Phenomeno Read online

“If you want to know, no matter what–”

  Yoishi continued, still staring into the distance.

  “It's quicker if you were to go.”

  “Go, to that hospital?”

  Yoishi nodded, and then scrunched her brows a bit.

  “To be honest, I don't really get that place yet.”

  ”… What?”

  “My head hasn't been able to come with an answer that makes me go, ahh, so that's how it is. That sort of pattern is quite uncommon.”

  I'd become speechless, and my legs began to wobble, but she continued.

  “From now on, it's just self-responsibility.”

  … and so, Yoishi and I had arrived her after taking a train.

  I see, this is indeed self-responsibility. To have tried to help her without understanding my own level, that's what has led me to wandering this creepy place.

  In the dense darkness–

  We'd descended to the basement of the hospital, and had progressed along a dark, damp, and humid passageway.

  My breathing had become heavier, possibly due to the dirty air. My heart pounded so heavily it almost felt like it'd rip through my clothes, and I'd thought countless times that I couldn't go any further.

  But why was I still hanging on?

  Why couldn't I grab Yoishi's hand and just say to leave?

  That moment–

  I heard a snapping sound somewhere, again.

  I recoiled, as if something had taken hold of my heart.

  “W- what was that sound? We've been hearing that for a while…”

  I asked, but Yoishi simply said, who knows? as she continued.

  “Who knows… you heard it, didn't you? It was pretty big.”

  I stood in a crouch, and kept moving my light about.

  “Here.”

  Yoishi's voice came from ahead.

  I looked toward her, and saw that she was standing in front of a room. I went closer, and saw that her penlight was illuminating a sign reading “Second Resources Room.”

  “What about here?”

  “One person disappeared here.”

  ”… Huh?”

  I swallowed, then asked.

  “In other words, what? That rumor about people disappearing–”

  “Was real.”

  ”… Say that earlier, please.”

  I snapped back at her, becoming exasperated, but things began making sense. In other words, Zippo's friend who was hospitalized was the one that disappeared. Of course they'd be stuck in a psychiatric ward if they were stuck here alone in such a creepy place. After all, my knees were about to give out just standing here– no. Wait? Then, why would he have been mumbling Yoishi? Why would she end up having such a reputation?

  And then Yoishi quietly shook her head.

  “Wrong.”

  ”… Huh?”

  “The one who disappeared, was me.”

  Her words gave me goosebumps.

  “I was with them the whole time, yet when we left the hospital they said I was the only one missing. We checked after we left the hospital, but our recollections matched perfectly up to this room. Yet, when we left the hospital we remembered things differently. To them, I wasn't inside, and to me, I remembered being with them the whole time. Then – who were the people I was with the whole time?”

  I looked at the side of Yoishi's face as she happily explained what happened–

  And I really thought I should never have come.

  “Why our memories became estranged, and why that happened. I want to know.”

  Yoishi went to the door with a bewitched look, then turned around once more.

  “Hey, scared?”

  She asked, gazing into my eyes.

  “How does it feel to be scared?”

  And with that, she disappeared into the room.

  I was left alone in the dark room, and hesitated.

  – Yes I'm scared. Of course. So I'm going home, good luck.

  How simple it would be if I could say that and leave.

  However, when a human's level of fear passes a certain threshold, their legs become immobilized. To remove oneself from the flow, the action itself feels like it would agitate things that cannot be seen, and thus require a whole different set of courage. Furthermore, her existence as a high school girl was nasty. If I were to run now, I would never be able to escape from the title “King of Wussies,” having left a younger girl alone in a dark hospital.

  I had no choice as I slid through the slightly-ajar door.

  It was even darker inside. If there were density to darkness, it felt like this place had become even more dense. When I shone my light, I could tell it was a space of about fifteen to sixteen tatamis. In the middle was a desk, and various unfamiliar tools were scattered around it. At the edge were several fallen cabinets with shattered glass, and the papers stored inside were also scattered out onto the folder.

  I kicked something as I shined my light. It was a beer can. When I looked around, I saw the remains of tobacco and snack bags. Probably the left-overs from the “thankless” that Krishna despised so much. On weekends this place probably became grounds for scare games.

  “This must be a pretty popular spot.”

  I said, and far off in the darkness came back a bored voice, probably.

  I pointed my light at her and found Yoishi next to a cabinet. She shone her light into the drawers, illuminating the fallen medical records, but eventually she ran out of things to do and walked over to me.

  “We were looking at this together, before.”

  Yoishi shone a light on the thing she showed me, which was an old university notebook.

  “What is this?”

  I used my light as I opened it, and realized it was a journal. Letters were written from end to end inside. Most of it was in written in hiragana. Occasionally, cars and people were drawn using colored pencils, so I could recognize it was written by a child patient. I turned the pages and noticed that the writing stopped about halfway through one page. It was dated August 16, 1991. And then across the page was scrawled in large letters.

  ”Please fix my sickness.”

  Those words stabbed into my heart.

  “The name matches, so it's probably that child's.”

  Yoishi handed me a sheet of paper as I started dumbfounded at the yellow notebook.

  It was a medical record. There was a record of an eight-year-old boy's medical history.

  And at the end was written, in a business-like fashion, “Deceased.”

  “He died.”

  I mumbled, and she nodded.

  And then she pointed her light at the opposing wall and happily rephrased what I said.

  “Yes, he was supposed to have died.”

  I was struck speechless when I saw the wall.

  There–

  In hiragana, in the same handwriting as the notebook.

  “I'll do whatever you ask if you fix me.”

  The writing on the wall was enormous. Each letter was the size of two human heads. And it was written at a height where even an adult would have trouble reaching.

  “Did… this boy write that?”

  “Who knows?”

  Yoishi said, as she shined her light from one end of the wall to the other.

  “But, the problem isn't who wrote it when.”

  … Then what's the problem?

  I thought, but it seemed like it would become even creepier, so I resolved to ask her only after we'd returned to a bright area. See, I've grown a bit.

  But, that moment.

  The light cut out.

  Everything became covered with darkness, and I visibly recoiled.

  “H- hey, why'd you turn off your light–”

  But then I realized it.

  … No. Yoishi wasn't the only one holding a light. I had a penlight too – and I hadn't pressed the switch.

  Regardless, for it to become dark…

  I heard a snapping sound somewhere, again.

  It seemed to echo
from afar, yet it also seemed to sound close to my ear. It was like the sound of the air split, like a wall I couldn't see was cracking. And I smelled something at the same time. A rotting odor, like a river filled with dead fish.

  “Hey, Yoishi–”

  I said with a trembling voice, but there was no response.

  ”… C- Cut that out, hey.”

  I fumbled with the switch of my mini-light as I shouted, and then.

  snap crack snap

  Sharp sounds echoed around me.

  This is – that. The rumored sound of saran wrapping.

  And then suddenly my arm was grabbed.

  I was about to shriek, but it made me crouch on the spot.

  “Silence.”

  I kept my mouth shut at Yoishi's sharp whisper.

  And then, silence and darkness reigned over the area.

  No–

  At the edge of that silent world, filled with tension, I could feel something tilting. I could hear an endless stream of quiet noises. Was someone else here? Or was it an animal, a bug? I tried to think that way, but I felt like I could feel something definite. At the very least it wasn't an animal, as it was something that held the same helpless complexities of a human.

  And I could tell that it was slowly coming to our room from the far end of the hallway.

  I was completely in tears.

  And I acknowledged that I was a wuss. If I could leave this place with my life. I would never enter a horror spot again. I wouldn't be enticed by Yoishi's bizarre words again. I would finish my letter to my mother, and I would live a proper life of a student, with filial piety and only school and work. Right. I'd come to Tokyo to turn around the fortunes of my family lumber business. Yet I was delving into an occult site, and was being punished for roaming around a place like this. This was punishment for not writing the letter to my mother as I said I would. I was wrong. I'll live a proper life from now on. So please. Please. I don't know what's going on, but be exorcised already. Go to that other world.

  However – as if to destroy my prayer to gods.

  “Vanish!”

  Yoishi's inexplicable shout boomed, and the desk by my side made an enormous sound.

  It seemed Yoishi had kicked it. Something was shattered by that, and a large sound echoed through what used to be a quiet, abandoned hospital. At the same time, my body began moving again. The lights turned back on, and when the darkness was torn away – I saw.

  I saw.

  In the hallway that you could see past the slightly-ajar door.

  A sneaker with blue laces.

  And then, stretched forth from the cut, worn sneaker – a thin, bluish-white, rotting, crumbling leg of a child.

  “U… uwaa.”

  I screamed, and so did Yoishi.

  “It's not impossible.”

  She shook off my arm and shouted loudly.

  “It's pointless. It's unnecessary.”

  She kept shouting something.

  How was she making such a loud voice with that thin body of hers? Her loud voice cowed me. But her voice seemed to have agitated something I could not see. Countless things I could not see seemed to slither and move.

  Simultaneously – Yoishi began running toward the hallway. It may have been a challenge toward something I could not comprehend, or perhaps she was just trying to flee.

  “W… wait, wait!”

  What the heck, I thought as I followed her a moment later.

  I stepped on the door she'd completely knocked down and stumbled into the hallway.

  “Hey, wait, Yoishi!”

  I pointed my light down the hall, but she didn't wait.

  – You bastard, fine.

  I was in the basketball club during high school, and was even the point guard. I had confidence in my leg speed.

  However – Yoishi was even faster. There was no trace of her usual plodding speed. Her black hair tossed about as she ran like a young deer, and slowly distanced herself from me. On the way, because she never saw them or was doing it deliberately, she knocked down hospital partitions and withered vegetation. As a result, it reminded me of the ding dong ditches we did in Elementary School, making me forget a bit that this was a haunted area. Of course, I regretted it now, but at the time we were afraid of the angry, bald guy that would chase us, and it was hilarious. My excitement from then suddenly reawakened. And here it became nothing less than my savior. I blew away the obstacles that crashed into my legs and shoulders, and I kept running. Excitement triumphed over fear then. I ran down the basement hall, climbed the stairs, and did a quick turn at the first floor. I chased Yoishi who ran in the distance ahead.

  “Hey, Yoishi!”

  I kicked open the entrance door to the hospital and came outside–

  However, there was no one there.

  I could only hear the the sound of insects, and found myself in a parking lot with overgrown grass.

  Under the moon that shined bluish-white – I placed my hands on my knees and regained my breath. My heart felt like it would explode from my first serious run in a while. I had never felt so comforted by the moonlight before. As I regained my composure, black socks and black leather shoes appeared before me.

  When I looked up, I found Yoishi looking down at me.

  “Why did you run ahead of me?”

  I complained, gasping for air, but Yoishi grumbled venomously.

  “Pathetic.”

  ”… Say again?”

  “This place is pathetic.”

  In the darkness of night, she glared at the concrete building–

  And then she vomited.

  Suddenly, she was vomiting in the parking lot.

  Her vomit sparkled under the moonlight.

  And as I watched, dumbstruck, I thought it looked kinda pretty.

  2

  “Krishna? Are you there?”

  It was about ten hours after leaving the creepy hospital.

  I was knocking on the door of the headquarters of the “Ikaigabuchi,” the Beatnik Research Club.

  “Hello?”

  I knocked several times, but there was no response.

  “That's odd. She's always in at this hour.”

  I peered through the frosted glass on the door at the darkened room, and stifled a yawn.

  It was sunrise when I arrived back at the Musashino apartment from the Hachiouji hospital.

  I'd been meaning to amass as much sleep as possible today, so there was a reason for me having diligently arrived at school for the first period.

  We'd walked back to the highway from the hospital, then to the Hachiouji train station. The moment we hopped onto first train on the main line, exhaustion finally caught up and made both of us fall asleep. I regained consciousness just in time for the Mitaka announcement and hurriedly jumped off, and for some reason Yoishi hopped off as well. After that, she wobbled about half-asleep, following me to my apartment and eventually toppling over in the hallway. Of course, I told her. Come on, wake up, go back to your home. I even tried pulling her cheeks, but she just stopped moving, as if her batteries had died.

  Thus, I had no choice but to let her sleep in the apartment, giving her the only blanket I had – and came to the university myself, like I'd been kicked out. I went to my first-period lecture for “Introduction to Law” to get some sleep, but when I thought about what happened last night, I had trouble actually getting myself to fall unconscious. No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't figure out what was going on with that hospital. The mystery of the vanishing member hadn't been solved, and I didn't know what Yoishi was calling “pathetic” either.

  As I thought of those things, I lost my chance to sleep. Consequently, I attended my next class, but couldn't sleep in “Foreign Languages 2” as well. In the end, without being able to catch any sleep, I came here when the noon bell rang.

  “Hello? Krishna?”

  I knocked again, but there was no response.

  There was no response, but I thought I heard something from ins
ide.

  “Seriously?”

  I remember a posting on the bulletin about someone roughing up rooms.

  I was worried and placed my hand on the knob, and found that it wasn't locked. I became suspicious, and decided to enter.

  I took a breath – and opened the door.

  And when I saw what was inside–

  I recoiled.

  Completely took a step back.

  Inside was a girl with a candle attached to her head using a headband.

  She was in a white robe, in her left hand was a voodoo doll, and in her right was a hammer.

  She held five-inch nails between her lips.

  ”Hoo haw.”

  The white-robed girl said.

  Or rather, she probably meant to say “you saw.”

  However, it didn't sound that way because of the nails between her lips.

  “K- Krishna?”

  I asked, and the red-framed, white-robed girl – Krishna took the nails away from her mouth, glared at me, and said “you saw.” It was a beautiful voice, like the ringing of a bell.

  “I knocked.”

  “Yes, I noticed.”

  Krishna said, angry.

  “Unfortunately, I had nails in my mouth. That means I can't respond. I thought 'Whatever, I'll ignore it', but then the door was opened anyways. Thanks to that, my secret experiment is ruined. Who opens the door when there's no response, anyways? Thieves do, that's about it. So you're a thief, then?”

  Yes, this style of talking, this small girl–

  Was Kurimoto Shina, or Krishna, the administrator of the largest occult site in the country.

  Incidentally, she's older than me, even though she looks like a middle school girl working part-time at a shrine as a shrine maiden. But in reality, she was a twenty-year-old, third-year university student, so you shouldn't be fooled by her loli appearance. Her incredible knowledge with regards to the occult and her charisma made her the object of much respect in the internet world.

  “I'm sorry, I wanted to ask you something.”

  I said.

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  She quickly replied.

  “I told you not to come her anymore, didn't I? Yesterday, the day before that too , I said the same thing but you seem to lack the capacity to learn. Or is this your way of annoying me?”