His last phrase had all the power of a brick wall, halting us with his cruel promise. It took a moment to formulate a response, but I was the first to speak from our group.

“My dad? How would you know anything about my dad?”

The old man twisted his frail body, moving his cane inch by inch, turning ever so slowly to face us. It was as if an ancient oak tree had finally tired of its resting place.

“My boy,” he said, “your father is in the grasp of a fate you would not wish upon your fiercest foe. Your father is becoming.”

“What do you mean, old one?” asked Miyoko.

“He is becoming. Soon there will be no return, and he will be one of them—no trace of his former self, fully in the service of beings so terrifying that your very bones will turn to mush just seeing them.” He coughed, a hacking, wet explosion of noise. “Once the Shadow Ka call you one of their own, there is no escape to be spoken of.”

The icy chill of his words seemed to freeze my heart.

“What did you mean when you said you had come to save my dad?” I asked.

“I meant what I said, boy. Only I know how to reverse this horror in which he is entrenched.”

“And how do you know how to save him?” asked Joseph. “He's practically a full-blown Shadow Ka right now.”

“How do I know?” He shifted even more weight onto his cane, the strain of it making an audible groan. If the pause that followed was for dramatic effect, it was completely unnecessary.

“Because I am one.”

The man refused to speak any more, and handed over a slip of paper with Japanese writing scribbled all over it, presumably an address. We were instructed to meet him there that evening, after we'd settled in from our long voyage. I protested, frantic to find out what he was talking about, but he was insistent, waving his gnarled hands in definite refusal. Then he began a journey of his own, an arduous walk down the long wooden pier. We watched him for several minutes, in awe of his mysterious words.

Joseph then shouted to the man, an eruption in the silence.

“So, who are you anyway? Do you have a name?”

The old man halted his steps, and turned his withered head back in our direction. He answered in a scratchy whisper of a voice, only five words long, and at first my mind refused to believe I'd heard him correctly. But there was no mistaking what he'd said, and there was no way it could be a coincidence.

Sometimes, the entire world can change with a few vibrations of the vocal chords—just three or four spoken words. How many people have had their lives come crashing down around them with only a short sentence? “You have cancer,” or, “He didn't make it,” or, “You're fired.” The answer that slipped through the old man's lips impacted me in every way as if someone had just taken an elephant and dropped him on my head, or reached inside of me and ripped my lungs out. His answer crumpled every hope he had offered with a vicious squeeze.

“What … did you say?” Joseph asked, his trembling voice reflecting the fear of what he knew he'd just heard.

The ancient man took a breath, shifted his body with a wince, and then looked up with yellowed eyes.

“I said my name is Custer Bleak.”

With that, he turned and resumed his exodus to the shore.