Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

Ando put the underwear back where he’d found it and twisted his body until his eyes came to rest on the television. The power light glowed red: the VCR had been left on. He pushed EJECT and a tape popped out. There was a white label on its spine, with a title on it.

Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr/1989.

This was written in large letters, none too neatly, with a felt-tip pen. It didn’t look like a woman’s writing. He took the tape out and examined it. It was fully rewound. After he’d scrutinized it for a while, he slid it back into the VCR. Ando hadn’t forgotten how this whole series of incidents had something to do with a video. There was the story Mai had told him about Asakawa, then the fact that Asakawa had been carrying a video deck on the passenger seat at the time of the accident.

Ando pressed PLAY.

For two or three seconds the image on the screen looked like ink being mixed with some viscous fluid. Then a point of light appeared amidst the roiling blackness. Flashing, it moved around to the left and right, and then finally started to grow. Ando felt a momentary, but distinct, unpleasantness. Then, just when the point of light looked like it was about to turn into something else, a TV commercial came on. He recognized it as one he’d seen several times already. The contrast, as the darkness gave way to sunny ordinariness, was stunning. Ando felt his shoulder muscles unclench.

The ad was followed by another, and yet another. He fast-forwarded through more of them. Then came a weather report. A smiling woman was pointing to a weather map. He fast-forwarded some more, and got to what looked like a morning talk show. The scene changed again: a reporter was looking into the camera and speaking into a microphone, something about some celebrity getting divorced. Ando kept on fast-forwarding but couldn’t find anything that corresponded to the title on the label. The tape must have been recorded over.

As he watched, Ando began to relax. Of course, he hadn’t been expecting to see American singers, but something altogether more horrifying. Aside from the first few seconds, however, his fears had been misplaced: all the tape contained was mundane TV programming. The talk show came to an end and was followed by a rerun of an old samurai adventure. Ando stopped the tape and rewound it. He wanted to examine the weather report segment.

He found the beginning of the forecast and pressed PLAY. The woman said, “And now here’s a look at the weather for Tuesday, November 13th.”

He pressed PAUSE and the image froze.

November 13th?

Today was the fifteenth. Which meant that this had been recorded the day before yesterday. But who’d been around to press RECORD?

Was Mai here just two mornings ago?

But then how to explain the newspapers in her mailbox? Had she simply forgotten to pick them up?

Or maybe … He opened the front panel of the VCR and tried to see if there was any evidence it had been programmed. It was possible that when she’d left the room a week ago, Mai had set the VCR to record something on the morning of the thirteenth.

At that moment, he heard something. It sounded like the faint splash of a drop of water. Without getting up, he turned his torso until he could see the sink in the kitchenette. But there didn’t seem to be a drip there. He got up and peered into the bathroom.

The door was open a crack, just as it had been the last time he checked. He turned on the light and tried to push open the door. But it would only open halfway; the toilet blocked it. Ando leaned in through the narrow opening and saw a bathtub just large enough for someone to sit in if she drew her knees up to her chin. A nylon curtain draped down into it. He pulled the curtain out of the way and looked inside. Water dripped from the ceiling, landing with a splat; there was water pooled in the bottom of the tub. While Ando gawked, another drop fell, rippling the surface of the water. It was about four inches deep, and in one end of the tub it was swirling gently. Several strands of hair floated on the surface, and a few of them had gotten tangled as they swirled.

Ando wedged his way into the bathroom, leaning down until his head was inside the tub. The drain was a round black hole, that is to say, the plug had been pulled. Ando didn’t immediately realize what that meant. The drainpipes were clogged with soap, or hair, or something, and the water wasn’t draining well. But as Ando stared, he could see that the level was falling, if only gradually.

It finally occurred to Ando to ask himself who had pulled the plug.

It clearly hadn’t been the super. He hadn’t taken one step into the room. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes.

Then who?

Ando took another step into the bathroom and crouched down. He held out his hand and hesitantly touched the surface of the water. It was still slightly warm. A few strands of hair tangled themselves around his fingers. It felt just like… sticking his hands into an eleven-hour-old corpse and finding it had maintained body temperature. The apartment had supposedly been vacant for a week. But only an hour ago, someone had filled the tub with hot water and, even more recently, pulled the plug. It was for ventilation that the window had been left open.

Ando hurriedly pulled his hand back and wiped it on his trousers.

On the other side of the toilet, directly below the toilet paper, he noticed a brownish stain. It wasn’t fecal matter, but rather, like something that had been vomited up. Covered in a thin film, it retained the outline of undigested food. A reddish, square object-perhaps a piece of carrot?

Did Mai vomit this?

Ando was squatting with one foot in the tiny bathroom, but in order to examine the vomit he had to lean over. When he did so, though, he lost his balance.

He came to rest with his face pressed up against the edge of the toilet. The cream-colored porcelain digged coolly into his cheek, and he could only imagine what kind of expression he was making.

At that moment, he thought he heard someone laugh behind him.

Ando fought back the urge to scream, and froze in that ungainly posture.

It wasn’t his imagination. He’d heard a distinct giggle behind him, from a point rather low to the floor. As if it had welled up from the floor, like some plant shoot poking up from the ground, blossoming forth in laughter. Ando tensed his muscles and held his breath.

“Hee-hee.” There! The same giggle. He wasn’t hallucinating. He was absolutely certain someone was behind him. But he could hardly move, much less turn around and look. He couldn’t figure out what to do. With his face still pressed up against the smooth porcelain, he managed to call out, rather stupidly, “Is that you, super?” He couldn’t prevent his voice from trembling. One foot still sticking out of the bathroom door, he thought he felt a current of air on it. Something was moving out there. Now, that something touched him on the patch of exposed skin between the hem of his slacks and the top of his socks, where they’d scrunched down. It brushed against him as it moved past, leaving behind the memory of its slithery touch. The lower half of his body shrank from it, and he let out a cry. He tried to tell himself that it was nothing; maybe a cat that’d been trapped in the room had licked his Achilles tendon. Nothing more. But it didn’t work. Every one of his five senses knew that it was something else. Some unknown thing was behind him.

His face was below the top of the bathtub, so he couldn’t see inside, but he could hear the water inside trying to gurgle out. There was a faint slurping sound as the water swirled down the drain, hair and all. But above that sound, he heard the floorboards creak. The creaky noise receded slowly from him.