Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination

by EDOGAWA RAMPO

  When I heard these words I began to feel even more uneasy. I didn't quite know what to make of the term "somnambulism"—nor exactly what tragic implications it held. From what I had heard about sleepwalking in the past, I understood that it was a state in which the body came under the control of the subconscious. As I began to think about what this might mean to me, I began to shudder. Supposing, I told myself, I were to commit some crime during one of my trances?

  Two days later I was a complete mental wreck. Unable to eat, and naturally unable to sleep for fear I would commit some violence while in die mysterious realm of the subconscious, I realized that I would never have another moment of peace unless I had medical help. So I went to see a doctor I knew.

  After examining me, the doctor told me frankly that I was a somnambulist. "But you need have no undue fears," he added, with what I considered unwarranted optimism. "Actually, yours is not a very serious case—provided you do not aggravate your condition by overstraining your mental energies. Calm yourself as much as you can; try to live a regular, normal, healthy life; and I am sure yon will be cured."

  With these words he dismissed me, but I was far from relieved. Quite to the contrary, now that I definitely knew myself to be a somnambulist, I began to worry even more. Losing complete interest in my studies, I wasted away the hours of each day doing nothing but fretting over my fate—often wishing that I had never been born.

  The days dragged on, every daylight hour like a century of agony; yet they were nothing compared to the tortures that awaited me at night. Fearing the unknown, I dared not sleep except in snatches. At last, however, a whole month had passed without a single untoward incident, and I began to feel somewhat reassured. "Maybe the doctor was right after all," I told myself. "If I can just stop worrying, I'll be fine."

  I was on the point of believing that I had been making a mountain out of a molehill, and that if anything, I was just a victim of badly shattered nerves—when something dreadful happened, again casting me into the deepest abyss of despair.

  One morning, shortly after getting up, I found an unfamiliar object—somebody's watch—ticking loudly a few inches away from my pillow. With all my previous fears again surging into my breast like mad ocean waves, I picked the watch up with a shaking hand and tried to figure out to whom it could possibly belong. Suddenly, as if in answer to my fears, I heard a shout from an adjoining room.

  "I can't find my watch! I can't find my watch!" someone yelled, and I immediately recognized the voice as that of another lodger in the same house, a clerk employed by a trading company.

  "So it's happened at last!" I told myself. "Just as I feared, I've committed a crime—without knowing it." Perspiring profusely and my heart beating wildly, I rushed to the room of my schoolmate and asked for his assistance in returning the watch, which I had evidently stolen from the clerk. My friend agreed and took the watch back to the clerk. Once he had explained that I was a somnambulist, the clerk was very understanding and agreed to consider the incident closed and forgotten.

  After that shocking incident, however, word quickly got around that I was an incurable sleepwalker. Even in my classroom, I knew that the other students were talking about me behind my back.

  With all my heart I yearned to be cured of my horrible affliction. There had to be a way out—some way out— and I was determined to find it, regardless of whatever sacrifice this might entail. Every day I bought and read books by the armful, tried various types of calisthenics to improve my health, and consulted several doctors. Far from improving, however, my condition went from bad to worse.

  At first, the fits came over me only once or twice a month, fits in which my subconscious mind completely dominated my actions. And every time I learned what had happened only by seeing what I had taken or what I had left behind in some unfamiliar place. If only I hadn't left these evidences of my nocturnal wanderings, I told myself, it wouldn't be so bad. And yet, if I did not leave any evidence, then how was I ever to know what type of felony I had unconsciously committed?

  One night I strayed out of my lodging house at about midnight and began to wander about the graveyard of a temple in the neighborhood. It happened that one of the office clerks who lived in the same house with me was returning from a late party, and as he came along the street beside the graveyard, he caught sight of my quietly moving figure beyond the low hedge. He quickly spread the report that a ghost was haunting the temple grounds. Later, when it was discovered that I had been the "ghost," I became the laughingstock of the whole neighborhood.

  But, as you can well imagine, it was no laughing matter for me. Instead, it was a horrible tragedy from which I now seemed to have no escape. As for the nights—those quiet moments of darkness and calm which spell restful-ness to all ordinary human beings—they meant but one thing so far as I was concerned—fear. My state of mind finally became such that I grew to fear the very word "night"—and everything connected with the ritual of sleep.

  Meanwhile, I continued to delve deeper and deeper into the workings of the human mind. What strange mechanism makes one act so abnormally, I asked myself over and over again. I was thankful that, despite all my anguish, I had not so far committed a serious crime. But what would happen, I asked myself, if I were to become responsible for some fatal tragedy? According to the many books on sleepwalking which I had accumulated and read with deepest absorption, ghastly crimes had been committed by somnambulists. Was it then not possible that I too might commit some such bloody act as murder?

  Once caught in this web of thought, I could contain myself no longer. Deciding that the best course was to abandon my studies and return home, I wrote a long letter to my parents, explaining all the circumstances and asking their advice. And it was while I waited impatiently for a reply that the very catastrophe which I most feared actually came to pass. . . .

  All this while Saito had been sitting motionless on his square cushion, taking in every word as if hypnotized. Outside, the sun was beginning to set, and as the New Year bustle of this popular hot-spring resort was now over, the absolute stillness seemed ominous.

  During the brief pause which he allowed himself, Ihara eyed Saito intently, trying to fathom the others reaction to his story, while simultaneously trying to place the strange resemblance of his listener to another face which he had once known. . . somewhere. . . . Still unable to remember where, he again picked up the thread of his narrative:

  To return to my story, the most shocking moment of my life came in the fall of 1907. . .a long time ago, to be sure. However, I remember every detail as if it had all taken place yesterday.

  One morning I was suddenly awakened from a restless sleep by a loud noise in the house. Quickly I got out of bed, deeply alarmed. "Did I have another fit during the night?" was the first question I asked myself. If so, what had I done? Secretly praying that it was nothing serious, I glanced quickly around the room, and suddenly I saw a mysterious bundle, in a cloth wrapper, placed just inside the door of my room.

  Under normal circumstances I would have examined the contents of the unknown parcel, but in this particular case I was too gripped with fear and foreboding to act rationally. So instead of even attempting to satisfy my curiosity, I snatched up the bundle and threw it into the closet. This done, I looked around furtively, like a thief, and only after I had made absolutely certain that I had been unobserved did I emit a sigh of relief. Just then someone knocked on my door, and when I opened it I found a fellow-lodger standing outside in the narrow corridor, his face pale as a sheet.

  "Say, Ihara," the man said with a shiver, "something terrible's happened! Old man Murata, our landlord, has been murdered. Everybody suspects a burglar, but you'd better come along and join the rest of us. Someone has already telephoned the police, and they'll soon be here!"

  You can well imagine how I felt when I heard this tragic news. My heart stopped beating, my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth, and I could not utter a sound. As in a nightmare, I followed the other to the
scene of the tragedy.

  The ghastly sight which met my eyes there made me all but faint. Even now, twenty long years later, I can still see the eyes of the dead old keeper of the lodging house staring madly and boring right into my own—as if in silent accusation.

  [Ihara paused again and with the sleeve of his kimono wiped away the beads of perspiration that dotted his brow.]

  Yes [he continued with a shudder], I can remember every detail vividly. From the excited chatter of the others in the room, I managed to learn the details of what had evidently taken place. It seemed that on the particular night of the tragedy the old lodging-house keeper had slept alone in his room. The next morning one of the maids had thought it strange that he was not yet awake since he had always been the first to rise, and she had gone to awaken him and made her gruesome discovery. When he was found, old man Murata was lying flat on his back, strangled in his sleep with the flannel muffler he had always worn, even to bed.

  Soon the police arrived on the scene. In looking for evidence, they discovered that several items belonging to the dead man were missing, namely, the keys which he had always kept in his purse, plus a large fortune in securities which had disappeared together with the small portable cash-box in which they had been kept. Also, further examination showed that the main door had not been locked on the preceding night because he had expected his wife and son to return late. So it had been quite a simple matter for the murder or murderers to gain admission to the house. As for on-the-spot clues, there was but one item—a soiled handkerchief—and this the police officers took with them for minute laboratory inspection.

  Meanwhile, after I had seen enough of the murder scene to want to linger any longer, I stealthily withdrew to my own room. After I had locked the door, my first thought flew to the closet where I had hidden the mysterious bundle. "What's in it?" I asked myself with horror. "Is this to be a real case of a skeleton in a closet?" Even before I took out the bundle and examined the contents, I knew what I would find. Inside the package, I found the victim's missing securities.

  Not long after, the police took me into custody. Even without the damaging evidence of the stolen securities, which the police found in my possession, the case against me seemed conclusive, for the handkerchief which had been found at the scene of the crime was mine.

  The days that followed were like a nightmare. Cast into a cell, I was questioned incessantly for hours on end. Finally, they brought along a mental specialist—a psychiatrist I believe he was—and after asking his expert opinion as to my case, the police also called various tenants of the lodging house to give testimony. Many who knew me well testified that, so far as they knew, I came from a respectable family and that they could not imagine me turning into a ruthless killer just for the sake of money. Others swore that I was a sleepwalker, and promptly cited several instances where, they claimed, I had acted abnormally, but without seeming to be conscious of my own conduct.

  Another person who testified was my father, who came up specially from our home town to try to save me from hanging. I remember that he hired three lawyers for my defense.

  Other witnesses for the defense were my friend Kimura —the very person who first discovered that I was a somnambulist—and several of my classmates. Even now, my heart goes out in gratitude to these staunch friends, for they spared no effort on my behalf.

  As was to be expected in so complicated an affair, the trial which eventually got under way dragged on and on, with the prosecution and defense waging a bitter struggle. Fortunately for me, however, the testimony of the many witnesses for the defense was so convincing that I was finally handed the verdict of not guilty.

  But, you are sorely mistaken if you think even for a moment that this verdict restored my peace of mind. Now, although I was declared innocent, the murder still remained to be solved. Who had done it? Inside my tortured mind a terrifying voice kept repeating: "You are a murderer! You are a fiend! You have cheated the rope, but you cannot escape your own conscience!"

  As soon as I was free, I went home with my father, and shortly afterward, I fell desperately ill. Had it been a physical ailment, I would no doubt have soon recovered. But this was something different—a mystic mental disease for which there seemed to be no known cure. Finally, after six months, I managed to get up, but all the time I knew, and so did my family, that I was no longer normal. Instead I was a man without a soul—a mental cripple destined to live the remainder of my life in anguish and misery. Thus did my normal life end.

  Soon after, my younger brother succeeded my father as head of the family, while I continued to live on as a parasite, always dependent upon the labor, compassion, and resources of others. In this way, twenty miserable years have dragged by—and today I am the monstrosity that you see before you—seemingly normal outside, but a hideous cripple inside. Compared to the ugliness of my mental structure, Mr. Saito, I consider your physical features to be positively handsome.

  The narrators face broke into a smile, and he repeated: "Yes, you're handsome, my good man. Compared to me, you're handsome!" Caught by the ironic humor of his own statement, Ihara broke into an eerie laugh. After a while, however, he quieted down and drew the tea things nearer to him. "Forgive me," he apologized, noticing the other's frowning. "I was not laughing at you—no one but myself can appreciate the humor of my life story."

  Saito cleared his throat. "A tragic story indeed," he commented. "Strange how wrong one can be in one's first impressions. From the very first time I saw you, I took you to be a contented man of leisure. But tell me one thing. Are you still a somnambulist? Do you still wander in your sleep and. . .er. . .commit crimes?"

  Ihara smiled again. "Strange to relate," he replied, "I have never had another fit since the old man was murdered. According to the opinion of different doctors, my 'somnambulistic nerves' must have been paralyzed by the shock I suffered at the lodging house. Can you now imagine why I laughed at myself a moment ago? Can't you realize what a comic figure I have cut these past twenty years, wasted in fear of something which was never more to happen?"

  Again, Ihara began to laugh, but Saito cut him short. "One moment," he said. "Tell me something about that friend of yours at the lodging house—the man you called Kimura. He was the one who first called attention to your somnambulism, wasn't he?"

  Ihara nodded. "Yes, he was the first to find out," he replied. "But then, there were also the others—the man who swore that his watch had been stolen, and later the man who spread the alarm that I had been prowling around like a ghost in the cemetery."

  "But were these the only occasions which made you think that you were a sleepwalker?" Saito asked, his eyes gleaming through narrow slits. "Weren't there any other incidents?"

  "Yes, many," Ihara replied. "Once, another lodger said that he heard footsteps late one night along the corridor of the house, while another accused me of trying to break into his room. . . . But why all these questions? What are you driving at?"

  Saito forced a laugh. "Forgive me," he said softly. "I wasn't trying to cross-examine you. I just couldn't convince myself that a man of your high intelligence would be capable of doing such things without being aware of what he was doing. You, of course, call it somnambulism. But I am not quite satisfied. You know it is quite common for people who are deformed, and live aloof from the world, like me, to be very skeptical, so I find all this hard to believe. How can sleepwalkers know what they're doing? They can only believe what they are told by others. Even a doctor knows only what he's told about a case like this. Unless they are told what you are supposed to have done, it is absolutely impossible for them to diagnose a case as somnambulism. Now, maybe I'm just a suspicious fool, a born skeptic apt even to disbelieve that the world is round; but I want to ask you: Are you certain—positively, absolutely certain—that you really did walk in your sleep? If you aren't, don't you think that you were a little too gullible and naive in immediately swallowing what others told you?"

  Hearing these words, Ihara began t
o fidget, while in the pit of his stomach he suddenly felt a sickening sensation. Actually, it was not because of what the other had said—but the way in which he had said it. Staring back at the other's grim countenance, Ihara again seemed to sense that he had seen this ugly mask somewhere before. However, he replied: "I didn't really believe it at first. But gradually, when these fits became more frequent—"

  Saito again interrupted. "Please don't argue without facts," he said sternly. "How—how did you know that your fits became more frequent?"

  "Because I was told—" Ihara stopped short. Yes, the other was right. He had only had the word of others about what he had done.

  Saito immediately took advantage of the other's hesitation. "There—you see?" he gloated. "At no time were you sure! On every occasion it was the word of someone else—of that so-called friend Kimura, for example!"

  "Yes, but there were others," Ihara broke in. "There was the clerk who discovered me at the cemetery, the man who missed his watch, the man who saw me break into his room. . . . Besides, what about the many clues I left behind me? Don't forget, every time I had a fit, I left something behind, or took something away. Certainly, things can't move by themselves!"

  "That's the most suspicious point of all," insisted Saito. "Even a fool knows that things could easily be moved or planted here and there if there's something to be gained by doing so. And as for your many witnesses, I don't consider any of them to be trustworthy. Take, for example, the man who found you prowling in the graveyard. After constantly hearing that you were a somnambulist, wouldn't he have identified you as the 'ghost' whether you were or not? The same goes for all the others. I tell you, man, that from everything you have told me I am strongly inclined to believe tha* you were the victim of a clever hoax by someone who was using you for his own purposes. I'll even tell you who that culprit was! He was none other than Kimura, the man who had always posed as your friend!"