In the summer of my first year in university, I decided to challenge a moderately famous local haunted spot called "Four-Dimensional Slope." The legend went that if you put your car in neutral while driving up the slope at night, the car would drive itself up the hill. Hearing that rumor, I got immensely excited. Unlike regular haunted spots where you never knew if ghosts were actually there or not, the idea that a car would physically move sounded like something incredible. Still, being too scared to go alone, I invited two of my upperclassmen. It was 1:00 AM. I was standing blankly in front of the empty, deserted nearest station. Next to me stood the eccentric occult mania fanatic I revered as my "Master," also standing there blankly. Usually, whenever I brought him this kind of story, he would make an immediate, on-the-spot decision: "Alright, let's go." But this time, we lacked the crucial element: a car. Master's beloved, battered old subcompact car was in the repair shop because of some mysterious smoke coming out of it. And I didn't even have a driver's license. So, we had invited one more person who could provide a car—and in a sense, that was a part of the outing I was looking forward to even more than the slope.
A blue Impreza cut through the darkness and pulled up in front of the station. The person who stepped out briskly waved at us, then immediately dropped their hand. "Why is *he* here?" It was Kyosuke, an online acquaintance of mine from the occult community. "That's my line," Master shot back, and the air immediately turned hostile. "Now, now," I tried to mediate, to which Master muttered something along the lines of, "Why do you always manage to pair me up with this guy?" Since I couldn't very well say, "Because it's entertaining," I just said "Now, now" instead. Master and Kyosuke hated each other. Intensely. It all started when they first met, and Kyosuke looked at Master and said, "What's with this fake-ass fraud?" Though their specific fields differed slightly, both seemed to harbor an unwavering pride that they were second to none as occult freaks. They were essentially the north and south poles of a magnet; mutual repulsion was bound to happen.
"Now, now, there's a spot just as insanely terrifying halfway to Four-Dimensional Slope anyway, so let's just enjoy the trip," I said, somehow managing to soothe the two of them and shove them into the car. Naturally, Master took the backseat, and I sat in the front passenger seat. "It's cramped," Master remarked. "Shut up," Kyosuke snapped back. When Master later muttered, "It stinks," Kyosuke pulled the car over and they nearly came to blows right then and there. I was so glad I'd invited them as a set. They were the absolute best. These two. Then, something that completely shattered that mood entered my field of vision. Deep in the middle of a mountain road at midnight with no oncoming traffic, a gigantic Jizo statue loomed up on the edge of the roadside along the river. Perhaps because there was nothing to compare it to in the dark, it looked abnormally large. Roughly five meters by my estimation. "That's the 'Looking Back Jizo'," I said. The legend went that if you passed it in a car and looked back, the statue—which should have been facing sideways—would be facing you, and making eye contact with it guaranteed a fatal accident. It was the kind of story they would love. Yet, despite it being right up their alley, neither of them said a word, nor did they look back. A chill ran down my spine. A bizarre laughter bubbled up inside me, part fear, part delight. Since I couldn't look back, the Jizo on the roadside receded only within my imagination, vanishing into the twisting darkness. And in that imagination, of course, it was facing straight toward us. Expressionless.
With both Master and Kyosuke maintaining a heavy silence, the car pressed on down the dark road. Looking irritated, Kyosuke tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. Eventually, we came to a fork in the road. "Go left," I said, and the steering wheel turned without even signaling. As soon as we took the left, an uphill climb began. "Where?" "Um, if I recall, it should be around here..." Well, according to the rumors, anyway. Kyosuke brought the car to a stop and shifted the gear into neutral. ... The suspense lasted only a moment. Inch by inch, the car rolled backward. Kyosuke let out a sigh and stepped on the brake. "Ah, man, I was actually kinda looking forward to this." I was disappointed, too. To be honest, if you asked me whether I genuinely believed such a slope existed, the answer would be no. At that moment, Master said, "Turn off the headlights," and got out of the car holding a flashlight. All three of us stepped out, standing completely still on a mountain road surrounded by total darkness. "Well, it's probably something like this," Master started mumbling.
The slope in these mountains was a gentle upward incline, but if you looked ahead, the white line on the shoulder subtly curved, and the width of the road seemed to change midway. That must be what distorts your sense of distance, making an upward slope feel like a downward one. On a dark night with few comparative objects around to indicate the slope's gradient, staring only at the white line illuminated by faint light must induce that exact illusion. Hearing Master's explanation, strangely enough, I began to feel as though the road that had been going uphill just moments ago was shifting into a downward slant. "In other words, if you didn't do something unrefined like trying to climb this with your high beams on, we could've enjoyed it a bit more, don't you think?" Kyosuke scoffed at Master's provocation. "Oh really? Then I'll just leave you here so you can enjoy your illusion to your heart's content." "Look at you talk. A grown adult naive enough to believe in a Four-Dimensional Slope." The quiet road, filled only with the distant chirping of insects, echoed solely with the sound of the two men snapping at each other. However, Kyosuke's next words completely altered the scene. "Whatever, but you really shouldn't look behind you. The Jizo is coming."
I was struck by a shock as sudden as having a bucket of minus-100-degree water dumped straight onto my heart. It wasn't because of Kyosuke's childish scare tactic. The moment he said it, Master whipped his head around to look behind him with a horrifying expression. It wasn't astonishment or fear. It was the look of someone with a chillingly cold, emotionless expression frozen onto his face. But of course, nothing was there—just sprawling darkness. Seeing that reaction, Kyosuke gasped, the mocking grin he had prepared freezing on his face. Hey, come on. This was supposed to be a joke. We were supposed to laugh at the guy who got tricked. Even as I thought that, the night air stung like needles. "My bad," Kyosuke apologized, and the three of us got back into the car leaving a terribly bad aftertaste. Master slumped down in the backseat and didn't utter a single word. We didn't pass back in front of the Jizo in question; instead, we took a wide detour along the prefectural highway on our way back. After dropping Master off at the station, as Kyosuke was dropping me off, he scratched his head and muttered, "Why the hell did I apologize?", then sped off at an absurdly high speed in his Impreza, giving me the greatest scare of the day.
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