The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters (41 page)

He stepped forwards as the man tumbled back onto the ground, only barely maintaining his balance as his weight shifted to the man’s face. The man was Akio Ishibashi. He had a knife in one hand. He had crept back into the residence and solicited a knife from the kitchen, it had probably taken until now to sever the rope that tied his hands behind him.

Fuminari’s foot had ripped through the man’s nose and smashed into his chin, knocking out teeth as it sunk ankle-deep into the lower-half of the man’s face. Ishibashi’s eyes had popped from their sockets. They hung from hollow pits, held up by white nerve fibers. One was on the grass.

Biku stepped slowly backwards, Renobo in tow, until the object under Fuminari’s foot came into view. He saw Ishibashi’s body, pinned under Fuminari’s boot and writhing in a strange rhythm, rolling and wriggling like an experiment in dance. His arms and legs convulsed, thrashing up before hitting the ground again as his torso bent. His death throes had taken control of his entire body. It was grotesque to watch, all the more because of the comedy of the movements. He looked like a kid playing games. The knife in Ishibashi’s right hand slapped against Fuminari’s right shin. Fuminari’s eyes were stretched wide, glaring down.

“Sorry, but he’s already dead. I’m gonna help him on his way,” Fuminari said, his voice heavy.

He shifted his entire 145 kilograms of weight over the heel of his right foot, then pressed. There was a sharp crack as his foot punched even further into Ishibashi’s caved-in face, snapping already-fractured bone and instantly putting an end to the man’s convulsions. Ishibashi’s legs stiffened, going through a final set of exaggerated movements before finally going limp. The twitching sensation of life disappeared from under Fuminari’s foot.

He pulled slowly away. Ishibashi’s face was over twice its previous length, lower-jaw dislodged and upper-jaw partially broken. As Fuminari’s foot came free blood rushed out like muddy water. He saw white outlines of broken teeth mixed in with the gunk, obvious against the dimly-lit black of the blood.

The dark liquid collecting in Ishibashi’s mouth gurgled up, suddenly forming an oversized red bubble. The man had seemed dead, but he had just spewed up some air still held in his lungs. Ishibashi got to his feet. Then he pitched forwards, howling as he thrashed the kitchen knife in one hand, striking random directions as he ran three or so nonsensical meters. Then he stiffened like a pole and collapsed. It was an incredible sight. The man had been possessed of a tremendous life force. Now, finally, he was still. A perfect silence descended. Nobody could speak.

A single voice broke the silence. It was Renobo. “Fuminari…Fuminari, Fuminari you
cunt
,” she groaned in a low, stuffy voice. “You killed him. You killed Akio. You went and
fucking killed him
.” She began to struggle like she was possessed, stamping and shaking her head. Her long black hair hit the sides of her neck, ends slapping noisily against her and Biku’s cheeks. Enoh and Hanko watched on in silence. Only Renobo’s voice continued to echo around them.

“
Kill them! Enoh! Hanko! Kill them both!”
The words came in a blood-curdling shriek. Tears flowed from her eyes. They were blood red. She looked like a beautiful
yaksha
, weeping as her white body tossed in the night air. She bawled, howling for murder.

Biku’s flat expression was an abnormal contrast behind her.

“Alas we cannot, Mistress Renobo,” Enoh said. “It would be different, of course, if we had such orders from Master Kurogosho.” He was trying to calm her.

She let out a senseless wail. Blood ran from her eyes and over her pale cheeks, down her throat, forming crimson threads that came together in interlacing veins. Each time she whipped her head they would veer to the side, painting a red net below her eyes. Enoh was moving away, although his legs showed no signs of movement. Hanko moved with him.

“Mistress Renobo, their target is Kukai. You will be safe as long as Kukai is with us. There is no need to endure any discomfort. They will want to learn Kukai’s location. Tell them. Don’t let them torture you for it.” Enoh continued to slide away as he spoke. Darkness intruded, gradually thickening between the two parties. There was the sound of them leaping the wall, already concealed in darkness. Then silence, permeated only by the rustling of the surrounding trees.

“Hanko..,” Fuminari said, half moaning. He pulled the glove from his left hand and squeezed it into a three-fingered fist, thrusting it forwards. “Hanko..,” he repeated the beast’s name. He no longer knew what he felt for the creature, whether it was love or hate—he just knew he could kill it. That the reason no longer mattered. An arid sense of purpose settled in his stomach, heavier than ever—
he had to kill Hanko
. Renobo was staring at the fist, incredulous.

“Now I see,
of course,
” she muttered. “You’re him,
him
from that time.” Her lips pulled tight and arched upwards. “One night two years ago, someone stumbled onto our ritual. That was
you
. It was your fingers that Hanko ate,” She looked away to glance at Ishibashi’s corpse on the grass. The man’s body seemed buoyant, pale against the darkness and the windswept grass.

Twenty-one

Crazed Nightmares: A Covert Insertion

1

A bizarre object appeared in front of Hosuke Kumon; it was swollen, red, huge.

Like a house, but one from a nightmare, assembled from the pulped entrails of thousands of people. It was the size of a mountain. The surface rippled with peristaltic motion, shifting endlessly from one shape to another.

Hosuke Kumon stood inside Geshin’s mind, perched on the threshold of the man’s surface consciousness. His
standing
there was only metaphor—there are no concepts of up or down in the mind, only measures of depth. Comparisons may be made where deeper is framed as
down
, areas nearer the surface as
up
, but such conveniences only approximate the truth. Hosuke was formless. A Diver can take on any shape in the mind, the only limitation is the level of detail the Diver can picture in his mind. But forcing a shape requires effort; it is always easier to adopt a natural state.

When a person is attacked the natural response may be to run. In that moment—regardless of their form until that point—they become defined by the movement of their legs.

The Diver might take the form of a dog, yet without an understanding of the relevant mechanics the Diver would immediately stumble. A-grade Divers need to take whatever form the situation demands while maintaining perfect control at all times.

Even after the Diver became a dog, he would not necessarily be recognized as such by a second Diver, whose mental state would influence their perception of the shape. The rule applies for anything witnessed within the mind—where one Diver might see a mountain, another may see something completely unrelated. The object Hosuke saw before him now was the result of a negotiation between Geshin’s consciousness and his own mind. The slightest fluctuation in Geshin’s mindstate could cause the object to transform into a monster, replacing its current form as a towering, intestinal structure. By maintaining an amorphous form, Hosuke was allowing himself to observe Geshin’s mind as objectively as possible. The technique allows two A-grade Divers to perceive any given object in more or less the same way.

The mindscape that Hosuke saw now was nothing like that during his dive into Tamura. Tamura’s mind had been missing, as though consumed by something. Only fragments of the man’s surface consciousness had remained, interspersed with packs of grotesque creatures; black, maggoty things, invaders that were foreign to his mind—hungry manifestations of appetite. They had been scattered through the barren chamber of his mind like fragments of a demonic soul, flocking around the remaining scraps of his consciousness and consuming everything in their path, chewing even on bone.

Hosuke reached up to grab a handful of the thin, upper atmosphere of Geshin’s surface consciousness; he pulled some in and began to fashion a Psyche Suit.
The Psyche Suit
—a layer of protection for a Diver’s body, similar to how a deep-sea diver’s wetsuit is designed to prevent contact with sea water, different in that it would be built from the very water surrounding it. The Psyche Suit is necessary because the water inside a person’s mind is alive. Dive without one and the sea—Geshin’s mind, in this case—would detect the intrusion immediately. A dive into a person’s mind is like violating the body with a foreign object. Just as the physical act results in pain, so it goes with the mind. Drugs kept Geshin under, but if his mind detected an interloper it would resist nonetheless.
And damage in the mind translates to damage in reality
.

A flesh-and-blood human can be conditioned, through hypnotic suggestion, to believe a rod pressed against their skin is a smoldering-hot iron. They might perceive actual heat; in extreme cases their skin might even blister. It is the same inside another’s consciousness; if an amateur Diver takes a bullet within the mind he can die in reality, however illusory the weapon.

Hosuke was surrounded by a cellophane darkness, accompanied only by the giant, floating assortment of viscera. It felt like he was suspended in the stratosphere of an intestinal planet, gazing down at the thing suspended in a void of space.

He could see that the structure was an abstract representation, only
intestine-like
, missing details such as the stomach and bowels. And it was all the more repulsive for it. Each time he attempted to gain visual purchase on it the surface would blur, becoming even more vague than its default, nebulous form. It was like trying to locate a bleak star in the night sky; impossible if attempted directly, better seen through periphery vision.

Hosuke had attuned himself to perceive Geshin’s mind through
visual
parameters, but it was just as easy to flip the coin and
listen
to the signals, as would a blind Diver traversing the mindscape. A series of lights flickered around him, each announced by an audible pop. Some were gone in a moment, others lingered and morphed, taking a variety of shapes. It was the breathing of the mind, a signal that Geshin’s consciousness was alive and functional.

Consciousness brings with it a constant background noise, empty chatter that originates from the deeper areas of the mind. Within the surface consciousness, such chatter is represented by specks of light. The lights change, sometimes collapsing into pint-sized motes of color, other times expanding into shapes; a book, a leaf, a female body. The reaction is dictated by the segment of the mind into which the light emerges; in the latter case, the area of the mind is one previously organized as an image, one that still contains remnants thereof—of a book, a leaf, a woman. Distinct images are only formed, however, in a tiny minority of cases. The vast majority of lights downshift into something vague and indistinct. Occasionally they clump together, or join with another object.

Hosuke had just seen the foggy outline of a woman with a bulbous rear end. Her face had lacked eyes and a nose, and her mouth had been shaped like a vagina. Her legs had parted to reveal scripture between her thighs. A single title stood out in an exaggerated font—
THE RISHU SUTRA
—blood gushing river-like from between the seams of the text. The woman had folded into herself and dissolved into the atmosphere. The entire spectacle had lasted but a moment. Less than a second in real
time. The woman had been no larger than the tip of his little finger. Yet the characters over her groin—
THE RISHU SUTRA—
had been, paradoxically, many times that size. Now the space around him bristled with similar images, each coming and going in the blink of an eye, flashing into existence only to hover briefly before transforming and, just as suddenly, evanescing away to nothing.

I need to get deeper into Geshin’s mind.
But Hosuke knew there was no point in pushing blindly forwards. He had to find something to lead him, an object to define his purpose
.

A memory, then. Years old, from the time of Geshin’s collapse outside Kukai’s burial chamber.
Hosuke’s mission was to find out exactly what had happened.
But how to track one down?
Hosuke had an idea—he could use Geshin’s terror of Kukai’s
sokushinbutsu.
He would find it and pick up the trail from there. Geshin was terrified of Kukai, the intensity of the emotion had cost him his sanity.

When Hosuke had asked him about the details from
that night,
Geshin had become increasingly agitated. Eventually, he had taken refuge in his madness. Now, before they had put him under, Hosuke had grilled him again, purposefully stoking the man’s fears with endless questions about Kukai. Hosuke’s plan was to inflame the element of Geshin’s mind that was built around Kukai; to force it to swell unnaturally, to make it easier to locate.

The downside of the approach was the concurrent increase in danger. Geshin would take measures to protect his mind, and there was no way to predict how the fear itself would manifest. There was also the possibility that those black maggots had wormed their way into his mind, if he had suffered an attack like that of Tamura.

Hosuke focused on the monstrous cluster of entrails.

There!

Something flickered briefly. The surface began to billow upwards, changing shape like an amoeba.

“
Unhh…
”

Hosuke had been caught off guard. The entrails began to reconfigure themselves into the parched form of Kukai’s
sokushinbutsu.
Kukai’s mouth was wide open, revealing dizzyingly sharp teeth inside. A rush of entrails snaked out, muddy as they exited the enormous cavity. They wrapped around Kukai’s body. In a flash, the object reverted to its original shape, it was over.

“Fascinating!”
Hosuke muttered.

He felt a burst of excitement. The vaguely-formed lips of his consciousness curled into a grin.

2

Hosuke clung to an enormous ball of entrails, itself a tiny amoeba-like thing attached to the larger, dark assembly. The thing felt like viscera torn from the abdominal cavity of some animal, arranged into tens of thousands of layers and massaged into a single ball. Some was gelatinous, black-red and sticky. More was like scum, greenish in color. Then there were coils of pink meat, speckled black. Also grub-like things, cerise-red and shapeless. Each pulsed with a constant throbbing, gradually—sometimes explosively—changing from shape to shape. Each of these coiled, intestine-like things was covered with innumerable lacerations, all pink and clean. The lacerations resembled fresh wounds, levied by a sharp blade; or dank, splayed-open genitalia. Focusing, it was possible to see that each slit was made from a series of smaller intestinal coils, each with its own set of wounds; zooming in on these in turn revealed them to be made of even tinier coils of intestines. The effect continued
ad infinitum
, regardless of how far Hosuke extended his mental zoom.

Dangerous
.

To overdo this in another person’s mind could damage a Diver’s senses, cripple their sense of scale. The Diver would risk getting lost inside, even
becoming
the labyrinth as the pattern takes hold. Either way, continuing to zoom here was meaningless—once a pattern repeats three or four times it was always best to give up and move on.

Hosuke began to gather himself into human form. He felt his formless shape condense, become a body. He noted that the viscera were lined with a sticky, glossy liquid. He scooped up some of the gunk and used it to buttress his Psyche Suit. It was important to make constant changes to the Psyche Suit, to add new materials from local depths, harmonizing the Suit with its surroundings. Doing so made it easier to keep in sync with the subject’s mind—the last thing a Diver wanted was for their naked mind to become exposed to another. If such a thing happened, the subject would feel pain like a spontaneous tumor; the pain would then compel the host’s mind to rid itself of the alien matter. By covering his body with elements of the host mind, Hosuke was able to bring the two into a form of unity.

In his new, human guise, Hosuke began to ease himself through the gaps in the viscera. There was only minimum friction, even as walls of meat closed in around him. It was like becoming submerged in a thick, tar-like substance. He found himself being pulled at, caught in a sudden wave of contracting flesh. He felt his body stretch, first to each side, then violently up and down. Each time one of the waves struck him his arms, legs and torso would stretch to many times their normal length, twisting and distorting in the onslaught of opposing currents. It was like he had become the plaything of a dozen slathering tongues. He offered no resistance. If he tried to blunder free, Geshin would notice.

Instead, he sought out the larger waves from amidst the chaos, positioning himself to ride them. Each time he succeeded he felt a concurrent increase in mental pressure. He was being pulled deeper into Geshin’s mind. The tumultuous waves were, he knew, born from emotions clashing together—anger, unease and fear, all the disparate elements of Geshin’s madness interacting as they sparked across his mind like rivers coming together, merging with the sea to throw up a web of complex undercurrents.

Yet the complexity and violence of the tempest was nothing compared to what it might have been had Geshin been conscious. Hosuke was in an area of Geshin’s mind that would be subject to constant stimulation from the outside. A wave would be generated each time Geshin saw, heard or felt something. That the swell he was inside now had a rhythm to it at all—albeit one that was highly complex—was due to the fact that Geshin was doped on medication.

Hosuke let himself slide with the flow; after a while it felt like the vast number of waves were gradually coming together to merge with another, greater swell. It felt like coming across a powerful ocean current, one that ran along the floor of Geshin’s surface consciousness.

He had become surrounded by schools of living, floating organisms. The majority were cloudy and indistinct, and even those with shapes that were distinct failed to hold them for more than a few seconds, soon diverging so wildly so as to be completely unrelated to their original form.