Kage
Page 16
He was gone.
I slid across the floor towards Aya. “Aya! Aya!” She was unconscious and the shadow gone. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a few times. No response. I pressed my fingers to her neck. Her pulse was faint, but it was there. “Oh god, what are we gonna do?”
The room was a horror house. Flesh and blood and bone everywhere. There was no way to clean it. The only way to cleanse it would be with fire. A lot of fire.
“Aya!” She was breathing. She was alive. But she wasn’t responding. I looked around the room and felt sick. I fought the urge to gag. The shadow killed Tatsuya but left me unharmed. Was that Aya’s doing? Or had I just gotten lucky? Either way, we couldn’t hang around any longer. Not like this. It would be a little difficult to explain the state of the room to the next person who wandered by.
But Tatsuya was dead. People would miss him. They would notice he was gone, and with their father’s passing just a week earlier, Aya would be the prime suspect.
Tatsuya’s wallet lay on the floor by the bed. His phone was by the dresser, snapped in two. I stood up and made my way towards the TV cabinet, squelching on the wet carpet. There was a notepad inside. I had an idea. I started writing.
My name is Fujie Tatsuya. I work for the Mitsuhada Corporation. Something has been weighing on my mind recently and I cannot keep it in anymore. This is my confession.
I pulled Aya into the bathroom and wiped off what blood I could.
Recently a string of murders caught the attention of the news. The victim’s hearts were torn out of their chests. It was me. I was the person who did it.
I wiped her clean and pulled her to her feet. I heard her whisper my name. “Megu?”
There’s a darkness inside of me. A darkness I tried to keep contained, but it was too strong. I couldn’t stop myself. It called to me.
I put Aya in her brother’s car and got in the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition.
Other than my father, the victims had nothing to do with me. They were random. People I saw on the street. I followed them until the opportunity presented itself, and then I killed them.
“It’s going to be okay, Aya. It’s going to be okay.”
But my feelings of guilt have grown. How could I, a man so respected and loved by the community, continue on, knowing that I had killed?
The hills rolled past us in darkness. Aya rested her head against the window and slept.
I’m terribly sorry. I must apologise first to the victim’s families for what I have done, and second, to the police for making them run on wild goose chases. I was the murderer. I used my connections to lay the blame on others, but it was all me.
I didn’t know where I was driving. Somewhere. Anywhere. I liberated Tatsuya’s wallet of the money inside before leaving it on the bloodstained bed. The police would find it and they would find the note and they would be able to figure out the rest. It might not make sense; it didn’t even make sense to me, and I was there to witness it. But that would be enough for them to close the case and move on.
I, Fujie Tatsuya, cannot live any longer with the knowledge of the crimes I have committed. I’m sorry for all the pain I have caused. I apologise from the bottom of my heart.
We could all move on.
Goodbye.
36
A month later, I handed in my notice at work. It was one of the happiest days of my life. The look on the boss’s face when I told him that I had found a new job was worth every single yen spent on my computer course. I passed my final assignment; not with flying colours, but I passed nevertheless. I applied wherever I could and found a nice office job with just slightly better pay than the dingy convenience store in the middle of nowhere. Just slightly.
Aya went back home, sorted out her things, and decided to sell the house. She didn’t want to be there alone, she said. I think she just didn’t want the memories. With her family contacts, she found a new apartment and was able to move in the very next day. It was weird to have her suddenly gone, but Aya said she wanted to get back on her feet again. To learn how to live independently and control her own future.
I called my cousin about what I saw in that hotel room. If anyone would know what it was, she would.
“Sounds like an ikiryo,” she said. “A living spirit.” Of course. I’d heard the term before but didn’t know much about them. When a person grew so angry, so vengeful that they were unable to contain it anymore, that rage was able to manifest as the person’s living spirit. It could leave the body and harm those who had hurt it while the person was still very much alive.
It will always be a part of her. It is her. Whenever she gets scared, or angry, there’s a good chance that darkness will appear again, and it might even kill. But that’s okay. Well, not the killing part. We’re going to do our best to stop that from happening again. But that’s who Aya is. It’s who she’ll always be. We’re going to work on techniques my cousin taught me to help keep her anger in check. It’ll be hard work, but we’re going to do it. We have to do it.
On my way home from my very last day at the convenience store, I dropped by the alley out back. Dusty was there, meowing and cold. I didn’t have any food for him this time, but I did have something better. A home. A warm place to sleep. He’s grown nice and fat and sleeps by my side each night. I never trusted myself to keep an animal before. Never thought I’d be able to do a good enough job. Seeing Dusty each morning makes me regret all the time we missed, but I’m looking forward to all the time we’ll have going forward now.
Aya applied for art school. She doesn’t need to work, not with how much money her family left her, but she wants to strike out on her own. Do something useful. Do something to occupy her mind, I guess.
The police found Tatsuya’s note. I don’t know whether they believed it or not, but the case was closed a few days later and we never heard from them again. I think they were happy that way. I don’t think they actually wanted to find the truth. I can’t blame them.
We might have to take a trip soon, Aya and I. A little vacation. I need to pay my cousin a visit. I hear she’s been having some troubles of her own. Troubles of the supernatural kind.
Final Analysis
File: #5983
Date: November 14, 2018
Subject: Sato, Megu
Classification: Ikiryo
Assessment: Ms Sato’s version of events were confirmed with investigators in the field. Mr Fujie Tatsuya’s DNA, along with that of Mr Terada Yosuke, the hotel’s maintenance man, were recovered from Room 5 of the Hotel Blue Ocean. Local police found the letter Ms Sato described in her statement and were persuaded to hand the case over. Case has now been officially closed.
We highly recommend a new investigation into Ms Fujie Aya. An ikiryo of her strength is rare and should be approached with extreme caution. In her interview, Ms Sato also alluded to ongoing problems with her cousin, Ms Rusu Mako. Investigators have been dispatched to determine if the situation requires special handling. More to come.
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WANT EVEN MORE?
Also available in the Kowabana: ‘True’ Japanese scary stories from around the internet series:
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tara A. Devlin studied Japanese at the University of Queensland before moving to Japan in 2005. She lived in Matsue, the birthplace of Japanese ghost stories, for 10 years, where her love for Japanese horror really grew. And with Izumo, the birthplace of Japanese mythology, just a stone’s throw away, she was never too far from the mysterious. You can find her collection of horror and fantasy writings at taraadevlin.com and translations of Japanese horror at kowabana.net.
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