The Devouring God

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Authors: James Kendley
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but leapt for the door. “I can accompany you to . . .”
    Nabeshima bowed. “No, please. Let us go. We need time to talk, and . . .” She flushed crimson. “I’ll see you day after tomorrow. I will. I just have to take care of something.” She looked directly at Mori. “Until day after tomorrow.” She whirled and sped out the door.
    A bemused Yoshida strolled after her. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t bother to answer the hotline,” she said to Takuda. “We don’t treat demonic possessions.”
    Takuda made fists for the simple satisfaction of feeling his knuckles crack. Mori stood staring at the door.
    â€œShe doesn’t believe us,” Mori said. “She thinks it’s a racket.”
    â€œBut she doesn’t think we’re dangerous.”
    Mori sighed. “That’s something at least.” He pulled a folded sheet from his breast pocket and placed it on Yoshida’s desk, right across from Takuda.
    Takuda stared at the folded sheet. He hated it when Mori casually dropped things on him. These little bits of paper Mori pulled from nowhere were always portents of the worst kind of trouble.
    â€œWhat is this?”
    Mori pretended to study Yoshida’s antiquated electric typewriter. “I found it on the floor in our room. I believe it’s another sheet that showed up in the priest’s begging bowl.”
    It was new onionskin covered with neat, dense handwriting. He spread the sheet flat with both hands and began to read:
    The footage was silent, hand-­tinted, a flickering image on a cracked projection screen: eight peasant farmers squatting, filthy and nearly naked, on a narrow spit of sand, a beach on a tiny island or perhaps on the tip of a peninsula. They could have been from any corner of Asia, but one wore braided straw sandals unmistakably Japanese. Beyond them lay three beached military boats, perhaps the boats on which the farmers had arrived. On the horizon stretched the mainland, a harbor city.
    Before the farmers stood a low, rectangular stone box. A thin rope tied to the stone lid was pulled taut by someone or something out of frame, and the lid tipped to the ground. The men gathered around the cavity thus revealed.
    One drew from the cavity a knife that appeared to be made of black volcanic glass. The scene cut abruptly to a close-­up of the object in the peasant’s trembling hand. It was simply a palm-­sized stone lozenge with a long, curved blade. The inner curve of the blade glittered. The film then jumped to a longer shot of the men passing the knife among themselves. Seven caressed it, but one held it in his palm and slapped it excitedly. As he spoke, gesturing toward the mainland, the others grew still and listless. Their faces took on a drawn, strained expression. They took the knife from the eighth farmer, who continued to gesture back toward the mainland, and they passed it flat from palm to palm among themselves. They were very still, except for the passing of the blade, and their eyes were downcast. The blade passed from one to another with increasing speed, fairly flying from hand to hand. The men seemed to barely use their eyes; each man released the blade in midair, but another hand appeared at the last instant to catch it, and so one more hand appeared to replace that one. The blade itself traced a flat and repetitive rosette above the sand. The eighth reached out for the knife several times, but it slid away on its own arc just as his fingers reached it. The final time, he jerked back and then rocked on the sand, pinching his right thumb and speaking angrily to the other seven. He tried to wipe the thumb with his own filthy tunic, but the blood did not stop, and he began to wrap it tightly with strips he ripped hastily from his own loincloth.
    The seven broke into grim, unpleasant smiles, their mouths broadening in unison as if to a signal unheard by the eighth of their

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