The Man From Taured: A thrilling suspense novel by the new master of horror (World's Scariest Legends Book 3) by Jeremy Bates

Author:Jeremy Bates [Bates, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Ghillinnein Books
Published: 2020-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

Back in the communal kitchen, I tossed my empty Styrofoam cup into the trash. I purchased three full-strength Asahi beers from the vending machine. I chugged one on the spot and brought the other two to my room, where I spent the next half hour looking up erstwhile Japanese clients I had worked with and contacting them through their websites. Of the dozen or so I got in touch with, not a single one knew who I was.

By that point I had a decent buzz going and wanted to keep it going. In fact, I had no better ambitions than drinking until I passed out.

I locked my room, took the elevator to the first floor, and stopped in the Lawson’s convenience store next door to purchase a can of beer. Outside, I popped the tab and took a sip. While drinking alcohol in public might be considered bad form, it wasn’t illegal in Japan.

I started down the busy street. A shopping district by day, Kabukicho turned into a red-light district at night. As a single male foreigner, I was a prime target for the hustlers and bar girls standing outside their questionable establishments. I politely deferred the first few propositions I received before eventually ignoring them altogether.

I made my way through the seediness to a darkened corner of Shinjuku called Golden Gai. The twentieth century wasn’t kind to Tokyo’s architectural heritage. Whatever buildings hadn’t fallen down during the monster earthquake in 1923, or weren’t bombed during wartime air raids, were bulldozed into oblivion during the second half of the century when the city was reimagined in steel and concrete.

Golden Gai had survived with its pre-war charm intact. Boxed in by high-rise developments, the area was composed of six intimate alleyways, each too narrow to drive a car down, and festooned with over two hundred mismatched bars and restaurants. Many of them were dirty and tumbledown with steep steps leading to second-story shops or flats. In some windows, signs boldly stated, “No foreigners” and “Regulars only.”

I stopped halfway down one lantern-lit alleyway, looking up at a second-floor noodle restaurant. I’d gone there with a work associate during my last visit to Tokyo. We had ramen and beer, then spent the rest of the night getting drunk on plum tequila at a nearby Edwardian/Gothic bar decorated with gilded mirrors, chandeliers, stag heads, and the occasional disco ball.

And look at you now, Gaston, a pauper on the outside looking in, with barely enough money to your name to afford the seating charge—

I started as a thought struck me.

With a renewed purpose to my step, I went looking for a payphone. Unlike many European cities, Tokyo still had a good number around, backup communication, I suppose, in case of cell phone reception failure during the overdue sequel to the 1923 earthquake.

A couple of minutes later I stood before a lime-green phone in the back of a convenience store. A ten-yen coin got me one minute. I dug change from my pocket and dumped fifty yen into the slot and dialed Okubo’s number, which I’d committed to memory on Flight JL077.

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