The Temple of Acala

Liberty Blair Charissage

i.

The little monk walked out of the cold and the rain into the hot springs. This was the place.

The receptionist looked at the dreary monk. The little monk nodded to him and spoke in a matter of fact manner, “I have an appointment here.”

The receptionist looked perplexed. “We do not set up appointments here. Have you - - -”

“I am here to see Kazuma.”

“Oh. He is in the special hot spring. It is to the left. Take off your clothes before you go in. He is waiting for you.”

“Thank you.” The little monk smiled at the receptionist and walked down the left hall.

The little monk took off all his clothes. His body was intensely black and of a dark hue abnormal to Tibetans as well as human beings in general. Though small, he had strong, well-developed limbs and a conditioned physique. Yet, he had a pot-belly which made the little monk’s body appear pear-shaped. His nails were long, sharp, and tough, making his feet look monstrous and his hands look like claws.

He walked into the special hot spring, naked. He stretched open his mouth for a second, showing four fangs in his jaws along with his teeth. An even younger man was relaxing in the indoor spring away from the little monk. The younger man’s hair was trimmed short, and his face had a beguiling, arrogant demeanor. The man’s back was completely covered over with an exquisite tattoo of the Buddha Acala. The Acala in the tattoo sat cross-legged, in firm meditation with the sword, the noose, and the immovable glare that identified him as Acala. The man’s back was so magnificent that the little monk paused, staring at it. The Acala tattoo was a work of art, a painting on a canvas of skin and flesh.

The little monk waddled into the hot spring, taking baby-steps on the smooth stones even though the water was warm.

The man turned to the little monk and cried, “Ah, Lama Ralo, or Wisman, I presume?”

“Yes. That is me. Both name and shadow name.” Ralo plopped himself down into the hot pool.

“I am Kazuma, as you can guess.” He stared at Ralo. Kazuma cracked a smile. “You’re smaller than I expected.”

Ralo said nothing.

“I do apologize for such an odd location for us to meet. Sorry about the rain, but I was simply dying to be here and this—”

Kazuma was cut off by Ralo saying, “This thing you are asking me to do is not ordinary.”

Kazuma grinned again. He snapped his fingers and pointed. “Exactly.”

There was a brief silence. The two men, Kazuma young, Ralo significantly older, were strangers at first meeting, sitting nude in a hot pool.

“How do you like the place?” asked Kazuma. “It’s a smart hot spring, every stone has a water-resistant interface.” He moved his hands over some small stones and they glistened with a blue glow. “It’s just like the real thing. No. It’s better than the real thing. The perfect reconstruction of a naturally-occurring hot spring. I can even lift off the roof.” He pressed his hand on one of the larger stones and the roof soundlessly retracted and folded away.

Ralo looked up to see the revealed, cloud-filled sky. Raindrops trickled down and hit him on the face and in his eye. The coldness of the rain and outdoors mingled with the warmth of the hot water, creating a pleasant intermixture. Ralo looked down and noticed Kazuma smirking at him. Ralo kept his expression mysterious and firm.

Kazuma questioned, “You know, I am wondering how and why a Tibetan Buddhist lama-monk would have an account at the place that I found him?”

“Meditation classes don’t pay the bills.”

“What!? Is that a joke? Ha! It’s a good one!” Kazuma pointed at Ralo. “You’re funny. I like the way you talk.”

Ralo remained stoic, indecipherable to this man.

“Are you—oni?”

Ralo raised his hands. “Are you referring to my hands? My teeth?”

“And your penetrating eyes.”

“We don’t exactly have the same type of creatures—and spirits—in Tibet. But no. I am—human.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kazuma moved his hand onto a certain stone in the hot spring. It glimmered with that artificial blue, and one of the walls changed colour and texture. A waterproof video screen installed in the wall soon displayed a photograph of a temple. The temple looked recently built—to the standards of Japan, a country that had temples ranging in thousands of years in age. It seemed like the temple must have been built around the 1960’s. It was surrounded by other buildings which had built up around it. Cramped by buildings bigger than it, the temple looked small and dreary.

Kazuma relaxed more into the water. “With the return of all the supernatural stuff, the Enlightening as it’s called, nothing is the same in the world. As you probably know, Tibet is isolated from the rest of the world by your magic thunderstorm.”

“My people did that to protect ourselves and take back our ancestral home.”

Kazuma chuckled, “Heh, that was a long time ago. Back when China was still the Communist Republic, and a unified country. How did you get past that storm by the way? I’m curious.”

Ralo did not speak. Then, after a few minutes, he muttered, “It was difficult to get to the outside world.”

“Whatever. The Enlightening has been good for my line of business. However, it has brought on a couple of annoyances.”

“Like what?”

“Haunted temples, for example.” Kazuma pointed to the image of the temple on the wall-screen. “This is Weird Temple. It used to be a Buddhist temple of the Shingon sect. A small shrine that the world has forgotten. It’s been abandoned for decades now. We’ve recently bought the land and are in the process of tearing it down so that we can build a gambling house on the property. There’s been a slight problem with that.”

Ralo guessed, “The place is haunted.”

“Exactly. I don’t know what is in there, whether ghosts, yokai, oni, or some other thing from ages past, or from a children’s book, but strange goings on and violations of the laws of physics are happening in and around the temple. The demolition workers aren’t able to do their job. That is why I found you. I require someone who can deal with the haunting. The reason I chose you was because you might be able to better deal with the temple using your unique expertise.”

“I’m not in the Shingon sect. It’s Japanese. I’m Tibetan.”

“Yes, but you’re close enough. If you accept, the payment will be one billion Crypto-Yen. You in?”

Ralo paused. He seemed to be in deep thought. Then he turned his head back to Kazuma. “I will do it, but one question before I do.”

“What is it?” Kazuma was annoyed.

“You have a tattoo of the Great Holy Acala, or Fudo as you Japanese call him, on your back. And yet, you are asking me to help tear down a temple?”

Kazuma smiled. He stretched his arm around and ran his fingers down his back. “Heh. Some traditions stay.” He then pointed to the picture of Weird Temple. “And others need to be gone. Out with the old and in with the new.”

Abruptly Kazuma stood up. “But about that.” He started walking over to Ralo.

Suddenly, Kazuma was over Ralo, towering with his massive frame and genitalia close to Ralo’s face in an act of domination and threat. “I am of the highest Yakuza syndicate and a relative of Goro, the man who owns Japan, whether the country knows it or not. Don’t think I haven’t considered that you might be having second thoughts because you are a monk. But you’ve accepted—and you will clean out the temple so that it will be torn down—or you’re going to get on the bad side of me, the syndicate, and Goro. You get it?” He placed the back of his hand on Ralo’s shoulder.

Ralo stared up at Kazuma. “I get it.”

Kazuma slapped Ralo’s face lightly with the hand he had on Ralo’s shoulder. “Good.”

Kazuma walked back to his side of the hot spring. “You have a device of some kind, don’t you? The information about the temple will be sent to you.”

“Thank you.”

Ralo walked out of the hot spring. He dried himself and put his clothes back on. The clothes, a pair of baggy, purple sweat pants and a black t-shirt acquired at a metal concert with a heavy metal band’s logo on it, made him look like a head-banger who had just come from the gym. Saying goodbye to the receptionist, he walked out of the smart hot springs resort to his car.

The car was a heavily modified taxi which Ralo had painted with symbols of his Vajrayana Buddhism. Sauvastika (a sacred symbol to Eastern religions), Tibetan deities, and Vajras in vibrant colours adorned the taxi in a beautiful mess of paintings on wheels. Ralo sighed and looked like he needed something to cool his mind, but the only thing there was the cool, clean air. He climbed into his taxi. It was filled with ritual objects and implementations, including statues of bizarre looking wrathful deities along with bits of junk that Ralo had accumulated.

Turning off the automatic settings on the taxi, he scanned the radio for a heavy metal song. He did not find one, but found a punk song he could listen to. Ralo thrashed his head to it as he drove into the city of Kyoto. The city’s megaplexes ascended into the sky, gigantic monoliths of steel and monstrous growth. Huge digital billboards showed all the great new technologies one could buy. Kyoto buzzed with lights and business.

Ralo zoomed his taxi down the dark steel rail line, the rain still pouring down. So much was changing; so much was new, the city, technology, the automatic car. Yet some old things remained— haunted temples, for one thing.

ii.

Ralo pulled up to the address he had for the Weird Temple. This was the place. Ralo crawled out of his taxi. He gazed at the temple. It had taken him quite a while to get here. In that time, the rain had stopped, but the night was still young.

The temple was how it appeared in the photograph, cramped in by skyscrapers, megaplexes, and other buildings surrounding and hanging over it. Because of the looming buildings and the night, the temple looked dark and concealed in penumbra. This all had the effect of making the temple appear to be a small object wedged in between two walls in an old house. In other circumstances, the temple could have appeared quaint. An atmosphere of claustrophobia and secrets long forgotten swelled in this place, on this night.

Ralo took steps into the overgrown garden of the temple, past the temple’s gateway. The temple was small, a shrine, in actuality. Ralo spent a few moments in the wild, untended temple-grounds. A sense, as if the location itself had a presence, was pervasive. The feeling was unshakeable.

Ralo marched his way through the tangled mess of bushes, vines, and plants to the main temple hall. A two-pronged door awaited him at the front step. Ralo placed his hands on the doors. They felt coarse and weathered. He heaved. The doors were not locked, and slowly creaked open in a noisy din, making a loud boom as they hit the walls. Empty pitch-black darkness stood before Ralo in the doorway, as if a hole were cut into the world.

He took a few steps into the temple’s insides, and then felt around in his purple pants’ pockets. He brought out his phone and turned its flashlight function on. Ralo’ eyes widened as the other side of the hall was illuminated quite suddenly.

This revealed, as if arising out of a black mist, statues of the wrathful manifestations of the five Tathāgatas, the Cosmic Buddhas of Meditation. Ralo was not versed in the Shingon sect’s ways, so he did not completely recognize the deities depicted. Although he somewhat identified his chosen deity, Yamantaka, the Conqueror of Death, he only understood that these were Dharma protectors and were related to the Five Cosmic Buddhas. The Fierce Deity Acala was in the centre, holding his sword and noose.

Ralo turned the phone flashlight to other parts of the temple, throwing light upon the whole Japanese Shingon Buddhist pantheon in statue form. Ralo soon made prostrations before these figures of the Buddhas and the Gods. He was a Buddhist monk, after all. Though he was not completely familiar with them, utmost respect was to be given.

He moved deeper into the womb of the prayer hall. The light from his phone revealed mandalas of both the Womb Realm and the Diamond Realm on the walls. Why these artistic and religious artifacts were still here and not archived or stolen, was anyone’s guess.

Ralo searched through the rest of the temple. He found nothing out of the ordinary nor anything incredibly important. The rest of the place was either abandoned or filled with trash and old temple supplies. From these temple supplies, Ralo found some candles and matches. He returned to the temple hall and placed the candles in various spots. Ralo lit them and the prayer hall was soon illuminated by low light.

Ralo then searched his pockets and withdrew a piece of chalk. He knelt down onto the temple floor and began to draw a mandala from his own traditions and sects from his home country of Tibet. He drew a circle, and then symbols and figures within it. He was quite meticulous. Then he placed himself in the centre of the mandala and removed from his baggy pockets a Vajra and Vajra bell. He began reciting mantras. As he did so, he hit the Vajra and the Vajra bell together. They made a ding as they touched that rang through the temple hall. This ritual was to make sure that supernatural hauntings would manifest tonight, to see if the spirits of Japan would respond to the summons of another land’s magic. Ralo had not been unaffected by the Enlightening.

He set down the Vajra and the Vajra bell in a careful manner, in a certain way, and in a certain order. Ralo then lay down in the mandala’s centre. He lay there to wait. The doors were closed and the hall wasn’t too cold. It had been a long night and Ralo needed to sleep. This rest was not out of step with his plan. Soon Ralo slept.

iii.

Ralo was roused by one of his eyes opening by its own accord. He did not know if he was dreaming or not. He was in the intermediate state of sleep, between dreaming and consciousness. He did not know what time it was, nor, for a second, where he was or why he was there.

The candles had burned low.

Above Ralo, a sea of faces danced and palpated in the ceiling.

They writhed.

It was a misshapen mass of half-formed faces that yawled and howled at Ralo in a soft, dim noise. Ralo’s eyeball rolled around in its socket to take in all of what he was seeing. Ralo closed his opened eye. Soon after he opened both of his eyes. He had heard the mouthings. The surreal conglomeration of countenances was still above him.

He stood up and looked directly at the temple doors. He heard the cries go silent. Ralo looked up again at the ceiling. It was just a ceiling. No faces in it. Ralo moved his head down to its original position. He scratched his cheek. He turned around, seeing the statuettes of the Buddhas and Gods behind him, then moved back around again.

The temple doors opened by themselves. When the doors were fully open, a huge crowd of six-inch men and women dressed in 1960’s fashions charged into the prayer hall. They had similar sized horses with them. They ran, danced, and laughed around the mandala, but did not penetrate it. A huge party of little people was taking place around Ralo. Ralo watched the little party-goers jump and gyrate. Subsequently, the little 1960’s Japanese people slowly faded, then vanished away. Ralo looked around. The tiny people were nowhere to be seen now. He turned his gaze to the doors.

They were still open. Ralo walked over and gazed out the doorway. He did not see anything, but heard strange, cackling laughter. It was an inhuman chuckling. Ralo shuffled his feet in a fashion that would make his footsteps silent. He moved towards the source of the laughter. He did this with caution. He moved across the balcony of the temple without a sound.

A jumble of bushes was near the cacophony. Ralo put his head through the bushes to see what he could see. Not three steps away from him was a pandemonious gathering. Three giant creatures, roughly in the shape of humans, had gathered around a shriveled corpse that had not been in the garden before. The beasts’ leathery skins each had a different colour. One was blue-skinned, another was a dark, green shade, and yet another was crimson red. They all had huge eyes that bulged out of their sockets and enormous horns jutting out of their bald, round skulls. They had fangs in huge mouths and claws on long limbs. Every part of their features was hideously exaggerated to monstrous proportions. Were these creatures the legendary oni that Ralo had heard of? They giggled and cavorted around the corpse. A fourth, smaller creature of their breed skittered to join them.

Then human skin began to materialize around the corpse’s body, or rather, a different body was beginning to phase in, in the place of the cadaver. The creatures chortled as the corpse and the other body faded in and out until the fresh- skinned body stayed. This other body was a pale-skinned, bloodless woman. This corpse-woman opened her eyes. She blinked.

He observed all he needed. Ralo did not wait to see what would happen after this. He retracted his head from the garden bushes. Without a sound, he shuffled back to the temple hall. He reached the doorway and noticed that a table was in the centre of the mandala that he had drawn on the floor. A table that had certainly not been there before. A tea set was on the table with two cups of tea. Steam wafted up out of these cups.

Ralo prepared.

Then, an odd-looking fox, or some kind of canine, arose from the shadows of the low light. It scampered across the prayer hall into the mandala and stopped next to the table. Then, the fox transformed into an enchanting Japanese woman in a traditional kimono dress.

The fox-woman, after her head had entirely metamorphosed, smiled.

Ralo smiled as well.

iv.

The limo sped down the dirty, bustling streets of Kyoto. Its brakes screeched as it came to an abrupt halt. A run-down, old taxi had pulled directly in its path.

The chauffeur climbed out of the front seat and yelled, “Gentleman! Get out of your vehicle!”

Ralo clawed out of his taxi. He stood by the road. He called, “Kazuma.”

The passenger door of the limo opened up and Kazuma stepped out. “Ralo! You shouldn’t be here!”

“Change of plans.” replied Ralo.

“What?”

“A better deal has come around. A group of eccentric individuals, dwelling in a reasonable location, are being harassed and forced out of their home by Yakuza.”

Kazuma chuckled and smiled. “Ralo. You’ve doubled-crossed me.”

At hearing that, the chauffeur, in an act of confused loyalty, whipped out an impressively large handgun and squeezed off a shot at Ralo. The bullet whizzed off Ralo’s skin and fell down onto the pavement.

The chauffeur gasped. Then he yelled and burst into a charge towards Ralo. Ralo raised his hand and gestured two claw-like fingers into a finger-gun. A bolt of lightning streaked out of the finger-gun. The lightning bolt blasted the chauffeur. He dropped to the pavement, dead. Kazuma looked on in shock.

Ralo walked towards Kazuma. “There are reasons other than meditation classes not paying the bills that I was on that website where you found me.”

Kazuma mouthed, “You’re— Enlightened.”

“Yes. In more ways than one.”

Ralo stepped closer to Kazuma. Kazuma then laughed an arrogant chuckle. His face contorted in fury. “Fine. Kill me. You forgot what I said? I am a relative of Goro, of the biggest Yakuza syndicate. No matter how powerful you are in magic or hocus pocus, they will hunt you down and kill you after a while.”

“Truth be told, I did think about that . . .”

Kazuma shuddered as Ralo came even closer. Now Ralo was the one who had the air of domination and intimidation. Ralo slapped Kazuma on the shoulder, as Kazuma had done to Ralo in the hot spring.

“But then I thought of something.” Ralo moved his hand to place his palm on Kazuma’s shoulder. He soon touched Kazuma’s back. Kazuma quivered.

Ralo stared into his eyes. “I never got to say, I like your tattoo.” Ralo began to chant a mantra.

Kazuma gasped. He contorted in pain. His back burst and snapped. He felt his tattoo of Acala move and undulate in his skin. An arm holding a noose slipped out of his clothes. Immediately an orgy of blood splattered out of his back, obliterating it. Kazuma fell down to the pavement, dead, like his chauffeur. The Great Furious Deity, Acala, floated above the body. Ralo prostrated himself before the Deity.

Acala intoned, Why have you summoned me, Ralo?

“Noble Victorious One, a great evil plagues this land. It takes the name of the greatest of the Yakuza syndicates. Please! Enlightened One! Out of your inexhaustible, incalculable compassion! Eliminate this evil.”

You speak Dharma, Ralo.

[Office towers’ windows shattered and street lamps fractured apart as the Wrathful Buddha swept into the night to lay doom upon the largest Yakuza syndicate in the world. ]