by Mariko Koike
“Look,” Teppei said. “It’s sink or swim for us right now, and those bars are our only chance at a lifeline—as in, literally, a chance to prolong our lives. We can’t be stewing about what-ifs at a time like this.”
“Oh, great,” Naomi said with a snort of mirthless laughter. “So now our two men are going down to the haunted basement, and they probably won’t come back alive. They’ll leave behind a couple of beautiful young widows, but before Misao and I have a chance to enjoy spending the insurance money, we’ll be dead, too.”
When Misao shot her a dirty look, Naomi said, “Oh, come on, lighten up. That was a joke,” then gave her head a jaunty toss.
“It’s worth a try,” Teppei said, turning to Tatsuji. “Let’s go first thing tomorrow morning, as soon as we’re up. Are you with me on this, Tats?”
“Oh, like I really have a choice,” Tatsuji said bitterly, but his face was resolute and he gave his brother an acquiescent nod. “I mean, of course I’ll go with you,” he added. “Let’s check it out, for sure. On the plus side, no matter what happens from now on, I don’t think anything can surprise me anymore.”
Cookie ambled up to the dining table and began to lick Misao’s ankle. As Misao reached under the table to scratch behind the dog’s soft, furry ears, she couldn’t help thinking that this blameless creature’s existence was inextricably bound up with the lives of her owners. Whatever the Kano family’s destiny might turn out to be, it would be shared by Cookie.
22
July 27, 1987 (early morning)
The previous evening, they had dragged the mattresses from both beds and lined them up in the living room. But although the five family members spent the night lying side by side on those mattresses, Tamao was the only one who got a wink of sleep. After Misao extinguished the candles, the room was engulfed in unrelenting darkness. The front door (which was now the only source of ventilation) was left open all night, and from time to time a slight breeze of unknown origin would waft in, undulate surreptitiously down the hallway, and nuzzle around the doorjambs of the rooms inside.
During the night Teppei was seized more than once by a desire to take Misao in his arms, but he somehow managed to restrain himself. No matter how close he held his wife, he knew he would still feel completely empty inside. He could sense that Misao, too, was doing battle with the demons of despondency, and he was afraid that the moment they touched each other, skin to skin, they would suddenly realize how catastrophic their situation was and start to weep so loudly that it would wake the rest of the family—if anyone had managed to fall asleep.
Misao lay on her side, dressed only in a pair of shorts and a flimsy tank top. Teppei could hear her sighing every few minutes, and he reached out to stroke one of his wife’s bare shoulders. As he gently kneaded the soft flesh, he was flooded by a brief but genuine moment of happiness. Misao continued to lie completely still, sniffling from time to time as she passively accepted his gestures of affection.
Teppei could hardly wait for the next day to begin. He kept glancing at the wristwatch he wore, using the flashlight next to his pillow to see the face in the dark. When it read 3:50 a.m., he rolled out of bed and perched on the edge of the mattress. “Tats. Rise and shine,” he whispered.
Tatsuji, who was already awake, raised his head languidly and glanced around. The earliest hints of dawn were just beginning to seep in through the window, and his eyes glinted in the dim light.
“We should do one more tour of the building before we hit the basement,” Teppei announced.
“I know, I know,” Tatsuji said impatiently.
Naomi sat up in bed with a sleep-deprived sigh. Next, Tamao opened her eyes and immediately began to cry. “What’s wrong? Do you have a stomachache?” Naomi asked. Tamao didn’t answer; she just wriggled up closer to her mother on the mattress and buried her head in Misao’s chest.
That’s where I’d like to put my head, too, if I only could, Teppei thought. In truth, the desire to climb back into bed and cuddle with his loved ones was so strong that he felt as if he might be about to lose his mind.
Tearing his eyes away from his wife and daughter, Teppei stood up and lit one of the candles. Through the unbreakable plate-glass windows he could clearly see the sky growing lighter, so sunrise couldn’t be too far off. It was probably going to be another blisteringly hot day. He tried to open the door to the balcony, but it remained as immobile as ever.
I am a man … That sentence popped into Teppei’s mind unbidden, and at first he had no idea where it had come from. Then he remembered: it was the catchphrase of the hero of a cartoon series he used to watch. I am a man. Yes, the cape-wearing hero used to make that valiant proclamation, all the time.
I am a man, Teppei murmured in his mind, although he didn’t say the words out loud. I am a man. As he was repeating that soundless mantra, he decided that if he somehow managed to survive this nightmare and return safely to the real world, he would make constructive use of those words. You could call them platitudinous, but for him, at least, they had a deep and thrilling resonance. Yes, Teppei told himself, if he got out of this alive he would find a way to work “I am a man” into some advertising copy, and perhaps one day that phrase might serve to inspire somebody else.
Teppei went into the kitchen and gave the faucet handle an experimental twirl. As always, the tap water flowed freely into the sink. However, when Teppei opened the refrigerator he saw that the inside was covered with drops of moisture and the first signs of mildew. It was like peering into a soggy cardboard box that was beginning to rot.
Teppei washed his face over the sink, then dried it on the nearest dish towel. Armed with the hammer, the flashlight, and some nylon cord, he headed for the front door. Misao came running after him. She was still wearing shorts, and her bare legs glimmered in the early light.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“No need. Tatsuji and I have this covered.”
“I know, but…”
Teppei took Misao’s arm and quietly pulled her close. “We’ll be fine,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
“I hope you’re right. I really feel like I’m on the verge of a breakdown.”
“Well, you’re certainly doing an amazing job of pretending to be calm.”
“Oh, thank you. It’s all I can do to hold myself together.”
Teppei sighed and hugged Misao even more tightly. “If you weren’t here with me, I wouldn’t be able to pretend to have my act together, either.”
Just then Tatsuji appeared, and the couple sprang apart.
First, the brothers went down to the first floor. When Teppei splashed the flashlight beam around the lobby, they saw that the glass door was still covered with handprints. Not only that, the prints appeared to be even more numerous than the day before. It was as if the door had been painted over with extra-thick oil paint. Teppei swung the hammer behind his head and brought it down on the glass, but the door might as well have been made of foam rubber.
Tatsuji stood off to one side, watching Teppei’s labors in silence. “Nice try,” he jeered. “Of course, nothing’s changed since yesterday.”
“Yeah.” Teppei sighed. “Come on, let’s head down to the basement.”
“Damn, I should have gotten a farewell kiss from Naomi, since I may never see her again,” Tatsuji said, satirically smacking his forehead.
“What? Don’t say things like that, even as a joke.”
The brothers stepped into the elevator and hit the “B1” button, which (it occurred to Teppei) hadn’t been touched in quite some time. A vision of the basement swarming with formless, evil, supernatural creatures floated across his mind, and he gave an involuntary shiver. At some point they’ll probably show themselves and come to attack us, he thought. But what form will they take? Will they look vaguely human, with their demonic faces covered by black hoods like medieval robbers or participants in a satanic ritual? Or will it just be a horde of gigantic translucent blobs, like those murderous amoe
bas I used to fantasize about as a child?
The elevator came to a stop in the basement with the familiar ga-tonk. The doors swished open without a hitch. The emergency lights had been left on, and they cast a murky light over the cavernous space. Teppei wasn’t the least bit surprised to find that the “power outage” hadn’t affected the basement. Nervously, he groped around on the wall until he found the switch for the overhead lights.
At a glance, nothing appeared to have changed. The storage compartments were still lined up in tidy rows; the numberless legions of exposed pipes still marched up the walls and snaked across the ceiling; and the floor still looked the same. Everything was covered by a fine film of dust, and the entire basement seemed to be sitting quietly, biding its time, like some forgotten ruin.
“Those are the protein bars we were talking about,” Teppei said, pointing in the direction of a tall pile of brown cardboard boxes toward the rear of the basement.
Tatsuji nodded. “I don’t see what all the fuss was about,” he said.
“Huh? All what fuss?”
“I mean, it just looks like a perfectly ordinary basement to me.”
“Ah, well. Maybe up to a point,” Teppei said cryptically.
The two men walked toward the heap of boxes, looking carefully around as they went. Teppei had been extremely reluctant to come down here again, but he was forced to admit that there didn’t seem to be anything malevolent lurking in the shadows. He heaved a sigh of relief. All they needed to do now was to grab the boxes and carry them upstairs as quickly as possible.
The stack of cartons came up to Teppei’s waist. Each box appeared to contain about a dozen individually packed boxes of the famous weight-gain bars. When Teppei gave the entire pile a two-handed push, it moved easily across the dusty floor, with a sound like air being let out of a tire.
“Come on, Tats, let’s get to work,” he called. “We need to drag these along to the elevator.” Tatsuji was standing nearby, staring at the back wall of the basement, and when he didn’t reply Teppei repeated, “Hey, come on! I need help. What are you doing, anyway? The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
“Wait, what’s this?” Tatsuji said, in a tone that seemed to combine apprehensiveness with the thrill of a new discovery.
Relaxing his hold on the boxes he’d been grappling with, Teppei turned his eyes toward the rear wall. Tatsuji’s long shadow had been obscuring the point of interest, but after a moment he shifted his position and Teppei was finally able to follow his brother’s sight line.
Near the place where Tamao had sustained her leg injury, there was a small, jagged black hole in the wall. Forgetting the boxes, Teppei crept silently over to the place where his brother was standing. It appeared that a sharp tool of some kind had been used to break through the concrete wall, just in that one spot. The hole was about two inches in circumference.
When Teppei peeked in, all he saw was blackness. The musty odor of damp earth drifted through the opening. “Hmm, this is odd,” he mused, cocking his head. “There was no hole here the last time I looked, a couple of weeks ago.”
“The wall is surprisingly thin. Look at this!” Tatsuji exclaimed, running an index finger around the edge of the aperture. “It shouldn’t be hard to break down.”
“Maybe, but where did this hole come from in the first place?”
Tatsuji didn’t reply. Putting one eye to the opening, he peered inside.
Teppei started to suggest that it might be some kind of trick, but held his tongue. What would these unidentified schemers—if they even existed—hope to accomplish by making such a small hole in the wall?
I really can’t take much more of this, Teppei thought as he headed back to the boxes. This place is making me crazy. “Hey, Tats, come on!” he called testily. “We need to get these things upstairs.”
Tatsuji didn’t respond; he just went on staring into the darkness beyond the hole in the wall.
“Hurry up!” Teppei shouted. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Ssh,” Tatsuji hissed, turning to face Teppei with one finger held to his lips. “Be quiet. I can hear something.”
“What?” Teppei froze in his tracks.
Tatsuji pressed his ear against the hole. He was completely still except for his bulging eyes, which darted wildly from side to side. “Wait, what is that? That sound…”
Teppei returned to the rear of the basement and placed his own ear to the wall. He could hear a faint pattering that made him picture someone trudging up and down a staircase. The footsteps weren’t hurried at all; they had a slow, deliberate quality. Teppei also got the sense that the faraway people were carrying something. Or was it just a single individual? He couldn’t tell. There were no sounds of conversation.
“But where does it lead to—whatever’s on the other side of this wall?” Tatsuji muttered, half to himself. “Maybe this room is somehow connected to the basement of a private house or a store or something, like by a tunnel?”
Teppei immediately thought of the story Misao had told him, about the “phantom road” she had researched one day at the ward library. Could something like that really exist? Was it possible that whoever did the initial excavation for the underground shopping mall simply paved over the surface and left the gigantic hole intact, after the developers failed to get permission to move the graves and were forced to abandon the entire project?
“Remember what I told you up on the roof about how some developers might have dug a hole for a belowground shopping arcade, before the project fell through?” Teppei said reluctantly, not wanting to stoke his brother’s optimistic fantasies any more than necessary.
“Oh, right! So there must have been a big underground space left over, and the owners of the land probably divided it up and rented it to shops, for storage and whatnot. That would explain it!” Tatsuji said with rising excitement.
“I doubt it,” Teppei said slowly. “I’ve never heard about anything like that. And even if such a space had existed, it would have been filled in when they built these apartments, don’t you think?”
“No, but still, there’s something happening here, right now. I can—” Tatsuji stopped and jammed his ear against the hole. “Yes, I can hear it clearly. First there were footsteps, and now there are people talking.”
Teppei found this entire situation patently implausible, but he couldn’t help garnering a small ray of hope from Tatsuji’s words. Pushing his brother aside, Teppei applied his own ear to the hole.
He couldn’t make out any words, but in the distance—the very far distance—he could hear the unmistakable sound of conversation, along with a repetitive clinking noise. It sounded like someone making a pile of glass bottles, and a torrent of images flooded into Teppei’s mind. Could it be an underground wine cellar, or the basement storeroom of a sake shop, or the subterranean meeting chamber of some secret society? (No, that last one was beyond ridiculous.) Or maybe it was an underground sarcophagus that was used as a repository for the bones of priests and their families by the ancient temple Manseiji? For the moment, any explanation would do. The important thing was that he could hear human voices.
And now there was the sound of laughter: a goodly number of men, roaring loudly with amusement. Middle-aged men, or maybe older.
The next thing Teppei heard was several female voices, engaged in animated conversation. So there were women in the group as well. Overall, it sounded like the sort of wholesomely constructive hustle and bustle you might hear in any busy corner of the city: people cheerfully performing some task or other while chatting among themselves in an easy, carefree manner.
Teppei stuck one index finger through the opening, and an icy draft instantly chilled it to the bone. Tatsuji, apparently impatient with waiting his turn, roughly shoved Teppei aside and shouted frantically into the hole, “Hey! We need help! Is anybody there?” Then, placing his ear to the opening, he listened intently. As before, faraway voices talking among themselves could be heard, but there was no cha
nge in the timbre of those murmurs, and no one responded to Tatsuji’s plea.
“Give me the hammer!” he yelled, snatching the tool from Teppei’s hand. Raising it over his head, Tatsuji brought the hammer down on the wall next to the hole. The dull sound of metal meeting concrete echoed through the basement. With each successive blow the cement crumbled a bit more, raining powdery gray rubble onto the floor. It was such absurdly easy work that the poured concrete wall might have been nothing more than a rudimentary layer of painted plaster.
In a matter of seconds, the hole had grown perceptibly larger. Teppei remembered now that when he came down to the basement to carry out a nocturnal inspection with the Tabatas, he had sensed something different about this particular section of the basement, and the back wall in particular. It was starting to look now as though his initial hunch that the concrete might be thinner in this area had been correct, after all.
Tatsuji’s face was covered with tiny beads of sweat that glimmered in the light. The hole had now doubled in size, and as Tatsuji, who appeared to be enjoying himself immensely, continued to hack away, it soon grew large enough to accommodate the head of an average-size person. An unnaturally cold, damp wind streamed into the basement through the aperture.
Tatsuji flung the hammer to the floor, then stuck his head and neck through the newly enlarged hole. “Hey!” he shouted. “Is anybody there?”
Teppei had his ear to the wall nearby, listening for a response, and he was astounded to hear the escalating buzz of a group of people in deep discussion, followed by a distinct question.
“What’s going on?” called a faraway male voice.
“Hello!” trilled a female voice in the background.
Teppei extricated his head from the opening. His sweaty face was transformed by joy. “We’re saved!” he exulted. “We’re going to be rescued, all of us!”
Without waiting for his brother to respond, Tatsuji stuck his head back into the hole and yelled, “Help us, please! We’re trapped in here! This is the basement of the Central Plaza Mansion. There are five of us: four adults and a child. Please help us get out of here!”