Shiki - a chinese web novel

Intros of Shiki [Chinese Novel, Horror Novel]

Shiki 

Original Name

《屍鬼》 BY  小野 不由美

Synopsis

The story takes place in a particularly hot summer in the 1990s, in a small quiet Japanese village called Sotoba. A series of mysterious deaths begin to spread in the village, at the same time when a strange family moves into the long-abandoned Kanemasa mansion. Doctor Toshio Ozaki, director of Sotoba’s only hospital, initially suspects an epidemic; however, as investigations continue and the deaths begin to pile up, he learns—and becomes convinced—that they are the work of the “shiki”, vampire-like creatures, plaguing the village. A young man named Natsuno Yuuki, who hates living in the village, begins to be pursued and surrounded by death.

>>Go to the chapter list of Shiki to read more! 

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Chapter 1

The village was surrounded with death. This was a village that was splayed out along a mountain stream, encircled with fir tree woods in a way that it resembled a triangle-shaped tip of a harpoon.

Fir trees are similar to Japanese cedar in their beautiful shape, but smaller and stouter. If cedar is shaped with clear and sharp edges as if carved by a fine cutting tool, then fir is fire in shape. An outline of blaze that flares out free and wide on the tip of a wick.

Branches with no bendings adjoining the straight line of a trunk extend far and wide, forming conic-shaped tree crown; leaves are simple needles, they do not grow in a systematic way, but rather in spirals, although these spirals are hardly anything complex. Generally fir is thought of as nothing more than simple timber. 

While this is true for most, however, these fir woods, with no other kinds of trees mixed in, were what entrapped the village in 'death'. Inside these woods, covering the mountain ridges that served as boundaries, isolating the village from various directions, there was the other world that did not belong to this side.

The giants, looking down at the village from that other world, could reach as much as 40 meter tall, but their lifespan was short - only 150-200 years. They were trees of destruction. Fir changed vegetation in the region by eradicating other species, thus advancing to and holding the position of the supreme ruler of the area.

These trees of eradication that were cultivated for the deceased occupied the surface of the mountains, surrounding the village. The village made good and constant use of fir timber, making wooden grave tablets and caskets for the deceased out of it. Since its birth, the village had been producing various death-related items and equipment.

Inside the woods were like a kingdom of the dead with fir trees serving as grave markers. Even now the village still buried its dead. Villagers had sectors of the graveyard in the mountains reserved for them, where they buried corpses. There were no tombstones. The only indication that the place was the abode of the dead was wooden pickets, stuck where graves were. But once 33 years after death had passed and prayers for the repose of the soul had been done, the picket was taken out and a fir tree was planted in its place. And then, after it had been planted, it was time to forget. When the dead returned from the mountains, they had nothing in common with humans any longer.

The trees of perish, planted for the dead, they did not allow any other kinds of trees to survive and truly were the kingdom of the dead. That was why the village, surrounded with fir on three sides, was isolated in death.

As a matter of fact, sections, comprising the very village, were also dispersed and isolated from one another. In the beginning a group of lumber dealers set their eyes on fir and migrated here, clearing land and founding the village; they were not blood kin, nor were they from the same place, so no connections were formed between the communities inside the village.

Probably that was the reason why everything was always solved inside the vilage, and the village never resorted to the help of the outside world for living. The outside world passed through the village like the bypass, touching upon it only on its southern outskirts. This pathway led to towns bigger than the village and then to cities even bigger than those towns, connected all them, but once one got off it, it did nothing to stop the fir tree siege, so this mountain village was still trapped in complete isolation.

Strangely enough, however, even in the recent years the mountain village had not faced the issue of declining number of population. Its population neither drastically decreased, nor dramatically increased. Little by little human habitation gew smaller on the hardest to reach outskirts of the village, but at the same time the number of houses rose in the south. It was only natural that there always were a lot of old people, but when the old passed away to find their eternal rest in the fir tree woods, the young came back to the village from somewhere to take their place.

When one looked at this small community with its established balance that might never get disturbed, it seemed like a small sanctuary. The regular life of the village would never get interrupted, like one could never stop believing, and not matter how forgotten one's faith might become, one would still get reminded of it some time or another, even if only for a brief moment.

And when one does, one might turn to the serenity of this quiet mountain village for guidance. There existed a bridge connecting this world to the other side, and the beyond, majestically encircling the village - a piece of this world - in death on the three sides, also isolated it from the mundane.

There, people died, worked and prayed for the dead.

This was the purpose of the village entire existence from the very day it came into being.

***

It was November, 8, a little past 3AM, when the first report about sighting of a suspicious light that seemed like that of a fire in the mountain district Mizobe to the north-west was filed to the branch station of the fire department.

The temperature was 9.6℃, the humidity level - 62.3%, wind velocity - 12.8 meters per second, and it was not unusual for the dry-weather warning that was in effect at the time to turn into fire alarms.

Upon hearing the report, Yoshino promptly threw aside a magazine he was reading and rushed out of the station.

To the north of the station there stretched pitch-black ranges of mountains. If this was the daytime, an onlooker would have seen a scenery of green mountains, stretching out in the view against the backdrop of the clear late-autumn sky. There, on the gentle slopes of mountain ranges, piled up on and against each other, covered with evergreen forests, the vivid colors of autumn were sprinkled in here and there; Yoshino was so used to seeing this scenery that he could recall these mountains in minute details even in the dark.

At the moment, the linen of the starry sky with innumerable light dots of stars, scattered across it, seemed torn off where the jet black silhouettes of mountains loomed. Small lights could be seen here and there, as if a few stars fell off the skydome, but it was unclear whether those lights were always there or not.

"Toku-san, do you see anything?"

The nervous voice of his collegue came from behind him, and Yoshino looked back at him over the shoulder.

"Nope."

Wind, cold enough to send chills down their backs, gushed straight into their faces. The flow descended from the mountains to blow through the town streets. The dry wind got under the uniform through the collar, clinging to the body beneath, and on the instinct Yoshino upturned the collar of his uniform, still gazing at the mountains.

The mountain site that extended as far as the northern part of the Mizobe town district occupied almost 2/3 of the town area. Mostly, the population was concentrated on the remaining 1/3 of the territory, in the urban area of the Mizobe district, but some settlements could be found scattered across the mountains as well. The problem at hand was to determine whether the 'suspicious light that seemed like that of a fire' was indeed a fire in one of such settlements or not.

Or rather, it was not the question whether the fire raged in the settlements. On one hand, each of those settlements was isolated in areas determined by the shape of the mountains, with most of them located in narrow ravines, and houses there were likely old and overcrowded. Nevertheless, each settlement had establshed its own fire crew that imposed a strong caution and the wary attitude regarding the abormal dryness of air. They had the guaranteed water supply and enough helping hands, so extinguishing a fire on their own was entirely possible. What was truly dangerous was the case when the fire went to the mountains.

Yoshino peered intently at the mountain ranges, shivering from the wind all the while. No mountain dominated the view. The mountains with only few ups and downs stretched out across his vision. They all gave off the easy feeling that you could climb them simply by hiking, however, the complexity of intervowen ridges presented quite a challenge, making accessing them surprisingly difficult. The trees, planted in the mountainous region, were evergeen for the most part, such as Japanese cedar, cypress and fir, but the undergrowth had already dried out and died, creaking drily if touched. That was why in case the fire reached the mountains the chances of it starting a large-scale forest fire were high. Yoshino recalled the huge-scaled forest fires that raged in Okayama and Nagasaki that summer.

'Please, let it be a simple fire in some house.'

As if he heard Yoshino's inner prayer, his comrade said in a lowered voice:

"We'll be lucky if this isn't a bushfire."

Yoshino nodded. If flames were to lick at the dried out underbush, the fire would spread at a frighteningly astonishing speed. The fire from one vast slope, enveloped in flames, fanned by a strong wind with velocity of 13 meters per second, would immediately run up and down all the neighboring ridges, reaching the northern mountains in no time and engulfing the settlements located there. To make things even worse, the wind, as if carefully aiming on purpose, blew right in the direction of the urban area of the Mizobe district.

Yoshino pleadingly looked up to the mountains, trembling from full-body shivers, and turned the collar of his uniform even further up.

The expressway, running through the southern extreme of the mountainous area, was set into operation. Previously only rice fields could be found there, but now those parts were undergoing the process of rapid development because of the interchange that was build there, on the verge of the open fields. The residential district, that supplanted the fields, ran out of plains and expanded farther north, going as far as clearing and habitatibg the mountain slope. The mountain and the urban area merged up, forming one continuous expanse of land.

Yoshino silently mouthed the word "Please", praying to no entity in particular, when, all of a sudden, the ringing of the station bell resounded in the air. Startled, he abruptly turned to the station building. At the same time his young fellow fireman came running out of the doors.

"I saw the lights from the tower! It's in Sotoba!"




The fire vehicle headed north along the Omi river, running through the town, and drove into the mountainous area that extended as far as the northern part of the Mizobe district. There was nothing abnormal in the mountains, at least for now. Their charcole black silhouettes ran along unbroken, but the details were only barely perceptible.

Under the expanse of the indigo night sky they rolled along like an endless sequence of alternating black-colored highs and lows. The pre-dawn national highway was quiet, and when the vehicle left behind the town streets, no car overtook it, except for the sudden gust of wind, and no oncoming car was in sight either.

The night was peaceful, and the mountaints looked monotonous, but right now the fire crew felt impatient. The road repeated twists and turns of the river and the ridges. The rush desire to dig tonnels by clearing forests on the mountain slopes that was based entirely on the fact that there were no overly steep mountains in the region grew weaker overtime. But as a result, one needed to head south first to reach the northern settlements. This often was the case. Big fires, on the other hand, were not concerned with such minor details. They pushed their way straight to their targets, urged on by winds and their directions.

Just thinking about it made the stomachs twist in pain at each curve of the road. In their own way the mountains readily changed as the vehicle advanced, and soon the light of the expressway could be seen far ahead. The dazzling light stretched into one straight line, crossing the valley ahead like a belt made out of pure radiance.

Sotoba - the former village of Sotoba - was located on the north side of the ridge that lay across the expressway as if trying to halt the valley from expanding. In that valley, stretching along the mountain stream, there were about 400 houses. The population numbered around 1300 inhabitants, and among the settlements dotting the mountainous region that was the largest.

"I see nothing so far."

Yoshino nodded, agreeing with his young collegue.

"The night is rather bright, so we shoulda been able to see smoke at least."

Then, suddenly, he was astonished by a strange omen. The magazine he was reading before the radio alarm sounded. It was left by Maeda, a member of the crew, who died last month. Maeda lived in Sotoba. Yoshino remembered how Maeda brought that magazine in, boasting about a novelist who lived nearby. It was a year and a half ago. When an essay about Sotoba was published, Maeda joyfully opened the page with it to show them and even courteously put a bookmark to mark it. By some chance Yoshino took out the magazine from the back of the shelves. 

Yoshino wondered if Maeda's death was natural. Maeda was younger than himself, after all. The members of Maeda's family came to sort the things the deceased owned and took all of his private belongings with them, leaving only that magazine in the back of the shelves in the break room.

Yoshino listened intently to the radio, while recalling all this without really intenting to do so. It seemed those in the headquarters could not grasp the particulars of the situation either. Not only they did not know the situation at the scene, but they could not even pinpoint the specific place of the fire.

Yoshino called out to the fireman riding the shotgun.

"Still no contact with the fire company at Sotoba?"

The fireman, who was manning the radio, turned to him.

"Looks like there's no one at their station."

"Absurd!"

The warning of abnormal dryness was in effect. That meant the fire alarm could sound anytime. Every fire company received a strong recommendation to be on high alert at all times, so someone always had to be present at the station.

"What about their head?"

"We tried calling him from our station to his home number, but no answer there as well."

"The head of the Sotoba fire department changed recently, as I recall. Have you tried to get in touch with the house of the new head?"

"Of course, I think that was tried too."

Yoshino quietly clicked his tongue. Strictly speaking, the fire department and the fire company were separate organizations, but they were closely interconnected. The fire department was the main one, but it was not a monolith structure, like limbs would be incomplete without nerves moving them.

"Am to I assume the unbelievable case when both the station and the house of the head are already engulfed in flames at the moment, then?"

The young fireman said it in a tone void of fear or amusement, and Yoshino frowned. If the situation was that grave, then they should have already got a report about it from Sotoba, before they arrived there. But still, now that the disturbing guess was planted into his mind, he could not stop thinking about it. What if Sotoba was in a state of utter chaos, left with no means to contact the outside?

The vehicle made another turn on a curve. They rounded another mountain ridge, now heading northwest, and Yoshino's field of vision broadened substentially at once. Now he could see the bridge of the expressway, straddling the national highway. Across the expressway, lit like it was midday, lay the jet black bulk of the mountains. That was where he saw something unusual. The darkness, that swallowed the road leading to their destination, was sprinkled with red flames here and there as if some giant spilled burning powder.

Not only Yoshino, but all the firemen in the truck cried out dumbstruck. Everybody knew right away that they were facing the worst case scenario. It was not a simple fire in some house. An unmistakable bushfire, that was what it was. Moreover, judging by the fact that they could clearly see the hotbeds of fire despite the blinding light from the expressway before them, this bushfire was already off the regular scale.

"You gotta be kidding me..." somebody muttered.

The fireman, riding the shotgun, was already urgently reporting the situation by the radio, sounding like he was having a coughing fit. It was clear that they would need reinforcements. A fire of this scale, with a wind of this direction, was not something a branch station would be able to deal with on their own.

How much time would it take to extinguish a fire that big (or, rather, the correct way to put it would be 'how many days would it take')? How much of the mountain forests would be destroyed by the fire? How many victims would be discovered?

Yoshino unconsciously and forcefully balled his hands, lying in his lap, into tight fists, when he saw the headlights of a car ahead. He ordered their driver to slow down. Then he leaned out of the truck window and vigorously waved to the approaching car. 

It was a standard station wagon. Both the fire engine and the car drew nearer to the center line of the road and stopped. Yoshino opened the door and half leaned out of it. The driver of the station wagon rolled down his window.

"You're heading from Sotoba, aren't you?"

A gust of wind muffled Yoshino's voice, stealing it away. There was no smoke in sight, carried here by the strong wind, but that wind noticeably reeked of burning.

The driver indifferently nodded in reply to Yoshino's question. His age could be from the mid twenties to the mid thirties. Due to the lack of light, his expression could not be seen clearly, except he did not seem to look confused. Only, his face and his clothes were so dirty, as if he rolled in mud. For a moment, the dirt seemed like clotted blood to Yoshino. But it was simply his imagination, because in dim illumination dirt could look just like blood. 'Of course, what else can it be.'

"What's going on in Sotoba? Do you know something about the situation there?"

The voice of the driver, void of emotions (or, maybe, despondent), was quiet, yet it was perfectly audible even in the wind.

"A forest fire is raging. It started in the northern mountains and swooped down onto the village."

Yoshino groaned.

"And its severity?"

"Awfull. Sparkles rain like snow."



Indeed, the worst possible case, through and through.

Somebody was heard cursing the Sotoba branch fire station for their idleness. The fireman on the passenger seat was reporting this information to the headquarters. Yoshino raised his hand a little and thanked the driver of the station wagon. The driver pulled the car into motion. The fire engine also started off moving again, when Yoshino, who was about to shut the door, glanced back at the wagon without thinking, and the breath suddenly caught in his throat.

There was a coffin loaded on the back seat of the car. He saw it for just a fleeting moment, but that sight, utterly bizarre, was burned onto his retinas in vivid details. It was a coffin of plain wood, he was sure. Every detail was scorched into his memory, down to how the backseat on its whole length was folded down to accomodate the big wooden box, half-wrapped in some cloth; to a small window on its side; to a tassel attached to its double door opening outwards.

Yoshino, his mouth fell open, followed the car with his eyes. For a moment he burned with desire to give a chase, to demand the driver to stop the car, but very soon the rushness evaporated and he reconsidered. 'It was a coffin alright. But it's nothing to worry about in these parts.'

Sotoba was a village that specialized in production of wooden grave markers and coffins from the very start. Judging by the driver's appearance, Sotoba truly fell into mayhem. He probably just took the first object of his trade he could find - a coffin that is - stuffed valuables in there and made his escape, or maybe he just loaded the coffin he was going to deliver somewhere, but before he knew it, the fire swooped down on the village.

Even though the sight was disturbing, it was not something to seriously concern yourself with at the moment. What was more important to Yoshino than an accidental meeting with a station wagon loaded with a coffin, was the fact that there were a lot of sawmills and woodworking shops in the area.

The fire truck sped farther north the national highway. Once they passed the bridge of the expressway, looming overhead, and made a single turn, following the twist of the river, down the national highway that was getting narrower, the Sotoba settlement would come into view.

The whole surface of the northern mountain, visible ahead, was already on fire. The firemen saw red flames reign freely over the underbush under the human-planted trees. The ridge stoodout as a distinct black line, due to the fact that it was illuminated by the fire on the northern side of the mountain. The point of fire origin was probably farther north from Sotoba, so, most likely, the other side of the mountain had already been fully engulfed in flames.

Smoke from the fire, along with the stench of burning, entered the vehicle. All the passengers watched terrified how flames flaired up high on a part of the mountain. Fir trees got knocked down from the sheer force of the flames. The neighboring buildings were already ablaze, and the headlights of some car that was trying escape the fire swayed like will-o'-the-wisps. 

Bright sparks fell all around. No, such a mild word like 'fell' was not adequate enough to describe the situation. The scene looked much more like a severe blizzard with strong wind adding to its intensity.

It was far worse than what the firemen imagined, and they all groaned in unison. Just what could a single pump vehicle do against this burning inferno?



Of course, there was nothing they could do.

This terrible spectacle could not be a beginning, only a demise. It was the culmination point of the events that started to unfold in the summer.

No, according to some people, everything was set in motion way before then - a year ago, or maybe even before that. Anyhow, it was in the summer that the unavoidable, unstoppable progression of events started. Or, to be exact, on July, 24, in the gray of morning.

On that fated day it was predestined that the community called Sotoba and a thousand hectares of the neighboring forests disappear off the face of Earth.

>>Go to the chapter list of Shiki to read more!