Mitsuhiro did the same thing—after taking off his right glove and putting it in his pocket, he used the tablet to take a photo of his own. Then he walked ahead, right hand still holding the tablet while his left kept the handkerchief over his mouth. Positionally speaking, he had to be directly underneath the East Wing by now, having crossed under the culvert. This was the deepest part of what the tweet called the “East Wing basement,” a place so deep that no one involved in the construction project would bother entering. If anyone was coming here often, there’d be footprints all over the place.
Now a door was suddenly visible at the end of the passage. It had a lock on it, the type seen at many construction sites: a metal door with a PIN-based lock on it. You had to know the right numbers, or you couldn’t open it.
This would mark the end of the investigation…if the door had been closed. But despite the imposing lock, it wasn’t. There was a dark space about four inches wide between the door and its frame.
—What’s this lock even for?
Mitsuhiro felt a surprisingly intense sort of anger, one he couldn’t immediately suppress. Maybe it was a sign of panic manifesting in another form. When you try to push down your fear, anger wells up until you can no longer control it.
Mitsuhiro took a deep breath under his handkerchief and slowly exhaled. He managed to suppress both his anger and his fear, scowling at the ever-rising dryness and odor, and pushed the door open with his foot. He had to, because his hands were full—although, really, he didn’t want to touch the door with his hand. It was a completely illogical thought, but he was afraid he might burn himself.
The door made a creaking sound as it swung open. He entered, sincerely hoping there was a damp space on the other side, and shone his headlamp into the darkness.
It was a surprisingly large space. He had his light on, but without any prior knowledge of his structure, he had no idea what he was looking at. He could make out concrete walls and a vaulted ceiling, but he couldn’t tell how high that ceiling went, and he was stepping on bare earth right now. That white lime-like substance he saw on the stairs was spread over the soil as well, creating clouds of dust as he slowly advanced. Despite how much the space around him had changed, the air was still the same. In fact, it started to seem drier and drier, like he was in a walk-in oven or a sauna where someone forgot to add any humidity.
Suddenly, the face of his dead father flashed across his mind again. A gaunt face. His father in the coffin, dressed in his suit, sleeping in his final resting place.
Takenaka had once asked Mitsuhiro if his father taught him how to read blueprints. Yes, he said—then he was surprised at how proud saying that made him feel. He thought the stress of running a subcontracting firm had caused his father to have a physical and mental breakdown. The face of his mother, exhausted after caring for her husband so long, flickered into view. He had sworn many times that his own wife would never have to experience that.
—This is so crazy. Why do I keep on recalling my dead father?
His heart pulsed. Maybe he was dehydrated. That was right up there with heat stroke as a factor in construction-site accidents.
Then, in the light, there it was.
A hole in the back of the space. A vertical shaft several yards square.
—That’s it! It has to be it! The last image! I finally found it!
Mitsuhiro shouted with joy in his heart. If the air didn’t feel so weird around him, he might have actually whooped out loud. Instead he held his breath, removed the handkerchief from his mouth, and quickly took several pictures with his tablet, not bothering to compare them to the tweeted photo. With each flash, a table by the wall beyond the hole appeared and then disappeared back into the dark. There seemed to be something on it, but he couldn’t tell what it was.
Human bones are coming out from that hole
He suddenly recalled the words, and they made his hair stand on end. He almost dropped the tablet, and as he tried to clutch it to his chest, he took in a deep breath of that dry air. It immediately set his throat on fire, making him cough and put the handkerchief over his mouth again. From now on, he resolved, he’d always wear a dust mask on these investigations. Better to keep one in his bag at all times, really.
The coughing had subsided, but Mitsuhiro was still having trouble breathing. It was time to get out of here before panic really did set in. With that in mind, he turned around, looking for the door. There was none. That doorway should have been right behind him, but now there was just a concrete wall.
He hurriedly turned his headlamp left and right to illuminate the wall. There was no way in or out. He extended the light range a few more yards, but he could only see the wall.
—The door disappeared.
Feeling rushing waves of agitation, he tried desperately to calm himself down.
Hang on. It couldn’t have just disappeared. The darkness made him lose his sense of direction. He thought he made a beeline for the hole, but he was actually walking in a broad arc, and now he was looking at the wrong wall.
—Footprints. Right, I left footprints. Just follow them back.
But when he shone his light on the ground, he couldn’t see any. Nothing but the pure white reflected back at him. No, the footprints had been erased by a new layer of white. That white ash, the remnants of something burned at high temperature. It was crazy. Mitsuhiro’s heart was pounding, his temples throbbing. Calm down. There has to be a way out. There must be. He repeated it in his head as he made a clockwise circle around the hole, taking care not to fall in.
He began to feel like a kid lost at a stamp rally—the kind of event train companies ran all the time, where you took the train to different stations and got your paper stamped at each one. The thought made him shudder.
What if this was the purpose of those seven tweeted images? What if it was all done in order to lure someone into this space deep underground?
—Stop being stupid. Why would anyone do that?
But his mind was already on to the next thing. He recalled a series of graffiti messages he saw in a bathroom stall once. You’d look at the door in front of you, sitting on the toilet, and you’d see “Look right” on it. You’d look right, and you’d see “Look up,” and so on. You’d follow this trail, and it’d always end the same way:
Dumbass
That was what he’d been doing the whole time. He was being made into a fool. He had been lured into this dark cavern in the middle of the city, and now he was trapped inside. God dammit. Calm down. There’s no way the exit just disappeared. Maybe the door closed on its own, and it just looks like the wall. There’s a way out. If you get trapped, the boss or someone on the team will come looking for you. So calm down. Calm down. Calm down…
Panic was about to overtake him, but he urged himself to move along the wall. He was bound to find the exit that way. It was a perfectly rational thought, but he was so impatient and uneasy that he rushed at the wall anyway. Maybe his body thought he could break through it or something.
With a thud, he felt a heavy impact on his shoulder. His helmet hit the wall hard and bounced back.
Every movement was panicked now. That was the state he was in. He was suddenly very aware of the smell, and all of a sudden, he was reminded of an MRI machine, that narrow space where they examine your brain. The first one he got was also the first time in his life he had ever felt claustrophobic. He’d nearly panicked, like he was being placed in a coffin. Like his dead father.
There, in front of his father in the coffin, someone had said to him:
“This is the last farewell to the deceased. You will not be able to see his face any longer. Please approach him and say your final goodbyes now.”
The final goodbyes. Why the final?
—Because it was a cremation.
Mitsuhiro rubbed his shoulder against the wall, staggering as he walked. He was shocked by the answer that suddenly came to him. He had smelled this before. It was the smell that had wafted faintly through the air after the coffin containing his father’s body, suit and all, was pushed into the oven and the lid was closed. The smell of someone turning into bones, then ashes.
Human bones are coming out
The palpitations were intense now. He could hear nothing but his own heartbeat. No, it was intensifying the silence around him, making his ears ring painfully.
Just being there makes you sick