Screaming in the Dark

In a dark room which smelled of old books and expensive liquor, Gouki Kageyama sat in a leather chair which had been in his family for decades, whiskey in one hand, a gun casually held in the other. He felt naked without the gun most times. It was especially true when he was disappointed.

“It should have been incredibly simple,” Gouki began to say. “Send a man to New York. Get my grandfather’s diary. A demon should have succeeded.”

He gulped down the rest of his whiskey. It didn’t make him feel better.

“But he was killed by Harry Vickers. Of all people on the planet…”

Gouki stood, his rage stretching his face as he spat out his next few words.

“…WHY WAS IT THE MAN WHO PUT A BULLET IN GRANDFATHER’S WRETCHED HEART?!” Gouki screamed. The six people whose faces were before him did not flinch. They were used to outbursts from Gouki, though this was a particularly bad one.

A fat man leaned forward on his desk, his slicked back hair and golden teeth glinting in what dim light there was. The dice tattooed on the backs on his hands seemed to roll as he moved his hands. “Giving us foreign demons seems to have been a bet which did not pay off, Gouki. I am now somewhat hesitant to use mine should the time come,” he said.

A tall man in a crisp white suit and a wide brimmed hat sighed as he tipped the hat over his eyes. “And after all the work I did…” he said mockingly.

“Gambler, Traveler…” Gouki growled, walking forward a few paces. “I don’t want bitching. I want solutions to our annoying gaijin problem.”

“I could cut his head off while he’s in bed,” a woman in a tight red dress who proudly knew her enormous tits were the first things anyone saw said.

“Vickers doesn’t sleep around, Seducer,” Gouki said curtly.

“It doesn’t matter. He will eventually lie among the bones,” a man with a bushy beard and dirt smudges on his hands and face said slowly.

“Sooner is better than later, Gardener,” Gouki sneered.

“Let me have him. I’ll make it quick. Not out of sympathy for him. I’m simply saying the fight will be quick,” a woman with short hair and muscles bulging through her clothes said.

“Delusional, Breaker,” Gouki scoffed.

“No man can…” Breaker started to say.

“SHUT IT, DELUSIONAL BITCH! Harry Vickers was gutted by Smiler and climbed a building.” Gouki let his statement hang before all of them.

“We all have to accept facts. Smiler’s defeat wasn’t an unfortunate accident,” Traveler said.

“Which leaves us where?” Seducer asked.

“Where we always are. Stuck behind the exorcists,” Gambler said.

“Wrong. Smiler underestimated Harry’s will to live. You six won’t,” Gouki said. Then he looked to the so far silent member of the Seven. “Do you have any thoughts, Thinker?”

A thin man in a black suit sat with rigid posture, leaning over a desk. His balding head shone in the light, and his glasses sat high on his beak like nose. Should one have looked at him, they would have assumed he was merely a rather strict salary man and not one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

“I think you’re forgetting,” he said, emotionless and confident.

Gouki actually looked surprised. “Forgetting what?” he asked, leaning forward.

“The facts of this matter. Harry Vickers does not matter. The book does. He is merely an obstacle,” Thinker said.

“One to be destroyed…or avoided,” Gardener agreed.

“So I should ignore him?” Gouki asked. Thinker simply raised an eyebrow in response.

“Or use him. He is only a man. We all are. Men have weaknesses,” Thinker said.

“Tug his heart. He’ll bring the book to you,” Seducer said.

“We followed you because your grandfather had a plan for us,” Gambler said. “Now’s the time to prove his instincts.” The others of the Seven all nodded along.

“Grandfather…” Gouki said. He could still feel the spray of the sea on his skin, smell the tang of ocean and blood mixing as he gazed at his grandfather’s lifeless body. His men had hurried him away after the gun battle. The demon possessed yakuza had been defeated. Harry Vickers had used his one bullet on his grandfather. And one thought burned through Gouki’s mind since.

I should have been the one to put the bullet in the old monster.

“I still don’t know why grandfather told me to contact you Seven,” Gouki said, sitting back down. “The old man loved his riddles and games. Since learning about the book I’ve felt…”

“Posessed?” Thinker asked.

“Close,” Gouki corrected. “To answers to my grandfather’s eternal puzzles.”

“We’re still in the dark about everything,” Seducer said.

“Like how I could get all those foreign demons from around the world to agree to potential contracts. Demons are supposed to come to humans, not the other way around. Yet Reiji’s methods worked,” Traveler said.

“The rules are bending, close to breaking. I don’t like it,” Gardener muttered into his beard.

Gouki leaned back into his chair, closing his eyes. His fingers gripped hard on the gun. Rules. All his life in his family of crime and death, there had been rules. Lessons. Tests. Seeing if he was ready. Ready to follow the rules.

Gouki put the gun to his head.

“Rules. A gun will kill you if it is loaded. Those are the rules. If I pulled this trigger, would I die?” Gouki asked, his voice calm and controlled.

“An unfair question,” Gambler said, pointing a fat finger at Gouki. “We don’t know if the gun is loaded or not, if it is in proper working order…”

“Exactly. You don’t know the rules. But it doesn’t change things. The trigger will do exactly what it will do despite our ignorance,” Gouki said. His finger tightened on the trigger. The hammer clicked, and the six others all leaned closer, some anticipating disaster, others morbidly curious.

No bullet was fired. Gouki grinned, lowering his weapon.

“The rules exist, despite our ignorance. We all hold guns, unaware if the bullets exist,” Gouki said.

“Honestly, this is all entirely too much thinking,” Breaker sighed, rubbing her temples vigorously.

“Then let’s simplify it for the slow. Our lives improved with D Day. Those first years the world scrambled to save itself, people like us decided the rules. I believe grandfather’s diary will give us power again.” Gouki stood, gesturing at all of them with his gun, partly for emphasis, partly because he was so used to holding a weapon he forgot it was in his hands. Seven large monitors were assembled before him in his grandfather’s library, six of them lit, one of them dark. Gouki leaned forward, a well known sneer on his lips. “So let’s get serious.”

“Absolutely,” Thinker said, and if he was capable of emotion he would have expressed eager joy at Gouki’s words.

“Lets get my grandfather’s diary,” Gouki said. His remaining Seven all nodded in agreement before their screens went dark. Gouki stood in the quiet library, not moving, barely breathing.

“End of the world…” Gouki said softly, picking up the envelope he had received several weeks prior. The handwriting was his grandfather’s. The delivery date was specified as the tenth anniversary of D Day. Inside were several pictures of the diary, as well as information about how to find it. It also held a frustratingly brief letter. WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW HOW TO END THE WORLD? -REIJI. It was the second such envelope he had received from his dead grandfather. The first had come years previous, with detailed profiles of the psychopaths who would become his Seven.

“I don’t care about your games, dead old man,” Gouki said. He aimed his gun at the large painting of his grandfather hanging in what had once been his library and pulled the trigger. Another bullet ripped through the canvas, joining the dozens of other holes. Gouki looked at the gun, smiling, remembering the feeling of holding it to his head. The end of the world, he thought.

“The end of their world. The beginning of mine,” Gouki said, exiting the library, leaving the gaze of his grandfather and his secrets in darkness and silence once more.