Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Saiyuki, the Amityville Horror or Ronnie DeFeo, so don't sue me!

Urban Legend

On first glance it was just a hole, seeming nothing special with the exception it was an un-repaired blemish on an otherwise pristine wall next to the abbots office door. But even a visitor of the shortest duration to the temple of the San Bu Shin would have noticed something weird whenever anyone came near that end of the hallway.

Novice monks would giggle and scamper with delicious fear from it, the older monks would casually make sure they crossed on the other side of the hall way when passing by and even the temples' abbots didn't linger in front of the hole in the wall just to the left of his office door.

The hole was about as big around as a human fist, at shoulder level to the average adult male and a rather deepish chasm into the side of the building. It had been patched and painted, re-patched and re-painted, re-repatched and re-repainted, to the point where the monks gave up and hung a picture over it - which wouldn't stay up either and would come crashing down in a shower of wood splinters and glass at the slightest vibration. So they gave up and left as it was.

As time went on and strange things began to happen, the adults simply referred to it as coincidence, an anomaly, an urban legend gone amuck, while the young ones in fearfully delicious whispers would refer to it as the cursed "Cho Gonou hole'.

"Did you hear?" One little Monk-ette sollem turned another one evening when lights were turned low and they were to be in bed, "Monk Xian fell down the well today!" Then gleefully reported as if it were a good thing, "and broke both his arms!"

"Really?! " The other little ones squealed happily as they bounced from their sleeping mats and danced from one foot to the other as if in one big collective pee-pee dance. "Did he go near the Cho Gonou hole?"

"Yes!" The call went up and down the rows of celebrating boys so of course all thoughts of sleep ran out the door and into the well with Monk Xian. "He mocked it, said the curse was a fake and even put his hand in!"

But a sleepy little newbie frowned at all the joy surrounding such a terrible incident and finally asked, "What is this Cho Gonou hole?"

The room went silent as the novices stared at the new comer like he had just asked who the Buddha was. "He did just arrive today," was the concession to such ignorance and it became apparent this FNG* had to be enlightened. So it fell to the oldest boy in the group, Phing, to take the lead as story teller and educator, "When Sanzo sama brought in the murderer Cho Gonou,........."

"Who's Sanzo?" That question earned the new guy a swat to the back of the head and a super full knuckle noogie.

"If I may continue?" Phing put the question in a 'sit down and shut up' tone, "At first it was like he was leading in a cow, so docile and gentle was he that a lead of twine could have been used to secure him. But then......" this is when the story teller gave a fearful glance to either side as not to let even smallest crumb of air carry the words he was about to say. "But then something was said, a priest walking by uttered some offense, No one knows for sure what the diss was, but suddenly the murderer comes alive and just like Xing Tran - the Heavenly Punished! He swung his fists, the first punch put that hole in wall the second taking the head clean off of the offending priest before Sanzo-sama could pistol whip the murderer into submission!"

"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" The little bald heads pressed together in concentration.

"I heard the priest's head went into the hole!!!!!" One the little novices piped up.

Phing glared him into silence. Warming up to his audience, he decided to really get into the spirit of the tale, "The angry demonic aura that burst off of the murder Cho Gonou's fist combined with the priest's bloody head going into the hole and the surrounding wall, coated it, cursing it with.............eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....vile!"

The word came out with an evangelic hiss and a look of solemn glee in the glint of a single candle

"But if the hole is as big as a fist," the newbie reasoned. "How could the priest's head go into it and wouldn't they taken head out to bury with his body?"

That's when Phing walked over, bent down to look right into the blinking brown eyes of the FNG. "Kiddo," he said, "First off, what is your name?"

"Feng Schwartz," the child replied.

"Is that like Feng Shui?"

"Only if you do it from right to left,"

"Good one," Phing said with all seriousness and with a wink he went back to his original train of thought, "It's at times like this, when you have something as good as the Cho Gonou hole, ya don't let truth get in the way of a great story."

"So it's not true?" Feng became mono-browed in confusion.

"Now did I say that?"

"But you said...."

"I said not letting the truth....." and here the older boy sighed the the seeming weight of revealing an even greater measure of truth. "Fact is Priest Xian only broke one arm and sprained the other."

"But....!" Feng was on his toes with his checks turning purple in frustration.

"Reach around and grab a handful," Phing leaned over snagging the boys' nose betwixt two fingers and dragged him by the snout over to a corner. "Listen up my little Schwartz-ling, is the 'Cho Gonuo hole' real? Yes and no. No it isn't, cuz it's just a hole, and yes it is because we want it to be true and because we want that, the negative energies were given permission to come in and live in it. Kind of like a bad thing bird house. I suspect priest Sanzo put some 'hoodoo' in place to make sure that hole is the only place the bad shit was going to be able to nest."

The child looked thoughtful with this explanation, "Lead go of my dose."

Phing did so with a wipe of a booger or two on his robe. "Go to bed Feng, the hole will be there tomorrow and there'll be some schmuck who'll fall down, slice and dice or fry themselves with a letter opener and we can all blame it on the Cho Gonou hole." With that he pushed the kid towards his sleeping mat, signaling the others to lay down, turn off the lights and get some sleep.

It was later that night, Phing was awakened by a cold persistent touch at his shoulder. "Who....what?" The dark outline of a priest was hovering over him.

"Wake up," a soft voice breathed in his ear. "Master Shu needs to see you."

Half asleep, the boy stumbled to his feet. Pulling his robe over his night shirt Phing wobbled after the dark shape of the priest who lead him away and down the hallway.

"What does Master Shu want?" Then a thought came burbling up from the depths of his sleep soaked brain,, there was no priest by that name at the temple. "Who are you?" He called out to the shadow.

But when there was no answer, he asked again, not knowing and half afraid of the reply he'd get. The priest however, didn't react any question but only hurried along with such a quick step he seemed to float. Again the challenge to the retreating back and with the fourth time, Phing suddenly recognized here he had been walking toward.

"Is something wrong young man?" the priest asked in a nasty-nice voice, stopping in front of the door to the Abbots' office. "No good story to tell a little Schwartz-ling?"

The candles in the hallways suddenly ignited into pyres of licking flames that sent Pheng ducking for cover behind the terracotta base of a large potted bamboo plant.. Peeking through the leaves and stems before him in the aura of the fire wall a creature in monks clothing floated, his toes a few inches above the floor and his head floating a few fingers above his neck. "How did you get past the wards that Master Sanzo placed?"

"You gave me the power to do it little priestling , you and all your dimwit friends. The fear, excitement and curiosity gave me the energy I needed to burst free from my little confining nest. Now, I'm going to leave this wretched place, but to do that," and the specter leered. "I need someone to take my place in that miserable hole. You can watch people walk by and stick their grubby little fingers in from now on. But in order to do that, a life must be taken. How would you like to get ahead, kid?"

Cackling at his own joke, the creature lunged at Phing, long cruel fingers ripped through the bamboo stalks and clutched the front of the boys' robe. The boy screamed in terror as he was pulled over the splintered bamboo and broken pot shards into the fearsome embrace of the demon monk.!

"Don't fret, it won't hurt, much. You will die so...." and what ever else that was going to said was lost in the sharp single snap of a pistol discharging its leaden payload.

.

The monk examined in cross eyed annoyance the bullet hole that now decorated his forehead and like a 3 year old having a tantrum with his bath ducky, tossed Phing to the floor and punted him to the side. "Did you have to do that there?" He kvetched. "The last time you just nicked me in the fuck'en elbow and it took forever to get pulled back together ,in that goddamn hole and now you done it again to the n-th degree. Saddle up kiddies, it's 'dust buster' time... again," The monk drew him self up, pursed his thin lips and sissed one last word. "Bitch!" He then devolved in whoosh of saffron and a gray dust sent swirling and whirling back into the Cho Gonou hole.

Trembling, Phing struggled to his knees when someone took a fist full of his robe and yanked him up to his feet. The boy suddenly find himself looking into a handsome yet frowning face and the most blood shot lavender eyes on the planet. The thought of grape road maps weirdly came to mind.

"Listen up you little dip shit, You and your buddies gotta quit teasing the hole The eyes turned heavenward for a moment, "that really came out sounding so wrong." Then he refocused, "cuz I am really sick of coming back here to clean up after you morons." Got it asshole? Don't talk about it, don't think about it and sure as hell don't stick your little dick skinners in it! Leave the hole alone!" And with that, the man in the white robe and golden crown of a sanzo turned Phing loose, stepped back and faded away like an apparition..

A thousand miles away in a small town in south western China, a light went on in the window of second floor bedroom of a rented house. The sash flew up and a figure leaned out, gasping, swearing, fumbling for air and cigarettes until the nicotine brought its calming essence several minutes later.

"God damn bi-location," Genjo Sanzo muttered. "Those kids and that hole will be the death of me yet."

Urban legend has its basis in a actual fist size hole in the wall at the maximum security prison in Danamora, NY. It rules the dispenser y waiting room where the biggest, meanest psycho killers refuse to sit near it, fearing the bad luck of the Ronnie Defeo hole. You all remember him as the guy from Amityville who murdered his whole family and where the Lutz's moved to and were immortalized in the book 'The Amityville Horror." It's said that in a fit of possessed rage, Ronnie punched the hole in the wall and cursed it. Over the years, there has been parade of guards and inmates who swear the bad luck in their lives came from either putting their hand in or mocking the "Ronnie Defeo' hole. Is it true? Maybe, maybe not. But then again, why let the truth get in the way of a good story?

*FNG-fucken new guy

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