(Art: “The Rescue,” by Mai-sensei)
I stopped telling my story to Tomo as I thought about the sound of wailing that had come from the tunnel. It had probably been a wise decision to go around, even with Tsubame Onna, but I still had to tell Tomo about her.
Tomo used the break to light a cigarette for himself. I watched the smoke drift up, partly veiling his face. It was craggy, and the eyebrows were uneven, giving him a perpetually cocky look he loved to take advantage of. His light blue hair was as tousled as usual. I don’t know if I had ever seen it straight. It just wouldn’t have been Tomo if his hair had been neat. He was even a perfectionist in how tousled his hair looked.
A thought crossed my mind that I owed my life to his perfectionism. There was something I needed to say. “Thanks for drilling me on snow driving and skids. I know I bitched, but it saved my ass. All things considered, I handled that bend well.”
“You’re welcome. Next time, don’t whine so much,” he said with humor, and I laughed.
“No promises.”
I took a sip of the coffee and made a face. It had gone cold.
I handed the mug to him, saying, “Mugicha, I think. Not sure my stomach could handle any more coffee. And could you check if I have more smokes back there? I seem to have finished these.” I crumpled an empty Pianissimo pack in illustration.
That was a pack and a half I’d consumed since I left on the trip. Too many, I’d end up like my grandfather coughing my lungs out. It seemed Hanayome-shin couldn’t be bothered with curing cancer.
After Tomo headed for the kitchen, I mulled over the story again. I had some questions, so I took out my phone, pulled up a wiki site on youkai, and did a few queries. A link to another wiki on creepypasta led me to an article on “Time Space Man.” There was no mention of a face like a vortex, but it sounded like him. A guy who warns you that you have wandered out of normal time and space. The workman’s clothes fit the description too.
There was nothing on cave drawings that fit, so I still didn’t know what I might have faced if I had continued across the bridge. I bookmarked a story on sacrifices made to a snake kami. As for the woman in white, there were lots of them, in and out of tunnels. None accompanied by swarms of swallows, but Tsubame Onna, Swallow Woman, seemed a fitting name. I still had to tell Tomo about her. Poor guy was going to have nightmares by the time I finished with him.
I put the phone down and apologized when he returned. “Sorry, this is taking so long, but a lot happened.”
“It’s okay. Take your time,” Tomo said. He gave me the mugicha and a plate of colorful chestnut and melon daifuku. My favorite flavors.
“Your girlfriend sounds like a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type,” he continued. This time, I didn’t detect any humor in his tone. Sometimes I hate how blunt he could be. This was one of those times.
I took the pack of Mevius’ he handed me while I put my reply together. “Maybe. I think she’s just lost and holding on to the only thing she knows. If we keep her long enough to get her detoxed, she might listen to reason and give up on Mikawa. And she isn’t my girlfriend.”
I laid the pack down, my throat was raw. If they had been a peche, I might have lit one, but as mild as Mevius’ were, I couldn’t face them. Instead, I wet my throat with the tea and continued my story.
*** Swallow’s Road (Ume POV) ***
(Art: “Ume Fumiko,” by Mai-sensei)
We turned down the side road, and it quickly narrowed. If the regular road was windy and rural, this was worse. Before long, trees encroached on the edge of the pavement and shut out the moonlight. Our headlights cut through thin wisps of night fog that drifted across the road. It would have been spooky anytime, but given the circumstances, it was ten times worse.
The road opened periodically, with a guardrail to the right and steep mountain slopes on the left. A haloed moon, that peeked through gaps in the trees, was at times obscured by fog and at other times shone clear and bright in a starless, inky-black sky. It was in one of these places I first spotted the lights ahead. For a moment, my heart leapt at the thought of seeing a car again. My hope was instantly crushed as I realized they were drifting blue lights.
“Kitsune,” I muttered.
“Uh-huh,” Shiomi replied. “Don’t let them lure you off the main road.”
I didn’t need the advice, but it didn’t hurt either. Her being helpful was better than her passive-aggressive grumbling.
At first, the advice was irrelevant. The night seemed almost normal except for the lights and glimpses of the sky. That illusion was soon shattered when we reached what should have been a resort. A sinister yellow light drifted from window to window on the third floor. I quickly glanced away and fixed my eyes on the road’s centerline. Nothing good would come of being too curious about mysterious supernatural lights.
We rounded a corner just beyond the resort when trees and fog engulfed us.
“Look,” I said as I noticed a movement in the forest. Before I knew it, we had driven into a swarm of black swallow-like birds. They flew and darted out of the fog, many just missing our windshield. Their shrieks filled the car, even more piercing because of the silence that had enveloped us for hours.
Shiomi touched my shoulder to get my attention and commented, “Uh-oh. Tamoto Suzume; something bad is going to happen. They’re fukitsu, like me.”
I caught the pun on her stage name, but ignored the irony and self-deprecation to focus on my driving. The car was already moving slowly because I didn’t trust the road. But I decreased my speed even further to a crawl. I was glad I had when the blue lights suddenly appeared just in front of me, going up a road to the left.
Braking to a stop, I peered through the fog into the night. I didn’t want to follow the kitsune, but was unsure what lay straight ahead. The mist made it hard to see if there was a sudden bend or cliff edge ahead.
After a minute, I determined it was safe to go forward and crept past the side road. A glance up the detour reassured me that the Kitsune weren’t trying reverse psychology to get me to avoid the safe road. It would be an excellent strategy, but the glowing eyes that peered out of the darkness convinced me the kitsune weren’t that sophisticated.
Moving ahead, we found no cliff or sudden guardrail, but there was a sharp bend and I crept around it. On the right was a bulging, twisted retaining wall. Like the Senryukyo bridge, it creeped me out. Ominous shadows moved across its surface, hinting at unseen forms.
As I got closer, I could see that wires and bolts held the wall together. The shadows were normal, caused by weeds growing in the wall’s folds and the bushes that overhung the top. Unlike the bridge, its warped aspect was natural. Everything I saw had taken on a sinister aspect. I no longer knew what was a threat and what was harmless. It was almost funny how hyper-sensitive I had become.
We rounded another bend and passed derelict cars in a wide spot off the road. They were the first cars I had seen since the tunnel. My spirits rose. Perhaps that was a sign we were almost back in the mundane world.
We might be close, but we weren’t there yet. Blue lights drifted ahead of us again, closer than before, reminding me of that. I could feel it; something was going to happen. Since turning off the main route, things had been creepy, but nothing bad was going to happen if we used reasonable caution. We weren’t going to explore an abandoned resort, we wouldn’t follow kitsune lights up a one-lane road, or even drive blindly through flocks of night sparrows.
The air practically crackled with menace. A metallic odor, like heated metal, overpowered the smell of tobacco. If I’d dared, I would have put in a new CD to fill the menace-laden silence. The question was, did I deaden my senses with music? Which was safer to protect myself from the insidious voices or remain fully alert. I opted to remain aware, so I could promptly react to a threat.
I kept my speed down. Losing control of the situation was the last thing I needed. Finally, our lights picked out a tunnel opening ahead. “Yabai,” I thought. “That was what I was trying to avoid.” Now I faced a tunnel, an old tunnel that might have an ominous history.
“Ready, Shiomi?” I asked.
“Sure.” She paused for a second then pleaded, “Ume, just get me home, and I’ll behave and even teach you to do makeup.” The glowing tip of her smoke quavered in the air. I don’t think I had seen her scared before. She always seemed blasé about everything, a “been there, done that attitude.”
I didn’t have time to reassure her or comment as I approached the tunnel and was met with a blast of black swallows exploding out of the entry. There were so many the Tanto rocked, and you could hear their wings cutting the air. Their shrill screeching pierced my ears like nails.
(Art: “Tsubame Tunnel,” by Mai-Sensei)
Shiomi screamed as one came in the window she had cracked to let cigarette smoke out. The swallow battered against the front windshield trying to escape again, while Shiomi shrieked, “Kill it, kill it, kill it!” For a second my eyes fastened onto the bird and then another wave of suzume battered the car and glass in front of me. The one in the car thrashed and darted inches from my face, blinding me for a second.
As we entered the tunnel, I let go of the steering wheel for a moment to catch it, but then I clamped my hands on the wheel tighter than ever. There was no way I could catch, let alone kill, the bird; all my focus was needed on the road ahead. If the birds at the resort had been ill omens, how much more must these be?
There was a wrenching feeling, and my stomach revolted. Then we were out of the birds. It was my turn to scream. A woman dressed in white stood in front of the car. Instinct took over, and I began to swerve to miss her.
“Don’t.” I heard, and a hand grabbed the steering wheel and kept me from turning it.
It was an unreal moment. A woman in front of me, a bird thrashing and squawking in panic on the dash, feathers flying, and Shiomi’s hand on the steering wheel.
I nearly had a heart attack and my hands went numb as the car hit the woman. But instead of a thud, there was an inhuman scream of rage and another wave of suzume flew headlong into the windshield, leaving red bloody streaks.
“Don’t look back, don’t look in the rearview mirror,” Shiomi screamed at me. The brief glimpse of her face showed her eyes were wide open, terror written all over her face. It was only a glimpse because the headlights of an approaching car sped past us. It was in the lane where I would have been if I had swerved.
Then we were out of the tunnel. My foot slammed the brake pedal against the floor, and I stopped in the middle of an intersection. It was a stupid thing to do, but I had to collect myself before I drove any further. Sweat was running down my back, my hands were numb, and my arms trembled. My mind kept flashing back to our car colliding with the woman and the other car speeding past.
I had just escaped death yet again.
But it wasn’t over. Behind me, I heard a whisper-soft voice say, “Too bad, so close, so close.” Then it was gone, replaced by the sound of my panting breath, Shiomi sobbing, and the fading sound of rustling feathers and thrashing wings.
With an effort, I finally said, “We had better get out of the road before something hits us,” and I pulled forward into a wide concrete turnoff. I had to pry my fingers off the steering wheel to turn off the engine.
“The bird,” Shiomi asked, her voice trembling.
I looked at the dash, but there was nothing there except old, dusty feathers and a small beaked skull. I scooped the remains up with a scrap of paper I found on the floor and deposited them out the window.
Out on the road, a late-night truck rumbled by taking the main route. I stared after it, its taillights disappearing into the Senryukyo tunnel.
“I think it’s over,” I said and noticed a tremble in my voice matching Shiomi’s. “Look, you can see stars again.”
She slowly leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder. “It’s never been that bad before.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “What’s happening?”
I wanted to say, “It’s just your girlfriend trying to kill you,” but refrained. We had been through that before, and it wasn’t the moment. Instead, I said, “You think I would look good in makeup? Can you show me how to do something that suits me?”
It was the right approach because she relaxed a little and sat upright. The feel of her head on my shoulder had been nice but was weird given our relationship. She was still looking for Mikawa and I had turned down her advances.
*** Disaster Lesbian (Ume POV) ***
(Art: “Ume Fumiko,” by Mai-sensei)
There wasn’t much more to tell, so I stopped and took a sip of my tea. When I looked at Tomo, he rolled his eyes.
“Well, maybe holding her wasn’t that weird given what we had gone through,” I said. “But it felt like it at the time.”
“That wasn’t it,” he said. “It’s that you don’t seem to be aware of how infatuated you are. You’re a ‘disaster lesbian.’”
“I am not. I write about disaster lesbians, and I’m nothing like them. It was stress bonding. As you say, she’s still hung up on Mikawa.”
“Is there more of your story, or can I get out the bottle of shochu I hid from your ‘girlfriend?’ All that coffee and nicotine will make it hard to sleep.”
“End of the story. We finished the drive home and nothing stranger than voices from the river happened.”
“And she isn’t my girlfriend, really,” I protested.
Tomo rolled his eyes again, so I gave up and said, “And I would love some shochu and a hug.”
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Note:
Tomo may be on to something here. “Disaster Lesbians” At least Mikawa knows who she loves.
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Story by Nara Moore
Twitter/X:@nara_moore
Mastodon: sakurajima.moe
WordPress: Josei Yuri and Paranormal Romance
Art by Mai-sensei
Twitter: @Maiisheree