We took some photos of the patient chart and autopsy report, and the doctor escorted us back to the lobby. We were about to leave when the nurse called out to him.
“Mrs. Karahara’s grandson is here again,” she said, her brow furrowed.
The doctor cast a reproachful glance in the nurse’s direction. Karahara. That was the name the doctor had accidentally let slip. The name of the first victim. Glancing through the sepia-toned glass, I saw a man standing between two vehicles out in the parking lot. Although he was young, he had a morbid, dreary sort of aura.
Even after we exited the building and approached, the young man did not acknowledge us.
“What? Is there something wrong with our car?” Miyaki asked and smiled politely.
The man responded with a flick of his eyes. His hunched shoulders and spindly body reminded me of a withered tree. Dark bags sagged underneath his lifeless orbs.
“The plate. It’s from Tokyo…”
The man’s voice was raspy. He glanced away slightly after speaking. I got the impression that he didn’t want to be taken for a nosy bumpkin. I did what I could to hide my smile.
“What brought you out here to the middle of nowhere?” he asked.
Miyaki stepped forward before I could stop her.
“We’re here to investigate an incident that occurred in this village. Your name is Karahara, correct? Would you mind speaking with us about whatever you know?”
The young man flinched. Miyaki’s well-placed smile had left no room for discussion.
As we walked along the mountain road, which was as gloomy as the dead of night even during midday, Karahara explained that he was twenty-four years old and had lived in Tokyo for a time, but he had fallen ill and been forced to leave his job. He was currently employed at the inn here in the village, which was his hometown. It was hard to believe this man worked in customer service. I couldn’t imagine him ever smiling.
“I say the inn, but no one comes to a place like this for sightseeing, so it’s mostly just oddball salesmen and students looking for somewhere cheap to stay… As long as I can interact with people from outside the village, that’s enough.”
Karahara pressed a cigarette to his lips and lit up.
“And when did you return to the village?” Miyaki asked as she walked next to him. She leaned away slightly to avoid the smoke.
“I came back once for my grandmother’s funeral, and then I returned for good about six months after that, so it must have been about a year and a half ago now. Honestly, I never thought I’d set foot here again unless it was for my mother’s funeral…” Karahara exhaled smoke and coughed. “You wanted to ask about my grandmother?”
“Or anything else you might be able to share,” I said.
The man laughed, his shoulders trembling as if he was choking.
“Nothing that would do outsiders any good to know. The people here brought this on themselves, after all.”
I was about to ask him what he meant by that when I heard a tiny bell. Karahara came to a halt. A woman, who looked to be in her thirties or so with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, stumbled out from in between the trees that lined the mountain road.
Karahara stared at her sharply. The woman frantically stooped over and snatched up the little bell key chain she had just dropped.
“Morning…”
She shoved the key into the pocket of her sweatshirt, which was covered with pill balls, and then she hurried down the road as if running away. I could see a slight gap between the dense trees where the woman had emerged. An animal trail led up into the mountain, bare like skin after a scab had been picked. Beyond the path, I could just barely see torii shrine gates buried amid a mass of murky, off-green leaves.
“Backwoods trash…”
Karahara dropped his half-smoked butt at his feet and stubbed it out with the tip of his toe, before turning his back to Miyaki and me.
“Come to the house, and I’ll show you my grandmother’s bequest.”
The cigarette paper had split open beneath Karahara’s shoe and lay crooked and bent like the dead body of some sort of beast, tobacco leaves spilling from its flanks.
“My grandmother was actually an awful person.”
Karahara’s voice was nearly lost in the sound of the heavy, frosted-glass door sliding open. It almost sounded like he was talking to himself. Miyaki and I pretended not to hear.
We brushed our way past the chipped hanging screen in the doorway as we entered the home. The chilly hallway was densely littered with rolled-up calendars, stacks of cardboard, broken folding chairs, and trolley frames.
“After my grandmother died, it was too much trouble to clean up and try to sell the property, so on my days off, I swing by to make sure bugs haven’t moved in. I’ve barely touched the place, though, so everything is still scattered all over…”
It wasn’t even evening yet, but the inside of the house was terribly dark. We avoided the clutter as we made our way in. Stacks of piled-up trash seemed to bleed into the surrounding shadows, losing any distinct outline. I felt like we were treading down the gully of some giant monster that had swallowed up a person’s home.
“You heard, I assume, that my grandmother was the first victim.”
Karahara had us sit down in the kitchen and poured us glasses of barley tea. The white stovetop kettle with its red flower pattern had probably been his grandmother’s. The smell of the dead woman’s house had permeated fully into him, making him seem worn-out and old, despite his youth. I could see a home-care bed in the living room behind him.
“That’s rich, though, calling her a victim. When half of this, she brought on herself.”
“I see. And the other half?” Miyaki asked bluntly as she sipped her tea. Karahara turned away from us, heading toward the living room without saying a word. “Do you think I made him angry?”
“A little late to worry about that now.”
“Guys like him don’t talk unless you piss them off a bit first.”
Karahara returned, carrying an old box in his hands. It looked like the kind of gift box that would have once held Japanese sweets or something like that.
“This is the diary my grandmother left behind.”
Karahara pulled out a notebook from the box and flipped past the first page. He turned it toward us, starting from the second. A large, oval circle had been drawn in the middle of the yellowing page, filled with multiple overlapping lines like intestines or brains. I flipped through more pages. They were all the same. The only difference was that every now and then, a few of the pages also had lines sticking out from the top of the oval.
“What is this…?” Miyaki muttered, then handed back the diary, her smile wavering.
“You think she was crazy, right?”
“Well, your grandmother was battling a serious illness. The kind of medicines she was on can sometimes cause delirium…”
It was an unsettling drawing scribbled entirely in red pencil. It reminded me of a frog’s belly I had once seen as a kid, the guts and arteries visible through the thin skin.
“Guts, maybe…?” I muttered to myself. Karahara’s eyes went wide, so I quickly said, “Sorry, I was just talking to myself.”
Karahara pursed his lips and looked down. After a long silence, he gazed intently at me.
“You’ll probably think I’m crazy, too…” Karahara intertwined his fingers atop the table. “When I was a kid, I got hit by a truck once. It was pretty bad. I was in a coma for a long time. While I was dreaming, I—I saw it.”
The shadows on Karahara’s gloomy countenance grew even deeper.
“I dreamed I was climbing a steep mountain road, surrounded by an overgrown canopy of trees, like a forest. When I reached the top, there was a strange creature there. Like a cluster of dry straw with horns. It had no eyes, nose, or ears. Its straw-like fur puffed up in the middle, fluttering insistently. Where the fur parted, I saw what looked like a faintly see-through red tube—a plastic bag, maybe. I think they were internal organs. Though it had no mouth. The organs were moving, as if it had eaten something and was now digesting it.”