But that would take at least three or four days, and he hated to wait that long. He wanted to know now. His passion for the case was such that he couldnt bear to wait three days. What in the world was going to come of this? If indeed the four of them had stayed the night at Villa Log Cabin at Pacific Land in South Hakone at the end of August, and if indeed that clue allowed him to unravel the riddle of their deathswell, what could it have been anyway? Virus, virus. He was all too aware that the only reason he was calling it a virus was to keep himself from being overawed by the thought of some mysterious thing being behind it all. It made senseto a degreeto marshal the power of science in facing down supernatural power. He wasnt going to get anywhere fighting a thing he didnt understand with words he didnt understand. He had to translate the thing he didnt understand into words he did.
Asakawa recalled Yokos cries. Why was she so frightened when she saw the demon mask this afternoon? On the way home on the train, hed asked his wife, Hey, have you been teaching Yoko about demons?
What?
You know, with picture books or something like that. Have you been teaching her to be afraid of demons?
No way. Why would I?
The conversation had ended there. Shizu was unconcerned, but Asakawa worried. That kind of fear only existed on a deep, spiritual level. It was different from fearing something because you had been taught to fear it. Ever since hed come down out of the trees, man had lived in fear of something or other. Thunder, typhoons, wild beasts, volcanic eruptions, the dark The first time a child experiences thunder and lightning, he or she feels an instinctive fearthat was understandable. To begin with, thunder was real. It really existed. But what about demons? The dictionary would tell you that demons were imaginary monsters, or the spirits of dead people. If Yoko was going to be afraid of the demon because it looked scary, then she should also have been afraid of models of Godzillaafter all, they were made to look fearsome, too. Shed seen one, once, in a department store show window: a cunningly-made Godzilla replica. Far from being frightened, she had stared at it intently, eyes glowing with curiosity. How did you explain that? The only thing he knew for sure was that Godzilla, no matter how you looked at it, was an imaginary monster. So what about demons ? And are demons unique to Japan? No, other cultures have the same type of thing. Devils The second beer wasnt tasting as good as the first one. Is there anything else Yokos afraid of? Thats right, there is. Darkness. Shesterribly afraid of the dark. She absolutely never goes into an unlit room alone. Yo-ko, sun-child. But darkness, too, really existed, as lights opposite pole. Even now, Yoko was asleep in her mothers embrace, in a dark room.
PART TWO1
October 11Thursday
The rain was coming down harder now, and Asakawa turned his wipers on high. The weather at Hakone was liable to change at any moment. The skies had been clear down in Odawara, but the higher he climbed, the moister the air, and as he neared the pass hed encountered several pockets of wind and rain. If it had been daytime, he would have been able to guess at the weather on the mountains from the appearance of the clouds over Mt Hakone. But it was night, and his attention was fixed on whatever came into the beams of his headlights. It wasnt until he had stopped the car and looked up at the sky that hed realized the stars had disappeared. When hed got on the Kodama bullet-train at Tokyo Station, the city had still been wrapped in twilight. When hed rented the car at Atami Station, the moon was still intermittently peeking out from gaps in the clouds. But now the fine water droplets drifting across his headlight beams were growing into a full-fledged downpour, pounding on his windshield.
The digital clock over the speedometer said 7:32. Asakawa quickly calculated how long it had taken him to come this far. Hed taken the 5:16 down from Tokyo, arriving in Atami at 6:07. By the time hed left the gates and finished the paperwork at the rent-a-car place it had been 6:30. Hed stopped at a market and bought two packs of cup o noodles and a small bottle of whiskey; it had been seven by the time hed found his way through the maze of one-way streets and out of town.
A tunnel loomed in front of him, its entrance outlined in brilliant orange light. On the other side, just after he entered the Atami-Kannami Highway, he should start to see signs for South Hakone Pacific Land. The long tunnel would take him through the Tanna Ridge. As he entered it the sound of the wind changed. At the same time, his flesh, the passenger seat, and everything else in the car was bathed in orange light. He could feel his calm slipping away, he could feel his hackles rise. There were no cars coming from the opposite direction. The wipers squeaked as they rubbed against the now-dry windshield. He turned them off. He should reach his destination by eight. He didnt feel quite like flooring it, although the road was empty. Subconsciously, Asakawa was dreading the place he was heading to.
At 4:20 this afternoon, Asakawa had watched as a fax had crawled out of the machine at the office. It was a reply from the Atami bureau, and he had expected it to contain a copy of the Villa Log Cabins guest register for August 27th through the 30th. When he saw it he did a little dance. His hunch was right. There were four names he recognized: Nonoyama, Tomoko Oishi, Haruko Tsuji, and Takehiko Nomi. The four of them had spent the night of the 29th in cabin B-4. Obviously, Shuichi Iwata had used Nonoyamas name. With this he knew when and where the four had been together: on Wednesday, August 29th, at South Hakone Pacific Land, Villa Log Cabin, No. B-4. It was exactly a week prior to their mysterious deaths.
There and then hed picked up the receiver and dialed the number for Villa Log Cabin to make a reservation for tonight for cabin B-4. All he had tomorrow was a staff meeting at eleven. He could spend the night down in Hakone and easily be back in time.
Well, thats it. Im going. The actual place.
He was eager. Never in his wildest dreams could he imagine what awaited him there.
There was a tollbooth just as he came out of the tunnel, and as he handed over three hundred-yen coins he asked the attendant, Is South Hakone Pacific Land up ahead?
He knew full well it was. Hed checked his map any number of times. He just felt like it had been a long time since hed seen another human being, and something within him wanted to talk.
Theres a sign just up ahead. Make a left there.
He took his receipt. With so little traffic, it hardly seemed worth having someone stationed here. How long was this guy planning to stand there in his booth? Asakawa made no move to drive off, and the man began to give him a suspicious look. Asakawa forced a smile and pulled away slowly.
The joy hed felt a few hours ago at establishing a common time and place for the four victims had withered and died. Their faces flickered behind his eyelids. Theyd died exactly one week after staying in Villa Log Cabin. Nows the time to turn back, they seemed to be telling him, leering. But he couldnt turn back now. First of all, his instincts as a reporter had kicked into gear. On the other hand, there was no denying that he was scared to be going alone. If hed called Yoshino, chances were he would have come running, but he didnt think having a colleague along was such a good idea. Asakawa had already written up his progress so far and saved it on a floppy disk. What he wanted was someone who wouldnt run around getting in his way, but simply help him pursue this It wasnt like he didnt have someone in mind. He did know one man who would tag along out of pure curiosity. He was a part-time lecturer at a university, so he had plenty of free time. He was just the guy. But he was idiosyncratic. Asakawa wasnt sure how long he could take his personality.
There, on the mountainside, was the sign for South Hakone Pacific Land. There was no neon, just a white panel with black lettering. If hed happened to be looking away when his headlights hit it, he would have missed it completely. Asakawa turned off the highway and began climbing a mountain road between terraced fields. The road seemed awfully narrow for the entrance to a resort, and he had lonely visions of it dead-ending in the middle of nowhere. He had to shift down to negotiate the roads steep, dark curves. He hoped he didnt encounter anybody coming from the opposite direction: there was no room for two cars to pass.
The rain had let up at some point, although Asakawa had just noticed it. The weather patterns seemed different east and west of the Tanna Ridge.
At any rate, the road didnt dead-end, but kept climbing higher and higher. After a while he started to see summer homes scattered here and there on the sides of the road. And the road suddenly widened to two lanes, the surface improved drastically, and elegant streetlights graced the shoulders. Asakawa was amazed at the change. The minute he entered the grounds of Pacific Land he was confronted with lavish accoutrements. So what was with the garden path that led here? The corn and weeds hanging over the road had narrowed it even further, heightening his nervousness over what lay around the next hairpin curve.
The three-story building on the other side of the spacious parking lot doubled as an information center and a restaurant. Without thinking twice, Asakawa parked in front of the lobby and walked toward the hall. He looked at his watch: eight on the nose. Right on schedule. From somewhere he heard the sound of balls bouncing. There were four tennis courts below the center, with several couples giving it their all under the yellowish lights. Surprisingly, all four courts were occupied. Asakawa couldnt fathom what made people come all the way up here at eight on a Thursday night in the middle of October, just to play tennis. Far below the tennis courts he could see the distant lights of the cities of Mishima and Numazu, glittering in the darkness. The emptiness beyond, black as tar, was Tago Bay.
As he entered the information center, the restaurant was directly in front of him. Its outer wall was glass, so he could see inside. Here Asakawa got another surprise. The restaurant closed at eight, but it was still half full of families and young women in groups. What was going on here? He cocked his head in puzzlement. Where had everybody come from? He couldnt believe all these people came here on the same road that had brought him here. Maybe what he had used was the back entrance. There must be a brighter, wider road somewhere else. But that was how the girl hed spoken to on the phone had told him to get here.
Go about halfway down the Atami-Kannami road and turn left. Drive up the mountain from there. Asakawa had done just that. It was inconceivable that there was another way out of here.
Nodding as he was told that it was past time for last orders, he went into the restaurant. Below its wide windows, a carefully groomed lawn sloped gently through the night toward the cities. The inside lights were kept intentionally low, probably to better allow customers to enjoy the view of the distant lights. Asakawa stopped a passing waiter and asked where he could find Villa Log Cabin. The waiter pointed back toward the entry hall Asakawa had just come through.
Follow that road to the right about two hundred meters. Youll see the office.
Is there a parking lot?
You can park in front of the office.
That was all there was to it. If he had just kept going instead of stopping in here, he would have found it on his own. Asakawa could more or less analyze why hed been drawn to this modern building, to the point of barging into the restaurant. He found it somehow comforting. All the way here he had been imagining dark, utterly primitive log cabinsthe perfect backdrop for a Friday the 13th scenarioand there was nothing of that in this building. Faced with this proof that the power of modern science functioned here, too, he felt somewhat reassured, strengthened. The only things that bothered him were the bad road that led here from the world below, and the fact that in spite of it there were so many people playing tennis and enjoying their dinner here in the world above. He wasnt sure exactly why this bothered him. It was just that, somehow, nobody here seemed quite lifelike.
Since the tennis courts and restaurant were crowded, he should have been able to hear the cheerful voices of people from the log cabins. Thats what he expected. But standing at the edge of the parking lot, looking down over the valley, he could discern only about six of the ten cabins built among the trees scattered over the gentle slope. Everything below was immersed in the darkness of the forest, beyond the pale of the street lamps, unrelieved by any light coming from inside the cabins. B-4, where Asakawa would be spending the night, seemed to stand on the border between the darkness and the lighted areaall he could see was the top of the door.
Asakawa walked up to the office, opened the door, and stepped inside. He could hear a television, but there was no sign of anyone. The manager was in a Japanese-style room in the back, off to the left, and hadnt noticed Asakawa. Asakawas view was blocked by the counter and he couldnt see into the room. The manager seemed to be watching an American movie on video, not a TV program. He could hear English dialogue as he watched the flickering light from the screen reflected in the glass of a cabinet out front. The built-in cabinet was full of videotapes, neatly lined up in their cases. Asakawa placed his hands on the counter and spoke up. Immediately, a small man in his sixties stuck his head out and bowed, saying, Oh, welcome. He must be the same man who had so cheerfully showed the guest register to the guy from the Atami bureau and the lawyer, thought Asakawa, smiling back at him pleasantly.
I have a reservation, name of Asakawa.
The man opened his notebook and confirmed the reservation. Youre in B-4. Can I get you to write your name and address here?
Asakawa wrote his real name. Hed just sent Nonoyamas membership card back to him, so he couldnt use it.
Just you, then? The manager looked up at Asakawa, suspiciously. Hed never had anybody stay here alone. At nonmember rates, it was more economical for one person to stay at the hotel. The manager handed over a set of sheets and turned to the cabinet.
If youd like youre free to borrow one. We have most of the popular titles.
Oh, you rent videos? Asakawa ran his gaze casually over the titles of the videos covering the wall. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Friday the 13th. All popular American films, mostly science fiction. A lot of new releases, too. Probably the cabins were mostly used by groups of young people. There was nothing that grabbed him. Besides, Asakawa had ostensibly come here to work.
Im afraid Ive brought work with me. Asakawa picked up his portable word processor from where hed placed it on the floor and showed the manager. Seeing it, the manager seemed to understand why he was staying here alone.
So, there are dishes and everything? Asakawa said, just to make sure.
Yes. Use anything you like.
The only thing Asakawa needed to use, though, was a kettle to boil water for his cup o noodles. He took the sheets and his room key from the manager, who told him how to find B-4 and then said, with odd formality, Please, make yourself at home.