Shotgun Sorceress

Chapter twenty-seven

Izanamiko No Oni

Once we got back to campus, we checked in our weapons and went up to the eighth floor.

“Guys, I need to try to find some useful memories in Henry’s bones,” I told Charlie and Pal as I picked up my mouthpiece. “My gut’s telling me that there’s something here we can use against Miko. But the imprints are so strong … the old guy went through some horrible things. The Goad might slip out and take over my body while I’m under and try to do some serious damage.”

Charlie stared at me. “Are you possessed by an evil spirit or something?”

“Yeah.” I winced. “Forgot to mention that part. Sorry.” I sat down in the restraint chair. “Anyway, I need you guys to strap me back in this thing.” I popped the mouthpiece in. “Please leave my jaw and my flesh hand free.”

They did as I asked.

“Pal, put his bone in my hand; take it away if I have a seizure or lose consciousness or anything like that.”

“I will.”

He put the bone in my outstretched hand; immediately I was hit with Henry’s primary death-memory. I bit down on the mouthpiece and tried to ride it out, tried to catch the memory-threads I could feel drifting below it—

The girl stood at the new releases shelf, and God almighty, she was a looker. She wore tight worn-out cutoffs that barely covered up enough to keep her from getting arrested, and she was barefoot. The first three buttons of her black silk blouse were open, and I could see her breasts swaying free under the fabric. Thick hair, as shiny and black as her blouse, hung nearly to her waist. I wondered if her hair would feel like silk.—

I pushed that thread away and moved on to the next.

The girl had the spooky, unnatural grin I’d seen on the faces of shell-shocked soldiers who’d cracked to the point of endlessly giggling at the horrors they’d seen. Her eyes were glassy, and I wondered if she was sick, or on drugs.

“I came to apologize, Henry.” Her words came out in a breathless rush as she stepped toward the cash register. “I was a bitch, wasn’t I? Shouldn’t be bitchy to a nice old man like you. So very nice.”

The scent of her rose perfume was thick in the air, but under it was the faint stink of sulfur and scorched metal.

“I mean, I can’t be mad about what happened, can I?” she said. “America fixed Japan up so nice afterward, and put in bases to protect us. My own father was a GI, and if not for the bomb … I wouldn’t even be here, and I should be glad to be alive, huh, Henry?”

I was sure the girl was utterly out of her mind. “What do you want from me?” I stammered, starting to inch toward the telephone mounted a few yards away on the wall.

“I want what everybody wants … that special someone who’ll make me … complete. I feel so alone, and I think you do, too. Are you the man I’m looking for? I said yesterday that you’re a part of things, but I’ve got to make sure …”

She lunged forward and pinned me to the wall. I struggled and hollered for help, but her arms were iron. She pressed her body against mine. I couldn’t help but thrill at the feel of her silky hair tickling my neck, her hard nipples brushing my chest.

“Sh, I’m not going to hurt you. Just relax.”

She started to kiss me, and her right hand slid down my belly to rest over my fly. I squeezed my eyes shut. Trapped between terror and lust, I could do nothing but moan as she unzipped my pants and pulled my johnson free.

When she went down on me, a blue shower of sparks exploded behind my eyes. Oh dear God in Heaven, my wife, Violet, had never done this, never would have done it if I’d begged and pleaded, oh dear God!

“Who … who are you?” I gasped.

I felt the buzz of the girl’s muffled laugh, and she bobbed faster and faster against me to match the slamming of my heart, and suddenly I was afraid I was about to have a heart attack, but at my age maybe this wouldn’t be a bad way to go, and I came, a hot, sweet explosion that rocked my whole body—

The vision was yanked away along with the bone in my hand. Pal and Charlie peered at me, concerned. My shirt was damp with perspiration, and I was panting like I’d been running a marathon.

“Are you all right?” Pal asked. “You started crying out.”

“I’m fine,” I replied, my voice hoarse. “I think I’m getting closer to something useful.”

I wiggled my fingers at my familiar. Pal blinked at me uncertainly and put the bone into my hand, and I went right back into the memory:

The girl pulled away, and I slid down the wall to lie in a sweaty heap. When I finally realized I hadn’t, in fact, had a stroke or heart attack, I opened my eyes and fumbled my pants back on.

She was gone, but a book entitled The Myths of Japan lay on the floor a few yards away. She’d taped a note to the front cover: “Can you guess my name?”

Trembling, I crawled to the book and opened it at the page she’d marked. I began to read about Izanami, mother of the gods, who became ruler of the underworld after she’d burned to death giving birth to Kagu-tsuchi, the god of fire.

The memory faded, and I grabbed the one closest to it:

My best friend’s chest exploded in a crimson spray. The young soldier fell twitching in the sandy mud. I helplessly tried to do something, anything, for him with the pathetic canvas medical kit. My buddy’s eyes rolled up into his head as he let out an awful wet noise. Then he was dead.

I dropped the kit and stared over the palm log at the Japanese machine-gun nest. The Japs were still firing, black smoke snaking from the slits in the bone-pale concrete bunker. I looked down at the sticky blood on my hands, at the black flies that were already crawling over my buddy’s wounds.

My field of vision started to twitch in time with my pounding heart, and bile rose hot in my throat. Those filthy yellow cockroaches were gonna pay for this. I grabbed my M1 rifle and a grenade and vaulted over the log. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I pounded across the clearing. I felt lances of fire slash my shoulder, my thigh, as I pulled the grenade pin and hurled it into one of the black slits.

The percussive gust nearly knocked me down, but as soon as the orange bloom of fire died I kicked open the door and fired a half-dozen rounds into the bunker. When no one returned fire, I jumped down inside.

A half-dozen Japs lay sprawled on the concrete floor, faces and bodies torn apart by shrapnel. Then I heard a ragged moan and saw one of them start rolling around. The kid was maybe sixteen or seventeen, his face a blood-speckled mask of shock. His close-cut hair looked like the down of a black duckling.

In two strides I was on the Japanese soldier and bashed his face in with the butt of my rifle.

“Ah, truly the deed of a mighty warrior!” came a laugh behind me.

I whirled around, but found my arms were paralyzed, my rifle useless.

One of the corpses rose, and in the dimness I first thought it was a man dressed all in black. But when it stepped into a shaft of sunlight, I saw it was a naked woman, her whole body charred almost beyond recognition, cooked flesh peeling from the bones of her face and hands. Her eyes were bright amber, live coals glowing in the ruin of her face.

She raised a hand, and my dog tags slithered up my chest to my throat. The chain jerked tight, then broke, leaving a stinging track on my neck. The tags flew into her open palm.

“Henry Schleicher, corporal,” she read aloud. “You please me. You’ve sent many souls to my realm today. Now you’ll drop your weapon and please me more.”

My hands released the rifle and I staggered backward to fall against a pile of bodies in the corner. To my utter horror, I realized I had an erection, and the woman was coming for me, her grin baring rows of gray shark’s teeth—

The vision mercifully ended as Pal snatched the bone from my hand. My throat and jaw ached, and tears stung my eyes.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Charlie asked.

“You were screaming,” Pal added.

“Think I’m gonna be sick,” I croaked. “Get me out of this.”

They untied me and I lurched into the bathroom to throw up. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, calmed myself down, and went back into the room.

“Okay. Let’s try this again, guys.” I sat back down on the chair.

“You’re sure?” Charlie asked.

I shook my head. “Not really. But this is still the only idea I’ve got.”

Once they strapped me back in, Pal put Henry’s remains in my hand and I slipped into the next memory:

“Can you guess my name?”

My heart froze. The girl stood beside my bed. Her slim body was shoehorned into torn, faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and tall boots. She’d cut off all her hair, buzz-cut it nearly to the scalp.

“How’d you get in here?” I stammered, blushing at the hard-on straining against the elastic waistband of my pajamas. I crossed my hands in front of my fly.

“What, you won’t even guess? You’re no fun,” she pouted. “Anyhow, I’m Miko, and I’ll be your demon for the evening.”

“How’d you get in here?” I repeated.

She nodded toward the open window. “Climbed your ivy. Same as when I came for your wife.”

It took a moment for the implication of her words to sink in. “You … you killed Violet.”

Another nod. “She was distracting. Not very satisfying, though; I had to kill an old man in a nursing home today, just to make sure I’d be halfway sane when I came here tonight.”

I couldn’t keep from staring at the gun on the table. There was no way I could get to it before Miko did.

She followed my gaze. “Is that for me, Henry? You can’t kill me, you know … thanks to dear ol’ mom, I have no soul. What’d my mother look like when she raped you, Henry? Burned or wormy or what?”

“Your moth—Oh dear God.” The room started swimming before my eyes.

“She looks like a big smoke cloud now. She and my brother were fighting over the souls in the war, and Kagu-tsuchi tricked her into being at Hiroshima when Little Boy blew,” the girl continued. “Did you know that the mother’s responsible for giving her child a soul? Kind of an automatic thing, usually, but since mine’s the queen of the dead, she gave me a jones for murder, instead. Mother likes ’em young, and so she made sure I’d send plenty of kids her way.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed and gave me a grim smile. “I guess you could say my soul is on lay-away; I get it as soon as I’ve made up for what my brother took from my mother. Kagu-tsuchi gets the souls of people who burn to death, and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was pretty much everyone. Mother was very angry about losing the souls, not to mention being vaporized, so I have to match the A-bomb body count: 236,962 people. And since I can’t use fire, bombs and guns are out, so I pretty much have to take lives one by one. So far I’ve only managed to send off 538. At this rate, I won’t be done for another twenty thousand years.”

She rubbed her face. “I wish you guys had just nuked one city, a much smaller city. I’d be lying if I told you killing wasn’t a kick, but I’m ready to do something else for a change, you know?”

“Why … why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because you can get me out of this. You’re my father, and if you willingly give me your soul, I’m freed from my birth curse.”

She seemed absolutely, horrifyingly sincere, but I reminded myself she had to be insane, or some sicko getting her kicks at my expense.

“Why should I believe this crazy story of yours?” I demanded nervously. “All that was just a dream I had, and you’re just playing with my head. I … I can’t possibly be your father.”

She dug into her pocket, pulled out a silver chain, and flipped it through the air. “Catch.”

I caught the chain. Two dog tags lay in my palm, gleaming like razor blades. They bore my name, rank, and serial number. The metal was flecked with brownish gunk that might have been blood or rust or both. I turned the tags over and saw the crude American eagle I’d etched with my pocket knife in a fit of barracks boredom. My heart dropped to the soles of my feet.

“Where did you get this?”

“Mother likes to play games. She gave me a box full of hundreds of dog tags a few decades ago, and told me one of them belonged to my father. I’ve blown a lot of old men, Henry, and you’re the only one who tasted of my mother’s poison.”

Her mother’s poison.

Miko met his mortified stare. “I’d always expected my father would be a man who was responsible in some important way, maybe Oppenheimer or the pilot of the Enola Gay or somebody, but it was just you,” she said quietly. “You didn’t ask for this, but neither did I. And if you don’t give me your soul, nearly a quarter of a million people are going to get something they didn’t ask for, either.”

She stood up and went to the window.

“Do I have a choice?” I stammered.

“You have all the choice in the world. Your soul’s no good to me if I have to take it by force. If you want to give me and everybody else a chance at a normal life, you’ll meet me tomorrow at midnight on top of Mount Nebo. Otherwise, you can just stay here, and I won’t bother you again. By the taste of you, I’d say you’ll live to an even riper old age, maybe even see a whole century.”

She swung a leg over the windowsill. “I guess it all depends on whether you’re still willing to die for your country or not.”

And then she was gone.

The memory ended, but another curled around its tail; I followed the new thread:

I opened the top drawer of the bureau, took out the tray that held all my old medals and ribbons, and stared down at them. The tray told me that I’d been a hero once, and like my daddy always told me, heroes took care of business, never shied away from what had to be done.

I felt cold deep in my bones. If Miko had been telling me the truth, I had to deal with her, had to stop her from killing anyone else. But how could I stop a demon?

I went downstairs and reread the Japanese mythology book, pored over the entries on Izanami’s other deadly child, the god of fire. If the gods truly feuded as Miko claimed they did, then Kagu-tsuchi wouldn’t want his little sister to complete her task, would he? If all this was real, then I ought to be able to contact the god of fire, somehow.

I went to my bedroom and arranged my medals in a big glass ashtray. I carried it down to the kitchen, set it on the counter, cracked open a bottle of brandy I’d been saving for company, and sloshed the liquor over the decorations. Part of my brain hollered at me for wasting good booze and ruining family heirlooms, but the rest reminded me that I had no real blood relatives left to inherit my treasures … except Miko, if she was telling the truth. And if she was, then contacting the god was a hell of a lot more important than a few medals.

“Okay, Kagu-tsuchi, if you’re out there, tell me what to do,” I muttered, then lit a match and threw it in the ashtray.

It blazed bright, and I stared into the flames. The Silver Star and Purple Heart began to blacken, and the ribbons crackled as they caught fire. The crackling got louder, and suddenly I heard a hissing voice inside my head:

“While the mother survived, the daughter shall die.”

The fire grew hotter, brighter, and suddenly the ashtray exploded. I stumbled back, momentarily blinded, eyebrows singed.

When the gray afterimage finally faded, I saw that the ashtray and medals were scorched slag, a black, bubbled mess melting into the countertop.

The memory faded into another one:

That night, I stood before the mirror, dressed in my old army uniform. The seat of my pants sagged and my belly bulged around the waistband, but the fit wasn’t that bad, considering.

I slipped the shiny Smith & Wesson and a road flare into the left pocket of my jacket. Then I carefully slid a Mason jar filled with home-brew napalm into my right pocket. I’d made the jellied gasoline that afternoon by soaking packing peanuts in gas; I hoped I’d made enough, hoped the jar wouldn’t leak.

I headed downstairs to my old Buick. It was a hot night, so I turned the AC up high as I drove. Mount Nebo was fifteen minutes outside town, hardly a mountain but certainly the largest bump in the flatland for miles. A local rancher had lived on Mount Nebo for a few decades, but five years ago his house had been hit by lightning and burned down, killing him and his family. Somebody back East had inherited the land, but nobody ever came out to do anything with it.

As I turned up the farm road toward Nebo, I saw the ruined chimney and walls silhouetted against the full moon. Below, I saw a flickering light, maybe a campfire? I parked the car off the road, clicked on my flashlight, and began to hike up the hill.

I had to pause midway to massage the rusty ache in my knees, and was wheezing badly by the time I reached the top. My dress shirt was sodden with sweat underneath my uniform jacket. When the blood stopped roaring in my ears, I realized I could hear Miko singing nearby, too softly for me to make out any words, but the sound sent an electric buzz through my chest and loins.

No. She was my enemy, and I had to stop her. I pulled out the Mason jar, unscrewed the lid with shaking hands, then hobbled around the weathered hunks of burned wood and cinder blocks to find Miko.

I turned a corner into what might have been a bedroom, and my breath caught in my throat. Miko was dancing naked on a red blanket surrounded by dozens of candles, from tiny white votives to slim tapers to enormous three-wick cylinders. The thin flames curled and flickered in the hot night breeze, and Miko’s dance mimicked them, her body twisting and rippling, the light gleaming on her hair, her breasts, her taut arms and legs. Maybe she had more muscles than I’d been brought up to think a woman ought to have, but she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The words to her serpentine melody were Japanese, but I understood the message: Come to me.

I wanted more than anything to go to her, to touch that wonderful body, but I knew what I had to do. She was the enemy. Swallowing nervously, I pulled out the road flare and sparked it against a piece of cinder block.

Miko stopped singing and turned to me, eyes wide.

“No! Put that stuff down, you don’t know what—” she began, rushing toward me.

Heart hammering, I slung the Mason jar at her. She knocked it away, but jellied gasoline splattered on her arm, her breasts, her face. She started screaming even before I threw the flare.

She virtually exploded. Her flesh seemed eager to burn. I watched, transfixed in horror, as her hair ignited like flash paper, her skin crisping and peeling, fat and muscle sizzling and popping under the burning napalm. Howling, she frantically beat at the flames spreading across her body. She stumbled backward into the candles and collapsed.

The air was thick with the smoke from her burning flesh. Bile rose in my throat as I watched her thrashing, scattering her candles, fighting the flames that had already destroyed her lovely eyes, her skin, her fingers. I wanted to turn away, but found I could not even shut my eyes.

Finally, her howling fell to a whimper, and then the whimper faded into the crackling of the dying flames. I realized I was crying, realized I could move again. I turned and staggered away, wishing I’d brought a handkerchief to cover my mouth and nose, wondering if I’d be able to keep from blowing out my brains when I got back to my empty house.

“Father, please don’t leave me like this …”

Oh dear God.

I turned, and saw Miko’s corpse stir in the ashes and congealing candle wax. Her face was that of Death, eyes and nose black holes, charred scalp peeling away from red bone. I wondered how she could still speak, how she could still be alive.

“Where are you?” She tried to raise herself up on an elbow, but couldn’t. “Please, not like this … Kagut-suchi won’t take me. Neither will my mother. No one will come for me. When my bones rot away I will still be trapped here.”

She made a choking noise, and her whole body started to spasm. It took me a moment to realize she was sobbing.

Dear God, what had I done? Not even Satan himself deserved what I’d done to Miko. To my own daughter. Heroes didn’t burn beautiful women alive, didn’t damn them to an eternity of agony in a wasteland. I squeezed my eyes shut against the hot tears streaming down my face.

“Father, please …”

Heart hammering madly, I turned and made my way through the wreckage to Miko.

“What can I do?” I stammered.

“Take me in your arms.”

Swallowing against a wave of nausea, knees creaking, I got down on the ground and lay down beside her. She slid a hand across my chest and wriggled close to me, her skin crackling with every movement.

I stared at the full moon overhead, my vision twitching with every beat of my heart.

She kissed my cheek, her lips dry and hard. A cold thrill coursed through my body. I felt my heart stutter, then cramp down. The pain was exquisite.

As my vision began to fade, I turned my head and saw fresh skin spreading across her face and body, new eyes blooming open in her sockets.

Before the cold blackness engulfed me, I felt her gently kiss my forehead. Her lips were soft as funeral roses.

“Thank you,” was all she said.

I came out of the vision and released Henry’s bones. Clammy sweat drenched my clothing. The sun coming through the blinds was low and golden; I’d been reliving the old man’s memories for hours.

Pal blinked at me expectantly. “Did you discover anything we can use against Miko?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “We can kill her with fire. Or at least hurt her really damn bad with it.”