Occultic;Nine Volume 2

by Chiyomaru Shikura

  Fifty bodies? A hundred more? A chill ran down my back. “What the hell is going on?”

  site 34: Kiryu Kusakabe

  You know what the world of the dead is like? There are lots of wanna-be psychics and high-and-mighty philosophers who’ll tell you all sorts of crap about it, but they’re all full of shit. Everything you’ve seen about the spirit world in movies, in manga, in books? It’s all so totally wrong, it’s laughable. Barely any living humans know what it’s like after you die.

  But — and this is important — there are a few people out there who do. I’m one of them, actually. Why do I know what it’s like, you ask? I don’t even have to explain. The reason is ’cause, again and again, I’ve died.

  The first day I died, it was way too goddamn hot, and the cicadas were annoying as hell. When it happened, this fake version of me showed up out of nowhere. For a second, I thought I had split in two, but I quickly realized I was wrong. The other me was still asleep, and he wasn’t getting up.

  That’s when I realized... The other me wasn’t my double. I was dead.

  Well, it wasn’t that complicated to figure out. What had happened was obvious enough that even a shithead like me could get it. Honestly, the fact that I’d thought I’d split in two, even for a second, just goes to show that I’ve got the brains of a monkey.

  I’d committed suicide. As a result, my spirit had left my body, I guess. I’d thought I’d died, but all I’d done was separate my body and soul. I was able to quickly get back into my body. Ironically, it was after I died that I started to really think about my life a little.

  After that, by the way, I died a bunch more times, and each time I was able to go back to my body. After trying it a bunch of times, I finally realized how fucking crazy this power is. People say that if you’re willing to die, you can do anything, and man, have they got that right.

  One time, I was outside my body having fun, and I stayed out a bit longer than I’d intended. I was away from it for like two weeks. And even then, I didn’t have any problems.

  It does put a lot of stress on my body, though, so I can’t do it that often. If you do it too much, the next day your joints hurt so much you can’t get out of bed. You’d think your bones had all fused together. If I did it for too long, I might die for real. Never tried that, though.

  Oh, and there’s one more thing. I don’t quite get how this works, but time flows differently when you’re a ghost and when you’re in the real world.

  It’s strange, but what feels like a long time as a ghost isn’t that much time at all in the real world. I’ve come up with this theory that when I’m a ghost, I’m seeing the future at an incredible speed. And when I get back to my body, barely any time’s passed at all. You might not believe it, but I mean, we’re talking about ghosts to begin with. Who knows how any of this shit works?

  So anyway, here’s where it gets interesting. A few years ago, I was near Musashi-Seki on the Seibu Shinjuku Line, doing one of my “wandering experiments.” It was pretty late, and all the houses around me had their lights off.

  Then I ran into this girl. It was cold as shit, but she didn’t have a coat on, or any shoes, and she was just kind of staggering down the road. I got curious and followed her, and I see this dumb bitch is about to duck under a guard rail and fling herself in front of a fucking train. The train’s coming down the tracks, and the conductor’s blaring the warning siren as loud as he possibly can.

  I don’t have the slightest idea why, but even with all this noise I can hear exactly what she’s saying. I can hear her even though she’s got her mouth closed. It was probably the voice of her heart, I think.

  Anyway, so I can hear her. It’s the one time I ever really felt like a ghost.

  I didn’t know the details, but the girl’s about to kill herself. She keeps telling herself that if she dies, she’ll be happy.

  I may be a ghost, but even I don’t much feel like seeing a girl get ground to mincemeat by a goddamn train. So I try calling out to her with my mind. It’s the first time since I became a ghost that I’ve tried this.

  And then...

  This girl hears me, even though I ain’t even really there, and do you know what she calls me? She calls me a devil! Man, I was laughing my ass off! And the bitch of the thing is this: she calls me a devil, but instead of being afraid, she likes me! Talk about a crazy-ass suicidal bitch! But eh, I ended up kind of liking being called a devil.

  That’s when my relationship with the girl began. It was a pain in the ass to keep up a conversation with this crazy chick all the time, but one day she comes to me and say she wants to open a “Black Magic Agency.” And then I get an idea.

  —There’s money here, I think.

  I mean, this girl’s got a real devil on her side. Y’know, me.

  The chick’s a bit of a drama queen, actually. A drama queen with a vivid imagination. Sometimes I wonder if she ain’t hypnotizing herself somehow. She never doubts me.

  Maybe that’s why I’ve been able to stay her partner for almost two years. But lately, things have been getting a little strange around me. My bad feeling started around the time this guy Hashigami’s hair showed up in the House of Crimson’s mailbox. The girl was starting to freak out, and that was a pain in the ass for me.

  At this rate, she might break the deal, and then I’d lose my golden goose. So what to do?

  First, I’d start by finding out who these people were who were trying to find out about her. Of course, I’d have her help me.

  And so I go to her shop, and for the first time, she starts saying some weird stuff.

  “I can hear your voice more clearly than usual this morning, I think.”

  “No shit, huh? Interesting.” I almost bust out laughing. “Yeah, I bet you can. Heh.”

  But I didn’t give a crap.

  site 35: Toko Sumikaze

  I came into work at my usual time, and the whole office was in an uproar. It was even worse than when Dr. Hashigami died. Nobody was working. Some people were glued to the TV, some were sitting on the internet looking things up, and others were calling every expert they knew.

  What was going on? Had something big happened? I was running a little late that morning, so I hadn’t really seen the news.

  I took off my coat and headed to the sofa we used for guests, where the editor-in-chief was sitting. That was where the biggest TV in the editorial office was.

  “Good morning. What happened?” But even when I spoke to him, the editor-in-chief just nodded a little and turned back to the TV screen. There were ten or so other editors around him, and they all had serious looks on their faces.

  I turned my eyes to the screen. There was some text in the top left. When I read it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Over seventy bodies found in Inokashira Lake”

  “What? Seventy?”

  They’d found seventy bodies? Was Inokashira Lake even that big? It couldn’t have been very deep.

  And that park was pretty busy, even on weekdays, and right near Kichijoji Station. They’d found seventy bodies in a place that was frequented by that many people? Was that possible?

  The TV screen was showing an aerial shot of Inokashira Park. There was a male reporter aboard the helicopter, trying his best to remain calm (and utterly failing). “It’s been three, no, four hours since the first body was found. The scene is in chaos as even more officers arrive. You can see the whole of the park from up here, and you can see officers on boats pulling up bodies. Many of them seem to belong to women and children. This can only be described as a nightmare!”

  Just like the reporter said, I could see police pulling bodies out of the water. They were all fully clothed. It was so terrible I couldn’t speak.

  Often, drowned bodies will build up gas in their stomachs and swell, but I couldn’t see many bodies like that here. Maybe it hadn’t been that long since they’d died.

  “Can they really show those bodies?” The editor-in-chief whispered.

 
; At the exact same time, as if he’d somehow heard him, the reporter on screen turned to the camera with teary eyes and yelled. “Cameraman, try not to show the bodies! They keep ending up onscreen! We can’t let the viewers see that—”

  And then the screen cut away. This time it was showing a female reporter inside the park. “We just got new information in! The police have now discovered over a hundred bodies! That’s right, the police say they’ve found over one hundred bodies!”

  “Ascension...” A hundred. It didn’t seem real.

  “There are still more bodies at the bottom of the lake, and in the end, they say it’s likely there will be over two hundred. They’re having trouble pulling them all out, and no luck at all identifying them so far.” And then there was another loud sound, different than the sound of the helicopter rotors above. “Look! Is that... Is that an excavator? It’s inside the park! It’s heading for the lake!”

  “Wait, don’t tell me they’re planning to dredge the lake with that thing!” The editor-in-chief yelled. “There are still bodies down there! No, not just bodies! There might be something important down there that tells us what the hell happened! And they’re going to dredge it with heavy equipment? Are the police stupid?!”

  That was a very Mumuu way to look at things, but he was right. This whole thing was crazy. It was best to preserve as much of the scene as possible. But for some reason, the cops were putting all their effort into getting the bodies up as fast as they could.

  “What happened?! Why are there so many bodies?!”

  Nobody answered me. Everybody else watching the TV was thinking the same thing I was. This was insane.

  From the look of the damage to the bodies shown onscreen, they hadn’t been dead that long. That would mean that in a very short period of time — a day or two, probably — over a hundred bodies had suddenly appeared in that lake.

  “Is this an occult phenomenon, you think?” I asked the head editor, fearfully, but all he did was nod. Nothing else.

  It wasn’t good to make guesses. Maybe we needed more information first. I brought my laptop from my desk and connected to the internet.

  How had they found all these bodies to begin with? When did they die? I wanted to know. I hit up all the news sites.

  “Over Fifty Bodies Found in Inokashira Lake”

  “Still More Bodies Found in Lake, Possibly Over Two Hundred”

  As I followed the related story links, I kept seeing headlines like that. It looked like even the police and media didn’t really have details yet. But despite that, foreign news sites like CNN and Reuters had already put up their own articles.

  Just for the hell of it, I hit up one of the aggregator sites. There was barely any information out yet, but the 2channel newsboards were filled with threads, and a real internet festival was underway.

  I opened one of the aggregator sites just to see what I’d find.

  “Over Fifty Dead Bodies Found in Inokashira Lake”

  At around 6:00 AM this morning, at Inokashira Park in Mitaka, Tokyo, the police received a report of a body floating in the lake. An investigation revealed the body of a man in his twenties or thirties in Inokashira Lake. In the same area, five more bodies of men and women were found, and the Musashino police sealed off the park and began a more thorough search. By 8:00 AM, over fifty bodies had been found, but it seems that there are still more below.

  2: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Da fuq? Fifty?

  8: Anonymous Reporting Live

  WHHAAATTT?? THERE’S THAT MANY BODIES IN THE LAKE? SINCE WHEN? SINCE WHEN?

  9: Anonymous Reporting Live

  The hell? I was just there yesterday and I saw nothing!

  10: Anonymous Reporting Live

  I went out there last year with my girlfriend on a boat. It did smell kinda bad, come to think of it.

  12: Anonymous Reporting Live

  And there’s probably more. Holy shit. How many do you think they’re gonna find?

  13: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Japan’s fucked. See you guys.

  16: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Anytime there’s a disaster, they start off by saying, “There are only a few casualties,” and then it goes up from there, right? Same thing as that. They haven’t confirmed a bunch, so the number’s still small, that’s all. It’s gonna go up. Only when the coroner looks at the bodies and says they’re dead does an “unbreathing body pulled out of the water” turn into a corpse. The bodies are all lined up in front of the coroner right now, waiting for their turn.

  17: Anonymous Reporting Live

  What’s about to happen to us?

  21: Anonymous Reporting Live

  This is crazy. This is really crazy. I’m so scared I’m going to piss myself.

  24: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Who killed all these guys? This is way more than one guy on his own could kill, dumbass.

  25: Anonymous Reporting Live

  >> 24

  Nobody said they were murdered. Take the hint. Hint: You’re the dumbass.

  26: Anonymous Reporting Live

  So what, you’re telling me it’s an accident?! Then what kind of accident was it? If anything’s impossible, it’s that. Be realistic.

  31: Anonymous Reporting Live

  It’s gotta be God in Inokashira Park. Did you know that God’s there?

  32: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Think it might be some kind of curse? There’s been a lot of nasty stuff going on in Kichijoji for a while now.

  35: Anonymous Reporting Live

  >>31

  Nobody wants to talk about that. I’m bored of that shit, anyway.

  36: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Nobody here actually thinks that this was just a series of accidents, right? That’s absolutely impossible. There has to be somebody behind this.

  54: Anonymous Reporting Live

  >>36

  Not necessarily someBODY. It could be someTHING, right? We should consider the possibility of vengeful spirits, a curse, or some kind of shamanistic element.

  61: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Did you guys know? Every year, about 80,000 people go missing in Japan. 98% of them are found, but the other 2% never are. You know what I’m getting at, right?

  63: Anonymous Reporting Live

  IT’S A TENGU! A TENGU DID IT!!!

  67: Anonymous Reporting Live

  A friend of a friend was saying, actually, that Inokashira Park was dangerous and that you should avoid it. Supposedly, if you’ve got a sixth sense, you can tell immediately.

  71: Anonymous Reporting Live

  They just drained the water from the lake and did a big cleaning a while ago, right? When was that?

  75: Anonymous Reporting Live

  >>71

  Yeah, that’s right. They did it in 2014. It was on the news. Of course, nobody found any bodies then.

  81: Anonymous Reporting Live

  There were a ton of bikes down there, remember? If there were that many bikes, you could actually maybe fit 100 people down there. The water’s dirty, so you can’t see the bottom, after all.

  83: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Are you stupid? There’s no way. Idiots like you are how conspiracy theories spread.

  84: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Where’d they die, and how’d they get into the lake, you think!?!!? Somebody tell me!! Tell me! HOLMES!

  89: Anonymous Reporting Live

  No way one guy kills 50 people. Is there some kind of mafia or cult or secret society involved? I’ve never heard about anybody like that over there.

  93: Anonymous Reporting Live

  If it was some kind of group, what crazy ritual were they doing, you think? This isn’t the middle ages. What could they be summoning that needs that many sacrifices?

  ...

  ...

  Could it be... SATAN?!

  95: Anonymous Reporting Live

  That’s scary as fuck... I�
��m never leaving my room again.

  97: Anonymous Reporting Live

  >>95

  Stay in your room your whole life, NEET.

  99: Anonymous Reporting Live

  >>97

  You can stay home and do solo hide-and-seek, and you might still go missing! Even being a NEET isn’t safe!

  112: Anonymous Reporting Live

  I’m seriously thinking it’s ghosts.

  120: Anonymous Reporting Live

  I could see maybe a killer stalking the street at night, and each day he kills one person and throws their body in the lake. Dunno if that killer’s human or inhuman, though.

  126: Anonymous Reporting Live

  Dead bodies float, don’t they? Everybody knows that. But they never found the bodies until this morning. And there’s nothing on them to indicate that they were tied down. Which means you’ve got one of two options.

  ・For some reason, the bodies weren’t floating even though they weren’t weighed down.

  ・There were no bodies in the lake yesterday, and they all appeared in a single night.

  Either way, what the hell? There’s no way to explain that without supernatural intervention.