Authors: Hideaki Sena
The only light came from the
yellow glow of a late-night drug pickup window. But there, too, a curtain was
drawn and he could not see inside. Anzai saw flitting shadows of people moving
behind it, but could not tell what they were doing.
He looked up at the clock.
Over thirty minutes had passed since he came to sit here.
Mariko’s face floated before
his eyes. She was clearly threatened by something. She had still not opened up
to him, but occasionally gave Anzai a look that seemed to implore for help.
Whenever he gazed back at her, she turned her face to the side, probably
wavering about how to respond.
When visiting hours ended and
Anzai got up to leave, Mariko sat up and stared at him. Her eyes begged him not
to go. He remembered her saying how afraid she was the night before.
He held her hand. She
squeezed it tightly in return. He tried to pull away, but she held on tighter.
He watched her patiently.
Before long, he said he
needed to get going.
As he walked out, he felt
Mariko’s gaze upon him the entire time, and as the door closed, he sensed
almost a scream of terror from her.
But visiting hours were over
and there was nothing he could do. He rationalized his departure like any
adult.
As he walked down the hall
towards the elevators, he realized his error. Shouldn’t he be by her side? He
was trying his best to understand her, but maybe that was still just a front, and
she had not opened up completely because she saw right through it. Anzai had
felt like turning back on his heel but kept walking, against all instinct.
He had no strength to return
to her room, but neither could he go home, so he had stayed in the lobby trying
to calm his conflicting emotions.
“What are you doing over
there?”
Anzai was surprised at the
sudden voice.
An older nurse was standing
there, carrying what looked like shopping basket in her hands and eyeing him
suspiciously. She ha probably come to pick up some meds. Were it not for her
uniform he’d have mistaken her for a housewife on some errand.
He faltered for an
explanation as she approached him.
“Visiting hours are over for
the night. Why are you here?”
Anzai was silent.
He stood up sluggishly. The
main entrance was closed. The only way out was through the service entrance.
“I wouldn’t idle around if I
were you,” came the nurse’s voice from behind, as he walked away. He was
extremely worried over Mariko, but he could not just sit there forever. Maybe
it was best for him to leave.
The service entrance had a
very different feel to it from the main one. There was no tree-lined rotary or
even a taxi stop. There were no lights either and Anzai could hardly see a
hundred feet in front of him. For all he knew, it was a dead end. Even where
light did reach, the hospital walls cramped him on either side. There were
numerous bikes and compacts parked outside. Water trickled from the drainage
pipe that ran along the wall.
He walked a little and took a
look around, wondering how to get out of this place.
Just then, he heard a low
sound at his feet. He looked down to find that he was standing on a manhole. He
felt a faint vibration underneath, growing in intensity.
At first, he thought it was
water flowing through the pipes. But the sound was too unnatural for that. It
was more like something moving in the sewers. A rat? No, bigger.
It was getting closer. The
manhole cover began to clatter as the sound gained on him. Anzai jumped back,
startled.
He listened closely.
Something was rolling in the sewers. If not rolling, then creeping. He could
hear no footsteps, nor was the sound intermittent. Whether it was a living
thing or a machine was impossible to tell. Regardless, it was moving along with
great speed. The manhole cover was vibrating visibly. Anzai lifted his face. He
was directly in its path. The sound was coming right towards him. He looked
back down to the manhole cover, then swallowed and turned around to the service
entrance door. The direction of the sound, the manhole, the service
entrance...all in a straight line.
What is this?
It’s coming to the hospital?
He turned back towards the
sound. He could see only darkness where the pale light from the ward window did
not reach. Not even the silhouettes of telephone poles.
A sound like the voice of the
earth itself came from the manhole. A great rush of wind blew out from around
the rim. There was no denying now that something was coming. It was big,
possibly bigger than Anzai himself. He could hear its breathing. He figured,
just from the sound, that it knew exactly where it was going.
Anzai was shaking. He peered
closely into the darkness in front of him and saw vibrations rolling wavelike
along the ground. Fifty feet away. The darkness erupted with sound. Twenty-five
feet. The asphalt quaked. Twenty feet. He stepped back. Followed the sound with
his eyes. It was coming for him. Fifteen feet. He wanted to scream, but his
voice refused to emerge. Ten feet. The manhole cover danced around madly. He
heard a slimy sound. It was coming. Any moment now.
He held his head to fend off
the noise.
A deafening roar ran under
his feet.
His entire body was enveloped
in sound. He shut his eyes.
The ground buckled beneath
his trembling knees. He did not open his eyes until the sound was gone, but the
feeling of its movement remained. His internal organs were shaken and refused
to settle.
What the hell just came
through here?
Whatever it was, it was
alive. He could hardly believe that something so large could navigate the city’s
pipes. It must have possessed intelligence to come here. There was no
hesitation in its speed.
But why here?
Anzai opened his eyes. He
turned around and looked up at the hospital walls. It was inside. It had
reached its goal.
Silence now. All signs of its
existence were gone. Had it gone into the hospital pipes?
...Mariko.
He did not know why, but he
knew somehow that she was in danger. Whatever had been making that sound was
after her.
Anzai turned back towards the
side entrance.
12
Upon receiving word that
Mariko’s condition had worsened, Yoshizumi rushed straight to her ward.
A nurse had discovered Mariko
thrashing wildly in her bed, with no reaction to sedatives. She was still
violent. Yoshizumi had banged down the phone and rim out of his office before
the nurse could even finish.
Because of Mariko’s
nightmares, the nurses had to wake her up every night to comfort her. They had
used sedatives on her before; this episode seemed to be different. Yoshizumi
was starting to fret about the whole situation.
Just what was going on
with her? First her organ rejection, slight as it was, reused to settled down,
and then this
. In over ten years of transplants, he had never encountered
such a strange case.
He reached the door to her
room, short of breath, and was surprised to hear a violent pounding coming from
the other side. A nurse screamed. Yoshizumi hesitantly put his hand on the
knob.
He went inside, then
swallowed.
Mariko’s body was bouncing up
and down on the bed. Two young nurses were trying to restrain her, but to no
avail. Her blanket flew into the air and the transfusion stand fell to the floor.
Yoshizumi stared in amazement
at Mariko’s abdomen, which had swollen up like a balloon under her nightgown.
The bulge was beyond what was
possible for her skeletal structure; regardless, it kept shrinking and
expanding, like rubber. It looked like something was trying to jump out of her
body, and Mariko was being tossed about by it. Her eyes were rolled back to the
whites and she was close to fainting.
“Doctor!”
The nurses called out for
help.
Yoshizumi came back to his
senses. He tried to restrain her legs, but she struggled with unbelievable
strength and he failed to get a firm grip on her. Mariko’s abdomen undulated
right before his eyes, and yet Yoshizumi could not accept what he was seeing.
He grabbed hold of her nightgown and forced it open. The two operation scars,
one on the right and one on the left, both painful to behold. But the one on
the left bulged out even as he watched.
His eyes widened.
Was it the kidney?
Was the kidney moving?
He bore down on her with all
his weight.
“Quick, bind her hands! And
put something between her teeth or she’ll bite her tongue!”
The two nurses pressed Mariko’s
hands down desperately. Her waist leapt up into the air in fierce opposition.
She was putting up quite a fight for a girl her age. Yoshizumi heard a sound.
Thump
.
Thump
. The kidney was beating like a heart. As he held down her kicking
legs, he thought,
This is crazy...
“Hurry up and tie her down!”
The bed springs creaked as
her body jumped up nearly a foot into the air, throwing Yoshizumi head first
into the wall.
Then, Mariko’s movements
suddenly stopped.
The swelling in her abdomen
subsided and her body slowly stopped hopping up and down, like a rubber ball
falling to the floor, gradually losing its bounce, and rolling to a standstill.
As Mariko lay silent, the
nurses stood up apprehensively. Yoshizumi rubbed the pain out of his head and
approached her. The room was now enveloped in quiet, as if the previous
commotion had all been an illusion.
Mariko’s eyes were still
closed. Her breathing was as slow and calm as that of one sleeping. She was not
sweating at all, despite the massive tantrum. Her kidney was no longer moving.
Only a peaceful expression upon her face.
Yoshizumi tried touching her
abdomen gently with his fingertips, but felt nothing unusual. No bulge, no
beat. He opened her gown again to check her surgical scars. He caressed them,
only to find they were normal.
He cast a sideward glance at
the nurses. By the looks on their faces, they were just as clueless as he was,
and even afraid. He looked back at Mariko.
After straightening her
clothes out, he gazed at her face once again. Seeing her placid face, his
distress faded away. Maybe the sedatives had finally kicked in? But sedatives
never had such a sudden effect.
“When did it start?” he asked
the nurses, still staring at Mariko’s face.
“About twenty past seven,”
said one of them. “One of the patients next door called about her. By the time
I got here, she was already in a bad state. I thought she was just having one
of her nightmares, so I stayed with her. But then it got too much for me, so I
called for help. Half an hour into it we started losing control of the
situation...”
“I see.”
“And the whole time, she kept
saying ‘Go away,’“ the other nurse added.
‘“Go away’? What’s that
supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know, but she’s been
saying that a lot in her sleep lately.”
“I wonder who she’s talking
about. I guess she’s being chased in her dreams?”
“We’ve asked her about it,
but she never gives us any answers...”
Yoshizumi took a deep breath.
Mariko had seemed like a
completely different person until a moment ago. Even that youthful rouge-like
tinge in her cheeks was back. Her mouth was open slightly, and clean white
teeth peeked out of them. Yoshizumi drew closer and touched her cheek with his
hand.
Her eyes shot open.
At the same time, Yoshizumi
felt an intense vibration in his fingertips. He cried out and withdrew his
hand. The nurses screamed loudly.
Her eyes were opened all too
wide, her pupils dilated into perfect black circles. She began to look less
human by the moment, making a cold shiver run along Yoshizumi’s spine. She
looked more like a plastic doll with glass eyes inserted into its face.
She sat up. Yoshizumi backed
away. She stared intently at him without so much as blinking.
“What the...” he said
hoarsely. The nurses held their breaths and stood trembling in the corner.
Yoshizumi then realized she
was not looking at him.
He followed her line of
vision to his stomach.
Not that, either. She was
looking behind him.
He turned around.
Just a sink. A little smaller
and more antique than the kind one found in a real apartment bathroom. Every sickroom
had been outfitted with one when the hospital was built. The sink was an old
make, with a small faucet. Yoshizumi looked back and forth between Mariko and
the sink.