Chapter 1: It Was Sunday, What A Black Day

Tokyo, Empire of Japan

December 24rd, 1911

Charles Page Bryan, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Empire of Japan, hadn't felt this relieved in weeks.

The resplendently mustachioed man breathed a deep sigh of contentment, as he continued his stroll down one of the Japanese capital's seemingly innumerable side-streets. Nothing at all like Chicago, he noted. Not that it was the first time he'd taken notice of that particular discrepancy. It wasn't that he hated living in this place, among these people. The streets were clean and well-kept, the people in question remarkably steadfast and dignified, and the whole of the country suffused with an exotic allure befitting the kingdom of a fairytale. But, much to his exasperation, that alien aura was exactly the problem. He'd been an Ambassador to Brazil before this, and before that to Belgium, he was no greenhorn. But in both, while the cities were not his own and the local tongues similarly different, he could still see pieces of home within them. Here, for all the fantastic sights, sounds, and smells, there was none of that. Thank heavens he'd never bothered himself with getting married, or the heartache would have been so great he'd have taken the first steamer home from Brussels! At that thought, a smile broke through his momentary melancholy. Mother and father dearest had always insisted he pursue some fine lady and settle down, but he'd never found the compulsion. The only union which he'd found himself in was with the United States Congress, and he was perhaps the only man in such a marriage to call it a happy one with any hint of sincerity. His nation called, and Charles Bryan was never a man to hesitate to answer. He would go wherever Lady Columbia required of him, even one so far from home.

On that note, the Ambassador suddenly took notice that his stroll had gone on for much longer than he intended, and his surroundings looked much different compared to where he'd started. The homes more rustic, the roads narrower, and the faint hum of electric lights absent. In his musing, he figured, he must have wandered all the way into another neighborhood! How foolish. He wasn't afraid, of course. Even having shed his protective detail, Japan was a land so safe he would have felt comfortable carrying a gold ingot in each hand through a place such as this without a second thought. Looking about, and then settling on his left, he saw the only alleyway which appeared to widen back into a proper road, a somewhat bedraggled-looking beggar sat cross-legged by the wayside just before that point, but again, he felt no fear. Even the paupers here wouldn't dream of accosting someone. Satisfied in his choice, he set off down the alleyway. Surely enough, the beggar made no sudden leap from his haunt, and, knowing that few others would pass by this place at such an hour, the Ambassador felt compelled to spare a few coins for the poor fellow.

Turning back to the road, he could see it now: his prediction was correct, and even better the electric glow of a main street could be seen far at the end, with a few pedestrians passing by. Pleased with himself at having found his way, Ambassador Bryan took a confident step forward.

And then froze.

Just as he had begun to walk, a slim figure suddenly stumbled out into the road from the right, stopping right in the middle. Now Illuminated by the swinging lamps of a nearby house, the Ambassador swiftly recovered his nerves and strained to get a better look at whoever it was that had just blocked his way back to safety. Looking closer, he relaxed slightly, but didn't yet give out a sigh of relief. It was a young woman in a traditional Japanese dress, hardly a threatening figure, but she didn't seem entirely…normal, in a way which he hadn't seen before. She bore no obvious injury, not even a bruise, but her breathing was pained, heavy and ragged, as if she'd ran until her frail frame couldn't bear it any longer. Looking further still, he noticed something even stranger about the young lady: her skin was exceptionally pale. Not even like porcelain, as was the fashion of the proper ladies of this country, but the pallid blue of a corpse. His fear replaced by a surge of worry, the Ambassador knew he had to act. Clearly, the poor young girl had been accosted by some vicious attacker or attackers, and had barely escaped with her life. He needed to get her to safety with all haste, lest they catch up with her.

"Young lady!" He cried out, approaching the girl, "Are you hurt? Do you need a policeman? Why are you-?" At that, the young lady's eyes snapped onto his at an unnatural speed, and Charles Page Bryan wished he had never agreed to be sent here.

It was a young woman alright, but none like he had ever seen before. Her face as cold, pallid, and gaunt as her hands and feet, the woman's entire head and shoulders were covered in a web of bizarre intersecting tattoos of red and black, with the signature cratered landscape of pockmarks of a smallpox victim dotting the spaces inbetween. As he made eye contact with her, however, he saw at once the most beautiful and most terrifying aspect of this stranger: her eyes bore calligraphy over their pupils, although he hadn't enough understanding of the language to read it. He swallowed a scream of terror as he tried to rationalize the insanity of this woman's terrifying visage. The only possible explanation was that they were false eyes, made of expertly painted glass, they had to be. But if they were, he thought, how could she have seen where she was running, let alone stare directly into his own eyes?

As the two strangers locked eyes, the woman was the first to break the silence. At first, it was barely a whisper. The Ambassador was scarcely able to understand, but as she repeated the same phrase over and over, her mantra gradually became clear.

"Ma…re…chi…" the ghastly woman droned.

"Ma-re-chi?" The Ambassador thought to himself, accidentally doing so out loud in his shock. His Japanese was still rather rudimentary, and he'd never heard of this particular term before. "I'm…sorry, young lady", he haltedly managed, "could you repeat that?"

"Ma..Re..Chi.." the ghastly apparition again croaked, this time louder, and with much more intent.

Now he could see, to his horror, that the pale woman had begun to salivate, as if a starving man had just been presented with a three-course steak dinner cooked and seasoned to perfection. He began to tear himself away from her fearsome gaze, to run back the way he came, but the Ambassador would never get the chance. Before he could do more than slightly look to his left, she charged with a speed his old bones could never hope to match.

"MA-RE-CHI!"

The last thing Charles Page Bryan saw before he was torn limb from limb with utterly inhuman speed and ferocity was the calligraphy emblazoned on those terrifying eyes, which he would never have the time to ponder the cryptic meaning of.

LOWER

SIX

Tokyo, Empire of Japan,

January 8th, 1912

11:30 A.M.

Still exhausted from coming ashore the day earlier, Bureau of Investigation Agent Joseph Meade Caldwell rubbed his eyes and continued his arduous trek down an avenue packed with a seemingly impossible multitude of people. San Francisco had been a cramped enough place for a man to spend most of his life, he could scarcely imagine trying to navigate through the swarming masses of Tokyo's streets every day. It wasn't supposed to be this way either, the agent noted with a growing frown as he apologetically stumbled past a young woman in a blue yukata. Tokyo's 'Entertainment District' of Yoshiwara was supposed to be less crowded than the rest of the city during daylight hours, or so he'd been told by the American Embassy.

It wasn't, and the more Agent Caldwell saw of the place, the more he dearly wished he hadn't been such a miser, and coughed up a couple bucks to take the streetcar. Joe Caldwell was no pearl-clutcher, that much he knew for certain, and his willingness to tolerate the unusual habits and morals of those around him had a useful asset in the prosecution of more than one major investigation. He'd made bombs and discussed assassinations with Anarchists, debated theology with Clergymen, and talked finance with Titans of Industry. Every character he had been asked to play the part of, he had acted to the letter of their scripts. But this place…

Never before had he seen human beings reduced to commodities in a storefront in such a way. Scores of dolled-up courtesans sat in formation behind the barred windows of the upper floors of the brothels, pained eyes and resigned faces advertising availability to a duty all of them no doubt unceasingly thought of escaping. The macabre display of human wares thankfully began to fade from Caldwell's view as he quickened his pace, bolstered by the knowledge that the embassy lay in the adjacent district just a few blocks distant.

At last, he glanced with relief, he could see the gates of his destination. Walking up to the diplomatic compound's entrance, a swift presentation of his credentials gave him access to the embassy grounds, and Caldwell continued on through the building to his appointment with the man he'd made the journey all this way to see. Soon enough, he was seated in his office. Sitting across from him, Arthur Rehnquist, Acting Ambassador to Japan, struck an imposing figure. Caldwell didn't feel particularly insecure about his own short stature of 5"4, not usually, but if he had been stricken with a Napoleon Complex, the towering man in the other chair would doubtlessly have been his arch-nemesis at first sight.

"You have my gratitude for arriving here so quickly, Mr. Caldwell,'' the bespectacled giant began excitedly, "I certainly hope the journey wasn't too taxing on you. We've scarcely made any headway into the case of Ambassador Bryan's murder in the meantime." At that, Caldwell was particularly surprised. The nature of the case had proven both extraordinary and difficult to crack, thus necessitating his involvement to begin with, but the idea that a crazed madman could murder a high-ranking American diplomat and escape with no reprocussions? Fantastical, unusual, unlikely. The distinct absence of evidence in a case as significant as this one could itself offer a potential lead, but speculating further was for another time. Now he needed to find out what other developments had rendered his information outdated.

"Not at all, Mr. Ambassador," Caldwell replied, "In fact, I'd planned to begin my investigation today, if you would have me, of course," he hurriedly added. Rehnquist certainly seemed to get a kick out of the latter remark, cracking a slight grin with a bemused look in his eyes. "Son," he began with a clear tone of amusement, "I don't believe I ever heard of moral indignation at a murder being solved too quickly. By all means, you're absolutely at liberty to begin whenever you feel is necessary." "Of course sir, thank you," the Agent added rather sheepishly. "On that note, in any assignment of mine, there are a few foundational questions I need to ask to begin a proper investigation. Would you mind?" Rehnquist hurriedly shook his head. "Not at all, please, whatever they are."

"First and foremost," Caldwell began, "Have any eyewitnesses come forward? My summons only mentioned Mr. Bryan's murder, nothing else." At that particular question, Rehnquist brought his hands to his face and gave a subdued sigh. Clearly, the man had been presented with an eyewitness account, but perhaps not an entirely reliable one. "One." he flatly stated. "A panhandler who, allegedly," he said stressing the word as if he was under interrogation for some heinous crime, "Had received a donation from the Ambassador, and witnessed the murder shortly thereafter."

The heavy stress on the alleged nature of the witness surprised the Agent. By this point he knew the 'witness' was uncredible, but he had to know why. Pressing the Ambassador, Caldwell inquired further. "Was he drunk, sir? Shifty looking? Asked for money for his account?" Rehnquist shook his head again. "No…it's just that…" he struggled to find proper wording, "Oh how do I say this, the man insisted it was a goddamned Demon!" For a short while, neither man spoke; Agent Caldwell out of bewilderment and Rehnquist out of frustration at the utter humiliation that this was the sumtotal of the evidence he had to give to a Federal Investigator.

Quickly recovering from his stunned state, Caldwell was the first to break the silence. "A…demon, Sir? Are you certain the translator taking his statement didn't perhaps make a mistranslation of what the witness claimed the perpetrator was? I mean he must've still been in a state of shock Sir, perhaps he didn't enunciate himself properly." Again, Rehnquist shook his head, scowling. "No, he made it quite clear to us. He absolutely insisted that it was some sort of demonic or mythical creature which killed him." The Ambassador continued, his tone becoming progressively angrier, "I didn't even know what the word for Demon was two days ago, but now I'll never forget it! It's all that worthless tramp would say, no matter how many times we asked him, it was nothing but 'Oni! Oni! Oni!'." Caldwell cautiously began to extend a hand. "Mr. Ambassador, please, that's alright-"

"No, it damn well isn't!" Rehnquist roared, rocketing up from his chair, "It doesn't make any fucking sense! None of it! He said he could 'see it in its eyes' before it struck, but what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I haven't the slightest damn inclination, but whatever it was it made him run for cover behind a wall before the thing split him in six pieces in an instant-" Out of breath and red in the face, Rehnquist paused for a few seconds to regain his composure. Noticing the stunned face on his guest, he seated himself again, looked down at his desk and let out a particularly deep sigh of catharsis. "Forgive me, Mr. Caldwell," he softly spoke, "I should have recused myself from this. Ambassador Bryan-Charles, and I were…friends for a long time, ever since we both entered the Foreign Service." The anger in his expression was gone now, Caldwell noticed as he listed, just as quickly as it appeared. "Finding his killer is the only task I have any need to attend to here, and in that I've failed. You'll find her in time, of course, but by then my replacement will have arrived, and I'll have long since left for home."

There was little left of the cheriness he'd first seen in the man, Caldwell thought. That wouldn't do. "Sir," he firmly began, "you absolutely have not." Rehnquist raised both eyebrows at that, but waited for him to continue. "Given your circumstances, you've done exceptionally well to prepare this case for investigation. Half the time, I don't even have a witness to begin with, and finding one can be tough going. With all this information you've been able to give me, you will have your killer, Sir, and soon." Rehnquist began to show a semblance of a smile, although the sadness was still present in his eyes.

"I'm very pleased to hear it, Mr. Caldwell," he replied, "However, given what we've heard, all this about demons, murderous eyes and whatnot, are you certain you won't be needing support? The Metropolitan Police are willing to provide an around-the-clock detail if you believe this…thing would put you in imminent danger." At that Caldwell gave a wide grin. "Don't worry yourself about me, Sir, I've dealt with cults plenty. Our murderer is certainly a fearsome character, but also almost certainly the most fearsome among them. The ordinary members are easy pickings. We're bound to snap up one of them sooner or later, and they'll lead us straight to the rest." Taking a glance at the clock, Caldwell quickly stood up, realizing he'd gone well over his allotted time. "Apologies for keeping you so long, Sir, I'll take my leave. You can rest assured I'll be taking action immediately."

Rehnquist stood up in turn, shaking the detective's hand. "No need for apologies, you needed to hear all the evidence, and now you have. I wish you the best of luck, and of course, please do inform me if you have any trouble with the police, although I hardly expect anything of the sort. Courteously nodding, Caldwell turned to leave, before stopping a few steps in. "Just one more thing, Mr. Caldwell," Rehnquist hurriedly asked. The Agent turned around to look. Again, Rehnquist smiled, with more of his cheery demeanor this time. "In the future, just 'Arthur' will do. I've had a lifetime's worth of rigid politeness from the Japanese. If you would have it, of course." The detective gave a smile and a nod, and his interview concluded, Joe Caldwell went off to hunt a Demon.

Tokyo, Empire of Japan

January 9th, 1912

3:00 A.M.

Hunched over a coffee table in one of the American Embassies' many meeting rooms, Caldwell and Rehnquist once again poured over the details of the report the detective had compiled from his investigation the previous day. Now, it had become Caldwell's turn to despair, as he combed through his hair with both hands for the hundredth time while staring down at the singular page of information his efforts had managed to generate. As it stood, Caldwell reckoned, his confident promise was going to be shattered in less than a day, an all-time record.

Rehnquist, Arthur, he corrected, as he tried and failed to remind himself to address the man, had been dead-on: it well and truly made no sense whatsoever. It was as if they'd been dealing with a ghost. As much as the agent might have been inclined to entertain the idea, however, ghosts were not known to slice men into mincemeat. Nevertheless, he thought, his murderer must have shared some blood with phantoms. Despite enlisting the help of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police to comb every street within two miles of the murder, and despite Rehnquist's flooding of local newspapers with advertisements promising a ten-thousand dollar King's ransom for anyone who would come forward with information, there had been only silence. They hadn't even been able to find the tramp who initially testified, who'd seemingly vanished into thin air, completely absent from all his usual haunts.

"Joseph," Rehnquist began, putting a hand on the young detective's shoulder, "I know you're frustrated, I feel exactly the same, but you don't need to stay awake any longer trying to find something in this paper that doesn't exist." Caldwell weakly shook his head. "It just isn't right," he croaked. Even when it took a toll on his health, physical and mental, obsessing over every last detail was what had allowed a man scarcely old enough to run for Senator to get his hands on this job in the first place. He would find a suspect, and he would prove them guilty of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Joe Caldwell always found his man, or in this case woman, in the end. There was no other way. As Rehnquist had begun to notice over the past hour he'd spent with him, however, obsessiveness and sleep deprivation can lead normally rational men to decidedly less rational propositions.

"I'm telling you Sir, sorry, Arthur, there's nothing else that explains this," the increasingly haggard agent insisted. "They're in on it. Somebody, maybe the policemen, maybe the mayor, someone at the head of the table of power here is playing all of us for goddamned fools." "Joseph," the Ambassador sighed, nearly as exhausted, "Again, I can assure you that-", the detective again cut him off mid-stride. "Of course I don't mean to demean you, or the good people here, but this has all the hallmarks of a political assassination. The Black Dragons, the Dark Oceaners, they're the only ones who have the motive and the political clout to pull this off. For all we know the Mayor or the policemen themselves were members."

Rehnquist, patient as he was with his companion's wild speculation, remained unconvinced. "Joseph, you're giving these men entirely too much credit." Caldwell looked up, confused. "The secret societies are violent, but restraint is not a word in their vocabulary. If they'd wanted Charles dead, they would have done it with a gun or a bomb, and they wouldn't have cared in the slightest about how many people were around to see it. This…" he paused, "I may not be an expert on this country, but this isn't how the Japanese do their assassinations. Not this quietly. Whoever this is, or whichever outfit they belong to, they've done precisely the opposite. They want to carry out their barbarisms in the dark, and they avoid public spectacle like the plague. I'm no expert on detective work either, Joseph, but I have a feeling this is something that neither you nor I have seen before." Caldwell opened his mouth to issue another half-hearted protest, even though he knew the Ambassador had him dead to rights. Before he could say a word, however, both men were suddenly startled by a noise from out in the street. A popping sort of noise, they noted, followed by the sound of glass shattering. "Broken streetlamp, I'd assume," Rehnquist pondered aloud. "We'll have to put in a replacement order in the morni-." The sound of another pop interrupted the musing. Then another.

One pop after another, accompanied by the crack of shattering glass, could be heard advancing down the street towards their room. A final pop sounded out from a short ways down the road, and then there was silence. Taking a look at each other, before returning their attention to the road, both men thought of a power outage, but the Embassy's lights remained perfectly intact, and the streetlamps had only blown out in one direction. Curiosity getting the better of him, Caldwell shifted over to the window, peering out into the now pitch-black night. Nothing seemed amiss, but he cracked open the window to better hear what was going on.

The Detective then fell to the floor with a yelp, as a muscled arm suddenly reached out from the darkness, forcing the window all the way up. As a cold draft began to come through the open window, so did the arm's owner, and both Caldwell and Rehnquist became riveted to their seats in fear as the intruder stepped into the light. Only now, far too late to save themselves, did the two men realize their foolishness in disregarding the tramps story, as one Japan's legendary Oni stepped out of the pages of folklore, and into the glow of their conference room. Craning their necks to look at their unwanted guest, Caldwell and Rehnquist could now get a good look at it, and both joined the late Ambassador in wishing they had never arrived here, as their blood turned to ice.

It was every bit as horrid a creature as the woodblocks and paintings had depicted. At least seven feet tall, the man-devil was covered from head to toe in hairless, fiery red skin. Two great horns jutted out from its forehead, one topped with a gold ring, and the other with one of silver. Smiling, or perhaps salivating, the creature's mouth sat slightly agape, showing its collection of putrid, crooked teeth and forked blue tongue. That wasn't the most terrifying possession to its name, however, nor was it what kept the two men from snapping out of their stupor and fleeing the room. No, that would be what it carried in its six arms. Five tightly grasped axes, their polished blades glistening in the moonlight. The sixth, however, held a far more terrifying sight: the decapitated heads of the Embassy's guardsmen; bone, blood, and sinew hanging down from beneath.

Dropping the two grizzly trophies on the floor, the creature let out a belly laugh at the terror of the mortals cowering before him. Getting into his master's good graces had never been so easy, he smiled to himself. His grin grew even wider as the older foreigner scrambled back at the display of his fangs. Now all he needed to do was identify which of the two foreigners was the 'Cardwarre' his master had ordered killed, lop off his head, and bring it back to him as a token of his unwavering loyalty. Perhaps, he wondered, this was the mission that would finally prove him worthy of being inducted into the Twelve Kizuki. Licking his lips with anticipation, he turned his attention back to the foreigners. "Now," he rasped in a gravelly tone, "which one of you is the one called Cardwarre?"

Although he took some offense to the butchering of the Caldwell family name, Joseph could hardly protest when the offending party was a giant demonic axeman conjured straight from the depths of hell. Looking to the heads of the gate guardsmen on the floor, and then back at the demon, the detective knew he needed to do something before two more heads were added to the pile. Frantically, he began running through his options. Shooting it was immediately out, firearms remained in the armory unless someone had a reason to be issued one. He certainly had the reason, and there was no one there to deny him, but that armory was 300 feet away, and the guardsmen served as a grim reminder that firearms may not be effective against these things at all. With the most obvious option unworkable, Caldwell quickly tossed out the others. Why should a demon be motivated by offers or money or power? Appealing to his conscience seemed especially unlikely, given the circumstances. That left just one viable solution to Caldwell and Rehnquist's demon conundrum: stall for time.

Thinking on his feet, the detective hatched a plan to do exactly that. A spectacularly stupid plan, but a plan nonetheless. "I won't waste your time Sir, I am him." Caldwell began, choosing his next words very carefully. As he expected, the demon gave another ghastly grin at his job having been made easier for him, and the brute began raising one of his arms to hack him down. Before he could, however, Caldwell launched into the second part of his Hail-Mary. "But before you kill me," he managed, more hurriedly this time, "Might I have the honor of knowing who you are?" At that, the demon at first lowered his arm, and then began to laugh. Slowly at first, but then nearly doubling over in laughter as if he'd just been told the funniest joke in all of history, even dropping one of his axes in the process.

As it recovered from its sudden onset of hysteria, the creature looked upon Caldwell with a mixture of admiration at his audacity and amusement that his prey clearly thought it was going to get out of this. "You're a funny one, gaijin, I'll give you that." the demon smiled as he picked up his axe. "When you meet your gods, tell them it was Ōkatemaru, of the Twelve Demon Moons who sent you to them!" He wasn't one of the Twelve of course, not yet, but he might as well be, and it must have sounded all the more terrifying to the Cardwarre-foreigner quaking before him. He stretched his arms out wide, ready to get the job done and slice his prey into pieces, but again the prey rudely interrupted him. "Twelve Demon Moons? What is that supposed to be?" it asked, clearly as a question designed to prolong his inevitable death. Conversation wouldn't save the prey, of course, but its ignorance infuriated him. "Imbecile!" the demon roared, sending the detective flying back onto the floor, "How dare you mock the name of Lord Kibutsuji's chosen wa-" Suddenly, the creature cut its tirade short, and the two men looked on in bewilderment as the most terrifying being they had ever witnessed dropped its axes, eyes wide, and doubled over in pain. As its expression became one of pure terror, the demon began to beg. Not to Caldwell or Rehnquist, but seemingly to no one at all.

"Please," it squeaked out through tears, its skin now changing color and its veins bulging, "I didn't mean it, my Lord, I. didn't. mean. it!" Before either man could wonder what "it" was, three monstrous arms burst out of the demon's body through its chest and mouth, accompanied by a torrent of blood. Letting out a decidedly unseemly shriek, Rehnquist scurried back as far as he could go, while the detective sat awestruck. For a moment, no one else moved, and Caldwell wondered if this was some sort of trick on the demon's part. Any chance of that, however, ended when the mouth-arm reached back to grasp the demon's head, and squeezed. In an instant, what was once a head disappeared, somehow spilling hardly any blood in the process. The chest-arms followed, crushing the body's arms, legs, and torso in a horrifying display of efficiency. Their job done, they too disappeared, and all that was left of the great and powerful Ōkatemaru was a robe, two mismatched earrings, and six hand axes, piled up in a neat bundle on the floor.

For a moment, neither man dared to say a word, needing to collect themselves after what they'd just seen. "Joseph?" Rehnquist spoke in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper. "Yes Arthur?" The detective replied as calmly as he could manage. "This is going to be a more…involved process than we thought it would be, isn't it?" the petrified ambassador whispered. Caldwell looked back at the pile of trinkets that was once a man, as footsteps began to rush in from all directions.

"It would seem so."