by Kōji Suzuki
Terrifying though they sounded, Saeko knew that black holes actually existed. There was one close to the center of the Milky Way, near the Sagittarius Constellation, that was 2.5 million times the mass of the sun.
The more Saeko contemplated the vast reaches of space, the further she felt from sleep. As she lay awake on the hospital bed with her eyes closed, the shuffling of slippers interrupted her thoughts. She opened her eyes slightly to the silhouette of an old woman on the curtain that partitioned off Saeko’s bed on three sides. The old woman’s hair was pulled up in a round bun on the top of her head, and her baggy hospital gown made her distorted shadow look like the paper dolls children made to ward off rain.
Saeko had thought the other woman was asleep, but apparently she’d gone to the bathroom and was just now returning. “All right, everyone. Let’s get some shut-eye now!” the woman declared in an oddly cheerful tone as she made her way to her bed.
It was just the two of them in the room. Saeko had heard that the old woman had undergone surgery for a subarachnoid hemorrhage and had been transferred to the general ward two weeks ago for rehabilitation since she was recovering smoothly. Sometimes she suddenly let out joyful little shouts for no obvious reason—perhaps an effect of the stress her brain had been through. At dinnertime she had raised quite a commotion and startled Hashiba by complaining of a huge purple spider on the ceiling.
“Good night,” Saeko responded in a low voice, closing her eyes once more.
Even after lights out, the ward was full of sounds. The old woman rustled her sheets in the next bed over, humming happily to herself. Oogh, an old man moaned in the six-person room across the hallway, as if in pain or having a bad dream. Here and there bedsprings creaked as patients rolled over, and the footsteps of passers-by drifted in from the outward window along with the hum of traffic and the rumble of passing trains.
Having been brought to the hospital unconscious in an ambulance, Saeko knew very little about her surroundings. She had no idea what part of Ina City she was in, or what the rest of the ward was like. The lack of information was vexing. It made her uneasy to be in a place she knew so little about, in an unfamiliar city.
“Nurse, come here, please! Nurse!”
It was the voice of the old man in the room across the hall. He sobbed for help, his voice trembling, even though pressing the call button next to his pillow would have served the same purpose.
“There he goes again,” another voice lamented.
Next, Saeko heard the footsteps of a nurse coming down the hallway, their rhythm slow, as if she were in no hurry. She was probably used to being called in after lights out. Perhaps the old man just wanted some attention. In any case, the others seemed accustomed to his wails.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Yasuda? How many times do I have to tell you to use the call button?”
Saeko could hear the young woman’s low whisper faintly through the door. The old man seemed oblivious to those around him, but the nurse was at least making an effort to be quiet.
Someone began to wheeze in another room, and a number of other patients began to cough, as if triggered by the first. It reminded Saeko of the dogs baying just before the earthquake. Once the first dog started, every dog in the entire neighborhood had chimed in, like flames spreading across a dry field, filling the sky with their ominous harmony.
It wasn’t the noises that prevented Saeko from sleeping. Each individual noise triggered various associations, sparking unwelcome thoughts. The images the sounds triggered weighed her down, dragging her towards the bottom of a dark abyss. She was in no state to sleep.
Saeko tried to think about something fun. It was a trick she often employed when she was having trouble sleeping. She thought about things she was looking forward to or planned imaginary trips to places she wanted to see. Of course, the ideal travel companion would be a handsome man. If she had to pick from the men she knew, a prime candidate was Hashiba. The chances of a woman meeting a man she wouldn’t mind sleeping with were extremely low. When Saeko had first met her ex-husband, she’d felt that way about him, but by the end of their marriage the mere touch of his hand sparked a wave of loathing in her. Perhaps there was no hope of ever meeting a man she would always want to touch. But right now, Saeko felt like the possibility might exist with Hashiba. The kindness he’d shown in this hospital room had spurred the positive emotions she felt toward him. But the fact that he was thirty-five, like Saeko, was a bad sign. The chances of him being single were slim.
Still, she was free to fantasize. Saeko imagined drawing close to Hashiba. It didn’t excite her so much as inspire a slow, melting feeling. She imagined not the act of love, but the resonance of it, his warmth enveloping her. She relaxed her shoulders, then her back, then her arms and legs all the way to her fingers and toes, letting herself drift in the sweet fantasy.
How many hours had passed since she’d turned off her bedside lamp? Saeko wasn’t sure if she’d nodded off for five minutes or an hour. Both of her eyes were still closed, but her mind had popped back into wakefulness. Something had woken her up, but she didn’t know what it was.
Without opening her eyes, Saeko probed with her other senses to gauge her surroundings. The space was full with a strange presence. There was a wall behind Saeko’s head and the other three sides of the bed were curtained off. To her left, the curtain nearest the hallway was fluttering gently. She could feel the faint breeze caused by its movement against her cheek.
Someone had pushed through the curtain and come inside.
That someone was standing right next to Saeko’s bed, looking down at her. Saeko could sense it clearly even with her eyes shut. The image crystallized in her consciousness and bore down on her.
She tried to raise a hand but couldn’t move, tried to cry out but found her throat constricted. Even her eyelids were paralyzed, and she couldn’t open them. Perhaps this was what it felt like to fall into a black hole—she had lost all control of her body. It was the same intense sleep paralysis that she always suffered.
She could hear the intruder breathing in and out, not in one spot, but slowly crawling across the room, low to the floor. The presence gave off a familiar stench, and Saeko knew exactly whose smell it was. A sour smell, like rancid sweat.
Tsk! a tongue clucked. I waited for you!
The voice didn’t enter through her ears. Instead, its message penetrated directly into her mind. The voice’s owner was angry at her that she hadn’t come. She heard the muffled jingle of a bundle of keys at the level of her mattress.
By now, Saeko was almost sure she knew who was standing next to her bed.
She couldn’t move her arms or legs, open her eyes, or speak. She didn’t even know if this was reality or a nightmare. Her heart pounded wildly, revealing her body’s honest response.
As always, Saeko felt as if she were trapped in a globe of darkness. It’s my mind that’s trapped, not my body, she told herself fervently. If only she could move a finger or a toe ever so slightly, it might free her entire body from whatever was holding it captive. But try as she might, Saeko couldn’t do it. Her fingertips wouldn’t move even a hair.
Help! she screamed, but her voice found no outlet. The scream only resonated inside her body, making her feel all the more suffocated.
The area around her chest felt drafty; the covers must have gotten tangled up somehow. Yes—earlier the blanket had been pulled up over her shoulders, but now it was all bunched up like a snake’s skin at her navel.
Through the thin cotton of the hospital gown, Saeko felt someone’s fingertips grazing her skin. The touch was so light, it felt less like fingers and more like someone breathing on her from close up.
The sensation grazed her nipples and slid between her breasts, slipped through the opening in her hospital garment and across the outside of her left breast. Suddenly, Saeko felt a stabbing pain. The fingertip was no longer barely detectable. It bore down sharply and deliberately into a single spot, digging in with a fingerna
il.
Ouch!
It wasn’t pain, exactly. The strong sensation startled her more than anything else.
The voice responded immediately. “Keep this up, and you’ll be one of us soon enough.”
With that, the presence was suddenly gone, leaving behind only the dull ache in Saeko’s breast.
The tingling in her breast spread in one direction down her torso and into her lower body, while at the same time crawling up her shoulders and neck. It continued to diverge and spread until shades of the sensation enveloped her entire body and at last she found she could move again—first her fingers and toes, then her hands and feet.
When she could feel beyond a doubt that there was no longer anyone next to her, Saeko slowly opened both eyes. A single miniature bulb glowed over the curtain at the foot of her bed, and there was more light in the room than she had imagined. The curtain nearest the corridor—the one where she had sensed someone standing moments ago—seemed both still and in motion.
Saeko didn’t know what to think. Had an actual person really been next to her? Or had it just been a hallucination brought on by her sleep paralysis?
There was one way to tell. Saeko pressed the palm of her hand to her breast. Trembling with fear, her fingers probed the surface of the sore spot in her left breast. She couldn’t tell by touch alone whether there was a fingernail mark on her breast. But there was no mistaking the spot. Even now, the ache lingered, and she could feel the lump under the skin.
It was round and hard, and roughly a centimeter in diameter—the same lump she’d discovered ten days ago and stubbornly ignored, telling herself it was probably mastitis. Dismissing it as such and denying that it might be breast cancer had enabled her to maintain temporary peace of mind in the midst of her busy work schedule.
And now someone’s finger had pinpointed and pressed down on the spot with complete conviction. Was it just a coincidence? Or had Saeko’s repressed fears reared their heads and given birth to a hallucination by way of warning?
The shiver that ran down Saeko’s spine shook the entire mattress, making the springs creak audibly. She couldn’t control her shaking, which built up into convulsive waves. She crossed her hands across her chest, pressing down to contain the scream that threatened to rise from her throat.
As another convulsion seized her, the old man across the hallway moaned once more. Oogh …
A toilet flushed, and the sound of the tank refilling seemed to go on forever, punctuated by the sound of a light bulb burning out in the hallway.
Saeko twisted her body, reaching for the call button. But what exactly would she say to the nurse when she came?
I was having a sleep paralysis attack, and there was a ghost next to my bed …
Or perhaps she should ask the nurse point blank if there was a man called Seiji Fujimura staying in this hospital. It was the only rational explanation. Before they had started shooting that day at the Fujimuras’ house, Seiji had hovered so close to Saeko he was practically touching her. As soon as they’d started filming, he had made himself scarce, and Saeko hadn’t seen him since. But he could still have been lurking nearby when the earthquake struck, and it was entirely possible that he too had been injured and brought to the same hospital. What if he’d learned that Saeko was staying here and had snuck into her room in the middle of the night? But even if he had, that didn’t explain how he could have known exactly where to find the lump in her breast.
The possibility that he had zeroed in on a fear Saeko had locked away inside chilled her more than anything.
Before she pressed the call button, Saeko checked the clock: 11:55 p.m. Morning was still a long ways away; the night was only just beginning. What if he came back again in the night? She was far too frightened to sleep.
She needed to talk to another human being. Anyone. She needed that reassurance. Without another moment’s hesitation, Saeko pressed the call button.
Please, come!
She understood only too well how the sobbing old man across the hallway must feel.
Chapter 2: Rift
1In mid-December, almost three weeks after Saeko had returned to Tokyo, there were frequent reports of earthquakes in the Ina area, where Saeko had been hospitalized.
Ina City was built right on top of an active fault and had always been prone to earthquakes, but recently especially so. In the past there had often been minor tremors, but the earthquake that had struck while Saeko was at the Fujimura residence seemed to have triggered the recent rash of temblors. The newscaster explained that they were caused by a shift in the active fault.
Whenever there was a news story about an earthquake, the events of the night Saeko had passed in the hospital in Ina came flooding back.
Her body still retained a vivid memory of being paralyzed while a man standing next to her bed fingered her breast.
The terror had lasted for only one night thanks to a visit from Hashiba the following afternoon.
Hashiba’s visit instantly inspired an assortment of conflicting emotions in Saeko. The nurse she’d called for solace that night hadn’t taken her seriously and left her alone to tremble at shadows. Too terrified of the same thing happening again to sleep, she’d lain awake for the rest of the night, counting the minutes until dawn.
The only person who could possibly understand, and might even be able to help, was Hashiba. Just as she had hoped, he came to see her the next day during a break in filming. He listened to everything she had to say and then inquired with the registration desk as to whether a Seiji Fujimura had been admitted to the hospital. There was nobody in the hospital by that name, deepening the mystery, but the mere fact that Hashiba had taken her seriously meant a great deal to Saeko. He could have just dismissed her story as a dream or hallucination, but the way he sincerely tried to understand what she had been through was a tremendous comfort to Saeko.
When he left that day, he told her, “I have to return to Tokyo this evening, but please let me know when you’re ready to go home and I’ll come and get you.” He’d jotted down his cell number on a piece of paper, and sure enough, the day Saeko was released, he’d driven all the way from Tokyo to pick her up.
On the highway heading back towards Tokyo from Ina, Hashiba had spoken excitedly about his plans for the project. If the program got good ratings, Hashiba was confident that the station would grant him another similar project. If they did, would Saeko consider collaborating again?
She was thrilled that Hashiba had kept his promise, driving all the way out to the hospital in Ina to give her a ride home, even though she knew he had his hands full editing the footage from the project. It was pretty common for men to make all sorts of sweet promises and never follow through on them, but Hashiba was different. He appeared to be the type who kept his word. Saeko knew right away that if he were given a follow-up project, she’d agree to work with him again, unconditionally.
Since getting out of the hospital in Ina and returning to Tokyo, she had been swamped with work. The tests they ran at the hospital had shown no abnormalities in her brain, and they had let her go after four days of observation. Still, she found herself scrambling day and night to make up for lost time.
She’d had someone else cover the interview in Gifu, but she wrote the article, sending it in by e-mail from her assignment in Hokkaido. It was touch and go, but she’d pulled it off in the end. That was a week ago.
The day before yesterday, Hashiba had called. When they met, he informed her jubilantly that the program had garnered stellar ratings and that the station was likely to give him another assignment dealing with a missing persons case. “Thanks to you!” he’d added. Hashiba’s words of appreciation made Saeko all the more glad to have been involved.
When he was appointed chief director of the next project, Hashiba extended an official request that Saeko collaborate once again.
Bolstered by a series in a monthly magazine put out by a major publisher and a highly successful pilot, the project would have a generous
budget at its disposal.
When she heard the news, Saeko informed Hashiba and Maezono that there was a limit to what she could unearth alone and proposed that they bring on board a highly skilled professional to make the investigations that much more efficient and accurate.
Both clients consented, agreeing that they would split the cost and jointly reap the benefits of the additional information.
Saeko had a file open in her lap and was just using the remote control to turn off the TV when the phone rang in the living room. She picked up the receiver. The voice on the other end belonged to the exact person she had been thinking of calling: Kitazawa.
“Oh, god. I was just going to call you,” she told him.
“Synchronicity. Which is what I’m calling about, actually. The other day you brought in a file about some missing persons in Itoigawa, right? Well, our office got a request to investigate a disappearance from Itoigawa right around the same time.”
“The same case?” Saeko had copied the documents in the file from editor-in-chief Maezono and left them with Kitazawa.
“No. A different one.”
“You mean, three separate people vanished from Itoigawa right around the same time? By pure coincidence?”
“We should assume they’re connected. The young lady who disappeared was a Mizuho Takayama, age 27, single. She lived with her parents in Musashino, Tokyo. She was the editor of a trade journal. She disappeared in the middle of September of last year. Her parents are the ones who came to us. Mizuho Takayama was visiting Itoigawa to do a report on jade handicrafts when she went missing. Her family’s pretty well off. Her parents had a criminal investigation done, but it didn’t turn up a single clue. They came to us as a last resort. ’Course, there’s only so much we can do, a year after the disappearance.”