JeeCay?'s Notebook

[JeeCay?]

I'll be using this space to store writing, namely short stories.  I suppose I"ll start with one I wrote a while back but edited recently.   

                          

                               The Tales of Yasuo: The Ghost of Suguru Castle.


 Yasuo was not by his nature a skeptic. He was a practicing Christian and kept a journal dedicated to sightings of Yokai, Cryptozoological creatures indigenous to japan. Still, in the matter of his sworn enemies, The Clan of the Wasp, skepticism was an important tool. Such was the case when Yasuo entered the domain of Suguru.

The Tokugawa shogunate, the de-facto rulers of japan had yet to establish an agent to run and maintain the land. The “ghost” of Suguru Castle was perhaps the biggest obstacle. Most who dared to move past the castle’s front gates were never seen again. The few that were found were barely recognizable. Identified by clothing or keepsakes associated with their person rather than their remains. Bodies chopped and sliced. Limbs broken and torn apart. Piles of muscle and flesh found next to the bones that should have existed within them. These murders were as horrifying as they were depraved. It was rumors such as these that brought Yasuo to Suguru.

Yasuo’s appearance could best be described as uncanny. He wore a Modest Kimono, a long robe, brown in color with a belt and overcoat of the same color. His attire would be considered fashionable a few decades prior. At the time of these events it would at best be considered quaint. Like-wise he had the strange ability to simultaneously stand out and blend into a crowd. It was clear as day to anyone looking at him. Just enough of his foreign heritage showed. Any efforts made to alter his appearance would mitigate this but never completely obscure it. It was a fact that caused him a great deal of frustration. Despite this Yasuo found confidence in his ability to overcome such struggle.

Yasuo’s stride carried a faint but noticeable strut to it. In high spirits, he offered a smile to everyone within eyeshot, ignoring those who nervously turned away from him. For the most part, only merchants and workers looking to stir up business for their respective shops seemed happy to see him. It was only when someone returned his gesture without motive that he stopped to engage them. Such was the case with an older woman who approached Yasuo that day. Not quite old enough to be Yasuo’s mother but a contemporary of hers 3 to 5 years younger. Unafraid of his status as a foreigner she happily engaged him in conversation.

“Hello” Said the lady.
“Hello as well” Yasuo replied.

The lady glanced down at the swords at Yasuo’s side.

“So, you are samurai.” She said gesturing to the swords. The phrase was said in a way that could be mistaken for a question.

“Not exactly. I’m a swordsman, not a samurai per say.”

In that moment her jaw dropped. Her mouth hung open as her eyes narrowed. A few uncomfortable seconds later here eyes widened. Seemingly anticipating this Yasuo smiled and placed his hand gently on her shoulder.

“Sorry…There isn’t a good way to explain it” He stated producing a piece of paper from his pocket. He held it in front of her while he explained.

“I used to be a magistrate of Edo. Sadly, I was among those who were left unemployed by the Nationwide mandate.

The tensed muscles in the face of the woman relaxed and she laughed with slight embarrassment.

“Oh. You’re a Ronin. My apologies”

Ronin were master-less samurai. Unemployed soldiers. Without widespread conflict or a planned conquest of either china or Korea in the works the Tokugawa could not justify keeping so many soldiers in their employ. As such, many a samurai found themselves out of work. And while temporary work could be found it wasn’t always good or noble.

“Ronin. Yes. In that regard I was hoping to ask you something” Yasuo said. The woman nodded with an audble nose which encouraged Yasuo to begin his inquiry.

Are you a resident of this village, or just a passerby like myself?

Her eyes widened briefly in response then relaxed to make room for the smile which took prominence on her face.

“I’ve lived here My whole life Mr Ronin. Raised a child here as well.“ she responded pridefully.

“Well that's wonderful!” Yasuo replied. “I pray I’m not keeping you from him or any other important business. “

The Lady waved away Yasuo’s concern with a smile.

“Not at all I’m merely taking some time to enjoy the city before heading home.”

“In that case” Yasuo stated in relief. “There was something I was hoping to discus with a local of Suguru. That is, if you’d be willing to offer me a bit of your free time.

Yasuo then gestured towards a tea house Just a stone’s throw away from where the two stood. The woman smiled and nodded with just a hint of nervousness and followed him in.

The two sat and conversed a bit more about trivial matters while they waited for tea and snacks to arrive. He got to know the lady a bit. Discovering she had a small house outside of town with a small bit of farmable land. She grew Daikon radishes of impressive size and shape. Her current struggle was convincing her son take over her work on the farm.

As their tea arrived a lull in the conversation formed as the woman savored the seaweed topped crackers that came with their tea.

“On the matter I wished to discuss with you. I should warn you some of what I have to ask might be distressing.”
The woman began to cough. Yasuo reached over to pat her on the back and she gestured for him not to. She instead took a moment to recover before responding with a noticeably sunken expression.

“You’re not the first to ask about it. I’m sure you speak of Suguru Castle.”

Yasuo only nodded in acknowledgment. The woman met the nod with a sigh, followed by a look of worry.

“Many like you have attempted to rid the castle of whatever malicious presence inhabits it. None have returned from the castle alive.”

She sighed looking away for a moment before continuing. I imagine not even half of them were as kind as you.”

Yasuo Smiled, hoping it would reassure her.

“I have every intention of returning alive-”

“They all did” The woman interrupted. Her face visibly mourning his predicted death. She shut her and drew in a deep breath which she held for a second or too before releasing it with another sigh. Her eyes met Yasuo in acceptance.

“You’ll find a posting regarding the bounty on a board south of here. Suguru Castle should be easy to spot. Take the pathway to the east if you want to avoid foot traffic.”

She got up suddenly and laid a few coins on the table. Before she could life her hand from the wooden surface Yasuo gently place his hand over hers.

“I have some experience with this sort of “haunting” Please let me take care of this. In three days come back here and you can treat me in celebration of my success.”

The woman smiled politely, doing her best to mask her concern. She took the money she attempted to leave on the table and was on her way. Nodding once more to Yasuo before departing the tea house.

Three days. Yasuo would use the time to prepare. Collecting information about the castle, surveying the land. He did the same within the nearby forests. Within a dedicated notebook he documented the plant life, returning to town to ask about the various flora and fauna. By the second night he was prepared to brave the home of Suguru’s former lords.
As the woman recommended he took the pathway in the east. With the castle in sight he stopped a-ways outside of it’s grounds.


In truth, it couldn’t really be called a castle. It was at first a manor. A large estate for the Suguru Family and their attendants. It was only later retrofitted to be a combat-worthy structure. This showed in key places. Normally pebbles were spread across the landscape behind the gate, the noise used to alert those inside of all movement around the castle. The wood which made up the floors of the castle was treated to have a similar effect. Creaking loudly with each step. The gates would not only be wider but have obstructions further out which reduced all pathways into a bottleneck towards the manner. There was only a small amount of rocks a few feet out from the castle as though someone at started to work on the landscape but never finished. The gate seems strong but it’s entrance was not only wide open but had fallen into disrepair.



He crept slowly towards the castles front gate. Doing his best to cling to the shadows. When he was within throwing distance Yasuo ducked low and attempted to dash through the gate. As he passed through it’s archway he was met with the sound of something cutting through the air. A sharp whoosh entered his ears as the item zipped past him. He hopped backward and fixed himself in a spot adjacent to the gate. Glancing down at the once taught string which now lay on the ground of the entranceway. Then, further to his right, he saw what shot past him. A hand-carved spike which was now embedded in a tree 10 feet away. Relieved that he’d evaded the trap, he glanced down at the pack he’d carried with him. He fished through a number of pendants and talismans inscribed with spells of protection to ward off spirits, eventually finding a vile of black powder from the pack. He removed his overcoat and draped it over the pack. He stood up, placed the item in his robe tightened the straps which held the swords at his side in place. Taking a deep breath he crept cautiously past the gateway towards the empty space where one might assume the castle’s front doors were.

The Ronin’s eyes darted from one part of the first room to another. Noting possible entrances. He moved cautiously, always turning so that his back wouldn’t be facing one of them. He stopped suddenly. Standing at the center of the room. He sensed something. It was a distinct lack of noise. What felt like an unnatural quiet emanating from the ceiling of the room he stood in. The very moment he looked up he saw the light of the moon reflect off a blade rushing toward his eyes. In an act of pure instinct, the Ronin propelled himself backward, drawing the smaller of two blades at his side as he fell, back first to the floor below. The blades clashed before he hit the floor. Yasuo placed his free hand to the back of the short blade he held and used the combined strength of his arms to push the assaulting weapon and its wielder away from him. Rather than resisting, the assailant seemingly sailed upon the force generated by Yasuo to propel itself backward. Yasuo willed himself upward with the blade pointed at his attacker.

It was in that moment that he paused to really see what was in front of him. He found what was either a woman or an emaciated man with long dark hair. Its thin frame was wrapped in a distressed black Kimono with white undergarments visible through rips in the thick fabric. The rips had darkened outlines around them likely dried blood. But the implications of the attackers distressed attire, no matter how ghastly, paled in importance to what the assailant wore upon its face. A Noh Mask.

The Noh mask was a tool of Noh theatre. Stage plays usually centering around the supernatural. While Yasuo enjoyed the subject matter, he could never sit through an entire performance as he’d always found the Noh mask disturbing. The mask at best bore an uncanny resemblance to the face of a Japanese woman from the dark ages. The mask was porcelain color with dark outlines around the eye holes and faint red coloring around the lips. While many masks were made with an intended expression this one was blank. The kind Yasuo found most disturbing. In his mind, they were the most effective at manipulating the perceptions of others. The blank expression seemed to amplify every word and gesture the wearer made. A slight change in how the light hit the mask could make the wearer seem sad or angry without a word. But most disturbing of all was when the wearer did nothing. That stillness amplified the mask’s void-like expression. Like you were looking at something that shouldn’t exist as it looked back at you through your own eyes.

The horrors would not cease for Yasuo. More disturbing than the attacker’s uncanny appearance and movement was the realization that the unearthly still and silent assailant’s feet weren’t touching the ground. His heartbeat accelerated, and his breathing quickened. The oxygen once taken in through his nose was now being pulled in through his mouth and he found himself blinking more. He stepped to the left allowing the moonlight to shine more clearly through the front entrance. A faint light seemed to rise up from various part of the levitating assailant. These lights were but reflections. Reflections which Yasuo traced to the ceiling, amongst a collection of small, strangely placed mirrors was a trap door above. The attacker had been released from the door and now hung from strings sewn into its body. It was a horrific sight but the horror brought calm with it as Yasuo allowed skepticism to step to the forefront of his perception. This was no ghost and an examination of his likely dead assailant would all but prove it. He sheathed his blade and stepped towards the frightful image before him with hopes of confirming his suspicion and perhaps, deducing the mechanism which launched the second trap.
 
Without warning, all conscious thought in Yasuo’s mind was flushed out by alarm and a strange sensation in his right foot. He looked down to find a blade poked through his right foot. Instinctively he pulled his foot up. His face twisted into a grimace. As he hopped away from where the now bloodied blade rested. It retracted abruptly. On one leg Yasuo inched towards a corner of the room. His eyes carefully watching the floor. The wood the floor consisted of and its likely thickness meant that the hole through which the blade came up had been made created for that purpose. He watched for more holes as he inched backward. He only came to a stop when he spotted what initially appeared to be a dark spot in the floor. He glanced back at the bloody foot print which outlined a similar spot on the floor then back at the black spot in front of him. Genius is often formed in the damnedest of places and it was between fear of the blade, uncertainty of it’s whereabouts and the pain of his recently punctured foot that Yasuo deduced it’s hiding.

He pulled the vial full of black powder from the inside of his Kimono and used the full length of his arm, from shoulder to fingertip to intact his plan. He poured a generous pile near the hole and formed a thin trail of powder about a foot and a half away. He lit the end of that trail with a match. The fire ignited each grain of the black powder. One tiny explosion triggered another in a line toward the pile. As this happened Yasuo took a deep breath, clinched his jaw tightly, and gingerly moved forward, gently planting his bloodied foot slowly and firmly on the ground over the hole. He imaged an actual attacker underneath the castle with the blooded blade, moving itself toward the second hole, his blood sleeping through the hole, imploring the depraved killer to impale him once more. All the while, the trail of flame inching closer to a greater explosion. Yasuo waited for as long as his nerve would allow before he pushed backward on his good foot. This action propelled him away just before the pile of black powder met flame. The explosion produced from the meeting punched a coconut-shaped hole in the wooded floor before Yasuo hit the ground. A loud, muffled and anguished scream erupted from beneath the floor. Yasuo’s gamble was successful. He could hear scurrying underneath the building.

Yasuo followed the sound hobbling the best he could. Leaving bloody footprints in his stead, he continued to follow the sound of one scurrying through the rocks beneath the castle floors. The noise led him into another room. With no care of another blade reaching out from underneath he hobbled through the doorway. He was ultimately gambling on there only being one “Ghost” in Suguru castle. The fact that he’d nearly made it through the room without incident seemed to be proof of that. It was only when he heard a what sounded like a snap that he cursed his absurdness. From his left, another humanoid figure rushed out. Instinctively, Yasuo shifted his weight to his uninjured foot and pushed off, jumping out of the way of the attack. In a single smooth motion, he rolled and returned to an upright position in time to see a humanoid form slam into the wall opposite. To his horror, Yasuo saw that his recent attacker’s body had be riddled with blades. Swords, daggers, and even some carpentry tools had been punched through the form of what was once a man. He too wore a noh mask with a blank expression. But it’s blade-ridden body seemed to communicate anguish through the mask.

Yasuo quickly came to a realization. Like the attacker in the first room, this unfortunate soul was not alive. Likely one of the many victims of the castle, used to the ends of whatever evil punctured Yasuo’s foot. Unfortunate people reduced to petrified death traps. Violent puppets to a nefarious end. What Yasuo could make of the knife-ridden corpse’s attire seemed to indicate he was samurai. Likely on mission from the shogunate to claim the castle. If it was the Ghost’s agenda to make traps out of people who’d had the misfortune of visiting the castle then he knew he had at least one more noh faced encounter in store. Worst still, the last attack hand thrown him off the trail of the ghost.

Yasuo knew he was in no position to explore the rest of the castle. His injured foot limited his mobility and each trap he evaded would make the next more likely to kill him. Blood loss was also a factor. If he didn’t tend to his foot soon he’d run the risk of passing out. He would have to force a direct confrontation between himself and the Ghost if he wanted to succeed. His plan would require a bit of deception

He hobbled forward, stopping a foot or two short of the doorway to the next room. He leaned forward so that he could see past the doorway. He looked left and then right in search of some sign of where the next attack would come. When he caught the moonlight reflected off another blade he stopped. With some idea of where the next attack would come from he moved closer to the door. He unsheathed his long-sword and gripped it firmly between his left and right hand then lifted it to his side in a ready stance. He inched slowly through the door. He saw the string pulled between the two walls of the room. He intentionally stepped into it triggering the noh faced trap. This one was another petrified samurai. Curious was its positioning. He had to have been killed mid-strike to have died holding his sword out. The puppet swung down from the roof at an arc which was intended to behead the unfortunate intruder. Yasuo lowered his head just enough to evade the puppet’s blade and sliced through the noh face assailant with his own. It was an exceptional cut one he would be sure to brag about if he survived this ordeal.

The sound of the trap’s lower half hitting the ground was used by Yasuo to mask his movements. He moved to the side of the door way, dropped his long sword and pulled out the short sword instead. He pulled the vial of black powder and sprinkled the faintest bit on the top of his foot. He placed the handle of the short sword in his mouth and bit down hard. He was dreading what would come next. He lit a match and held it to the black powder on the top of foot, igniting it. The reaction worked as intended, cauterizing the top part of his wound. The only thing as excruciating as the pain this trick caused him was how miserable the thought of doing it again was. But repeat the process he did. This time the bottom of his foot sprinkled with the last of his black powder and lit. He came close to passing out from the pain but eventually, it did pass. With the hard part over he carefully removed his Kimono and wrapped it around the waist of the legless puppet. He did so hoping to obscure the damaged nature of the “ghost’s” death trap. As he deftly repositioned himself he noting the placement of the severed lower half. How the legs were visible from the doorway but the area where they had been cut was not. It seemed that luck was finally on his side. He took the sword handle out of his mouth and held it in his right hand ready to launch a surprise attack the moment the Ghost walked in. This gambit hinged upon two factors. First, that the gunpowder attack he’d launched on the ghost prior had bloodied it. Second was that the ghost would follow his bloody footprints into the room he now rested in.

What felt like hours passed. Yasuo did all he could to block out the pain in his foot. To not cry out in anger or anguish. To not verbally provoke the ghost into fighting him directly. He had to wait. Wait for the ghost to get and frustrated and anguished as he was. Wait for the ghost to mend its wounds and come searching for him. Wait, for that decisive moment where either he or whatever the ghost was fell to the others blade. That time did come. The Ghost stumbled through the door an excruciating amount of time later. The footfalls were unsteady. The sounds bounced about the first room from the door. The picture Yasuo formed in his mind’s eye was of one stumbling in a struggle to stay upright. As if walking a tightrope in a room that spun and moved out of focus. Perhaps the ghost hadn’t taken any time to patch its wounds. Perhaps it did but its best efforts to mend wounds paled in comparison to a severe injury. In the end it wouldn’t matter. This fiend would meet its end the same way regardless. Fallowing the trail of bloody foot prints to the doorway of the third room. Taking that first step through and then being run through by Yasuo’s blade.

And so, the Ghost fell. Run through the chest by Yasuo’s short-sword. The Ghost, such as it was fell back, likely a reactionary effort rather than a conscious decision. It hit the ground with a loud thud. Yasuo exhaled in response. Allowing relief to wash over him. In regard to the bounty he was more or less done. All that was left was to wait for an agent of the shogun to arrive and rule that it was Yasuo that conquered the ghost. However, Yasuo had other business with the ghost. Like it’s puppet’s The Ghost wore an expressionless noh mask. Unlike the rest It had a large crack down the center and the top right portion was gone. So effective was the explosion that the face underneath the mask gave way, exposing blood and skull and even a portion of the assailant’s brain. Proud as he was of his plan before, seeing the state of the ghost left Yasho feeling foolish for the pain and time spend on a plot against a foe who was effectively a zombie by that point. Still, he could take pride in defeating one who felled so many before him. Yasuo limped towards the body of the ghost. He first removed its mask to reveal the face a woman underneath. She wasn’t unattractive. Somewhat plain looking. The kind that could easily be dressed up to attract men beyond her station. Her skin was dry, her cheeks sunken in with dark circles around her eyes, indicating very little sleep and malnourishment. Even so, the ronin could see the beauty that may have existed in her. Yasuo felt a tinge of sadness looking at her. Had she always been so mad and bloodthirsty? So twisted and perverse as to create lethal puppets out of human beings. Or was it the wasps venom that drove her to this, like so the many Yasuo had encountered and slain before her. He had one test. That of the blood.

 
  In what felt like an eternity he hobbled out to his pack outside pulling an empty vial and a pinch of groundup herbs. He dropped the herbs into the vial and hobbled back to the body of the ghost, using his sheathed long-sword like a cane to reduce pressure on his injured foot. He drew some blood from her arm and allowed it to flow into the vial. When blood, untouched by the wasp clan’s venom met the herb in the vial they would clump together and stick to the surface of the vial. However, when blood tainted by the wasp clan’s venom made contact with the herbs they dissolved and changed the blood’s color from red to blue.

As he watched his assailant’s blood change in coloring he pondered, as he often did following their defeat at his hands, what the wasp clan’s venom truly makes of the victim's mind. He could only assume that it left little trace of the person as the depraved and evil acts he’d witnessed in the form of the noh-faced puppet seemed too deranged to be enacted by one with even the faintest traces of sanity.

Yasuo Took one last glance at the departed woman and headed towards his pack and then back to his lodgings in the village. He had an appointment for tea to keep and wished to reward himself by sleeping in a bit before then.