Miyaki and I were sweating buckets by the time we made it back down the mountain. The sweat felt like cold ice water had been dumped over my head, and the dirt clinging to my shoes and the legs of my suit felt heavy as lead, impeding my movements.
“What was up with all that stuff back there…?”
“This might sound stupid…,” Miyaki muttered, her smile stiff. Whenever she made that face, I knew I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear. “…But you don’t think the god of this village turns people into trees, do you?”
“Come on…”
I tried to think of some piece of evidence to refute that suggestion, but nothing immediately came to mind. The area surrounding the cult building had been completely littered with lost articles. And the people who had disappeared had all done so without a trace. Maybe Miwasaki had witnessed a person turn into a tree before his very eyes. That would certainly explain why he had snapped. I recalled the long list of disappearances, trying not to let my imagination get the better of me.
“The last place where many of the people who went missing were seen before they disappeared was down by the abandoned tracks. I don’t remember any mention of anyone hiking up the mountain, so it’s probably not trees…,” I said, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about.
I still wasn’t very confident, but fortunately, Miyaki didn’t press the issue any further and instead began brushing the mud off her clothes. We began trudging our way down the interminable country road, our feet heavy beneath us.
“I wish we could do something about our clothes, at least. I wouldn’t mind washing my face and hands, too, while we’re at it…”
“Agreed.”
I spotted a two-story home with an old traditional-style ceramic-tiled roof buried in a floating cloud of green. The white plaster was peeling from the walls, and at first glance, I wondered if it was abandoned, but an indigo banner hung from a veranda on the second floor. Unbelievably, the banner read, SELF-CATERING PLANS AND DAY-SPA VISITS AVAILABLE. The adjacent wooden hut was affixed with an exhaust fan, a gas meter, and a faded fire extinguisher. An ancient, old-fashioned laundry machine was visible through the frosted glass of the door.
“Is that an inn and a laundromat?
An old woman appeared from the inn side, carrying a garbage bag. She smiled and nodded when she saw us. I spoke up, calling out to her.
“Excuse me, we’re not staying here, but is it possible to just use the laundry machine?” I asked, hoping there would at least be a sink inside. The old woman, who was apparently the innkeeper, nodded magnanimously.
“Of course, of course. It’s so cold out, though; feel free to use the lobby while you wait.”
We could hardly wash our suits whole, but we were at least able to wipe off the mud and then toss the black fabrics into the washing machine. There was a high-pitched electronic buzz as I placed a few coins into the machine and pressed the switch, and then the machine tumbled to life with a sound that made me worry it was going to fall apart.
“In any case, why don’t we get some more interviews down while we take a break?”
“Good idea. We don’t know anything about this village’s god or their beliefs yet.”
The area located directly inside the inn doors resembled an old-fashioned reception stand at a bathhouse more than it did a ryokan lobby. Rental towels and samples hung from the curved wooden counter front. There was also a display case studded with limescale that was filled with bottled beer and orange juice. Foam stuck out from the massage chair, which had been draped with a yellowing slip-cover, while a layer of dust sat atop the surface of some indecipherable objet d’art that was made from a large hollowed-out piece of wood and towered toward the back. Maybe this place really was abandoned after all.
I rubbed my arms, which were growing chilly as my sweat and the water we had wiped our clothes down with earlier began to evaporate. The proprietress poked her head out from behind the counter.
“Are you here to investigate the local religion?”
I stared wide-eyed at the old woman. Even Miyaki seemed taken aback.
“Whenever people in suits show up, that’s almost always the case. You’re from Tokyo, I presume?”
The woman was folding towels indifferently. I couldn’t remember any mention in the files of agents making their way all the way down here to question the villagers, but there were lots of convoluted hoops that agents had to jump through in order to access any information related to this case. There could be documents in the department’s safekeeping that we had yet to lay eyes on.
“Sometimes, they call the mountain here Mount Fudaraku,” the woman said, shoving a pile of thin, scratchy-looking tiles onto a shelf. Miyaki nodded in recognition.
“That’s the Japanese name for Potalaka, isn’t it? The fabled Buddhist mountain said to exist in southern India. There’s a temple named after it in Japan, as well.”
“Yes, but not that one. People your age probably don’t know about this anymore, but there used to be a thing called fudaraku tokai.”
“The practice where high-ranking ascetic priests would sacrifice themselves, correct? By setting out to sea by boat, never to return, to bring enlightenment and salvation to the common folk…? But there’s no sea nearby, is there?” I said, interrupting her.
A sardonic smile surfaced on the woman’s face.
“Yes, that’s right. But Fudaraku is just a euphemism. Essentially, the mountain used to be an ubasute.”
Miyaki and I pursed our lips. An ubasute. I had heard of it before. Practiced in poor villages around Japan, it was the custom of abandoning the old and sick villagers in the mountains once they became infirm. It had never felt real before, though.
“Don’t get me wrong, ubasute wasn’t carried out here. This village was actually created by old and sick people who had been abandoned.”
The woman set her hands down on the display case, not minding if she got fingerprints on the glass.
“Long ago, a Buddhist monk in the area chose to hole himself up in the mountains to dedicate himself to his ascetic practice. One day, he came across an old couple who had been abandoned in the mountains to die. They were barely managing to sustain themselves on berries and wild animals. The monk felt sorry for them and offered to shelter them in his temple. From that day forth, anytime someone sick or elderly was abandoned there, the monk came to their aid, until before long, there were so many that they had formed their own settlement.”
A kettle on a little potbellied stove back behind the counter began to whistle.
“There were too many at that point for everyone to shelter in the temple, so the monk and the abandoned people descended from the mountain, and this village is where they wound up. Surrounded like this by mountains, they must have assumed no one would ever find them here.”