Careful, it’s dangerous over there.
You wouldn’t believe how much rain fell yesterday; the dam is going to be in a state. That’s right—I’m on my way to inspect it now.
It’s always a pain, the day after so much rain falls. I’ll be heading down to the bottom of the dam. There’s actually an elevator, but you can’t use it after the kind of weather we got. You’ve just got to take the stairs, one step at a time. Not because of the rain itself, of course. Obviously, the dam was built a lot sturdier than that. I mean, it had better be, since they submerged a whole village to build it. So don’t get me wrong… When I say the dam is in a state, I really just mean the elevator!
It almost sounds like some sort of punishment for destroying the village like that. Maybe things would be easier if it really were that simple.
The submerged had always been dark and bleak, studded with these dense thickets of camphor trees. I’m from the next village over, but I did my best not to get too close to that place. After all, they were in the business of building caskets out of those camphor trees. Can you imagine making boxes for dead people, day in and day out? It doesn’t get much more depressing than that. Although the people who lived there seemed to have had a different take on things. Apparently, those camphor trees were sacred, like the guardian god of their village or something.
Not one big old sacred tree in a shrine like what you usually see. It was all the camphor trees throughout the whole village. Long ago, they used to bury the village dead underneath those trees, so the idea was that by building coffins from wood that contained the spirits of their ancestors, the dead would be able to return to their god.
Sit tight for a second. I’m getting a call.
Yeah, what is it? What? That lazy jackass. I told him to take the stairs. Well, how is that my problem? What good will calling a doctor do? Fine, I’ll head over in thirty minutes.
Sorry about that. What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, the coffins. People don’t perform burials like they used to, so eventually, the village decided to try their hand at tourism. Said they couldn’t get by anymore by just making caskets. I think it’s called marquetry, but nothing big or fancy like other places. They started making ornamental boxes out of the camphor trees and selling them in souvenir shops. Little boxes that would only open after you solved some sort of mechanism. They were already experts at making boxes, after all. Not that the new boxes were in huge demand, but they were apparently unusual enough to draw a decent stream of customers.
It was already bad that the village was so dark and gloomy. But that was when they started to go strange.
Supposedly, people began hearing voices from inside the boxes. Always from their deceased loved ones: mothers, children, old friends. I know, it sounds crazy. There was one acquaintance I had from that village. His sister died from some illness when she was around twenty or so, but he didn’t show up to work one day and fiddled with one of those boxes all day long instead. Said he could hear his sister’s voice coming from inside, asking him for the badminton racket he had bought her as a kid. The voice said he had to let her out of the box so they could go search for it together. It freaked me out so bad, I stopped talking to him. He wound up hanging himself from one of the camphor trees. Not with a rope, mind you. There was a big hole or something high up on the trunk, and he had shoved his entire head into it, the rest of his body dangling from the crevice.
That sort of thing kept happening. This was only a rumor, but some people started saying they saw a giant around the village, too, dressed in mourning clothes. Four meters tall, just about the height of those camphor trees.
That’s when people started talking about building the dam. All the young people had already left the village because of how creepy it was, so there wasn’t really anyone left to object. The remaining villagers got some money from the city or the prefecture or something, then the village was quickly submerged, and that was the end of that. Or at least, it should have been. Hold on, I’m getting another call. Sorry. I should probably get going soon anyway.
Really, though, it’s not some kind of punishment or anything. A mere punishment would probably have been better.
Anyway, I doubt you’ll have any reason to visit the dam, but if you do, remember: Don’t use the elevator. After it rains, the water always swells. And once the water swells, it rises. Still, better not use the elevator if you don’t have to.
It’s strange, though, isn’t it? It seems like no matter what they were originally designed for, any box made in that village winds up carrying the dead in the end. Not that I would know anything about it.