|
Re: The Black Mass ☆Mark Samuels Fanfiction☆
They approached a residence which appeared similar to the others in the area. Two white stone walls separated it from its neighbors, while twin rose bushes bordered the path leading to the doorway. Rioko raised her phone and called Okamura to announce their arrival. A moment later the door opened and an elderly woman stepped out. Samuels had expected a wizened hag with her back bent double, perhaps wearing a kimono, but this woman, despite her evident age, looked sprightly in a smart black blouse and floral skirt that could have come from Prada or another high end brand. Her long grey hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. She motioned them over, smiling, and Rioko greeted her in the same formal register she had used earlier on the phone.
Before stepping into the entrance way Mrs. Okamura asked them to remove their shoes. Samuels took off his new steel-toed boots, which she stared at with evident curiosity. Then she said something to Rioko, and Samuels became aware that she wanted to relieve him of his backpack.
"I'll just bring it in with me," he said. "Goodies inside, remember?"
Rioko interpreted for him, and they were ushered inside. Before they came to the living room Samuels became aware of a smell emanating from within. He thought first of mold, but it was less musty than pungent, and he realized with a certain disgust that it was a human smell, that of hundreds of people crammed into a small space, like the hold of a slave ship. There was no evidence of such congestion, though, as the house's interior seemed all but empty. Samuels noticed what looked to be freshly-cut roses in a vase, but their scent did little to disguise the underlying stench.
A large rectangular table occupied the living room. This too seemed to be empty, until Samuels noticed its seated figure. He had at first taken it to be an object - a bundle of clothes, or at best a mannequin. Despite the heat outside and the slow whir of the air conditioner, the figure was wearing a heavy woollen coat and had been wrapped in at least two layers of blankets. A cap and dark glasses hid the top of its face, while the rest was covered by a cold mask. As the figure rose with some effort, Samuels realized that it was Okamura himself. He greeted them with a sepulchral trickle of words, suggesting a throat ravaged by cancer.
"Mr. Okamura apologizes for his voice and appearance," Rioko explained. "He says that he's 'pretty far along'. Very old - I think that's what he means."
"Pleased to meet you and all that," Samuels said. "Tell them we can't stay long, will you?"
At Mrs. Okamura's prompting, Samuels sat across from the sculptor, taking the opportunity to look around the room. A screen partitioned it into two areas, one containing the kitchen and living area; the other, he supposed, the couple's beds. The walls were covered with large framed prints, most of them abstract images reminiscent of those on the cult's website. Small stands had been set up in seemingly random places, supporting angular sculptures and abstract constructions of blown glass. An enormous plasma television screen dominated the far wall. The room's proportions seemed subtly wrong - the walls too high, the table too low to the ground - although not having set foot in any other Japanese homes, he could not be certain these features were as anomalous as they seemed. Whatever the case, their effect, combined with his headache and the unbearable stench, both of which had become impossible to ignore, made him anxious to leave as soon as possible.
Okamura spoke again in the same ruined voice, and a stunted conversation ensued. Samuels tried to keep up with Rioko's explanations, but he sensed that she was having trouble thinking of English equivalents for whatever the sculptor was saying. Soon Mrs. Okamura broke in and an awkward exchange followed, which Samuels interpreted in terms of the dynamics of their facial expressions. Mrs. Okamura was insisting on something, and Rioko was struggling to refuse her with as much diplomacy as she could muster. For a moment Rioko seemed to have won, but then Mrs. Okamura dismissed her with a smile, as if she were addressing a child, and headed to the kitchen.
"She's bringing out tea. I tried to stop her, but..."
"Dead serious," Samuels said. "Do. Not. Drink."
"She mentioned dinner too - she's prepared some kind of roast. I told her we can't stay long, but she said we have to at least try it."
He sensed Okamura following the conversation, and for a moment he was certain the old man understood English. But then the sculptor launched into a monologue which Rioko struggled through in fits and starts.
"He says thank you for coming...he realizes you've made a great effort to get here. I'm not sure whether he means this house or Japan in general. He says that his friend Shimura, or Brother Yuji, wanted to talk to you after he read your black mold story. He wanted to tell you the good news. Your story was sad, Brother Yuji said, but the real future isn't like that...the real future is a paradise."
Mrs. Okamura returned with two glasses of cold black tea. Samuels's throat was parched and he found himself wanting to reach out and drink, though he managed to restrain himself, and looked over to make sure Rioko did the same.
"We were worried, after what happened," Rioko said, adding: "I think he's talking about the bookstore."
Okamura said something in a jovial tone and then broke into choking laughter.
"All of us, we're beacons. But Brother Yuji went too far, and he was deactivated. It was too public, that was all, and too fast. But everything turned out for the best, didn't it?"
Samuels noticed that the television screen set against the wall was excessively large, even in this era of enveloping home entertainment; from the corner of his eye it became a black mouth or window into darkness.
"The large-scale transmissions are coming soon, from the Eon of the New Biology. New contact points. He hopes you'll join the Human Communion and continue the good work back in England. He says there are already contact points waiting for you there." Rioko stopped. "I'm sorry. I don't really know what he's talking about. And it's hard for me to breathe in here..."
Samuels too found his breath coming in short, and his consciousness was slipping in the same strange way it had on the street. The pounding in his head continued. The air conditioner, despite its whir, seemed broken; a suffocating heat pressed against his skin. He wanted more than ever to reach for the glass of cold black liquid before him, and he sensed Rioko was feeling the same impulse. He took her hand under the table and squeezed it, hard enough to hurt. She sat up sharply, startled back to attention.
Okamura had placed a handful of white pills on the table.
"These are...um...immunosuppressives. Suppressants. They'll help with making contact."
The sculptor moved his other hand into view and dropped what Samuels recognized as a hunting knife, its serrated edge glinting in the dim overhead light.
"He says...he says we can use this too, if we want. Sudden, localized damage will...will make the process easier. Look, Mark, I think we should get out of here. I'm not really comfortable with -"
Mrs. Okamura interrupted her by bringing out the roast, which did not resemble anything Samuels had ever seen connected with the word. It was a deep dish filled with thick, circular lumps of black matter that reminded him of enormous sea snails. Looking closer, he could see minute silvery filaments connecting them, and the suggestive shapes of half-formed organs beneath the surface. They were covered with a sticky film of matter resembling a mixture of charcoal and slime.
"Right," Samuels said. "I think this has gone on long enough."
He stood and opened his backpack, which had been resting against the table.
"You. Mr. Sculptor. I'd like a look at your face, yeah? Let's see what's under the mask."
Samuels extracted a pair of forearm length gloves from the backpack and, still standing, slid them on. He noticed that this action took Rioko and the Okamuras alike by surprise; now he needed to press his advantage. Belatedly, Rioko explained his request. But instead of seeming threatened, Okamura acted almost relieved. He pulled off the cold mask and removed his cap and glasses, just as Samuels was fitting his own protective goggles over his eyes.
Rioko started back in horror. The sculptor's eyes had fallen out of alignment, and only the left still moved with recognizable human intelligence. The right was a leaking cyst. His face was marred by patches of translucent blue-black skin, in places almost scaled. His nose had caved in, its cartilage reduced to jelly, while his lips had nearly fused into a single teratomal mass.
"Oh," Samuels said, "That's just not on, is it?"
In a single movement he pulled the baseball bat from his backpack and swung it across the table, connecting with Okamura's head. The sculptor fell out of his seat and struck the floor. In the next moment Samuels rushed to his side and pulled off the blankets. Someone behind him screamed, but he was too absorbed in the sight before him to turn and determine whether it was Rioko or the sculptor's wife. The force of the blow had ruptured Okamura's left eye, and a steady stream of black blood flowed from his ruined face. His woollen coat, which had been concealed by the blankets, was drenched in a similar damp substance.
Samuels felt a sharp pain and looked down, remembering that he had removed his boots at the door. The black fluid leaking from Okamura was congealing and liquefying again in sinuous ophidian movements, as if it were being subjected to sudden and extreme temperature changes. Some of it bubbled onto his bare sock and burned like acid. He jerked his foot away and tore the sock off, but the pain remained. Okamura raised his head and Samuels struck him with the bat again. The skin of the sculptor's face hung in flaps, and beneath was not bone but a hard black substance like the shell of a beetle. On impulse Samuels dropped the bat and reached his gloved hands into the wounds, peeling back their unevenly-textured flesh. He felt his hands burning despite their protective coverings as he tightened his grip and dislodged a mound of black gristle from the space where Okamura's brain should have been. Its shell-like exterior seemed to have been arrested during formation, transitioning as it did to leathery scales, slick black fur and other motley textures. At its center was a soft pit of pulp, heavily vascularized and inset with a single staring eye of lacteal blue, its multiple pupils a field of black stars shining in a noonday sky.
"Hello, sunshine," Samuels said, gazing into the eye. "Getting a good look at me?"
Behind him Mrs. Okamura ceased her screaming, grabbed the knife from the table and rushed at Rioko, who was staring at the sculptor's body with dim horror. She turned just in time to upend the table, forming a wall between them. When Mrs. Okamura began edging around it with her weapon extended, Rioko grabbed one of the glass sculptures from its stand and hurled it at her. It struck her shoulder on its way to the wall, where it shattered. At the sound of impact Samuels dropped the black lump and drove his bat through its eye with full strength, reducing it to a milky puddle. Okamura's body continued its strange dissolution, small clots of matter emerging from the riven folds of his face like parasites fleeing their host.
"Right," Samuels yelled. "Out of here, now. Now!"
Rioko hurled another sculpture at Mrs. Okamura and ran for the entrance way. Samuels grabbed his backpack and lugged it after him as he followed her out the door, neither of them stopping to look back.
They continued running until they could no longer see the house behind them. Rioko stopped when they were almost within range of the station, panting from the exertion. Samuels slowed down and felt his heart racing as if it would burst. The pounding in his head had worsened to the point that he was struggling not to vomit. Rioko stared ahead into the distance, seeming not to see him. Her expression was more angry than frightened.
"What the f.uck..." She slowly shook her head. "What the f.ucking hell..."
"Rioko," Samuels said. "We left our bloody shoes."
She laughed, but it was more like a cough. He sensed she felt the same nausea that he did, and was restraining it with similar difficulty.
"Oh my God. I can't believe...his wife. What if she calls the police?"
"Not going to happen," Samuels said. "The last thing they want is the law back there. No, she'll go running to the boss instead. Mr. Aleph."
"We'll have to call them ourselves then. I mean, I only caught a glimpse of that thing but -"
"No police," Samuels said. "That's not how I do things."
"Are you crazy? His wife tried to kill me. They both wanted to poison us. And what was wrong with his body?"
"Look. We don't know what's going on here, neither of us does. The police wouldn't believe us, first of all. Second, we'd waste time and probably give away our position."
"What do you mean, our position? And why did you have all those things in your backpack? Have you been involved in something like this before?"
"Not exactly. But I've seen things I couldn't explain. And I've had enemies, yeah? Maybe not ones like this, but enemies all the same. You always want to keep the upper hand if you can."
"Well," Rioko said. "I don't think they were expecting that."
"With Mark Samuels you don't get what you expect, you get what you deserve."
"I can't believe that really happened. It's like a nightmare."
"You don't have to believe," Samuels said. "It happened. We were both there."
Rioko seemed to calm down - or maybe it was only that exhaustion had caught up with her. They resumed walking until she stopped again.
"Oh my God...we can't go into the station without shoes. We have to find a store."
"Does it really matter?"
"The station guards won't let us on the train barefoot."
They came to the station and walked around to the Sun Road street of shops, where they found a shoe store called ABC Mart. As they passed through the entrance, an attendant came and said something to Rioko.
"He's not letting us in," she said.
"Why?"
"We're not wearing shoes."
"But we're going to buy them!"
"He says it doesn't matter, they can't let anyone in without shoes."
"F.uck's sake..." Samuels said. He pushed past the attendant into the store and threw a handful of notes on the counter. "Here's twenty thousand yen. That's what, a hundred pounds?" He grabbed two pairs of thong sandals from a rack. "I'm buying these. Ta."
He walked back and handed one of the pairs to Rioko.
"Problem solved."
Sandals on, they headed back to the station. Samuels noticed that the spot on his left foot where the black fluid had touched him had taken on a scalded look, and was filled with what appeared to be tiny fragments of black gravel. He made a mental note to disinfect it when he returned to his hotel.
"It's Saturday tomorrow," he said to Rioko. "You don't have work, right?"
"No. But I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight..."
"I'm sure you've got some medicine for that."
"I do, actually. How did you know?"
"Just a guess. You seem like the insomniac type. I am too, so I might end up asking you for some later. Always found it goes down better with this." He took out his flask and threw back a slug of whiskey.
As they rode back to Shinjuku, Samuels got the impression she was deciding whether to contact him again the next day or head straight to the police.
"Look," he said. "I probably shouldn't have gotten involved in this, and I really shouldn't have gotten you to come along. It's just a thing with me. I'm a bit paranoid. And sometimes I keep going when I should turn and walk away."
Rioko leaned in closer to him. He sensed she felt awkward talking on the train.
"It's all right."
"So I'd understand if you wanted to get out now. You know...tell Mr. Slick I took off on my own. I'll be heading back to England next week and I'm supposed to be meeting some friends of friends before I go, so you lot don't have to worry about me. You can -"
"They tried to kill me," Rioko broke in. "I'm not letting them get away with that."
Samuels nodded, and a minute passed before he spoke again. "I was twelve years old the first time I felt like that. I was walking home in Crystal Palace when some lads decided they didn't like my clothes. Everything I wear I like to keep clean, yeah? Well, they thought my Nike Blazers were too spotless. Said I'd nicked them, said I should hand them over. I could have run or tried to call for help, but I held my ground. Blinded one of them, put the other in the hospital and wound up there myself. Since then, that's how I tend to react."
Rioko looked at him.
"I think you can take those off now."
"What?"
She reached over and gently slipped off the goggles he had forgotten he was wearing.
"The gloves, too. You look like the plumber from Hell."
"That's about how I feel right now, love."
The train arrived at Shinjuku. Rioko needed to change to the Yamanote Line, so they parted on the platform.
"I'll give you a call tomorrow," Samuels said. "We can decide what to do then."
Rioko nodded and managed a half-smile. "Good night."
Samuels walked back his hotel and stopped on the way at a convenience store called Lawson, where he bought a bottle of whiskey, six cans of Kirin beer and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, or 'POTATOE CHIPPS' as a flaring line of text on the bag referred to them. He had noticed similar misspellings on objects and signs throughout the day, which he put down to the country's American influence, but he was past caring about them now. Back in his room he poured three fingers of whiskey into a plastic cup and drank it neat. Over the next hour, while marveling at the excesses of Japanese late night television, he made what he considered a valiant effort to finish the bottle. After thirty minutes he decided the effort was not only valiant but courtly and heroic. After forty-five it became noble, chivalrous and gallant. He was still searching for synonyms when the darkness in the room deepened.
He looked around. His left hand held the plastic cup, his right a cigarette. He had stripped down to his underwear and changed into an old Zapatista T-shirt he had picked up in Mexico. The lights had been off for some time, but just for a moment the darkness surrounding him had blinked, flashing to absolute pitch before returning to normal. At first he thought the television had lost power, but he was certain nothing on the screen had changed, and so the adjustment must have come from outside it. He was still thinking about it when it happened again, and this time the change remained. The television was on but its light failed to reach him; he could no longer make out any part of his body, and had to touch his face to reassure himself he still existed. The screen, which had been tuned to an infomercial, faded to a pure, crackling white rectangle that burned itself into his eyes. He looked away but the image filled his vision no matter where he turned, and as he struggled to orient himself in the darkness, he slipped and fell off the bed.
Samuels sat up. He was now less than a foot away from the white rectangle, and he watched as a faint image formed on its surface, resolving into the outline of a man. First his head took shape: coal-black eyes with greatly dilated pupils in a stark white face framed by long hair and a wispy beard and mustache. Then his shoulders and the rest of him came into view, the body covered by a long black robe.
The eyes fixed him and the lips moved.
"Good evening, Mark."
Samuels felt an explosion behind his eyes and steadied himself to avoid vomiting. The voice came from the television and from the inside of his head at the same time; he could hear the words ricocheting in his skull like steel ball-bearings.
"Hello, sunshine," he managed. "Bit late for a visit, isn't it?"
"No, not at all."
Samuels clutched his head. There was no difference between the room and his mind, and the voice filled both with its flat blare, a tuneless angel's trumpet whose every syllable announced final judgment. His body and the hotel were gone; there was only the voice and this ultimate void.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you," the figure said. "If you're wondering, I'm using your own nervous system to communicate. We made contact earlier tonight, but it was you who opened the door. Right now your liver is on the verge of failure, and the little missionaries in your bloodstream are taking advantage of the lowered defenses to receive the transmissions."
Samuels realized he had forgotten to clean his foot. The whiskey had made him forget the pain, but he realized now that the scalded flesh had been filled not with gravel from the street, but traces of the black matter that had escaped the sculptor's body.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"To offer friendship. Brother Eijiro Okamura isn't dead - he's here with us now. The important parts of him are still alive, and he doesn't hold anything against you. His wife, Sister Misako, was surprised and acted without thinking, but she understands now. We're very interested in you, Mark. We need Brothers and Sisters in England to continue our work. You've always sensed there was something beyond this world, haven't you? A greater reality of which the life you know is only a child's sketch. We'd like to show you what it is."
"F.uck off. You corrupt the sick and vulnerable. You're a cancer, and I'm going to end you."
The figure reacted only with a mild smile. Samuels got the impression it was enjoying the contrast between its conciliatory words and the oppressive force with with they were delivered.
"The next visitation has already begun in Tanimoto Hospital. I invite you to attend and share in the contact. You're correct that the sick, those near death, are particularly receptive to the transmissions. They're afraid, but we can remove their fear and heal their wounds, so that they may share in the life of the coming eon. In us there is no death."
"I wouldn't count death out just yet," Samuels said. "Because you're looking at it. Your own."
Immediately after delivering this line, which in his drunken state seemed suitably cinematic, Samuels decided his next priority was to prevent the figure from making any kind of retort. A solution came to him, and he congratulated himself for the way it encompassed an equally pressing matter, that of ending the explosions in his head. As the figure's lips moved to form a response, Samuels pulled back and, summoning all his strength, smashed his head into the screen. After the impact there was a moment of total dislocation, as if he were drowning in a sea of static and razors, and then his awareness dispersed in the darkness of oblivion.
TO BE CONTINUED!
|
For reason I imagined something akin to a Field Guide to Genre Authors with an entry something like...
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
