The Graveyard Apartment

by Mariko Koike

  “What—what’s that?” she gasped, pointing toward the door.

  “Don’t look,” Tatsuji said, putting one hand over his wife’s eyes.

  “But what are all those handprints? I mean, look at the door. Who’s making them, anyway?”

  Outside, there was the sound of a couple of car doors slamming shut, one after the other. Misao approached the handprint-covered glass door and began pounding on it with her fist. “Help us, please!” she shouted.

  There was no response, but two male voices could be clearly heard in the driveway outside. The moving men were evidently approaching the door, because both their footsteps and their conversation gradually became more audible.

  “What floor was it, again?” one man asked. By the time the other replied, “Eight,” the newcomers were standing directly in front of the entrance.

  Raising her own voice a notch, Misao shouted again, “Help us, please!”

  Surely this time the men must have heard. Nothing was separating their faces from the anxious faces on the inside except a pane of whitened glass, but the new arrivals still made no reply.

  “Hey!” Teppei yelled at the top of his lungs. “Can you hear us?”

  “What’s with the front door?” they could hear one of the men asking incredulously. “It’s totally white. Do you think someone painted over it?”

  “Hey, wait, what’s that over there?”

  That’s when it happened. There was a strange noise on the other side of the door, followed by a rapid series of strangulated cries. Those blood-chilling sounds were like the final groans of a murder victim breathing his last in some dark, deserted alley. Misao and Teppei exchanged a horrified glance.

  “Hey!” Teppei shouted again. He pounded on the door with his fists, and then began to kick it, as well. “What’s going on out there? We need help!”

  There was no response from outside. In fact, there was no sound at all.

  Tatsuji and Naomi stood up and hurried over to join Teppei and Misao in banging noisily on the door. The louder they pounded, the faster the already thick layer of handprints seemed to proliferate on the other side of the glass, but they didn’t have time to worry about that.

  Behind them, in the lobby, Tamao began to bawl. Misao glanced over her shoulder and said in the most comforting tone she could muster, “Please don’t cry, sweetie. Can you do that for me?” Tamao nodded dispiritedly.

  “I wonder what happened out there,” Tatsuji said, taking a break from banging on the glass to press his ear against the door. “There are no sounds at all now.”

  “I know, and the truck hasn’t driven away, either. I wonder where they went?” Naomi tore her eyes away from the door and looked inquiringly at Teppei.

  “I don’t have a clue,” he faltered, putting his own ear to the glass. “Nope,” he said after a moment. “Nothing.”

  “What do you suppose those dreadful noises were—the ones we heard a while ago?” Misao asked diffidently. “Did everybody else hear them, too?”

  “I did,” Teppei replied. “They were like cries of agony or—”

  “Hey, I just thought of something!” Naomi interrupted eagerly. “This building has a rooftop, right?” Her bright coral lipstick had begun to flake off, exposing lips that were chapped and colorless.

  “I forgot about the roof!” Teppei exclaimed.

  “That’s right, the roof,” Naomi echoed impatiently. “Anyway, let’s go up there and see what we can see. If we look down, we should be able to figure out where the moving men went.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Teppei led the way to the elevator. He pushed the button to open the door, and everyone filed in. The elevator didn’t go all the way to the top—that was another of the building’s structural idiosyncrasies—so they had to get out on the eighth floor and take the emergency stairs the rest of the way.

  The door from the interior stairwell opened easily onto the roof. Letting go of Tamao’s hand, Misao charged over to the iron railing. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the sun was shining so brightly that the rays seemed to pierce her skin like superheated needles.

  Beyond the expansive graveyard, now fully green, the clustered buildings of the Takaino area were clearly visible. The crematorium’s tall, cylindrical chimney was emitting the usual thick billows of smoke. Saying a silent, secular prayer, Misao took a timid peek at the ground below.

  There was only one road leading to or from the Central Plaza Mansion. The building was located in a cul de sac, so there was no way someone could have driven off down a side road. Even if the movers had decided to leave while the members of the Kano family were making their way up to the roof, they would first have needed to back up their large truck and execute a U-turn, which would have taken several minutes. The entire length of the access road was visible from the roof, so the moving men couldn’t possibly have gone far enough to have vanished from sight.

  However, there was no activity of any kind on the road that skirted the temple grounds. No truck was parked in front of the building, either. Tatsuji’s sedan was still there, but it had the loading area all to itself. In the approximate spot where they would have expected to see the truck, the only thing visible on the asphalt was what appeared to be a few shards of glass, sparkling in the sunlight.

  Not only was the moving truck missing in action, but there was no sign of human presence, either. Misao made a complete circuit of the roof, holding on to the iron railing and keeping her eyes peeled for any nook or cranny where a couple of men could be hidden from sight. She checked for potential blind spots, too, but she didn’t find anything at all: nothing along the low rock wall, nothing in the patch of morning glories the caretakers had planted, nothing around the area where a drainage ditch emptied onto vacant land. She didn’t even see a cat, much less a human being.

  When Naomi crept up to join her, Misao glanced over and caught her sister-in-law’s eye. “What’s that?” Naomi asked in a muted voice, pointing down at the short flight of stairs leading to the building’s entrance. On the broad, flat stones that made up the three-step staircase, there were two large dark blobs. It looked to Misao as if someone had spilled stone-polishing oil on the steps, in two different places. No, on second thought, maybe the splotches were more like fresh puddles of coal tar. Clouds of steam were rising from the two wet patches, as though someone had heated up some coal tar a few moments earlier, then poured it on the steps.

  Clouds of steam…? Misao let out a long, piercing shriek, then collapsed in an insensible heap at the edge of the roof.

  20

  July 26, 1987 (11:00 a.m.)

  Teppei stared down at the dark puddles on the stone steps, so stunned that it didn’t even occur to him to go to the aid of his wife, who had collapsed nearby. At first his mind was a total blank, but after a moment he remembered a photograph he’d seen years before at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where a variety of archival materials related to the atomic bomb attack on the city were on display.

  The photo showed a charred blob on a stone stairway, and Teppei had immediately been reminded of the flat, limp shadows in Salvador Dalí’s paintings of melting landscapes. According to the caption, the steps were attached to a building near ground zero. A profoundly unlucky human being happened to be standing on those steps when the A-bomb blast hit the city, and in that brief instant that unknown person was completely dematerialized and reduced to an amorphous smear on the ground.

  This is just like that photograph, Teppei thought as he stared down at the driveway in front of the building. Except there’s no way to ignore the fact that these puddles are shaped, vaguely, like people. One of the blobs in front of the Central Plaza Mansion had its arms and legs splayed to either side, so that it resembled the Sino-Japanese character for “large”: 大. The other splotch was curled in upon itself with a single arm outstretched, which gave it the look of a gigantic prawn.

  When he looked more carefully, Teppei could just make out what appeared to be several scraps of k
haki-colored cloth, shrouded by the steam. As he watched, he was shocked to realize that the steam was actively working to dissolve those bits of fabric. In a matter of seconds, every trace of the khaki scraps had vanished into the air, as if they had been dissolved in sulfuric acid.

  “Tepp?” Tatsuji whispered weakly. He sounded as if he might be about to lose consciousness. “That’s the moving men down there, isn’t it? Those blobs.”

  “It certainly looks that way,” Teppei replied, clutching his forehead with both hands and moaning softly. Just then the brothers heard a choking, gurgling sound off to one side. It was Naomi, bent double at the waist as she vomited up every last bit of her breakfast.

  “Tats, take her downstairs and put her to bed,” Teppei ordered, indicating Naomi with a slight lift of his chin. “And could you please look after Misao and Tamao, too? The minute you’ve gotten them settled in the apartment, look around for some paper and pens, and bring them up here. We need to write a bunch of notes and throw them down. Oh, also, see if you can find some heavy things that we can attach the memos to, and bring those up, too.”

  “Got it,” Tatsuji said weakly. Cradling Naomi in the crook of one arm, he took hold of Tamao’s hand. Misao scrambled to her feet and started to follow the others, then stopped to look back at Teppei. Her face was as white as a sheet of paper. She wanted to say something to her husband, but no words came to mind. Teppei didn’t speak, either; he just watched his family members until they disappeared through the door to the emergency stairwell.

  The black smoke from the crematorium chimney was shooting straight up into the sky, testifying to the complete absence of wind. In the distance, on the national highway that ran along the far border of Manseiji’s temple grounds, an endless parade of shiny cars streamed in both directions. From where Teppei stood, the cars looked like toys. If that faraway vista is the real world, he thought dreamily, what madness are we caught up in here? In that moment he felt like a ghost, gazing back at the living world from the other side.

  There wasn’t a soul to be seen in the precincts of the temple, or in the immense, sprawling graveyard. In front of some of the gravestones, bouquets of old wilted flowers were crumbling in the midsummer sun. The grayish-white grave markers stood out against a dense backdrop of Fatsia japonica shrubs, with their branches like long, skinny arms and leaves that resembled gigantic spread-fingered hands. Near a tall grove of elm trees was a large cluster of polished granite gravestones, and one of them in particular seemed to be reflecting the sunlight with uncannily mirrorlike brilliance.

  “What the holy hell is this place, anyway?” Teppei muttered to himself. It was beginning to seem possible that the otherworldly invasion of the building and its immediate environs was even more horrific than anyone had imagined.

  Clearly, they were all around, day and night. But who, or what, were they? Teppei still had no idea. However, he was certain that this area was their nest, and their den, and their sovereign domain.

  They hate us, he thought. They literally hate us to death. They’ve decided to play some kind of malicious cat-and-mouse game, so they’re going to trap us in this building, and torment us, and eventually frighten us to the point where our hearts simply give out. That is, if we don’t starve first.

  On the rooftop, a forest of pipes for the building’s ventilation system stuck up at various places, creating an irregular obstacle course. Stepping carefully over each protrusion, Teppei made his way to the north side of the roof and put his hands on the rusty iron railing that ran all the way around.

  Looking down from there, he didn’t see anything that could be described as scenery. There were a number of what must once have been small, city-sponsored housing units scattered about, but they had all been abandoned long ago. Now they looked like fossilized remains, hidden in the shadows and nearly engulfed in the weeds that grew in every direction. In all likelihood, these residential areas had been designed to house lower-income families. People had moved into them, and for a time the white flags of everyday laundry had fluttered above the flowerbeds in the back gardens. Children had probably frolicked happily while grown-ups enjoyed afternoon chats with their neighbors, and the family dogs would have added to the festivities with a chorus of joyful barks.

  Picturing that pleasant, long-vanished scenario, Teppei shivered involuntarily despite the warmth of the sunshine. He didn’t need to speculate about why all those blocks of housing had ended up empty and forsaken; he knew now that there was something sinister about this pocket of the city. While the details remained a terrifying mystery, he was certain that the ill-starred land around this apartment building was somehow governed or controlled—he almost wanted to say “ruled”—by them, whoever they might be.

  The door to the rooftop opened, and Tatsuji appeared. In one hand he carried a pad of lined writing paper, which looked familiar to Teppei. Oh, that’s right, he thought with a pang. It was the sketch pad he and Misao had used to draw schematics of the rooms in the place they were supposed to move into today—indeed, they should have been walking through the door of that house right about now. They’d spent an enjoyable evening perusing the floor plan while they decided where to place each piece of furniture. Remembering those carefree hours, Teppei was suddenly overcome with deep desolation.

  “I put Naomi to bed on the sofa,” Tatsuji mumbled absently. “There was a can of cola in the fridge, so I gave her some of that to settle her stomach. Do you think we can use these for weights?” He handed Teppei the pad of paper, along with a handful of coffee spoons.

  “Thank you,” Teppei said sincerely. Even as he uttered that word, he was thinking, This is the first time in a long while that I’ve felt the urge to thank my brother for anything. “Before too long an electrician who deals with air conditioners and someone from the phone company should be stopping by, since we put in requests regarding both those things when we moved out,” he explained. “We’ll wait here till those people show up, and then we’ll shout and call for help. But we need to let them know that this is a dangerous place, too, so we’ll throw down the notes at the same time.”

  “I wonder if they’ll land in the right place.”

  “Well, there’s no wind today, so they ought to drop straight down.”

  Tatsuji nodded, but there was no spark of life in his eyes, and he didn’t say anything else.

  Teppei took the felt-tipped pen his brother handed him, and on one sheet of paper he wrote in large letters:

  PLEASE HELP US. WE’RE THE KANO FAMILY FROM UNIT 801, ALONG WITH TWO OF OUR RELATIVES (FIVE PEOPLE IN ALL) AND WE ARE TRAPPED IN THIS BUILDING. PLEASE CONTACT THE POLICE RIGHT AWAY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

  As he was composing the message, Teppei was thinking, I can’t believe I’m writing these words. When someone reads the notes, they’ll probably think we’re being held captive by armed burglars or a gang of marauding psychos. After a pause, he added another line:

  THIS BUILDING SEEMS TO HAVE SOME KIND OF DESTRUCTIVE ENERGY. PLEASE BE EXTRA CAREFUL AROUND THE STONE STEPS AT THE FRONT ENTRANCE.

  “No, no, this won’t do,” Teppei said abruptly, tearing up the page and tossing the pieces onto the ground. “Anyone who read a message like that would just assume it was a joke, or a prank.”

  Tatsuji, meanwhile, had slumped to the ground and was staring vacantly into space, as if his mind had gone on strike and was refusing to function. Teppei tore a fresh sheet from the pad and began to write again.

  PLEASE HELP US. WE’RE THE KANO FAMILY FROM UNIT 801. PLEASE CALL THE POLICE. WE’LL EXPLAIN LATER, BUT THERE ARE REASONS WHY YOU SHOULDN’T COME INTO THIS BUILDING. PLEASE DON’T EVEN TRY TO ENTER UNTIL AFTER THE POLICE HAVE ARRIVED. THANK YOU.

  Satisfied with this revision, Teppei proceeded to write the same message over and over, on numerous sheets of paper. He then rolled each page into a long, tight cylinder, and twisted it securely around a coffee spoon.

  “You knew there was something going on with this building before today, didn’t you?” T
atsuji said, rubbing his face with both hands. “Why didn’t you tell us about it up front?”

  “We never dreamed something like this would happen,” Teppei replied. “I’m really sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” Tatsuji stopped massaging his face and glared at Teppei through spread fingers. “You think being sorry will make everything okay?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. You have a problem with that?” Teppei asked quietly.

  Tatsuji stared at his brother with a face as stiff and impassive as a mask. When he finally spoke, nothing moved except his lips.

  “You’re the one who got us into this situation—Naomi and me. And yes, I have a huge problem with that. You’ve obviously known for a while that this place is haunted, or possessed, or whatever. Why didn’t you at least give us a heads-up about the negative energy, before we came over?”

  “Because we really didn’t understand what was going on ourselves—and we still don’t. We gradually realized there was something wrong here, and that’s why we’ve been trying to move away. That’s all there is to it, but it looks as if we may have waited too long. We were hoping we could make the move without needing to worry you and Naomi about all this weird stuff.”

  The hot summer sun beat mercilessly down, scorching the brothers’ backs and shoulders through their cotton shirts and turning their exposed skin increasingly red. Sweat poured from their brows and ran down their faces.

  Tatsuji jumped to his feet and drew himself up to his full height in an almost warriorlike stance. He untucked the tails of his white button-down shirt from the waistband of his chino pants, then stood there looking uncharacteristically unkempt. “So just how far do you think it’s okay to go, when it comes to causing inconvenience to other people?” he asked confrontationally.

  Teppei scowled at Tatsuji. “What’s your problem, anyway?” he grumbled.