Free The Devouring God by James Kendley Page B

why he did not want sex with her, he started spouting gibberish, she said, and threw her belongings into the street.
    Nabeshima told Takuda to look at Thomas’s artwork.
    â€œLook at his journals, if you can, and look at his sculpture,” she had said. “He’s really good. His sculpture is in the lobby of some Zenkoku Sales office.”
    Takuda had tried not to squirm. “I’ve dealt with Zenkoku before. What will his art and his journals tell me?”
    â€œThat the world doesn’t look the same to him as it does to most ­people.”
    Takuda looked at her closely. She looked away. He said: “He sees things other ­people don’t. Just as you do.”
    She did not reply, and she still didn’t look at him.
    Takuda asked, “How does he have your phone?”
    â€œWhen he threw my things into the street last week, the phone was gone. I thought that perhaps I had lost it earlier. I decided not to lock the account in hopes that someone would call my home number.”
    â€œAny luck?”
    She shook her head. She was leaving out important information, of course, but not to protect herself. She still liked the young foreigner even though he had gone insane.
    Takuda already knew it was not as simple as insanity. He just hoped he could retrieve the Kurodama before anyone got hurt.
    Thomas lived next door to his landlord. In the garden between their houses, melons and small, green-­skinned pumpkins lay rotting in the dirt, some of them exploded from the overlong rainy season. Bean pods hung limp and black on the vines. Takuda marched up to the door and rapped sharply, and then he slid it open and yelled out his presence. “Daily Yomiyuri!” If he was going to play the pushy salesman, he would do it with gusto.
    There was a faint, sharp reek like rotted crab. It took Takuda back to an earlier horror, but there was nothing supernatural about this stench. Thomas’s entrance pit was almost filled with plastic bags, all from the same convenience store, each the same size and shape, each sealed with a nearly identical cross of masking tape. Twenty-­five bags were lined up five by five, probably waiting for disposal. Takuda stepped in.
    â€œExcuse me! Daily Yomiuri! Would you like to subscribe? Special subscription rate today . . .”
    The long, narrow front room was darkened. The walls and windows were draped with yellowed canvas bunched and puckered where it’d been nailed to the beams. Pinwheeled spatters of paint had faded so they met and melded with creeping brown water stains and black constellations of mold. In the middle of the back wall, one section of canvas bearing the legend Welcome to Yokatopia Art Space Bravo hung in ribbons and tatters, and the wall behind was gouged to the lath. Plaster had been trodden to dust where ruined canvas sagged to the floor.
    He felt eyes on him and looked up. There stood a skinny foreigner, pale and freckled, a redhead with watery, red-­rimmed eyes. His eyes were so blue as to be almost transparent. Takuda found it disconcerting, but he grinned and bowed. Thomas didn’t say anything.
    â€œExcuse me! Daily Yomiuri! It’s lucky that I found you at home!”
    Thomas smiled slowly and cocked his head to the left. “Good morning. You’re back.”
    Back? Takuda smiled and bobbed two quick bows as he reached in his pocket for an order form. “Yes, a lucky day for both of us. Happy to find you here. You know, Th e Daily Yomiuri is the least expensive English newspaper in Japan . . .”
    â€œBack for your money,” Thomas said. He stood, head still cocked as if he were a broken puppet.
    â€œQuite right,” Takuda said after a pause. Then in a rush: “For the subscription rate this low, there’s really nothing like it. Plus, there’s nothing like it for a teaching aid. It’s a daily lesson plan. That’s what teachers call it in Tokyo. A daily