Koji Suzuki - Ring

September 5, 1990, 10:49 pm, Yokohama

A row of condominium buildings, each fourteen stories high, ran along the northern edge of the housing development next to the Sankeien garden. Although built only recently, nearly all the units were occupied. Nearly a hundred dwellings were crammed into each building, but most of the inhabitants had never even seen the faces of their neighbors. The only proof that people lived here came at night, when windows lit up.

Off to the south the oily surface of the ocean reflected the glittering lights of a factory. A maze of pipes and conduits crawled along the factory walls like blood vessels on muscle tissue. Countless lights played over the front wall of the factory like insects that glow in the dark; even this grotesque scene had a certain type of beauty. The factory cast a wordless shadow on the black sea beyond.

A few hundred meters closer, in the housing development, a single new two-story home stood among empty lots spaced at precise intervals. Its front door opened directly onto the street, which ran north and south, and beside it was a one-car garage. The home was ordinary, like those found in any new housing development anywhere, but there were no other houses behind or beside it. Perhaps owing to their inconvenience for transport links, few of the lots had been sold, and For Sale signs could be seen here and there all along the street. Compared to the condos, which were completed at about the same time and which were immediately snapped up by buyers, the housing development looked quite lonely.

A beam of fluorescent light fell from an open window on the second floor of the house onto the dark surface of the street below. The light, the only one in the house, came from the room of Tomoko Oishi. Dressed in shorts and a white T-shirt, she was slouched in a chair reading a book for school; her body was twisted into an impossible position, legs stretched out toward an electric fan on the floor. Fanning herself with the hem of her T-shirt to allow the breeze to hit her bare flesh, she muttered about the heat to no one in particular. A senior at a private girls’ high school, she had let her homework pile up over the summer vacation; she had played too much, and she blamed it an the heat. The summer, however, hadn’t really been all that hot. There hadn’t been many clear days, and she hadn’t been able to spend nearly as much time at the beach as she did most summers. And what’s more, as soon as vacation was over, there were five straight days of perfect summer weather. It irritated Tomoko: she resented the clear sky.

How was she supposed to study in this stupid heat?

With the hand she had been running through her hair Tomoko reached over to turn up the volume of the radio. She saw a moth alight on the window screen beside her, then fly away somewhere, blown by the wind from the fan. The screen trembled slightly for a moment after the bug had vanished into the darkness.

She had a test tomorrow, but she was getting nowhere. Tomoko Oishi wasn’t going to be ready for it even if she pulled an all-nighter.

She looked at the clock. Almost eleven. She thought of watching the day’s baseball wrap-up on TV. Maybe she’d catch a glimpse of her parents in the infield seats. But Tomoko, who desperately wanted to get into college, was worried about the test. All she had to do was get into college. It didn’t matter where, as long as it was a college. Even then, what an unfulfilling summer vacation it had been! The foul weather had kept her from having any real fun, while the oppressive humidity had kept her from getting any work done.

It was my last summer in high school. I wanted to go out with a bang and now it’s all over. The end.

Her mind strayed to a meatier target than the weather to vent her bad mood on.

And what’s with Mom and Dad anyway? Leaving their daughter all alone studying like this, covered in sweat, while they go gallivanting out to a ball game. Why don’t they think about my feelings for a change?

Someone at work had unexpectedly given her father a pair of tickets to the Giants game, and so her parents had gone to Tokyo Dome. By now it was almost time for them to be getting home, unless they’d gone out somewhere after the game. For the moment Tomoko was home alone in their brand-new house.

It was strangely humid, considering that it hadn’t rained in several days. In addition to the perspiration that oozed from her body, a dampness seemed to hang in the air. Tomoko unconsciously slapped at her thigh. But when she moved her hand away she could find no trace of the mosquito. An itch began to develop just above her knee, but maybe it was just her imagination. She heard a buzzing sound. Tomoko waved her hands over her head. A fly. It flew suddenly upwards to escape the draft from the fan and disappeared from view. How had a fly got into the room? The door was closed. Tomoko checked the window screens, but nowhere could she find a hole big enough to admit a fly. She suddenly realized she was thirsty. She also needed to pee.

She felt stifled-not exactly like she was suffocating, but like there was a weight pressing down on her chest. For some time Tomoko had been complaining to herself about how unfair life was, but now she was like a different person as she lapsed into silence. As she started down the stairs her heart began to pound for no reason. Headlights from a passing car grazed across the wall at the foot of the stairs and slipped away. As the sound of the car’s engine faded into the distance, the darkness in the house seemed to grow more intense. Tomoko intentionally made a lot of noise going down the stairs and turned on the light in the downstairs hall.

She remained seated on the toilet, lost in thought, for a long time even after she had finished peeing. The violent beating of her heart still had not subsided. She’d never experienced anything like this before. What was going on? She took several deep breaths to steady herself, then stood up and pulled up her shorts and panties together.

Mom and Dad, please get home soon, she said to herself, suddenly sounding very girlish. Eww, gross. Who am I talking to?

It wasn’t like she was addressing her parents, asking them to come home. She was asking someone else…

Hey. Stop scaring me. Please…

Before she knew it she was even asking politely.

She washed her hands at the kitchen sink. Without drying them she took some ice cubes from the freezer, dropped them in a glass, and filled it with coke. She drained the glass in a single gulp and set it on the counter. The ice cubes swirled in the glass for a moment, then settled. Tomoko shivered. She felt cold. Her throat was still dry. She took the big bottle of coke from the refrigerator and refilled her glass. Her hands were shaking now. She had a feeling there was something behind her. Some thing -definitely not a person. The sour stench of rotting flesh melted into the air around her, enveloping her. It couldn’t be anything corporeal.

“Stop it! Please!” she begged, speaking aloud now.

The fifteen-watt fluorescent bulb over the kitchen sink flickered on and off like ragged breathing. It had to be new, but its light seemed pretty unreliable right now. Suddenly Tomoko wished she had hit the switch that turned on all the lights in the kitchen. But she couldn’t walk over to where the switch was. She couldn’t even turn around. She knew what was behind her: a Japanese-style room of eight tatami mats, with the Buddhist altar dedicated to her grandfather’s memory in the alcove. Through the slightly open curtains she’d be able to see the grass in the empty lots and a thin stripe of light from the condos beyond. There shouldn’t be anything else.