Chapter 1 : Knucklebones

'You're cheating!' said the little girl.

'No, I'm not!' protested Jack, who knelt opposite his little sister in the

back garden of their parents' cottage.

'Yes, you are! You're supposed to clap before picking up the bones.'

Jack stopped protesting; his look of mock innocence didn't fool Jess

one bit. As much as he loved his sister, a slight girl of seven with light-blue

eyes and mousey-blonde hair, he knew she was a stickler for the rules. Most

days Jess was as harmless as a buttercup, but when they played

Knucklebones, she became as strict and severe as their mother was about

the household chores.

Jack picked up the five sheep's knucklebones from the ground and

started again. They were the size of small pebbles, their edges rubbed

smooth from all the play he and Jess had subjected them to during the

summer. Despite the oppressive heat, the white bones felt oddly cold in his

hands.

'Bet you can't beat my twosies!' dared Jess.

Taking up the challenge, Jack cast four bones on to the ground. He

then threw the fifth bone high into the air, clapped and seized a knuckle out

of the grass before catching the falling bone. He repeated the process with

practised ease until he had all five back in his hand.

'Onesies,' said Jack.

Unimpressed, Jess plucked a daisy out of the grass in pretend

boredom.

Jack recast the bones, completing the second round in a couple of easy

swipes.

'Twosies!' he announced, before tossing the knuckles back on to the

grass. Then, throwing one up in the air and clapping, he grabbed three

before capturing the falling bone.

'Threesies!' exclaimed Jess, unable to contain her astonishment.

Grinning, Jack recast the knucklebones a final time.

In the distance, the sound of thunder rolled heavily across the

darkening sky. The air was becoming thick and muggy with an encroaching

summer storm, but Jack ignored the change in weather. Instead he

concentrated on the challenge of picking up all four bones at once.

Jack tossed the single knuckle high into the air and clapped just as

there was an almighty crack! A shaft of jagged white lightning scorched the

sky, striking a distant hilltop and setting a tree ablaze. It burned blood red

against the blackening sky. But Jack was too focused on the game to be

distracted. He snatched up the four knucklebones before catching the fifth

only a hand's breadth from the earth.

'I did it! I did it! Four in one go!' enthused Jack.

He looked up triumphantly and saw that Jess had disappeared.

So too had the sun. Thunderous clouds as black as pitch now raced

across a boiling sky.

Jack stared in bewilderment at the sudden ferocity of the weather.

Then he became vaguely aware of something crawling inside his clasped

hand. The knucklebones felt like they were moving.

Tentatively, he opened his hand.

He gasped. Scurrying across his palm were four tiny black scorpions.

They surrounded the remaining white knuckle, their deadly tails

striking at the bone, each of their venomous barbs dripping lethal poison.

One of the scorpions turned and scuttled up his forearm. In a wild

panic, Jack shook it off, dropping all the scorpions into the grass, and ran

headlong for the house.

'Mother! Mother!' he screamed, then immediately thought of Jess.

Where was she?

Large drops of rain began to fall and the garden was cast into shadow.

He could just make out the five knuckle-bones lying discarded in the grass,

but there was no sign of the scorpions or of Jess.

'Jess? Mother?' he cried at the top of his lungs.

No one answered.

Then he heard the soft singing of his mother coming from the kitchen:

'A man of words and not of deeds

Is like a garden full of weeds

And when the weeds begin to grow

It's like a garden full of snow…'

Jack darted along the narrow corridor towards the kitchen.

The cottage was all shadows, as murky and dank as a catacomb. A

glimmer of light seeped through a small crack in the kitchen door. From

within, his mother's voice faded and rose like the sighing of the wind:

'And when the snow begins to fall

It's like a bird upon the wall

And when the bird away does fly

It's like a hawk up in the sky…'

Jack put his eye to the crack and could see his mother sitting in her apron

with her back to the door, peeling potatoes with a large curved knife. A

single candle lit the room, making the knife's shadow upon the wall appear

as monstrous as a samurai sword.

'And when the sky begins to roar

It's like a lion at the door…'

Jack pushed at the kitchen door. It grated over the stone-clad flooring, but

still his mother did not look round.

'Mother?' he asked. 'Did you hear me…?'

'And when the door begins to crack

It's like a stick across your back…'

'Mother! Why won't you answer me?'

The rain was now falling so hard outside it sounded like fish frying in

a pan. Jack stepped across the threshold and approached his mother. She

kept her back towards him, her fingers working feverishly with the knife,

stripping the skin off potato after potato.

'And when your back begins to smart

It's like a penknife in your heart…'

Jack tugged on her apron. 'Mother? Are you all right?'

From the other room, Jack heard a stifled scream, and in that moment

his mother turned on him, her voice suddenly harsh and grating:

'And when your heart begins to bleed

You're dead, and dead, and dead indeed.'

Jack found himself staring directly into the sunken eye sockets of an old

hag, her oily grey hair crawling with lice. The figure, whom he had

believed to be his mother, now raised the knife to Jack's throat, a sliver of

potato hanging from the blade like freshly peeled skin.

'You're dead indeed, gaijin!' rasped the shrivelled witch, her rotten

breath making Jack gag.

She gave a callous laugh as Jack ran screaming for the door.

Jack could hear Jess's anguished cries deep within the cottage. He

burst into the front room.

The large armchair, where his father always sat, faced the fire in the

grate. The flickering flames silhouetted a shrouded figure seated in it.

'Father?' enquired Jack tentatively.

'No, gaijin. Your father's dead.'

A gnarly finger protruded from a black-gloved hand and pointed to the

prone body of Jack's father, who lay broken and bleeding on the wooden

floorboards in the far corner of the room. Jack recoiled at the gruesome fate

of his father, and the floor began to heave like the deck of a ship.

With a single leap, the shrouded figure flew from the chair to the

latticed casement window. The intruder clutched Jess in his arms.

Jack's heart stopped.

He recognized the single jade-green eye glowering at him through the

slit in the hood. The figure, dressed head-to-toe in the black shinobi

shozoku of a ninja, was Dokugan Ryu.

Dragon Eye. The ninja who had killed his father and hunted Jack

ruthlessly and was now kidnapping his little sister.

'No!' screamed Jack as he flung himself across the room to save her.

But other ninja, like black widow spiders, materialized from the walls

to stop him. Jack fought them off with all his might, but every faceless ninja

he defeated was immediately replaced by the next.

'Another time, gaijin!' hissed Dragon Eye as he turned and

disappeared into the raging storm. 'The rutter is not forgotten.'