The only true part of what she had said was that we had come from Tokyo. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if we could go around telling people we were a couple of government agents dispatched all across the country to investigate paranormal incidents that were deemed too serious to ignore. In other words, the kind of stuff that fell outside typical human jurisdiction. Our job wasn’t to solve these issues, though, only to investigate in hopes of finding détente. Not exactly exciting or rewarding work but such is the job of a public servant. To do what the private sector will not.
I took out my portable pocket ashtray, stubbed out my cigarette butt, and started heading back down the hill for the time being in search of more locals to interview.
Winter was approaching. The brittle trees had begun to drop their leaves. Through the gaps, I could see more houses surrounded by more hedge walls; everywhere everything was the same. Beyond the houses, a cracked asphalt road passed through the paddies and fields, unfolding like a burn scar.
“What should we do next? We could try the local museum or the shrine. We’ve barely scratched the surface regarding information about the gods in this area, after all,” Miyaki said.
Her eyes were focused on the mud oozing into her pumps as she walked.
“I already looked into that.”
“Well, you could have mentioned that,” Miyaki said, glancing up at me reproachfully. She had a baby face to begin with, but at times like these, she really could have passed for just a college student.
“We don’t have each other’s personal contact information.”
“This kind of seems like a work matter to me…”
“I know, but we’ve been so busy with other cases that I never had a chance to mention it.”
Before Miyaki could say anything else, I retrieved a folded piece of paper from my suit pocket and unfurled it. It was a copy of a brushstroke illustration I had found in a book of local folk legends that had been sitting in a corner of the village folk museum. It was the kind of niche tome that would probably never leave the shelf unless some very particular college students happened to come sniffing around.
“This was apparently drawn by an artist who lived here, in the tenth year of the Tenpo era.”
Miyaki peered down at the paper in my hands. The image showed yellowing calligraphy paper with rows of overlapping straight lines meant to represent a mountain ridge, as well as a series of dots meant to represent rice paddies. It looked like something even I could scribble. However, a gaunt giant with a bald pate peered out from the shadow of the mountains, a vacant look upon its face.
“The drawing has character. I’ll give it that.”
It was impossible to read any emotion in the giant’s eyes. They were almost caves. The image had been rendered with a flat-slanted brush, showing the perspective of villagers staring up at the giant.
“There were almost no concrete myths remaining. I couldn’t even find a name for the kami—the god. Just that the shintai, the immanent object of worship embodying the god, included both the mountain and the village land as a whole and that the god supposedly watched over the villagers and protected them. Pretty standard stuff.”
“Nothing else?”
“I also found a poem or something written toward the beginning of the Meiji era. I didn’t understand much of it, but it mentioned something about the god leaving during a festival one year because the village was prosperous enough on its own, I think…”
“Hold on, I heard something like that, too. It was a song. Apparently, they used to dance to it during the village festival.”
Suddenly, I stubbed my toe on something that felt a little bigger than a rock. I came to a stop. Looking down, I saw an object made of stone poking out from the dirt, half buried, smooth, and worn like melting ice.
“Who put this here? I nearly broke my neck.”
As soon as I crouched down, I got a terrible feeling. In my experience, touching these sorts of things was bad luck. Either that or they were bad luck whether you touched them or not. All I could make out, etched into the surface of the mud-strewed stone, were the characters for “harvest” and “road.” At first, I thought it must have been some monument or marker of some sort, but it was oddly smooth for a marker, and there was even the suggestion of arms and legs around the edges.
“What’s wrong?” Miyaki asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
We had reached the bottom of the hill at some point, I realized, where silvery-white plumes of pampas grass billowed around us. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a little gasoline stand tucked away beneath the shadows of the trees, as if buried. Not a single car currently sat underneath the gasoline stand’s red- and orange-striped roof. Even the electronic signboard, where the current price of gas should have been displayed, had been switched off.
“We really are in the middle of nowhere.”
“Believe it or not, this place was being developed not so long ago. A bunch of roads came through, and they even opened up the mountain and excavated a tunnel.”
“Exactly…how long ago?”
“Until around…’97.”
Miyaki and I made eye contact.
“The same time the first arm or whatever it was fell.”
“That sounds like something we should dig into.”
Miyaki tucked her chin in, a serious expression upon her face. It was starting to look like this case was going to be a hassle.
Glancing up, I could see the mountain, black as ink, through the dense, leafless trees. Scanning its surface, I spotted an area, like a thin scratched line, where no trees grew. That must have been the road they had built that went through the mountain. The dreariness of the landscape reminded me of the photo I had seen earlier. It must have been taken at around the same time of year.
“Hey, Miyaki, what day did they hold the festival on?” The pitch of my voice rose slightly.
Miyaki flipped through her notepad, apparently not noticing.
“Well, they’ve stopped celebrating it lately, but…it would have been today.”
Just then, there was a loud boom like a crash of thunder, almost drowning out Miyaki’s voice. I was standing a little ahead of her. Instantly, I was buffeted by a drab gray squall of wind, which pelted my skin with fine gravel. Miyaki and I tried to peer through the cloud of dust as we choked and hacked.
The red and orange roof of the gasoline stand had buckled into a V, like origami paper, a hole now poking through the middle. The gas pump below tilted dangerously to the side, as if ready to snap at any moment. For a moment, I pictured the gasoline inside catching fire and exploding, but we had other things to focus on right now. The bizarre thing that had just crashed through the roof was sitting neatly atop the pile of rubble below.
“What…is that…?”
Pale peach in color and shaped like a plump, semi-ovoid bed sham, it lay draped across the other pump. I could see a round hole inside the complicated wrinkles of its folds. Even the shadows of the downy hairs that poked out from within were visible in stark detail.
It was, in fact, a massive ear.
There are strange phenomena in this world that cannot be classified as good or evil. Enigmas that surpass human knowledge and control. We call these phenomena, and the entities that give rise to them, divine incursions.