บท 19: Curse Marks
The grey clouds were hovering over the island. Even in the morning, and in summer, not a single ray of sunlight could pierce through that dark blanket.
The native people of the island cared only less about that. When they first appeared in 1967, the clouds were so light, they didn't even look like rain clouds.
Then time passed, and now in 1981, the clouds looked like a blanket God had cast over the island to keep its dark energy from spreading across Japan. The religious people claimed it to be God's punishment for the crimes in the past decade, but the scientists – two or three at most – believed it was just a mystery like the Black Hole and Bermuda Triangle, and accepted it.
Just like the rest of the islanders, that fact did not bother Haihin, the junkyard man. Every morning, he would walk to the junkyard and open the gate, just like today. Always with a tune of music on his lips, he waved the birds good morning, and his junkyard a hello.
Before he would go out and collect trash from downtown, he would check for space to dump the trash. If he was out of space (hard to happen in a two-acre big junkyard), then he would destroy indisposable trash like plastic with magic, and create some space.
Once a month, he would sell the junk to anyone who would be ready to deal, and with the amount of junk he had only a few people could deny the deal. And that time would be during the last week of the month.
He would sell every piece of trash the islanders gave him, but no matter what, he would not sell the only car the island had to provide. Nobody had to drive a car on the island since shops were rounded off in a single plaza, the owner of that car had purchased it anyway.
After the owner of the car died, no one bothered to dispose of his car. And when Haihin grew up, he took the car in. The owner had thought him how to use dark magic without harming anyone or himself. Haihin used to look up to that man until he was found dead in his house.
In 1970, three years after the owner's death, Haihin turned eighteen. He decided to look after the car.
From then to this date, after eleven years, he still had the car at the end of the junkyard. Although it had corroded and the metal was weak, it was still the car of the person he admired.
But today, when he saw the car from the distance, he had his guts telling him something was off. He must have imagined the pieces of shattered glasses, and that definitely was not a door hanging somehow.
He stopped humming his favorite song came. His heart tightened. His eyes were good enough to tell him something had happened to the car.
"No. it just might be my…" His voice faded as he took a step, then strode to the car.
He grabbed his head when he saw the door barely hanging from the side of the driver's seat. His eyes widened in sadness, then narrowed down in anger when he saw the mirrors shattered into pieces.
"Who the fuck?!" he shouted, his voice echoing downhill. "Why the hell would anyone…? No one is his enemy anymore. No one hates him anymore… but…"
On the hood of the car was a red spiral, and the dashboard was pushed inside, then titled up. As if a meteor had smashed onto the hood.
His anger turned to suspicion. That definitely looked like the mark of a spell the owner of the car had prohibited Haihin from casting. But what was it?
From what the owner of the car had told him, the spell that leaves a spiral mark shall be a deadly spell.
***
Shiro was a man with the same pale white hair as his son, but his eyes were blue, unlike his son. Since he used to be in the Japanese Army and had served in both wars for six years, he had a strong build.
At the six-foot height, pretty tall for a Japanese, he was leaning over the hood of the Toyota Century. After a while, he leaned away from the car and glanced at Haihin.
"I will need Kuro's help," he said as he pulled his hands into the sleeves of his white kimono, it looked just like a karate uniform. "Stay on the guard. Please do not let anyone close to this site. And you, too, don't go near the car – or you will be suspected for whatever that thing is."
"Sure, Chief. I will… wait outside then." Haihin put on a smile and must have expected a smile back from Shiro.
Shiro was not interested. He was usually a friendly guy, everyone on the island knew that, but when things were serious, he would not even laugh at someone who had tried his best to crack a joke and lighten the mood while everyone was worried about the Americans closing in on their camp.
After fifteen minutes, while Haihin was still in front of the junkyard, Shiro came back with Kuro, the island's mayor. His skin was light brown and he had black hair with brown eyes which shone red if seen from far.
He walked beside Shiro with a black kimono on him. They were the same age and were ripped despite being in their late fifties. With only one or two wrinkles on their faces, their glowing skin made them look as if they were in their mid-forties.
After they retired from their military service, they both took jobs as detectives in Tokyo. By the time they had married, they were already thirty-eight. Shiro had married before Kuro did, but only a year early.
"What is it you said?" Kuro asked.
As they approached Haihin, Shiro was relieved to see Haihin still in front of the gate. "You will see in just a minute."
Haihin bowed to them, and Kuro and Shiro bowed too. Then they walked inside the junkyard, crossing the cartons and wooden scraps, leading to metal scarps and plastic junk at the end of the left side.
Shiro walked straight to the car, then turned to Kuro. He could see Kuro's stoic expressions – he had never bothered to put on a smile to be polite or gasp in shock. Perhaps it was because of the years he had lived, he had grown immune to everything.
"What in God's name happened here?" Kuro pulled his hands out from his kimono. He had brought his katana, the black scabbard was hung on his left side.
Shiro had a katana himself, but he was more of a shooter than a slasher. So his gun, a .38 caliber, was in his hands under the kimono's sleeve. It was loaded and cocked.
Kuro leaned over the car for a minute. He put his hand under his chin and thought for a while. Then looked at Shiro. "What do you think?"
Shiro took a deep breath before answering, "Looks like a curse mark to me. But no one uses dark magic to kill people in Shizuma."
"Sure. It is a curse mark. The dark fireball." Kuro was a dark wizard himself, so he had a pretty good grasp of spells, curses, and charms. Not many spells leave marks, but the ones that do, Kuro could recognize instantly.
"Right. I could not remember the name. Maybe my age…"
"And not just that, you have seen this mark before too."
On Kuro's comment, Shiro raised his eyes. "Have I? When?"
Kuro dropped his head at the curse mark. The red lines that had now turned brown were, no mistake, the victim's blood... Or the victims' blood. "In the war," he said, "When an American unit had charged on our camp, I had to unleash my dark magic."
Kuro lifted his eyes. It was not Shiro's age playing with his memory – he had cast a spell on himself to forget about that man slaughter until someone would remind him.
Now that Kuro had… Their guts had spilled out like bursting a balloon filled with chocolates. The ones who were at the front lines were demised to ashes, just like the Japanese people had when the nuclear bombs had landed, just by coming under the radius of dark energy Kuro was emitting.
Shiro could not back down after that. He had to step forward and cover Kuro as he walked to the middle of the no-man's-land and opened fire on everybody. Just like that, a wizard and a dark wizard no more than twenty years had wiped out a whole unit of American soldiers.
They had to wipe the memories of their mates, making it seem like the earth swallowed that unit since the satellite had caught them moving and had shown it on the radars. They had to clean the mess after that, too.
Shiro gulped and was prompted to step back, but he stood still. "I remember some of it…"
While removing the remains of Americans from the battlefield, he picked another man off a rock. That was where he had seen it for the first time. On the rock was a dark, almost black, maroon color spiral.
"That was darker than this."
Kuro stared at Shiro for a moment, then nodded and walked back to him. "I can say one thing for sure – someone has learned to use this high-level spell and has killed someone. We need to find who has died, at least, if we can not find his body. The killer must have done a good job of hiding it." Kuro patted Haihin's shoulder as he walked past him.
"No one has reported a person missing. If this incident happened at night, then the person who got killed must have had someone waiting for them at home. Why had they not reported him missing?"
"Uh… Shiro…" Kuro pulled out his pocket watch. "It is just seven in the morning."
"But that person did not come home for the night. They should have noticed his absence."
"Shiro. One's family can not do such a thing. So stop turning to that possibility." Kuro put one hand over the katana's grip and stuck the other in the belt around his stomach.
"I am not saying the family killed the person. Perhaps they hired—"
"Drop that topic, Shiro. I heard the kids are coming back. Do you think you should tell them to stop coming? Tell them to postpone their visit?"
Shiro started walking down Transport Street, it was an asphalt road. No one really used that road after the hospital closed down, so he could even walk in the middle of the street and no one would say anything.
When Shiro did not reply, Kuro replied to his own question, "I think you should let them come. People killed each other in the war, too, but we did not run away. We held our camp and faced them head-on."
Shiro nodded. "You want the kids to learn to stand in their hometown despite a murderer on loose. I just hope it is not a serial killer."
Kuro sighed. "You should give yourself a break. Only two years and then we will retire. So take it easy, we are at that age."
Shiro glared at Kuro. "If you would have known what I know."
On that, Kuro hummed and said in a deadbeat voice, "Oh God. Just what that 'top-secret' might be?"
"It is Sen's new friend."
"So are you now going to complain about a new friend your son made at High School?"
Shiro looked at the waking island, how the days of the people who have woken up to follow their routine for another normal day would shake when they hear about the murder.
"Hayashi Ryota," Shiro said.
'I better not let the murder news get out.'
He did not realize that Kuro had stopped and he had walked ahead.
Shiro knew Kuro would react this way. So without any surprise, he turned to Kuro.
"HIS grandson?"
Shiro nodded. "Hayashi might be a common surname in Tokyo, but not in Shizuma. So probably, he is the one."
'I better keep the news inside until we have solid evidence.'
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