Inside the well-lit room, the window which overlooked the city seemed to form an impossible contrast. It was as if the only thing that seperated her from the infinite abyss was a small, thin sheet of glass. It was a silly irrational thought, but Keiko couldn't help but shudder.
"Somehow you look a bit paler today."
The concerned voice of the head nurse snapped her vision away from the window and back to what she was supposed to do. As the new nurse, Keiko followed around her superiors to do the nightly rounds of the hospital and it's room. With her was the ageing head nurse Nukata who seemed to have more concerns for others than herself- even her own appearence- and a much younger, well kept Maria Uchiyama. Another impossible contrast.
"I've been staying at home more often than I should I guess," Keiko said apologetically.
"In those small cramped appartments?" She lovingly tapped Keiko's shoulder. "That's not good for you at all. Those cramped spaces are not good for your health, not to mention your own sanity."
"I see, thank you for your concern," trying to change the subject. "The air conditioning sure is noisy here isn't it?"
"That's not the air conditioning" Nurse Uchiyama said gravely.
The nurse was made up in a way more suitable for a bar hostess, with long curls and a pouty look. Naturally everyone hated the beauty and Keiko had a feeling she'd soon join them. "Is that so?" her disinterested voice was the best bait.
"Don't start, Maria..." Head nurse Nutaka said, more teasingly than with authority.
"Oh? Am I saying anything untrue?"
"If there's an animal in there," Keiko said. She decided to ignore her collegue's teasing and continue making the bed. "Shouldn't we get it out?"
From above the bed the banging from the ventilator got louder as if agreeing with her. The white sheets felt like rough paper as she folded them up. Uchiyama smiled like a popular high school girl about to spread cruel gossip. "It's hard to release a ghost stuck in its own hell-" Keiko waited for the head nurse to disapprove or deny Uchiyama's words, but she was very silent. "Don't you think so Keiko?"
"Now think about it. Don't you think it's strange we need three people for just one room? Isn't it ridiculous, the nurses are too afraid of a cursed room and ghosts! We're supposed to be at a hospital, a place of science and medicine, and we go around talking about psychology while being afraid of a ghost in the ventilation system!" Uchiyama threw a defiant laugh aimed at the head nurse, who deflected with a skillful use of ignoring the woman. Keiko thought it seemed very dignified. "Have you heard about the patient that occupied this room for only one day?"
"A patient can recover that quickly, there's no mystery in that..."
"Do you think I'd waste time speaking about a speedy recovery! Surely you've read or heard about the incident at the Asanuma residence."
"That sure was awful! An entire family killed like that."
Uchiyama's black eyes seemed to become more hollow, she spoke like a skilled storyteller. "There's a lot more to it."
"Is that so?"
"I have a friend in the police, he was part of the group that found the bodies. A call from the neighbours about offensive smells and strange sounds prompted a small group to go knock on the door. It was probably just a slight neighbourhood nuisance right? But the fact the residents also mentioned seeing a suspicious man one night, and then strange shadows walking around at night.
They got there and, as he described it, there was the worst stench you'd ever get in your nose. A corpse is not supposed to stay in this summer heat out, can you imagine a whole family for ten days?"
"That's terrible."
"This is exactly what he told me, and I believe him. Some police officers we encounter will make up wild stories just to impress us, kind of like a gross out contest between the hospital workers and the force, just to make those dumb flirtatious nurses shamelessly scream 'oh you're so disgusting!'. But my friend isn't like that at all.
"So he said the smell was unlike what he experienced before. Usually when they find a body its in small confined spaces, the smell is so concentrated it comes at you like one big punch. But this time it prevaded the whole house, and mixed with ordinary household smells, to make it a vague stench. Imagine an obscure sensation that gets under your skin like a needle injection that makes you queazy. Thats when they knew it was something serious. There was also knocking coming from an upstairs room. The slightly open door was visible even from the entrance.
"It was fairly obvious by then there was going to be dead bodies inside this house. But privately the small group was getting anxious about upstairs. Would they find stray animals eating human remains or a criminal doing some sick psychic stuff to his victims? They didn't even know which option would be better...
"They walked up the stairs and the smell got stronger, so did the banging. Behind the old fashioned wooden door on the second floor-"
"Oh no!"
"-Bodies. Everywhere. It was worse than they imagined. He described it like those old Buddhist pictures of hell you see in temples and paintings, with all the damned suffering retribution by boiling all together in a big demon pot. The head of the household's eyes were staring right at them, mouth gaping like a fish, locking gazes and greeting the latest batch of victims into this hell. Mother, daughter and son were all over him in different twisted shapes. You know how humid those old fashioned rooms can be during the summer. In the big demon pot of summer, the bodies boiled in each other and formed a wet and slimy..."
Keiko tapped Uchiyama on the shoulder. "Stop it! That's disgusting."
"You're a nurse aren't you?" The storyteller scoffed. "But I admit it's hard to find something more gross than a body that's been left to rot and stew with all the..."
"I said stop it!"
"That wasn't all, far from it! If you thought that part was terrifying you haven't even gotten to the worst part. Remember the banging noises they heard that beckoned them into that hell? It wasn't just some willow-o-wisp leading them to the bodies. That would've been fine. But they heard the banging quite visibly coming from the closet. The atmosphere was so terrible it clouded their minds and made them forget everything about themselves and their duty, some suggested they just leave whatever was behind there alone. A superstitious spirit awakened in them that made them refuse to go deeper into the hell, my friend admited with shame that he too hesitated. But the banging would not let up. Just like what we're hearing now-"
As if on cue the banging resumed above the bed.
"-it would be subdued one moment, then furious the next. Finally they also heard a voice.
'Help! Let me out! Please let me out!' it was a desperate exhausted voice, running on the last of its energy.
When they realized it was a human voice they regained their senses and dashed to the door. It was stuck and made slippery from all the blood. After a lot of force the door gave up the darkness that was inside it. Out of there just JUMPED a wide eyed crazed attacker! The youngest girl of the Asanuma family had been trapped in there all along!"
"You're lying!" Keiko exclaimed.
"It's true, you can check the newspaper articles if you don't believe me. The girl was feral, she started violently shaking the police officer like a drowning victim. My friend said she lost all of her senses. She was deathly pale and blood red under her eyes from starvation, and the way she clicked her mouth and shook her head made her seem like an insect. And then, she closed her eyes and dropped to the floor."
"Dead?"
"No, you wouldn't believe it. She feel asleep just like that! They took her to the hospital completely baffled at her behaviour and how she managed to survive ten days living in that hell. They found deep marks on the skin of her arms and legs like they were dragged across the tatami room. Most likely she hid in the closet as her parents were murdered and to avoid looking at their corpses she crawled face down on the floor, as if praying to their dead bodies. And like some sort of sinister ritual she'd always go back to the scene of the crime, crawling, dragging herself across the blood and maggot filled floor and back in the closet. And one day the door must've jammed and she got stuck in there. Just like that. Her constant sleeping must have been the body's way to slow down her metabolism to compensate for lack of food and sunlight.
And then she got to the hospital..."
The bang from the ventilator made Keiko yelp.
"The poor girl eventually woke up. The first thing she did was scream. She kept asking, pleading, the nerve-wrecked nurse to remove the tattoo from her. 'Please, please let it stop spreading' she said. The nurse was silent, but the girl kept repeating the same thing over again.
The poor nurse didn't know what to do. She was new, exactly like you now that I think about it. Finally she had the courage to spead 'but you have no tattoos!'
This infurated the Asanuma girl. She had so much intensity that the atmosphere seemed to be sucked in her darkness. She stretched out of bed, hands on the cold floor, then she dropped the rest of her body with a loud thud. One hand in front of the other, just like she had learned in her home turned hell, and crawled. Crawled closer and closer and then-"
Keiko was so absorbed in the story she didn't notice her collegue approaching. Uchiyama grabbed Keiko's sides and started shaking her. "-grabbed the nurse just like this! And then crawled away!"
One nurse shrieked in laughter, the other just shrieked. Maria Uchiyama clutched her sides as she chuckled. "Oh you're too much!"
"And you're too cruel!"
Head nurse Nukata looked sternly at the two subordinates. "Maria you've had your fun, time to go back to work. Besides if you tell all your best stories you'll have nothing for the hundred ghost stories night."
Keiko said, "hundred ghost stories night?"
"Yes," Uchiyama's face slithered into a smile. "During the summer nights all of us get together to tell horror stories concerning the hospital and its patients. But how did you like my story huh? A great way to keep you chilled while they fix the air conditioner, don't you think so Keiko?"
Fixing the air conditioner huh. That was the noise was all about. But still, looking at the small rectangle abovethe bed, the darkness and sound caged in by metallic bars, she wondered.
"There really was an incident like this," the head nurse told her. "It was quite an embarassement for the hospital losing a patient like that. A couple of nurses were attacked during the Asanuma girl's escape, and for a whole month people complained about noise that seemed to be coming from underneath their houses. Those who knew the stories were very worried.
But you don't have to worry about those attacks. Kiriko Asanuma, after all, was found dead a few days ago."
Somehow that didn't comfort Keiko at all.