Chapter 13 (2008) (1,469 words)

I

My Life

By Mrs. Marilyn Dianna Reichmann

The mind of a thinker has no worse enemy than boredom, and no better friend than imagination. I, Marilyn “Mary” Dianna Reichmann, am one of those unfortunate writers whose careers were prematurely cut short.

As a child I always wanted to be a journalist. Growing up in the Eastern Bloc had made me particularly alive to the necessity of journalism in modern society. I became the editor-in-chief of a prominent English educational magazine in Kanagawa called The Torchbearer. It was considered somewhat controversial on account of the progressive nature of the ideas it laid out for the future of education in Japan. I left the magazine within a year out of boredom, since it did not seem to me that our efforts were having the slightest impact on society. And so my first big job ended in failure.

Soon after leaving the magazine I decided to put my English education to good use by writing books. I was simple back then, and did not realize that writing books required a mind full of imagination in addition to a sound command on the language. Being a pragmatic person, I find myself often incapable of imagining things that are contrary to reality. Nevertheless I began writing books, and for the first two years it seemed that I was doing rather well.

But now, after eight years of writing, I have reached a dead end in my writing career. In my somewhat prolific career I managed to publish one novel and three short stories, none of which was particularly well received by the reading public, and I was criticized in the occasional review for my dense prose.

The only plus side of my career was that writing enabled me to meet my future husband James P. Reichmann. He wrote me shortly after I had published my novel, and said that he greatly admired my work. Still to this day I wonder whether he did not say that just to be polite, since I read my novel some years after, and cringed all the way through it.

The two years I spent with James were the best in my entire life. It was in these two years that I begat my one and only child, Richard. Alas, if only James and Richard had arrived a little earlier in my life, I might have been able to spend a little more time with them.

It was in the spring of 1959 that the Devil in the form of smallpox swept my husband and my son away from me. It had never occurred to us to get ourselves vaccinated against the killer disease. Words cannot describe my sorrow.

I remember how isolated I felt after James’s and Richard’s deaths. Mother often told me to take up some charitable endeavor to take my mind off them. I told her that I was fine. Nothing mattered to me anymore.

It was sometime around the fall of 1962 that a child approached me at the farmers’ market, and said, “Ma’am, could you please tell me what this letter is?” He was pointing at a large D written above a shop. D was for devil, death, disaster.

When I began recovering from my double bereavement, I decided to put the money James had left me to good use, and opened a school. It was a preschool that I ran for about a year, until I realized that the sight of children not much older than Richard had been aggrieved me no end.

I relinquished ownership of the preschool, and opened a high school, where I would deal with much older children.

It was, to my great delight, and I am sure to James and Richard’s, wherever they may be, a total success. In the winter of 1964 I founded Kainan High School, which was later to become known as Kainan University-Affiliated High School. I was its principal and directress.  

II

Everybody was silent as they walked down the path toward the dormitory. The crunch of dried leaves under their shoes was amplified as a result.

Mitsui had shut up about Friday the Thirteenth, but even still, there was a general air of foreboding that the group just couldn’t shake off.

They slowed down and got more cautious as the dormitory came into view.

“Why on earth would Sendoh come here?” Ayako said to herself, trying to think like Sendoh. “Why, why, why?”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Kogure.

The fact that Kogure, who seemed to revel in scary things, had misgivings caused a chill to run down everyone’s spine. Maybe there was something off about the day after all.

“Sendoh is all right,” said Uozumi firmly. “Nothing bad ever happens to him.”

“I sure hope so,” said Koshino in an undertone.

Kaede seemed to be in the only person in the group who kept a cool head. Though the appearance of being cool was probably a result of his perpetual impassivity, an optimist would choose to disregard that detail. Kaede studied the environs, hoping to spot something that had changed since their last visit to the dormitory. Unfortunately he discovered nothing.

There was a shapeless gaping hole where the front door had once been, bordered by what remained of the forty-year-old doorframe. Chunks of wood were strewn across the rotting porch, indicating that no one had been down to clean up the mess they had left.

“That’s good news,” said Maki.

The Kainan team heaved an enormous sigh of relief. They didn’t want to find out what Coach Takato would do to them if he discovered that, not only had they been down to the dormitory, which was out of bounds to all students, but they had also destroyed the door. In the worst-case scenario he would withdraw Kainan from the Winter Games.

“Well,” said Mitsui, his voice slightly croaky from keeping his mouth shut for so long.

The others glanced in his direction, but said nothing. They were all deciding whether to go back into the dormitory, and possibly relive their unpleasant experiences from before. Or anything worse that awaited them inside.

Was it worth it?

Then the innocent and charming face of the spiky-haired ace of Ryonan flashed before their eyes, and they berated themselves for even considering abandoning Sendoh to his fate.

Uozumi cracked his knuckles.

“We’re going in,” he said in a low voice.  

III

“Sendoh!” Ayako called out into the darkness.

Though it was the middle of the day, the sunlight filtering through the leaves and the dusty windows was greatly attenuated, and offered no further illumination than a gray glow at the windows. Everything inside was a silhouette.

Ayako strode up to the portrait of Mrs. Marilyn, and stared at it thoughtfully. She unconsciously dropped the handkerchief she had been holding.

“I am convinced,” she said, “that this portrait hung somewhat farther to the right when we last came here.”

Suddenly Koshino let out a paroxysm of surprise.

“Holy fish in a bucket!” he yelled, drawing everyone’s attention to where Koshino was staring down at an object in his hand. “It’s an empty bottle of chloroform.”

Maki took the bottle from Koshino, and examined it. Sure enough, the word CHLOROFORM was printed on the label in neat typewritten letters.

“Well, what do you know? He might not have been lying after all.”

Everyone narrowed their eyes at Maki, since they had all trusted Sendoh from the beginning.

Kogure folded his arms.

“All right, so whoever it was that chloroformed Sendoh apparently used this bottle, in which case it can be safely assumed that they used the entire bottle on him, in which case Sendoh’s peculiar behavior is easily explainable. Moreover, that someone”—(“Or something,” Mitsui interjected)—“first chloroformed Sendoh, then brought the bottle downstairs, and hid it here—under this couch.”

“We’re just dawdling over here,” said Takenori after half an hour of dawdling had taken place under his very nose.

“You’re right,” said Mitsui.

“You know,” said Ayako. “I think going upstairs would furnish us with better results and more evidence.”

“You’re right,” said Mitsui again.

Maki, who was leading the group, placed his foot on the bottom step when Ayako let out an “Ah!” of surprise, and clicked her tongue.

“I think I dropped my handkerchief by the portrait.”

She dashed off to retrieve it.

A door opened somewhere deep inside the building, and moments after that Ayako screamed.

They ran to Ayako’s aid.

Ayako was almost hysterical as she stared with wide eyes at a door at the far end of the corridor.

There was a man standing in the doorway, still as death. His face looked taut and waxy in the dark. He might have been a corpse.

Then he opened his eyes, and stepped into the corridor.

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