Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 3: The Book of Catastrophe
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Prologue: A Dark and Stormy Night
The rain began gently around midnight the way rain begins in late August in the city, its softness soothing. By one o’clock in the morning, that rain had become a storm.
Clouds darkened to a color that had no name, and the downpour came, not in waves but as a solid weight of water. It ran down the hospital windows in sheets, turning the glass opaque. Lighting crackled in the sky, turning the night white. Thunder followed, close enough to rattle the building’s frame. The building lost power, suddenly plunging St. Luke’s Hospital in Tsukiji into darkness.
The hospital had a reasonably reliable generator, but with no emergency surgeries scheduled that night, the decision was made to conserve energy by using candles instead. The building had settled into an old kind of darkness an hour ago, the kind that made the nurses walk a little faster than they intended to.
Around two o’clock in the morning, the night shift began their rounds. Two nurses were accompanied by one janitor carrying a candle in a tin holder. The three figures walked through the dark corridors that looked so different than they did in daylight.
The windows rattled. Water ran down the panes in rivulets so thick they distorted the dim reflections in the glass. Outside was darkness and the percussion of rain on the roof and the sides of the building.
The temperature had dropped sharply somewhere between midnight and two in the morning. It was unbelievably cold for late August. The usual humidity of summer vanished like mist and dream, replaced by a chill that made the nurses pull their cardigans tightly around themselves.
One nurse stopped so suddenly that the janitor nearly collided with her. The candle flame guttered. Their shadows leaped up the walls, exaggerated and strange.
“Stop,” the nurse said quietly.
The other nurse approached her from behind. “What is it?”
There was no answer at first. The first nurse was staring down the corridor toward the examination rooms. The candlelight reflected off a puddle of water on the floor. The puddle was not scattered or random, but concentrated in a single spot. As the candle traveled over it, the light revealed a wet trail of footprints leading away from the puddle.
“Is it a puddle?” the second nurse asked. Her voice had gone flat from the effort of pretending not to be afraid. “From a leak, probably. The rain’s coming through the roof. The windows are intact. If someone came in from outside, they would have had to break through. Anyone who passed through wet from the rain could cause a puddle.”
“Then could it be the doctor on night duty in the first examination room?” the first nurse asked.
“It’s so strange,” the second nurse said. “If it were the doctor, he should have stayed inside the hospital. There’s no reason he would be drenched, is there?”
At that moment, the janitor let out a strangled cry.
“What is it, sir?” the first nurse asked.
“Blood,” he said. The short janitor raised his unshaven, red face and said in a trembling voice, “It’s blood!”
It was indeed true. When they held the light close to the puddle, which had looked dark and murky in the dim ambient light, they could see that it was stained red.
The second nurse was younger than the first nurse; she clung to the older woman’s arm for reassurance. “Is it really blood?” she asked. “Eek!”
“I can’t say for certain. In any case, let’s follow the trail.”
Answering bravely, the older nurse walked toward the entrance of the first examination room, where the wet footprints led. She tried pushing the door open.
It made a faint creaking sound.
Startled, the nurse shone the light on the seam of the door. This door should have been locked at night, but she saw that the lock had been torn away together with the hasp.
Who would tear off a lock? Wouldn’t that cause a ruckus?
“Look, it’s been torn off.” The nurse collapsed against the janitor’s shoulder, barely supporting herself.
“It’s a burglar! You, report to the duty room at once,” the janitor commanded the younger nurse.
The nurse nodded and ran off down the corridor.
“All right, sir, we’re going in.” The older nurse bit her lip firmly and slowly pushed the door open.
Inside was pitch dark. There were no windows in the examination room.
Blue-white flashes of lightning from the corridor and the single candle were the only sources of light.
The trail of water—or blood—ran from the corridor to the examination room.
That trail led to the entrance of the dispensary at the back of the examination room.
“They’re inside the dispensary!” the janitor whispered.
“Could it be a thief who came to steal medicine?” the nurse asked.
“We need to be careful.”
The nurse put her index finger to her lips, then sent the janitor ahead of her. They headed for the dispensary.
It was obvious by now that they were following a trail of blood. The liquid on the floor reeked of it, the iron tang hanging heavily in the air.
The janitor pressed himself against the sliding door of the dispensary, lowered his candle, and quietly slid the door open.
In one corner of the dispensary, there was a glimmer of blue light.
“Someone’s in there!” the janitor said.
“Shh!” The nurse covered the janitor’s mouth and crouched down.
***
Within the patch of blue light were two shadows. One was a man wearing dark clothing. The other was the shadow of an enormous black dog.
The dog’s wet, glistening belly heaved violently. It growled a few times, low in its throat.
The man crouched over the dog, moving one hand frantically.
The sharp smell of alcohol commingled with the scent of blood in the air. There was another odor, too, and that was harder to identify.
The nurse thought that she was going to be sick. She covered her mouth with one hand and stepped back.
Suddenly, the wet black dog raised its enormous head and turned.
She looked at the dog with an expression of terror. “They’ve noticed us!”
The nurse immediately understood the situation, stood up, and slid open the door of the dispensary fully. The janitor’s candle lit the dispensary, revealing the man and the dog. Like the dog, the man was soaked through.
“Who are you?!” The nurse cried out. She stood blocking the entrance.
The man turned around slowly. His cheeks were sunken in, as were his eyes; they were so shadowed that it was impossible to tell what color they were. His red lips were split and bleeding, but he was sneering contemptuously. That sneer was the only thing lifelike and human about him. He was pale enough to be a cadaver.
Overwhelmed by the man’s glare, the nurse stepped back and put a hand on the doorway. The smell of alcohol and an unidentified stench assailed her in waves. For an instant, her mind went dark.
The bizarre intruder turned toward the entrance of the room. A red garment covering his left shoulder had been violently torn apart, exposing the flesh beneath. Down that shoulder ran a terrifying red wound shaped like a bolt of lightning. The edges were defined; it could only be a wound caused by a blade.
The clean lines of the wound were marred by white lumps, writhing and squirming all over it. Four enormous white grubs, like silkworm larvae, stuck to the wound like glue, vigorously undulating their bellies as they moved over it.
In the pool of blood filling the space between the black dog and the man, similar grotesque maggots had gathered, crawling through the blood—and drinking it!
The nurse was repulsed, of course.
Overcome by horror, the janitor threw down the candle and fled back toward the first examination room.
The black dog rose to its feet. It kicked off from the bloodstained floor and leaped onto the janitor’s back, growling.
Its claws tore through cloth. Blood gushed. The dog’s teeth found the janitor’s throat and the creature twisted its enormous body. The janitor’s body jerked and was still. Mist-like droplets rained down in the room.
The janitor shrieked in dismay.
“Murderer! I’ll call the police!” The nurse screamed and fled toward the medicine cabinet. Her back struck it with a clatter. The bottles inside the cabinet rattled.
The black dog showed her no mercy. It growled again and kicked off the floor with its hind legs. Its fangs drove into the nurse’s chest.
She fainted from shock before she could scream again.
The black dog twisted its head, fangs still embedded. Blood spurted across her white coat. Her chest tore open.
The man watched. His expression was cold. The chilling sneer he’d turned on the nurse and the janitor before had not shifted an inch.
Blood from the nurse’s chest wound joined the pool where the maggots had gathered. The maggots moved faster and with more precise movements, as if they were excited by the presence of fresh blood to drink.
The man lowered his eyes to the wound on his shoulder. The maggots clinging there emitted thin, sticky, translucent threads to cover the injury. The resulting bandage was as strong as sutures.
The man peeled away one creature whose movements had grown sluggish. He threw it into the pool of blood. Then he picked up another from the pool and pressed it against his shoulder.
The creature fastened itself tightly to his wound.
The pool of blood on the floor kept spreading.
“Bloodworms, that’s enough,” the man murmured, brushing the maggot-like creatures from his injury. Bloodworms were demonic insects that were said to have originated in ancient China. If they were allowed to suck blood, they could create thread with the power to stitch human flesh together. There were stories of ancient sorcerers who made nets from bloodworm thread and captured every kind of monster and spirit beast within them.
According to one theory, dragon handlers had used nets woven from bloodworms to capture dragons, tame them, and release them into the Imperial Palace.
“Damn it—Kōda! Twice now, that Kōda has wounded me.” Flames of hatred blazed in the man’s dark eyes. “Kōda, just wait and see. The dragon has already begun to move. Tōkyō can no longer escape its fatal fate.”
Staggering to his feet, the man walked out of the dispensary into the corridor. His breathing was ragged. “In a few days, Tokyo will perish. And… damn… Kōda, you will die as well!”
The severely wounded man was named Katō Yasunori. He had infiltrated St. Luke’s Hospital to use bloodworms to close his wounds.
Only a few hours earlier, Katō had fought Kōda Shigeyuki and Narutaki Junichi, who had been lying in wait at the Ministry of Finance at the burial mound of Taira no Masakado’s head. He had been wounded through his own carelessness.
Having mastered the deepest secrets of alchemical practice, his body was hardened and as tough as rope. He had carried himself all the way to the hospital despite losing so much blood. It had taken him nearly an hour to make the journey.
Katō Yasunori summoned a black dog, a shikigami servant bound to obey his will. Then he harvested the bloodworms from the dog’s ears and used them to spin thread over his gaping shoulder wound. He was so dizzy from blood loss that he could scarcely think, but the bloodworms were successful in their work; that wound had closed, and he was no longer bleeding.
Outside St. Luke’s Hospital, the thunderstorm still raged. For Katō, whose life had been saved, this storm was a blessed rain.
Storm,
Blow!
Lightning, tear through the darkness!
Heaven’s punishment had already fallen upon Tōkyō. The giant dragon of the earth was already raging underground. The vengeful spirits that had slept beneath Tōkyō for centuries were awake.
Before long, the ground under Tōkyō would split, heaven and earth would tremble, and everything would be engulfed in blood and fire.
Katō laughed aloud. His revenge was all but accomplished. Tōkyō would perish because of the strength of his hatred.
The fateful day of September 1, 1923 drew ever closer.
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