BLACK STATIC #41 (11 page)

It was at that moment that Kumo-harai felt an emotion he’d never had before. He removed the basket from his hip and spent the rest of the day alone by the river. By nightfall he was no longer angry but terrified in a way he’d never been before.

The following day the two worked side by side as usual and Kumo-harai tried to pretend that nothing inside him had changed. But what was once comfortable was now awkward and he could find nothing to talk about. Even Jin seemed to be more distant than usual. After the evening meal Jin built a small fire behind the graveyard to keep off the chill and used his staff to knock the branches of the chestnut tree. The two gathered and roasted the prickly treats in silence.

“Those are the temples you’ve visited,” Kumo-harai said, pointing to the characters burned into Jin’s thick boxwood staff.

“All of them so far,” Jin said, turning the staff in his hands to show his friend. “I’ve still got five more stops.”

“Five more,” Kumo-harai repeated. He leaned over and ran his finger down the impressions until he reached the last one. Yamaoku Temple. His temple. It was a small stamp. They weren’t one of the sixty-six holy sites. They hardly ever had travelling monks visit; most carried on until they reached the city.

Jin picked up a sharp stone and below the last stamp began to carve something in the empty space.

Kumo-harai used the end of his broom to poke the fire. “Your next stop is Mishima,” he said.

“Yes.”

Kumo-harai turned and faced his friend. Jin’s profile was lit orange and red from the fire. He stopped carving and threw the stone aside, blew on the wood.

“You have to leave,” Kumo-harai said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” Jin answered. “But I’ll return before autumn next year.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Not so long.” Jin gazed into the darkening forest. The moon, not quite full, was still low and large, rising over the tree line. The night insects chirred. “I’ll be back in time for spider season. I’ll be here to help.”

Kumo-harai smiled. From inside the temple the last bell of the evening tolled, slow reverberations washing over them. The monks could be heard shuffling barefoot across the straw-matted floors to their rooms, their prayers finished for the day. Jin handed Kumo-harai his staff, turning it so he could see the new inscription.

Kumo-harai
. He’d carved his name.

“You’re the gentlest soul I’ve ever met,” Jin said. “Someone who greets the birds by the names he’s given them, who whispers appreciation to bath water before he throws it out, and who sees the world as it should be, not as it is.” Jin held out his hands and examined them in the firelight. They were old man’s hands. “You made me battle myself. You confused me.” He finally turned to meet Kumo-harai’s stare. “And I could very well end my journey here. Stay here. Forever.”

Kumo-harai felt his breath hitch in his chest. He wanted to cry out. The bell’s ringing faded, and was replaced by a beautiful chorus of crickets erupting from the forest. The sound was just for them.

The last paper door in the temple slid shut across its wooden track. Jin reached out and took Kumo-harai’s hand. He stood and led him to the grassy patch behind the storage house where the moonlight fell and the night-blooming jasmine ran up the back of the stone building.

•••

Jin was still asleep when Kumo-harai left to fetch water and start the morning fires. When he returned he found the graveyard wet with morning dew and a heavy mist. The spiders had been busy and even in the faint morning light their webs glistened in long jewel-lined threads from gravestone to gravestone. Standing near a mossy lantern was Jin. He was dressed in his travelling clothes. Kumo-harai felt the strength leave his legs, but the dark man was there to hold him up and kiss him one last time.

News of Jin’s imminent departure spread quickly, and the abbot hastily arranged for a pilgrimage ceremony to be performed.

The monks lit a large fire and fed it with damp grasses and handfuls of fragrant herbs. A constant rhythm was beaten on
taiko
drums, bells were rung, and deep trance-inducing tones were chanted. Jin knelt before the abbot, head bowed, receiving the blessing. Before long the townspeople were making their way up the mountain to wish their new friend a safe journey. Kumo-harai hid in the plumes of cedar and sage-scented smoke, allowing it to sting his eyes.

After the ceremony Jin was presented with a bundle of food and fresh water for his journey. The children looped several dandelion necklaces around his neck and played little tunes on the stems. Kumo-harai remained apart from the crowd, even though he wanted to run to Jin, beg him to stay.

Jin said goodbye to each person in turn, and then approached Kumo-harai. “I forgot to return this,” he said, pressing something into the palm of his hand.

Kumo-harai squeezed the object tightly, and with his other hand held Jin’s wrist. “Thank you,” he said, bowing low.

Jin returned the bow and in a low voice said, “If I don’t leave now I’ll never go. It was a promise I made on my parents’ grave, my sisters’ grave. I have to—”

“I know,” Kumo-harai said, sliding his hand up Jin’s sleeve to grasp his forearm. They stood in silence for a long time before Jin finally pulled away.

While Jin was tying his hat around his chin, Kumo-harai opened his palm to find a tiny Buddha carved out of black coral. He knew its story. It had belonged to Jin’s mother.

Kumo-harai, thinking he’d see him again, watched the broad back of his lover walk away.

•••

Kumo-harai waited as the soothsayer examined the sticks on the straw-matted floor.

“Yes, yes, that’s what it is,” she said. “His spirit is visiting you.”

Kumo-harai was almost ready to believe her prediction when one of the monks from the temple flung open the door and charged in.

“The abbot said I’d find you here,” he said. He was out of breath. “I have news.”

Kumo-harai balled his hands into fists and closed his eyes.

“There were bandits on the road,” the monk said. “Jin was alone.” The monk couldn’t look Kumo-harai in the eyes. “He was murdered.”

“But he was a mendicant,” Kumo-harai said. “He had nothing of value…”

He reached up to touch the collar of his robe, running his finger along the outline of the small Buddha he’d sewn there three nights ago. He wondered if Jin had not given it to him, could he have used it to buy his own life?

•••

When Kumo-harai woke the next morning he could hardly remember being carried back to the temple and laid in his drafty room.

Down the hallway he could hear chanting and drumming and the crackle of the fire. A very faint light came from behind the paper
shoji
. He had overslept and someone had performed his morning chores for him. He hurried into the graveyard. It was the fourth morning since the ghost first appeared and Kumo-harai prayed he was not too late to see him again.

“Kumo-harai.”

The ghost was waiting. It turned its back and strode across the yard towards the storehouse, the first and last place they’d been together.

This time Kumo-harai followed his lover, wiping away tears with his long sleeve until he collapsed against the heavy storehouse door.

“Kumo-harai.” The voice was coming from inside. He pulled himself up and opened the door.

It was dark inside, the morning sun lighting only a thin rectangle on the clay floor. The smell of earth and the sour odour of vinegared daikon filled Kumo-harai’s head. He squinted, trying to find Jin’s ghost in the dark corners of the room. But it had vanished again.

“What are you doing there?”

Kumo-harai jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching.

“I…”

“Did you see him again?” The abbot opened up his arms and Kumo-harai went to him.

It was there in that embrace, the abbot gently leading the young man from away, that Kumo-harai turned for one last glance into the storehouse and saw what he was meant to see.

There, hastily shoved into a corner, was a bundle of clothes. Travelling clothes, a large cone-shaped hat ripped nearly in half, and a wooden staff. These were not the style of clothes the monks used, these were layman’s clothes, mendicant’s clothes. Kumo-harai pushed himself free of the abbot and ran over to the pile. He buried his face in them and knew. These were Jin’s belongings. And they were covered in blood.

With the sun in his eyes he looked back up at the abbot. “How did you get these?”

The abbot, a large black figure in the doorway, folded his arms across his chest and said nothing.

“
You
did this?” Kumo-harai held the staff, the top splintered. Jin had put up a fight. But who knew how many were sent after him? “There were no bandits. It was you?”

Still the abbot stood silent.

“Why? He had nothing of value. He was a good man,” Kumo-harai said, his voice cracking with grief, realising now that this was never about riches. “He’d gone. He was already gone.”

“He was a risk,” the older man said.

“What do you—”

“I had him followed into the city. Just to be sure,” the abbot said.

Kumo-harai rubbed his thumb along the last carving in the staff, his name. He approached the abbot, stopped an arm’s length away. “Why?”

“You were mine. You were always meant to be mine,” the abbot said, looking straight into the young man’s eyes. “Jin should have stayed gone.”

“Stayed gone?” Kumo-harai thought he was going to be sick. “You mean he was coming back?” He tightened his grip on the staff.

“Yes.”

“For me?”

“Yes.” The abbot spat on the floor, raised his nose in contempt.

The edges of Kumo-harai’s vision blurred. He saw nothing but the monster in front of him. He raised the stick and screamed. The abbot backed out into the graveyard, tripping on his robes. Kumo-harai waited for him to stand before he advanced again.

To his right the temple stood, doors pushed open. Lines of straight-backed monks droned sutras and sleepy prayers. The hollow wooden drum clacked a steady beat. A golden bell. The monks were used to the occasional day when the abbot slept in or had business elsewhere. They were single-minded in their meditations or resolute in their betrayal – either way, not a single man lifted his eyes to witness the crying out and pleading of their master going on below.

The last vision Kumo-harai ever saw of Jin was over the abbot’s shoulder. He was standing under the persimmon tree, bare-chested and smiling.

Kumo-harai knew exactly what he needed to do. Step by step, the jagged end of the staff thrust into the fat of the old man’s throat, he led the abbot through the graveyard and down to the tree line until his back was pressed up against the twisted trunk of the persimmon tree. The abbot tried to make excuses. He wept. But Kumo-harai wasn’t swayed. And for the first time in his life he wasn’t afraid.

“If you kill me you’ll forever suffer in one of the Buddha’s hells, roasting over a sulphur fire, your belly split and boiling,” the abbot warned, shaking his fist, trying to look intimidating. “You’ll never be with Jin again.”

“Oh, you will not die by my hand,” Kumo-harai said. “I have no desire to meet you in hell.”

A brief expression of hope passed across the abbot’s face. He smiled an awful, sharp-toothed smile. He ran one hand over his shaven head and clucked his tongue. Such a shaming sound. Such a confident sound. Kumo-harai would enjoy putting an end to that.

He raised Jin’s staff above his head and brought it down on the branches overhead. The tree trembled, raining down morning dew, dying leaves, and spiders. Hundreds and hundreds of spiders. Spiders in all shapes and sizes. Some dropped onto the abbot’s saffron robes, scuttling into folds or down his neckline, while others landed on the ground only to disappear under the man’s yellow hem, scurrying up the abbot’s fat legs. While the old man was busy yelping and slapping them away he didn’t notice the others, the ones that swung down on delicate threads. The ones that lowered themselves slowly, intentionally. He screamed, flailed. He stomped and howled.

And Kumo-harai laughed and laughed as he beat the tree. For a few minutes anyway. Until something made him stop.

Even the abbot ceased his thrashing when he saw Kumo-harai’s face, saw him gazing over his shoulder, beyond the persimmon tree, deeper into the forest. Eyes wide and mouth ajar.

“Wha…what is it?” the abbot asked. But he didn’t turn. He watched as Kumo-harai dropped the staff and then clutched at the collar of his robe, kissing it and whispering a prayer. The young man stumbled backwards. He saw what was coming.

But the abbot was frozen with fear, couldn’t move. Could probably not even guess what the younger man saw. He might have heard the sound of something horrible and hungry moving along the leafy forest floor, the snap and splinter of tree limbs as it approached. A heavy mouldy woof of breath. But he’d never been there to listen to Jin’s stories. His imagination couldn’t possibly allow the idea that the crack of a small tree being bent in half was some enormous beast coming to feed. A monster picking its way closer and closer on eight grotesque legs, dozens of eyes glassy and wild. No, the abbot couldn’t imagine that or even this: that a moment later – an instant after he felt the fiery heat of the beast – there might be another echoing crack to fill his ears. And this time it wouldn’t be a tree or a branch but the very peculiar and satisfying sound made by a jealous man’s head being opened and cleaned of the treasure inside.