Koji Suzuki - Loop

He thought he heard the sound of falling rock somewhere close by. He stiffened with fear. Several boulders rolled by, shooting pebbles when they hit them-he could feel the air move with their passage. The rain must have softened the ground enough to start a landslide. But then the rumbling abruptly stopped, right in front of him. There could be only one explanation: there must be a ravine directly in front of him. As the falling rocks pitched into empty space, they ceased making any sound. He was sure of it. He was on the edge of a gaping maw.

He backed up, sliding along the ground on his back. He had to put some distance between himself and this pit whose depth he couldn't know. It was an instinctive thing. His feet slipped once, and he slid back down a couple of feet, and even that was enough to set the muscles of his buttocks trembling.

He was taking the rain full in the face now, and by and by he was becoming oblivious to the drops pounding his cheeks. No doubt tears were coursing down his face, too, but the Kaoru that wept seemed like somebody else.

Illusions crowded in on him with frightening force. He saw himself clinging to a rocky outcropping amidst towering waves, waist washed by the sea, and then again he saw himself being sucked into a bottomless swamp, sinking deeper into the ground the more he squirmed.

And then every time he managed to shake off the delusions, to recover his grip on reality, he was left with an overpowering consciousness of death. His body was nearly frozen, and his senses were about to give out.

I'm going to die from rain.

He'd never, not once in his life, worried about rain. It had simply never occurred to him that it could kill him. It was comical, really. Here the whole world was about to die of cancer, and meanwhile he was going to die of a little rain.

He realized it had been quite some time since he'd been rained on enough to get wet. He remembered a late afternoon shower about a month ago: he'd stood by the window on the top floor of the hospital and watched it. One moment the clouds beyond the thick pane of glass were changing color, and the next moment the streets below were wet. That pane was all that separated him from the outside, but it looked at that moment like another world.

Reiko had been with him. Shoulder to shoulder they'd stood in the air-conditioned hallway; Kaoru had been glad for the shower, as it hadn't rained for a while. He'd looked on it as a blessing then. Ryoji was still alive, and new life had just begun in Reiko's womb.

Rain was rain, but what had once seemed like heaven now felt like hell.

He tried to drive away negative thoughts with memories of Reiko's face. He thought of his father and his mother; He tried to muster some courage. But he was too weakened. The moment he let his guard down, the shadow of death crept back over him.

All he had to do was go to sleep and it would all be over. The cold would take care of him, the darkness would carry him off.

Kaoru strove to retain his grip on consciousness.

He was fading fitfully in and out now. When he came to, he sometimes didn't know where he was. If he stayed out for longer, death would take him.

As he shivered from the cold, he longed for the dawn. Once the sun came up, the temperature was bound to rise. Then, if nothing else, he'd be delivered from this fearsome darkness.

As it was, the unrelieved blackness was a breeding ground for delusions. He thought he sensed somebody nearby. Not the familiar Indian, but somebody whose scent was far stronger as it wafted past his nose. Voices of indeterminate gender whispered back and forth. There had to be at least two of them, shadows in communication.

"Is somebody out there?" Kaoru yelled as loud as he could, loud enough to be heard over the rain, loud enough to chase away evil spirits.

But the shadows didn't recede. Instead they increased-there were three of them now, four, five. They surrounded him, muttering. Kaoru couldn't make out what they were saying, couldn't even identify what language they were speaking. They sounded like they might be sympathizing with him, but then he thought he caught a mocking undercurrent. Maybe they were laughing at him after all.

At length, the rain began to lessen and the darkness started giving way. He could gradually make out his surroundings. Everything was gray as of yet-that distant peak that poked up like some sort of religious monument should be brownish-red, but instead it was just a black shape. A monochrome world was better than an invisible one though.

Watching the scenery around him change for the better should have given Kaoru courage. The dawn had come. The rain was stopping. But he was feverish now, his mind dazed, and he was still chilled and exhausted. Budding doctor though he was, Kaoru had trouble explaining his condition.

He hoped he'd simply caught a cold, but he could feel a tortuous rasping in his lungs. He'd never experienced these symptoms with a common cold. Pneumonia? He put his hand to his forehead, his chest, under his arm, trying to gauge his temperature. He seemed to be running a considerable fever. He couldn't make himself move.

The rain had stopped and morning had come, but he was still curled up in the mud. He wiggled like a shrimp, trying to get to someplace out of the standing water.

What he wanted now was sunlight. He wanted to bask in it, to dry his body and his clothing. His waterlogged clothes were warm now, but from his fever, and he couldn't stand the feel of them.

He took them off and wrung them out. Even that was a hard task in his present state of weakness. When the wind hit his bare skin, he shivered so much that he almost fell over. Still, he managed to get rid of enough water that he felt lighter.

He crawled into a space between the rocks to get out of the wind whipping up the ravine. There he rested for a while. He'd have to husband his strength by staying still until the temperature rose.

As he lay there among the rocks, fighting his fever, the world around him continued to transform. Colours appeared, and distant objects became clearer.

He watched it all, waiting for the clouds to part.

Hours passed. As the temperature climbed, Kaoru was able to sleep for short periods of time. Every time he opened his eyes he gazed vacantly at the movements of the clouds. Still the sun hadn't broken through.

He awoke to a roar. Reminded of his sufferings of the previous night, he sat bolt upright in terror.

He saw something hovering in the sky. Right behind it, the sun was finally emerging. The clouds split apart and rays of sunlight shone on the floating object. Kaoru squinted against the brightness, staring at the heavens beyond the gleaming black thing.

This thing that had appeared was not what Kaoru had imagined. He'd expected to find ruins that bespoke the very beginnings of time, a group of people shrouded in mystery. Instead, what hovered there in the sky backlit by the sun was the product of the most cutting-edge modern science: a jet helicopter. And, just like the Indian's bow had been, the antenna projecting in front of it was aimed straight at Kaoru.

The wind from its rotors buffeted him. Appearing like this, it was almost as if it had been waiting for him to arrive. For a time the helicopter stayed in one spot in the middle of the air, bombarding his ears with its noise. Then it turned, showing him its underbelly, and climbed.

Its rotors rent the clouds, enlarging the hole through which the sun shone. The light that came through now looked to Kaoru like a halo.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the whitish ceiling. Kaoru next turned his gaze on all four walls in succession, then on anything else that came within his field of vision.