Chapter 49: 49. The Head Banger

Jiro followed Sumire, Kaori and Yui back toward the shrine compound, scanning the grounds for any sign of Masa or another intruder. He saw nothing unordinary. Indeed, he could barely see anything ordinary either, for the sun had set and the shrine grounds were weakly lit with only a few electric lights.

“There.” Yui suddenly pointed to the spirit library. “Someone inside.”

Jiro followed her finger and squinted. “I can’t see anything in this light. You sure you saw someone go in?”

Yui nodded.

“It must have been Masa,” said Sumire. “Or whatever is posing as him. Everyone stay behind me … and stay close.”

They stepped cautiously toward the library building. When they reached the entrance, they found the sliding door open and the corridor lights extinguished.

“The lights …” whispered Jiro.

Sumire nodded and motioned everyone behind her. From her kosode she produced a short wooden staff. From one end hung strips of white paper cut into jagged shapes, almost like strands of white hair. She motioned for Kaori to switch on the lights.

Kaori fumbled around in the dark until she found the switch and clicked it on. For a moment nothing happened, then the lamps in the hallway flickered to life, revealing the long corridor that led to the tearoom and library stacks. Nobody in sight.

“Okay,” whispered Sumire, holding up her staff. “Everyone stay behind me and try not to make a—”

“AIIEEEEGHHE!”

A muffled scream came from somewhere down the hall.

“That’s Masa’s voice!” said Sumire, not bothering to whisper anymore. “Quick, follow me.”

Sumire rushed down the hall until she reached the sliding door before the tea room. There the priestess stopped, caught her breath, and then raised her staff up to the height of her face before sliding the door open. The lights were off. The weak light filtering in from the hallway was scarcely enough for Jiro to see his own feet.

“He’s somewhere in here. I know it,” he said. Summoning his courage, Jiro stepped forward with his hands in front of him. Don’t think about your fear, he told himself. Don’t think, just act.

“Jiro wait,” said Sumire. “Let Kaori turn on the lights before you—”

Jiro stumbled over something and fell to the tatami, nearly breaking his skull on the edge of the tea table. He folded up over himself in the dark, clutching his head in pain. When he pulled his hand away it was wet with blood.

“Jiro are you okay?” he heard Kaori’s voice call out to him. “I’m trying to find the light switch.”

“I’m f-fine … I tripped on something. I’m bleeding a little. But I’m fine …”

“Hold on I think the switch was somewhere over here … found it!”

Kaori clicked on the lights. Almost in unison, the four of them gasped. Lying on the tatami next to Jiro, face up in a pool of blood was an elderly man who could only be Masa, the groundskeeper. Next to his head, drawn on the tatami mat with a finger, were the words:

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

Jiro shuddered. The spirit was playing with them.

Sumire rushed to Masa’s side. “He’s still breathing. Not dead, just unconscious. There’s a cut behind his neck. We need to stop the bleeding.”

Jiro released his own forehead. He wiped it with the back of his wrist. There was barely any blood. The blood on the tea table, he realized, wasn’t his own: it was Masa’s.

“Lots of blood,” said Yui softly, closing her eyes.

“Can we call for help?” Jiro said. “An ambulance maybe? Do you have a phone?”

“No,” said Sumire. “We don’t have a telephone on shrine grounds.”

“Drive him to a hospital then?”

Sumire shook her head. “The mountain road isn’t lit at night. We’ll all end up driving to our deaths. No, we’ll need to do what we can here. Kaori got get some towels and handkerchiefs. Yui please boil some hot water in the kitchenette. Jiro come apply pressure to the wound. I’m going to see if I can find some disinfectant.”

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Sumire and Yui exited the room. Jiro rolled Masa over gently and applied pressure to his neck through his shirt. When Kaori found some towels in one of the closets and tossed them to him, he gently used them to apply pressure to the wound. By the time Sumire shuffled in with a bottle of disinfectant, he could tell the bleeding was slowing.

“I think it’s just a shallow head wound,” said Jiro. “I remember this happened to one of my classmates in high school. Head cuts bleed a lot but there shouldn’t be a problem if we apply pressure.”

Sumire pulled back the bloody towel and applied the disinfectant to the cut on Masa’s neck. The groundskeeper’s forehead knotted up in pain but he showed no sign of waking.

“Thanks Jiro,” she said. “I’ll take over for now.”

“Sumire?”

“What is it Jiro?”

“If a spirit takes over a human body, can it bypass the shrine’s protections? What I mean is … Could it be that something possessed Masa and used him to remove the seals from the compound?”

“Hmm …” Sumire chewed her lip as she continued to apply pressure. “It is possible but …”

“But?”

“Then we are dealing with a very powerful spirit. Masa is our groundskeeper. He has tended to shrine business since he was just a little boy. Ritual cleansings, wardings, purifications: he’s seen all these things. No simple spirit would have been able to possess him.”

Kaori sat down by Sumire and wiped down Masa’s head with a handkerchief. His hair was matted with blood and sweat. He muttered incoherently in his sleep. “If a spirit did possess him,” said Kaori. “It is no longer inside him now.”

“But I wonder,” said Jiro. “Why would a spirit bring Masa in here and then force him to slam his own head against a table?”

Kaori shrugged. “Spirits have their own reasons. What’s more important is that we prevent this from happening again.”

Jiro frowned and looked around the room. “Maybe … But it feels to me almost like this was done as a distraction …”

“A distraction? From what?”

Jiro shot to his feet, head pain forgotten.

“What is it Jiro?”

He whirled toward the doorway. “Where’s Yui?”

“She went to fetch hot water for Masa, remember? But it’s strange. She should be back by now …”

He ran out of the tearoom and down the corridor, fumbling left and right until somehow, he reached the kitchenette and threw open the door. A brass kettle was lying on the tile in a pool of steaming hot water. There was no sign of Yui.

Just then, through the wall of the building, Jiro heard the revving of a motor coming from the shrine grounds.

Shit.

He dashed down the corridor and back out into the night, just in time to see the taillights of Kaori’s car disappear around the bend of the forest road and disappear into the darkness.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Kaori’s called to him from the library building: “Jiro, what the hell is going on? You shouldn’t be running around alone like this!”

“Why?! Why did you let her go alone?!”

“Jiro what—”

“Yui! It’s Yui. She’s taken the car … The spirit has her!”

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