“It isn’t even our fault you lost your stupid flashlight,” said Mitsui indignantly. He hated doing people good turns, especially when it involved going to places that weren’t meant to be gone to – like purportedly haunted, dangerous dormitory buildings; at night, no less. “This is simply outrageous! Doesn’t anyone know how to treat guests anymore?”
“I’m sorry, you guys, but this is important. Please,” said Maki earnestly. That flashlight was very dear to him.
Takenori was more sympathetic than Mitsui. Besides, he didn’t think he could stand it if Maki started bawling his eyes out – even if the contingency was remote. The very thought was enough to make him taste bile.
“All right, Maki,” he said with a curt nod at Maki. Then he turned to the others, who were telling each other about how outrageous the idea of risking their lives to retrieve a goddamned flashlight was. Takenori raised his voice to that pitch and volume with which the Shohoku team was intimately familiar, and which they hoped, whenever they heard it, that they wouldn’t have to hear again. “Why are you all behaving like this is the end of the world?”
Everyone winced. Takenori was decidedly unpleasant to be around in situations like this.
“All he wants is for you to go with him! Is that too much to ask for?” Takenori’s voice rent the night air like a scythe – the scythe of Conscience.
Everyone stood twiddling his thumbs, pouting occasionally.
“All right. They’ve agreed.” Takenori cast them one last angry glare just to make sure no one had changed his mind.
“That’s great! Let’s go before the moon disappears behind the clouds,” said Maki. He led them down a cobblestone path toward the dormitory.
“What happens when the moon disappears behind the clouds?” asked Kogure. “Do the undead come out of their graves or something?” He loved supernatural things, and looked around eagerly for a grave.
“Uh, when the moon disappears behind the clouds,” said Jin, “it gets dark.”
Jin’s answer was received with groans and grumbles.
Mitsui was laughing hysterically.
“We’re travelling by moonlight?” It seemed to him that the human race hadn’t quite kept up with the times.
The moonlight shining through the canopies of the large trees on the sides of the path cast eerie shadows over the group. Mitsui’s outburst made fifty or so startled bats fly out of their homes in the trees, making everyone scream.
“I hate bats,” said Hanagata, covering his head, and ducking as the creatures flew over them.
“Right.” Maki cleared his throat. Even he seldom came to these parts. What Miyamasu had been doing here, nobody knew. Going for an evening stroll, perhaps, when he saw whatever it was that he had seen, and threw the flashlight into the air and through a window. Maki sighed, and shook his head.
They finally arrived at the end of the path. The building loomed over them like a slumbering giant. In appearance, it was nothing special: a plain cuboid in the midst of tall trees. The few windowpanes that hadn’t been broken were so grimy that the moonlight falling on them elicited only dim smears of gray – like eyes without pupils. The paint on the building had faded to the point that only the blackened cement below was visible. The wooden front porch had rotted to quite an unrecognizable shape, and looked perilous to walk across.
“All right,” said Maki, taking a deep breath and striding up to the wooden porch. The rest followed. The floorboards creaked as they stepped on them. The wooden columns that supported the roof of the porch were weak and rickety.
Maki held out his hand in front of Miyamasu, who placed a key in it.
“Ready, everyone?” asked Maki. Before anyone could protest, Maki promptly turned the key in the lock, and gave the door a hard push. It swung open on its hinges with an eerily long-drawn creak. Then they entered, and found themselves in a sort of hall, judging by what they could make out in the darkness, that greatly resembled the lobby of an inn. The windows on the wall permitted just enough illumination to roughly make out what the room was like. The walls were paneled, and the hardwood on the floor was badly damaged in one place – as if something big and heavy had fallen on it.
After a while, when everyone’s eyes had got accustomed to the darkness, it became apparent that there was a door at the other end of the room.
Mitsui produced his cell phone, and directed its light toward it.
All gasped – some started – a few, like Hanamichi, stepped backward, tripped, and fell.
The doorway, as it transpired, had someone standing in it. But everyone’s fears proved groundless when Mitsui, displaying uncharacteristic presence of mind, focused the light more closely on the figure, and sighed in relief when he realized that it was only a life-sized portrait.
“Hey, that’s Mrs. Marilyn,” said Jin, who had seen a similar picture of the school’s founder in the principal’s office, when he had gone in there once as a freshman.
Everyone walked up closer to the life-sized portrait of Mrs. Marilyn. She looked very stern, and almost menacing in the dark. Her eyes peered sharply over her glasses, and were startlingly bright. Her thin lips were curved in a smile… or a frown, or a smirk – it was open to interpretation, really. She also carried a cane, which seemed to glow a pale cobalt blue in the dim light.
Suddenly, the sound of something heavy falling was heard. It sounded like an iron rod falling somewhere further inside the building.
Everyone instinctively turned to face the source of the sound, but as it soon transpired, everyone had turned in a different direction. It was as if the sound had proceeded from within them all.
The sound of the rod falling continued to ring in everyone’s ears even after the echoes had died down. The first thought that went through everyone’s mind was that it was Mrs. Marilyn’s cane. The group huddled together, feeling absolutely no shame in being openly scared... Even Kaede, who was usually very hard to get a reaction out of, was frightened. His eyes were wider than normal and his breathing labored. He felt a certain comfort in knowing that Sendoh was right behind him and that he was not all alone that he would never have permitted himself to feel in any other situation.
Then the dull thud of the stick was heard again. This time, the sound recurred at measured, periodic intervals – slowly, deliberately – as if trying to force itself into everyone’s consciousness.
A sudden chill descend upon the room, despite the fact that it was the middle of summer. Kogure remarked gleefully on how a sudden drop in temperature usually foreshadowed a visit from one’s undead friends.
As the sound grew louder, it transpired that it was coming from one corridor in particular. Shortly, a large rat emerged, its body entangled in a piece of old fishing net along with a steel pipe. The pipe rose and fell with the motions of the rat’s body as it scampered away from the humans, hitting the ground almost perfectly periodically.
Enormous sighs of relief escaped every mouth, except Ayako’s.
“AAAAH!” Ayako screamed, jumping into the awaiting arms of a blushing Ryota.
“AAAAH!” Jin screamed, jumping into the sturdy arms of a confused Takenori, at the same time.
“A rat!” both exclaimed together, their voices shrill, while pointing shaky fingers at the poor animal, which had managed to break free of the bonds and run away.
“What? I’m scared of rats, so what?” Jin said self-righteously when everyone gave him “the look”.
Maki picked up the pipe, which had managed to get itself disentangled from the net, and looked at it thoughtfully. He ran his hand up and down the length of the pipe, and gave vent to a triumphant h’m when he felt something under his fingers. He gestured at Mitsui to bring his cell phone closer.
“I think there’s an inscription on it.”
“What does it say?”
“‘Reichmann Pipes.’”
“Sounds German,” said Takenori with a grunt. It was beyond his comprehension why someone as intelligent as Maki would be concerned with things so trivial as a German pipe manufacturing company.
“Reichmann was Mrs. Marilyn’s last name. Her husband was German, and their family did own some kind of factory back in Germany.” Jin had been fascinated with old and useless things ever since he had found out how old and useless things could be.
“So what do we do with this thing, Old Man?” said Sakuragi, his voice dripping with derision much as a wild animal’s teeth might drip with saliva.
Maki winced.
“We put it back where it was.”
“And why would we do something like that?” Koshino asked, eyebrow raised. “Where I come from, old pipes go straight into the trashcan.” He was beginning to think the Kainan team was seriously lacking in street smarts.
“You could throw it out,” said Jin. “But then the spirit of Mrs. Marilyn would haunt you forever. At least, that’s how the story goes.”
“Don’t tell me you actually believe something so obviously stupid and contrived.”
“I do,” said Jin without embarassment. “I believe ghosts are real.”
“Oh, do tell us why.” Koshino was fuming. He always did when people failed to see reason. “This isn’t the middle ages. This is the age of science. Why would you possibly believe in ghosts?”
“Because,” said Jin, and one could tell he was assuming the role of the raconteur, “I’ve seen one with my own eyes. It was my grandfather’s ghost. When I was a kid, my grandfather visited me in my bedroom. Well, naturally, I assumed he had come to visit. I sat there with him, and we talked for the whole afternoon. In the evening, when I asked my mom if we could go somewhere with Grandpa, she told me Grandpa had died over ten years ago.”
“Nice story,” said Fukuda.
“What rubbish,” said Koshino.
“Fine, I was just pulling your leg,” said Jin. A laugh and a half later, he added, “Seriously, though, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“Besides,” said Maki, “we’re going upstairs to look for my flashlight, anyway. Which floor was it on, Miyamasu?”
Miyamasu bit his lip while he thought.
“Uhm… I think it fell through a window on the fourth floor.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, that makes things simpler – if only a bit,” said Takasago.
“Hardly,” said Muto. “You forget how vast each floor is. It could be just about anywhere.”
Takasago had begun piecing together a plan to find the flashlight quickly and effectively, when Ayako interrupted him out of sheer irritation.
“Can we just go already?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we were about to do,” said Maki, turning on his heel, and climbing up the narrow staircase on the other end of the hallway, his path illuminated by Mitsui’s cell phone, which was steadily losing charge. “First, we follow these tracks the rat made, and put the pipe back where it belongs.”
They reached the second floor landing, and stopped to get a better look at the place. It vaguely resembled a hotel. Both sides of the corridor were lined with doors with numbered brass doorplates on them. The dormitory must have been quite something in its day.
They followed the rat’s trail up to a room whose door was partially ajar. The trail, however, went under the door.
“Strange,” said Maki.
“What is?” Kogure badly wanted something to go wrong. The evening so far hadn’t given him much enjoyment.
“The trail goes from underneath the door. That means the door was completely open when the rat ran out of the room. But now it appears that the door has swung inward.” Maki rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Maybe the net got stuck under the door when the rat was running out,” suggested Koshino.
“Maybe. But I’m not so sure about that.”
“So what do you think might have happened?” Takenori asked.
“Well, it couldn’t have been the wind, since the windows are all sealed. I don’t think it was the rat, because the gap under the door is large enough to allow a net to pass smoothly through it.”
“So, what do you think it actually was?” Fujima asked, slightly jealous that his rival was so good at deduction.
“I don’t know,” said Maki.
“Well, why don’t we go inside?” suggested Uekusa. “Maybe we can find something.”
“That’s the idea.”
Maki pushed the creaking door open, and they walked in. It was a small room, and the bookcases along the walls were lined with books obscured by cobwebs and dust. There was a desk at the center of the room, which meant that the room must have been the office of a school official.
Maki had opened his mouth to say something when the door suddenly swung shut with a crash. Then Mitsui’s cell phone died, and darkness consumed all.
“I’m sorry, you guys, but this is important. Please,” said Maki earnestly. That flashlight was very dear to him.
Takenori was more sympathetic than Mitsui. Besides, he didn’t think he could stand it if Maki started bawling his eyes out – even if the contingency was remote. The very thought was enough to make him taste bile.
“All right, Maki,” he said with a curt nod at Maki. Then he turned to the others, who were telling each other about how outrageous the idea of risking their lives to retrieve a goddamned flashlight was. Takenori raised his voice to that pitch and volume with which the Shohoku team was intimately familiar, and which they hoped, whenever they heard it, that they wouldn’t have to hear again. “Why are you all behaving like this is the end of the world?”
Everyone winced. Takenori was decidedly unpleasant to be around in situations like this.
“All he wants is for you to go with him! Is that too much to ask for?” Takenori’s voice rent the night air like a scythe – the scythe of Conscience.
Everyone stood twiddling his thumbs, pouting occasionally.
“All right. They’ve agreed.” Takenori cast them one last angry glare just to make sure no one had changed his mind.
“That’s great! Let’s go before the moon disappears behind the clouds,” said Maki. He led them down a cobblestone path toward the dormitory.
“What happens when the moon disappears behind the clouds?” asked Kogure. “Do the undead come out of their graves or something?” He loved supernatural things, and looked around eagerly for a grave.
“Uh, when the moon disappears behind the clouds,” said Jin, “it gets dark.”
Jin’s answer was received with groans and grumbles.
Mitsui was laughing hysterically.
“We’re travelling by moonlight?” It seemed to him that the human race hadn’t quite kept up with the times.
The moonlight shining through the canopies of the large trees on the sides of the path cast eerie shadows over the group. Mitsui’s outburst made fifty or so startled bats fly out of their homes in the trees, making everyone scream.
“I hate bats,” said Hanagata, covering his head, and ducking as the creatures flew over them.
“Right.” Maki cleared his throat. Even he seldom came to these parts. What Miyamasu had been doing here, nobody knew. Going for an evening stroll, perhaps, when he saw whatever it was that he had seen, and threw the flashlight into the air and through a window. Maki sighed, and shook his head.
They finally arrived at the end of the path. The building loomed over them like a slumbering giant. In appearance, it was nothing special: a plain cuboid in the midst of tall trees. The few windowpanes that hadn’t been broken were so grimy that the moonlight falling on them elicited only dim smears of gray – like eyes without pupils. The paint on the building had faded to the point that only the blackened cement below was visible. The wooden front porch had rotted to quite an unrecognizable shape, and looked perilous to walk across.
“All right,” said Maki, taking a deep breath and striding up to the wooden porch. The rest followed. The floorboards creaked as they stepped on them. The wooden columns that supported the roof of the porch were weak and rickety.
Maki held out his hand in front of Miyamasu, who placed a key in it.
“Ready, everyone?” asked Maki. Before anyone could protest, Maki promptly turned the key in the lock, and gave the door a hard push. It swung open on its hinges with an eerily long-drawn creak. Then they entered, and found themselves in a sort of hall, judging by what they could make out in the darkness, that greatly resembled the lobby of an inn. The windows on the wall permitted just enough illumination to roughly make out what the room was like. The walls were paneled, and the hardwood on the floor was badly damaged in one place – as if something big and heavy had fallen on it.
After a while, when everyone’s eyes had got accustomed to the darkness, it became apparent that there was a door at the other end of the room.
Mitsui produced his cell phone, and directed its light toward it.
All gasped – some started – a few, like Hanamichi, stepped backward, tripped, and fell.
The doorway, as it transpired, had someone standing in it. But everyone’s fears proved groundless when Mitsui, displaying uncharacteristic presence of mind, focused the light more closely on the figure, and sighed in relief when he realized that it was only a life-sized portrait.
“Hey, that’s Mrs. Marilyn,” said Jin, who had seen a similar picture of the school’s founder in the principal’s office, when he had gone in there once as a freshman.
Everyone walked up closer to the life-sized portrait of Mrs. Marilyn. She looked very stern, and almost menacing in the dark. Her eyes peered sharply over her glasses, and were startlingly bright. Her thin lips were curved in a smile… or a frown, or a smirk – it was open to interpretation, really. She also carried a cane, which seemed to glow a pale cobalt blue in the dim light.
Suddenly, the sound of something heavy falling was heard. It sounded like an iron rod falling somewhere further inside the building.
Everyone instinctively turned to face the source of the sound, but as it soon transpired, everyone had turned in a different direction. It was as if the sound had proceeded from within them all.
The sound of the rod falling continued to ring in everyone’s ears even after the echoes had died down. The first thought that went through everyone’s mind was that it was Mrs. Marilyn’s cane. The group huddled together, feeling absolutely no shame in being openly scared... Even Kaede, who was usually very hard to get a reaction out of, was frightened. His eyes were wider than normal and his breathing labored. He felt a certain comfort in knowing that Sendoh was right behind him and that he was not all alone that he would never have permitted himself to feel in any other situation.
Then the dull thud of the stick was heard again. This time, the sound recurred at measured, periodic intervals – slowly, deliberately – as if trying to force itself into everyone’s consciousness.
A sudden chill descend upon the room, despite the fact that it was the middle of summer. Kogure remarked gleefully on how a sudden drop in temperature usually foreshadowed a visit from one’s undead friends.
As the sound grew louder, it transpired that it was coming from one corridor in particular. Shortly, a large rat emerged, its body entangled in a piece of old fishing net along with a steel pipe. The pipe rose and fell with the motions of the rat’s body as it scampered away from the humans, hitting the ground almost perfectly periodically.
Enormous sighs of relief escaped every mouth, except Ayako’s.
“AAAAH!” Ayako screamed, jumping into the awaiting arms of a blushing Ryota.
“AAAAH!” Jin screamed, jumping into the sturdy arms of a confused Takenori, at the same time.
“A rat!” both exclaimed together, their voices shrill, while pointing shaky fingers at the poor animal, which had managed to break free of the bonds and run away.
“What? I’m scared of rats, so what?” Jin said self-righteously when everyone gave him “the look”.
Maki picked up the pipe, which had managed to get itself disentangled from the net, and looked at it thoughtfully. He ran his hand up and down the length of the pipe, and gave vent to a triumphant h’m when he felt something under his fingers. He gestured at Mitsui to bring his cell phone closer.
“I think there’s an inscription on it.”
“What does it say?”
“‘Reichmann Pipes.’”
“Sounds German,” said Takenori with a grunt. It was beyond his comprehension why someone as intelligent as Maki would be concerned with things so trivial as a German pipe manufacturing company.
“Reichmann was Mrs. Marilyn’s last name. Her husband was German, and their family did own some kind of factory back in Germany.” Jin had been fascinated with old and useless things ever since he had found out how old and useless things could be.
“So what do we do with this thing, Old Man?” said Sakuragi, his voice dripping with derision much as a wild animal’s teeth might drip with saliva.
Maki winced.
“We put it back where it was.”
“And why would we do something like that?” Koshino asked, eyebrow raised. “Where I come from, old pipes go straight into the trashcan.” He was beginning to think the Kainan team was seriously lacking in street smarts.
“You could throw it out,” said Jin. “But then the spirit of Mrs. Marilyn would haunt you forever. At least, that’s how the story goes.”
“Don’t tell me you actually believe something so obviously stupid and contrived.”
“I do,” said Jin without embarassment. “I believe ghosts are real.”
“Oh, do tell us why.” Koshino was fuming. He always did when people failed to see reason. “This isn’t the middle ages. This is the age of science. Why would you possibly believe in ghosts?”
“Because,” said Jin, and one could tell he was assuming the role of the raconteur, “I’ve seen one with my own eyes. It was my grandfather’s ghost. When I was a kid, my grandfather visited me in my bedroom. Well, naturally, I assumed he had come to visit. I sat there with him, and we talked for the whole afternoon. In the evening, when I asked my mom if we could go somewhere with Grandpa, she told me Grandpa had died over ten years ago.”
“Nice story,” said Fukuda.
“What rubbish,” said Koshino.
“Fine, I was just pulling your leg,” said Jin. A laugh and a half later, he added, “Seriously, though, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“Besides,” said Maki, “we’re going upstairs to look for my flashlight, anyway. Which floor was it on, Miyamasu?”
Miyamasu bit his lip while he thought.
“Uhm… I think it fell through a window on the fourth floor.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, that makes things simpler – if only a bit,” said Takasago.
“Hardly,” said Muto. “You forget how vast each floor is. It could be just about anywhere.”
Takasago had begun piecing together a plan to find the flashlight quickly and effectively, when Ayako interrupted him out of sheer irritation.
“Can we just go already?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we were about to do,” said Maki, turning on his heel, and climbing up the narrow staircase on the other end of the hallway, his path illuminated by Mitsui’s cell phone, which was steadily losing charge. “First, we follow these tracks the rat made, and put the pipe back where it belongs.”
They reached the second floor landing, and stopped to get a better look at the place. It vaguely resembled a hotel. Both sides of the corridor were lined with doors with numbered brass doorplates on them. The dormitory must have been quite something in its day.
They followed the rat’s trail up to a room whose door was partially ajar. The trail, however, went under the door.
“Strange,” said Maki.
“What is?” Kogure badly wanted something to go wrong. The evening so far hadn’t given him much enjoyment.
“The trail goes from underneath the door. That means the door was completely open when the rat ran out of the room. But now it appears that the door has swung inward.” Maki rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“Maybe the net got stuck under the door when the rat was running out,” suggested Koshino.
“Maybe. But I’m not so sure about that.”
“So what do you think might have happened?” Takenori asked.
“Well, it couldn’t have been the wind, since the windows are all sealed. I don’t think it was the rat, because the gap under the door is large enough to allow a net to pass smoothly through it.”
“So, what do you think it actually was?” Fujima asked, slightly jealous that his rival was so good at deduction.
“I don’t know,” said Maki.
“Well, why don’t we go inside?” suggested Uekusa. “Maybe we can find something.”
“That’s the idea.”
Maki pushed the creaking door open, and they walked in. It was a small room, and the bookcases along the walls were lined with books obscured by cobwebs and dust. There was a desk at the center of the room, which meant that the room must have been the office of a school official.
Maki had opened his mouth to say something when the door suddenly swung shut with a crash. Then Mitsui’s cell phone died, and darkness consumed all.
◄ Chapter 1 ● Nights at Kainan ● Chapter 3 ►
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