Koji Suzuki - The Complete Ring Trilogy - Ring, Spiral, Loop

What is it? What’s different? His heart was pounding. This is bad. Nothing about this is getting any better. Think, man, try to remember. The last time I watched this … I rewound it. And now the tape’s in the middle. About a third of the way through. That’s right about where the images end, and it hasn’t been rewound. Somebody watched it while I was away.

Asakawa ran to the bedroom. Shizu and Yoko were asleep, all tangled up together. Asakawa rolled his wife over and shook her by the shoulder.

“Wake up. Shizu! Wake up!” He kept his voice low, trying not to awaken Yoko. Shizu twisted her face into a scowl and tried to squirm away.

“I said, wake up!” His voice sounded different from usual.

“What … what’s wrong?”

“We have to talk. Come on.”

Asakawa dragged his wife out of bed and pulled her into the dining room. Then he held the tape out to her. “Did you watch this?”

Taken aback by the ferocity of his tone, Shizu could only look back and forth from the tape to her husband’s face. Finally, she said, “Was I not supposed to?”

What’re you so mad about? she thought. Here it is Sunday, and you’re off somewhere, and I’m bored. And then there was that tape you and Ryuji were whispering over, so I pulled it out. But it wasn’t even interesting. Probably just something the boys in the office cooked up anyway. Shizu remained silent, only talking back in her mind. There’s no call for you to get so upset about it.

For the first time in his married life, Asakawa felt a desire to hit his wife. “You … idiot!” But somehow he managed to resist the urge and just stood there, fist clenched. Calm down and think. It’s your own fault. You shouldn’t have left it where she could see it. Shizu never even opened mail addressed to him; he’d figured it was safe just leaving the tape in the cabinet. Why didn’t I hide it? After all, she came in the room while Ryuji and I were watching it. Of course she’d be curious about it. I was wrong not to hide it.

“I’m sorry,” Shizu mumbled, discontentedly.

“When did you watch it?” Asakawa’s voice shook.

“This morning.”

“Really?”

Shizu had no way of knowing how important it was to know exactly when she watched it. She just nodded, curtly.

“What time?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just tell me!” Asakawa’s hand started to move again.

“Around ten-thirty, maybe. It was right after Masked Rider ended.”

Masked Rider? That was a children’s show. Yoko was the only one in the family who’d have any interest in that. Asakawa fought desperately to keep from collapsing.

“Now, this is very important, so listen to me. While you were watching this video, where was Yoko?”

Shizu looked like she was about to burst into tears.

“On my lap.”

“Yoko, too? You’re saying both of you … watched … this video?”

“She was just watching the screen flicker—she didn’t understand it.”

“Shut up! That doesn’t matter!”

This was no longer just a matter of destroying his wife’s dreams of a house in the suburbs. The entire family was threatened now—they could all perish. They’d all die an utterly meaningless death.

As she observed her husband’s anger, fear, and despair, Shizu began to realize the seriousness of the situation. “Hey … that was just a … a joke, right?”

She recalled the words at the end of the video. At the time she’d dismissed them as just a tasteless prank. They couldn’t be real. But what about the way her husband was acting?

“It’s not for real, right? Right?”

Asakawa couldn’t respond. He merely shook his head. Then he was filled with tenderness for the ones who now shared his fate.

October 15—Monday

Every morning when he woke up now, Asakawa found himself wishing that it had all been a dream. He called a rent-a-car place in the neighborhood and told them that he’d be in on schedule to pick up the car he’d reserved. They had his reservation on file, no mistake. Reality marched on without a break.

He needed a way to get around if he was going to try and find out where that broadcast had originated. It would be too hard to break in on TV frequencies with an off-the-shelf wireless transmitter; he figured that it had to have been done with an expertly modified unit. And the image on the tape was clear, with no interference. That meant that the signal had to have been strong, and close. With more information he might have been able to establish the area in which the broadcast was receivable, and thus to pinpoint the point of origin. But all he had to go on was the fact that the television in Villa Log Cabin B-4 had picked up the transmission. All he could do was go there, check out the lay of the land, and then start going over the area with a fine-toothed comb. He had no idea how long it would take. He packed enough clothes for three days. He certainly wouldn’t need any more than that.

He and Shizu looked at each other, but Shizu didn’t say anything about the video. Asakawa hadn’t been able to think of a good lie, and so he’d let her go to bed with only the vaguest of excuses about the threat of death in a week. For her part, Shizu seemed to fear finding out anything specific, and seemed happy to let things remain ambiguous and unexplained. Rather than questioning him like she usually would, she seemed to guess at something on her own that made her keep an eerie silence. Asakawa didn’t know exactly how she was interpreting things, but it didn’t seem to assuage her uneasiness. As she watched her usual morning soap opera on TV she seemed extraordinarily sensitive to noises from outside, starting from her seat any number of times.

“Let’s just not talk about this, okay? I don’t have any answers for you. Just let me handle it.” This was all Asakawa could think to say to calm his wife’s anxieties. He couldn’t allow himself to appear weak to his wife.

Just as he was stepping out of the house, as if on cue, the phone rang. It was Ryuji.

“I’ve made a fascinating discovery. I want you to tell me what you think.” There was a hint of excitement in Ryuji’s voice.

“Can’t you tell me about it over the phone? I’m supposed to go pick up a rental car.”

“A rental car?”

“You’re the one who told me to find out where the broadcast originated from.”

“Right, right. Listen, put that on the back burner for a while and get over here. Maybe you don’t have to go looking for an antenna after all. Maybe that whole premise will just crumble away.”

Asakawa decided to pick the car up first anyway, so that if he still needed to go to South Hakone Pacific Land, he could leave straight from Ryuji’s place.

Asakawa parked the car with two wheels up on the sidewalk and banged on Ryuji’s door.

“Enter! It’s unlocked.”

Asakawa jerked the door open and deliberately stomped through the kitchen. “So what’s this big discovery?” he asked, forcefully.

“What’s eating you?” Ryuji glanced over from where he sat, cross-legged on the floor.

“Just hurry up and tell me what you’ve found!”

“Relax!”

“How am I supposed to relax? Just tell me, already!”

Ryuji held his tongue for a moment. Then, gently, he asked, “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Asakawa plopped himself down in the middle of the floor, clenching his hands on his knees. “My wife and … my wife and daughter watched that piece of shit.”

“Well, that’s a hell of a thing. I’m sorry to hear that.” Ryuji watched until Asakawa began to regain his composure. The latter sneezed once and blew his nose loudly.