by Kōji Suzuki
“What in the world are you doing?” At the sound of Ryuji’s voice, Asakawa’s head jerked up. “What’ve you been up to, crawling around over here. We’ve got to search a wider area.”
Asakawa gaped up at Ryuji. Ryuji had the sun at his back, his face was shadowy. Drops of sweat from his dark face fell to the grass by his feet. What was I up to? A little hole had been dug in the ground right in front of him. Asakawa had dug it.
“You digging a pit or something?”
Ryuji sighed. Asakawa frowned and moved to look at his watch.
“And stop looking at your fucking watch!” Ryuji slapped his hand away. He glared at Asakawa for a little while, then sighed again. He squatted and whispered, calmly, “Maybe you ought to take a break.”
“No time.”
“I’m telling you, you need to get a hold of yourself. Panicking won’t get you anywhere.” Asakawa was crouching, too, and Ryuji poked him lightly in the chest. Asakawa lost his balance and fell over backwards, feet up in the air.
“That’s it, lie down just like that, just like a baby.”
Asakawa squirmed, trying to get to his feet.
“Don’t move! Lie down! Don’t waste your strength.” Ryuji stepped on Asakawa’s chest until he stopped struggling. Asakawa closed his eyes and gave up resisting. The weight of Ryuji’s foot receded into the distance. When he gently opened his eyes again, Ryuji was moving his short, powerful legs, crossing over into the shade of B-4’s balcony. His gait was eloquent. He’d had an inspiration as to where they could find the well, and his sense of desperation had faded.
After Ryuji had left, Asakawa lay still for a while. Flat on his back, spread-eagled, he gazed up into the sky. The sun was bright. How weak his spirit was compared to Ryuji’s. Disgusting. He regulated his breathing and tried to think coolly. He wasn’t confident he could keep himself together as the next seven hours ticked away. He’d just follow Ryuji’s every order. That’d be best. Lose himself, place himself under the sway of someone with an unyielding spirit. Lose yourself! You’ll even be able to escape the terror then. You’re going to be buried in the earth—you’ll become one with nature. As if in answer to his wish, he was suddenly overcome by drowsiness and began to lose consciousness. At the very threshold of sleep, in the midst of a daydream about lifting Yoko high into the air, he remembered once again that episode from his grade-school days.
There was a municipal sports ground on the outskirts of the town where he’d grown up. There was a cliff at its edge, and at the foot of the cliff was a swamp with crayfish in it. When he was a schoolboy, Asakawa often went there with his buddies to catch crayfish. On that particular day, the sun shining on the exposed red earth of the cliff next to the swamp was like a challenge. He was tired of sitting there holding his fishing pole anyway, so he went over to where the sun was shining on the cliff and began to dig a hole in its steep face. The dirt was soft clay, and it crumbled away at his feet when he thrust in an old piece of board he’d found. Before long his friends joined him. There’d been three of them, he seemed to recall, or maybe four. Just the perfect number for digging a cave. Any more and they would have been bumping heads, any fewer and it would have been too much work for each of them.
After an hour of digging they’d made a hole just the right size for one of them to crawl into. They kept going. They’d originally been on their way home from school, and soon one of his friends said he had to be getting home. Only Asakawa, whose idea it had been in the first place, kept at it silently. And by the time the sun set the cave had grown large enough for all the boys who were left to squeeze into. Asakawa had hugged his knees; he and his friends giggled at each other. Curled up in the red clay like that, they felt like the Stone Age people at Mikkabi, whose remains they’d just learned about in Social Studies.
However, after a little while the entrance to the hole was blocked by a lady’s face. The setting sun was at her back, so her face was in shadow and they couldn’t make out her expression, but they realized it was a fiftyish housewife from the neighborhood.
“What are you boys doing digging a hole here? It’d be pretty disgusting if you got buried alive in there,” the lady said, peering into the cave. Asakawa and the two other boys exchanged glances. Young though they were, they still noticed something odd about her warning. Not, “Cut it out—that’s dangerous,” but, “Cut it out, because if you got buried alive in there and died it would be disgusting to people in the neighborhood, such as me.” She was cautioning them purely for her own good. Asakawa and his friends began to giggle again. The lady’s face blocked the entrance like a figure in a shadow play.
Ryuji’s face gradually superimposed itself over the lady’s.
“Now you’re a bit too relaxed. Imagine being able to go night-night in a place like this. Hey, you jerk, what are you giggling at?”
Ryuji woke him up. The sun was nearing the western horizon, and darkness was fast approaching. Ryuji’s face and figure against the weakening sunlight were even blacker than before.
“Come over here a minute.” Ryuji pulled Asakawa to his feet and then silently crawled back under the balcony of B-4. Asakawa followed. Under the balcony, one of the boards between the supporting pillars had been peeled partway back. Ryuji stuck his hand in behind the board and pulled it out with all his might. With a loud snap the board broke in half diagonally. The decor inside the cabin was modern, but these boards were so flimsy you could break them by hand. The builders had thoroughly skimped on the parts you couldn’t see. Ryuji poked the flashlight inside and shined it around under the cabin. He nodded as if to say, come look at this. Asakawa fixed his gaze on the gap in the wall and looked inside. The flashlight beam was trained on a black protrusion over by the west side. As he stared at it he noticed that the sides seemed to have an uneven texture, like a pile of rocks. The top was covered with a concrete lid; blades of grass poked out of cracks in the concrete and between the stones. Asakawa immediately realized what was directly overhead. The living room of the cabin. And directly over the round rim of the well were the television and VCR. A week ago, when he’d watched that video, Sadako Yamamura had been this close, hiding, watching what went on above.
Ryuji pulled off more boards until there was an opening large enough for a man to pass through. They both ducked through the hole in the wall and crawled to the rim of the well. The cabin was built on a gradient, and they’d entered from the downhill end, so the further they went the lower the floorboards got, creating a sense of something pressing down on them. Even though there should be plenty of air in the dark crawl space, Asakawa began to find it hard to breathe. The soil here was clammier than outside. Asakawa knew full well what they must do now. He knew, but he felt no fear yet. He felt claustrophobic just from the floorboards over his head, but maybe he’d have to go down into the bottom of the well, into a place ruled by an even deeper darkness … Not maybe. To pull Sadako out, they’d almost certainly have to descend into the well.
“Give me a hand here,” said Ryuji. He’d grabbed a piece of rebar poking out from a crack in the concrete lid and was trying to pull the lid onto the downhill slope. But the ceiling was too low, and he couldn’t get much leverage. Even someone like Ryuji who could bench 120 kilos was down to half strength if he didn’t have the right footing. Asakawa went around the well until he was uphill from it and lay down on his back. He placed both hands on a support column to brace himself and then pushed against the lid with his feet. There was an ugly sound as concrete scraped against stone. Asakawa and Ryuji began to chant in order to synchronize their efforts. The lid moved. How many years had it been since the well’s face was exposed? Had the well been capped when Villa Log Cabin was built, or when Pacific Land was established, or when the sanatorium closed? They could only guess, based on the strength of the seal between the concrete and the stones, on the almost-human screech as the lid was torn away. Probably more than just six months or a year. But no longer than twenty-five years. In any case, the well had now started to
open its mouth. Ryuji stuck the blade of the shovel into the space they’d made so far and pushed.
“Okay, when I give the signal, I want you to lean on the handle.”
Asakawa turned around.
“Ready? One, two, three, push!”
As Asakawa leaned on the makeshift lever, Ryuji pushed on the side of the cap with both hands. With an agonized shriek, the lid fell to the ground.
The lip of the well was faintly damp. Asakawa and Ryuji picked up their flashlights, placed their other hands on the wet rim, and pulled themselves up. Before shining light into the well, they moved their heads and shoulders into the roughly fifty-centimeter gap between the top of the well and the floor above. A putrid smell arose on the cold air. The space inside the well was so dense that they felt if they let go their hands they’d be sucked in. She was here, all right. This woman with extraordinary supernatural power, with testicular feminization syndrome … “Woman” wasn’t even the right word. The biological distinction between male and female depended on the structure of the gonads. No matter how beautifully feminine the body, if those gonads were in the form of testes it was a male. Asakawa didn’t know whether he should consider Sadako Yamamura a man or a woman. Since her parents had named her Sadako, it seemed they had intended to raise her as a woman. This morning, on the boat to Atami, Ryuji had said, Don’t you think a person with both male and female genitals is the ultimate symbol of power and beauty? Come to think of it, Asakawa had once seen something in an art book that had made him doubt his eyes. A perfectly mature female nude was reclining on a slab of stone, with a splendid example of the male genitalia peeking out from between her thighs …
“Can you see anything?” asked Ryuji. The beams of their flashlights showed that water had collected in the bottom of the well, about four or five meters down. But they didn’t know how deep the water was.
“There’s water down there.” Ryuji scuffled around, tying the end of the rope to a post.
“Okay, point your flashlight downward and hold it over the edge. Don’t drop it, whatever you do.”
He’s planning to go down in there. As he realized this, Asakawa’s legs began to shake. What if I have to go down … Now, finally, with the narrow, vertical tunnel staring him in the face, Asakawa’s imagination started to work on him. I can’t do it. Go into that black water and do what? Fish around for bones, that’s what. There’s no way I can do that, I’ll go crazy. As he gratefully watched Ryuji lower himself into the hole, he prayed to God that his turn would never come.
His eyes were accustomed to the dark now, and he could see the moss covering the inner surface of the well. The stones of the wall, in the orange beam of his flashlight, seemed to turn into eyes and noses and mouths, and when he couldn’t tear his gaze away, the patterns of the stones transformed into dead faces, distorted with demonic cries at their moment of death. Innumerable evil spirits undulated like seaweed, hands outstretched toward the exit. He couldn’t drive away the image. A pebble fell into the ghastly shaft, barely a meter across, echoed against the sides of the well, and was swallowed into the gullets of the evil spirits.
Ryuji wormed his body into the space between the top of the well and the floorboards, wrapped the rope around his hands, and slowly let himself down. Soon he was standing on the bottom. His legs were submerged up to his knees. It wasn’t very deep.
“Hey, Asakawa! Go get the bucket. Oh, and the thin rope, too.”
The bucket was where they’d left it, on the balcony. Asakawa crawled out from underneath the cabin. It was dark outside. But it still felt far brighter than under the foundation. What a feeling of release! So much pure air! He looked around at the cabins: only A-1, by the road, emitted any light. He made a point of not looking at his watch. The warm, friendly voices spilling from A-1 seemed to constitute a separate world, floating in the distance. They were the sounds of dinnertime. He didn’t have to look at his watch to know what time it must be.
He returned to the lip of the well, where he tied the bucket and shovel to the end of the rope and lowered them down. Ryuji shoveled earth from the bottom of the well into the bucket. From time to time he’d crouch and run his fingers through the mud, searching for something, but he didn’t find anything.
“Haul the bucket up!” he shouted. With his belly braced against the edge of the well, Asakawa pulled up the bucket, then dumped the mud and rocks out on the ground before lowering the empty bucket back down into the well. It seemed that quite a bit of dirt and sand had drifted into the well before it had been sealed. Ryuji dug and dug, but without turning up Sadako’s beautiful limbs.
“Hey, Asakawa.” Ryuji paused in his labors and looked up. Asakawa didn’t reply. “Asakawa! Something wrong up there?”
Asakawa wanted to reply: Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.
“You haven’t said a word this whole time. At least, you know, call out encouragement or something. I’m getting a bit melancholy down here.”
Asakawa said nothing.
“Well, then, how about a song? Something by Hibari Misora, maybe.”
Asakawa still said nothing.
“Hey! Asakawa. Are you still there? I know you didn’t faint on me.”
“I’m … I’m fine,” he managed to mutter.
“You’re a pain in the ass, that’s what you are.” Ryuji spat out the words and jammed the tip of the shovel into the water. How many times had he done this now? The water level was slowly dropping, but still there were no signs of what they were looking for. He could see the bucket climbing more and more slowly. Then, finally, it stopped. Asakawa let it slip out of his hands. He’d had it raised about half the height of the well, and now it plunged back down again. Ryuji managed to avoid a direct hit, but he got splashed from head to toe with muddy water. Along with anger came the realization that Asakawa was at the limit of his strength.
“Sonofabitch! Are you trying to kill me?” Ryuji climbed up the rope. “Your turn.”
My turn! Shocked, Asakawa stood up, banging his head hard on the floorboards in the process. “Wait, Ryuji, it’s okay, I’m alright, I’ve still got some strength left,” Asakawa stammered. Ryuji poked his head out of the well.
“No you haven’t, not an ounce. Your turn.”
“Just, just hold on. Let me catch my second wind.”
“We’d be here ’til dawn.”
Ryuji shined the light in Asakawa’s face. There was a strange look in his eyes. Fear of death had stolen his reason. One look told Ryuji that Asakawa was no longer capable of rational judgment. Between shoveling muddy water into a bucket and hauling that bucket four or five meters straight up, it didn’t take much to see which was the harder job.
“Down you go.” Ryuji pushed Asakawa toward the well.
“No—wait—I—it’s …”
“What?”
“I’m claustrophobic.”
“Don’t be silly.”
Asakawa continued to cringe, unmoving. The water at the bottom of the well trembled slightly.
“I can’t do it. I can’t go down there.”
Ryuji grabbed Asakawa by the collar and slapped him twice. “Snap out of it. ‘I can’t go down there.’ You’ve got death staring you in the face, and you might be able to do something about it, and now you say you can’t do it? Don’t be a worm. It’s not just your own life at stake here, you know. Remember that phone call? You ready to take sweet babykins down into the darkness with you?”
He thought about his wife and daughter. He couldn’t afford to be a coward. He held their lives in his hands. But his body wouldn’t obey him.
“Is this really going to work, though?” But there was no purpose in his voice; he knew it was pointless to even ask the question now. Ryuji relaxed his grip on his collar.
“Shall I tell you a little more about Professor Miura’s theory? There are three conditions that have to be met in order for a malevolent will to remain in the world after death. An enclosed space, water, and a slow death. One, two, three. In other words,
if someone dies slowly, in an enclosed space, with water present, then usually that person’s angry spirit will haunt the place. Now, look at this well. It’s a small, enclosed space. There’s water. And remember what the old lady in the video said.”
… How has your health been since then? If you spend all your time playing in the water, monsters are bound to get you.
Playing in the water. That was it. Sadako was down there under that black muddy water playing, even now. An endless, watery, underground game.
“You see, Sadako was still alive when she was dropped into this well. And while she waited for death she coated the very walls with her hatred. All three conditions were met in her case.”
“So?”
“So, according to Professor Miura, it’s easy to exorcise such a curse. We just free her. We take her bones out of this nasty old well, have a nice memorial service, and lay her to rest in the soil of her native place. We bring her up into the wide, bright world.”
A while before, when he’d crawled out from under the cabin to get the bucket, Asakawa had felt an indescribable sense of liberation. Were they supposed to provide Sadako with the same thing? Was that what she wanted?
“So that’s the charm?”
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
Ryuji grabbed Asakawa’s collar again. “Think! There’s nothing certain in our future! All we can hope for is a vague continuation. But in spite of that, you’re going to keep on living. You can’t give up on life just because it’s vague. It’s a question of possibilities. The charm … There might be a lot of other things Sadako wants. But there’s a good possibility that taking her remains out of here will break the curse of the video.”
Asakawa twisted his face and screamed silently. Enclosed space, water, and slow death, he says. Those three conditions allow the strongest survival of an evil spirit, he says. Where’s the proof that anything that fraud Miura said is true?
“If you understand me, you’ll go down into the well.”