Man with No Name: A Nanashi Novella Read Online Free PDF

had melted. Dread overcame him, rooted him in his tracks, and he groaned. He knew if archeologists dug into this hillside they’d unearth a fossil record of carnage that burrowed into the yawning mouth of antiquity. Someone whistled from the trees; a soft, lilting tune that was answered from several hidden locations. The whistling grew louder, accompanied by cracking branches. Men wearing antlers, their bulky torsos covered in animal skins, shambled forth. They hooted and whistled a song he almost recognized; something incongruously popular, something urban, which made it all the more awful. One of the misshapen brutes waved--
    -- Nanashi plunged from a terrible height into water. At first he drifted in lightless depths, arms and legs spread loosely, and his previous panic melted, replaced by a sense of finality, of release. Gradually, his surroundings brightened, exposed by an unearthly, muted radiance that came from many directions at once. He followed the bubbles of his own escaping breath upward and saw an inverted bed of fleshy kelp, or soft, white tubers, swaying as the water in the jar sloshed. The white tubers had faces he began to recognize when a monstrously large hand, distorted by the curved glass walls, closed around the jar and all was dark --
    -- and Nanashi fell back into the sleeping chamber, frozen upon his mat. Someone in another room played a stringed instrument, plucking at the chords and humming the tune he’d heard whistled by the mountain phantoms.
    A single ray of lamplight filtered down to illuminate the prisoner Muzaki in profile, seated cross-legged near the door, head bowed to his breast. He wore a thick towel wrapped around his midsection and he twitched with each discordant note struck by the neighboring musician. Nanashi realized that despite the pain of his seized muscles, the hyper-clarity of his senses, this was another part of the dream. The music was a figment -- it faded in and out, yet Muzaki twitched in metronome and a cotton cloud muffled and nullified the chorus of snores, groans, and flatulence of the sleeping gangsters as they lay scattered like dolls beyond paper thin walls and sliding panels.
    Sound contracted around Nanashi, reduced to his thumping heart, his labored panting. A fly alighted on Nanashi’s cheek, drawn by his sweat, and just then nearby Muzaki’s arms flew wide and his head thrust back so the sinews of his neck were taut. A seam opened him, bisected his flesh from temple to toe. The man divided, skin and bone elongating until twin halves became separate wholes, yoked at the spine by a length of ganglia. Then each whole divided again and soon there was a daisy chain of howling Muzaki’s elongating toward infinity.
    Nanashi was paralyzed, yet fully aware, as blood poured across the floor and rushed toward his gaping mouth - -
     
    *   *   *
     
    The morning was overcast. Nanashi sat on the chilly terrace and ate a bowl of white rice and drank several cups of black coffee laced with brandy. Normally, tea was his preference. However, today was a coffee and liquor sort of day. The proprietor owned an espresso machine. He made the coffee into syrup, Turkish style, per Nanashi’s specifications.
    The rest of the gang were inside. Through the glass, he saw Koma slouched at a corner table, cradling his head and talking on the house phone. He was conferring with his bookie about the horse races -- he scribbled on slips of paper, hunting through his pockets every few seconds for more of them. Gambling was his particular area of expertise, although he’d never been wise enough to avoid becoming addicted to the very vice he peddled. He owed money everywhere and people had begun to whisper. Apparently the latest news wasn’t good -- he barked at anyone who came close. His voice barely reached Nanashi, as if he and the others were calling out from a distant valley.
    Amida and Haru stepped onto the terrace to smoke cigarettes. “Good morning,” Haru said. He lighted