The Ring of Water - Chris Bradford [76]
Jack and Hana backed away from the hideous onryō. As they passed another decrepit building, a bony hand shot out from a shadowy doorway and grabbed Hana. She screamed and Jack wrenched her from its grip.
‘Have you the Answer?’ beseeched a voice from the building’s dark recesses.
Several more voices joined the entreaty. ‘Have you the Answer? … The Answer? … The Answer?’
More emaciated bodies materialized out of the mist. Upon a flight of crumbling stone steps a man rocked to and fro, mumbling gibberish to himself. Another was slapping his head with his hands and howling like a wolf. Crouched in a corner, a woman was putting pine cones into a bowl, emptying them on to the ground, then repeating the process endlessly.
‘They’re all mad!’ said Hana.
The chorus of ‘Have you the Answer?’ grew and the skeletal man advanced on them, others joining his ranks. Jack and Hana found themselves surrounded and backed up against the pagoda.
Then suddenly the chanting ceased and the onryō scattered, disappearing into the shadows.
Glancing up, Jack saw a head thrust out of an upper window of the pagoda. Bald, bug-eyed and bearded, it gawped down at him with wild delight. The head vanished and a moment later reappeared in a window on the floor below. It popped out again on the third, second and first floors, before the Riddling Monk, in bright red robes, burst from the pagoda’s doorway and bowed with great ceremony.
Skipping round Jack and Hana, he waved a dead branch and scattered leaves over their heads in a bizarre imitation of a Shinto purification ritual. He stopped before Jack, bringing his face so close that their noses touched.
‘Fish to a cat, you came back!’
48
RIDDLE ME THIS!
‘I’m here for the rutter you riddled from Ronin,’ explained Jack, trying his best not to be unsettled by the monk’s proximity.
‘A riddle he utter –’ the monk’s eyes rolled towards Hana – ‘yet mine is still to answer.’
‘He’s already asked you a riddle!’ exclaimed Hana with alarm.
Jack nodded. Hana pulled him away from the monk, whispering urgently, ‘But you have to answer it. He’ll take your soul if you don’t.’
‘You really believe that,’ replied Jack, glancing at the monk who was now picking lice from his beard and eating each one with relish.
Hana pointed at the maddened ones hanging in the shadows, eyeing the Riddling Monk with devoted reverence. ‘Onryō or not, they look to have lost their souls to me.’
With a cold dread, Jack realized Hana could be right. The monk he’d taken for a harmless fool may be mad, but he had a powerful grip over the minds of others. Whatever his secret, he was a dangerous individual.
‘Let’s find the rutter and get out of here,’ said Jack.
Hana stuck close to Jack as he approached the monk.
‘Answer me this first,’ he demanded. ‘Do you know where my logbook is?’
The Riddling Monk smiled inanely. ‘I have many a book. But what it took to take, you must challenge me or … your mind will break.’
‘Be careful, Jack. It could be a dangerous trick,’ said Hana.
‘Why take life so seriously?’ the monk laughed, dancing a jig around her. ‘You can’t get out of it alive, believe me!’
‘Hana, too much is at stake,’ said Jack, under his breath. ‘Too many people have sacrificed themselves for this rutter. I made a promise to my father. There’s no going back –’
‘Of course you can’t leave, you’re in a circle, see!’ interjected the monk, pirouetting on the spot. ‘Once bound inside, it’s riddle you, riddle me, riddle die.’
At that moment, the sun dipped behind the horizon and dusk fell upon the temple. The air chilled and the whole place became as ghostly as a graveyard. Like living corpses, the monk’s maddened disciples slunk out of the shadows and encircled Jack and Hana.
‘Looks like we don’t have a choice,’ said Jack, taking Hana’s hand.
‘Good! Better! Best!’ exclaimed the monk, clapping with manic joy. ‘The challenge is set, no more bets!’
He dragged them inside the ruined pagoda. Black as the devil’s cave, they stumbled over bones, both animal and human, strewn across the main hall. The Riddling Monk disappeared