Reiko Read online

  Shinichi sighed heavily. ‘In Japan, it’s bad luck to talk about ghosts. I don’t know why. I’m not a superstitious person, but I really don’t like talking about ghosts. They say that if you talk about ghosts or dead people, they will hear.’

  I laughed. ‘Are you serious?’

  Shinichi nodded. ‘Ghosts will hear you. It’s bad luck.’

  I wasn’t sure how to take this. Here was Shinichi, a floppy-haired Bohemian wanting to live like Baudelaire, telling me that we shouldn’t talk about ghosts in case they overheard. I wanted to ask what would happen if they did overhear. What would they do? Would they take it as an opportunity to haunt us?

  Josh started to say something about moving on to somewhere livelier, but was interrupted by Etsuko, who had been looking at me intensely throughout the whole conversation.

  ‘When I was a schoolgirl, I heard a story about Izumi. Hundreds of years ago, in the Tokugawa period, there was a Buddhist priest who was famous for his visions. While he was travelling around Japan, he stayed one night in a temple at Izumi. While he was asleep, he dreamed that a demon visited him. The demon said he had something to show the priest and led him to a house where the local feudal lord lived. He stopped in front of a sliding screen at the back of the house. The screen was very beautiful, decorated with peaceful scenes of nature, and the priest asked the demon why he was being shown this screen. The demon laughed and said that this was a unique screen. He said that Izumi village in Fukushima Prefecture had a very unique secret and it could be found behind this screen. The priest asked why the screen was unique and what was behind it. The demon told him that hidden behind the screen was the entrance to hell.’

  6. THE BLACK FILE

  ‘They’re not normally like that. Sorry.’

  It was gone one o’clock as Josh and I made our way back to the Tower. The campus was deserted and we cut solitary figures as we skirted the edge of the gravel football pitch, casting long shadows.

  ‘They’re normally pretty chilled out,’ he continued. ‘That’s why I introduced you. I don’t know why they had a problem with this haunted village.’

  ‘It’s okay. What they said was interesting. The part about the entrance to hell was news to me. Kind of makes me even more determined to check this place out.’

  ‘I didn’t even know Buddhists had a hell. I thought hell was just a Christian thing.’

  I had a mental image of sliding back a screen door to find the raging fires of hell and it made me laugh. ‘I’ll just have to be extra careful with those sliding screens.’

  ‘Yeah, you might be looking for the bathroom, you open the wrong door and, oops, you’ve opened the door to hell.’

  It had been a long evening and I was glad to end it on a light note. I hadn’t expected Shinichi and Etsuko to be so sensitive about Izumi and I was troubled that they didn’t want to talk about ghosts for fear of being overheard. I’d been hoping to do fieldwork as part of my research, asking ordinary Japanese people about their perceptions of the supernatural, but if I couldn’t get those two to talk, what hope did I have with anyone else.

  On entering the foyer we found an ‘out of order’ sign standing in front of the lifts, a regular event according to Josh. We trudged up the narrow and dingy emergency steps in silence until we reached my floor. Josh’s room was on the floor above, so I said ‘goodnight’ and turned to leave.

  He called after me. ‘You’re all right in the head, aren’t you?’

  I would have laughed, but there was no flippancy in his tone. ‘I think so. What a weird question.’

  ‘Maybe it’s what happened to the other guy. I’ve just got a bad feeling about something. I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘I’m different to the other guy. Sounds like he had a whole lot of other problems.’

  Josh looked at me doubtfully, then turned and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. That was not a cool thing to ask. I’m a little tired.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  I watched Josh as he made his way up the steps and I couldn’t help feeling taken aback by his question. I may have only known him half a day, but it seemed out of character. He’d been so completely carefree earlier on, filled with stories about his hedonistic lifestyle and amorous adventures and here he was worrying about my mental health.

  Back in my room, I put the conversation behind me and got on with my preparations for bed. I’d seen and heard enough for one day and I needed my sleep. I gave my face a quick wash, tore off my smoky clothes, flicked off the light switch and crashed out on the mattress.

  I tried to sleep. God knows I tried, but jet-lag can play strange games. For over an hour I tried everything in the book. I cleared my mind of thought, I counted sheep, I imagined sinking slowly into a bed of soft feathers. I turned from side to side, on to my back, back on to my front again, kicked off the sheets, pulled the pillow over my head. In mounting frustration I shouted out loud, telling myself I’d only slept a few hours in days and, dammit, I should be tired. But to no avail. I gave up and opened my eyes.

  The bright moon didn’t help. Through a thin veil of curtain it cast a silvery pall over the sparse furnishings. But there was something else. It had started as a nagging voice at the back of my mind, but in my weakened state the voice had become too loud to ignore. And now, at five to three in the morning, I finally yielded. By banishing the file from my sight I thought I’d forget it was there. I was wrong.

  I got out of bed and switched on the desk lamp. Then I opened the drawer, hauled out the file and laid it down in front of me. There it was. The work of a dead scholar. The work of a man who had hung himself by the neck just a few doors down from where I stood. I still had a sense that it was wrong to be looking at it without his permission, no matter what Professor Atami might have said. But I also knew that I wouldn’t get another ounce of sleep if I didn’t take a look.

  I sat down on the chair and, with a deep breath, opened it up. My first impression was that for a man supposedly losing his sanity it was a remarkably neat and well-ordered file. Certainly, I had never approached that level of organization in any work I’d done. On the opening page there was a glossary of subjects and, looking across, I noticed that each section had been clearly marked with a coloured divider.

  I opened the first section entitled ‘Japanese Spirits: an Overview’ and was immediately floored by Charlie’s handwriting. It was astonishing to behold – a beautiful copperplate style, straight from the time of Queen Victoria, full of loops and flourishes and exquisite artistry. Even more remarkable was that nowhere on this first page, or any of the pages immediately following, could I see a word crossed out or a smudge or even an untidy line-break. Either Charlie had liked to make a neat copy of his work or he simply didn’t make mistakes. There was something unnerving about it.

  I looked at some of the descriptions in his overview. Oni he had translated as ‘a demon, a horned beast, often portrayed in ancient art or theatre’. Yokai was described as ‘a bewitching presence, appearing in the hours of dusk or dawn’. Further down, yurei was down as ‘a spirit of the dead, who remains among the living for a specific purpose, usually vengeance’. I turned the page, the novelty of Charlie’s handwriting beginning to wear thin.

  There were individual sections on yokai and yurei and some of the other supernatural apparitions, but my eye had already been caught by the bulging entry for Izumi.

  I flipped forward and recoiled in disbelief. It couldn’t be the same person. Gone was the copperplate handwriting and seamless presentation, replaced by an incoherent jumble of messy scrawls, corrections and random doodles. If I’d had no insight into Charlie’s state of mind before, I did have now. At some point during his research, and certainly by the time he got to Izumi, Charlie had gone mad.

  I turned the pages slowly, taking in the disjointed fragments, unfinished sentences and Japanese characters written over and over again. I didn’t have an adequate grasp of written Japanese to know what they meant, but there was enough English scrawle
d in the margins to give an alarming taste of a man on the edge. Phrases like ‘help me’, ‘I’m lost’ and biblical snippets like ‘why hast thou forsaken me?’ were all testimony to Charlie’s failing mental health. At one point he had even written ‘dig me a shallow grave’ and drawn a coffin-shaped box round the words.

  Seeing the palpable nature of his descent into madness I felt angry with Professor Atami for giving me the file. Had he actually looked at it before making the decision to keep it? Surely any decent human being would have respected the wishes of Charlie’s parents and destroyed it. I had a sudden impulse to light a match and burn the thing there and then, and if I’d had a match to hand I think I might have done just that. But it was too late. I needed to see more.

  I continued turning the pages until I came to a plastic envelope containing a series of six by four inch photo portraits of high school students, possibly taken for a school yearbook. I knew instantly who they were. I had read about the Izumi tragedy, I knew the names of the students involved and I knew the manner of their deaths. Yet I couldn’t explain why my fingers trembled as I removed the pictures and laid them out in front of me.

  The first photo was of a boy with a strong, handsome face and friendly smile. He was wearing the standard-issue school uniform, a plain black button-up jacket, modelled on the dress worn in German military academies of the nineteenth century. Turning the picture over, I found the name, Hideki Sano, written in Charlie’s immaculate copperplate.

  The next photo was of a girl in a navy sailor uniform, with three white stripes and a crimson ribbon tied in the middle. She wore her hair in a ponytail and smiled at the camera. This was Saori Kumano.

  There were photos of two other students whose names I recognized: Jun Takada and his girlfriend Kanae Kubota.

  Those were the four students whose bodies were recovered. But the most famous case of all was that of Reiko Shimura, the first of the students to disappear and the only one whose body was never recovered. I had seen a blurred photograph on the web, but now, looking at a proper portrait for the first time, I felt a shiver run the length of my body. The other four had looked little different to any other seventeen year-olds, with relaxed expressions and confident smiles. Reiko was different. For a start she was strikingly beautiful, with high cheekbones, almond-shaped brown eyes, sculpted nose and delicate lips. But her expression hinted at something much darker underneath, as though she had some premonition of her terrible fate. Like a Leonardo virgin, she seemed to look straight through me and into the dark places of my soul. Maybe it was her arresting beauty and the knowledge of her tragic fate that led me to look for hidden depths. Maybe she was just an ordinary schoolgirl, bored at the prospect of having to sit for a photograph.

  I don’t know how long I sat there staring at the portrait, studying the contours of her face, trying to fathom its mysteries. But I could understand now why her case held such a powerful fascination.

  The sound of footsteps outside in the corridor finally broke the spell. I hastily stuffed the pictures back into the envelope and snapped the file shut. As the footsteps approached the door, I was convinced it was my door they were heading towards. I braced myself for a heavy knock or even the turning of the door handle – perhaps the ghost of Charlie returned to reclaim his file – but the footsteps passed by and continued down the corridor. They stopped a little way down and I listened with relief as a door was unlocked and then closed with a bang. Just a late night reveller returning home. I felt strangely comforted by this evidence of life somewhere else on the floor. With term ended and the dormitory near-deserted, the silence had been oppressive.

  I sighed heavily and got to my feet. My curiosity sated, perhaps now my mind would give me some respite. But I had also seen Reiko. And having looked into her eyes and caught a glimpse of that unquiet soul, I knew instinctively that I had opened a Pandora’s Box. I didn’t know what had happened in Izumi, or what had led Charlie to lose his mind, but I couldn’t shake the fear that he and I shared some common destiny.

  7. YOSHI

  I awoke to a glorious spring day at the window. For a while I lay there without moving, enjoying the sensation of sunbathing in bed, feeling a deep sense of relaxation for the first time in days. I had expected restless dreams in the wake of my nocturnal researches, but as far as I could remember my sleep had been undisturbed. Finally rousing myself enough to sit up, I peered through the curtains at the cloudless sky.

  I met Josh in the foyer, leaning against the vending machines, chatting to a couple of students. Judging by the number of suitcases standing around, I guessed they must be leaving the dorm.

  ‘Hey there. Just get up?’ Josh patted me on the shoulder.

  To avoid any further doubts about my mental health, I told him I’d slept like a baby. He then introduced me to Jan and Piet, who were Dutch students at the end of two-year research scholarships and heading back to Amsterdam. When I mentioned my name, there was a flash of recognition and they glanced at Josh for confirmation.

  ‘You’re the guy studying the paranormal?’ Jan asked.

  I nodded my head, not certain whether to take this recognition as a compliment.

  There was an awkward silence which Josh hurried to dispel. ‘We’re going to be pretty much on our own for the next couple of weeks. We were just trying to figure out how many people were left in this place.’

  ‘How many people normally live here?’ I asked.

  ‘About sixty,’ said Piet, with a heavy Dutch accent. ‘Most of the students are on one-year government scholarships issued by Mombusho, which is the Japanese Ministry of Education. They’re all here to study the Japanese language, but their visas run out pretty quickly. That’s why they leave so soon.’

  ‘Which leaves researchers like us.’ Josh gave me a conspiratorial wink. ‘There are about fifteen or twenty of us coming back for next term. In theory you could spend your whole time here, but most people want to use the holidays to travel.’

  ‘So how many are still here?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to figure. Two Indonesians down on the second. No one knows what their plans are. Then there’s Anne, the Australian, on the fourth. And a French girl on the sixth, just down from me.’

  ‘And we’re leaving today,’ added Piet.

  Josh put his hand on my shoulder. ‘And then you’re off to your haunted village, so eventually it could be me all on my ownsome.’

  ‘So why aren’t you travelling?’

  Josh shook his head ruefully. ‘I haven’t been the best student this year. I’m embarrassed every time I see Atami, so I promised him I’d use this time to catch up. And anyway, I’m not really the travelling type.’

  I was about to make my excuses and go look for some late breakfast, when I remembered something.

  ‘There’s someone else on the fifth floor.’

  Josh looked at Jan and Piet for help, but they shook their heads. ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Yeah, he came back in the night. Or she, it could’ve been a she.’

  Josh wasn’t convinced. ‘They were all language students on your floor. They all left before you got here.’

  I tried to convince him, but he remained adamant that I must have misheard. He told me I’d been dreaming or that someone had wandered in from outside and got lost up there. I explained I’d heard the door being unlocked, opened and closed, but to no effect. All the while, Jan and Piet were watching me carefully, their suspicions about the ghost-hunter confirmed.

  I tried to act unconcerned, but I was irritated with Josh. I knew what I’d heard and I wasn’t about to be labelled a lunatic because Josh didn’t have his facts right. How the hell did he know who was in the building anyway? Just because people had left, it didn’t mean that others like me hadn’t arrived. And even if he was convinced I was screwy, he could have bitten his tongue and humoured me in front of the Dutch lads. He’d already questioned my sanity the night before, and here he was doing it again. I didn’t want to be tarred with
the same brush as Charlie just because I was doing the same research subject.

  Over the next few days I began to settle into my new life. The sun continued to shine, the clouds kept their distance and I got out and explored my new surroundings. The warm weather had brought on an early show of cherry blossoms and I was able to see the spring revellers lay out their mats beneath the trees and get merrily wasted on sake.

  The campus was pretty empty, which provided a good opportunity to check out the facilities at my leisure – the library, the swimming pool, the cafeteria. Josh accompanied me on most of my wanderings, eager for distractions from his research. By day we explored some of the outlying hills, wading through lush vegetation and watching the wild monkeys roam free. In the evenings we hit some of the gaijin foreigner bars, where Josh demonstrated his techniques for picking up Japanese girls. There was the wink, the cheesy smile and the introductory, ‘hey, what’s your name?’ and that seemed to get him the result he wanted. He freely admitted that the Japanese girls turning up to gaijin bars were generally looking to be picked up and tended not to offer much of a challenge. Despite this, Josh seemed to get genuinely upset that some of the Western men picking up Japanese girls weren’t up to standard. Most of them, he insisted, clearly couldn’t get girlfriends back home.

  On each of our gaijin bar forays, he would encourage me to follow his lead, delivering persuasive sales pitches on the enduring qualities of the Japanese female. I kept resisting, maintaining that I’d just ended a messy relationship and wasn’t about to step into another. What I didn’t tell him was that the relationship in question had ended over two years before and I was still struggling to come to terms with it. I thought admitting as much would confirm all his suspicions about my mental health.

  I also ventured into Osaka on my own one day to make arrangements for my Izumi trip. I found a sympathetic travel agent, who either understood my phrasebook Japanese or was very good at guessing. I would take the Tokkaido bullet train to Tokyo, then take the Tohoku bullet train to Shirakawa in Fukushima Prefecture. From there I would take a local train to the station at Izumi. In all, I could expect the journey to take up to six hours, but the route would take in a long stretch of Central Japan, including Mount Fuji, where the winter snow still covered its peak. I would also get to see Tokyo, if only to change trains. As for accommodation, the agent gave me a list of guest houses and Japanese style ryokan inns in the area, where I could either book ahead or turn up unannounced. The only awkward moment came when I first mentioned that it was Izumi I was travelling to. The agent stiffened and asked what the purpose of my visit was, as though he were duty-bound to clear my motives prior to issuing me a ticket. Though tempted to look up the words for ‘none of your business’, I flicked through my phrasebook to find the word for tourist: kankyaku. He regarded me critically for a second, then got on with his job.