Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [40]
The place that should have been the main entrance was covered with a particularly thick tarp, which was secured, not with a rope, but with a large padlock. Mr. Daimatsu presumably was holding on to the key until he could find another construction company to carry on with the project. He must have opened the lock before Wataru and Katchan arrived on the day they had met, so that he could inspect the interior.
Wataru peeked between two of the sheets. He could just make out some steel beams and what looked like a staircase. The place smelled faintly of mold. He glanced down at the digital display on his watch.
08:19:32
Why would Mr. Daimatsu have brought Kaori here on a walk so late at night? If he wanted to inspect the place, he could have easily done so during the day. Why go to the trouble of coming so late? Maybe he couldn’t bear to see Kaori’s broken body under the unforgiving light of day? Maybe Kaori herself didn’t like going out when it was hot? Or maybe it wasn’t the bright sunlight she hated but the strangers who filled the streets. All those people—and not a single one had come to her aid.
Wataru wished that he knew the details of what had happened so that he wouldn’t have to suffer through the painful images his imagination dreamed up. Even more, he wished he hadn’t heard about it in the first place.
Standing there, he couldn’t help comparing this ill-fated, partially completed building to Kaori. A lifeless husk, meaninglessly abandoned to the depredations of wind and rain, wasting away little by little. This wasn’t just a building, it was her soul.
For a moment, Wataru was too lost in the sorrow and indignation swirling through him to be aware of his surroundings or to see what was happening right before his eyes. When he did see, he blinked. Impossible. Even a fifth grader knows the difference between what should be real and what shouldn’t be. This was a fantasy, a phantasm, a…
Somebody was pressing gingerly against the padlocked tarp from the inside. He saw a hand. Wataru’s mouth dropped open. It’s moving. The hand was oddly pale, not a woman’s hand. It was too wrinkled and dry. It looked like the hand of his grandfather—the one who lived in Odawara.
Slowly, the hand lifted up the sheet, widening the gap between it and its neighbor. Someone was peeking through at Wataru.
“Whoa!” Wataru’s delayed astonishment leapt from his mouth in the form of a shout. The hand withdrew, and the tarp fell shut. The padlock rattled.
Somebody’s in there!
Wataru crouched and grabbed the bottom of the sheet. It was a lot heavier than it looked, but by using both hands he was able to lift it about a foot off of the ground. He crawled under, into the building, slithering so hastily that his face touched the ground and came up smeared with muck, but he paid it no mind. He was inside.
Wataru got up on his knees, only now realizing how dark the place was. The only light came from thin beams from the streetlights sneaking in through spaces between the tarps. He could see the concrete foundation, rising steel struts, a staircase leading upward to his right—all transformed into blacker lumps of darkness in the dim light.
Wataru heard a noise off to his right. He whirled around. Above him, the staircase twisted up, turning on a landing between the first and second floors, another between the second and third floors, another between the third and fourth floors…and there the stairs ended. It looked like they had built the third landing and then just stopped. Wataru squinted in the darkness.
Someone was climbing the stairs.
Chapter 6
The Door
Wataru’s mouth gaped. For a moment he could do nothing but stand there, blinking in disbelief.
The figure stood on the landing between the third and fourth floors, so close to the edge that one step farther would have sent it tumbling down. Its black silhouette was thin and tall, and