SOMETHING STRANGE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (PART 3)
By the time Jim and The Gytrash reached All Saints Church, its great smoke-blackened stones were catching the light of the sinking sun, although there were gathering clouds overhead that looked almost as dark as the stones. The cherry tree was still blossoming in the churchyard, and The Gytrash bounded over the entrance gate and around the front of the church to reach it.
Jim was not surprised to see Mike sitting on a bench under the tree. Only a short time ago, he might have been surprised to see that Mike was dressed in a long and elaborate robe instead of his normal street clothes, but not so much now. This person was clearly not Mike at all, and when he stood up and bowed by way of a greeting Jim noticed that he was tall, a lot taller than the Mike he had known.
"Hello, Jim," said "Mike". "Glad to see you and your friend. It's always good to see a fellow ayakashi. I didn't know you were in the habit of befriending them knowingly, even if it was obvious from the start that you and your family were able to see us."
"Hey, Mike, or whoever you are, you can cut the polite chit-chat," said Jim. "I want to know what you've been messing with my children's heads for and I want it to stop, now." "Mike" looked a little flummoxed, as though he had genuinely not expected such a forceful response.
"There's no need to keep calling him Mike," said The Gytrash. "I believe that back in his native Japan, he calls himself Asagi Kimura for the purposes of interacting with humans. I don't know what his true name is, although, like me, he probably has a few."
Asagi shrugged. "I prefer Kimura Asagi myself, but if you're going to insist on the Western order for the name, I suppose it can't be helped."
Jim clambered off The Gytrash's back and strode towards Asagi. "At the moment, sunshine, you don't want to know what I feel like calling you. Now are you going to take back whatever spell you've been casting here, you pink-haired ponce, or am I going to have to…"
The Gytrash's cry of, "No, Jim! Watch out!" came just too late. Before Jim could reach Asagi, the latter made a slight gesture with his hands. There was a flash of light, and Jim reeled back with a shout of pain. He felt as though he'd just walked straight into a brick wall.
"I'm sorry, Jim-san," said Asagi. "but you must realise that you aren't dealing with another human being here. I'm a spirit like your dog-friend here, and I have powers, as he does. I don't want to hurt you with them, but if you're going to attack me like that I have no choice but to defend myself."
Jim stepped back a few paces, until he was standing next to The Gytrash.
"Kimura-san," said The Gytrash. "If you know that I also have powers, you know what havoc would be caused if we both started using them. I'm The Gytrash, I'm the guardian of this town, and I must protect these people against anything that would disturb their lives. That includes you, right now. So let's not confront each other. I'd rather have a sensible discussion about what's been going on."
Asagi sighed, and sat back down on the bench. "I don't want to fight you either, Gytrash-san. Perhaps you could start by explaining how you know my name in the first place." He gestured towards Jim. "Please, sit down, Jim. There's no need to forget good manners just because of the circumstances we're in."
With some apprehension, Jim perched himself on the edge of the bench, next to Asagi. He found it difficult to meet the gaze of the spirit's weird off-grey eyes, and ended up instead staring with strange fascination at the small metal plaque with a greenish patina that told him the bench commemorated Fred and Betty Tressell, parishoners of many years standing.
"I don't think you quite understand the sensation caused by what you did back in Japan, Kimura-san," said the Gytrash. "Not amongst humans, of course. Momiji Village still stands and as far as everyone who lives there knows, it always has. But you and I know differently. Because in one reality, it was destroyed in a landslide and everyone there died, and that isn't our reality only because you used your power to keep the village alive by creating a whole series of time-loops, people living and re-living their lives, until history could be completely re-written without the landslide. That's quite an intervention to make in the human world. And whilst the humans may not know, your ayakashi friends did. There's no hope keeping something like that secret. Spirits will talk to spirits, when we meet, and over the past few years that story has gone from one to another around the world. I first heard about it from Father Thames. So when I realised people from this town were starting to behave like those you were involved with, and to act as though they had to reverse and repeat parts of their lives…it was your name that came to mind, even before I heard Jim's description of his assistant. But everyone thought you were dead."
"So did I," said Asagi. "By the time everything was resolved, I had almost exhausted my powers keeping time looping. I thought I would just fade out and come to an end. The girl I loved had returned to the rewritten history with no memory of me, so I would have been quite happy to go that way. And anyway, I had only been given form as a spirit by the other ayakashi so I could carry out this task. Before that, I was just a cherry tree. But, some power or other approved of my actions so much that they felt I deserved reincarnation. I was returned to how I was, but the price was that I will never be able to return to the village."
"You were lucky," said The Gytrash.
"Was I?" said Asagi, with a bitter edge. "I lost home and I lost love…it seemed more of a curse than a blessing, at first. But then I remembered that I had always wanted to see the world beyond the village. So I decided I would travel around it, and that's what I've been doing ever since, usually disguised as a human. That's how I ended up in England."
"I prefer "the UK" myself, but if you're going to insist on calling it that, I suppose it can't be helped," said Jim.
Asagi laughed. "You English are even stranger than most humans, really. But I probably deserved that."
"But why?" asked Jim.
"Well, it's probably your marked preference for eccentric individualism over harmonious collective ideals…"
"No, no, I mean, "why my family?", not "why are the British strange?" People get Ph.D's in that, and still end up saying "buggered if I know.""
"Oh, sorry. Well, it was really just…you know, I've had a while to reflect on what happened in Momiji. And it struck me that those people had an opportunity that no human would normally get – the chance to relive their lives, at least parts of them, make different choices, see how things changed. You might live several lives in the course of just one. And I began to wonder - maybe this could be a gift I could give some humans who'd been kind to me?"
Jim shook his head. "You were wrong, Asagi. You can't just wish that sort of thing on people without giving them having a chance to choose it. It's not like you had the excuse that it might save their lives this time – they didn't need this to happen."
"And this time," chimed in The Gytrash, "you couldn't make it work like you did last time. I mean, then you were stopping and restarting time for everyone. This time, all you could manage was to make a few people start acting as if it was, while somehow they knew all along it wasn't."
Asagi sighed again. "That's true. In Momiji my powers came from the memories of everyone who had lived there that the tree had stored up through its long life. I didn't have anything like that here. Really, all I could do was play cheap conjuring tricks on people, controlling them to do things like puppets. I see now how mistaken I was. I'm sorry, Jim."
They stood in silence for a moment. "What will you do now, Asagi?" asked Jim.
"I'll withdraw the spell I cast," he replied. "Rosie-san and the others will return to normal. I only hope no long-term trouble comes from this. And as for me, I guess it's time to find somewhere new to live."
Jim clasped Asagi's shoulder. "You meant well, I suppose. It's a pity…well, there's no point hammering it home. I'll miss having you around at the shop."
"And I'll miss you, Jim-san." He stared up into the lowering skies above them. "I suppose I'm still only a young spirit. Maybe one day I'll learn enough about people to actually be able to use my powers for their benefit again, without harming them."
"There's no better way to learn that than by carrying on with your travels," said The Gytrash. "Don't fall into despair, Kimura-san. Romantic love doesn't always last, any more than cherry blossom does. You, of all of us, should know that. But the good things you've already done will, and so will those you're going to do."
"Perhaps," said Asagi. "Excuse me, gentlemen, I must be on my way now. It's been a pleasure."
The Gytrash carried Jim away from the church, although at a normal walking pace now, since there was no reason to hurry. As they reached the corner of the road, Jim looked back and saw a brief flash of white light from behind the church, and realised that Asagi had gone,and all of a sudden, the blossom was starting to fall from the branches of the cherry tree like a sudden heavy snowfall. Thunder rumbled overhead.
"The storms a lucky coincidence," said the Gytrash. "At least no-one will wonder what those weird flashes of light in the churchyard were. But it means we'd better make tracks if we don't want to get soaked. I'll drop you off near your house, then head back to the Moor. Have you any idea how you're going to explain all this to your family?"
"No," said Jim. "I'll tell you one thing though – I know there's no place I'd rather be now than with them."
That Sunday, they had a big roast dinner at the Swales'. It was largely made by Rosie, who had stuck at learning to cook all through the previous months, and who didn't seem inclined to give thus up just because Asagi's magic had ended. Jim and Alice invited Harry, Yuri, Ulric and Sam over. They agreed it was no more than the lads deserved after all they had been put through.
In the end, Jim had told Alice and Rosie the full story of what happened to him that afternoon. They all agreed that Tom, who had now abandoned doing drawings of Rosie's friends for his usual dinosaurs and fighter planes and no longer did anything around the house without much persuasion, didn't need to know. After a fair amount of soul-searching, they decided the boys did. Without a proper explanation of events, no-one would ever quite trust Sam again, and Harry might not quite trust Rosie either.
"That Asagi guy deserved such a kicking!" said Ulric. "Pity I wasn't there…"
"There's probably a totally rational scientific explanation of this all," said Yuri. "I mean, I'm sure you saw what you saw, but…"
"Wow!" said Sam.
"Ugh, I missed out on meeting real ghosts?" said Harry. "But I would still have trusted Rosie without knowing the truth, you know. I would just have assumed she was being her usual moody self."
"You pillock!" said Rosie, with a grin, and punched him in the shoulder.
Around a rather crowded dinner table, the eight of them all tucked into roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with roast potatoes, peas, carrots and plenty of gravy, and apple pie for pudding.
"The meat's great," said Ulric, indistinctly, as he chewed at it. "Really tender. Just melts in the mouth."
"Fair's fair – Mum really did most of that," said Rosie. "Cooking full-on joints of beef takes a bit of practice."
"The gravy's a bit lumpy, though," said Yuri. Everyone ignored him.
"Honestly, I'm thinking I should start taking lessons from Rosie," said Ulric. "We'll all be leaving home some day, after all."
"I've got dibs on that, Ricky," Harry said. "Rosie's already promised to show me how to cook a few things."
"Well, I'm impressed by your sudden enthusiasm for doing things in the kitchen, boys!" said Alice. "But I think you should start by helping do the dishes when we've finished the meal." Harry and Ulric's hearts sank a little, but they could hardly say no.
Jim's phone bleeped suddenly. He glanced down at it.
"It's the small ads guy from the paper again, about the advert I want to run for a manager at Golden Route."
"A manager!" said Rosie.
"Yes, love. Me and your Mum have been talking it over, and I think I need someone I can actually leave in charge in my absence regularly, as well as an assistant. You know, after everything that's happened recently, I think I want to step back from the business a bit. Spend more time with you guys."
"That's great, Dad," said Rosie. "But promise me – this time, just don't hire any ghosts."