The Graveyard Apartment

by Mariko Koike

  Misao bundled Teppei into the elevator and pushed the button for the eighth floor. The door closed, and the occupants heard the familiar sound effects as the mechanism shifted into gear. Just as Misao’s emotions seemed to be returning to normal, she was seized by a sudden urge to vomit. She clapped one hand over her mouth and managed, just barely, to gulp back the wave of bitter bile that rose from the depths of her esophagus and flooded into her throat.

  13

  June 6, 1987

  Around noon, Misao was dithering in front of the elevator, trying to decide whether to take it down to the fourth floor. Finally, she gritted her teeth and pressed the call button. Lately she’d had to make a major effort to psych herself up to get into the elevator every time she needed to go somewhere.

  In the weeks since that night in the middle of May, Sueo Tabata, in his capacity as the building’s caretaker, had brought in an elevator maintenance crew not only once or twice but three times. On each visit the experts had made a complete examination of the elevator’s working parts, but they hadn’t been able to find anything that could have caused the stoppages.

  Next, Sueo had summoned a local locksmith to remove the automatic locking mechanisms on the emergency staircase doors on every floor of the building. Once this was done, the doors could be easily opened from either the inside or the outside. While this might have appeared to be an invitation to burglars, the building’s few remaining residents—the Inoues, the Kanos, and the Tabatas themselves—all agreed that it was more important to have immediate access to the emergency stairs without needing to carry a key.

  Really, they were all thinking, suppose a prowler did somehow manage to sneak in through the lobby, then used the emergency staircase to reach the higher floors? Honestly, at this point, who cares? They had far bigger problems to deal with, and they were past worrying about hypothetical real-world threats.

  After their terrifying experience in the basement back in May, Teppei and the Tabatas were especially reluctant to use the elevator. “Suppose we get in and press the button for the lobby, and instead it goes all the way to the basement?” Teppei would say. “Or what if it suddenly stopped moving, and we were stuck? What would we do then?” However, since the Kanos lived eight flights up, it would have been exceedingly impractical to stop using the elevator entirely.

  The elevator arrived on the eighth floor. Warily, Misao got in and gave the button marked “4” a forceful push. The doors closed, and she heard the usual ga-tonk. Squeezing her eyes shut, she said a silent prayer. A few seconds later the elevator came to a halt, and the doors slid open with a rush of air. When Misao opened her eyes she saw the hallway of the fourth floor, looking safe and familiar.

  With a feeling of relief, she stepped out of the elevator. The front door of the Inoues’ apartment was standing open, and there was a pile of cardboard packing boxes in the entryway. Misao gave the doorbell a cursory ring, out of politeness, then poked her head through the open door. The first thing she saw was Eiko, standing in the living room holding a telephone.

  “That’s right,” Eiko was saying into the receiver, “Central Plaza Mansion, apartment 402. I called in an order for four portions of cold soba more than an hour ago. What? Really? Well, I hope he gets here soon. We’re moving today, and we’re on a tight schedule.”

  As she was hanging up the phone, Eiko spotted Misao at the door and made a beckoning gesture. “Come in, come in!” she called, smiling broadly.

  Eiko’s husband was in the process of detaching a hanging light fixture from the living room ceiling. “Yes, please come in!” he echoed.

  “I just wanted to drop by and see how you were getting along,” Misao said as she entered the chaotic room.

  “Well, I think we’re nearly there,” Eiko said. “I ended up just kind of randomly tossing stuff into boxes, but I did at least take the time to pack the breakables carefully. We aren’t going far, so it should be okay.”

  “When is the truck coming?”

  “I think it should be here before too long. I’m just hoping we’ll have time to finish eating the noodles we ordered.” Eiko glanced at her wristwatch, then stared abstractedly into the distance for a long moment. The sky outside the windows was covered with clouds, and now that the overhead light fixture had been taken down, the living room seemed dark and gloomy.

  The Inoues had put their apartment on the market the week after the incident in the basement, back in mid-May. Eiko had apparently talked about nothing else for days on end, but it wasn’t as if her husband required much (if any) persuasion. Indeed, it turned out that even before that night he had begun thinking it might be better to move away sooner rather than later.

  Since it went without saying that they wouldn’t be able to find a buyer on such short notice, Eiko had spoken with her parents, who lived in Itabashi, and they had agreed to rent the Inoues a prefabricated two-bedroom house that had been installed in one corner of their property some years before. The structure had originally been built to serve as a studio where Eiko’s mother could teach the neighborhood brides and housewives the complicated art of dressing in kimono, but the older woman’s health had deteriorated to the point where the prefab house was hardly used anymore. Even though this move meant making the transition from a deluxe, spacious apartment to a much smaller cottage, none of the Inoues—not Eiko, not her husband, not the children—had the slightest objection to that change in lifestyle.

  “It’s really just a temporary measure, a place to camp out for a while,” Eiko explained when she came to tell Misao the news. “We’ll stay there long enough to catch our breath and get our bearings, and then we’ll start looking for something more suitable, long-term. It would be ideal if we could sell this place first, but I’m not holding my breath about that.”

  Of course, everyone knew what had galvanized Eiko into taking action so quickly. After the events in the basement, she seemed to have been transformed into a different person. Overnight, her relatively mild objections to the apartment building had turned into full-blown antipathy. She even started spending the better part of the daytime hours away from home—far more time than could reasonably be explained by the need to do moving-related errands.

  After everything that’s happened here, Eiko can’t even relax and feel secure in her own apartment, Misao thought. Of course, she and Teppei were feeling the same way, but …

  Initially, Teppei hadn’t talked to Misao at all about what he experienced in the basement on the night of May 17. Misao could think of several possible reasons for his silence. It could have been thoughtful altruism, born of concern that knowing the harrowing details would make her feel afraid. Or it might have been embarrassment about having the stubbornly rational attitude he’d clung to until now regarding the basement—and the realm of paranormal phenomena in general—proved wrong. Also, in a more general sense, when someone is subjected to a traumatic experience, that person’s unwillingness to discuss the event in question is likely to be in direct proportion to their degree of shock.

  Teppei definitely saw something in the basement the other night, Misao thought. And it seems clear that whatever he saw, it was not of this world.

  The first time Teppei spoke about his ordeal was five days afterward. “It was so cold,” he said abruptly. “I literally felt like I was going to freeze to death. And the wind—the wind seemed to be alive, somehow.” Then he went on to talk about some formless, numberless something that had seemed to be wriggling and squirming in the darkness. He could only describe the entity (or entities) by the vague word “something,” but there was no doubt in his mind that he had heard a vast rustling, as of a great many somethings moving in the unseeable blackness. Those ominous sounds were accompanied by an extreme escalation of the already unnatural chilliness in the basement, and a moment later Teppei began to feel lightheaded.

  “And then … and then I guess I just passed out,” he stammered.

  That was when Misao finally shared everything she had learned on her res
earch trip to the ward library, and gave voice to the suspicions she had been harboring privately. Teppei didn’t immediately embrace her theory about the subterranean road, but he didn’t dismiss it out of hand, either.

  “I still don’t understand what happened,” Teppei said over and over again during the weeks following his misadventure in the basement. “I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around it. I mean, what in the world was going on down there? What were they trying to do to us? And who, or what, are they?”

  The doorbell of the Inoues’ apartment chimed, followed by a cheery greeting: “Hello! Anybody home? I’m from the soba shop—sorry I kept you waiting!” Clutching two thousand-yen bills in his little hand, Tsutomu raced to the front door.

  “I wish I’d thought to order some noodles for you, too,” Eiko told Misao as she trotted by, a few steps behind Tsutomu. “The thing is, we didn’t have time to eat breakfast, so I wasn’t thinking too clearly when I made the call.”

  “Please, don’t give it another thought,” Misao said with a smile.

  Eiko, meanwhile, had joined Tsutomu at the door to their apartment, with her husband close behind. “You’re awfully late, you know,” she groused, glaring at the uniformed deliveryman. “We’ve been waiting for ages.”

  “I’m really sorry,” the young man replied as he handed the takeout orders to Mr. Inoue. “The thing is, the front door of the building was closed when I got here, and it took quite a while to get the caretaker to open it.”

  “Closed?” Eiko echoed in surprise. “In the middle of the day?”

  “That’s right,” said the deliveryman. He pocketed Tsutomu’s eagerly proffered payment and smiled at the little boy in a friendly way.

  “You mean it was locked?” Eiko sounded incredulous.

  “I don’t know whether it was locked or what, but it wouldn’t open. I kept banging on the glass and after a while the caretaker must have heard me, because he came out and opened the door from the inside. I’m sorry, but I need to get back to work now. Please just put the empty dishes in the hall outside your apartment, and I’ll pick them up later today. Thank you very much!”

  After the deliveryman had taken his leave, the family trooped back into the living room. Mr. Inoue wore a troubled frown as he distributed the bamboo plates. Everyone had ordered zaru soba: a heap of cold buckwheat noodles topped with strips of seaweed, accompanied by a soy-based dipping sauce and tiny pyramids of wasabi and finely grated daikon radish for each diner to stir into the sauce, to taste.

  “Whatever the Tabatas may have suffered through the other night, this is going too far,” Eiko complained. “I mean, locking the front entrance during the day? That’s unheard of. And today, of all days, when they know very well that we’re moving out. What if the truck had shown up while the door was locked? That would have been a major hassle.”

  “Poor old Mr. Tabata has really been on edge since that night,” Misao said. “He probably just inadvertently turned the lock or something.”

  “Still, that’s no excuse. I mean, what were the postal carrier and the newspaper person supposed to do when they couldn’t get into the lobby?”

  While Misao watched, the Inoues began to slurp up their cold noodles in the traditional manner—that is, as noisily as possible. Without air conditioning, the living room was suffocatingly warm and humid.

  Looking out beyond the balcony, Misao said, “Speaking of the mail and the newspaper, it looks as if it’ll just be us and the Tabatas from now on. We’re really going to be lonely here without all of you. I can’t believe it’s come to this: an entire apartment building with only two occupied units.”

  “But what about you?” Eiko began, quietly laying down her chopsticks and turning to look at Misao. “Have you been giving it any thought?”

  “It? Oh, you mean moving?”

  “Of course. What else?”

  Misao lowered her eyes. “As a matter of fact, we have been thinking about that,” she said. “Quite seriously, too.” She found it hard to believe that she was having a conversation like this barely three months after moving into the building. Three months ago she and her family had arrived here so full of hope and anticipation, and now …

  Mr. Inoue looked at Misao with a sympathetic expression. “Finding a place to move to isn’t that easy, especially when most of your capital’s tied up,” he said. “We were lucky to have family in the city, with extra space.”

  “Well, Teppei and I agreed early on that we would never even think about moving in with either of our parents, so that isn’t an option for us,” Misao said.

  Eiko used the palm of her hand to wipe away a trickle of sauce that was running down her chin. “Well, for us, I mean … this time last year we were making do in a tiny rental apartment no larger than an eel’s bed, scrimping and saving so we could buy a place of our own, and for what? To have it turn out like this? I mean, it would almost be funny if it weren’t so tragic.”

  “I’m sure this apartment will sell before too long.” Misao spoke the requisite words in a determinedly upbeat tone, but she could tell that both Eiko and her husband were struggling to remain optimistic. Kaori, meanwhile, was beaming fondly at Misao. Smiling back, Misao said, “Tamao and I will definitely come to visit, Kaori. We’ll stop by one day soon, I promise.”

  Kaori bobbed her head in an exaggerated manner, as children do. “There won’t be any spooky things at our new house,” she declared in an extra-loud voice. “That’s why we’re moving, to get away from all the scary stuff.”

  “Yes, of course it is,” Misao responded automatically.

  Eiko and her husband just went on inhaling their noodles, without saying a word. Large drops of rain began to pelt the balcony’s sliding doors, leaving dark splotches on the glass.

  When Misao remarked, “Hey, it’s raining again!” Eiko furrowed her brow and muttered sarcastically, “Oh, perfect. That’s just what we need.” Then she added in a normal tone, “I hope the truck will get here on time, at least.” At that, Misao took her leave, promising to return later to see the Inoues off.

  It was Saturday and Teppei had the day off from work for once, so Misao had sent him to pick Tamao up after school. St. Mary’s Kindergarten had only a half-day session on Saturdays, and father and daughter returned around 12:30. Tamao was wearing a lightweight pink vinyl raincoat with a hood that kept her dry when the sudden downpour began, but Teppei had left the house without an umbrella, so he was soaked to the skin from head to foot.

  “Papa ran all the way home,” Tamao reported enthusiastically as they shed their soggy shoes in the entryway. “I mean, all the way. He ran from my school to our house, carrying me on his back. It was amazing!”

  “Since when did you turn into such a superhero, honey?” Misao teased. “Was it when you noticed you were getting a little paunchy around the middle?”

  “A mere woman can never know the pleasure of running through a June rainstorm, carrying a rather large child,” Teppei retorted with a laugh as he darted past her on his way to the bathroom. “I really feel sorry for you.”

  Misao couldn’t help feeling that her husband’s show of lightheartedness was just a facade.

  Teppei turned around in the hallway and said, “Oh, by the way, the Inoues’ moving truck showed up. They were loading the boxes and furniture as fast as they could, but I could tell the rain was making things difficult for them. Eiko was grumbling nonstop, of course.”

  “I told them we’d go down later to see them off,” Misao said. “So please hurry up—you need to take a shower and change into some dry clothes.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Teppei gave an ironic salute as he disappeared into the bathroom. After a moment the sound of the shower’s vigorous stream was joined by his strong tenor voice, singing some old tune.

  Tamao had left her wet raincoat in a heap on the floor, and Misao said sternly, “You know you’re supposed to put your coat away, sweetie. Stick it on a hanger and we’ll leave it out on the balcony until it dries. Othe
rwise the water will get all over the living room.”

  “Woa-kay,” Tamao said, responding with an obscure colloquialism. It wasn’t something either of her parents would ever say, and Misao wondered fleetingly where her daughter had picked it up. Probably at school, or perhaps from watching TV.

  As Tamao was jamming her pink slicker onto a cream-colored plastic coat hanger decorated with a picture of a rabbit’s face, Cookie approached and nudged the child’s hand with her snout, clearly wanting to play. Giggling with delight, Tamao stroked Cookie’s fur affectionately while she murmured, “Aw, such a good little girl.”

  Suddenly, it all struck Misao as impossibly artificial. Everything Teppei and I do these days—no, really, everything the four of us do, including Tamao and even Cookie—somehow feels as if we’re all acting in a play, she thought. A theater-of-the-absurd play about the daily routine of an utterly ordinary family living in a beautiful, sunny apartment, without a care or worry in the world. Just an average family, living in a perfectly normal building, playing their parts to the hilt. Except that something isn’t quite right about this idyllic tableau …

  Misao went into the kitchen and began whipping up a batch of Chinese-style fried rice, using some cooked white rice and vegetables left over from the previous night’s dinner. Soon a light, pleasant sizzling sound rose from the wok, along with a delicious aroma. As she stirred the ingredients with deliberately histrionic hand movements, like a stage actress portraying a housewife, Misao reached out and switched on the radio they kept on the kitchen counter. A young woman’s voice was delivering an updated traffic report.

  “On Metropolitan Expressway Route Four, near the Shinanomachi area, there is a two-kilometer stretch of slow-moving traffic because of routine congestion. Metropolitan Loop Line Number Eight, in the vicinity of Roka Park, is experiencing extreme gridlock as the result of a rollover accident involving a truck. The Metro Expressway Route One has been severely congested due to an accident during the morning hours, but as of midday all the lanes are open again and traffic flow has returned to normal.”