This is a story I heard from my master. "It was probably about two years ago. I went to a certain old family's estate at the request of the daughter," Kanako-san whispered, her lips moving in the darkness illuminated by an oil lamp. "The house stood in the middle of a fairly large property, and a total of six people lived there: a family of five and a live-in housekeeper. The family consisted of my client, Manami-san. She was twenty-six and helped around the house. Then there was her younger sister, Takako, who was a college student. Plus their mother and father, and a grandmother well over eighty. There was a rather large detached building on the grounds as well, but since the family had shrunk compared to the old days, it seemed to be used only as a storage shed. They were part of a landowning family in that area. The father, the pillar of the household, was now just an ordinary salaryman, and while they had plenty of ancestral land they could sell, their actual lifestyle didn't seem particularly wealthy. The corner of the property was a parking lot, with space for as many as four cars. It's just an empty lot like that now, but before the war, a part of the mansion used to extend into that corner." There was a storehouse... right there. The light of the lamp writhed and swayed for a single moment.
It was the summer of my second year in college. That day, I had been invited to the secret base of my master in the occult, Kanako-san. In a dreary location facing a small river in the suburbs, a series of rented garages lined up. One of them was the garage rented by my master—in other words, her secret base. Inside, a wide variety of collected items were packed tightly together: bulky things that couldn't possibly fit in a single room of her rundown apartment, and ominous things that couldn't be kept there for entirely different, terrifying reasons.
The sheer volume of it was beyond imagination, so much so that you wouldn't believe it was collected by a mere student. Even though she must have made a decent amount working part-time for a private detective agency, the fact that she was always struggling for food was clearly because of this collection. When she unlocked the door and we stepped inside the garage, my master said to me, "You've been wearing a protective amulet lately, haven't you?" "Yes." I reached for my chest. Then my master spread her palm and ordered, "Take it off." "Eh? Why?" "If you wear half-baked things like that, it has the opposite effect." You'll die. She said that with a completely straight face. Just to step inside a rented garage. I held my breath and removed the amulet from around my neck. "Act normal." With those words, my master vanished into the depths of the door, and I followed her back. *Plop.* It felt as if my whole body had been submerged in oil. That sensation lasted for just a second, and my breath stopped. Soon, I realized that this viscous space was shaped by various overlapping, dense presences. I'm being watched. I instinctively felt that. It was past one o'clock in the middle of the night. There was no one in the garage except for my master and me. Even so, countless gazes intersected within that darkness. For instance, from inside the large grandfather clock illuminated by the old oil lamp my master had pulled out. From a painting depicting nothing more than a single bag with delicate embroidery. Or even from the grotesque skeletal specimen with both eye sockets gouged out. "Well, sit down." A sofa was placed in the small vacant space in the center of the garage. My master pointed to it, while she herself sat down on a pitch-black Western-style gravestone right beside it, resting one knee upon it. The surface of the gravestone was densely carved all over with foreign letters that looked like people's names, almost covering every inch. Every single thing here was extraordinary. Everything inside this garage. A thick, muddy presence swirled around us like a viscous current.
It was just the other day that my master had pulled out an old mask with a terrifying legend attached to it from this very place. Were there many other things as terrifying as that? When I asked her with some trepidation, my master muttered, "Oh right, I haven't told you," reached her arm behind her, and pulled out a wooden box. I recognized it. It was the box that had housed that old mask. Fearing I would have to look at something that horrifying again, I instantly braced myself. However, my master unsealed the wooden box with an odd look of delight and held its contents up to the lamp's light. "Look at this." At those words, my eyes were glued to the spot. The mask inside the box was smashed to pieces, centered around its nose. "Amazing, isn't it?" I had no idea why she looked so happy. "This isn't a joke," I finally managed to say. "True," she replied, putting the lid back on the wooden box. The object that my master herself had described as "so cursed it's on a national treasure level" had been broken. No, it couldn't possibly have broken on its own. It had been broken. Inside a locked garage. I had no idea what had happened, but it certainly wasn't ordinary. "It means there's something in this town that can trade blows with this thing—or perhaps, destroy it unilaterally." Scary, isn't it? My master laughed as she said that. Then, putting the box away, she cheered up and laughed cheerfully, saying, "Now then, let's talk about something fun." After that, she began telling several personal experiences. Naturally, they were all ghost stories. The first story was about a strange event related to the storehouse of an old family, which she had taken on as a part-time job for the detective agency.
Formerly, there had been two paths between the main house and the large earthen storehouse standing beside it. One was a stone path about six *ken* (approx. 11 meters) long running from right beside the entrance of the main house to the door of the storehouse. And the other was a narrow, dark corridor of the exact same length, stretching from the basement of the main house to the basement of the storehouse. Why it had been necessary to build two paths had already become unclear by the time the Showa era began. It was just whispered among the clan that once, there had been a detention cell in the basement of the storehouse, and the only way to reach it was through a secret door in the head of the household's room in the basement of the main house. "I don't think that's entirely a lie, though," Manami's father would often say, nodding to himself. "There's some kind of bizarre atmosphere down there." Within the family, the only one who would step foot into the basement of the storehouse without a care was her grandfather. The basement of the main house—where the head's room was once said to be—had now become a storage room crammed with things rarely ever used. As if concealed by those dust-covered pieces of furniture, the passageway leading to the basement of the storehouse quietly opened its dark mouth. Passing through it, an iron gate awaited you at the end. When you pushed open the gate, which let out a terrible rusted screech, it led once again to a space packed tightly with various items. The place rumored to have been a detention cell was now used as a storage room as well. However, unlike the basement of the main house, it held old family-heirloom antiques that were supposed to be kept in a storehouse. The above-ground portion of the earthen storehouse had burned down in a fire during the war and had been left as an empty lot without being rebuilt. Perhaps because their structures differed, the basement had escaped the disaster of the flames, and the items stored above ground had been moved down into that basement, which was no longer in use at the time. Because the first-floor section was lost and paved over solidly to become a parking lot, there was no other way to enter and exit that underground storehouse except through the narrow six-*ken* passageway from the basement of the main house. Manami's grandfather loved that underground storehouse, and would always hole up in there by himself, reading old books or writing by the light of a candlestick. Manami was terrified of that storehouse. She could certainly feel the "bizarre atmosphere" her father spoke of, and she hated the dark, narrow passage leading to the storehouse beyond endurance. Although the distance should have been only about ten meters, it sometimes felt terribly long. The passage bent like lightning twice along the way, and the structure prevented you from seeing ahead, which only fueled her anxiety all the more.
Heading from the main house, you were supposed to turn right first, and then immediately turn left. However, that passage—choked with soot and dust, overlapping with the dark corners of the family's history—had planted illusory memories in Manami's young mind. Turn right, turn left, and then turn right once more. A corner that shouldn't have been there would appear out of nowhere. When she got scared and tried to turn back, the path curved to the right from a dead end. Even though she had just turned right a moment before, trying to go back made the direction reverse. At times like that, how did she manage to get outside? For some reason, she couldn't remember. That wasn't all. There were times when more than ten minutes had passed just walking through a mere ten-meter corridor. Childhood memories though they were, such things had happened not just once or twice. Why on earth would she brave such a terrifying path to head to the storehouse? It was because her grandfather was there. Manami loved her eccentric grandfather, and whenever she interrupted him reading in the underground storehouse, she would beg him for stories or ask for snacks. Her grandfather never made a single annoyed face; rather, his expression would melt, and he would entertain young Manami gladly. That grandfather died when Manami was in the fifth grade of elementary school. He had stomach cancer. Right before he died, amidst pain so severe that even morphine no longer worked, her grandfather's dying, delirious wish was: Please place my bones in that underground storehouse. After her grandfather died, the remaining relatives discussed it, and his body was cremated and placed in the ancestral family grave. However, a single fragment of those bones was placed in a small urn and quietly stored away in the depths of the storehouse. Ever since then, the basement of the storehouse had become a dead space where not a single member of the family set foot unless absolutely necessary. The ancestral books and antiques slept in the dark storehouse as if all of them were grave goods for her grandfather's death. A sepulcher. That was the word that came to mind in such a place.
Fifteen years had passed since her grandfather's death. That day, Manami had ended up making a trip to that underground storehouse for the first time in half a year. Her uncle had begged her over the phone, so she had no choice. Apparently, he had seen a tea caddy made by a famous Edo-period master fetching a high price on some TV program. He claimed he felt like he had seen something identical to that tea caddy in the storehouse long ago. Her uncle, who now lived outside the prefecture, had a greedy streak when it came to money, and Manami didn't like him. But anyway, he unilaterally demanded that if that tea caddy happened to be made by the master, it was a matter for a family council, so she had better go look for it first. Family council or not, what right did an uncle who had left the house have? She felt resentful, but when she mentioned it to her father, he just laughed: "There's no way there's any such amazing caddy. Once he realizes it's just a misunderstanding, he'll finally drop it." And so, Manami was sent off to the storehouse to look for the tea caddy. She descended into the basement of the main house, walked through the tatami-matted room illuminated by a yellow electric light, and slipped her body into the small doorway at the back. From there, a staircase about half the usual length extended further underground, and at the bottom was the corridor leading to the storehouse. A faint, stale airflow could be felt in her nasal passages. She groped around for the light switch. When she pressed down on what touched her fingertips, with a low *hum...* sound, the light of an incandescent bulb lazily spread from the ceiling. The dimly lit passageway, its walls plastered with lime, felt eerie, as if something chilling was rising up from her feet. People used to pass through here by the light of lamps or handheld candles in the old days, but electricity was now run through it for safety's sake. However, perhaps due to the humidity, the incandescent bulbs burned out frequently. Every time that happened, her father or she would hold a flashlight and replace the bulb with a creepy feeling. Even now, right above Manami's head, the filament of the incandescent bulb was blinking. I hate this. Not again. When I get back, I have to ask Dad to fix it... Chizuko-san, the current housekeeper, would always insist without hesitation that she refused to enter this underground passageway. "I've been sensitive to spirits since I was young, and that place alone gives me the creeps." Saying that, she would shudder. Thanks to that, minimum cleaning of this corridor and the storehouse beyond it had become something the family took turns doing.
Beneath the flickering, unreliable light, once she passed the first bend, the entrance to the storehouse came into view. She stepped closer cautiously and pulled the small iron door toward her. *Screeech...* A grating sound rang out, and at the same time, somewhat lukewarm air leaked out from the pitch-black depths beyond the door. The door was narrow, and even Manami, who wasn't particularly large, couldn't enter without hunching over. Manami put half her body inside the door, reached her arm around, and felt along the wall. The light of the incandescent bulb spread into the dark storehouse. She breathed a sigh of relief. Antiques and old household goods—which no longer had a master to pick them up—were quietly resting on shelves and chests lining the walls on all four sides. She had heard that anything truly valuable had been disposed of around the end of the war, so what remained now should only have value to their own family who had inherited it generation after generation. Manami took a photograph out from her breast pocket. True to form, her uncle had sent her a cutout from a magazine introducing the tea caddy in question. Comparing it as she walked back and forth along the corner where the urns and other items were lined up, she managed to find something that seemed to be it. Indeed, the shape and color scheme were certainly similar. However, when she picked it up, it was strangely light, and looking closely at the surface, the craftsmanship also seemed cheap. As expected, it was her uncle's misconception. Thinking that, she felt a little cheered up. With the tea caddy in one hand, she headed for the single doorway. Managing to squeeze through the narrow door, she felt her heart go cold for a second. The incandescent bulb in the passageway had burned out. The path surrounded by plaster walls was swallowed by darkness, making it impossible to see ahead. She had left the light inside the storehouse on when she meant to turn it off, but even so, the light leaking from the small door was far too faint. I hate this. She had remembered that this place was the depths of the earth. Wasn't there a flashlight left inside the storehouse for times like this? She thought about turning back to look for it, but stopped, feeling it was too much trouble. It was a corridor only about ten meters long. It was a straight path with no obstacles, and she wasn't a child anymore, so what was there to be so scared of?
Without realizing it, she told herself that, and Manami started walking forward, clutching the tea caddy to her chest. It was quiet. Silence rang at a high pitch deep inside her ears. After walking just a few meters, there was a corner. Turning right there, she was supposed to immediately turn left. From then on, it was just a straight walk to the original entrance. However, what she cautiously peeked at beyond was pitch-black darkness where the light didn't reach. Her skin prickled with goosebumps. Desperately fighting the urge for her mouth to stiffen, she moved forward at as natural a pace as possible. Straight ahead, keeping her left hand along the wall. It's nothing. It's nothing. It's fine even if it's dark. Look. The original entrance is right there. *Thud.* Eh... She collided. With someone. No way. A chill ran through her entire body. It was dark and she couldn't see anything. She didn't even know who was there. Only a presence swept past. It seemed to be heading toward the storehouse. Manami scolded her feet, which felt rooted to the spot, and jogged up to the base of the stairs at the entrance. Once she reached there, a faint light was leaking from overhead. Clutching the tea caddy, she ran up the stairs and finally made it back to the storage room. Realizing that this place was still the basement, she crossed the room without looking back and bolted up the stairs to the first floor. In the living room at the top of the stairs, her father and mother were sitting around a table drinking tea. "Oh. You found it? The treasure." Looking at her, her father said casually. "Hey, did someone just go down there?" When Manami asked this hurriedly, her father and mother shook their heads with perplexed expressions. "Where's Takako?" She tried to ask next, but the sound of the TV and her younger sister's laughter could be heard from the next room.
I have a chill. The housekeeper, Chizuko-san, wasn't scheduled to come today. And her grandmother had caught a cold and had been hospitalized since the day before yesterday. It was the usual thing, nothing serious. Then who on earth was it she collided with in the underground passage just now? "Hey, don't say creepy things." Her mother forced a smile with a twitching cheek. "A burglar?" Her father bristled and started to rise from his chair, but her mother chided him with a troubled, half-hearted smile. "Oh, Dad. We've been right here the whole time, haven't we?" She pointed to the stairs leading down to the basement storage room. That's right. There was no other exit to the storage room. Only from this living room where her father and mother had been the whole time. And those two hadn't seen anyone. No one could possibly have gone down. Then who was it she bumped into in the darkness just now? She hadn't accidentally hit a wall. She had been walking with her left hand firmly touching the wall. Her mother rubbed Manami's back as she squatted down, shivering. Her father, along with Takako who had come to the living room upon hearing the commotion, took flashlights and went down into the basement.
In the end, they searched the basement storage room, the corridor, and the storehouse beyond it from top to bottom for about an hour, but found nothing unusual. Not even any traces that someone other than the family had been there. Finally, her father, who had replaced the incandescent bulb in the underground passage, returned to the living room with a weary expression, and all four family members sat facing each other around the table. Then, as if she could no longer bear the silence, her younger sister Takako opened her mouth. "Actually... I've bumped into someone before, too." I was shocked. She said an event almost identical to what had happened just now had occurred about two years ago. In her sister's case, the basement lights went out without warning, and when she tried to grope her way back through the corridor, her shoulder brushed against some unfathomable "something."
What was even more surprising was that her father and mother, looking thoroughly disgusted, then each began telling stories of similar experiences. It had happened a few years ago. Everyone had been trying to convince themselves it was just their imagination. Such a thing couldn't possibly happen. Yet now that they knew every single member of the family had experienced the exact same thing, it could no longer be brushed off as mere imagination. "Don't you think we should have an exorcism done?" When her mother brought it up timidly, her father snapped, "What nonsense—"
Comments (-)