Koji Suzuki - Loop

Sometimes this tribal guide would appear standing on a rock ahead of him. He'd stare at Kaoru until he'd fully caught Kaoru's attention, then wave to him before disappearing up ahead. He never drew his bow anymore. His gesture was easy enough to understand: Follow me.

Sometimes Kaoru would see things drawn on the brown arcing rock faces deep in cul-de-sac ravines, things that filled him with foreboding. He imagined they'd been drawn ages ago by the Native Americans who had settled here, animals and human faces expressed with varying degrees of abstraction. Geometric patterns that, depending on how you looked at them, resembled the double-helix structure of DNA. Kaoru realized he was nearing his destination.

He pictured the elders living in a huge cave, preserving a more natural way of life. He'd come to imagine the place he was heading to as an unexplored region, veiled in mystery. There the elders lived as naturally as plants, dressed in hempen robes. Their mission was to impart to seekers the knowledge they'd stored up over the course of thousands of years…

But Kaoru's expectations were betrayed. He walked for a day and a night without finding any ancient cave filled with relics.

It was getting to be time to wonder about his food supply, whether it would run out and with it his strength. Now was the time to turn back if he was going to. He still had a little food left, and if he could just make it back to where he'd left the motorcycle, he should be alright. The bike had nearly a full tank of gas, and the nearest town was about twenty miles, an easy ride. Maybe he ought to go back there and replenish his supplies.

He'd have to do what the situation demanded, he told himself, in an effort to calm his thoughts.

He couldn't let himself be trapped in a blind alley.

He'd been mentally referring to the beings that lurked here as "the Ancients". The question was how to meet the Ancients and learn from them how the world worked. His father's life, his mother's life, Reiko's life depended on it.

Somewhere along the line, Kaoru had started to see the Ancients as some kind of gods. But he told himself that he needed to consider the opposite possibility, too. What guarantee was there that they bore good will toward men?

As if to second that notion by allowing him a glimpse of malevolence, clouds raced across the sky. Since coming to the desert, he hadn't paid much attention to the sky. Day after day of clear, bright weather had lulled him.

From where he stood on the ridge he had a three hundred and sixty degree view of the landscape-he felt he could see to the ends of the earth. Now in an instant his vision was cut off by roiling clouds, and the sky was a thick ashen colour.

The clouds were moving in layers, hanging low in the infinite sky, until they seemed like they'd come crashing down on his head. The pressure was suffocating.

Expecting rain at any minute, Kaoru began searching for a particular spot on the ridge. The trees up here were short and their foliage sparse, he knew he'd find no shelter under their limbs. He was looking for something like a crevice between boulders. He'd seen several small openings while following the river upstream, but they were too far down the mountainside. Up here on the ridge near the peak, it wouldn't be so easy to find a suitable cave, he was beginning to fear.

A drop of rain hit him on the cheek. He tensed his body, ready to dash for shelter, but there was none to be found, only rubble. A few more drops spattered on his head. Then the rain let loose with an earth-shaking roar of thunder. The scene was so changed that its previous appearance seemed to have been an illusion. At first the parched ground drank up the rain, but soon it could absorb no more, and rivulets of water began to appear.

Kaoru had no option but to huddle where he stood. There was no escaping nature's wrath. For the first time in his life, he was afraid of the rain.

He had plastic bags in his rucksack, but only a few, and of what use would they be anyway? He had no tent, nothing to keep himself dry with. And even if he had brought a tent, it wouldn't have done him any good. He was soaked to the skin in a flash.

His sneakers were waterlogged and heavy. Each step squeezed out a little flow of water. Waterfalls ran down his back and belly under his heavy jean jacket. He couldn't see where he was walking anymore, and he began to be afraid he'd stumble into one of the torrents that had appeared from nowhere. All he could do was find slightly higher ground, firm footing, and crouch there.

His last bread was in his rucksack, wrapped in plastic, but he knew he hadn't wrapped it very well. It was bound to get wet and dissolve. But he couldn't eat it in this downpour. He was forced to stand there helpless while his food supply was destroyed. Then again, he thought, at least he'd have enough water. He opened his mouth wide to take in as much of it as possible.

But the rain was falling too mercilessly: it hurt to stand there with his face exposed to it like that. He had to squat on his heels again.

Looking down, however, exposed the back of his neck to pain. He couldn't leave any skin uncovered, it seemed. He moved his pack so it covered his neck, then hugged his knees and waited for the rain to pass. He had the impression that rainstorms in the desert never lasted very long.

But this one did. The raindrops did get smaller and smaller until they seemed to turn to mist, but then, instead of stopping, they returned to their former size and force, pelting the ground. It was as if the storm was mocking him.

His fear grew. The rain had robbed his body of all warmth, and he was chilled through and through. On top of that, it was getting late. Darkness, cold, and hunger. He thought of this rain continuing all night, and it nearly paralyzed him.

The temperature of the air was falling, too. The dimness of evening turned into pitch blackness, and the rain sounded even louder. He couldn't see, but he could feel someone close at hand, striking him on the back and the head. He was surrounded by people kicking and hitting him. He felt like he'd been cornered by a lynch mob.

But even worse misfortune awaited him. Suddenly muddy water was flowing around his feet, and when he jumped in surprise, he dropped his pack. He lost his footing, twisted and fell, and as he did so he lost his sense of direction. Based on recalled sounds, he groped around for his pack, but to no avail. He touched the ground with both hands, feeling out a circle around where he lay on his back, but found nothing. It could be just a little ways away, or it could have been carried off by the current. It was all the same to him: the pack was gone.

Kaoru stayed still in the midst of the darkness, unable to move freely. He'd have to rely on his sense of touch and his hearing now. If the water eddying around his feet rose to cover his ankles, he decided, he'd have to move, but to where? He'd have to hear and feel his way to where the water wasn't as deep.

He was a worm, squirming in the mud. He'd seen worms that had crawled up out of cracks in the asphalt after days of heavy rain, only to be caught and dried up by the burning sun. Why did worms crawl out of the ground after the rain anyway? One theory was that they were trying to escape the carbonic acid gas dissolved in rainwater; Kaoru didn't know if this was right or not. Poor creatures-they finally crawl out of the dirt and get out of the rainwater, only to be dried up by ultraviolet light. Was it the light that drew them, despite their weakness to it?

Kaoru would settle for even the tiniest bit of light at the moment. He'd been in utter darkness for hours now. How many hours, he didn't know, as he'd lost all sense of time. He couldn't even see the hands on his watch.

Without being sure of the lay of the land around him, he couldn't walk anywhere. On the way up he'd seen numerous hundred-yard drops. If he wandered off now he might step right into a yawning crevice.