The January Second Selected Writer is Dominique Lamssies
You can email Dominique at: oniqumosheart@yahoo.com
COLD MEAT
by Dominique Lamssies
Nothing ever happened in Gokurakuji. Satoshi supposed he could move to Tokyo; it was only an hour away. But this tiny little town between the mountains had been lucky for him. He took a deep breath and adjusted the canvas wrapped body on his shoulder. Hana was heavier then she looked.
Satoshi didn’t usually go to the Buddhist temple this late at night, but Hana hadn’t gone down as quickly as his other victims.
He mounted the stairs up the mountainside and didn’t get five steps before everything suddenly got darker. He looked up and saw clouds blotting out the full moon. Then a fat drop of rain struck him right on the nose.
Satoshi’s head slumped. Maybe Gokurakuji wasn’t that lucky. He had no choice now, though.
He started up the stairs, being careful not to slip on the slick stones already worn smooth with time. His mind wandered over the events of the night, trying not to think about how wet he was getting.
Hana had been very pretty, the type of pretty you don’t often see anywhere, let alone in a small town. And she was just another girl stuck in that small town because she’d missed the last train to the big city. The police would ask questions but there would be no answers and it would all fade away.
Satoshi smiled. She’d been a fighter. She’d clocked him on the head with a pot. But he got her in the end. He always did.
He was so distracted by his musings that he didn’t notice the rain stop. He reached the first stair landing and paused. He needed to catch his breath.
A strange sucking sound to his right drew his attention to the single grave next to the path. Satoshi squinted into the sickly moonlight fighting its way through the clouds. Where is that sound coming from?
He shifted Hana a little to adjust his weight, then lifted a foot and poked at the dirt near the grave with his toe. It sank into the mud with the same sucking noise.
Satisfied that he’d found the source of the sound, he tried to pull his foot back, but it wouldn’t come out. Careful not to fall, he gave his leg a little jerk. His foot came up, but he imagined he saw long, stark white fingers holding onto his shoe.
This is what happens when I drink, he thought. My mind plays tricks on me.
He never drank on nights he had a girl over, but Hana had insisted. She’d had a stronger stomach than most girls.
He started up again, trudging slowly and carefully. He came to the next landing and grimaced as he adjusted the body on his increasingly sore shoulder.
A light to the left caught his eye. His head jerked in its direction and he saw a square paper lantern sitting on the cement path between the graves.
Someone’s here! he thought, clenching his jaw.
He looked all around, trying to find a bunch of trees or a shed he could put the body in before someone came to get the lantern. As he searched, he was wary of any sight or sound. He started to create his story in his head. I’m just taking some equipment up to the temple. A rich man from Tokyo hired me to restore the place.
“Shit!” he mumbled. There was nothing around but graves…nothing that would hide a body. He took a chance and went to the plot of graves on his left. Straining against his already tense muscles, he lowered the body as quickly and quietly as he could into the dark patch at the foot of a headstone.
He turned back to the right and jumped. He grunted in pain as he accidentally bit his tongue. Probably for the best as it kept him from screaming.
There was a figure sitting next to the lamp, slumped against a gravestone. It was white save for the blue tint cast over it by the lantern. Its hands lay limp on the wet ground, skeletal and knotty. The freakishly long head and neck drooped at a right angle from the rest of the body. Ratty, black hair concealed the face.
His body shaking, Satoshi kept an eye on the figure as his right hand slowly moved behind him. He’d never needed the knife he kept sheathed at his back before, but he always carried it just in case. His hand closed around the hilt and he tried to play calm.
“What are you doing out here so late?” Satoshi said, his heavy breathing betraying his anxiety.
The figure began to turn its head. The neck never righted itself as a face emerged from under the hair, eyes wide and milky white, lips pulled back over teeth in an amused grimace.
Satoshi’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. His heart pounded and his mind was shrieking fight or flight! Instead, he stood rooted in place with shock. Hana’s body tumbled to the ground, but he didn’t even notice.
On the face, the grimace stretched a little wider as the head started to droop, and then it slid right off the thing’s neck. The head tumbled onto the stone path and rolled to the edge of the landing, staring up at Satoshi.
Satoshi jerked a step back, but his legs gave out and he stumbled back, the knife hitting the landing with a clang. Behind him, a heavy stone fell against the pavement path and a thud followed. Satoshi twisted with a cry and saw the canvas bundle draped across the fallen headstone.
Lightning on the other side of the mountain split the sky. Everything around Satoshi, from the air, to the trees, to the head at his feet, seemed to be waiting for it when the roar of thunder shook the ground under them.
The rumble faded away and Satoshi heard a shrill scream in its place. He searched for the source of the horrible sound. He found it in the head at his feet, its expression contorted in obvious terror.
He could only stare as the headless form struggled to its feet, took the lantern in one hand, lifted the stray head by the hair in the other and scurried off between the graves.
He was still frozen in fright, sitting on the ground. He took a moment to catch his breath and stop the trembling. He picked up the knife and re-sheathed it. He stood and faced Hana’s body. He started panting again. There was no way she could have moved like that. Not after what he’d done to her. And that thing…
I’m more afraid of getting caught with a dead body than I am of any monster. He steeled himself and hefted Hana’s body onto his shoulder. Feeling like he was back in control, he turned around to go down the stairs, but the stairs were gone. Directly behind him was a cluster of trees, dark as the forest covering the mountain.
Wherever the trees came from, the street should be on the other side of them, he reasoned, trying not to let himself freak out again. He raised his foot and meant to go forward, but it hit something that felt like a big rock.
He kicked at it lightly. Then he realized that he couldn’t even step into the trees.
What…what the hell is this?
His arms tightened around the bundle and he stared at the trees. At the temple there was another path down the mountain. I can leave the body there, he decided. His jittery legs tried to make him move, and not just stand there.
His pace up the stairs quickened. He had no intention of stopping when he reached the next landing. He was almost there. He started for the final stretch of stairs, but something wrapped around his leg.
He fell, his hands going out to keep his head from hitting stone. For the second time, Hana’s body tumbled to the ground.
“No!” he gasped, “Please don’t hurt me! I’m sorry!”
Hanna’s body began to roll down the stairs, but it only went over two steps before stopping at the foot of a clump of trees. The landing where he’d just seen the headless figure was gone.
“I’m drunk,” he panted, barely able to keep control of the panic anymore. “I’m drunk and hallucinating. That’s the only explanation for this.”
Something tightened around his ankle and jerked him to the right. Out of the mud at the foot of a grave extended an arm that ended in three claws. A big ball seemed to rise out of the sludge behind it, then another arm emerged.
Satoshi screamed and kicked at whatever held him. His leg passed through it, splashing mud onto the ground. His thought process slowly ground to a halt and his body went dead weight. That thing was mud; it was made of mud!
His state of confused paralysis allowed the creature’s new arm to clamp onto his leg. It moaned as it straightened into a vaguely human shape, one large yellow eye focused on Satoshi, a yawning black hole forming underneath it.
Satoshi began flopping around like a fish out of water as he tried to grab onto anything that would let him get out of the creature’s grasp.
Lightning struck again suddenly, and it was only a heartbeat before the thunder crashed. It dissolved into silence, and Hana’s body twitched like she was trying to stretch her legs. The mud monster’s lone eye swiveled to the body. Abruptly, it let go of Satoshi and began to sink back into the mire.
Free of the hold, Satoshi pulled himself away and into a ball against a grave on the opposite side of the landing. He stared at the bundle as he wheezed loudly.
That thing had been made of mud, was it was scared of Hana’s body? Hana was moving even though Satoshi had basically gutted her.
Suddenly he didn’t care what happened to the body anymore. He scrambled to his feet and ran up the stairs. By the time he reached the temple building, the rain was coming down in sheets and his lungs hurt from breathing so heavily for so long. He entered, slid the door closed and sat heavily on the reed-mat floor.
Under the beating of the rain he heard scratching. “It’s here! It’s here!” a voice cried in child-like delight.
Satoshi's eyes searched the dark in vain for any sign of something as he fidgeted with the flashlight. “Go away!” he cried as he flicked it on.
“Hungry,” a voice reverberated through the darkness, now sounding low and wracked with pain.
He swept the beam through the temple.
“Give! Give!” the voice demanded.
He pointed the light in the direction of the voice and screamed. A naked man was standing there. Satoshi scrambled away, keeping the beam fixed on the figure.
The man smiled and from between his teeth came a tongue that was so long and thin it looked like a snake. Satoshi suddenly realized this wasn’t a man. Its skin was bright red. Its hair was dark and matted with grease. Two claws replaced its fingers and one claw replaced its toes.
The light shook violently in Satoshi’s hand as he shrieked.
“Bringer of good food make mess!” the red thing screamed in return.
“Please!” Satoshi pleaded. “I’m sorry! I’ll change!”
The red thing began to hop in place. It twirled and danced forward a little, which made Satoshi flinch and press himself against the wall. “No change. With blood and meat and knife and smile! Always you leave for us food!”
Another creature entered the temple. The blood froze in Satoshi’s veins. They know! They know about the bodies I have left here...And they want me to do it again?
“You kill so many. Greedy, like me. Hungry, like me,” the new creature said.
Satoshi had never been content to simply end someone’s life. He’d always been fascinated by what happened after a person died, by how the body changed. He had started bringing the bodies to the old Buddhist temple because it was abandoned. He got a little excited when he had his knife in his hand and things got messy. He could clean up at his leisure here. But when he came back the day after he’d brought someone, he noticed that bites had been taken out of the bodies and there was less blood there than there had been the night before. He thought he’d attracted animals. But these weren’t animals. They weren’t human either.
“You two eat the corpses you find here,” he whispered in amazement, temporarily forgetting his fear.
“Yes,” the red thing said, collapsing onto all fours in front of Satoshi. "Before, we no come this place. This holy place. But you make mess! You make dirty! Always make meat and mess and we hungry!”
Satoshi used what little self-possession he had left and reached for the knife. As soon as he had it in hand, he lunged at the red thing with a roar, knife out. It danced out of the way, as if it were a child he was chasing.
Satoshi’s anger was overcoming any other emotion. He wasn’t powerless and there was nothing for him to be afraid of. Nothing!
He held out the knife again for another charge, but something slammed against the temple door, making them all jump. The door began to slide open slowly, and Satoshi shined his light to see who was opening it.
The beam hit a hand, vomit green skin stretched over bone. He moved the light up the arm to see what the hand was attached to. He saw an emaciated man in the shreds of a loincloth, which was barely visible under its bulbous, distended belly. The skin hung off its face in folds as if there were no muscles to hold it in place.
“Hungry,” it growled. There was a thud and the canvas bundle with Hana’s body in it hit the floor.
The red creature squealed in delight as it rushed forward and pulled the body into the middle of the room. The emaciated man slid the door shut slowly.
Lightning struck, and then came thunder, louder than he could imagine. Satoshi dropped the flashlight and put his hands over his ears, trying to keep his eardrums from bursting. Even the two monsters backed away and curled up.
When the sound stopped, Satoshi reached for the flashlight but accidentally knocked it out of reach. The beam fell onto the canvas bundle in the middle of the room as it tore open.
Straight up out of the torn hole rose a snake. It held itself with the bearing of a dragon as it looked at each of the three cowering figures. The gap split wider as a tiger’s paw emerged.
What climbed out was not Hana. It had a snake for a tail, the body of a tiger and the head of a monkey. Blazing red eyes fixed on Satoshi and it snarled, revealing a mouth full of sharp teeth. One huge paw stepped toward him.
Satoshi saw a knife fall out of the snake/monkey/tiger’s body…the knife he had left in Hana’s stomach when he’d wrapped her up.
“Nue!” the two monsters cried in recognition and inched forward on all fours like scolded dogs. They seemed just as frightened of this new creature as was Satoshi.
The monkey head snapped and a tiger paw went up as if to swat a bug. The things pressed their noses to the matting and put their hands together as if praying.
Nue lowered its paw and sneered. “You lick up the filth these pests leave behind. I want only the creature that is foolish enough to think it can harm one of my kind.”
Satoshi screamed and clawed his way along the wall until the door. He scrambled to his feet and shoved it open only to see a dark clump of trees. The stairs down the mountain were gone.
He flung himself at the woods, but met a wall of resistance. “No!” he howled, ramming his shoulder into the wall. “Somebody let me out! Help me!”
Nue padded forward leisurely. “I am grateful, Nurikabe, blocker of paths. You saved me the annoyance of having to chase him.”
Satoshi let out a scream. In desperation, he kicked and punched at the wall. Nue raised a paw and swung it down, claws connecting with Satoshi’s back with a wet smack.
The creatures flashed their eyes as they looked at the smear of blood Nue left on the floor when it dragged the body back into the temple. Slowly, the red thing crawled forward, its tongue extended in anticipation as it watched Nue tear Satoshi apart. “We eat good.”
Dominique Lamssies was born during the Hour of the Ox (the Japanese witching hour) on the last day of O-Bon (the Buddhist festival of the dead) which meant she was pretty much destined to love and write J-Horror from birth. She lives in Portland, Oregon and has lived all over the US and the world. She has written about Japanese travel and folklore in Eye-Ai Magazine. You can visit her blog, The University of The Bizarre HERE