One by one, the bandits stared into the darkened forest to see what the wailing demon was staring at. And one by one, the bandits stopped laughing.
High in the trees the bandits could see a ghostly apparition flitting from treetop to treetop. Even in the darkness of the forest, it could be seen by the starlight. It moved with amazing speed, darting from one location to the next. Its movements were accompanied by a swishing sound that added an aural element to the visual speed.
“What’s that?” one man said in a low voice.
Boss Kuemon came from around the fire to get a closer look. “Have any of you ever seen anything like that before?”
The men shook their heads no or murmured a negative.
The white presence suddenly dove to the ground and disappeared.
“Get my sword,” Kuemon growled. No one moved. All the men were transfixed, waiting to see if the apparition would reappear.
“Get my sword!” Kuemon shouted. “And you men get your weapons and follow me. I want to get a closer look at that thing.”
Still the men didn’t move. Kuemon walked up to some and started kicking and cuffing them, knocking them out of their fear-induced stupor. Hachiro brought Kuemon’s sword, and a few of the other men grabbed swords and spears, but others, although they grabbed weapons, could not be induced to leave the safety of the fire, no matter how many blows Kuemon rained down on them.
Exasperated and angry, Kuemon finally led the men who would follow him into the woods, seeking out the white presence. After a search of more than an hour, the men returned to the glow of the fire. They gathered around, looking at each other’s faces, each not daring to speculate about the strange events of the afternoon and evening or what their fruitless search meant.
“Well, it’s probably a trick of the vision,” Kuemon said. A few of the men glanced in his direction, but no one would make eye contact, and no one agreed. “Sometimes the eyes play tricks on you,” Kuemon continued. “Like mistaking those impressions in the mud for footprints. They were probably-”
“BLOOD!” A deep, ghostly voice echoed out from the forest. The men were galvanized, jolted to a state of taut alertness as they peered into the dark trees. They clutched their weapons in a tight grip and edged closer to the sheltering light of the fire.
“I WANT BLOOD!” The voice came from the darkest part of the forest that surrounded the bandit camp. It boomed out of the darkness with a resonance that was unearthly.
“Come here!” Kuemon hissed. “Form a defensive line! Stay alert. Be ready for an attack at any moment.”
From deep in the darkness, Kaze watched the effect of his cry for blood with satisfaction. The bandits were all on the alert now, their nerves frayed and near the breaking point. They would probably stay alert most of the night. Even if they didn’t, they would be sleeping in shifts, jumpy and watchful. Kaze smiled.
He untied the piece of white gauze he had attached to the end of a long, thin piece of bamboo. By running through the trees and whipping the bamboo back and forth, he had created the ghostly apparition the bandits had searched for.
Then he picked up the fat, hollowed-out tube of bamboo that he had used as a megaphone when crying for blood. The megaphone had given his voice just the right touch of ghostly reverberation.
He hauled the evidence of his manufactured ghosts with him to a safe, secluded spot in the forest. There he had previously stored the gnarled tree branch, carefully chosen and shaped, that formed a large claw. Tied to the branch was a long piece of bamboo, so Kaze could stand at some distance and make tracks in the soft mud, creating the dragon prints that so frightened both the bandits and a group of young boys. Fluffing up a bed of fragrant pine needles, he snuggled down into a satisfied sleep.
CHAPTER 17
Shadows where there is
no light. Demons appear to
prick at our conscience.
The next morning, Kaze climbed a tree to observe the camp from a safe distance. He could see the men in the camp standing around the burnt-out campfire from the night before, arguing. From a distance they looked like bunraku puppets playing out a scene in pantomime. Kaze couldn’t hear what was being said, but he didn’t need to.
The man he took to be Boss Kuemon was haranguing the other bandits. He had a sword in one hand, and he was marching up and down like a general trying to instill courage into reluctant troops. He would stop occasionally to point to the woods where Kaze had performed his ghostly tricks the night before. Kuemon started marching in that direction, but then stopped when he noticed none of the men were following him.
He returned to the men and started his speech again. Finally, after much cajoling, first one, then a second, then a third and a fourth man joined Kuemon. No amount of hand waving and fist shaking could make the others join in the search of the woods. Shouting over his shoulder as he marched into the woods followed by the four men, Kuemon finally started the search.
The remaining men stood around looking at each other for several minutes. First one, then the next, started talking and pointing to the woods. Then, as if by general agreement, the men ran into the camp, grabbed as much as they could carry, and scattered into the forest in directions away from the searchers. The only one left in the camp was the young boy that Kaze had spared in his encounter with the bandits on the road, the same youth that obligingly fell asleep while on sentry duty. Kaze laughed out loud and settled into a comfortable position on the tree limb to await further developments.
Kuemon conducted a thorough search of the woods, and it was well over an hour before he returned with his four remaining followers. From his vantage point in the trees, Kaze watched as Kuemon exploded like fireworks shot into the night sky to mark a summer festival. Kuemon started by knocking the youth to the ground, then he tore through the camp, discovering what was missing, then he ran back to the boy, who had just picked himself up, and knocked him down again. With a shaking arm, the boy pointed in the direction the other men had run, and Kuemon and the other four ran off in that direction.
Kaze started climbing down the tree, happy with the results of his actions. With ten or twelve men, it would be a suicide attack, in which the best result would be the loss of the leader. Five was possible. The five bandits would return upset and tired from their long night, the fruitless search of the woods, and now the chase after their erstwhile comrades. And Kaze would be ready.
Back in the camp, Hachiro picked himself off the ground and sat for a moment with his head in his hands. Kuemon’s blows had set his ears ringing. When the other men looted the camp and ran in fear, Hachiro had been tempted to join. Yet his fear of Boss Kuemon was greater than any fear of the supernatural, and he had waited. With the look of fury in Boss Kuemon’s face, he was glad he did.
Hachiro went and picked up a spear. Kuemon told him to guard the camp against man or demon. Kuemon had punctuated his order with a threat to cut out Hachiro’s privates and feed them to the demon if Hachiro was not alert and on guard when he returned. The very thought of the threat made Hachiro squirm.
After Hachiro’s headache subsided, he realized the source of the discomfort in his belly was actually a call of nature, not the threat from Boss Kuemon. Hachiro went and picked up a handful of leaves for wiping, then made his way into the part of the woods the bandits used as a latrine. Although his need was becoming pressing, Hachiro entered the woods carefully, looking at every tree and bush to make sure some dreadful creature wasn’t lurking.