Paprika (43 page)

Atsuko wondered if she’d merely left one dream and entered another, as before. “But I haven’t heard anything … Not from the Swedish Embassy …”

Atsuko’s cool response seemed to irk Matsukane. He let out a little hysterical laugh; he was the one who was excited. “We heard it directly from a news agency that monitors the headquarters in Stockholm. They’re always quicker than the Swedish Embassy.”

“And what about Doctor Tokita? Does he know?”

“I haven’t called him yet. I hope you won’t think me rude, but I actually wanted to talk about holding an emergency press conference. I thought you’d be better equipped to discuss it than Doctor Tokita. But I could call him now, if you like?”

“No,” Atsuko said sharply. “I’ll call him.”

Now the excitement started to build up inside her. She wanted to be the first to share this joy with Tokita. She was the only one who could really share any joy with him. Atsuko replaced the receiver and got up purposefully.

19

Atsuko arrived at the Institute for Psychiatric Research in her Marginal, with Shima and Tokita in the passenger seats. The entrance to the Institute was jammed with a large throng of media reporters, who were haggling with the night-duty staff, doctors, and security guards. The entrance was bathed in bright light, despite the midnight hour, as the lights from television cameras illuminated the entire vicinity.

“A press conference at this hour? I never heard of such a thing!”

“Surely Doctor Chiba has called to tell you?” protested one of the journalists.

“Chiba doesn’t work here anymore!” said a middle-aged employee, obviously one from the Vice President’s camp.

“She hasn’t told
us
that!” Matsukane called loudly, glaring at the employee. “In that case, would you tell us about the conspiracy by the Vice President or whoever it was that forced her out?”

“Eh? What’s that about a conspiracy?”

The other journalists started to make noises. The employee screwed up his face in a grimace. “We can’t talk about it here. Are you mad?! You’ll have to make an appointment.”

“Out of the way, pompous git!” hooted a particularly short-tempered reporter. “We’ve no time for this crap! Two of your scientists have won the Nobel Prize.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine!
What do you mean by obstructing the press conference? You jealous of them, or something?!”

Dazzled by the glare of the TV-camera lights, the chubby little security guard quickly raised his hands to cover his face.

“Let us through! Just let us through! We’ll tell you all about it!”

Kosaku Tokita forged a path through the media scrum toward the entrance. Realizing that the Nobel prizewinners themselves had arrived, the battery of television cameras all turned as one and the surrounding clamor grew louder still.

“I can’t let you through without the permission of President Inui,” said the security guard, standing in their way.

“I am the President,” said Torataro Shima. “I don’t recall promoting Doctor Inui.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand any of that. I’ve just been ordered not to let you in.”

Tokita casually brushed the still-arguing security guard to one side. “Well, that’s him out of the way. And in we all go.”

Still wrangling and quarreling, the gathered throng surged through the automatic glass doors into the central lobby. Following Tokita’s lead, they headed for the Meeting Room usually reserved for press conferences.

“Wait! You may not enter!”

The middle-aged Senior Nurse Sugi glared at them as she blocked their path. Atsuko pushed her aside and, breaking free from the human tide, raced up the central staircase to the first floor. She was worried about Noda and Konakawa, having left them there on waking from her dream. Could they still be in Osanai’s lab, where she’d left them in the dream – which, for them, was reality? Could they still be trying to open the lead storage box with the DC Minis inside? Atsuko held herself responsible for them, as if they were her own sons. She felt a harrowing sense of shame and regret that they, as upstanding members of society, had gone to such undignified lengths to help her.

Osanai’s lab was deserted, the chemical storage box gone. They must have taken it away to open it. Atsuko felt relieved, but at the same time gripped by another nagging worry, something she hadn’t considered in her dream. Hashimoto had escaped to the waking world while pursued by the grotesque Lord Amon. She had definitely heard his dying cries. Her fear that he might actually be dead was no longer unrealistic. In fact, it was more or less certain, and for that reason, it had to be confirmed.

The research lab newly assigned to Hashimoto was across the corridor from Osanai’s and a little farther toward the stairs. On its door was a plate bearing Hashimoto’s name. Atsuko had no idea whether he was inside. Judging from the time of his appearance in her dream, he was more likely to be snoozing in this lab than sleeping in his apartment.

Atsuko overcame her fear and resolutely opened the door. Inside, her eyes met a sight that turned her stomach. An indeterminate mass of flesh was heaped there on the sofa, and it was definitely real. Her numbed mind gradually registered a pile of entrails spilling out of a lower abdomen, cascading down to the floor, a gaping red hole in a crotch with the genitals ripped out, a line of white ribs jutting from a bloody chest, an expressionless face so scorched by fire that it resembled a black mask. It was the pile of Hashimoto’s remains after the butchery meted out by Lord Amon. An ashen-gray languor started to swirl loosely inside Atsuko. She closed the door, overwhelmed by her own powerlessness.

Of course, Konakawa should be the first to hear of it. He was probably with Noda, but where were they? Atsuko wanted to keep the door locked until Konakawa had arrived, but lacked the brute courage to go back into the room and search that lurid bag of dripping guts, that glistening heap of barbecued mincemeat for the key, which Hashimoto must have had on his person. Atsuko headed back to the Meeting Room, convincing herself that it was all right. Nobody would enter Hashimoto’s room until the following morning.

By intentionally withholding the discovery of a murder, Atsuko knew she was sinking even deeper into guilt as a co-conspirator in evil. Even winning the Nobel Prize might have been part of that evil. Fortunately, though, she felt no such guilt about winning the Prize itself. She could therefore put on a brave face, drawing on her feminine ability to become impervious to evil as necessity demanded.

Atsuko waltzed into the Meeting Room as if nothing had happened. While expressing dissatisfaction at her absence, the reporters had reluctantly started questioning Tokita and Shima. Now they started to remonstrate and call out loudly to Atsuko, without even waiting for her to settle in her usual seat.

“Doctor Chiba. Doctor Chiba. If I might ask right away, could you explain why we were given that reception at the entrance just now?”

“What’s been going on here?”

“Did the Institute oppose your winning the Prize? Why did they try to block the press conference?”

“No, no, no. First of all, your reaction on winning the Prize.”

Employees in the Vice President’s faction had joined the journalists in the Meeting Room. They now stood in a line beside the podium, glaring at Atsuko and the others with looks of suppressed spite. Secretary-General Katsuragi sat impudently in his usual moderator’s chair, though no one had asked him to moderate anything.

Atsuko stood up. “I find this kind of attention most regrettable. It puts the spotlight only on myself and Doctor Tokita, and that goes entirely against my better wishes,” she started, then turned to face the group that stood beside the podium. “In fact, it goes without saying that our great honor in winning this prize could only have been achieved with the fullest cooperation of all our colleagues here in the Institute and the hospital. Though not all of them are here with us tonight, may I take this opportunity to extend my sincerest thanks to them.”

Atsuko bowed deeply; the group of six or seven shifted uneasily and pulled sour faces. Aware of the cameras trained on them, some grudgingly returned the bow.

“What were you doing when you heard news of the award?”

The question showed that the speaker had no interest in courtesies or niceties, but wanted only to drag a matter of lofty importance down to her own mundane level. It was the bespectacled female reporter in her thirties.

That’s right. It was when I was looking for the DC Minis. Before that I’d been fighting the griffin. So Inui must also have been asleep then. Is he still asleep now? Has he heard about the Prize in his dream? Was he dreaming when he gave the order not to let the journalists in?

“What were you doing when you heard news of the award?” As she repeated the question, the female reporter’s face began to look increasingly blank.

“I think Inui’s sleeping now,” Atsuko said to Tokita and Shima on either side of her, ignoring the gathered journalists.

“I know,” Tokita replied, thrusting out his bottom lip and on the verge of tears. “We’re in terrible danger. He appeared in my dream again, just now. It was a one-legged medieval creature called a sciapod, but its face was definitely Inui’s.”

“I saw something like that in my dream too.” Shima sighed. “A dwarf-like thing the size of a child, with legs growing straight out of its head.”

“Ah, that would be a glyro,” said Tokita. A monster suggested by some to be a demonic manifestation of the child Jesus.

“What were you doing – when you heard news – of the award?” the female reporter repeated once more with an indignant sneer, almost singing the words.

The lighting in the room started to grow red. The photographers tutted, more concerned with the loss of precious light than the advancing redness. The reporters started murmuring and looking around them.

“I SAID NO!” came a coarse, boorish voice that seemed to be screaming over a cheap loudspeaker. The voice came from far beyond the ceiling, way above the heads of those present, yea, even from the lofty heights of heaven. “I SAID, NO PRESS CONFERENCE!”

“It’s the Vice President,” Atsuko breathed as she stood again. Many of the reporters also stood in astonishment at the sheer volume of the voice.

“Who is it?”

“Such a loud voice! How rude can you get?!”

“Where’s it coming from?”

Everyone in the room felt a dull, heavy crash. Those who were standing started to stagger. The wall between the room and the corridor vibrated under a force suddenly and violently exerted from the other side, causing the air and floor inside the room to shake.

There was a second crash, then a third. The reddish light in the room was emanating from this wall, made incandescent with heat. The ferocity of the heat started to melt the wall. The wall cracked, and there, in the center of the white heat on the other side, something like a sunspot appeared. It expanded into a massive bull’s head, causing dizziness in those who saw it and giddiness in those who tried to stand. The long claws of a gigantic beast appeared through cracks in the wall. A hairy black arm smashed through the wall and into the room.

Now two more heads appeared on the monster. One was the head of a ram, the other the purple head of a man. He had the face of a demon and was boiling with rage.

“GRRRROARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!” roared the monster in a voice that covered the entire range of frequencies, including falsetto. The bespectacled female reporter gave out a lengthy and very bizarre scream as she rose to her feet, tried to run away, kept changing direction, then fainted, hitting her head heavily on the corner of a table as she fell rigid to the ground.

“It’s Asmodai!” screamed Atsuko.

Asmodai, the demon of wrath and destruction. Master of all malevolent deities and governor of hellish legions, a monster with the three heads of a bull, a ram, and a man, the tail of a serpent, and the webbed feet of a goose. The monster sat astride an infernal dragon and held a lance bearing the war standard of hell. The three heads simultaneously breathed fire from their mouths while they surveyed the room. A television cameraman engulfed in flames ran screaming toward the window.

Tokita grabbed the microphone and shouted loudly above the tumult of confused screams inside the room. “Everyone, listen! This is a creature called Asmodai! Stand firmly where you are and face it! To exorcise this demon, we must call its name loudly and clearly! Don’t be scared! Call its name!”

Tokita and Atsuko faced the monster and started chanting its name.

“Asmodai!”

“Asmodai!”

Shima joined them.

“Asmodai!”

“Asmodai!”

The monster’s human head started to distort as if in torment. The white-hot wall gradually cooled to gray. The monster stopped moving, its further advance into the room halted by the voices chanting its name.

“It’s in torment!”

“It doesn’t know what to do!”

The reporters also started chanting, the tempo of incantation gradually increasing under Tokita’s guidance.

“Asmodai!”

“Asmodai!”

Eventually, enclosed by the hardening wall, Asmodai turned to stone, his front half still protruding into the room. Bull, ram, and human were all transfixed in expressions of spite, mouths wide open with rage but quite bereft of life.