by Mariko Koike
At that moment, the lively sounds beyond the wall abruptly ceased. Then Teppei heard his brother shouting urgently from inside the opening, “Hey, Tepp, can you hand me the flashlight?” Reluctantly, Teppei complied.
Momentarily withdrawing his head, Tatsuji aimed the flashlight beam through the opening, then peered in again. “Hey!” he called to Teppei. “You’ve got to see this. There really is an underground road!”
Teppei edged up to the hole and took a peek. What he saw was so incredible that it took a minute for his brain to process the scene that greeted his eyes. On the other side of the wall was an excavated road, wide and tall enough for several adults to walk abreast while standing fully upright. The long, straight path appeared to extend in the direction of Manseiji, just as the ward reports had suggested. Of course, the flashlight’s illumination didn’t extend that far so it was impossible to say for sure, but there didn’t seem to be any major obstacles along the way, and there was no end in sight.
The unpleasant aroma of ancient, fermented earth filled Teppei’s nostrils. Stepping back from the opening, he looked at his brother’s face and said vaguely, “The thing is, I think…” He was feeling more and more certain that the underground road might be a trick or a trap of some sort, but he knew his suspicion would sound ridiculous if he tried to put it into words.
“Thank god, we’re saved!” Tatsuji whooped. “That wild story you told me turned out to be totally true. Right? The one about an underground road running from here to the train station. It actually turned out to be true! I don’t know how it’s even possible, but what’s the saying, ‘Ours not to reason why’? Anyway, bottom line, there are people at the end of the road, so we can get out!”
Tatsuji was so galvanized by enthusiasm that his saliva ducts seemed to be working overtime, and long strings of drool oozed from both corners of his mouth. He gave his brother a look that radiated hope and exhilaration, then stuck his head into the hole again. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hello!”
“Hey!” The voices that responded this time were all male. There seemed to be three of them, at least. It definitely wasn’t an echo.
“Help us, please!” Tatsuji pleaded.
“Come to us!” a male voice yelled. “You can get here, can’t you?”
“Where are you, anyway? Is there some kind of underground storehouse or something?” At that, the faraway chorus fell silent for a few seconds. Then there were distant sounds of shrill, cackling laughter and general commotion. A woman’s voice—so pure and high that she might have been singing a soprano role in an opera—rang out above the others, but her words were indistinct.
With one ear still mashed against the wall, Teppei reached out and grabbed his brother’s arm. “Hang on a minute,” he said.
“What? What’s the problem?” Tatsuji demanded, pausing with his head half in and half out of the opening.
“Don’t you think there’s something strange about this?”
“Strange? Don’t be stupid. Those voices belong to human beings. It isn’t a bunch of ghosts or goblins, if that’s what you’re thinking.” As he spat out those words, Tatsuji sprayed saliva in every direction. He immediately jammed his head through the hole again and called out, “Hey! Hello! What should we do now?”
The underground cavity erupted in an incomprehensible hubbub, as if a great many people were talking at once. There was a mixture of other noises, as well: metallic clangs; the lucent tinkle of glass being rung like a bell; and oddest of all, a sound that made Teppei picture a battalion of medieval samurai warriors, dressed in full battle regalia, crawling along on the ground.
Teppei began to tremble. He was sure of it now: these … these were not human beings. They may have sounded like people, but they were something else. Something very different, and infinitely more dangerous.
Tatsuji didn’t seem to have noticed. “Please come here!” he was yelling into the hole. “Come over here right now, and help us out! We’re in the basement of the Central Plaza Mansion!”
“Ho-oh!” came the response. It sounded like a very large number of male voices—several dozen, at least—all shouting at once.
What the hell? Teppei thought with a frisson of dread. What possible reason could there be for such a huge crowd of men to be gathered in an underground cave, or grotto, or storeroom, or whatever it was?
Tatsuji extracted his flushed, perspiring face from the hole and took off toward the elevator at top speed, calling over his shoulder, “Come on! Let’s go upstairs and get everybody! We need to bring them down here!” Teppei followed behind at a normal pace. He could feel a cold, clammy draft—the same abnormally frigid breeze he remembered from his nightmarish evening in the basement—eddying around on the floor of the basement.
“Tats, wait!” he shouted. “I think we should just forget about this.”
Tatsuji was already in the elevator, jabbing at the “8” button. “I don’t see why,” he whined. “They just want to help us. I don’t know what you’re so afraid of. If you don’t want to be rescued, Naomi and I will go by ourselves.”
“Listen,” Teppei said sternly as he joined his brother in the elevator. He thought of grabbing a box of protein bars, but he decided that could wait. “First of all, how do you explain the small hole that suddenly appeared in the wall? Like I told you, it wasn’t there before. I’ve racked my brain, and I can’t remember ever seeing a hole like that anywhere else in the basement, and there’s no way it could have simply occurred naturally. Someone made it, on purpose.”
“Well, you haven’t been down here in quite a while, so as you say, maybe somebody came along and made that hole when no one was looking.”
“But who? And why would anyone do such a thing?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know!” Tatsuji bellowed, stamping his foot on the elevator floor. “The only thing that matters right now is that there are people out there, and there’s a road, and we’re going to be saved. After they rescue us we can ask for a detailed explanation, if that’s so important to you.”
When the elevator arrived at its destination, Tatsuji bounded through the doors and into the apartment with such an overabundance of energy that he nearly fell flat on his face in the entryway. The sky outside was already completely light and the apartment was flooded with morning sunshine, the same as always.
“Naomi! Naomi! We’re saved! We found some people!”
“What? Where?” Naomi came running down the hall dressed in nothing but blue jeans and a brassiere, with her disheveled hair flying every which way.
Tatsuji burst into the living room, where he began picking up clothes and miscellaneous items and cramming them into the Louis Vuitton overnight bag.
“Go and get dressed,” he ordered Naomi. “They’re going to be sending a rescue party to the basement any minute now, so we need to be there.”
“A rescue party? In the basement?” Misao echoed doubtfully.
“No, that isn’t happening,” Teppei whispered in his wife’s ear. “It’s true, we did hear something, but I seriously doubt whether it’s a rescue party.”
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” Misao asked, looking around helplessly, but no one seemed to hear her plea.
Naomi appeared again, dressed in the gaudy floral-patterned blouse she’d worn the day before. When she began to paint her lips while looking into the miniature mirror of her compact, Teppei walked up to her and shouted, “Stop primping, dammit! You aren’t going anywhere!” His voice was so loud that Cookie began to howl in confusion. Naomi stopped with her lipstick tube in midstroke and gaped at her brother-in-law, speechless with astonishment.
“Nobody’s coming to save us,” Teppei continued in a calmer tone. “That isn’t what’s going on down there at all. You need to understand. Those sounds we heard—those voices? They don’t belong to people.”
Tatsuji let out a long, dry, artificial-sounding laugh. “I think my big brother here has lost touch with reality. I heard them with my own e
ars. They were definitely people, and they were answering me with perfectly normal words and sentences. Misao, you’re the expert on the underground road that might never have been filled in, right?”
“Wait, how do you know about that?”
“Your husband told me.”
“Well, it’s just speculation,” Misao demurred. “We have no idea whether such a road exists or not.”
“No, I’m telling you, it does exist. There really is a road!” Tatsuji insisted. “Apparently it was there all along, behind the wall. Okay, listen. This is what happened. There was a little hole in the wall, and when I hit it with the hammer the wall started to crumble like, I don’t know, a piece of birthday cake or something. After I made the hole bigger we looked through it, and there was a magnificent-looking road on the other side of the wall. I could hear voices, far away, and when I shouted for help, they answered me. Isn’t that right, Tepp?”
Teppei nodded reluctantly as Tatsuji babbled on. “When Tamao got injured by the weasel wind, it probably blew in from the underground hole. If we follow the road, it’ll come out somewhere. I’m certain of that. If we just start walking, someone will come and help us, or show us where we need to go.”
“Can this really be true?” Misao asked Teppei, but his only response was to avert his eyes and give his head a pessimistic shake.
“Come on, Naomi, we need to get going,” Tatsuji said. “This is no time to be thinking about makeup. Hurry up, let’s get a move on!”
“But—what about the rest of the family?” Naomi asked hesitantly, clutching the overnight bag Tatsuji had thrust into her arms.
Teppei looked at Misao. She was breathing raggedly, and her chest was visibly heaving under the sheer tank top.
Misao returned his gaze. It was clear from the look in her eyes that while she was decidedly skeptical about the miraculous rescue scenario Tatsuji was touting, she found this new development too interesting to ignore.
“We could at least go down and check it out,” she said softly. “I mean, where’s the harm in just taking a look?”
Teppei understood what Misao was saying: they couldn’t afford to overlook any chance of escape, however slight. He shared those sentiments, and he knew a last resort was better than no resort at all. It was just that he had a profoundly bad feeling about this particular last resort …
“And after we check it out?” Teppei asked. “What then?”
“I don’t know,” Misao said. “But anything has to be better than just sitting around in this apartment doing nothing, don’t you think?”
Everyone knew she was right. When human beings are deprived of their normal freedom of movement, they need to latch onto any shred of hope. As long as there is some action to take or some solution to explore, even if those options ultimately come to naught, the mere illusion of possibility can keep people from tumbling into the abyss of despair.
So they all piled into the elevator: Tatsuji, Naomi, Teppei, Misao, and Tamao. As the door began to close, Tamao suddenly cried, “I don’t want to leave Cookie behind!” The dog was already standing wistfully in front of the elevator, and when Teppei held the door she bounded eagerly inside.
23
July 27, 1987 (7:00 a.m.)
The moment they stepped off the elevator, Cookie began barking ferociously. She bounded toward the opening in the basement wall like a hunting dog charging at its prey, leaping high into the air with every step.
“Cookie!” Tamao called. “Come back here! Cookie!”
Paying no attention, the dog began to go berserk, running wildly around in circles near the wall and frantically sniffing at everything in sight while emitting an endless stream of low growls interspersed with hysterical yelps.
“Look, there it is!” Tatsuji said loudly, pointing toward the hole.
“So you’re saying there’s an underground road on the other side?” Naomi’s tone was hopeful but dubious.
“Yeah. Come on, I’ll show you!” Tatsuji grabbed his wife’s wrist and pulled her toward the back of the basement.
“It’s really cold down here. How on earth could it be so chilly, all of a sudden?” Misao asked Teppei. He didn’t reply.
“Oh my god!” Naomi exclaimed in wonderment as she aimed the flashlight beam through the opening. “There really is a road! Misao, you’ve got to see this! I’m not sure what it is, but it’s amazing!”
Misao trotted up and peeked inside. At the sight of the road her whole body began to shiver uncontrollably.
The moment she moved away, Tatsuji took her place. Sticking his head through the opening, he yelled fervently, “Hey! Hello! We’re all here now!” As if in counterpoint, Cookie matched every word with a shrill, frenetic bark.
“Shut up, Cookie!” Tatsuji bellowed. “Will somebody please make this dog be quiet? I can’t hear a damn thing!”
Teppei took hold of Cookie’s collar and tried to jerk her away from the wall, but the dog braced her hind legs and refused to budge. Cookie’s eyes were bugging out in frustration, and the flecks of white foam that sprayed from her mouth made her look like a rabid hound.
“Hey!” Tatsuji yelled again, into the hole. “Is anybody there? Hello?”
Naomi and Misao pressed their ears against the concrete wall. Tatsuji clicked his tongue in irritation. “Hey!” he shouted into the hole, more urgently than before. “Where did everybody go?”
After a moment Tatsuji withdrew his head from the opening. “There’s no answer,” he said peevishly, making no attempt to hide his disgruntlement. “Maybe they went to get somebody else, to help.”
Somebody else? Teppei felt a sick lurch in the pit of his stomach. But who, and why? There had been so many voices, earlier. Surely that throng wouldn’t have needed to go off in search of reinforcements.
Tatsuji paused to rest for a moment while Naomi took a turn at hollering into the opening. “Hello! Won’t you help us, please? Somebody? Anybody?”
“You know what?” Tatsuji cried. “Let’s just tear this mother down! It shouldn’t take too long.” His face was red as a beet, and his eyes were filled with grim determination.
“I’ll help, too,” Naomi said as her husband prepared to attack the wall, hammer in hand. She hoisted the flashlight above her head and was about to strike the concrete when Tatsuji halted her arm in mid-swing.
“Don’t be stupid!” he snapped. “If you break our only flashlight, how are we going to see once we’re on the road?”
Unconsciously, Teppei glanced in Misao’s direction. She looked back at him with a face that had lost its usual youthful verve and animation, as though she had somehow been transformed into a world-weary old person in the space of a few minutes.
“Um, Papa?” Tamao came up to Teppei and tugged on the bottom of his T-shirt. “What’s on the other side of the hole?”
“It’s kind of like a big cave with a road running through it,” Teppei replied, absentmindedly stroking his daughter’s cheek.
“And we can use the road to get out of here?”
“We don’t know yet. We might be able to. That’s why we’re going to give it a try.”
“But it’s so dark in there.”
“You’re right. It does look pretty dark.”
“I don’t like it.” Tamao’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m scared. I don’t want to go in there.”
Teppei didn’t reply; he just held his little daughter close. Cookie was crouched beside them, muscles tensed, emitting a low, continuous growl.
Meanwhile, Tatsuji was making good progress with the demolition. At every blow of the hammer, great chunks of loosened concrete crashed to the floor in a hail of rubble. The wall was so easily dismantled that the onlookers found it hard to believe it was made of cement.
It took Tatsuji a quarter of an hour, at most, to finish hacking out a hole large enough for one person to clamber through. By the end his entire body was drenched in sweat, and his white shirt was soggy and gray with grime. Taking off the shirt, Tatsuji tossed it asi
de. Then he stood by the wall, naked to the waist and breathing hard, admiring his handiwork.
“This is good enough,” he declared. He had evidently gotten nicked by one of the jagged shards of falling concrete, and blood oozed from a single scratch on his right temple.
Gingerly, with trembling hands, Naomi pointed the flashlight through the newly expanded opening. Teppei and Misao came up and joined her in peering through the hole. The configuration seemed to indicate that the basement was meant to serve as a terminus for the underground road, just as the urban-planning documents at the ward library had described. To the left was a kind of ravine—a wide, deep groove in the earth—while the rough, unfinished road stretched off to the right. A damp, fishy odor assailed their nostrils.
“Do you suppose there are bats, or mice?” Naomi asked uneasily as she beamed the flashlight’s circle of light around the vast, dark space.
“Who cares about that?” Tatsuji said irritably, using his bare forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow. “What I want to know is, what happened to all the people who were down here before?”
“They probably haven’t gone far.” For some reason, Naomi’s casual remark sent a chill up and down Teppei’s spine. They probably haven’t gone far …
“Anyway,” Tatsuji said, taking a deep breath, “let’s go check it out, shall we, ladies and gentlemen? Or should I say ‘ladies and gentleman’?” Clearly, it took a supreme effort for him to crack that little joke.
“Are you really going to go?” Teppei asked.
“Yes, I’m really going to go.” Tatsuji met his brother’s gaze and held it.
“I’m going with you,” Naomi announced. She appeared to be in the grip of a contradictory jumble of emotions: a normal measure of fear and foreboding, along with affectionate loyalty to her husband and the hedonistic self-centeredness that made her want only to get back to her easy, comfortable life, any way she could.
“You know, I wonder whether it might be better to hold off for a while,” Misao ventured diffidently.