed.

“I’d like a glass of water, if you please”.

Kanata meets eyes with the cop… okay, my brother doesn’t understand. I stare at the cop, telling him that I will not leave my fingerprints everywhere, because I know his superior would be slightly irritated. He snorts, tries to look threatening and fails, finally consenting to leave the room for my satisfaction. Who did he think he is? I had had my face so close to yokai’s that we could have made out easily, so little game of nasty glances sounds very childish to me now.

My brother, out of his depth, still doesn’t understand why I need water.

“Because it is hard enough to concentrate with you looking over my shoulder when I’m working, so I asked for him to evacuate. Close the door.”

Last time a zealous civil servant though it was a good idea to ask me what I was doing, he ended up as a stain on the wallpaper. Bad reaction. I was trying to pull a yôkai out of a nursery room and I was a bit nervous.

I need less than a few seconds to feel the heavy sticky, persistent aura floating around, of the kind that rings all my alarms. To my onmyôji ears it sounds like nails screeching on a blackboard. Not a demon, not really a yôkai either, it’s something rather… intense, as if I was surrounded.

To help you getting an idea of what it feels like, try putting your hand in a bucket full of iffy material and guess what you are touching.

“Got it. Is there a garden here?”

“In the backyard, why?”

I stand up and feel a brief pain located in my throat, sharply enough to mentally slap myself in the face.

“Satoru?”

“The cop!”

As you may understand, sometimes one can be part of Japan’s spiritual elite and part of very stupid. I let a guy wandering in a dirty, nasty house in which people bring out the big esoteric guns. And this guy has probably just paid the price of my carelessness. I thought –utterly wrong- that my aura would have prevented the thing hidden here to reveal itself.

I bolt out of the room and trip over a lying body, around two yards from the door. Kanata bumps into me and looks at the thing on the floor, loosing his lasts colors.

“Kami-“

“Leave the gods be and show me where the garden is before he clears off!”

“He?”

“A Kubikajiri!”

I catch him again within the garden as expected, wearing a raggedy sort-of kimono, cackling and bending over something. At least, he’s so focused on whatever he’s holding that my showing up didn’t worried him at all.

Easy, Satoru… the few inches above my shoulders and the top of my head are not so unnecessary that I’d like to get rid of them.

“Can I help you?”

Startled, the ghost stands up straight. Bruised and already blue, his face is Yoshi’s, the late painter he beheaded yesterday. I slowly raise both of my hands and let him study me.

“Yes, I can certainly help.”

He turns towards me and I can see what he’s holding, the cause of so much interest: the cop’s severed head.

“It may be long time before you find it, don’t you think? I can give you a hand.” Still, I don’t move. “They have bothered you, that’s the least I can do for you.”

He hesitates, claps his mouth several times, then he smiles, giving me a good view of his sharp black teeth… a smile that seems to split his face in two, his way of approving. Still avoiding hasty gestures, I move my hands to intone.

“Om… sowaka… Om… sowaha…”

The grass around me is shivering, gradually growing to a gust. In case you’re sometimes wondering about this oddly cold sensation, that kind of draft when there is not any breath of air… well you can almost certainly put your money on a ghost. And if you feel it hard to stay alive, guess probably not a spirit prankster.

Still staring at me, the kubikajiri cocks his “borrowed” head on a side, then it pulls loose and falls on the grass. In its place, a new face slowly takes shape, a bit thinner, with big black eyes and a human-sized mouth, smiling at me. I open my eyes and bow at him.

“It is easier this way, don’t you agree?”

In my back my brother comes finally out, probably wondering why the hell I am bowing to severed heads of his former employee and of the cop, because that’s all he’s able to see. The ghost bows in return, lower than me. The wind unfolds and he’s scattering away, calming down as soon as he has totally disappeared.

“Gone.”

As usually after an exorcism, my hands are slightly shaking and my legs are numb, and I need to slowly stretch them to release the tension within my muscles. An unpleasant feeling I never completely managed to overcome.

“What did you just do?”

“Gave him a hand. Kubikajiri have a nasty habit of ransacking graves in order to try on heads, looking for theirs. I just saved him some time, no more no less.”

“Searching for graves… so why is it not looking for a graveyard?”

“He was.”

What is he thinking of? That you can expropriate a ghost by asking him if he could do us a good turn and go haunting elsewhere, because a real estate will soon replace all these faded and frankly poor tasted graves?

“You were the ones who brought livings here. My advice is to see your boss and make use of little power of persuasion you have for them to screw up this building site. I would hate to come back again for the next drop dead worker. Speaking of, I’m going to eat something before I drop dead.”

Hands in my pockets, I want to turn around and walk away but Kanata stops me.

“But... don’t you exorcise it? This kaji… kaja…”

“I did. So, you think he was the only one?”

Our gazes fall on both severed heads in the grass, and this time, by the way he looks, Kanata seems to understand.

I pat him on the shoulder.

“Well, it was nice to see each other, oni-san. We should do this more often.”

Then I go back in the hall biding him a good day. That’s the very moment I put neighborhood issues into perspective. It’s a kinda positive way of thinking, when one comes to think about it.

Why don’t you draw little ponies?

“Are you sure you’re a professional?”

Okay. Shaggy male onmyôji waiting at your door wearing sweatshirt and tattered denims may look very suspicious. Especially when a woman had answered your phone call with a perfect and ridiculously pompous Japanese, telling you something like “The Master will come out to your place”. Aforesaid Master (including myself, my ragged denim trousers, my eyes ringed and my have-seen-better-days sweatshirt) knowing nothing about teleportation in spite of his great powers is actually two hours late. Well, in fact, master was crashing out after he had the hell of a masochist day, and he really didn’t like to be pulled out of his bed.

I make myself into a smile to my “client”.

“I am the best.”

It always amazes me how much I do appear persuasive telling people things I’m well aware of, without boasting about. I find this whole onmyôji ego-tripping is only useful when I want to look more serious at work, if not I don’t give a rat’s ass about being the best of exorcists. And I can’t give any shit less about it either with a three-hours-and-twenty-two-minutes-long night of sleep.

“Is your daughter upstairs?”

It was a panic-stricken call from a family mother. She found out little Akane darling drooling and clawing the walls of her bedroom, scratching deep with her nails, and a not very healthy-looking black ichors pouring out of her eyes. She didn’t send for the doctor, because she thought that being only eight years old, chances were quite scarce for bad trip and hallucinogenic mushroom abuse. On the phone, I wanted to retort to my aunt that this kid probably had the worst case of cataract I ever knew of, but she was so icy that I felt my sense of humor was allowed to go back to bed (lucky him).

“Yes, I locked her door… She’s frightening me, she tried to attack me…”

I bet you are, looking at the symptoms.

“You did well. Stay here.”

I’m halfway through the stairs when a strong, sweet nauseating smell hit me in the face… totally odorless to anybody but an onmyôji. I refer to my personal scale when I need to estimate a job difficulty level. D-level: easily tossed off, C-level: a few band-aid and headache pill expected, B-level: I wonder if the family doctor would threaten me again to quit his job, A-level: looks like the minister’s counsellor will loose his hair when he gets medical fees and material damages bills.

That smells like a C-level. How the hell a kid so young has been able to attract such a piece of shit in her bedroom? Well, the answer is proudly pinned up on the fridge, scribbled with a greasy wax pencil, looking like a pentacle. I freeze and ask firmly:

“Do you practise esotericism?”

Mommy answers positively, and here she goes babbling: thanks to her practice, as soon as she became aware of Akane-chan’s condition she thought she has to call the Kondo clan, because she read something about the clan somewhere in a newspaper and because she has our phone number hanging on the fridge just in case. I retort it seems a better idea to me for her to stop letting aforesaid magazines close to Akane-chan, who seems to be very fond of drawing these so-called incantation pentacles instead of flashy little ponies. Might as well advertise for a yôkai picnic area.

“Why are you saying such things? Akane doesn’t read any of my esoteric books.”

I nudge at the door with the end of my foot and the wood literally explodes, forcing me to cast a small whirlwind in order to save my skin.

“Let me guess, she has a lot of imagination.”

Looking to cute little Akane coming to me, with her neck bent to a weird angle, I bet that the yôkai possessing her is very happy to see me. I smile and draw my fuda.

“Do you know I was pulled out of my bed just for you?”

I send him three fuda in the face and it starts screaming, while the swaying floor under my feet forces me to back off.

“And I didn’t even have time enough for a coffee?”

Shit, it’s running at me… I’d rather not hitting a girl aged less than ten years, so I leap back throwing another fuda at her back. Moving behind her, I put my hand between her shoulder blades - still intoning- and my hand sink wrist deep through her. Another scream pierces my ears.

Needless to say, the mother climbs up the stairs, wondering what by the gods am I doing to her daughter. Hard cheese, the kid will have bruises and the mother too. I pull out my hand and the yôkai hiding inside the girl’s body begins to come out, slashing at my fingers, tearing up my fuda. I use my free hand to knock down a bookcase shelf before the stairs in order to prevent mother from stepping into the room.

Come on, I’m nearly done... Walls are trembling around us and screaming turns to shrieking. Biting the bullet, I tug my hand, yanking the whole demon out of Akane. It tries to snatch my face as I seize him by the neck and I punch him, all the way going on intoning my mantras. On the floor, Akane is trembling, crying and calling for her mother.

Finally, the yôkai bursts into flames, disappearing in my hands. I take a deep breath, make out a big “everything is all right” smile on my face and try to remove the collapsed shelves with my hands bleeding everywhere and the kid howling in the background. The mother starts to give me a bollocking when she realises her daughter is not drooling anymore on the carpet, and she quickly tone it down. Instead, she spreads slimy thankyous all over me–of the exasperating kind, as if gratitude needed to be repeated over and over- before taking her daughter in her arms.

All snot and tears, Akane is staring at me with her black eyes, still wondering in which case she has to file me. I prevent her by politely asking loudly for band-aid, as I’m leaving blood trails everywhere on the already hopeless floor. The mother runs for the bathroom and helps me with disinfecting while Akane is still staring at me from a closer place. Crouching, I pick up the torn pieces of the pentacle drawing scattered among door wood shards, and hand them over to Akane’s mommy.

“Next time, why don’t you try reading Playboy?”

Well, that will certainly be retold to my mother, who will get me a good telling off –warrant of Japan’s spiritual stability, keeper of morals, sort of- about so inconceivable it is, me giving such an image of the clan, behaving the way I am.

Meanwhile, if you please, the keeper of morals will have a coffee and two aspirins. All this screaming cursed me with a headache.