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.
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Licence de l'image

Certains droits réservés par walknboston

Raiding the grasshoppers

Sometimes, I wonder what the Minister’s counselor is on. And I’m actually thinking about asking him his supplier’s name.

When he called me last night to give me the address I was expected to be tomorrow morning, I confess it wasn’t very scrupulously competent of me not to check where he was sending me. I scribbled it on a bit of torn paper and get rid of it on my desk without further ado. Needless to say this morning I dig for it around twenty minutes in order to find it–I’m quite prone to believe moles and stickies to be close cousins. Or maybe the mayhem on my desk finally came alive and attempted to take in what I tossed out to him. The late giving rise to a quite interesting zoological hypothesis.

As soon as I arrived, I admit I suspected a defect in my note taking skills, and felt obliged to call back the Minister’s office –God they hate so much when I ask anything. My interlocutor looked very angry at me, dare to say very close to bawl me out.

“Kondo Satoru speaking. I’m at the meeting place but… I think I made a mistake. That’s a kindergarten.”

*insert windbag on its last legs sigh here* “No, there is no mistake. They asked for your services.”

Big dismayed silence (mine). Toddlers and I are like, Nutella and sashimi. In theory they do not fit really well together. In practice, they are a disaster.

“The Minister asked that you don’t do any old thing, for once. Won’t be hard for you, this is a mild case.”

Click.

So you’re sending me to the nursery school with zero information, zero contact and zero clarification, piece of cake, dream on that, you oyster face?

Well then. If something really dangerous was hidden in this school, the average age would probably have climbed up in the polls, but it seems not to be the case… and from where I am, I don’t feel anything more than the youngsters’ aura.

“Who’s the one you’d pick up?”

Stuck behind her desk, the receptionist looks as relaxed as a climbing plant stake. My face seems to panic her –Didn’t know I was so ugly- and I finally understand I do not ring any bell in her and she’s desperately ransacking her mind to find which brat I am related to.

“I’m sent by the Minister’s private office, Miss. Mixing up instant coffee and starch does not do any good to you. You’d better stop.”

“Ah, Kondo-san!”

The institutor rushes toward me, all smiles out –let me feel like being a kind of kid easily softened by a smile- and bows at me, so low that I wonder if he’d like to polish my boots with his tongue… at least that would have been funny.

“You’re right on time, children are in the playground, and you’ll have plenty of space to take a look and do the first move.”

Kids less than six years old gathering together are like a swarm of grasshoppers, you pray that you would not be their next target… like, first move, thanks! I’d rather have a coffee. Said grasshoppers still are playing around us, not disturbed at all.

“I was expecting you a little sooner, I let them outside so they’ll let you be. They’re a bit nervous, you know…”

“Clearly, Shimi-san, why did you call me for?” I cut off, arms crossed. I’m not at all bothered by him blabbering about his mornings, full of joy and short-legged trolls. Not at all.

“That.”

Coming closer to the building, he points what seems to be his class door, facing open to the playground, made of plastic, scratched nearly eight inches high from the ground. Resting on the amount of scratches and the depth, these look not new. I kneel and touch the deepest scratch but feel nothing, neither good nor bad.

“Started a week ago or so. At first I thought a child made them with a toy rake, but…”

“But Hannibal Lecter is not attending your class. These were hardly made with a plastic rake, for sure. Did the children tell you something?”

“They… They say that when they arrive soon in the morning, they hear something like a whimper, crying. I tried to come sooner and pricked up my ears, but I never saw nor heard anything. We’d like to avoid the parents getting involved in this. What could it be, according to you?

“No idea. A yôkai would rather smash the door open, I think… looks like something tried to enter the classroom.”

When I stand up, I feel a gaze weighting on me and turn slightly. And I find myself facing a kind of miniature black long tangled hair Sadako, in atrocious lemon yellow overalls and red shoes, glancing at me with a bewildered look. From what I feel, she has some kind of aura… I wonder if she’s powerful enough to “see” like I do –“those who see” is a common term used to talk about extra-sensorial-abled persons.

“Naoko! Don’t stare at people! What do you want?”

“Did you come to repair the door?”

Looking at the brat, I sigh.

“You’re right girl, I’m the handyman. Shimi-san, I’d like to enter the classroom, if you’re okay with that.”

By touching the door I feel a fleeting sensation, nearly primal. Kind of a rough feeling, raw… not necessarily bad but it’s so quick I can’t grasp it. Not very surprising, I’m in a school, hundreds of hands touched this door, some of the kids maybe let muddled sensations printed in it and I was granted the remains.

Inside, nothing more. No aura, no ghost dozing off on teddy bears, no yôkai crawling in the neon lamps. Just an ordinary empty room…

"Did something happen before?” I ask, stopping by to look at drawings pinned up on the wall. I study them while Shimi thinks about it.

“No, nothing out of the ordinary.”

There’s only common stuff, all the drawings look similar up to the colors: houses, suns, trees… but one of the drawings pictures a.. sort of… black mess, totally vague, in which I can make out a pair of triangles and a kind of line coming straight out of it. Signed: Naoko.

“So, about the children?”

The institutor glares at me with an offended look… People are so damned annoying, when they sob me about their problems but irk when I come to solutions clearly out of their “good vs bad” conception – as if they were anywhere but in Disney movies-.

“Don’t you dare imply that a child…”

“I do not imply, I ASK. Answering questions is your job, isn’t it? Mine is to ask them. I’m not part of your brood, so stop looking stern and answer. There is nothing in your classroom nor in the playground, therefore if that is not something coming from the inside, it means that somebody brings it with him. Maybe you do practice black magic?”

Looking how quick his face has changed, I think I’ve just met a friend. Looks like my voicemail will boo me again…

***

“What do you want?”

Me trying to charm a girl is as funny as a legless cripple on a trampoline: always wondering when he falls flat on his face. And the receptionist does not look either convinced by my attempts to pry information out of her.

“Look, there’s a problem, kind of, with the bra... children, I really, really would like to know if you heard something lately? Say, a week ago? Maybe one bringing an old toy to school, or back from a family trip?”

She snorts.

"I don’t see what is the point for you to ask.” Maybe that’s what I’m paid for? “The kids are quiet actually, there was only Naoko last Monday…”

Hey… micro human-shaped lemon interested by me has got into trouble last week…

“She arrived red-eyed, she did not want to tell anything to us and her parents just asked us to let her be.”

I smile, thinking. Don’t come closer, you curious nosy-nosed. May be a mild case, but matches quite well. In my job area, one is often very skeptical about coincidence. The receptionist stands up, visibly better at ease than when I arrived.

“And I will not give you their address. That does not concern you.”

“Yes it does.”

My hand sinks on her desk and fishes the file box, causing her to sharply squeak. She tries to catch my sleeve.

“Stop it, you can’t do that!”

“Yet it looks like I could. Stop pulling at my shirt, it’s already a rag, you’ll finish it off.”

Naoko…

Naoko Kondo??

The kanjis are the same. And the address…

Looks like I have a little niece. Well, thinking about that, I recall that my brother has reproduced. More than one time… bringing his offspring back home tonight, no wonder I’ll please my bro very much…

I give back the file box to the receptionist, her back to the wall. I smile at her again.

“If you would lend me your phone, you’ll be a sweetheart.”

To be continued... 

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Licence de l'image

Certains droits réservés par Janne Toivoniemi

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.