The Graveyard Apartment

by Mariko Koike

  Teppei had clambered out of bed, and now he stood in his unbuttoned pajama top looking at his wife and daughter. Nothing moved except his eyes, which were now fully open. “Tamao, did you sleep well last night?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Tamao nodded.

  “Really? Are you sure Mama and Papa didn’t keep you awake with all our tossing and turning?”

  “Well, I think little Miss Tamao looks exceptionally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today,” Misao said with a chuckle, even though there was nothing amusing about what she’d said. She went up to Tamao and tenderly lifted the ringlets from her daughter’s damp forehead, then checked for signs of fever.

  “What’s the matter, Tamao?” she asked. “What did you mean just now when you asked whether everything was okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Tamao said. “I just feel afraid, somehow.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  Tamao’s only response was to twist her rosy lips into a pout, scrunch up her eyes, and shake her head violently from side to side.

  “What are you afraid of, sweetie?” Misao asked again. “Won’t you tell Mama and Papa, please?”

  Tamao’s face crumpled as if she were fighting back tears. She picked up her teddy bear and hugged it close to her chest, but she didn’t say a word.

  Misao traded a look of concern with Teppei, who now appeared to be fully awake. He conjured up an awkward-sounding laugh, then put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “You probably just had a bad dream,” he said. Tamao gazed solemnly at her father, then said, “No, I didn’t have any dreams at all. I just feel scared.”

  A chill traveled up Misao’s spine, but she made an effort to chase away the feeling of uneasiness that threatened to engulf her. After all, she explained to Tamao in a soft, soothing voice, there was no way anything bad could happen on a brilliantly sunny day like this. Today was their moving day, and in just a few hours the truck would be coming to transport their worldly goods to the new house, while they followed in Uncle Tatsuji’s car. It was going to be a very busy day for everyone, but it would be great fun, as well. Yet even as she was reassuring her daughter, Misao had the feeling that she was also trying to convince herself, and she suddenly felt cold again.

  Teppei crossed the room and opened the curtains, allowing the dazzling morning sunlight to stream in through the bay windows. Cookie had evidently heard the family stirring, and was sniffing around outside the closed door. On the surface it seemed to be a morning just like any other, but it was actually a rather momentous occasion. Today was the day they would begin the next chapter of their lives by moving to a marvelous new place, and that was a major reason for celebration.

  After repeating these positive sentiments to Tamao once more, for good measure, Misao said, “Ummm,” drawing out the consonant while she collected her thoughts. “Let’s see. Cookie’s going to be hungry, so you need to get up and change out of your jammies and then go fix her breakfast.”

  Tossing aside her beloved teddy bear as if she had suddenly lost interest in him, Tamao hopped out of bed. “Let’s go quickly, Mama,” she said.

  “Where to?”

  “You know—to the new house.”

  “Oh, of course,” Misao smiled. “Yes, we’ll be leaving very soon.”

  Misao washed her face and went into the kitchen to put the coffee on just as Tatsuji and Naomi meandered into the living room. Naomi was dressed in a figure-hugging pair of white cotton slacks and a low-necked shirt in a gaudy print, with the shirttails casually knotted at her waist.

  “Did you get enough sleep, Naomi?” Misao asked.

  “Yes, thanks, I slept like a rock. It was nice and cool, all night long.”

  Tatsuji switched on the transistor radio. On one of the FM stations a perky-voiced woman was talking about a new department store that would be having its grand opening starting at ten o’clock that morning.

  “Today’s special activities will include a dog parade on the roof of the store,” the woman announced. “There will be everything from St. Bernards to Afghan hounds and Akitas, and of course they’ll have plenty of cute little terriers, Pomeranians, and Chihuahuas, too, all strutting their stuff. Please stop by and bring the whole family. There will also be a big showroom filled with puppies that you can buy, or just admire…”

  Naomi joined Tatsuji and began playfully spinning the radio dial. A cacophonous jumble of sounds cascaded from the speakers—music, news, commercials, DJs’ voices—and the overall effect was as if a tape recording were being played back at twice the normal speed. “Hey, stop it,” Tatsuji said, laughing. “What do you think you’re doing, you silly goose?”

  “Ha, ha,” Naomi brayed, opening her mouth and showing all her perfect teeth. “Come on, let’s watch TV instead,” she urged, switching off the radio. “Today’s Sunday, so Wide World of Travel should be on right about now. Misao, would it be all right if we turned on the TV?”

  “Please, go ahead,” Misao said. She was thinking, It would be nice if you had asked whether there was anything you could do to help with breakfast, although she knew better than to put her critical thoughts into words. Of course, she could simply have requested some assistance outright, but she didn’t feel comfortable with the direct approach.

  “Hey, the mistress of our house likes foreign travel,” Tatsuji said with an apologetic shrug. “She says I never take her anywhere exciting, and lately we’ve been on a steady diet of travel shows. I mean, it doesn’t cost anything to watch those shows, so it’s fine with me, but I suspect she’s on the verge of trying to twist my arm into actually going somewhere, and that could be a problem.”

  Naomi, meanwhile, had moseyed over to the television and turned it on. After a moment she let out a little squeal of surprise and then said crossly, “What’s with this TV set, anyway? There’s no picture.”

  “You’re right,” Tatsuji said. “Maybe the antenna’s broken. Um, Sis?”

  “The antenna isn’t broken,” Misao said, peering across the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room while she continued inserting slices of ham between pieces of toasted white bread. Crackling noises emanated from the TV set, and the screen was covered with a dense pattern of diagonal lines. Without saying a word, Misao went over and tried switching from channel to channel, but she found only static.

  “This is certainly odd,” Misao said, looking at Tatsuji. “We haven’t touched the plug or the hookups or anything. We were planning to let the movers take care of that.”

  Tatsuji shifted the TV set into a different position, then checked to make sure the indoor antenna was properly attached to the back. “It must be broken,” Naomi said. She sounded disappointed. “I guess it suddenly broke, just now.”

  “I really doubt that,” Misao retorted. “It was working fine last night. Is it normal for a fairly new set like this to suddenly break down?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tatsuji said.

  Misao was overcome by a feeling of panic. She told herself it was preposterous—surely there had to be some rational explanation for this latest outage—but even so she couldn’t bear to look at the TV set.

  Teppei had been in the bedroom getting dressed, but now he appeared in the living room with an extraordinarily tense expression on his face. Ignoring the group clustered around the malfunctioning television, he angrily tramped across the room and put one hand on the sliding door to the balcony.

  Tatsuji and Naomi had been busy pounding on the TV set and clicking through the channels one by one, to no avail. They paused and looked over at Teppei. “This is really weird,” he said, with a heavy sigh.

  “What’s weird?” Misao asked in a calm voice, making a conscious effort to conceal her rising feelings of apprehension. Teppei shot her a severe look, and she thought for a moment that he might be about to yell at her. But he just said flatly, “They won’t open.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All the windows, and this door. None of them will open.”

  �
��Don’t be silly,” Tatsuji laughed. His tone was relaxed and playful. “They probably just need to be unlocked. When the latches are on, windows won’t open no matter how hard you push or pull, you know.”

  “Why don’t you come over here and try, since you’re such an expert?” Teppei snapped, reaching out and grabbing Tatsuji roughly by the arm.

  Tatsuji was still smiling as he looked back and caught Misao’s eye. “I think your husband must still be half asleep,” he joked. “He isn’t usually this hopeless about mechanical things.”

  Misao didn’t bother trying to come up with a glib response. Instead, she ran over to the glass door. She quickly confirmed that the latch was unfastened, but the door refused to move. “You’re right,” she said. “It won’t open.”

  “The windows in our bedroom and the nursery are all the same. I couldn’t get any of them to open, either. Oh, and the bathroom, too,” Teppei added. He and Misao swapped a worried look.

  Tatsuji, meanwhile, was tugging on the door to the balcony, using all his strength to try to force it open. It almost seemed as if he was attempting to pull out the entire wall, door and all.

  “What’s happening?” Naomi cried, but no one paid any attention.

  Saying a silent prayer, Misao sprinted over to the entryway and grabbed the knob of the apartment’s front door. It opened easily, and when she went into the corridor she saw the elevator off to one side, as usual.

  “The front door’s still working, at least,” she announced as she walked back into the apartment. Teppei had run over to join her, and he looked enormously relieved when he grabbed the doorknob and felt it turn under his hand.

  “I wonder why it’s only the windows and the sliding door that won’t open,” he said, catching Misao’s eye. “I mean, the front door’s fine.”

  “I know. It’s not like someone could sneak up overnight and nail them shut from the outside, especially since we’re on the eighth floor.”

  “You should go check all the windows yourself. I’d be willing to bet that none of them will open,” Teppei suggested in a low voice. When Misao looked closely at her husband, she was startled to see that the skin around his eyes was unnaturally black and blue, as if someone had beaten him up.

  “You really aren’t looking very well,” she said.

  “Well, you aren’t going to win any beauty pageants this morning, either,” he retorted grouchily.

  Just then Naomi came up next to them and began to complain about something. Paying no attention to her sister-in-law, Misao headed for the master bedroom. The morning sunlight was still pouring in through the glass of the closed window, and the room was already unpleasantly warm. The bed hadn’t been made, and Tamao’s discarded teddy bear lay forgotten amid the untidy tangle of sheets and pillows.

  After checking to make sure the latch wasn’t engaged, Misao gave the bedroom window a sharp tug. The window simply wouldn’t budge at all. It was as if someone had intentionally sealed it shut by slathering glue around the entire frame.

  In the near distance, Misao could see the buildings of the cityscape gleaming in the morning sun, which blazed down relentlessly despite the early hour. The sky was cloudless and clear. With her illustrator’s eye, Misao noticed that the color of the sky today was unusually deep. It appeared to be closer to indigo than the normal robin’s-egg blue.

  Moving on to the nursery, Misao tried the window there, with no success. Naomi joined her, placing her own fingers on the immovable glass as she said, “I don’t understand what’s going on. How can all the windows get stuck overnight? That’s unbelievable. And what’s with the TV?”

  “I think it must have something to do with atmospheric conditions,” Misao replied. She didn’t believe that for a minute, but she felt the need to provide some reassurance. “There’s been a lot of humidity lately, and the window seals must have gotten swollen. Either that, or the grooves where the panes slide back and forth somehow got corroded. I don’t really understand it, either.”

  The men had joined them in Tamao’s room while Misao was speaking, and now Tatsuji said mockingly, “Humidity? You honestly think that’s a plausible theory? I mean, can excess humidity really cause every single window in a modern apartment to become impossible to open overnight?”

  Of course not, but can’t we all just pretend to believe that, for now? Misao cried in her heart. If we don’t hang on to some kind of logical explanation, then the two of you are going to get so freaked out that you won’t be able to stand being here, even for another couple of hours! She didn’t say anything out loud, though.

  Tamao was loitering nearby, clinging tightly to Cookie’s neck, and as the adults headed back to the living room she watched their every move with eyes that were wider than usual. The corridor was piled high with cardboard boxes, and when Naomi bumped into one of them she swore like a sailor, then bent over to rub one shin.

  “Well, anyway, this isn’t the type of problem that can be solved by deductive reasoning,” Tatsuji said with a phony-looking smile. “The windows are just stuck. Why don’t we stop for a coffee break and then try again later?”

  “No, but really: what the hell is going on?” Teppei demanded rhetorically, in a voice that was close to a growl. “This is really freaking me out.”

  “You think?” Tatsuji said in a sardonic tone as he squatted down and joined Naomi in trying to knead away the pain from her shin bump. “The bottom line is that it wasn’t very smart to buy an apartment right next to a graveyard.”

  “Why don’t you just shut up for once?” Teppei bellowed.

  “Hey, there’s no reason to shout at me,” Tatsuji said, suppressing a chuckle that bore a clear undertone of contempt. Teppei took a deep breath and glanced at Misao, as if asking her to rescue him.

  Misao couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say, so she just crouched down next to Tamao, pulled her daughter’s little head close to her own palpitating chest, and held it there for a long moment.

  19

  July 26, 1987 (9:00 a.m.)

  Everyone sat down to breakfast with grim faces and heavy hearts. The radio had been left on all morning, and while they were eating, a program called “American Pops Best Ten” filled the air with a series of popular songs, one after another.

  Naomi would occasionally muse, “Oh, I know this one,” in an almost unconscious way. Every time, without fail, Tatsuji bristled as though his wife had said something confrontational. Then he would glare at her, saying things like, “Oh yeah? Well, it just so happens I know this song, too!” with a childish show of belligerence. All the adults were downing cup after cup of strong coffee, and no one asked for a second helping of ham toast.

  In another hour or so it would be ten o’clock. There was still quite a bit of work to do before the moving truck arrived, but when Misao thought about the prospect of having to stay in this abominable place for even another sixty minutes, every inch of skin on her body seemed to break out in gooseflesh.

  “Listen,” she said to Teppei, “maybe we could call the moving company and ask them to send a truck over as soon as possible, instead of waiting.”

  Teppei was immediately on board. “Good idea—let’s do that right now,” he said. “The sooner they get here, the better. The company’s located right next to the station, so it shouldn’t be a problem to move up our appointment.”

  Misao fumbled around in her shoulder bag for a moment and finally fished out the business card the moving company’s representatives had given her when they stopped by to provide an estimate. Holding the card in one hand, she lifted the handset of the telephone with the other. It was only a second or two after she put the receiver to her ear that she realized something was wrong. Feeling as if her entire body had been immersed in a vat filled with ice water, she whispered, “What should I do? I can’t get through.” Still clutching the lifeless telephone, she looked beseechingly at Teppei.

  “Maybe you just dialed the wrong number,” he said. “Or maybe there was a misprint on the car
d?”

  Slowly, Misao shook her head from side to side. “It has nothing to do with the number,” she said. “The phone is dead. There’s no dial tone at all.”

  All the grown-ups looked at one another, their eyes moving from face to face, but no one said a word. Tatsuji was holding a coffee spoon, and he banged it down loudly on his saucer.

  “What the hell is the matter with this apartment, anyway? First the TV breaks, then the windows won’t open, and now it’s the telephone. This is outrageous. I mean, it’s a brand-new building!”

  “I’m going to go take a look downstairs,” Teppei said, jumping out of his chair so abruptly that it toppled over backward. He dashed across the room at top speed, heading for the front door.

  “What do you mean, ‘downstairs’? And what are you going to look at?” Misao demanded, chasing after him in a panic. “Please tell me you aren’t going to the basement!”

  “No, absolutely not. I just want to take a quick look around outside. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  “Okay,” Misao said reluctantly, grabbing hold of the black T-shirt Teppei was wearing. “But it’s just so—I mean, why is all this stuff happening, anyway?”

  “I don’t have the foggiest idea,” Teppei replied in a low voice.

  “I’m going with you,” Misao declared. “Hey, maybe we could get Tatsuji to run over to the moving company’s office in his car and ask if they could send the truck a little bit earlier?”

  “That could work.” Teppei paused with his hand on the front doorknob.

  “Mama?” Tamao came up from behind, and Misao put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she said, “Mama isn’t going anywhere yet. I need you to do me a favor, though. Could you please run and get Uncle Tatsuji?”

  Tamao rushed off, and a few seconds later Tatsuji appeared in the entry hall. “You want me to drive over and talk to the movers, right? Sure, I can do that. Just give me the address.” He spoke in a petulant tone, out of habit, but his face was contorted with genuine concern.

  “Come on, I’ll tell you on the way,” Teppei said shortly as he marched out into the corridor. He went over to the elevator and hit the call button.