Dark Water

by Kōji Suzuki

Don’t let it get to you, he chastised himself. It’s just your nerves. Hurry and contact the Wakashio!

  He was unsure about how to operate the set. He felt that by fiddling with it long enough, he’d eventually get through. But when he turned on the switch, the radio refused to come alive. Examining the rear of the set, he realized that the battery connection cord had been severed, probably to prevent anyone from using the set. Incredible. No means of communication. Relax, relax

  If he lost his head, he was bound to make mistakes. It was imperative that he think things through calmly. There was no need to rush. Whatever was going on, the seaman on watch aboard the Wakashio VII was bound to notice that the yacht was no longer in tow. They probably knew already. They were sure to retrace their course and could be there on the horizon by now.

  Kazuo thrust his head from the cockpit and gazed in a northerly direction. No signs of the ship. He strained his ears in vain for the familiar old blast of her steam whistle.

  It then occurred to Kazuo that they hadn’t noticed yet. After all, seamen on watch were more often than not preoccupied with the fore view, seldom paying attention to what was behind the ship. They happened to be towing a boat on that particular occasion, but old habits died hard. No one could have possibly imagined that the rope would work itself loose in the first place. To make matters worse, the yacht’s navigating lights had been off all the time. They might not notice until morning that the boat in tow was missing.

  There were still a few hours to sunrise. Yet those few hours seemed like an eternity. Kazuo was not at all sure that he could hold out that long against the indescribable presence that pervaded the boat. Like most seamen, Kazuo tended to be superstitious. Venturing out to sea, nature’s untrammelled domain, you often encounter phenomena that are beyond the pale of human understanding. You stand a far greater chance of experiencing the paranormal at sea than on land.

  There was no longer any room for doubt. The boat’s owner and his family had disappeared through no accident; some mysterious force had worked upon them. What they’d dreamed, they’d gone and done. Goaded by a malevolent force… And it was trying to control Kazuo now.

  ‘Please help me,’ prayed Kazuo. Though he worshipped no god, there seemed to be no other way to stave off his fear.

  There had to be some explanation. Kazuo tried to think as logically as he could. Thinking, and acting, could distract him if nothing else.

  … Was the boat always cursed? No, something happened on this voyage. When?

  Kazuo retrieved the boat’s log and began turning the pages. During the night of the 23rd, all members of the family had the same dream. On the following day, the daughter, Yoko, sensed the presence of someone else on the boat. This meant that they must have picked up whatever it was on or before the 23rd. ‘Picked up’? The words came to him just like that. But indeed, they’d picked up something nefarious. Didn’t the log say something of the sort? Kazuo seemed to remember a passage that he’d merely skimmed. The incident had seemed insignificant to the father, who’d barely mentioned it in the log, and so the reader hadn’t given it much attention either.

  Kazuo hurriedly turned the pages in search of the section. He was sure there’d been something of the sort.

  ‘Here it is!’ The entry was dated July 23rd and appeared to have been made at around noon.

  …Yoko has this annoying habit of picking up any shell she finds. She found something very odd this time. Strange that it should have been drifting in the ocean. It’s a bottle containing some kind of shell, resembling a bivalve. The shell is about the size of a human hand and much larger than the neck of the bottle, but there it is inside the corked bottle. I wonder how anyone could have gotten the shell into it without damaging the bottle. Surely the thing can’t have grown to that size in the bottle? Perish the thought!

  I told her to throw the thing away, but she ignored me and hid it somewhere where Daddy can’t find it. She’s clearly afraid I’ll toss it overboard if ever I find it. But Daddy isn’t so cruel as to throw away any of her treasures, even that shell. I wonder why Yoko doesn’t find the shell ‘creepy’. The shell’s pattern looks like an eye. If you hold the bottle up and take a close look, it’s really quite frightening, the way it seems to be staring back at you.

  Those are EYES if ever I saw one. Normally the inside of a half-open shell is a lustrous pearly colour. But this shell has a fleshy mound bulging out on each side. It’s altogether different from the thin muscle that pulls the halves together; it looks like flesh, with scarlet capillaries on the surface. The lens and gelatinous cornea are a cloudy brown, with the overall shape of the eye slightly warped. They resemble the eyes of a rotting tuna and seem to exude malevolence. An uncanny gaze I must say. We really should get rid of the thing! Treasure or not, I can’t stand it. Where could the silly girl have hidden it?…

  Sometime around midday on the 23rd, Yoko had found a bottle and picked it out of the sea. The bottle contained a shell resembling a bivalve. What was more, the shell bore a pattern that looked exactly like an eye.

  …This is it. The source of the curse.

  The problem was where the daughter had concealed the shell. He had to find it and find it fast. And then what? Return it back to the sea, of course.

  Since the couple had been sleeping in the aft berth, the children must have been using the fore berth. Ever conscious of what was behind him, Kazuo began to go through the contents of the locker.

  His consciousness seemed to skip, and the next thing he knew, he was staring at his hand, which was on the locker door, as though none of this really concerned him. His hand seemed to be an organ separate from his own body. When the hand moved slightly, he felt the urge to crush it. He wanted to destroy every animate object, every living thing. A gaze that bore down on him from God-knew-where told him to.

  Throwing his head back with a growl of defiance, he fought the murderous urge. If he didn’t hurry, it would get the better of him. Losing the battle meant doing to himself what he’d done in his dream.

  He didn’t stop at the fore berth; in the main cabin, in the aft berth, he searched every nook and cranny that could hide anything. Yet he found nothing like a shell in a bottle.

  ‘Where could the damned kid have hidden it?’

  Taking his anger out on the boat’s furnishings, Kazuo turned the whole place upside down.

  Before he knew it, his elbow was bleeding. He had apparently struck it on the corner of the table during his rampage. Could he have done it on purpose? He simply couldn’t say. He couldn’t even recall, beyond a haze, what he’d been doing a few seconds ago. Touching the lukewarm, viscous stuff with his left hand, confirming the colour of blood, he panicked and went on another mad rampage. He no longer knew whether he was searching for the bottle or just trying to maim himself. He cut his shin on the shard of a broken wine bottle, and soon slipped in the blood, landing forcefully on his buttocks.

  Yet, for all his fervour, his search was in vain.

  …I can’t stay here.

  It occurred to him to escape. It could just make things worse for him, but he hadn’t the leisure to think about it. Chanting can’t stay here’ like some magic charm, he found a flashlight and made his way out on deck. There was nothing but sea on all sides. He had to resist the urge to jump overboard.

  …Gotta escape!

  Shining the flashlight over the deck ahead as he moved, he searched for the lifeboat stowed at the rear of the cockpit. Upon boarding the cruiser, they’d confirmed that the lifeboat was still there.

  Praying, he opened the locker, and there to his immense relief he found what he was after. This was the only chance he had left. The Maritime Safety Agency was bound to dispatch another aircraft in the morning. The lifeboat was brightly coloured so as to be clearly visible from the air. They would find him sure enough. It also had a stock of several flares. Placing the container holding the boat at the edge of the deck, Kazuo pulled the tag as directed in the instruction manual. The lifeboat emitted a q
uiet hiss and began inflating. Securing it with a thin rope, he lowered it into the sea. Before climbing into it, he looked around one last time. He caught sight of three waterproof bags marked SUPPLY SACK in the container. The owner must have specially prepared them to supplement the emergency supplies that came with the lifeboat. Guessing that they contained water and food, Kazuo tossed all three bags into the lifeboat and jumped in after them.

  It was probably because there hadn’t been much wave action that the whole thing had gone smoothly. Just six feet in diameter, the circular boat was labelled as being good for six people, but it was cramped enough even for one.

  Kazuo cast off the mooring rope, and the lifeboat rocked unsteadily away from the yacht. He was surprised to find no relief in watching the yacht steadily recede into the distance. He could only rationalize to himself that it was the anxiety of being in such a frail craft as the rubber float. As he thrust his legs out in front of him, he felt the motion of the sea on his rump through the bottom. Compared to the cruiser, this boat was like a leaf.

  More than a hundred feet had opened up between Kazuo and the yacht. The sensation of being watched should have been gone by now. Yet, far from fading, it seemed to have grown in intensity. His adrenaline level was rocketing, but now he had nowhere to escape. Off the lifeboat there was nothing for him but death.

  He watched as an irrevocable distance opened up between him and the yacht. Just as she disappeared out of sight into the darkness, his mind seemed to jump the rails. His perceptions became so clouded that he was no longer capable of understanding what exactly was happening. Countless people were conversing in his head at once. The incoherent din sounded like the roar that dominates the floor of the stock exchange. Eventually the voices merged into one and prodded him from behind. Kazuo thrust his hands into the sea and scooped up seawater to bathe his aching temples. Leaning out over the side, he sunk his face into the seawater and peered down below. A dark, fathomless vortex was spiralling at the bottom of the night time sea. Gazing into it, Kazuo was nearly sucked in.

  He never did notice. Kazuo never did find out where the daughter had hidden the small glass bottle. She’d tucked it away in a SUPPLY SACK. Tossed onto the lifeboat, it now sat snugly between the rubber bottom and the side tubing. In the silver sack, among packs of water and cans of food, the eyes kept quiet.

  VI – WATERCOLOURS

  1

  Early in the evening on a late summer day, the bridge over Shibaura Canal was swaying in the wind. On either side of the canal, old buildings rubbed shoulders with new ones in a higgledy-piggledy array, and strong gusts of wind blew in through the spaces between them. Looking south from mid-bridge, the third building was stained black with what looked like streaks of soot on its rear and side walls. Whether the black streaks were grime accumulated over many long years or an artificial design was hard to say.

  Until two summers ago, the building housed a discotheque called Mephisto on its third, fourth, and fifth floors. Each floor had a separate entrance, and customers could enter the disco through their entrance of choice, depending on how the spirit moved them at the time. The higher the floor, the more extreme the music, fashion, and interior design. Dancers on the fifth floor were mostly half-naked women clad in black bondage gear. Unable to join their ecstatic coterie, most men contented themselves with viewing them from the side.

  In those days, you didn’t have to go far in this neighbourhood before you caught sight of women trussed up in bondage fashion. They used to walk the streets outside in the garb they danced in. When they had to take the train, they draped a coat or cape over themselves to conceal their exposed flesh.

  Women clad in what amounted to nothing more than underwear vanished with the bursting of Japan’s ‘bubble economy’. Just where did they all go? The whereabouts of at least one of these women is known. Her name is Noriko Kikuchi and she has drifted back to this neighbourhood. Her frenetic dancing experience at Mephisto had taught her the joys of self-expression. She thus became an actress with a small theatrical troupe, and it was in such a guise that she returned to the same building that once dominated the times.

  Tokyo is home to countless small theatrical troupes. Although it is estimated there are three thousand, the fact is that it is virtually impossible to ascertain the exact figure. Many groups will assemble and disperse for a single production, resulting in a different total emerging with every reckoning.

  Many of these small troupes are nothing more than groups of like-minded individuals who get together now and then to offer performances to small audiences of less than three hundred per run. Yet some will on occasion make it to such venerable venues as Kinokuniya Hall and the Honda Theatre. The provisional goal of people involved in these groups is to perform at such noted playhouses.

  The theatrical company that Noriko belonged to appeared set to attain that goal. Called Kairin Maru, which made it sound like a fishing boat, the troupe was on its way up, having attracted an audience of more than fifteen hundred to its last production. Mustering an audience of over two thousand on their next run, they believed, was their ticket to Kinokuniya Hall. Members of the troupe had all pinned their hopes on Manager-Director Kenzo Kiyohara, a man of superhuman energy. If the troupe managed to get bigger, it would catch the eye of the mass media, making it more likely that the actors would get the kind of break they sought. The future of the troupe members thus lay in the capable hands of Kiyohara.

  The playhouse that Kiyohara had chosen for the performance of their next play was that building wedged between the Shibaura Canal and the First Metropolitan Expressway – the building that had been the home of Mephisto until the year before last. The lighting, acoustic, and other equipment had all been left behind, making it not an altogether incongruous setting for a playhouse. After the disco had gone out of business, the owner of the building had been hard-pressed even to rent the premises out as a venue for local community events. It had never hosted anything like a full-scale drama production. The decision to stage that particular play must have involved a fair amount of risk; some leading members of the troupe had vigorously opposed the choice. Yet their misgivings transformed into fervent enthusiasm upon seeing the script. They appreciated the multi-layered composition of the play, the way the stage settings would use the building’s structure to impressive effect. As every member of the troupe agreed, difficult though it would be to pull off, it was a challenge well worth taking on.

  Kiyohara was constantly striking out in new and original directions. He believed that the scenario for a play should change according to the contours of a playhouse, and with it the performances. Any troupe’s rendering was likely to become somewhat stereotypical after a dozen or so performances. What set performances by Kairin Maru apart was that the troupe managed to avoid this pitfall. This was mainly due to Kiyohara’s constant pursuit of freshness. Yet the theatre is always a chancy business; it is impossible to gauge how something will go until the night of the performance. Kiyohara and the members of his troupe were brimming with both anxiety and expectation as the opening performance drew near. If all went according to plan, the path to Kinokuniya Hall would be theirs to walk. Conversely, if the performance went off badly, their collective goal was likely to remain tantalizingly beyond reach for some time to come.

  2

  The third floor of the building was roughly parallel to the Metropolitan Expressway. Every time a truck drove past, the building would vibrate. The roar of traffic did penetrate the building and could be heard by the audience, but not enough to distract attention from the performance.

  As director, Kiyohara always sat among the audience, scrutinizing the stage from their perspective. He would mercilessly point out any mistakes he noted in the performance to cast members once the curtain came down. Accused cast members would have to rethink their roles and make proper adjustments by the next day. Thus, their theatrical production underwent a transformation even after opening night, right through to the final performance. A play honed t
o perfection over two months of rehearsal would often be turned upside down after the first performance. It was Kiyohara’s practice to use feedback from the audience to refine the production.

  As he briefly scanned the audience gathered to watch the first performance, he noticed that there were no empty seats in the house. The floor space once used for the disco was flat, and seating had to be provided by stacking boards to form tiers, which involved a great deal of exertion. The effort was more than rewarded, however, when spectators filled the seating to capacity. If the audience continued to pour in as they were doing on this opening night, the troupe should easily exceed their target of two thousand over the fifteen scheduled performances. Kiyohara looked away from the stage and drew a long breath of relief.

  A telephone was ringing onstage. The young woman played by Noriko Kikuchi reached to answer it.

  She wore a running outfit with a scarf wrapped around her head, the kind of look she’d never have permitted herself back in her disco days. Before her outstretched hand could lift the receiver, she heard a man’s voice behind her and started to turn around. That very instant, Kiyohara noticed something that had definitely not been there in rehearsal: Noriko and the actor behind her seemed to lose their concentration. Noriko brought her hand up to her cheek, and glanced up toward some point on the ceiling. Reacting to this, the actor behind her also looked up at the ceiling. Kiyohara, shocked, almost stood up from his seat. Water was dripping from the ceiling. Drops of water were dripping down, wetting Noriko’s cheek. This accident had diverted the actors’ concentration from their roles.

  * * *

  Yuichi Kamiya in the sound effects booth was pissed off. Having voiced to Kiyohara a difference of opinion, he’d been replaced at the last minute. He was still unhappy about being relegated to the non-acting staff. On the face of it, he had voluntarily stepped down from the role and the part was given to a junior actor who’d been his understudy. But that was only the story put forth to cover his dismissal. Everyone in the troupe knew the truth. Kamiya was simply the latest proof that going against Kiyohara, autocratic director-manager, meant losing your part.