Chapter 1
BEGINNING
Yumiko gazed at the western sky, where cinnabar slowly consumed the blue.
Sitting in the playground sandbox, Yumiko looked around with a wide, youthful gaze, her eyes colored by the sunset—and by worry. The swings and the slide sat vacant. The jungle gym lay emptied of its swarming climbers. Cold metal bars stood against the sunset sky in stark relief.
Eri-chan, Hitoshi-kun, and Megu-chan had all left. Everyone had gone home.
Yumiko hurriedly got to her feet, then straightened her sweater and brushed the sand from her white socks and plaid pleated skirt. I was almost done, too, she thought.
Before her in the sandbox stood a nearly complete European-style castle. The sculpture lacked only one detail—a moat—that kept her from feeling satisfied with her creation. The scoop in her hand would put one there easily.
The girl stared at the sand castle for a moment. Then she made up her mind—she tossed her scoop back into the sand. Despite the temptation, Yumiko felt too alone, too vulnerable to stay. She pictured her mother’s worried face and thought, I have to get home.
Another evening not so long ago, Yumiko had come home late. Her mother’s scolding had been especially severe. “You need to learn to be more responsible!” she’d said, eyebrows pulled so tight together that wrinkles formed between them. “You’ll be going to grade school next year.”
Hastened by the memory of that expression, she headed for the park’s entrance. She knew the way. First, under the flower-laden arbor, then past the small fountain. She saw the entrance just ahead. Her pace picked up to a jog.
And then it happened.
A man appeared, blocking the entrance before her. Yumiko stopped in her tracks.
The sky had darkened, but not so much that she couldn’t see what he looked like. The man was dressed in a whitish T-shirt and baggy jeans. He wore faintly dirty leather shoes. On the front of his T-shirt, a cute, anime-style girl looked back at her. The girl was from a TV show Yumiko had watched many times, but she couldn’t remember the character’s name. The setting sun, directly behind the stranger’s face, obscured his features in
relative darkness. The effect only made him more unnerving.
Yumiko looked down to avoid meeting the man’s eyes and started to trot past him.
But, in an instant, he bent over, put his hand on her shoulder—and then he was behind her, his arms pinning her against his body. Yumiko grunted. He tightened his grip. The animal stench of his breath assaulted her nostrils.
Yumiko knew she was in danger. She kicked with her legs and tried to shake free from the stranger’s grasp. But the more she struggled, the deeper his hands dug into the softness of her skin.
“Ojouchan,”—little girl—he said, his voice weak and unimpressive, oddly scratchy and high pitched. “Ojouchan.”
Yumiko felt she had heard that voice before. But where?
“Ojouchan,” the stranger said again.
In the darkness, Yumiko thought, the memory sending shivers through her. I heard it in the dark. I heard it in the dark of night.
The night she had heard that voice counted among her earliest memories. The voice had made her so scared that she cried. When her mother came into her room to see what was wrong, Yumiko flung herself against her and sobbed, “Mama, I heard a strange voice.”
Her mother switched on the nightstand light and tried to reassure her with a gentle smile. “Yumiko,” she said, hugging her child tight, “that’s your grandfather’s voice. His spirit has come to be by your side.”
“No,” Yumiko said, shaking her head. “It’s not Grandpa.”
Her grandfather had passed away the year she was born, and she didn’t know what his voice had sounded like—but she knew that the scratchy, high-pitched voice in the dark wasn’t his.
“It’s not him,” Yumiko said, now shaking her head more forcefully. “It’s a monster, Mama. It’s a monster! I know it is!”
Her mother’s arms tightened around her. “Yumiko, Yumiko, calm down.”
Yumiko tried to wriggle free. “Mama, you’re hurting me! Let me go! You’re hurting me!”
Her mother’s arms gripped her even tighter.
“Don’t struggle. Don’t struggle!” Suddenly, her mother’s voice was scratchy and high-pitched. “Don’t struggle!”
Yumiko opened her eyes in shock and saw the reality in front of her—long greasy hair and a craggy face every bit as real as the foul, bestial smell that accompanied them.
“Don’t struggle. Be a good girl.” He drew his face closer to her, and the fierce stench enveloped her. His eyes, timid yet vulgar, blinked rapidly. His oversized nose flared with every breath. “If you behave, I won’t hurt you.”
He pushed out his tongue and ran it across the surface of his lips. That red, swollen organ could have been a mollusk at the bottom of a sea.
Yumiko felt her body go slack. Deep down, she realized that no matter how hard she resisted, she would never escape his grip.
He scooped up her body with ease and carried her into the thicket.
Yumiko’s mind, distant now, wondered where she was being taken. For some reason, she felt oddly calm—like she was no longer herself.