Escape From Yokai Land: A Laundry Files Novella

by Charles Stross

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Horror

Synopsis

Regular listeners of Charles Stross's Laundry Files might have noticed Bob Howard's absence from the events of The Nightmare Stacks, and his subsequent return from Tokyo at the start of The Delirium Brief.  

Escape from Yokai Land explains what he was doing there. 

Bob's been assigned to work with the Miyamoto Group, checking the wards that lock down Japan's warded sites - a task previously handled by his predecessor Dr. Angleton, the Eater of Souls. This mostly involves policing yokai: traditional magical beings, increasingly grown more annoying and energetic. 

But then Bob's simple trip turns into a deadly confrontation with the ultimate yokai. It's massively powerful. It's pink. And it says Hello.

 

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Release date: March 1, 2022

Publisher: Recorded Books Inc.

Sample

“I’m sorry, Bob,” says Dr. Armstrong, “but they asked for you specificallybecause Hello Kitty is a Londoner.”

It’s a Friday afternoon in May, and I’m making a futile attempt to get out of the most pointless waste of time and energy to land on my desk this year. I tried Mrs. MacDougal in HR first, but she just sneered at me and told me to man up. (Few people ever win a face-off with Emma; decades of disciplining idiots who send dick-pics from work—or ovipositor pics, in some cases—have turned her heart to granite.) So, after getting knocked back by HR, I went to lobby the Senior Auditor. He has a better grasp of what this kind of liaison job entails than HR—he’s been there himself, after all. But I’m getting an unexpectedly unsympathetic hearing.

“What part of ‘our eighth wedding anniversary’ isn’t getting through to you? Mo will assume I forgot, and blame me. You know that thing she does, when she turns so chilly that her sense of irony achieves superconductivity? I’m talking freezer burns. And that’s before we get into my four-month-deep to-do list of Severity One containment issues that need my official attention, stat, because—” I stop. My old boss, Angleton, isn’t here anymore, and I’m working my way through his backlog of jobs and it kind of sucks, but I’m not placing any blame on his shoulders. “I don’t need this right now,” I continue, and even to my own ears it comes out a little petulant.

“Bob.” Dr Armstrong gives me a long-suffering look. “You’re separated.”

“Not through choice! And in any case there are loads of high-priority jobs on our doorstep, stuff we’re officially tasked with locking down right here without buggering off on a foreign assistance junket. I still haven’t finished decontaminating Gruinard”—(the press think it’s anthrax spores: if they had any inkling what Churchill ordered tested there during the war it’d trigger a mass panic)—“and then there’s the thing in Shaft Ten at Dounreay, not to mention the anomalous readings near Malham Cove—”

“Enough!” Dr. Armstrong eyes me like a university professor sizing up a student who’s spending more time in the bar than the library. “They wouldn’t be asking for you without a very good reason. James was there in ’46, and again in ’77. They’re due another visit round about now anyway, you’re his direct successor, and it is our responsibility. Postwar UN occupation, residual cleanup per international treaty. You can’t let this slide, it’ll make us look shifty and unreliable. More shifty and unreliable,” he corrects himself, clearly thinking of our beloved coalition government and their attitude toward foreign aid (encouraged when it’s a fig leaf for defense industry exports; otherwise, not).

He straightens up and proceeds to hand down judgment. “You need to go to Japan to check the hit list of warded sites James left behind in case any of them are leaking. You need to look into this business in—where is it, Tama New Town?—that our colleagues from the Miyamoto Group are banging on about. Explain what happened to Dr. Angleton and introduce yourself as his successor, then bring them up to date on recent developments. While you’re at it you should read, digest, and apply the guidelines in chapters eight through eleven of the Civil Service Overseas Liaison Handbook while bearing in mind best practices for Foreign Office adjuncts on temporary posting overseas.”

“Crap.” I surrender to the inevitable as he opens a drawer in his desk and rummages furiously for a few seconds. “Can I just say—”

“Here you are! A local travel guide: James swore by it.” He pushes a dog-ear ared paperback at me—The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore...