The Complete Ring Trilogy

by Kōji Suzuki

  “You don’t have time to dawdle. Your deadline is almost here.” Ryuji’s voice grew gradually kinder. “Don’t think you can overcome death without a fight.”

  Asshole! I don’t want to hear your philosophy of life!

  But he finally began to climb over the rim of the well.

  “Attaboy. You finally think you can do it?”

  Asakawa clung to the rope and lowered himself down the inner wall of the well. Ryuji’s face was before his eyes.

  “Don’t worry. There’s nothing down there. Your biggest enemy is your imagination.”

  When he looked up, the beam of the flashlight hit him full in the face, blinding him. He pressed his back against the wall; his grip on the rope began to loosen. His feet slipped against the stones, and he suddenly dropped about a meter. His hands burned from the friction.

  He was dangling just above the surface of the water, but couldn’t make himself go in. He extended one foot, putting it in the water up to his ankle, as if he were testing the temperature of a bath. With the cold touch of the water came gooseflesh, from the tips of his toes to his spine, and he immediately retracted his foot. But his arms were too tired to keep hanging onto the rope. His weight pulled him slowly down, and eventually he couldn’t endure anymore so he planted both feet. Immediately the soft dirt below the water enveloped his feet, submerging them. Asakawa still clung to the rope in front of his eyes. He started to panic. He felt as if a forest of hands were reaching up from the earth to pull him into the mud. The walls were closing in on all sides, leering at him: there’s no escape.

  Ryuji! He tried to scream, but he couldn’t find his voice. He couldn’t breathe. Only a faint, dry sound escaped his throat, and he looked upward like a drowning child. He felt something warm trickle down the insides of his thighs.

  “Asakawa! Breathe!”

  Overcome by the pressure, Asakawa had forgotten to breathe.

  “It’s alright. I’m here.” Ryuji’s voice echoed down to him, and Asakawa managed to suck in a lungful of air.

  He couldn’t control the pounding of his heart. He couldn’t do what he needed to do down here. He desperately tried to think of something else. Something more pleasant. If this well had been outside, under a sky full of stars, it wouldn’t be this horrible. It was because it was covered by cabin B-4 that it was so hard to take. It cut off the escape route. Even with the concrete lid gone, there were only floorboards and spiderwebs above. Sadako Yamamura has lived down here for twenty-five years. That’s right, she’s down here. Right under my feet. This is a tomb, that’s what it is. A tomb. He couldn’t think of anything else. Thought itself was closed off to him, as was any kind of escape. Sadako had tragically ended her life down here, and the scenes that had flashed through her mind at her moment of death had remained here, still strong, through the power of her psyche. And they’d matured down here in this cramped hole, breathing like the ebb and flow of the tide, waxing and waning in strength according to some cycle that had at some point coincided in frequency with the television placed directly overhead; and then they’d made their appearance in the world. Sadako was breathing. From out of nowhere, the sound of breathing enclosed him. Sadako Yamamura, Sadako Yamamura. The syllables repeated themselves in his brain, and her terrifyingly beautiful face came to him out of the photographs, shaking her head coquettishly. Sadako Yamamura was here. Asakawa recklessly began to dig through the earth beneath him, searching for her. He thought of her pretty face and her body, trying to maintain that image. That beautiful girl’s bones, covered in my piss. Asakawa moved the shovel, sifting through the mud. Time no longer mattered. He’d taken off his watch before coming down here. Extreme fatigue and stress had deadened his vexation, and he forgot the deadline he was laboring under. It felt like being drunk. He had no sense of time. Only by the frequency with which the bucket came back down the well to him, and by the beating of his heart, did he have any way of measuring time.

  Finally, Asakawa grasped a large, round rock with both hands. It was smooth and pleasant to the touch, with two holes in its surface. He lifted it out of the water. He washed the dirt out of its recesses. He picked it up by what must once have been earholes and found himself face to face with a skull. His imagination clothed it with flesh. Big, clear eyes returned to the deep, hollow sockets, and flesh appeared above the two holes in the middle, forming itself into an elegant nose. Her long hair was wet, and water dripped from her neck and from behind her ears. Sadako Yamamura blinked her melancholy eyes two or three times to shake the water from her eyelashes. Squeezed between Asakawa’s hands, her face looked painfully distorted. But still, her beauty was unclouded. She smiled at Asakawa, then narrowed her eyes as if to focus her vision.

  I’ve been wanting to meet you. As he thought this, Asakawa slumped down right where he was. He could hear Ryuji’s voice from far overhead.

  Asakawa! Wasn’t your deadline 10:04? Rejoice! It’s 10:10!

  Asakawa, can you hear me? You’re still alive, right? The curse is broken. We’re saved. Hey, Asakawa! If you die down there you’ll end up just like her. If you die, just don’t put a curse on me, okay? If you’re going to die, die nice, would you? Hey, Asakawa! If you’re alive, answer me, damnit!

  He heard Ryuji, but he didn’t really feel saved. He just curled up as if in a dream, as if in another world, clutching Sadako Yamamura’s skull to his chest.

  PART FOUR

  Ripples

  1

  October 19—Friday

  A phone call from the manager’s office woke Asakawa from his slumber. The manager was reminding them that checkout was at 11 a.m., and asking if they’d prefer to stay another night. Asakawa reached out with his free hand and picked up his watch beside his pillow. His arms were tired, just lifting them was an effort. They didn’t hurt yet, but they’d probably ache like hell tomorrow. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, so he couldn’t read the time until he brought the watch right up to his eyes. A few minutes past eleven. Asakawa couldn’t think of how to reply right away. He didn’t even know where he was.

  “Will you be staying another night?” asked the manager, trying to suppress his annoyance. Ryuji groaned right beside him. This wasn’t his own room, that was for sure. It was as if the whole world had been repainted without his knowing it. The thick line connecting past to present and present to future had been cut into two: before his sleep and after it.

  “Hello?”

  Now the manager was worried that there was nobody on the other end of the line. Without even knowing why, Asakawa felt joy flood his breast. Ryuji rolled over and opened his eyes slightly. He was drooling. Asakawa’s memories were hazy; all he found when he searched his recollections was darkness. He could more or less remember visiting Dr Nagao and then heading for Villa Log Cabin, but everything after that was vague. Dark scenes came to him, one after another, and his breath caught in his throat. He felt like he did after waking up from a powerful dream, one that left a strong impression even though he’d forgotten what it was about. But for some reason, his spirits were high.

  “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Asakawa finally managed to reply, adjusting his grip on the receiver.

  “Check-out time is eleven o’clock.”

  “Got it. We’ll get our things together and leave right away.” Asakawa adopted an officious tone to match the manager’s. He could hear a faint trickle of water from the kitchen. It seemed someone hadn’t turned the faucet tight last night before going to sleep. Asakawa hung up the phone.

  Ryuji had closed his eyes again. Asakawa shook him. “Hey, Ryuji. Get up.”

  He had no idea how long they’d slept. Ordinarily, Asakawa slept no more than five or six hours a night, but now he felt like he’d been asleep for much longer than that. It had been a long time since he’d been able to sleep soundly, untroubled.

  “Hey, Ryuji! If we don’t get out of here they’re going to charge us for another night.” Asakawa shook Ryuji harder, but he didn’t wake up. Asa
kawa raised his eyes and saw the milky-white plastic bag on the dining room table. Suddenly, as if some chance happening had brought back a fragment of a dream, he remembered what was inside it. Calling Sadako’s name. Pulling her out of the cold earth under the floor, stuffing her into a plastic bag. The sound of running water … It had been Ryuji, last night, who had gone to the sink and washed the mud from Sadako. The water was still running. By then, the appointed time had already passed. And even now, Asakawa was still alive. He was overjoyed. Death had been breathing down his neck, and now that it had been cleared away, life seemed more concentrated; it began to glow. Sadako’s skull was beautiful, like a marble sculpture.

  “Hey, Ryuji! Wake up!”

  Suddenly, he got a bad feeling. Something caught in a corner of his mind. He put his ear to Ryuji’s chest. He wanted to hear Ryuji’s heart beating through his thick sweatshirt, to know he was still alive. But just as his ear was about to touch Ryuji’s chest, Asakawa suddenly found himself in a headlock, held by two powerful hands. Asakawa panicked and started to struggle.

  “Gotcha! Thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Ryuji released his grip on Asakawa’s head and laughed an odd, childlike laugh. How could he joke around after what they’d just been through? Anything was liable to happen. If at that instant he’d seen Sadako Yamamura alive and standing by the table, and Ryuji tearing at his hair dying, Asakawa would have believed his eyes. He suppressed his anger. He owed Ryuji a great deal.

  “Stop fooling around.”

  “It’s payback time. You scared the bejeezus out of me last night.” Still on his side, Ryuji began to chuckle.

  “What did I do?”

  “You collapsed down there at the bottom of the well. I really thought you’d gone and died. I was worried. Time was up. I thought you were out of the game.”

  Asakawa said nothing, just blinked several times.

  “Hah. You probably don’t even remember. Ungrateful bastard.”

  Now that he thought about it, Asakawa couldn’t remember crawling out of the well on his own. Finally he recalled dangling from the rope, his strength totally spent. Hauling his sixty kilogram frame four or five meters straight up couldn’t have been easy, even for someone of Ryuji’s strength. The image of himself hanging suspended reminded him somehow of the stone statue of En no Ozunu being pulled up from the bottom of the sea. Shizuko had gained mysterious powers for fishing out the statue, but all Ryuji had to show for his troubles were aches and pains.

  “Ryuji?” asked Asakawa in a strangely altered voice.

  “What?”

  “Thanks for everything you’ve done. I really owe you.”

  “Don’t start getting mushy on me.”

  “If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be … well, you know. Anyway, thanks.”

  “Cut the crap. You’re going to make me puke. Gratitude isn’t worth a single yen.”

  “Well then, how about some lunch? I’m buying.”

  “Oh, well in that case.” Ryuji pulled himself to his feet, staggering a little. All of his muscles were stiff. Even Ryuji was having trouble making his body do what he wanted it to.

  From the South Hakone Pacific Land rest house, Asakawa called his wife in Ashikaga and told her he’d pick her up in a rental car Sunday morning, as promised. So, everything’s all taken care of? she asked. All Asakawa could say was, “Probably”. From the fact that he was still here, alive, he could only guess that things were resolved. But as he hung up the phone, something still bothered him deeply. He couldn’t quite get over it. Just from the mere fact that he was alive, he wanted to believe that everything was wrapped up neatly, but … Thinking that Ryuji might have the same doubts, Asakawa walked back to the table and asked, “This is really the end, right?”

  Ryuji had wolfed down his lunch while Asakawa was on the phone.

  “Your family doing alright?” Ryuji wasn’t going to answer Asakawa’s question right away.

  “Yeah. Hey, Ryuji, are you feeling like it’s not all over yet?”

  “You worried?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “About what? What bothers you?”

  “What the old woman said. Next year you’re going to have a child. That prediction of hers.”

  The moment he realized Ryuji had exactly the same doubts, Asakawa turned to trying to dispel those doubts.

  “Maybe the ‘you’, just that once, was referring to Shizuko instead of Sadako.”

  Ryuji rejected this straightaway. “Not possible. The images on that video come from Sadako’s own eyes and mind. The old woman was talking to her. ‘You’ can only refer to Sadako.”

  “Maybe her prediction was false.”

  “Sadako’s ability to foresee the future should have been infallible, one hundred percent.”

  “But Sadako was physically incapable of bearing children.”

  “That’s why it’s so strange. Biologically, Sadako was a man, not a woman, so there was no way she could have a kid. Plus, she was a virgin until right before she died. And …”

  “And?”

  “Her first sexual experience was Nagao. The last smallpox victim in Japan. Quite a coincidence.”

  It was said that in the distant past God and the Devil, cells and viruses, male and female, even light and darkness had been identical, with no internal contradiction. Asakawa began to feel uneasy. Once the discussion moved into the realm of genetic structures, or the cosmos before the creation of the Earth, the answers were beyond the pale of individual questioning. All he could do at this point was to persuade himself to dispel the niggling uncertainties in his heart and tell himself that it was all over.

  “But I’m alive. The riddle of the erased charm is solved. This case is closed.”

  Then Asakawa realized something. Hadn’t the statue of En no Ozunu willed itself to be pulled up from the bottom of the ocean? That will had worked on Shizuko, guiding her actions, and as a result she was given her new power. Suddenly that pattern looked awfully familiar. Bringing Sadako’s bones up from the bottom of the well, fishing En no Ozunu’s statue up from the ocean floor … But what bothered him was the irony: the power Shizuko was given brought her only misery. But that was looking at things the wrong way. Maybe in Asakawa’s case, simply being released from the curse was the equivalent of Shizuko’s receiving power. Asakawa decided to make himself think so.

  Ryuji glanced at Asakawa’s face, reassuring himself that the man before him was, indeed, alive, then nodded twice. “I suppose you do have a point.” Exhaling slowly, he sank back into his chair. “And yet …”

  “What?”

  Ryuji sat up straight and asked, as if to himself, “What did Sadako give birth to?”

  2

  Asakawa and Ryuji parted company at Atami Station. Asakawa intended to take Sadako’s remains back to her relatives in Sashikiji and have them hold a memorial service for her. They probably wouldn’t even know what to do with her, a distant relative they hadn’t heard a peep out of in nearly thirty years. But, things being what they were, he couldn’t just abandon her. If he hadn’t known who she was, he could have had her buried as a Jane Doe. But he knew, and so all he could do was hand her over to the people in Sashikiji. The statute of limitations was long past, and it would be nothing but trouble to bring up a murder now, so he decided to say she’d probably been a suicide. He wanted to hand her off and then return immediately to Tokyo, but the boat didn’t depart that often. Leaving now, he’d end up having to spend the night on Oshima. Since he’d have to leave the rental car in Atami, flying back to Tokyo would just make things more complicated.

  “You can deliver her bones all by yourself. You don’t need me for that.” As he’d said this, getting out of the car in front of Atami Station, Ryuji seemed to be laughing at Asakawa. Sadako’s bones were no longer in the plastic bag. They were wrapped neatly in a black cloth in the back seat of the car. To be sure, it was such a small bundle that even a child could have delivered it to the Yamamura hous
e in Sashikiji. The point was to get them to accept her. If they refused, then Asakawa wouldn’t have anywhere to take her. That would be troublesome. He had the feeling that the charm would only be completely fulfilled when someone close to her held services for her. But still: why should they believe him when he showed up on their doorstep with a bag of bones, saying this is your relative whom you haven’t heard from in twenty-five years? What proof did he have? Asakawa was still a little worried.

  “Well, happy trails. See you in Tokyo.” Ryuji waved and went through the ticket gate. “If I didn’t have so much work, I wouldn’t mind tagging along, but you know how it is.” Ryuji had a mountain of work, scholarly articles and the like, that needed immediate attention.

  “Let me thank you again.”

  “Forget about it. It was fun for me, too.”

  Asakawa watched until Ryuji disappeared into the shadow of the stairs leading to the platform. Just before disappearing from view, Ryuji stumbled on the steps. Although he quickly regained his balance, for a brief moment as he swayed Ryuji’s muscular form seemed to go double in Asakawa’s vision. Asakawa realized he was tired, and rubbed his eyes. When he took his hands away, Ryuji had disappeared up the stairs. A curious sensation pierced his breast, and somewhere he detected the faint scent of citrus …

  That afternoon, he delivered Sadako’s remains to Takashi Yamamura without incident. He’d just returned from a fishing voyage, and as soon as he saw the black wrapped bundle he seemed to know what it was. Asakawa held it out in both hands and said, “These are Sadako’s remains.”

  Takashi gazed at the bundle for a while, then narrowed his eyes tenderly. He shuffled over to Asakawa, bowed deeply, and accepted the bones, saying, “thank you for coming all this way”. Asakawa was a bit taken aback. He hadn’t thought the old man would accept it that easily. Takashi seemed to guess what he was thinking, and he said, in a voice full of conviction, “It’s definitely Sadako.”