It’s a story I heard from someone. "I’ve picked up an interesting story." My mentor said this in a hushed voice. She was my mentor in the occult. When she called something an interesting story, you could never take it at face value. "There’s an old merchant house ruins in a town near the prefectural border. It’s practically abandoned, but the building is still standing. Nobody knows who owns it, so it’s just left there, undeclared and untouched. Lately, rumors have started that from the middle of the night, groans that sound like they aren't of this world echo from inside that empty house. The locals are too scared to go anywhere near it. So, interested?" It was the summer of my second year in university. It wasn't a matter of whether I was interested or not. At that time, all I thought was, *Ah, a road trip this time.* That summer was just like the one before it—no, even more than that—a daily routine of blindly drawing closer to things of fear and terror. That daily life was tilting, like a slope slowly giving way. Every time I caught a glimpse of a bizarre world ordinary people couldn't touch and felt terrified, it felt as though someone was handing me an invisible key. I had no idea what kind of door those keys were meant to open. The keys just piled up, and I had no idea when I was supposed to use them. Overwhelmed by them, I wandered endlessly through streets, mountains, forests, paths, and the darkness made by man. Those days numbed an important part of my brain, blurring the boundary between sanity and madness. It was a summer devoid of reality, like living inside an aquarium. Rocked back and forth in the passenger seat of the light car, I stared at the scenery beyond the window. We had set out from my mentor's house in the evening, but now the sun had completely set, and the towering mountains stood as dark, giant shadows, forming an eerie, jagged line.
How long had it been since I last saw a convenience store? The deserted country road twisted and turned, with the lights of a farmhouse occasionally visible beyond the mountain fields, followed only by the faint, lonely glow of streetlights that appeared as if remembering to do so. The car stereo had been whispering Inagawa Junji’s ghost stories for a while now. Every so often, my mentor would let out a soft chuckle. I looked at her profile. Still gripping the steering wheel, she suddenly turned to me and said, "I saw a *kudan* the other day." "Huh?" I asked, but she didn't repeat herself. Instead, she abruptly averted her gaze and muttered, "Never mind, I wouldn't tell a dense guy like you anyway." A vague sense of dissatisfaction was all that remained, but not everything my mentor said and did could be easily interpreted. Before I knew it, the road widened, and the mountains seemed to recede a little further away. When a disaster-prevention pole caught my eye by the roadside, a farm cooperative sign appeared shortly after. Farmhouses and small public facilities began to appear, one by one. "Let's park around here," my mentor said, pulling the car into a space that looked like a construction company’s material storage yard, and cut the engine. There was no sign of life whatsoever. My mentor pulled a flashlight from the glove compartment and illuminated her hands. It looked like a hand-drawn map. "This way." Slamming the car door shut, my mentor started walking. I followed right behind her. As we moved through the dead-silent, old countryside town, I didn't see even a shadow of movement. Along the path illuminated by the flashlight, signs with various slogans occasionally came into view, and the only sound breaking the silence was the distant, harsh cawing of birds, almost as if filling the void. I checked my watch; it wasn't even midnight yet. I felt that the night here was longer than the one we knew.
*With it being this lonely, I'm actually more scared of running into a living person,* I thought, sending a shiver down my spine, but we didn't meet a soul. The faint croaking of frogs grew louder, and soon we hit a dirt path alongside an irrigation ditch. Following it as it curved, a single yellow streetlight stood alone, and beyond it, the dark shadow of a building came into view. "Is that it?" My mentor shined the flashlight toward it. As we drew closer, the condition of the abandoned house became clear. Just how long ago had it been built here? The thicket behind it showed no signs of being tended to at all, stretching its branches into the property like massive, pitch-black hands. Here and there around the surroundings, you could catch glimpses of old stone foundations where houses once stood, and dilapidated huts with no roofs, but there was no trace left of the neighborhood's past as a merchant district. Remembering the rumor that otherworldly groans could be heard, I instinctively strained my ears, but all I could hear was the croaking of frogs and the sound of the wind. Growing increasingly uneasy, I was about to suggest, "It looks like nothing's here, let's just go back," when I stopped myself upon seeing her scratch the area just below her eye with her finger. She had an old scar there, and she said that when she was excited, it would faintly rise to the surface of her skin and prickle with pain. Whenever she touched it, to me it meant that the structure of this world—the one we idly assumed was supposed to be a certain way, no, the way it *had* to be—was about to twist out of shape. Plowing through the overgrown weeds, my mentor approached the house. Before long, the flashlight illuminated the wooden boards at the front of the house, where a faint design resembling the kanji for "soy sauce" (*hishio*) still remained. It might have once been a soy sauce wholesale store. My mentor rattled the wooden boards, but they didn't seem like they would budge. When she aimed the light upward, the front window on the second floor was illuminated. Fitted with lattice doors, it had no footing below and didn't look like a place anyone could easily slip into. And then—
From a slight gap in that lattice, I felt as though I saw a shift in the air, as if something had moved inside. I rubbed my eyes, but the second floor was immediately swallowed back into the darkness. My mentor lowered the light and muttered, "Wonder where we can get in," as she started walking around to the back. What was that? I had a very bad feeling about it. I strained my ears once more. Just the frogs and the wind, as expected. When we rounded the corner, an earthen wall enclosed the property, but we found a small side door just big enough for a person to pass through. I pushed the half-collapsed wooden door open to find a space overgrown with tall weeds inside. "The back garden, huh?" My mentor stepped into it. Sweeping the flashlight around the area, the fire box of a fallen stone lantern, the remains of a filled-in pond, the ruins of a collapsed earthen storehouse, and what looked like an outhouse emerged chillingly into the light. As we pushed through the weeds toward the back of the main house, we found a spot where the plaster walls were peeling everywhere, and wooden panels were heavily nailed across. "The back door? Though I doubt this will open." My mentor banged rhythmically against the boards. The sound of wood dust pattering down reached my ears. "Over here, there's a veranda." Bathed in the faint moonlight, a veranda that looked slightly damp stood quietly in the gloom. However, beyond it, wooden storm shutters covered the entire surface just the same. We both tried shaking them, but something like a brace must have been propped against them from the inside—they showed no signs of opening at all. With an annoyed click of her tongue, my mentor stepped away, walked to the edge of the back garden, and slipped her body into the gap between the earthen wall and the exterior wall of the house, invading deeper. All I could hear was the unpleasant sound of her crunching and breaking something underfoot. Darkness descended upon me left behind. A slight sense of loneliness crept in.
Before long, cursing under her breath, my mentor returned from that gap. "Spit, spit. What is this? There's nowhere to get in at all." "Right." Uttering such words, I looked up at the two-story house. Just how long had this structure been standing here? Since the Meiji era? The Edo era? Now, illuminated by artificial, inorganic light, the dingy white walls seemed draped in the melancholy of a ruined home. Insects chirped away: *lee, lee*. "I should've brought a metal bat," my mentor said. Before the bad premonition could even settle in, unforgiving words rained down on me without a beat of hesitation. "Body slam." "Huh?" I asked back, but she repeated the command while pointing the flashlight at the back door. I felt like I had a lot of things I wanted to say, but I resolved them all within myself, and though I hung my head, I decided to obey submissively. At first, I tried throwing my shoulder against it lightly, but a dull shock ran straight to the core of my body, and the door didn't even warp. "Half-hearted hits just hurt more, you know," my mentor said irresponsibly from behind, hardening my resolve. This time, I built up enough momentum and threw my entire body against it. With a sharp *crack* like something snapping, the door broke inward, and my momentum carried me tumbling inside. The moment I crossed the threshold, a moldy stench rushed into my nasal passages, making my head spin. Rather than shattering, the door had simply given way because the wooden bar acting as an interior lock had snapped. It swung back and forth on its hinges, creaking loudly. Pulling me to my feet, my mentor shined her light into the house. Underfoot was a dirt floor. Several large earthenware jars sat near what looked like a sink. In a corner piled high with wooden chairs, the remains of a hearth were visible. And bundled firewood was scattered so densely there was nowhere to stand. "You know a lot about houses like this, right?"
I shook my head at my mentor's words. My specialty was Buddhist art. Old merchant houses weren't my field. "But I'm pretty sure this is called a *tōri-niwa* (through-corridor). And that means this side is the tatami room—" I pointed at the shoji screen stripped down to its wooden skeleton, then pointed deeper in the opposite direction of the back door we had just entered, and said, "And that over there must be the shop room." "Ho," my mentor murmured as she shoved the shoji screen wide open and stepped into the tatami room, where dust had accumulated thick. Shoes on, of course. There wasn't a single piece of furniture. It was a completely bare room. It was just that the rotting tatami mats stirred up an unpleasant smell and dust. "Go any further, and we might sink right through." My mentor shined her light against the wall from where she stood. On the earth-toned wall, there were traces where a hanging scroll might have once been mounted above the raised tatami platform, but now the wall plaster had peeled off, leaving a gruesome sight. Looking up, there was a massive spider web in the corner of the ceiling. Several moths were caught in it. "No way," my mentor gasped. We clearly caught a fleeting moment of an unimaginably huge spider hiding its body away into the ceiling beams to avoid the light. Disgusting. Inside a house where humans no longer lived, the lives of insects continued on unchanged. The adjacent room looked much the same.
Next, my mentor and I cautiously stepped into the shop room. "Are there spiders?" Suddenly losing her nerve, my mentor tried to push me into the darkness. After a brief tug-of-war of "You pushed," "No you did," we both peered inside from the entrance. There were only a few low display counter-like stands, and almost nothing else remained. Just like me, perhaps sensing shadows hiding from the light here and there, my mentor aimlessly swept her light in every direction, groaning, "Ugh." On the back side of the door that served as the shop's main entrance (was it the one with the *hishio* character painted on it?), we could see sturdy-looking bars propped up in multiple layers. I shuddered to think what would have happened if we had body-slammed *that* side with all our might.
After that, the two of us explored the small rooms inside the house, but nothing notable came of it. In other words, nothing related to the rumor that "otherworldly groans can be heard" happened, and nothing was found. "There's no sign of people at all." At my whisper, my mentor tilted her head with a "Hmm." She didn't seem convinced. Surely, after coming all the way here on an expedition and even committing trespassing to find nothing, she wasn't satisfied. As I thought this, my mentor tilted her head further and muttered quietly. "How do you get to the second floor?" A chill ran down my spine. The second floor? The second-floor lattice windows we had seen from the outside. There had to be a room back there. How do you get up to it? There weren't any stairs in this house, were they? Maybe we missed something. Thinking that, I walked around the inside of the house once more. However, not only were there no stairs, but I couldn't even find a trace of where they used to be. "In a house built like this, where are the stairs normally located?" I answered my mentor's question. "Usually at the edge of the shop room. Well, sometimes next to the kitchen." "There aren't any. Nowhere at all."
Strange. I wondered if people came and went using a rope ladder, so I inspected the ceiling, but found no such traces. Could it have been accessed from the outside using a portable ladder? Just as I started thinking that, my ears caught something that chilled the core of my soul. *Ooooooooo* *…………* I felt like I heard a groan coming from nowhere in particular. I instinctively stiffened. It wasn't my imagination. The proof of that was right in front of me. My mentor had placed her index finger to her lips, keeping a low posture with a grim expression. *Quietly.* After giving me that instruction with her eyes, my mentor slowly began to step forward on tiptoe. Unpleasant sweat trickled down my temples. We moved from the shop room where we had been standing into the through-corridor, holding our breath as we advanced down the dusty path carved out by the flashlight's round beam. I felt as though the darkness had suddenly deepened. I was reminded, belatedly, that there are shadows inside a room that a single light source cannot reach. The imagination flared up, whispering that something had hidden itself away in that darkness the moment I looked away for a second. *Ooooooooo* *…………* Straining my ears to the faint groans, my mentor stopped. It was right in front of the tatami room we had first entered. Placing her feet gently onto the tatami, my mentor stepped up into the room. As if pulled by the sagging mats, the skeleton of the shoji screen made a sharp click. Pulled along by her hushed voice saying, "Hey," I stepped up onto the tatami as well.
My mentor shined her light toward the remnants of a closet in the corner of the room. Even the sliding paper doors were gone, having seemingly been removed. It was just a space that yawned open like a hole in the room. The groans were still continuing. Moreover, they had clearly gotten closer. Just as I thought my mentor was fumbling around the floor of the closet, with a sound like wood grinding—*zuzu...*—a flow of unseen air pushed against my face. My mentor looked back at me. Then, she shined her light on the closet floor. The light vanished at a single point, as if swallowed up. There was a hole there, its hidden board lid removed. It was large enough for a person to easily slip inside. Drawn close by my mentor's gestures, I cautiously peered into the hole. Inside was a wooden staircase leading down into the underground. Air blew up from below. *Ooooooooo* *…………* The sound of wind rushing through a hollow space. Was this the true identity of the groaning sound? As I swallowed hard, my mentor whispered to me. Her eyes shining brilliantly, she said, "Well then, shall we go?" I remembered. The old storehouse at my paternal grandfather's house. Deep inside, there was a hidden staircase leading underground. Below it was a secret room, where a giant earthenware jar sat. When I was a child, being led down those stairs by my father, that feeling—so gradually and imperceptibly that you didn't even notice it—of slowly dying. Scolded for mischief, I would be forced into that jar by my father.
The jar stood so quietly that it looked like it was sitting down. Who was it that said that...? Either way, swallowed all alone by the jar in the depths of the earth illuminated by yellow light, I could only curl up into a ball and watch as a heavy stone lid was placed over me from above. Locked away in a world without a single ray of light, I would listen to the footsteps fading away. Before long, I would stop feeling like the place I was in was the depths of the earth at all. I would start to feel like there was something even further below.
"What's wrong?" Called back to reality. Aiming her flashlight downward, my mentor cautiously placed her foot on the stairs. I followed behind her. *Creak, creak*—the sound of old wood groaning. This wasn't the sound of stairs going from the second floor to the first. Even in a building where you couldn't see the outside, stairs heading down into the earth were unmistakable. You knew it through your skin. Or perhaps your organs. The stairs were steep. Each step was terribly high, and the tread where you placed your foot was narrow. Looking down, I even had the illusion that we were descending almost vertically. It would be terrible if I slipped. Thinking that, I carefully advanced step by step. Soon, we hit a wall. When we rounded the space opening to the right, another staircase leading further down continued. It was just a landing. "Maybe they're aging soy sauce down in the basement," my mentor muttered, but I didn't think so. It didn't seem like the humid underground was a suitable place to store soy sauce, and above all, the fact that the entrance was hidden inside a closet was deeply unsettling. The faint breeze blowing up from the basement brushed against my cheek.
A moldy stench hit my nose. We quickly hit another wall. My mentor slowly aimed her light to the right. A voice saying, "Hey." When I lined up beside her, a staircase leading further down came into view. "There's still more below," my mentor muttered. Illuminated by the flashlight below, another wall of the same plaster reflected the light. And, in the exact same way, a space on the right swallowed the light. "Just how deep underground does this go?" We descended those stairs. The sound of creaking wood and the wind. The dingy plaster walls, and the path continuing as it doubled back in a loop. Two times. Three times. Four times. Five times. Six times. Counting the number of switchbacks, strange static like insects flying entered my brain, and I gradually lost track of the next number. Seven times. Eight times. Nine times. Next is ten. Ten. It's ten. Ah. Another staircase. Since this makes eleven, the next one—no, wasn't the last one ten? Next is... My mentor, walking ahead, suddenly stopped in her tracks. She aimed her flashlight at the ceiling. "Soot." Though I called it a ceiling, it was a low, slanted wooden board extending downward. The floorboards of the stairs we had just descended were likely the ceiling boards of the floor below. That entire ceiling looked faintly stained in black. "I hadn't noticed, but the footing is full of soot too." In my mind, the silhouette of a person descending these stairs holding a candle flickered to life. Just how long had this underground staircase been used? My mentor crouched down and stared intently at the stair treads.
"Hey. Take a look at this."
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