The hallway was long, murky, and thick with the choking stench of dust and mold. The only sound as we ascended the stairs at the end of the hallway was the squeaking of our shoe soles.
As we reached the second floor, the glow from my penlight bounced off a silver emergency door to our immediate left, throwing back a distorted reflection of our own faces. Panning the light the other way, I saw motes of dust dancing in the darkness and then a placard reading CLASS 2-1. I directed the light farther down, but all that could be seen through the glass window of the closed classroom door was fathomless black darkness.
“Miyaki, do you see a light switch anywhere?”
“Hold on a second. Maybe it’s around here.”
I could tell Miyaki was groping along the wall behind me. There was a click, and then light suddenly filled the space. I began to lower my penlight, then nearly shouted out loud.
It wasn’t darkness that I had seen through the small glass window in the door. An incredible mass of hair filled the room. The long, black, coiled fibers were pressed up against the window, leaving white streaks of sebaceous grease on the glass. I heard Miyaki gasp softly.
“A job is a job. Let’s keep going,” I said.
I adjusted my grip on the light, which was now damp with sweat from my hand, and proceeded farther down the hall.
The next room was Class 2-2. The wall opposite the classroom was puffy and warped from water damage, causing the rusted thumbtacks and printed notices stuck to the wall to jut outward. Peering through the small window, I could see a pale, protruding expanse that resembled a gently rolling mountain ridge. The surface of the bumps and valleys was finely textured with a pattern like woven hemp. It was an enlarged patch of skin, I realized.
“I think I’m starting to lose my mind in here,” I remarked.
“I don’t know, you look fine to me.”
“With all this weird stuff, maybe I’m just not sure how to respond anymore.”
“I suggest sticking with shocked and amazed,” Miyaki said, coming to stand by my side. Her voice sounded grim. “We don’t have to look in all the rooms, do we?”
“We are here to investigate. Not that looking will tell us much.”
We approached Class 2-3 next. As I flashed my light into the small window, I saw some sort of orb gleaming in the center of the room, chairs and desks lined up in front of it like a barricade. It was an eyeball. The creaking of the school building made it seem as if someone was sneaking up on us, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched. This was not the kind of place a person ought to loiter in for too long.
“You know, I bet the guardian deity for this area was split up into pieces when the stone idols were broken and scattered back when they were developing the land. That must be the cause of all this.”
“Maybe. Or it might be because the land itself was split up by the roads. It’s hard to say.”
Miyaki and I quickened our pace once again.
“The thing I don’t get is this god is supposed to reside up in the mountain, right? So why do the body parts fall out of the sky? Why don’t they come down from the mountain instead?”
“Well…hmm…,” I said, trying to figure out how to answer.
Before I got the chance, however, everything suddenly began to shake up and down violently. The school building screeched like it was in pain, and dust and flecks of paint rained from the ceiling.
“An earthquake?!”
“Let’s get the heck out of here!”
Miyaki and I ran back the way we came. The floor shuddered beneath our feet, threatening to send us sprawling.
As we raced past Class 2-3, something thudded against the wall. The glass shattered, and I heard a squelching sound, like some sort of living creature trying to force its way through a space that was far too small for it. I glanced toward the window and immediately regretted it. The eyeball, which had been in the middle of the classroom earlier, was now pressed up against the small window. Bleeding from where it was forcing itself through the glass, it rotated, fixing me with its pale gray and murky black pupil.
There was another crash, this time from behind us. The glass in the classroom door at the end of the hallway rattled in its frame, and an even larger eyeball than the first began desperately attempting to break through the window. The two eyes, shut away in their separate rooms, spun about, trying to make contact with each other.
“Katagishi, what’s happening…?!”
“Who cares? Just run!”
I grabbed Miyaki by the arm and raced down the hallway without looking back, hurrying down the stairway as quickly as I could.
The moment we reached the first floor, all the violent heaving and shaking stopped as abruptly as if a switch had been flipped. Ignoring the trembling in our knees, which felt like cooked spaghetti after all that shaking, we bolted free from the school building, sweating and out of breath. The older man from earlier glanced up at us as if we were acting strange.
“What’s wrong? No need to rush like that. I was about to give a shout, though… You two were in there for quite a while.”
The man’s polite smile and the chilliness of the air robbed the warmth from the trails of sweat that trickled along my back. The patches of sky brimming through the rusty links of the fence had now changed to an evening red.
“Were we really in there that long?” Miyaki asked, wiping sweat from her jaw.
“Being in that place probably messes with your senses…,” I said eventually, trying to sound tough. I glared at the school building. “Whatever is going on here, though…those parts in there are moving.”
But my voice had come out thin and raspy instead.
“What do you think happened back there? Do you think the god is trying to put all its body parts together?” Miyaki asked.
I recalled the drawing I had seen earlier.
“That could be a part of it, but I don’t think that’s its main objective. Remember what we were talking about earlier? About the shintai.” I scuffed the tip of my shoe against the schoolyard’s ground, which was still painted with old white lines. “According to the documents we found, the object of worship was the mountain and land itself. Meaning that the god’s true body is the land. If this all started when the stones were scattered, then returning them to their original places to at least prevent any more parts from falling would probably be a good idea… I’m not sure we’d want to see what would happen once all the body parts piece themselves together.
“What would happen?”
“This is just my conjecture, but I think those massive parts will start moving as one, trying to make their way back to the earth. And if that happens, there probably won’t be much of the village left once they’re through.”
The mountain towered like a shadow puppet overhead, seeming to reach for the deep-crimson foot of the sky.