Paprika (44 page)

20

At about the same time, specters released from the realm of dreams started to appear all over the capital, wreaking havoc in the waking world. They caused real deaths, not fictional or dream deaths, and drove many more insane.

In various places around Shinanomachi, home to the Institute’s staff apartments and the Inui Clinic, tens, hundreds, or even thousands of Japanese dolls about a meter tall started walking toward every intersection from the darkness of every street corner. They quickly filled roads and pavements in the busy evening hour. The dolls all wore the same smile and the same clothes. They all walked in quick, short steps as if gliding along the ground, all in the same pose with arms outstretched on both sides, all issuing the same hollow chuckle.

“Ho ho ho. Ho ho ho.”

“Ho ho ho. Ho ho ho.”

It was this bizarre happening that caused many people to go mad. The dolls were typical examples of the “spooks” deeply rooted in the Japanese sentiment. In them resided a primordial fear that prickles the subconscious, a fear well known to all Japanese. The dolls formed an army that filled the roads and marched forward en masse. A woman who caught them in her headlights couldn’t stop laughing at the sight of them, causing an accident that killed two pedestrians.

Asmodai eventually disappeared, leaving the remains of the destroyed wall as his calling card. But then a gigantic Buddha tens of meters tall appeared in the garden in front of the Institute. With the merciful compassion of the enlightened one, it started to trample down the media personnel who came tumbling out of the Institute buildings. Several of them died the absurd death of being crushed by a nightmare. Then the Great Buddha began to chase their fleeing cars. From the main thoroughfare outside the Institute’s gates, it walked off in search of the nightlife district, where it started indiscriminately attacking any passersby and cars it found. As it continued on its trail of death and destruction, the Buddha emitted a vulgar laugh from the back of its throat, exposing the crimson lining of its mouth.

A flock of akbabas soared through the night sky. Akbabas are vultures that feed on the carcasses of the dead and are said to live for a thousand years. From time to time, these phantom birds of the night would swoop down to attack passersby in the nightlife district, or peck out the eyeballs of the Great Buddha’s trampled victims.

Sakurada-cho, seat of the Metropolitan Police Department, was visited by a variety of creatures diabolically converted from Christian-inspired constructs. One of them was the water-beast Hydra, which had a crown on each of its seven heads. Another was the buer; with five legs radiating from its head, it moved by rolling like a wheel. Then there was the fire demon Haborym, a monster with the three heads of a serpent, a cat, and a man. It was running around the center of Tokyo holding a firebrand and setting fire to everything it found. Fires started burning in wooden buildings, as well as parks and gardens where trees stood closely together. It was no coincidence that these phantoms all started appearing after Konakawa and Noda had taken the storage box containing the DC Minis back to the Department.

On arriving there, Konakawa had received reports of calamitous events occurring elsewhere in the capital, and had immediately sent Yamaji, Saka, and Ube to the Inui Clinic. He suspected that Inui was still sleeping there, sending phantoms from his dreams to the waking world as surrogates of himself. The three officers were joined by Tatsuo Noda, who would serve as a civilian adviser. This was an exceptional measure; Konakawa knew that the officers, equipped only with their waking awareness, wouldn’t be able to cope with Inui’s unpredictable attacks.

As the four drove up to the Inui Clinic, they found the place unlit and deserted. Doctors, nurses, and patients had probably fled in fright at the monstrous happenings, especially as the Clinic was at the center of them all. But now the Clinic itself seemed to house a spirit, an energy, like an organic being crouching quietly in the darkness. It even seemed to be breathing.

“It’s alive!” exclaimed Saka.

“It might attack us if we go in!” Even Ube was scared.

Yamaji turned to Noda with a questioning look.

“Let’s push on,” Noda said resolutely. “We’ve got to wake Inui. If we can do that, we’ll only need to deal with the remaining creatures.”

They’d started to suspect that the Clinic itself was Seijiro Inui, the entire building transformed into a living thing. They had found only a solitary DC Mini in the chemical storage box after wrenching it open at the Department. That left one more still in the possession of Inui; he was probably wearing it. In view of that, and the fact that the device made it harder for the wearer to wake up, this case wouldn’t be closed until they’d captured Inui and woken him.

The officers entered the Clinic with Noda. Passing through the mouth-like lobby, they proceeded along endlessly winding corridors and stairways lit only by red night lights, like a journey through the innards of a body, before at last finding themselves on the fourth floor. Yamaji’s research had already told them that Inui lived on the fourth floor, but it would have been too dangerous to use the elevator. Elevators commonly appear in dreams as symbols of sexual desires. As such, they thought it highly probable that the elevator would be used for an attack from the subconscious.

They broke down the door to Inui’s apartment and made their way to the bedroom. The bed emitted a continuous moan, yet Inui was not there. There was a lingering warmth in his bedding, as if he’d just gotten up. The four searched the spacious study and library, the not-so-spacious other rooms, and even the wards and examination rooms downstairs. But there was no sign of Inui anywhere.

“He could have burrowed through his dreams like a tunnel and escaped to a different place in reality,” said Noda. “I know that’s possible.”

“You’re kidding?!” Yamaji stared in disbelief. “In that case, it’s futile to search. He could be anywhere.”

“No. There’s one place we could look,” Noda countered.

At around the same time, just before eleven o’clock that night, Atsuko was running along Gaien Higashi Avenue toward Roppongi, chased by phantoms. She’d been traveling with Tokita and Shima in her moss-green Marginal, but it had been crushed underfoot by the Great Buddha. The three had jumped clear moments before the giant foot descended. They’d quickly agreed that it would be best to run in separate directions, for it was patently obvious that the phantoms were targeting the three of them in particular. Tokita and Shima were rescued by separate media vehicles and driven off in different directions. Atsuko alone escaped on foot, deliberately moving away from the Institute’s apartments.

But phantoms from the realm of dreams don’t give up that easily. Wherever Atsuko went, wherever she ran, her relief at making a momentary escape would dissolve when they reappeared from the brightness of the nightlife district or the darkness of the night. Just as in a nightmare. These were specters and hobgoblins driven by subconscious energy. As such, they would attack haphazardly, to the detriment of passersby. As in a nightmare, they would change the scenery ahead to obstruct Atsuko’s progress. The roadside trees would wriggle and squirm, the road would bend and twist. An akbaba flew down and crashed into the window of a coffee shop in front of her.

Near the Roppongi crossing, a wheel came to attack her from the road. It was about a meter in diameter, and in its middle was an old man’s face leering at Atsuko. It was a buer. Atsuko had changed into Paprika without knowing it. She adopted a martial arts pose, poised to kick in self-defense. The buer passed beside her and disappeared into the wall of a building, leaving behind a laugh that sounded like coarse sand being rubbed together. Most of the nightlife revelers and passersby were blissfully unaware of the crazy things happening elsewhere that night. These people had nothing to do with Paprika in the first place, but were merely human-interest items who would get caught up in things and be haplessly killed or injured.

The akbaba came to attack again. Seeing the ghoulish bird descending diagonally from high above the crossing, a young couple on a date commented disinterestedly:

“What’s that? A vulture?”

“There’s a few. Been flying around awhile now.”

“Gross.”

Paprika escaped into a building. Inside the main entrance, to the right, were stairs leading down to the basement. She ran down the stairs and pushed open the heavy oak door. Paprika was relieved to feel the warm air and sense the soft, nostalgic smell of Radio Club.

“My!” gushed Kuga, smiling radiantly and bowing. But then he read from Paprika’s expression that all was not well. “Is something the matter?” he asked, narrowing his eyes more than they were already.

“H-help. Help me.” Paprika could barely speak.

Keeping a steady eye on her, Jinnai emerged from behind the counter. “As I thought. There’s something going on outside, isn’t there.”

There were no customers in the bar, but any person of keen perception could detect abnormal events going on aboveground, even from down here in the basement. Jinnai and Kuga supported Paprika’s weary body from both sides as they led her to a sofa in one of the booths. There, she started to explain the whole story.

“A new device we developed for treating mental illness has turned out to have unexpected effects,” she said, virtually recumbent on the sofa.

Jinnai sat opposite the sofa, looked Paprika in the eye, and nodded in response to her every word. He seemed to be showing her that he understood, or perhaps rewarding her for attempting to explain a complex tale in simple terms. Kuga sat at Paprika’s feet, closed his eyes and listened, a faint smile playing on his features. Perhaps her voice sounded like soothing music to him. Perhaps she was telling him his favorite story.

“Dreams have started to merge with reality. But it’s not just that Inui’s dreams have begun to infiltrate reality. What we’re seeing now is the collective subconscious of everyone who’s been exposed to the side effects of the DC Mini.”

“So you’re saying all these weird things were originally in someone’s dream but are now real beings, real things that have an impact on reality?” Jinnai asked once Paprika had finished her tale.

“That’s what I’m saying.” Paprika had forgotten to mention something, and now made a point of emphasizing it. “To be killed by them means to actually die in reality. Please be careful. But by the same token, they can also be killed. The difference is that, when they die, their physical form also ceases to exist in reality.”

Jinnai immediately stood and returned to his position behind the counter. “All right. We’ll have to fight them.”

Kuga half-opened his eyes. He rarely opened them more than that anyway. “So they take their strength from dreams, do they?”

“Yes.”

“Right.” Kuga stood up. The look on his face seemed to suggest that his whole life had been leading to the decision he was now about to make. He went straight to the sofa in the next booth and lay down on it.

“Oy, Kuga! What are you doing? This is no time for snoozing!”

“I’m going to sleep first,” he said in a voice that was already sleepy, settled in a supine position and placed both hands over his midriff. “Then I’m going to fight these demons, using the power of the inner mind.”

To Paprika’s amazement, Kuga had already understood that the boundary between dreams and reality no longer existed.

The solid oak door was struck violently, as if something heavy had hit it from the other side. The sound of a living thing hitting the door was repeated a second and then a third time, accompanied by a vulgar cry of “
Gwaa! Gwaa!
” and the rough flapping of wings. A loud, high-pitched squawk seemed to come from the tip of the creature’s beak.

“It’s an akbaba!” Paprika shouted, edging into a corner of the sofa. Jinnai gathered together anything that could be used as a weapon – cutlery, sharp-edged tableware – and emerged again from the counter holding a thin knife. Timing his movement to the repeated banging against the door, he wrenched the door open.

A single akbaba whistled through the air, narrowly missing the top of the door frame. It flew to the back of the bar and turned near the ceiling.

“
Gwaa!
”

As the akbaba set its sights on Paprika and prepared to swoop down on her, the knife hurled by Jinnai sank deep into its right eye.

“
Gweeeeerghh!
”

The creature threw back its bald head at the end of its thin neck, then plummeted down to the table below, scattering black and white feathers everywhere. It writhed violently for a moment, then vanished.

Indifferent to the commotion as he slept on the sofa, Kuga was already starting to snore.

21

“Our enemies are phantoms from the realm of dreams.”

Chief Superintendent Konakawa was appealing to the heads of the Riot Squad, the Traffic Riot Squad, the Special Task Force, the Mobile Patrol Force, and the Police Aviation Unit. They had all gathered at the Incident Headquarters hastily set up in the Metropolitan Police Department. The time had come to reveal the ghastly truth, but there was no need to explain all the details.

“To overcome the enemy, the first thing we must have is willpower. We must remain steadfast to ourselves and impervious to the enemy’s tricks. Our weapons will destroy the enemy, but we have no room for complacency, for they will keep reappearing. This is a battle that will seem to have no end. But weak-heartedness is as much our enemy as they are. I strongly expect the most strenuous efforts from all units. That’s all. Now please go and mobilize your men.”