The elevator, now cordoned off by tape, shook back and forth, making a tremendous noise.
Bloody mouths sprouted from the tumorous bulges. They continued to gnash their teeth, prattling in a multitude of voices. It seemed as if they might break through the silver doors and spill out of the elevator at any moment. Fear and disgust were painted all over the faces of the policemen surrounding the elevator but not only fear and disgust. I could tell, from the way the policemen bit their lips as they listened, that they were struggling with something deeper. The voices coming from the tumorous growths likely belonged to departed souls who bore some connection to the policemen.
“Contact the authorities. Tell someone from the closest department to coordinate with local police and to come immediately,” Rokuhara told the guard.
The tumorous growths continued to swell in size. Even the thick steel doors, which ought to have been unmalleable, were beginning to strain from the pressure. Along with the voices of the departed, I began to hear the blistering squish of pressed meat and the scream of twisting metal.
“We need to be prepared for the possibility that those doors could break. If that thing gets out of there—”
And then suddenly, the mass was gone. Everyone gasped.
With barely a cry, the bloated, grotesquerie-filled elevator box had dropped out of sight. The space where the elevator had stood a moment ago was replaced with cavernous darkness. The elevator car must have been unable to withstand the weight of the growths. I couldn’t hear the voices of the dead anymore nor did I hear any sound of impact from the drop.
The severed cable, which the compartment had been hanging from a moment ago, snapped back into view with a twang, slicing through the tape blocking the elevator.
I glanced to the side as the policemen stared in shock. The look on Rokuhara’s face was difficult to describe.
“How many meters deep is this elevator? How far down until the bottom?” I asked.
One of the workers tried to answer, but he didn’t seem capable of speech just yet. His lips only trembled faintly. Darkness yawned silently from behind the strands of tape, reminding me of the shadow that had stood at the bottom of the dam.
“In any case, it doesn’t look like that thing is coming back up any time soon.”
The worker nodded several times, as if praying for that to be true.
“Seal the elevator.”
The elevator had plummeted into the depths. I couldn’t hear any more voices. But I did hear a wet slapping noise, like bare hands smacking against the walls of the shaft. Was the creature trying to climb its way back up? The severed cable swayed in midair, its cut end clearly visible. It looked like it had been severed cleanly, as if with the blade of a katana.
There was a rusty splotch of blood on the elevator’s call button panel, possibly the worker’s.
By the time we made our way back down the interminable hallway to the monitor room, the rain had grown even heavier. It poured from the colorless sky, causing everything to appear murky and leaving the gray outline of the dam in a haze.
I glared at the shadow that appeared in the monitor. The long, black, humanoid figure remained perfectly still while the driving rain beat down on it like a waterfall. Its golden pupils caressed the surface of the water, like the rays of a lighthouse illuminating the surface of the ocean. The eyes stared at me, glaring yet hollow. Only watching. As if they had long given up on appeal.
“What do you think?”
Opening the door, Rokuhara slipped into the passenger seat, his umbrella still open over the door.
“What do I think…? I think it’s great that the thing decided to take a spill back there, but who knows when it might decide to crawl back up the shaft again?”
Out of laziness, I had closed my umbrella before getting into the car, so my head got doused with water. It was taking the heater in the car a while to kick in, the tepid air stealing warmth from my body instead.
“What exactly is the correlation between the dark giant at the bottom of the dam and the monster that devoured that worker in the elevator? Do you suppose the thing at the bottom of the dam is the god itself and the tumorous growths are like its heralds?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking me for.”
Rokuhara placed his chin in his hands, considering the matter, as I furiously dabbed my hair with a wad of tissues.
“In fact, should we even assume those growths are a single entity, or should we consider them an amalgamation of separate entities…?”
“Again, why are you asking me?”
I tossed the wet tissues onto the dashboard and then placed my elbows on the steering wheel.
A god that was supposed to send off the dead, that had once protected the sacred trees used to make their coffins. Why would it spawn such a monster? Why would it harm human beings? It seemed unlikely that it was because it was angry over the village being submerged. Even before the decision had been made to build the dam, there had been several reports of oddities imitating the voices of the dead and of people who’d been attracted by those voices meeting a suspicious demise. That was also when people started reporting seeing the dark, giant, humanoid shadow. Had it come to reproach the people for using the village’s sacred trees for something other than caskets? A giant in mourning clothes, standing by idly in water up to its knees. And a grotesque whirling oddity resembling tumorous growths with human mouths packed into an elevator.
“Something doesn’t add up,” I said impulsively.
Rokuhara turned to look at me.
“I don’t have any proof, but I can’t help but feel like that giant shadow and the monster in the elevator are two separate entities.”
There was something so desolate about the golden eyes of the giant. As if it lacked a mouth of its own, the eloquence to speak. Maybe I was being sentimental, but whatever it was, I highly doubted it had the deceptive wiles to lure in prey using human ventriloquism. Rokuhara smiled uncomfortably.
“I have a sneaking feeling as well that those two creatures have distinct origins.”
“Well, now you’re making even less sense than I am.”
I placed my hands on the steering wheel. The heater was finally kicking in.
“Maybe we should head down to the village and start asking questions…”
Then I remembered the conversation between the two old-timers I had overheard as we were leaving the diner.
——“The ones who were always coming and going before that village became a dam. Some kind of cult or something, I don’t know. The ones who hand out those strange red ornaments.”——
“Different origins… And maybe a different god!”
Rokuhara asked me what I meant, but instead of answering, I just stepped on the gas. We had to find those weirdos who the two villagers had mentioned.
We sped down the road past rows of rice paddies, which were looking greener now that they were wet. Occasionally, our progress was interrupted by street signs or red traffic lights.
“It’s like you said. The monster in the elevator probably isn’t the god that was here originally. It’s something far less respectable that’s been brought in from outside.”
The rain caused the windshield to fog up, as if trying to hamper our way. The wipers sloshed back and forth, while the tires sent up splashes from the puddles collected along the poorly maintained asphalt.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter.
“Rokuhara, are there any records of strange groups arriving at the village around the time they stopped making caskets and began making those woodwork boxes instead?”
“Would you please drive slower…? But to answer your question, yes, there were records of seminars being held at the community center around that time to teach people how to make the new craft works. Unfortunately, the instructor’s identity was redacted.”
“What about other seminars being held at the center? Maybe meetups for some sort of new religious group? Were there any records of that?”
Rokuhara paused for a moment before answering. “…There were,” he muttered.
“And what about elections? For mayor. Anything. Any mention of some upstart or nobody, someone not well-known around the village, suddenly advancing to a post?”
“No, nothing like that… But the mayor’s secretary was suddenly switched out the year just before the dam was built. A prominent local family had filled the position for generations, but for some reason, the secretary was replaced by a young person from outside the village.”
“Okay, things are starting to come together now. One more thing. Before any of that happened. Before those religious meetups and before the secretary changed, did anybody close to the mayor suddenly pass away?”
Rokuhara stared at the faded white lines along the road and sighed, as if he had now put the pieces together as well.
“The mayor’s son had just graduated college and was supposed to be returning to the village. He died in an accident on his way back from Tokyo…”
“Of course…,” I muttered.
Just then, Rokuhara suddenly threw himself at me from the passenger seat. Before I could react, the car screeched to an emergency stop, causing my seat belt to dig into my chest as my weight tossed me forward.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
I glanced down at Rokuhara, who was doubled over below the steering wheel, his bony white hand clutching the emergency brake. I flicked the wipers to clear away the rivulets of rain obstructing the windshield and stared outside. There was some kind of animal standing just past the white lines, like a shaggy wet dog.