Reiko

by James Avonleigh

  The police eventually settled on the suicide explanation, but most people believed that this was more for convenience’s sake, seeing that their man was already behind bars. But then less than a week later another of Reiko’s friends, Hideki Sano, was killed on the expressway. Kenji said that he’d been extremely depressed after the deaths of his friends, though he insisted to everyone that Jun and Kanae had not committed suicide. And few people could believe that he, out of all of them, would kill himself. The accident happened at nine o’clock at night, on the expressway, just outside the village. The driver of the truck claimed that one minute the road was clear, the next minute he had hit someone full on. He couldn’t say if Hideki had jumped or been pushed, although a potential assassin would have had an easy escape route into the hills. He’d apparently told his parents that he was going for a walk, although, intriguingly, they had sworn that they’d heard voices in his room just prior to that. Most people who knew Hideki refused to believe that he could have jumped.

  Just under a week later, the fourth in this grim sequence of deaths occurred. Saori Kumano had been Reiko’s closest friend and confidante and she was found dead in her bedroom with the window broken and the skin on her arms ripped to shreds by the broken glass. It was certainly a violent death, but once again there was no firm proof that she had been helped along. The widespread belief was that she had been trying to escape from somebody and had tried to use the window as an escape route. But she had been alone in the house at the time and no one had heard her cry out. The official verdict was suicide.

  After her death, school was suspended for several weeks and many families moved away, fearing further calamities. The village had never really returned to normal, Mrs Azuma added plaintively. She sighed and poured herself a glass of sake.

  ‘What about your son? How did he cope?’ I asked after a pause.

  She brightened a little. ‘He was fine. He was a very confident boy. He tried to cheer the other students up. It was very difficult for everyone and it was very disruptive for Kenji’s education. Maybe if it hadn’t been for that incident, he might have done better in his exams and gone to a better university.’

  I hazarded another question. ‘Did he ever mention seeing ghosts in the school?’

  Mrs Azuma shook her head. ‘No ghosts. Now the students at the school can make up stories about ghosts. It is four years since the incident happened. Most of them didn’t know the students involved.’

  ‘So you haven’t heard any stories?’

  ‘I’m a scientist. I have no interest in such things.’

  Mrs Azuma had given me more insight than I’d expected into the grim details of the students’ deaths, but would not be drawn on the subject of ghosts. I wondered if this reluctance was down to the same superstitious fears that had prevented Shinichi and Etsuko being drawn on the subject, the fear that there were ghostly listeners in the shadows waiting to catch her unawares. Somehow I couldn’t quite believe it of Mrs Azuma.

  I decided I should lay my cards firmly on the table. ‘The main reason I came to Japan was to investigate Japanese attitudes to the paranormal. So far people have been reluctant to talk about these things.’

  Mrs Azuma flashed me a conciliatory smile, as though to assure me she understood my dilemma. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a difficult subject for many Japanese.’

  I nodded, resolving to leave the matter there. I still wasn’t sure if I was being insensitive or not. I got the impression she wanted to talk, but first needed to go through the motions of appearing reluctant. Once she’d started on the story of the tragedy at the school, she’d talked for twenty minutes straight without the slightest inhibition.

  She began to gather up the plates, asking us if we still had room for dessert and generally returning to her cheerful self. We explained that we were fit to burst and she took this as a compliment.

  Then, as she was about to leave the room with an armful of plates, she turned and said ‘There’s something I remember about your friend.’

  I assumed by ‘my friend’ she was referring to Charlie. ‘Yes?’

  She furrowed her brow, her voice solemn. ‘He told me he’d seen a ghost in Izumi. He sat there where you’re sitting and told me he saw the ghost of Reiko Shimura walking towards him along the road.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  We were standing in Sarah’s kitchen, watching the kettle boil. ‘Bloody full,’ I said.

  ‘I did warn you, she doesn’t do restraint.’

  ‘I felt a bit like an animal, eating all that meat dripping with blood.’

  ‘How did you eat that raw horse meat? I bet you only did it to butter her up.’

  ‘She’s your host mum. What choice did I have?’

  Sarah laughed. ‘I don’t remember anything in the etiquette books about being offered horse meat. I think it’s one of those things they wheel out to frighten foreigners.’

  I took the kettle off the hob and poured it into a pot with green tea leaves. I fancied the stuff as a night cap, even though Sarah assured me it contained almost as much caffeine as black tea and was guaranteed to keep me awake. ‘I can’t work out if she’s frightened to talk about ghosts or if it’s something else.’

  ‘I don’t think the woman’s frightened of anything, so it’s probably something else. Remember, it’s not a normal thing to go around asking people about ghosts. Not everyone’s comfortable with that kind of thing. And if you asked me now for a ghost story I knew, I couldn’t tell you one off the top of my head. I’d at least have to go away and think about it. It’s a weird subject.’

  Sarah was right. Maybe I was expecting too much of Mrs Azuma. She’d spent the day slaving over a stove to create a sumptuous dinner for me and I was trying to pick her brains about the ghosts of her son’s friends. Time to take a rain check.

  ‘Don’t worry. Tomorrow, I’ll show you a few more sights.’ She retreated to her room with a cup of camomile tea and I retreated to mine, even though there was only a flimsy sliding screen separating us.

  For a while I lay there completely still, listening to her movements and her breathing. I saw her light go off and heard the rustle of her bedclothes and I couldn’t repress the first pangs of desire, the reawakening of emotions I’d buried deep inside me. I knew she was just a naturally friendly person and it’d be wrong to confuse her hospitality with anything deeper. I’d spent most of my life misinterpreting signals and I was determined not to go down that road again.

  But sleep didn’t come easily. I felt the food churning in my stomach, a colourful cocktail of dark green seaweed, white sea bream and blood-red horse meat. And everything Mrs Azuma had described came back to visit me: visions of Jun and Kanae making their last fateful tryst, of Hideki seeing the lights of a truck bearing down on him and of Saori cutting her wrists on the broken window pane. The only thing I could not see was whether they died alone or whether they had company. Then other figures appeared, gatecrashing my rest. Yoshi, showing me how to insert a banknote into a drinks machine; Charlie, fresh laceration marks around his neck, bent over his file, scribbling furiously; Professor Atami, waggling his finger at me, giving me a stern rebuke for embarking on this journey against his advice; and Shirakami-san, sitting alone in a dark classroom, brooding on the deaths of his students.

  No, sleep didn’t come easily that night.

  12. IZUMI HIGH REVISITED

  In a dream, I found myself standing at night in the deserted forecourt of Izumi high school. The bright moon cast a silvery pall over the scene. In front of the school building a line of cherry trees were shedding their snow-white blossom. I didn’t know what had brought me there, but I looked up instinctively to the windows of the third-floor classrooms. There in the third window along I saw the figure of a schoolgirl, clear in the light of the moon. She was dressed in a sailor uniform and her ghostly pale face looked out at me. Then she turned from the window and was gone.

  My feet took me forward, towards the main entrance where I paused to look up at
the clock. It was two o’clock. I pushed open the door and went through to the main hall, then stopped in front of the flight of steps to my left. I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going, but something pulled me towards those steps. Looking down I saw I was standing in a pool of liquid, reflecting the silvery moonlight. I didn’t stop to check, but I knew very well that it was blood.

  I made my way up slowly, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in my wake. At the top of the steps a sudden sound stopped me in my tracks. I strained to hear and there, unmistakably, was the sound of a girl laughing close by. A gentle, teasing laugh, drawing me on.

  I peered down the first floor corridor, saw that it was in darkness, then turned to face the second flight of steps. As I did so I saw, for the briefest of moments, a flash of sailor uniform at the top of the steps, appear and disappear into the shadows. I didn’t know who it was, but I knew I had to follow.

  I continued on up to the second floor, where I heard the same sound of laughter, only this time it was followed by the sound of a boy laughing. The girl was not alone. I glanced behind me and saw that my bloodstained footprints were still clear on the steps, reflecting the moonlight.

  I didn’t stop at the second floor corridor, but continued on upwards. I knew where I was going now. As I neared the third floor, the sound of laughter was closer and more distinct and, looking up, I saw, framed in the window at the top of steps, a boy and a girl in uniform. They stood there for an instant, their faces in shadow, watching me, then turned tail and ran, as though playing a game of catch with me.

  I reached the third floor and looked down the corridor to see a single shaft of moonlight from an open doorway piercing the darkness further down. I knew already which door was open and, as I started down the corridor, I heard the sound of excited laughter. I assumed they had hidden themselves in the classroom and were waiting to be found.

  As I neared the classroom, the laughter stopped and I had a sinking feeling in my gut. I picked up my pace.

  The room was empty. No desks, no chairs, no signs of life. Only a few shards of glass lying on the floor by the window, where one of the window panes had been shattered. I hurried over, my feet crunching on the broken glass, my stomach turning somersaults. I leaned out and saw below, on the forecourt, two lifeless bodies, a young girl and a young boy. I felt the tears welling up inside me, tears of anger and sorrow for these two lives cut down in their prime. Cherry blossoms, catching the moonlight, fluttered about their broken bodies, gracing them with a poetic valediction.

  I turned and slumped to the floor, clenching my fists and sobbing loudly. Then another feeling took hold: the feeling that I was not alone, that someone was observing me from the doorway. I looked up quickly, but the figure retreated into the shadows before I could properly see it. But my heart was too heavy to go in pursuit. I just sat there, amidst the scattered shards of glass, alone and full of sorrow.

  13. AYA

  The sorrow was still with me when I awoke.

  The morning sun streamed into the room through the blind, promising another beautiful day. In spite of this I didn’t feel well. I had a splitting headache and my stomach was still heavy after the evening’s indulgence. Then there was the dream. Perhaps it was made vivid by the rich food I’d eaten. Or perhaps it was the lurid tale Mrs Azuma had told me. But I could still see my bloodstained steps in the moonlight, hear the sound of laughter, taste the salty tears I’d cried. The image of the two doomed lovers lying lifeless on the school forecourt beneath a flurry of cherry blossoms was one I couldn’t dispel.

  I stirred myself and resolved to concentrate my efforts on my task in hand: documenting attitudes to supernatural phenomena. I had to make more effort to keep an emotional distance from those tragic events at the high school.

  Sarah was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room, listening to Allegri’s Miserere with a burning incense stick and a cup of coffee. She wore a beautiful white silk dressing gown and smiled when I appeared at the door.

  ‘Hungover?’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much. Who cares, you’re on holiday.’

  I lowered myself onto the floor and breathed out heavily, trying to steady myself.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  I definitely wasn’t sure. I took a few deep breaths, drinking in the fresh air from the open window. ‘Have you got any aspirin?’

  ‘I’ll just get you some.’ She got up to go to the kitchen then stopped at the door. ‘You were pretty noisy in the night.’

  ‘Noisy?’

  She went into the kitchen and started rummaging about. ‘Yeah, you were moaning,’ she called.

  ‘Moaning?’ I felt I could only muster one word at a time.

  She reappeared at the door with the aspirin. ‘Yeah. I remember sharing a room once with this girl who did the same thing. I asked her what it was and she told me she was wrestling with the devil in her sleep. Said she did it all the time.’

  I smiled. ‘I wasn’t wrestling with the devil. At least, I don’t think I was.’ I decided against telling Sarah about my dream for the time being.

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’ She handed me the aspirin and stretched her arms. ‘What you need is some clean, fresh air. There’s no hangover cure like it.’

  She was right. But there was more in my head than just a headache. Something darker and more pernicious had taken root and I was powerless to fight it.

  When Sarah told me she’d arranged for Aya to join us to do a little sightseeing, I was unable to suppress a broad smile. Sarah accused me of being no different to her other legion of panting admirers, then let me off because I was hungover.

  ‘She’s a pretty girl. If I were a man, I’d fancy her,’ she said as we drove towards our meeting place, the local Seven-Eleven convenience store.

  ‘Maybe outside of school, she’ll be able to talk more freely. When we were in the grounds yesterday, she kept looking across at the building, as though it were keeping tabs on her.’

  ‘You’re probably right. She’s always a bit more chatty outside school. Even likes to slag off the other teachers.’

  We drove into the Seven-Eleven forecourt, where a row of bikes were neatly parked outside the shop front.

  ‘This is where the local kids like to hang out,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s kind of the focal point of village social life, sad as that sounds.’

  We got out of the car and made our way into the shop, where a gaggle of schoolgirls descended upon us, giggling excitedly and pulling at Sarah’s sleeve. There were five of them, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, dolled up for the occasion, a blur of sparkly make-up and handbags. They all spoke at once with a mixture of Japanese and pidgin English and the only thing I recognized with any certainty was the long drawn-out cry of ‘Seeera-sensei’.

  ‘These are some of my first years,’ Sarah said above the din. ‘I think they want to be introduced to you.’

  The next thing I knew I was shaking their hands, saying my name and having it repeated back to me with an enthusiasm I was unaccustomed to. The next word that stood out amidst the chattering was ‘boyfriend’, to which Sarah shook her head emphatically. Undeterred, they turned their attention to me, asking in a harmony of perfect Japlish, whether I had designs on their teacher, to which I answered ‘no’, though if I’d had the time and a less impatient audience, I might have qualified this slightly. No matter, they didn’t seem to believe either of us and, after a little more harmless banter, left the store, giggling furiously as they went.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Sarah said, as the dust settled. ‘They’re good girls. Just a little excitable.’

  ‘They’re not the ones who told you about the ghosts?’

  She shook her head. ‘I think that lot are more interested in boys than ghosts. Or English lessons for that matter.’

  The door swung open and Aya appeared, a vision in blue jeans and white T-shirt, her face lit up with a smile.

  ‘They’re a
ll talking about you outside,’ she said.

  Through the window I could see them standing around their bikes, looking towards us and gossiping excitedly. ‘They think I’m Sarah’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Yes, they say you’re very handsome.’

  Sarah playfully locked her arm through mine. ‘So they think I’ve done well then?’

  Aya giggled. ‘They say you make a beautiful couple.’

  That was too much for me, and I felt my cheeks burn. God knows I tried to fight it, but blushing had always been a problem for me.

  Aya insisted on driving us. As a Japanese person, she said she felt responsible for showing her foreign friends around. ‘We’re all ambassadors for our country,’ she added, motioning out of the window with a theatrical sweep of the arm.

  As we started out, I asked what had brought her to Izumi. She told me she was originally from Yokohama, but had come to study at Tohoku University, Fukushima Prefecture’s most prestigious seat of learning. It had always been her intention to get back to the Greater Tokyo area, but somehow she had got stuck in a backwater. It reminded me of what Sarah had told me of the Japanese attitude towards the countryside. When she referred to it as ‘a backwater’, she really meant it. There was no point me harping on about clean air and birds singing in the hedgerows. This was no place for a young Japanese woman. ‘I’m not getting any younger,’ she said matter-of-factly as the car headed towards the hills.

  Now that we had left houses and factories behind, the profusion of blossom suddenly struck me. If anything was going to cure my hangover and dodgy stomach, then it was the experience of passing beneath an avenue of cherry blossom trees. But these weren’t just cherry trees we were passing. Soon Aya was reeling off names with the practiced nonchalance of an expert. Plum blossom, apple blossom, pear blossom, almond blossom. ‘It’s the kind of thing we had to learn at school,’ she said. ‘The names of trees, the names of flowers. There’s always been an emphasis on nature vocabulary in Japanese schools.’