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  The Eyes in the Dark

  Tales of Crow #1

  Chris Ward

  Contents

  The Eyes in the Dark

  Also by Chris Ward

  About the Author

  Contact

  Author’s Note

  Get Tales of Crow #2 for FREE

  Prologue

  Part One

  1. The students arrive at British Heights

  2. The band takes a wrong turn

  3. Karin remembers her past

  4. Jun dreams of Akane

  5. O-Remo finds the lookout

  6. Preparations for dinner

  7. Dinner is served

  8. O-Remo meets a stranger

  9. Bad turkey and a monster in the woods

  10. Bad things begin to happen

  11. Bee freaks out

  12. Creaks and groans on the mountain road

  13. Jun finds Akane

  14. The boy who built robots

  15. Jun talks to Akane

  16. The cold sets in

  17. Hell breaks out

  Part Two

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  18. Professor Crow surveys the damage

  19. Morning has broken … everything

  20. A meeting upstairs

  21. Trouble for the band

  22. Secret negotiations

  23. Jun and Akane reconcile

  24. Trouble for Forbes

  25. Escape from the snooker room

  26. Games in the snow

  27. Confrontations and rescue plans

  28. Fun and games in the forest

  29. As darkness falls

  Part Three

  30. Discoveries and plans

  31. Professor Crow makes arrangements

  32. The helicopter arrives

  33. Wires and revelations

  34. Jun gets chased

  35. The Professor plans an escape

  36. O-Remo remembers the best show

  37. Underground lairs

  38. The king of all beasts

  39. A battle underground

  40. Swords and snowplows

  41. Dying sonatas

  42. The final concerto

  43. Exit strategies

  44. Last stand in the snow

  Epilogue

  Where did the Crow go?

  Contact

  Acknowledgments

  Available Now

  The Eyes in the Dark

  (Tales of Crow #1)

  For Jun Matsumoto, a school trip to the remote study camp of British Heights is hardly his idea of a good time. Akane, the love of his life, hates him, and he’s rooming with Ogiwara, the school bully.

  * * *

  Things get even worse when a dose of bad Christmas turkey makes most of the students sick, and suddenly Jun and a handful of others are left cut off from civilization as the snow closes in. Soon the power has gone off, and a strange, birdlike creature begins terrorising the guests.

  * * *

  If Jun thought the school trip could get no worse, he’d be wrong. As the students group together with the other remaining guests, suddenly their understanding of danger turns on its head.

  * * *

  There are creatures out in the woods, and they’re hungry for human flesh…

  Also by Chris Ward

  Novels

  Head of Words

  The Man Who Built the World

  Fire Fight

  * * *

  The Tube Riders series

  Underground

  Exile

  Revenge

  In the Shadow of London

  * * *

  The Tales of Crow series

  The Eyes in the Dark

  The Castle of Nightmares

  The Puppeteer King

  The Circus of Machinations

  Also Available

  The Tube Riders Trilogy Boxed Set

  The Tube Riders Four Volume Complete Series

  About the Author

  A proud and noble Cornishman (and to a lesser extent British), Chris Ward ran off to live and work in Japan back in 2004. There he got married, got a decent job, and got a cat. He remains pure to his Cornish/British roots while enjoying the inspiration of living in a foreign country.

  He is the author of the The Tube Riders series, the Tales of Crow series, and the upcoming Endinfinium YA fantasy series, as well as numerous other well-received stand alone novels.

  Chris would love to hear from you:

  www.amillionmilesfromanywhere.net

  Thank you for your interest in my work.

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  Please join my READERS GROUP to get exclusive news, offers, and special discounts.

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  Readers Group - click here to join

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  You can also chat to me on Facebook at

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  Chris Ward (Fiction Writer)

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  and follow progress on new books on my website at

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  www.amillionmilesfromanywhere.net

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  Thank you for reading!

  For:

  * * *

  Bec and Dom

  * * *

  This one’s for you

  * * *

  And to the late, great Richard Laymon

  * * *

  An inspiration for this beast

  “The Eyes in the Dark (Tales of Crow #1)”

  Copyright © Chris Ward 2014

  * * *

  *Previously published as “They Came Out After Dark”

  * * *

  The right of Chris Ward to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author.

  * * *

  This story is a work of fiction and is a product of the Author’s imagination. All resemblances to actual locations or to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  Author’s Note

  The Eyes in the Dark is a horror-thriller set in Japan. It’s laced with a tracing of dark humour, and a little suspension of belief will help with its enjoyment. In terms of context, assume the characters are speaking in Japanese unless otherwise noted, even though the dialogue intentionally uses a lot of British and American slang. This was inspired by the wonderfully colourful English subtitles you get for some Japanese teen movies, but just assume the characters are using their native language equivalent.

  In addition, any Japanese words or terminology are noted in italics. Prices are usually noted in yen, and in general a good conversion is 100yen = $1.

  While the book is conceived as the first of an ongoing series, it is very much a standalone story and can be read as one.

  I hope you will enjoy my little book about crazy happenings up in the Japanese mountains. Now, if you’re ready, strap yourselves in for the ride…

  Get Tales of Crow #2 for FREE

  Join Chris Ward’s Readers’ Group to get a free copy.

  Click here for more information.

  Prologue

  Wooden Knees takes a walk

  The clacking branches of the leafless trees beat out the kind of tune that the old man the local kids called Wooden Knees might have made if, before he followed his father inevitably into rice farming, he had decided to take up tap-dancing instead. As it was, Masanori Kojima paused, put his hands on the accursed parts of his body, and looked up at the grey sky with something like trepidation.

  It was a little late in the year, but he
knew a stand of red pine deep in the woods where he’d been claiming the sparse crop of matsutake mushrooms as his own since he was barely more than a sapling himself. None of the other farmers knew its location, but the fungi he could sell for as much as twenty thousand yen apiece came late in the year because of the orientation of the hill. No one ever thought to search once the snow had begun to fall. While he despised the taste of the nasty, musty little things himself, the profits from his secret crop would keep old Wooden Knees drunk for the rest of the winter.

  But the weather was turning. It was December the sixth, as the calendar read, but closer to New Year by the look of the sky, almost groaning above him as it ached to dump its load of accumulated moisture down upon his head. Masanori glanced upslope towards the last crest before he reached his secret spot, wondering whether it might be better to cut his losses and run. Getting caught out here in heavy snow didn’t bear thinking about.

  For a few minutes he stood in contemplation, staring upslope for a while, then looking back the way he had come, through a skeletal glade of leafless trees, the brown curls of their shed skin heaping up on either side of the trail he had made with his heavy boots and heavier bag. He could be home and stretched out under his heated table in a couple of hours, a glass of sake in front of him and some quiz show playing on the television. But if he soldiered on for just another hour there could be a basket of money sitting inside the front door.

  In the end it came down to simple economics. This was almost certainly his last foraging trip of the year. A good crop now and he could rest easy for the winter. His mouth curled up in a thin, wrinkly sneer as he considered the other uses for the money.

  ‘A reward,’ he muttered, in that reedy whine that ended conversations quickly. ‘A little reward for my efforts.’

  He’d make this one count, put in an extra half an hour to really go over the ground, then splash out on one of the younger girls who hung around at the end of the shopping arcade late on Saturday nights. The younger ones wouldn’t touch an old bag of bones like him unless he could pay way over the going rate, but even the prettiest girls had their price, and perhaps if he took a trip to the pharmacy beforehand he could get something that would make him able to do a little more than just leer as they took their clothes off. Yes, he thought, it’s time for old Wooden Knees to do some proper knocking.

  Feeling a little bulb of arousal bouncing around down in his pants, he slung his bag back over his shoulder and started up towards the rise.

  His legs started to shake and his knees to knock together long before he reached the crest of the hill, but, huffing and puffing like an old steam locomotive, he finally made it, leaning against a tall sapling to catch his breath. The stand of pine was just ahead; hopefully with it several dozen litres of sake and a couple of lustful nights reliving his youth.

  He started off, stumping through the trees towards a large boulder poking out of the ground that marked the edge of the red pines. Just beyond it, also benefiting from the prolonged warmth of the hillside’s westward-facing orientation, was a thicket of bamboo. It stretched around the area of pine, a natural barricade, making this the only way in.

  Spotting a small hump in the undergrowth at the foot of the nearest pine, Masanori grunted in satisfaction, dropped his bag down on the rock, and got down on his knees to brush away the pine needles and humus beneath.

  The flat head of a matsutake mushroom peered up at him. ‘Huh,’ old Wooden Knees muttered. ‘A hand job and a litre of sake to wash it down with. Good start.’

  As he cupped a hand underneath it to work it out of the ground, something moved in the undergrowth to his left.

  Masanori froze. A bear, maybe? It was rare that Japanese brown bears attacked hikers unless they were suckling young, but breeding season came in the spring and the summer had been plentiful, so unless it had some kind of disease…

  Behind him came the crunch of a footfall, lighter than a bear but too heavy for a deer. Masanori let out a slow breath. Could someone have followed him? He cursed under his breath. ‘If that’s one of you fuckers…’

  A sudden zipping sound, like a jacket being undone in a hurry, came from just beyond his shoulder. His head jerked around, his vision blurring as his old eyes took a moment to catch up, then something heavy and black was swinging towards him out of a background of bare forest. Like black wings it seemed to open out to fill his whole world, then something was closing over his head, drawing in around his neck. Masanori scrabbled at his face and tried to roll backwards, but strong hands on his back shoved him forward, his knees knocking together with that familiar wooden clump.

  He pushed his hands down on the cool, grainy turf and started to rise.

  Something heavy struck the back of his head and his senses switched off like the last electric bulb in a dark hallway.

  His knees seemed far too close to his face. As he came to, Masanori realised he was clutching his legs to his chest and pushed them away, stretching out the old muscles in his back as he peered into the gloom around him.

  He felt floorboards under his feet; the absence of a breeze suggested he was inside. Groaning, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. His eyes slowly adjusted to reveal the insides of a single-roomed log cabin. There appeared to be no windows and only a single night-light in the ceiling, pushing back the darkness with a dim, orange hue. A tiny red LED light flickered alongside it.

  Behind him was a wall, so he leaned back against it, pulling his knees up in front of him again. Directly opposite him was a closed door. He lifted one hand and touched the back of his head, immediately pulling his hand away as a blunt pain shuddered through him. Gingerly touching it again, he found no blood but a thick, meaty lump.

  ‘Where am I?’ he shouted. ‘Someone let me out!’

  In answer, there was a click and the door swung open, letting in a chill wind that swirled and wrapped itself around him. Masanori gasped and tried to shrivel up into the wall, but the door stayed open. After a few seconds he climbed to his feet, hobbled across and tried to close it, but it was stuck firm.

  He peered out into the gloom and saw the shifting shadows that were the nearest trees of the forest outside. He felt a great sinking feeling that this was some sort of a game. Few people in the town liked him, but Masanori didn’t much care. He didn’t make trouble, or spread gossip, or screw people over. He just did what he did with a sneer instead of a smile.

  It was also quite clear that he couldn’t stay here. A cabin in the woods where the doors opened of their own accord … nope. Not his idea of a good time.

  If whoever had jumped him and left him here wanted him dead, he would be dead already. Whatever sick kind of a joke this was, it was clearly meant to rattle him. ‘Won’t get the better of me, you bastards,’ he muttered. ‘When I find out who’s behind this there’ll be trouble.’

  He leaned out into the dark. The grey cloud had departed to reveal a partial moon smiling down on him, giving him just enough light to see. Glancing to the right, he could make out a shadowy ridgeline some way above him. So, they’d taken him down into the valley. The stupid fools. Masanori knew this forest better than he knew the varicose veins on his thighs. It was dark and it was cold, but he was hardy inside the battered suit age had left him with. It was only a mile or so downhill towards where he had left his little truck. The key was inside the rim of the front right tire, waiting for him. The angle of the moon told him it was past midnight, but in a couple of hours he could be home having a hot bath.

  And in the morning he’d start figuring out who was behind this.

  Masanori lurched out into the dark.

  He’d gone no more than a few feet when he heard a rustling sound over the wind, and a deeper, thicker sound that could only be…

  A pair of shining crimson lights appeared through the trees ahead of him, bobbing at a height that was above his head. Masanori didn’t stop to consider the impossibility of it. He turned and rushed back towards the cabin as something huge and fea
rsome charged out of the trees.

  He was within a couple of feet of the door when it slammed shut on him. He heard something whirring and looked up to see a blinking LED light just above the door. Then it was gone as something thick and sharp and furry gripped his legs and wrenched him backwards.