Kowabana 6 Read online

  And yet, I was too scared to stay behind by myself, so I followed them down the hall, warning them that they were going the wrong way, when suddenly A burst out laughing. Surprised, I looked closer and saw he was laughing at B, who lay sprawled on the floor.

  “What the hell are you doing man? Geez.” he said, shining his light on B. But B showed no signs of getting up. A and I grew worried. “Hey, are you okay?” we called out, leaning next to him and turning him over.

  We soon realised something was terribly wrong.

  He clenched his eyes tightly shut, grinding his teeth as he moaned, holding onto his shin.

  “What’s wrong? Did you hit something?” I asked in a panic. Yet B was in so much pain that he couldn’t answer. He just continued moaning.

  “Hey, I’m gonna take a look now,” A said. “Here, hold this for me.” I stood above B and shone both lights on his leg. A grabbed his hand and, after a struggle, removed it from his shin. “Uwa!” A let out a scream.

  “Eh? What’s wrong? What happened?” I asked, looking closer. Even thinking about it now makes me want to throw up, but at the time I was honestly dumbfounded.

  The skin and flesh was missing from his shin. The white thing we saw beneath the torchlight was his bone, and there was blood everywhere.

  “What the hell? What happened?!” A screamed and went into a panic. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew that we had to get out of there.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and we both helped B up, carrying him back down the hall when it happened. Even now I can’t unsee what I saw. The torch B had dropped shone on the operating room door. At some point the door had opened, and something inside was looking at us. You’ve probably experienced yourself what it’s like to shine a light on a face in the dark; how it vaguely lights up the features, making them seem even more terrifying. I don’t know if I could say that face was of a human, but it was definitely a face.

  The only thing I remember about the body was that it was round. Like those extremely overweight people you sometimes see on TV. They’re so large and round that they can’t even move. It was about the size of a person, but abnormally wide. It wobbled left and right, making its way towards us.

  Seeing it right in front of us like that, A let out a piercing screech and ran off, almost dragging B behind him. I probably screamed as well.

  I couldn’t think, but I was so terrified of the dark that I gripped the torch in my hand tightly and helped A drag B away. Only the light wasn’t in front of us, so I couldn’t see very well, and that sent me into a terrified panic again.

  Somehow we got B to the stairs, but we suddenly heard something rattling down the end of the hall we’d just come from. It got louder and louder, and gripping my torch in both hands, I turned it down the hall. Someone sitting in a wheelchair was rapidly approaching us. A collapsed under B’s weight as I suddenly let him go, and the wheelchair ran into them with incredible speed. B rolled down the hall, making A panic even more.

  “Waaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” he screamed and tried to turn back, screeching once more as he took off at full speed back down the hall. Only he ran right past the stairs, and although I yelled at him, he didn’t seem to hear. He continued right passed, screaming at the top of his lungs. His scream disappeared down the hall and I dropped both torches, doing my best to drag B back to the stairs through my tears. I panicked and tried to pick them up again, but when I looked down, I thought I was about to die.

  I could clearly see a face. It was the face of a child. Only the face of a child. If there was a body, it must have been lying perpendicular to my arms. It was completely expressionless, although it seemed angry. The light from the torch shone on the side of its face.

  This time I ran. I don’t think I could ever apologise enough to A and B for what I did, but I was honestly so scared that I ran. I didn’t want to run past the stairs like A had, so with that in mind, I ran with my hand along the wall. I ran right into the stairs and then crawled the rest of the way up.

  Perhaps my eyes had gotten used to the darkness, but when I got to the first floor, I could easily see my surroundings in the moonlight. I ran for the front door as fast as I could and grabbed the handle, but it was chained and padlocked. I couldn’t get out. There was no way I could go back, and I feared that if I looked anywhere but forward, I’d see that monster or that kid again.

  I shook and kicked the door when I heard something coming from in front of me. That didn’t stop me and I kept shaking, but then a bike suddenly appeared on the other side of the door and I stopped like a deer in headlights. It was so bright that I couldn’t even open my eyes.

  It was C.

  Finally, I thought, we were saved. Turning his lights off, C removed his helmet, placed it on his side mirror, and then looked at me, perplexed. He walked over and said something to me through the thick glass, like, “What the hell are you doing?” I couldn’t hear him very well.

  “Hurry up and get me outta here!” I screamed, but he rolled his eyes and walked off to the side, disappearing from view. I desperately tried to follow him when I noticed a window at about hip height was broken; in my haste I hadn’t even noticed it.

  “Ah, but it looks kinda dangerous,” C said, but I got down to squeeze through it anyway. C stepped back, perhaps confused at my haste, and my heart pounded at the thought of freedom.

  “What on earth is wrong with you?” he said, but it was probably two or three minutes before I could answer him.

  “Let’s get away from here first,” I said, and he looked at me bewildered. I just wanted to get away from there as soon as possible.

  “Huh? What about the others? Where are they?” C asked. I screamed at him in response, still in a panic from what had happened. C reluctantly got on his bike and turned it. I jumped on the back and urged him to go.

  As he rode off, I turned to look behind us several times, worried something might be following us, but C got angry. “What are you doing? That’s dangerous!”

  He stopped at a convenience store about two or three kilometres away and this time got pissed at me. “Seriously, what the hell is up with you?”

  I told him everything that had happened at the hospital, but my head was such a mess that I probably didn’t get the point across very well.

  “We went downstairs and B fell over. There was something down there. A and I tried to escape with him, but then A got hit by a wheelchair and he panicked and ran off. And I was so scared, I saw this child’s face by my feet and I ran, leaving them there,” I said.

  “Huh?” C said. I explained myself again, and again, tripping over my own tongue and losing confidence with each retelling. C was getting more and more pissed off by the minute. He could see there was something clearly not right with me, however, so he held it in.

  “Are you guys trying to mess with me?” he said.

  “Why would we do that? I’m not joking, I’m telling you the truth!” I replied. I screamed so loud that the guy working in the store came outside.

  “Is everything okay?” he said. The guys reading magazines inside stared at us.

  “We’re fine,” I said, brushing him off, and tried to get my phone out of my jeans. I struggled to get it out of the hard material, but I finally got it and dialled the cops. When C saw me call them, his expression changed, and he realised I was serious. The other end soon picked up.

  “Yes, this is the emergency services,” an old guy said.

  “Two of my friends are in trouble at J Hospital! You gotta help them!” I said.

  “Which hospital?”

  “J Hospital! J! The one near the mountains and farms!”

  “I don’t know it, can you give me the address?”

  “Quit screwing around! How the hell am I supposed to know that? It’s the damn hospital in OO Village!”

  “Ah, is that so? And what happened? An accident? An argument?”

  He replied like he didn’t care about what I was saying, which made me even angrier.

  “You don’t believe a word I just said, do you? Look, somebody’s hurt, okay? Hurry up and get out there!”

  Then my phone buzzed with crackle.

  “Ah, hello? Hello?” the old man said. He couldn’t seem to hear what I was saying, and his voice came through in broken chunks. “Hello? Is this a prank call?” He didn’t believe me at all and then hung up.

  Pissed off, I called again and put the phone to my ear. This time there was no ring, but a soft crackling sound mixed in with a buzz. I hung up and tried again, but this time the phone itself died. Looking back on it now, I probably held the button for so long with shaking hands that the phone turned off.

  “Gimme your phone!” I said to C, snatching it and dialling the police. The moment it started to ring, the convenience store clerk came back outside.

  “Hey hey, what’s going on?” he said, a troubled look on his face. I ignored him and focused on the phone.

  “I don’t really know either,” C said. The phone continued to ring endlessly. Nobody picked up. “Our friends went over to that hospital but they haven’t come back out yet,” he continued.

  Someone finally picked up and I held my breath, waiting to see if they would say anything. When they didn’t, my anger blew up again. “Two of my friends are hurt, they need help!” I screamed. On the other end I heard a noise, like something far in the distance.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  At first I didn’t know what it was, but it gradually got louder, and when I realised what it was, I dropped the phone like it was hot as fire.

  “Hey hey hey!” C screamed, picking his phone up from the asphalt. He turned to me, apparently confused about whether he should be angry or if he should ask me what happened. I shook uncontrollably, and no doubt my face had go
ne white.

  “Hey, are you okay?” the clerk asked, worried. The sound seemed to cling to my eardrums, and I scratched at my temples in an attempt to get rid of it. It was A’s voice. That final scream before he disappeared in the hospital. Why did I hear that after calling the police? Was it taking place in real time, and if so, was something happening back at the hospital?

  I was so overwhelmed I crouched on the spot and couldn’t move. The clerk looked down at me as though I were a drunk, unsure of how to deal with me.

  “Eh? Hang on, what’s that?” he said suddenly, leaning in close to my face. “Ah! L-Look, you’re bleeding from your arm!”

  “Huh?” For the first time, I noticed that I’d cut myself on the broken glass when I crawled out of the hospital.

  “Shit, are you okay, man?” C looked down at me. The clerk rushed back into the store and returned with another old guy and a first aid box. They cleaned the wound and wrapped it for me, but the bandage was so short that the blood soon soaked through it. The old guy went back into the store and brought some of the store merchandise out, wrapping my arm again for me. For a moment, I felt relieved. The occasional customer glanced over at us while exiting the store.

  “Don’t you think you should go to the hospital?” C said. The fear within me welled up once more. It might sound stupid, but I began to imagine the ambulance taking me back to that abandoned hospital instead.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said. I went to grab my wallet to pay for the bandages when I realised it wasn’t on me. It should have been in my back pocket, which meant I’d dropped it somewhere. C took 2,000 yen out of his wallet to pay for me instead, and then his phone rang. He looked at it, then me, then hesitantly answered, “Hello?”

  The clerk took the bandage packaging and the money inside the store, returning with the change for C who was still on the phone. He nodded his head, still muttering. “Ah. Yeah… I see.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” the old guy asked me again, but I answered him indifferently. C’s voices started getting more fed up and angry, and all my attention was on him.

  “The convenience store. Yeah. Uh huh. He’s here, but something’s wrong. Ah. And you guys? What, you’re still there?” C said. A bad feeling washed over me and I broke out in goosebumps.

  “Nah, he was saying… Huh? Ah, yeah, that’s what I thought. But that can’t be right. Ah. I see. Nah, it’s all good. No, he’s injured so I’m gonna take him to the hospital. Nah, I doubt there’s really one there. There’s not even any electricity. Huh?” C continued his conversation. “Nah, look, I already said don’t worry. I said it’s fine! God, you’re pushy. That’s enough already, geez! Ah? Hello?”

  Pissed, C clucked his tongue and slammed his phone shut. Then he glared at me.

  “You guys really better knock this shit off,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “That was B on the phone just now,” he said. My mind went blank. I had no idea what was real and what wasn’t. C continued talking, but I felt dizzy and didn’t remember a thing after that. I heard all about it from C later on.

  Apparently I hit the ground and passed out. The old guy called an ambulance, and I spent the night in a nearby hospital. It was past lunch by the time I came back to, and there was a drip in my arm. My mother and grandmother were sitting in chairs beside my bed.

  The cut in my arm had been pretty deep, and there were several stitches in my face as well. I’d also broken a toe (which I noticed when I tried to get out of bed), which I had an x-ray for that afternoon. They wanted me to stay in the hospital for another night, but I really didn’t want to, so I refused.

  That night I got a call from the police, and they asked me about A, B, and the abandoned hospital. The next day, I went to the station where they took me to some type of investigation room and a uniformed officer questioned me for several hours. He asked about the details leading up to the hospital and then what happened inside. I told him the truth, but of course, he didn’t believe me. On the contrary, he made me take a drug test, and he said they might do a household search as well, depending on how things went. This went on for several hours, before I finally asked him what had constantly been on my mind; A and B.

  C had contacted the police, and they found B the following afternoon after I passed out. They found him a little passed the stairs I’d mentioned. He was already dead. The initial cause of death was thought to be shock from blood loss, but they wouldn’t know for sure until they did an autopsy.

  They still hadn’t found A. Officially he was missing, but they probably suspected him of killing B, just like they suspected me. The guy interviewing me seemed to be hinting that he thought A killed B, and I was helping him cover it up.

  They found my wallet at the bottom of the stairs near B’s dead body. They said it would take some time for me to get it back because it was evidence, so I told them to just throw it away. The entire hospital building was off-limits, so the police never patrolled the area. They found A’s abandoned car out the front as well, and his parents drove it home with a duplicate key.

  After the police were done with me, C picked me up in front of the station in his car. We drove to a family restaurant just out of town to chat. C rode to the hospital with me in the ambulance, and then his brother took him back to the convenience store to get his bike. A different person was working inside, but after explaining what had happened, he debated whether he should go to the abandoned hospital himself. He pulled out his phone to call B and noticed he had over 30 missed calls. They were all from B. For the first time C realised just how strange everything was.

  Scared, he turned his phone off and went home. He called both A and B’s houses the next day, but he found out that neither had returned home. Realising something was wrong, he called the police and gave them a watered-down version of what I’d told him (which was perhaps why the police suspected me to begin with).

  This is what C told me, taking his time as he searched carefully for the words:

  “When I first answered the phone at the convenience store, I thought something was strange. You were so earnest about what you said, but then he said it was a prank the three of your were playing, and to bring you back to the building. But your arm was injured, so I said I had to take you to the hospital, and he was like, ‘There’s a doctor here as well.’ I found that odd, but I figured maybe it was another joke. I said there was no way there could be a doctor there, but he was insistent that there was. ‘He’s in surgery right now,’ he said. I told him to quit it, but he was like, ‘I’m for real. There’s a doctor here. He’s here. He’s here.’ He kept repeating it over and over. It pissed me off, so I hung up on him…”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  He listened to me once again as I told him everything that went down at the abandoned hospital.

  “Okay,” he said when I was done, and said nothing else on the matter. I had to see the police several times after that, and my parents submitted a temporary absence from school to my university, informing them I’d need another few weeks off to rest.

  I’m done with the police now, and I graduated from university as well. I didn’t wanna go back home, so I stayed in my apartment and found work. But, something happened on my fourth or fifth visit to see the police.

  The officer was asking me the same questions as usual when he said something about the injury on B’s shin.

  “According to your testimony, you saw the injury, but what did it look like? Was it a gash or an abrasion?” he asked.

  “I was scared, and it was pretty dark, so I don’t know. But I saw something white, like a bone.”

  The officer leaned back in his chair. He shuffled through his papers again, looking for something.

  “This is a strange injury, isn’t it? It’s not the type of injury you’d get falling over or being dragged.”

  “Huh?”

  “So you really didn’t see anything when he fell over, right?”