Read Online Man with No Name: A Nanashi Novella by Laird Barron - Free Book Online Page A

want you to thank whoever did it.”
    “Send a postcard to the Yokohama office. The guys will appreciate the thought.”  He brushed his hair back; useless in the teeth of the wind. Eventually he sealed the hole with the palm of his hand.
    “With Wesley’s death, I am free.”
    He grunted.
    “I was his slave. That was the price to pay for bringing me back from the underworld. He’s King Pluto, our man Wes.”
    “Yeah? Are you certain he’s not Polyphemus?”
    “Don’t you dig, killer? All the myths are the same. Geography just changes how we explain the horrors.” She lighted yet another cigarette and smiled a tight, bitter smile. “You’ll figure it out, bad boy. Act Two. Me, I’m beating feet.”
    “Where am I taking you, huh?”
    “It would be meaningless to say. Fear not -- we’re almost there.”
    You slaughtered your brothers. O woe unto thee! Nanashi could’ve tricked himself into hearing that whisper from Muzaki’s lips instead of the pit of his own subconscious. Slaughtered sworn brothers for what? This sharp-tongued gaijin with nice legs? Guilt? Your fear of something larger than yourself? Yes, that last thing felt right. There was his motive. He’d become enmeshed in the action of powerful forces, a leaf in the flood.
    “Okay,” he said. “I am at your service.”
    She laughed and it wasn’t the melodic timbre of her silver screen personae. This was swift, dark water over rocks, the quick bark of a crow. “Not mine, killer. You belong to a real sonofabitch.” She laughed again. “There, turn there. That’s my exit, stage left.”
    He parked in a leaf-strewn lot near a picnic table and a drinking fountain. A small placard indicated it might be a park or preserve -- the lettering was illegible and focusing upon it made his head ache.
    Susan Stucky finished her cigarette. She opened her door and climbed out, pausing to lean back in and study him. In the dimness her expression was inscrutable. “Your boys are going to kill you?”
    “If they find out that I helped you. Yes.”
    “You going to tell them?”
    He shrugged.
    “The macho honor bit,” she said.
    “Yeah.”
    “The Dragon?”
    “Yeah.” He smiled. “Nobody likes me.”
    She smiled back. “Okay, rabbit. Thanks.”
    “Wait.”
    “What?”
    “Where will you go? This is a forest.”
    “You’re very observant. Maybe in the next life you should be a detective.” She slammed the door and walked in front of the car and followed the headlight beams. Her kimono shone like the moths milling around her pale hair.  She vanished into the woodwork.
    Nanashi smoked a cigarette while the engine idled. He sighed and got out and went after her. The slender trees were slick with dew. Fog dampened the rasp of his breath, his shoes scrabbling among roots and leaves. Illumination from the headlights quickly faded and he felt his way through opaline murk. Ahead, a bluish light infiltrated the forest. Shadows leaped around him as limbs creaked with a puff of wind.
    Bushes rustled nearby and the Akita ghosted along, its white fur gone blue as an ice floe. Its eye flickered. Guts trailed from a fist-sized hole where the shotgun slug had torn through. Man and dog regarded one another in passing.
    “The hell is this?” Nanashi said in wonderment. He almost expected Muzaki to mutter the answer. Hell? Oh, yes, rabbit.
    The trees thinned and he caught glimpses of the born again dog. Once he could’ve sworn a woman’s voice echoed from the distance. He scrambled down a steep embankment, grasping exposed roots to keep from pitching onto his face. At the bottom was a gully and a fast-moving stream. The water flowed shin deep and cold enough to shock his feet numb. He trudged downstream as the light intensified and set the cloying mist ablaze and forced him to shield his eyes.
    The gully widened into a field of short, damp grass. The moon seethed through a low cloudbank, spotlighting a cherry blossom tree in a shaft of blue fire. The tree reared