Masako Togawa - The Master Key

At just before eight, the priest appeared, dressed as before in a black double-breasted suit and accompanied by the medium in her red ceremonial priestess’ skirt. The audience bowed deeply, sucking in their breath as a sign of respect. There was even one old lady who prostrated herself, touching her forehead to the floor, as the priest passed by.

The priest took his seat, and, addressing a woman in the front row, asked her how her relations with her husband were recently. This made everyone laugh, but Yoneko felt it was a contrived informality and did not join in. This sort of banter and discussion continued for a few more minutes, whereupon the priest broke off and said:

‘Leave the door open. The person on whose behalf we are met together tonight is on her way here.’

And the medium lit the candles, as before, and the electric lights were switched off. When the room became thus dark, Chikako Ueda made her entry, accompanied by the white-haired Haru Santo. It was some time since Yoneko had seen Haru, and she tried to catch sight of her face, but somehow there always seemed to be someone else’s head in the way. Yoneko reflected that Haru had only come into the room once it was dark on the last occasion, too. Meanwhile, Chikako took up her seat in the very front, facing the medium.

It was the first time that Yoneko had got so close to Chikako. As it was so dark, she could stare at her without embarrassment. In the flickering candlelight, she examined Chikako’s profile and saw a woman who, although in her forties, still had the dimples and fringe of a young girl. There was something very attractively feminine about Chikako, and it looked as if she was a woman who had ceased to age some years back.

As before, the priest adopted a commanding tone of voice and ordered all present to link their hands. Yoneko, thinking that the whole thing was like a staged performance, nonetheless obeyed, although it was with some reservations that she took the hand of the woman from outside who was her neighbour. Chikako then spoke in a clear and firm voice, giving the date of birth and name of the man she sought.

Yoneko tried to work out the age of the man, and found herself confused by the Japanese era system of dates, but at last calculated that he must be in his mid-thirties, and so must have been in his late twenties seven years ago. So he must have been a good ten years younger than Chikako. Could Chikako have had a love affair with a man so much younger than herself? And then Yoneko could not help but think of Keiko, who had married a man more than ten years her senior. In each case, it seemed that the hoped-for bliss had ended in sorrow. Why was it that so many people had such unhappy experiences in love?

While she was thinking over these things, the medium had entered her trance and now once again her whole body was shuddering in the throes of demonic possession.

What happened in the next ten minutes remained engraved in Yoneko’s mind for the rest of her life. The medium fell, as before, flat on her face and rolled around on the floor repeating meaningless and garbled words, with an occasional real word mixed amongst them. As these words emerged one by one from the jumbled mass of sound, they stuck in the mind of the hearers, until gradually they could piece together in their minds what was being said. It went like this:

‘Ow! It hurts… I can’t see anything… I’m in a suitcase, it’s hard… A man is putting me into a hole… There’s another grown-up with him… A lady! She has opened the bag… She’s looking at me… At my face… Now I can hear someone mixing concrete… I see a shovel… Oh, they’re shovelling concrete into my suitcase… It’s awful… I can’t see anything any more… They’re burying me in the dark… Mother! Mother!’

This was what Yoneko pieced together, word by word, from amongst the medium’s gibberish.

At this point, the priest laid his hands on the medium’s head, and cried out, ‘Stop! It’s the wrong spirit!’

And then, in ringing tones: ‘Spirit, I command you to be gone!—Get thee hence!’

Someone in front of Yoneko spoke in a quavering voice.

‘Saints protect us! It’s an evil spirit in our midst.’

In obedience to the priest’s command, the medium became silent and lay motionless, only the whites showing in her open eyes. The priest called for the lights to be put on, and the tension was lowered and everyone stretched themselves in their seats and waited expectantly. The priest called out Chikako Ueda’s name.

Chikako did not reply. Yoneko looked at her, and observed that the healthy and youthful appearance she had observed a few minutes earlier had vanished. Now Chikako’s whole complexion seemed to have turned grey, and she was staring vacantly into the middle distance, her mouth hanging open, her jaw slack. Tomiko lay her hand on her shoulder and called out.

‘Miss Ueda! Miss Ueda!’

Chikako just brushed Tomiko’s hand away with an unnatural force. She rolled her eyes up into her lids, and gave every appearance of having entered a catatonic state.

Yoneko left shortly after this, but subsequently heard that Chikako had remained in this condition until the next morning, sitting in the same position staring fixedly ahead. If anyone touched her, she struck the offending hand away.

Haru Santu had slipped out of the room even before Yoneko, and she appeared to have gone at the same time that the lights were turned on.

Making her way back to her room, Yoneko wondered what it was that the medium had said which had had such an effect on Chikako. Could it have been the voice of her lover crying out that he was being buried? Yoneko did not think so. There was clearly some connection between the burial the medium had described and the poem in Chikako’s room. This had been the voice of another spirit, and Chikako’s reaction and the priest’s announcement made the fact doubly clear. The voice had been that of a child being buried, and Yoneko was ninety-nine per cent sure that the child had been George. The medium had been describing the burial of a child in concrete, in terms which rended the heart of Heaven, had used the language of a child describing in terror what was going on before his very eyes.

She realised that she must now tell Keiko Kawauchi the whole truth. She sat down there and then and wrote her a long letter describing in detail all that she had seen and heard, including the poem in Chikako’s room. She asked Keiko to think about it all and apply her own judgment as to what should be done next. She added that it might now be advisable to report the matter to the police.

As she addressed the envelope, Yoneko reflected that she still had some doubts as to whether the dead could really communicate with the living in this way. But there could be no doubting the effect of the words, purporting to come from the dead by way of the medium, upon Chikako Ueda.

It was the last Sunday in April. Yoneko was writing letters in her room when Keiko Kawauchi suddenly appeared at her door. Greeting her after a lapse of some twelve years, Yoneko could not help feeling that Keiko had become rather gaunt, although this may have been the effect of her wearing a Japanese kimono. It was too late to cry over spilt milk, but nonetheless Yoneko wished she had not written to tell Keiko so clearly that George was dead.

Keiko explained that she had been visiting Hiroshima when Yoneko’s last letters reached her home.

‘As George died at the end of March, it was exactly seven years since his murder. I went to Hiroshima because I heard of a mixed-blooded child of his age there, but of course it was a fruitless trip. And when I got home the day before yesterday, I found your letter waiting for me.’

Keiko wiped the tears from her eyes.