🧹🧹"The Night of Baba Yaga" by Akira Otani

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First published in Japanese under the title Baba Yaga No Yoru by

Kawade Shobo Shinsha Ltd. Publishers.

This English edition is published by arrangement with

Kawade Shobo Shinsha Ltd. Publishers, Tokyo in care of

Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

First published in English in 2024 by

Soho Press

227 W 17th Street

New York, NY 10011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Otani, Akira, author. | Bett, Sam, translator.

Title: The night of Baba Yaga / Akira Otani ; translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett.

Other titles: Babayaga no yoru. English

Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, 2024.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023055100

ISBN 978-1-64129-491-1

eISBN 978-1-64129-492-8

Subjects: LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction). | Novels.

Classification: LCC PL874.T36 B3313 2024 | DDC

895.63/6—dc23/eng/20231204

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023055100

Interior design by Janine Agro

Printed in the United States of America

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The white sedan, reeking of blood and cigarettes, shot west into the setting sun.

Squeezed into the back seat between a man with a gaudy necktie and a man wearing a loud shirt, a woman with long hair nodded in and out of consciousness. She wore torn jeans and a cheap yellow T-shirt. Her dirty hands flopped at her knees. When the car went over a bump, a wad of phlegmy blood fell from her mouth onto her chest. The two men looked increasingly uncomfortable with her. So did the young guy behind the wheel. At every traffic light, his eyes jumped in the rearview mirror.

The sedan was tailing a black Ford, polished to a gleam. Light glanced off of the paint job. It was the sort of evening when the sunset burns. The glass towers of Shinjuku were tinted red, as if blood was streaming down the window panes.

Eventually, the two cars pulled into a tranquil Setagaya neighborhood. Hard to believe that this idyllic setting was, like bustling Shinjuku, a part of Tokyo. A few turns later, the road ended at a gate set in a high stone wall. Chiseled blocks of fine white stone, stacked high in neat rows, topped off with accordion wire. Keeping people out. Or keeping something in. The cars stopped long enough for a cartoonishly large camera to notice them and activate the iron gate.

Behind the walls was a sprawling mansion landscaped in the Japanese style. The cars followed a driveway paved in stone and parked by a small pagoda in a corner of the grounds.

Out of nowhere, a crowd of men wearing white shirts and bright matching neckties surrounded the cars. Young guys with punished faces.

The driver jumped out of the black Ford and opened the door to the back seat. Glossy black shoes touched the ground. A thin man dressed in black, like for a funeral, stepped from the car. His sunken cheeks and cauliflower ear stood out.