EDGE (15 page)

That was when Saeko noticed a small, black, rectangular object set off to the side, separate from the four piles.

Behind the camera, Saeko craned her neck, trying to see what the lone item was. A cigarette case? No. It looked more like a day planner. Saeko found herself intrigued by that specific object. Somehow, it struck her as familiar. “Please be as specific as you can about their locations,” Hashiba was instructing Torii, but Saeko was oblivious, focused solely on the black day planner.

Hashiba didn’t just want a vague image—he wanted a detailed description that would enable them to pinpoint a location. A river, a bridge, a lake … He realized that it was unlikely that the four Fujimuras were still alive, but as the director, he wanted his project to help resolve the mystery. If the Fujimuras’ bodies had been hidden somewhere, he
wanted his program to lead to their recovery. That was the whole point of featuring Shigeo Torii.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to put Torii under undue pressure or stress. “Take your time now, and relax. Could you tell us a bit about the image you’re getting?” he prompted.

Torii’s breath grew suddenly labored. She clutched her chest, tilting her throat towards the ceiling. Her trembling spread from her fingertips to her hands and arms, and then her entire body, making the table rattle.

The psychic’s body lengthened slightly. Suddenly she sprang out of her chair and darted across the room to the kitchen. She flung open one of the cabinets as if she knew exactly what was inside and removed a bottle of sake. Taking a measuring cup from the counter near the sink, she filled it to brimming and downed the liquid. Then she set the bottle down on the counter top and looked up, turning her head this way and that as her eyes scanned the room busily. The rapid movements of her pupils seemed to suggest a corresponding intensity in the images flashing through her mind. After a moment, her gaze quieted, focusing on a single point.

Meanwhile, Saeko found herself increasingly fascinated by the black book on the table. She leaned towards it, trying to get a better look while the cameras were focused elsewhere. Its black cover was worn and tattered, and the leather was peeling at the corners. Near the top of the cover, it bore a logo inscribed in gold foil that was now mostly worn away.

A familiar logo.

Saeko reached for the book, but her hand froze in mid-air. Was it all right for her to touch it? It occurred to her that her touch might somehow compromise Torii’s ability to get a psychic reading from the object.

But Saeko was certain she recognized that logo. The design was clever and appealing, featuring a semi-circle-shaped boat with a sail shaped like the letter K, inscribed in a circle. The year 1994 was printed beneath the logo—the year chronicled in its pages.

Nineteen ninety-four—the year bore special significance for Saeko.

The cameras were following Torii back towards the table. Quickly, before the cameras focused on it, Saeko snatched up the little book and moved back towards the edge of the room.

“If that’s what you want, fine. I won’t stop you!” a man’s voice echoed suddenly in Saeko’s head.

She flinched, looking quickly from side to side. Was a member of the staff reprimanding her for touching things without permission? But
nobody was. It had been a completely unfamiliar voice. Each word had rung out clearly, and Saeko had the distinct impression that she had been given permission to take the book.

The voice lingered indelibly in her mind, dark and ominous, leaving an unpleasant feeling that slowly permeated her body. Slowly, Saeko came to the realization that the voice hadn’t come from an external, physical source. It was an imaginary voice that had been somehow triggered by the act of touching the book. Was it a sign that Saeko was coming to possess powers similar to Torii’s? Saeko didn’t welcome the prospect of acquiring Torii’s ability to derive flashes of insight about an object’s history whenever she touched something.

Saeko huddled in the corner of the room, trying to contain her emotions as she gripped the leather-bound book tightly in both hands. Meanwhile, the cameras rolled on without her …

Torii sat absolutely still in her chair, the palms of both hands pressed firmly against the table. Hashiba looked on for quite some time before he felt the need to interrupt. “Ms. Torii, what are you getting? Can you describe it to us?”

Torii raised both of her hands and waved them slowly in the air over the table, her palms facing downwards. She seemed to be trying to pick up psychic energy from the family’s belongings through her palms, but the dramatic movements struck Saeko as phony for the first time since meeting Torii. Waving her hands in the air with her eyes closed, the old woman reminded Saeko of an enraptured conductor directing the final strains of a symphony.

A low growl began to rumble in Torii’s throat. Her exaggerated movements grew smaller and smaller until only her fingertips described a point in the air. The middle fingers of both hands pointed downwards, as if indicating an invisible tube that might serve as a portal into another world.

“On the last night, there was a presence other than the four Fujimuras in this home,” Torii intoned somberly. It was clear that she was now in a trance-like state. Her body seemed to give off a yellowish aura that filled the entire room.

Only Saeko was impervious to the strange atmosphere affecting the rest of the group. Instead, she remained transfixed by the black day planner. She had truly discovered a portal into another world.

She knew exactly what the mark on its cover signified. It was her
father’s company’s logo, and the notebook was a day planner produced by her father’s company. He had used a book just like it to keep track of his schedule. Saeko had no idea how many copies the company had produced. Hundreds? Not more than a thousand, she was sure. Each year, they printed them up and distributed them to clients, family, and friends. Perhaps Saeko had discovered one in the Fujimuras’ home simply by coincidence.

Saeko rifled through the book.

Its pages were full of penciled entries inscribed in cramped lettering. As Saeko skimmed through them, she saw that the calendar had been used not just as a schedule book but as a sort of journal as well.

Just as Saeko had intuited, the book was indeed a window into her past.

A stabbing pain shot through her temples. Unable to stand, she sank to the floor right there, resting the book on her knees. She turned to the last page.

There was a dramatic decrease in the amount of text entered after August 22nd. After that, the planner was used solely as an agenda, with no more journal entries.

It was the day after Saeko’s father had called his daughter in Tokyo from the N Hotel in Narita, just before he had disappeared.

Quickly, Saeko slipped the book into her pocket. Anything that had belonged to her father was rightfully hers, and she had no qualms about taking the book. She was supposed to have it.

The discovery of her father’s agenda book from the year of his disappearance was a tremendous and unbelievable stroke of luck. If she could trace her father’s movements prior to his disappearance, she could reopen the investigation of his whereabouts.

Taking care to remain out of the camera’s view, Hashiba moved towards the side of the table opposite Torii. He had been posing his questions from the doorway behind her, but he was growing frustrated.
He wanted to be closer to Torii and see if he could move things along.

“Ms. Torii, would you please tell us more about what you’re seeing?”

“The servant of the gods comes in a snake’s form. It preys on life …” Torii paused, her voice choking up. She trembled violently, and her face seemed to be searching the room, trying to detect something. The skin of her cheek quivered, and her pupils rolled upwards.

“Is something wrong?” Startled by her ghastly expression, Hashiba retreated backwards a step.

“Quiet!” Torii hissed, raising a finger to her lips in an unmistakable gesture.

Instantly, the atmosphere in the room turned to ice. Everyone stood rooted in their spots, absolutely still. Only Torii slowly turned. Her gaze passed over the hallway door and a shelf supporting a fish tank, coming to rest at a windowpane. Then she, too, fell motionless.

“The earth will now shake,” Torii intoned.

Did she mean that there was an earthquake coming?

Crack!

It wasn’t the window shattering. It was as if a chasm had opened in the air itself, sharply but painlessly striking the skin of the room’s occupants.

For almost twenty seconds, everyone waited with bated breath, straining intently to detect the presence in the room.

The sky that had been so clear earlier was now covered in clouds. They moved rapidly across the sky, sending flashes of bluish-white light arcing downwards. Outside, the southern Japanese Alps seemed to press in on them. The mountains communicated with the canopy of clouds overhead through glints of lightning, undulating wildly like scan lines on a CRT screen.

With the window sashes tightly closed, the room should have been sealed off from the wind. Yet, the air in the room circulated wildly—it wasn’t wind. It could only be described as extremely localized air movement, and there was nothing natural about it. A burst of air pressure that blew up out of the earth and through the floor.

The windows began to rattle, just as a dog began baying in the distance. Nearby, another dog answered the call, and soon the noise was deafening. Every dog in the neighborhood seemed to be howling at the sky.

Then suddenly the sound of the beating of countless wings filled the air, like a flock of crows rising up into the sky all at once from a telephone line. They seemed to be fleeing, aware that something was afoot.

Saeko and Hashiba’s eyes met, as if to send a mutual signal that
something was about to happen.

Saeko felt a sensation similar to the contents of her stomach lurching upwards. She stumbled, unable to keep her footing.

A cabinet next to her wobbled and fell, spilling its contents. The objects seemed to tumble off of the slanting shelf in slow motion, as if gravity wasn’t working properly.

Then she felt a sharp impact to her skull, and the colors faded from her vision. As her consciousness dwindled, out of the corner of her eye she saw Hashiba running toward her.

13
When Saeko opened her eyes, she didn’t know where she was. And
when
was it? Whether someone told her a week had passed while she was unconscious or that it had been only an hour, she wouldn’t be able to refute the claim.

Her gaze traveled from the ceiling down the wall, then took in the person sitting by her bedside. Before she could fully register who it was, a voice said, “Oh! You’re awake!”

The voice was Hashiba’s. Saeko recognized the clothes he was wearing; just as before, he had on a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He was close enough that Saeko could see the hairs of his muscular forearms wavering in the fluorescent light.

An image of the last thing she had seen before losing consciousness flashed through Saeko’s mind.

She had felt the ground lurch upwards, and the entire room had rocked in a wave-like motion, causing the objects on the table to slide off the edge and tumble through space. The cameramen had crouched down, shielding their expensive equipment, and Torii had slid to safety under the table, facing upwards the whole time, like a gymnast executing a back hip circle. Only the unlucky Saeko was left standing next to a cabinet, and as she’d reached for it for support, the cabinet itself began to pitch forwards just before her fingers reached it, sending a ceramic vessel on the top crashing down on Saeko’s head.

Hashiba looked overjoyed that Saeko had regained consciousness, and his haggard face flushed with color.

“I’m so glad you’re awake!” He looked almost tearful with relief. Immediately, he hit the call button to summon the nurse. He had been instructed to let the doctors know as soon as Saeko woke up.

It took less than a minute for the nurse to arrive, but as they waited,
Hashiba gave Saeko a quick rundown of how an ambulance had picked her up at the Fujimura residence.

At 3:54 that afternoon, an earthquake with an intensity of between four and five on the Japanese scale had struck the Suwa Lake area. Nobody had been killed, but a number of homes right at the epicenter at Suwa Lake had been damaged. A handful of people who had been unluckily struck by falling objects had been injured, including Saeko. The ambulance had taken her to the Emergency Room at the Ina General Hospital. All together, five people who had been injured in the earthquake had been brought here.

In the ambulance, the paramedics had made sure Saeko’s airway was open so that she could breathe. As soon as they arrived at the hospital, they had hooked her up to an IV, measured her blood pressure, and assessed her breathing. With all of the emergency staff working together, it had taken mere minutes. They had proceeded to give Saeko a CT scan, and the entire process was finished in just twenty minutes.

The CT scan revealed that there was no lethal damage to her brain. There was some concern over the fact that she had remained unconscious for two hours. The doctors worried that she might show symptoms of subdural hemorrhage or a cerebral contusion and deemed it necessary to monitor her carefully.

Saeko had been moved into one of the standard hospital rooms, with a curtain that screened off her bed from the other bed. Her breath and heart rate were being recorded by a monitor next to the bed, but she couldn’t read the display from where she lay.

The nurse called in Saeko’s doctor, and Hashiba stood up quickly to make room. The doctor checked the numbers on the monitor and asked Saeko various questions. He seemed satisfied by her responses.