The Graveyard Apartment Page 16

  When Teppei arrived at the door of the caretakers’ apartment he found Sueo Tabata waiting for him, freshly dressed in a pristine white polo shirt. Mitsue hastily shed her grease-spotted apron and followed them into the lobby with undisguised excitement, brandishing a jumbo flashlight in one hand.

  Teppei wondered silently whether it was really necessary to make such a production out of a humdrum errand, but he didn’t say anything. He pressed the button for the elevator and then, in a subtle attempt to emphasize the routine nature of what they were doing, he struck up a nonchalant conversation about professional baseball with Sueo.

  In the game Teppei had been watching out of the corner of his eye during dinner, the leadoff batter for the Giants had hit a home run on the first pitch. When he mentioned that to Sueo, the older man broke into a delighted grin. Evidently he was a Giants fan.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” Mitsue said as they boarded the elevator. “I gather you were in the middle of watching a game?”

  “No, it’s fine. Anyway, at our house Tamao usually gets to choose the channel, and she wanted to watch something else.”

  When they got to the basement, Sueo turned on the overhead lights. Maybe it was because the weather had warmed up outside, or perhaps the air was just stagnant because hardly anyone ever came down here anymore, but the atmosphere seemed unusually close and stuffy—almost to the point where it was difficult to take a proper breath.

  The storage lockers stood in neat, orderly rows. Tsutomu’s tricycle wasn’t occupying its usual place in front of the Inoues’ locker, but apart from that detail the basement looked just the way it always had. There was nothing abnormal, nothing different, nothing out of place.

  The cardboard boxes of high-calorie protein bars were still piled in one corner, where they had been all along. Teppei and the Tabatas carefully examined each of the cartons, but there wasn’t a single bit of evidence to indicate that rodents had been nibbling at the cardboard.

  “Everything looks spick-and-span, doesn’t it?” Sueo said. “I mean, now that we’re here, nothing seems to be amiss.”

  “The cleaning is completely up to date, too,” Mitsue declared proudly. “I’ve been coming down alone once a week, without fail. Well, I usually just run the vacuum over the floor, but I always make sure to do a thorough job, including the corners. Needless to say, I would never dream of neglecting my duties.”

  Teppei had heard about Mitsue’s tendency toward self-aggrandizement, and now he understood what Misao and Eiko had been referring to.

  The only thing that matters is the here and now, Teppei told himself as he glanced around. Even if certain things occurred that seemed at the time to defy logic and common sense (like the indoor weasel wind, for example), an impeccably rational explanation would eventually emerge—an explanation that simply happened to involve some obscure scientific principle that hadn’t immediately sprung to anyone’s mind. Once you started jumping to subjective conclusions, matters could get out of hand very quickly. Nothing good ever came of that approach, and it often led to chaos, confusion, and a destabilized mental state. On that score at least, Mitsue, with her regular trips down to the basement to vacuum the floor as part of her caretaker duties, seemed to be taking a commendably reasonable, down-to-earth approach to the place, and that was as it should be. In Teppei’s opinion, rational and objective was the only way to go.

  After a quick huddle, the three explorers decided to divide the basement into three approximately equal parts. Sueo took the front section, which included the elevator; Mitsue claimed the central area; and Teppei set off to examine the periphery.

  Teppei’s assignment included the spot where Tamao had sustained her mysterious injury. He began by peeking behind every single one of the unused storage lockers, where he found nothing more sinister than the usual colonies of fluffy dust bunnies. At one point something glossy caught his eye, but when he looked closely it turned out to be just a flake of paint.

  The floor, the ceiling, the tops of storage compartments: Teppei walked slowly around, executing the same meticulously attentive type of survey he had performed just after Tamao’s accident. Methodically, he opened each of the unused storage lockers and peered inside, but they were all empty and—contrary to the dramatic outcome he suspected Misao and Eiko might have been hoping for—he didn’t catch a single glimpse of a strange, scary monster from realms unknown.

  “How’s it going over there?” he called out to Mitsue.

  She was apparently experiencing some pain in her lower back, because she pounded on the base of her spine with both fists as she replied, “I haven’t found anything at all.”

  Sueo was standing in front of the elevator, admiring the metal door. “This really is a splendid building,” he declared in a loud voice. “The construction is sturdy, and everything looks nice and new, inside and out.”

  Teppei jammed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and began to whistle quietly: “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” He had no idea why that particular song had suddenly popped into his head. When he was in college, Frankie Valli’s rendition had often been played at the clubs he frequented. Then, years later, he and Misao had gone to see an American film called The Deer Hunter, and that same song was part of the soundtrack. On the way home from the movie theater, he and Misao had quietly crooned the chorus as they strolled through the Shibuya district of Tokyo.

  I doubt if I ever sang a song that way with Reiko, even once, Teppei mused. Reiko had disliked any kind of noisy, high-spirited behavior. She couldn’t stand unexpected developments, or excessive liveliness, or the kind of momentary vicissitudes that can boost people’s moods, causing them to feel (and express) a sudden rush of joy or elation.

  Teppei sauntered up to the back wall, where Eiko claimed to have heard a vague hubbub of human voices, and placed one ear against the concrete surface. He thought he detected a faint rustling on the other side of the wall, but he assumed it was just the sound of his longish hair brushing against the concrete. Next, he tried knocking on the wall with his bare knuckles. From the other side, there came a muffled sound, almost like an echo. The concrete must be thinner here, or perhaps the builders used hollow blocks, he thought.

  He examined the wall carefully, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of irregularities. There wasn’t a single fissure, and the coat of paint that had been used to finish the concrete was as flawless as the day it was applied.

  “Okay,” he said to himself, sotto voce. “I am now officially sick and tired of this whole damn thing. I’ve had it up to here with all the talk about the big, bad basement. I mean, we’re all adults, and then some. What the hell are we doing anyway, poking around down here? This is downright embarrassing—I mean, there’s no way I could ever tell anyone about this little expedition.”

  Turning around, Teppei said in a louder voice, “Okay, there’s nothing here whatsoever.”

  “Nothing here, either,” Mitsue and Sueo called back, almost in unison.

  “I’m going to tell my wife that she needs to start putting things in our storage locker again,” Teppei announced. “It’s wasteful to have a facility like this and not make use of it.”

  “So I guess the noises we heard last night must have been coming from outside the building,” Sueo speculated, tilting his head to one side. “I don’t know—maybe there’s something about the construction that turns this place into a sort of conduit for noises from outside? You know, like an echo chamber?”

  “That must be it.” Teppei nodded in agreement. “I mean, the fact that we haven’t found anything out of the ordinary would seem to support your theory, as well. Oh, Mrs. Tabata? I was just wondering whether you ever got any kind of strange or, I don’t know, unnerving feeling when you were down here alone.”

  “No, not really.” Mitsue smiled, automatically putting one hand up to cover her mouth while she spoke. “Even if I had, I wouldn’t have been afraid. For me, real-world dangers like burglary, or fire, or getting an ‘i
nsufficient funds’ notice from my bank—that’s the kind of thing that scares me!”

  Chuckling at her quip, the three of them assembled in front of the elevator. As he touched the call button, Sueo told Teppei that he hoped they would both get home in time to see the remainder of the baseball game.

  “We have radically different tastes when it comes to watching TV,” Mitsue said, with a wry glance at her husband. “This guy here is all about baseball, and pro wrestling, and sumo, while I love dramas—you know, like those recent thrillers with women in all the lead roles? That series was really something…”

  As Mitsue rambled on, Teppei’s eyes were fixed on the elevator panel. That’s odd, he thought. The elevator was taking an inordinately long time to respond. The door hadn’t opened, and the indicator light remained stuck on “1,” which meant the elevator had returned to the first floor after they got out.

  The call button was already illuminated, but Teppei stuck out an index finger and pressed it again, to be safe. Still, the elevator door remained closed. Mitsue interrupted her monologue about the women’s suspense dramas and said, “Huh? What’s going on? Why isn’t it opening?”

  Sueo stretched out one arm and jabbed repeatedly at the call button, with escalating force. The elevator door remained stubbornly closed, almost as if it were making fun of them, and there was no movement on the indicator panel.

  Teppei felt a sudden draft on the back of his neck: damp, penetrating, and freezing cold. He turned and glanced at the rows of storage lockers. Just then, the overhead lights began to flicker. A moment later they went off completely, and the entire space was enveloped in darkness. An afterimage of light in the form of orange filaments lingered deep inside Teppei’s eyes; it was the kind of optical effect you might experience if you walked into a dark beach house after having been out in the brilliant sunshine at the seashore.

  “What the—?” Sueo shrieked in a panic-stricken tone. Teppei, too, was seized by an almost overwhelming desire to scream, but he managed to suppress it. A large vein began to throb at the base of his throat.

  “I wonder if it’s a power outage?” Mitsue said shrilly. She fumbled frantically with her large flashlight until she located the power button, then turned it on. “Even the emergency lights have gone out.”

  “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all,” Sueo chanted over and over. He snatched the flashlight from his wife’s hand and bounced the arc of light haphazardly around the immediate vicinity. The wintry wind had grown noticeably stronger, and it seemed to be actively trying to burrow under Teppei’s loosely tucked T-shirt.

  “Did you get a notice about any power outages scheduled for tonight, as part of regular maintenance or something?” he asked in an exaggeratedly calm, relaxed manner, surprising himself with his acting ability.

  “No, I didn’t hear about anything like that,” Sueo replied.

  “This can’t be a power outage,” Mitsue pointed out. “I mean, look, the elevator light is on.”

  Sure enough, she was right. They had all been so busy reacting to the blackout that they hadn’t noticed that “B1” was now alight on the panel above the elevator. However, the door remained stubbornly closed. Sueo seemed to have taken leave of his senses, and he pounded futilely on the call button with such excessive force that it seemed likely to shatter under the assault.

  “Well, drat,” Mitsue said. “I wonder if the elevator’s on the fritz again.” She spoke in an easygoing manner, which had the perverse effect of making Teppei feel even more alarmed. Meanwhile, the wind seemed to be gaining strength. Even though the weather outside was warm enough to make a person sweat during a brief jog, the temperature inside the basement had dropped so precipitously that Teppei felt as if his entire body were covered with goose bumps: every inch of his skin, and inside his head, too. It was cold on cold, like eating a shaved-ice cone in a snowstorm.

  “What should we do?” Teppei said, to no one in particular. “This is really getting weird.”

  “Help us, please!” Sueo shouted. His voice reverberated throughout the basement, creating an otherworldly echo. “Somebody, help!”

  “It’s gotten really cold down here,” Mitsue whined, rubbing her bare arms. “What’s going on, anyway?”

  “The wind must be blowing in from someplace,” Teppei replied. “You know, through a crack or something.” He turned to look behind him. He had a distinct sense that something was stirring in the dark corners of the basement, where the beam from the flashlight didn’t reach. An instant later he thought he saw a brief, sudden burst of unnaturally bright light, and he got the feeling that the moving thing (whatever it might be) was trying to intimidate or even actively threaten them. But no, surely that was just his imagination running wild.

  Rousing his unnerved self to action, Teppei carefully surveyed the area around him. “Is there an emergency call box, or any other way to get in touch with the outside world when the elevator breaks down?” he asked calmly.

  Sueo was visibly trembling and could only shake his head, so Mitsue answered in his stead. “No, there isn’t,” she said. “That’s just one of this building’s many design flaws. I’ve always thought it was odd, though.”

  Teppei was wearing slip-on sandals without socks, and the chilly wind twined around his bare ankles and crept up his legs in a way that felt oddly aggressive and clingy. He bent down and swatted vigorously at his ankles with both hands, as though brushing away a cloud of mosquitoes. He was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe, and when he tried to suck in a deep, restorative lungful of air, that simple action caused his chest to quiver uncontrollably.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Sueo said in a plaintive, high-pitched voice. He began to hammer on the closed door of the elevator with both fists. “After Tamao’s accident we had the elevator serviced, so there’s no way it could have broken down again so soon!”

  “What if all three of us shouted together at the top of our lungs?” Mitsue suggested. “Somebody might hear us upstairs.”

  “Somebody? Who?” Sueo thundered, his eyes ablaze with frustration. “Do you really think anyone will be able to hear us all the way up on the fourth floor, where the Inoues are?”

  “You don’t have to yell at me!” Mitsue snapped. The lazy, circular beam of the flashlight—bright at the center, more diffuse at the edges—cast surreal shadows on their faces, making them look like a trio of grotesque goblins.

  Teppei placed both hands on the elevator. There was a small crack where the two halves of the door met, and he thought he might try sticking one finger into that opening and wiggling it back and forth, in the hopes of prying the doors open. However, the crack was so narrow that he couldn’t even maneuver his pinky finger into a position where it would have any leverage.

  “It’s so cold,” Sueo whispered. In fact, “cold” didn’t begin to describe the unearthly chill that had descended on the basement. Teppei could actually hear his own teeth chattering.

  There has to be a rational explanation, he thought in desperation. I mean, things like this simply don’t happen in the real world … do they?

  “Help us, please!” Sueo’s voice was a plaintive squeak. Mitsue just stood there, stock-still and silent, almost as if she had lost the ability to speak.

  Teppei stuck his arm into the beam of the flashlight and peered at his wristwatch. It was nearly half past eight. Less than half an hour had passed since they had come down to the basement. It was much too soon for Misao to start wondering why he was so late in returning home. When she did reach that point, she would go out into the hallway and push the button for the elevator, and when there was no response she would realize it was out of order—or else she might intuit that something else was going on, something that boggled the mind and flew in the face of reason. Either way, surely she would rally the troops (that is, the Inoues) and they would call someone outside the building, asking for assistance. But that sequence of events wouldn’t commence for at least another fifteen minu
tes, at the earliest. In the meantime, they were on their own down here.

  “I know why the wind has kicked up all of a sudden,” Mitsue said softly. “It’s because of that underground road they dug. I’m sure of it.”

  “What underground road?” Teppei asked incredulously.

  “Oh, you haven’t heard? Apparently at one time there was a plan to build an underground shopping mall that was supposed to stretch from Takaino Station to right around here.”

  Teppei had a sudden urge to shout, “What the hell does that have to do with what we’re dealing with now?” He managed to suppress that outburst and only said, “You don’t say.” He placed both hands on the elevator door, hoping to feel a sense of movement, but the mechanism was as inert as ever.

  Half to herself, Mitsue said, “It’s kind of a sickening thought—I mean, the idea that there could be an old, abandoned tunnel passing under the graveyard and leading right up to this building.”

  Teppei wasn’t listening. The velocity of the already powerful wind had ramped up another notch, almost to the point where you could call it a gale, and he could feel it lifting his hair. Mitsue stopped muttering to herself and latched onto her husband’s arm.

  Not long after that, the noises began. They were macabre, disturbing, and distinctly unpleasant. The unsettling cacophony included the whistling of a high wind, which seemed to be traveling along the electrical cables on the ceiling; a sort of discordant screech, as if an unmusical child were fooling around with a violin and bow, randomly scraping at the strings; a squishy slapping, as of a throng of giant reptiles thrashing around in the murky mire of a swamp; and the stealthy murmuration of an immense number of voices, whispering secretly among themselves. Teppei was standing perfectly still, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. His T-shirt was now completely untucked from the waistband of his jeans, and the icy wind lifted it into the air, exposing his slightly flabby midriff.

  “Stop it! Somebody help us, please!” Sueo cried. He and Mitsue were clinging tightly to each other, and without letting go they plopped down onto the floor and sat there, looking stunned. The wind stole under the gathered skirt Mitsue was wearing, causing it to billow so high that her baby-blue granny panties were plainly visible.