Ozawa called me out of the blue one day, and I went to meet him at a café in Jinbocho.
We sat down and waited for our drinks. Once they’d arrived, he drained his iced caffe latte and started talking.
“Will you listen to my theory?”
I decided to hear him out.
After laying out his theory on the mountain caller, he continued.
✦ ✦ ✦
The red woman and a boy showed up in Scary School Stories by the horror writer XXXX, who I interviewed. Not just any boy, though, Akira.
That interview cleared up most of the root causes behind everything except for the mountain caller. What a tragedy.
The Talisman House from that thread I found online must have been the same house where the red woman and Akira lived. The talismans have all been peeled off now, though. I feel like the periodic thumping the original poster described shares some similarities with the red woman’s MO.
Your follow-up interview with the man who did his thesis on the cursed video showed that while the red woman haunted him for a while, she later left him alone, and Akira replaced her. If they’re family, that would make sense.
As I mentioned before, unlike the mountain caller, the red woman actively seeks people out. It’s like she wants to be found. And Akira is probably somehow involved.
I can’t believe she sent letters to my work when she was still alive.
Well, I don’t know exactly when she killed herself, so I’m just speculating. The letters all give off the general impression of being written by someone still in possession of most of their faculties. The author was simply a little deranged, is all.
It was the third letter that made me suspect they had come from the red woman. I recognized that phrase, “Thank you for finding me.” She most likely sent the letter to another reporter from our publisher who investigated her child’s suicide. Other departments write gossip columns like that, such as the illustrated weekly journal , which spawned the monthly magazine .
As he was working on Scary School Stories and XXXX’s new book, O must have been asking around the company, trying to find anyone who had interviewed people about the suicide in . Someone from a different department heard about that and gave him the mother’s letters, which then ended up in the pile of research materials where I found them.
A different department published it, so I haven’t found the back issue with that article. But I’m still looking.
They probably pressured the mother into giving an interview and then wrote something that painted her in a bad light. That would make the red woman a victim in this case.
Speaking of victims, Akira is one, too.
The horror writer said that Akira served as a sacrifice to Mashiro-san, which I think means he became like the sacrifices in that game the kids in the apartment complex played, Masshiro-san. The mother found him, and then they became yet another supernatural entity.
According to the interviews, Mashiro-san has existed for a while as one of the school’s seven mysteries. If we go far enough back, I bet there’s a story somewhere about Mashiro-san calling people over to the mountain. That became the basis for the game called Masshiro-san that the apartment kids played. The game’s role in Akira’s death led to further rumors spreading about him and his mother, the red woman. That’s what I think, anyway.
However, the mountain caller and Akira both share one strange feature.
Both open their mouths wide and ask for a sacrifice.
Strictly speaking, no direct testimony states that the mountain caller opens its mouth wide, but one of the letters to the editor and Ghost Photo mention something to that effect. I think the image of the gaping mouth is somehow related to the mountain caller. But Akira in the Akito and the Phone Booth story opens his mouth wide, too.
Both phenomena also involve sacrifices, but they seem to have a slightly different significance. The mountain caller usually receives dolls, while the sacrifices in the Masshiro-san game include inorganic objects and sometimes the lives of animals or other people.
In Akira’s case, the sacrifice was his life. It seems he had no choice but to offer it up if he wanted to be forgiven.
In terms of differences, the mountain caller seems to have clear objective, while Akira’s motives are more vague. It seems as though he wants to steal the lives of others. Perhaps he wants to consume them, like it says in Scary School Stories.
If he’s taking the life of a human being, he might consume their life force, then have them throw their physical bodies off the apartment building’s roof, like how the mountain caller influences people to jump off the dam. That’s one way to explain it, anyway.
In addition, Akira himself follows the targets he haunts, just like the red woman. This is also different from the mountain caller.
Based on these ideas, Akira, who died because of the mountain caller, inherited certain features from it, but ultimately became a different phenomenon.
Both the horror writer’s testimony and the letters mention that the red woman was interested in spirituality when she was alive.
The thread on the Talisman House claimed that some items related to New Age beliefs had been left behind in her home, and it seems like she didn’t own a Buddhist altar. The post on the medical consultation website also said “Thank you for finding me” and used that weird turn of phrase “Please guide everyone from a higher place.”
This red woman is trying to spread something related to Akira in accordance with some specific ideology. Either that, or she’s trying to make as many people as possible aware of Akira’s existence. Using that sticker with his name, 了, is one way of doing that. Or at least that’s what I think.
Just like Akira, the red woman is somehow connected to the mountain and the mountain caller in some way.
The woman who started the thread on the medical consultation website said her son went to the ruins of some corporate retreat. It might have been the same facility west of the mountain where the events in The Truth Behind the Mass-Hysteria Incident at the School Camping Trip took place. She didn’t specify the exact location, but as you know, that place is famous for paranormal activity. Plus, it’s the only big, abandoned facility in the area.
Cheating described how to summon Mashiro-sama, and those actions remind me of the red woman. I don’t know when this game to summon Mashiro-sama started at that elementary school, but it’s possible the kids who saw the red woman jumping frantically to get Akira down from the tree incorporated her movements into the Mashiro-sama summoning ritual. But if that’s true, then it would reverse the relationship between the two stories.
And then there are the sticker and the strange letters to the editorial department…
✦ ✦ ✦
Ozawa spoke in a flurry, as if possessed, without regard for my reactions, denying me any opportunity to interject.
When I eventually interrupted him, he finally stopped talking, took a deep breath, and said:
“I’m close. I can feel it. There’s still a lot of unknowns, but I feel like I can just about connect everything together. This special edition is going to be spectacular.”
He continued, the excitement never fading from his voice.
“I’ve come this far. I think it’s time to visit for myself.”
Of course, I tried to stop him.
But he went anyway.
Two months later, he was dead.
They found him in .
Dear readers, I’m so sorry for deceiving you.
This is where About a Place in the Kinki Region ends.