The Graveyard Apartment (33 page)

“I really doubt that,” Misao retorted. “It was working fine last night. Is it normal for a fairly new set like this to suddenly break down?”

“I don't think so,” Tatsuji said.

Misao was overcome by a feeling of panic. She told herself it was preposterous—surely there had to be some rational explanation for this latest outage—but even so she couldn't bear to look at the TV set.

Teppei had been in the bedroom getting dressed, but now he appeared in the living room with an extraordinarily tense expression on his face. Ignoring the group clustered around the malfunctioning television, he angrily tramped across the room and put one hand on the sliding door to the balcony.

Tatsuji and Naomi had been busy pounding on the TV set and clicking through the channels one by one, to no avail. They paused and looked over at Teppei. “This is really weird,” he said, with a heavy sigh.

“What's weird?” Misao asked in a calm voice, making a conscious effort to conceal her rising feelings of apprehension. Teppei shot her a severe look, and she thought for a moment that he might be about to yell at her. But he just said flatly, “They won't open.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the windows, and this door. None of them will open.”

“Don't be silly,” Tatsuji laughed. His tone was relaxed and playful. “They probably just need to be unlocked. When the latches are on, windows won't open no matter how hard you push or pull, you know.”

“Why don't you come over here and try, since you're such an expert?” Teppei snapped, reaching out and grabbing Tatsuji roughly by the arm.

Tatsuji was still smiling as he looked back and caught Misao's eye. “I think your husband must still be half asleep,” he joked. “He isn't usually this hopeless about mechanical things.”

Misao didn't bother trying to come up with a glib response. Instead, she ran over to the glass door. She quickly confirmed that the latch was unfastened, but the door refused to move. “You're right,” she said. “It won't open.”

“The windows in our bedroom and the nursery are all the same. I couldn't get any of them to open, either. Oh, and the bathroom, too,” Teppei added. He and Misao swapped a worried look.

Tatsuji, meanwhile, was tugging on the door to the balcony, using all his strength to try to force it open. It almost seemed as if he was attempting to pull out the entire wall, door and all.

“What's happening?” Naomi cried, but no one paid any attention.

Saying a silent prayer, Misao sprinted over to the entryway and grabbed the knob of the apartment's front door. It opened easily, and when she went into the corridor she saw the elevator off to one side, as usual.

“The front door's still working, at least,” she announced as she walked back into the apartment. Teppei had run over to join her, and he looked enormously relieved when he grabbed the doorknob and felt it turn under his hand.

“I wonder why it's only the windows and the sliding door that won't open,” he said, catching Misao's eye. “I mean, the front door's fine.”

“I know. It's not like someone could sneak up overnight and nail them shut from the outside, especially since we're on the eighth floor.”

“You should go check all the windows yourself. I'd be willing to bet that none of them will open,” Teppei suggested in a low voice. When Misao looked closely at her husband, she was startled to see that the skin around his eyes was unnaturally black and blue, as if someone had beaten him up.

“You really aren't looking very well,” she said.

“Well, you aren't going to win any beauty pageants this morning, either,” he retorted grouchily.

Just then Naomi came up next to them and began to complain about something. Paying no attention to her sister-in-law, Misao headed for the master bedroom. The morning sunlight was still pouring in through the glass of the closed window, and the room was already unpleasantly warm. The bed hadn't been made, and Tamao's discarded teddy bear lay forgotten amid the untidy tangle of sheets and pillows.

After checking to make sure the latch wasn't engaged, Misao gave the bedroom window a sharp tug. The window simply wouldn't budge at all. It was as if someone had intentionally sealed it shut by slathering glue around the entire frame.

In the near distance, Misao could see the buildings of the cityscape gleaming in the morning sun, which blazed down relentlessly despite the early hour. The sky was cloudless and clear. With her illustrator's eye, Misao noticed that the color of the sky today was unusually deep. It appeared to be closer to indigo than the normal robin's-egg blue.

Moving on to the nursery, Misao tried the window there, with no success. Naomi joined her, placing her own fingers on the immovable glass as she said, “I don't understand what's going on. How can all the windows get stuck overnight? That's unbelievable. And what's with the TV?”

“I think it must have something to do with atmospheric conditions,” Misao replied. She didn't believe that for a minute, but she felt the need to provide some reassurance. “There's been a lot of humidity lately, and the window seals must have gotten swollen. Either that, or the grooves where the panes slide back and forth somehow got corroded. I don't really understand it, either.”

The men had joined them in Tamao's room while Misao was speaking, and now Tatsuji said mockingly, “Humidity? You honestly think that's a plausible theory? I mean, can excess humidity really cause every single window in a modern apartment to become impossible to open overnight?”

Of course not, but can't we all just pretend to believe that, for now?
Misao cried in her heart.
If we don't hang on to some kind of logical explanation, then the two of you are going to get so freaked out that you won't be able to stand being here, even for another couple of hours!
She didn't say anything out loud, though.

Tamao was loitering nearby, clinging tightly to Cookie's neck, and as the adults headed back to the living room she watched their every move with eyes that were wider than usual. The corridor was piled high with cardboard boxes, and when Naomi bumped into one of them she swore like a sailor, then bent over to rub one shin.

“Well, anyway, this isn't the type of problem that can be solved by deductive reasoning,” Tatsuji said with a phony-looking smile. “The windows are just stuck. Why don't we stop for a coffee break and then try again later?”

“No, but really: what the hell is going on?” Teppei demanded rhetorically, in a voice that was close to a growl. “This is really freaking me out.”

“You think?” Tatsuji said in a sardonic tone as he squatted down and joined Naomi in trying to knead away the pain from her shin bump. “The bottom line is that it wasn't very smart to buy an apartment right next to a graveyard.”

“Why don't you just shut up for once?” Teppei bellowed.

“Hey, there's no reason to shout at me,” Tatsuji said, suppressing a chuckle that bore a clear undertone of contempt. Teppei took a deep breath and glanced at Misao, as if asking her to rescue him.

Misao couldn't think of anything appropriate to say, so she just crouched down next to Tamao, pulled her daughter's little head close to her own palpitating chest, and held it there for a long moment.

 

19

July 26, 1987 (9:00 a.m.)

Everyone sat down to breakfast with grim faces and heavy hearts. The radio had been left on all morning, and while they were eating, a program called “American Pops Best Ten” filled the air with a series of popular songs, one after another.

Naomi would occasionally muse, “Oh, I know this one,” in an almost unconscious way. Every time, without fail, Tatsuji bristled as though his wife had said something confrontational. Then he would glare at her, saying things like, “Oh yeah? Well, it just so happens
I
know this song, too!” with a childish show of belligerence. All the adults were downing cup after cup of strong coffee, and no one asked for a second helping of ham toast.

In another hour or so it would be ten o'clock. There was still quite a bit of work to do before the moving truck arrived, but when Misao thought about the prospect of having to stay in this abominable place for even another sixty minutes, every inch of skin on her body seemed to break out in gooseflesh.

“Listen,” she said to Teppei, “maybe we could call the moving company and ask them to send a truck over as soon as possible, instead of waiting.”

Teppei was immediately on board. “Good idea—let's do that right now,” he said. “The sooner they get here, the better. The company's located right next to the station, so it shouldn't be a problem to move up our appointment.”

Misao fumbled around in her shoulder bag for a moment and finally fished out the business card the moving company's representatives had given her when they stopped by to provide an estimate. Holding the card in one hand, she lifted the handset of the telephone with the other. It was only a second or two after she put the receiver to her ear that she realized something was wrong. Feeling as if her entire body had been immersed in a vat filled with ice water, she whispered, “What should I do? I can't get through.” Still clutching the lifeless telephone, she looked beseechingly at Teppei.

“Maybe you just dialed the wrong number,” he said. “Or maybe there was a misprint on the card?”

Slowly, Misao shook her head from side to side. “It has nothing to do with the number,” she said. “The phone is dead. There's no dial tone at all.”

All the grown-ups looked at one another, their eyes moving from face to face, but no one said a word. Tatsuji was holding a coffee spoon, and he banged it down loudly on his saucer.

“What the hell is the matter with this apartment, anyway? First the TV breaks, then the windows won't open, and now it's the telephone. This is outrageous. I mean, it's a brand-new building!”

“I'm going to go take a look downstairs,” Teppei said, jumping out of his chair so abruptly that it toppled over backward. He dashed across the room at top speed, heading for the front door.

“What do you mean, ‘downstairs'? And what are you going to look at?” Misao demanded, chasing after him in a panic. “Please tell me you aren't going to the basement!”

“No, absolutely not. I just want to take a quick look around outside. I'll be back in a jiffy.”

“Okay,” Misao said reluctantly, grabbing hold of the black T-shirt Teppei was wearing. “But it's just so—I mean, why is all this stuff happening, anyway?”

“I don't have the foggiest idea,” Teppei replied in a low voice.

“I'm going with you,” Misao declared. “Hey, maybe we could get Tatsuji to run over to the moving company's office in his car and ask if they could send the truck a little bit earlier?”

“That could work.” Teppei paused with his hand on the front doorknob.

“Mama?” Tamao came up from behind, and Misao put an arm around her daughter's shoulders. “Don't worry,” she said, “Mama isn't going anywhere yet. I need you to do me a favor, though. Could you please run and get Uncle Tatsuji?”

Tamao rushed off, and a few seconds later Tatsuji appeared in the entry hall. “You want me to drive over and talk to the movers, right? Sure, I can do that. Just give me the address.” He spoke in a petulant tone, out of habit, but his face was contorted with genuine concern.

“Come on, I'll tell you on the way,” Teppei said shortly as he marched out into the corridor. He went over to the elevator and hit the call button.

After hastily asking Naomi to keep an eye on Tamao, Misao ran into the hall and jumped in the elevator with her husband and his brother.

Tatsuji took the car keys out of a pocket in his casual slacks and began to juggle them noisily in one hand. “This is really getting to be a drag,” he said, turning down his mouth in an expression of displeasure. “Seriously, I need to know. What on earth is going on here? I mean, did some clueless service center somewhere decide to disable the utilities in this building before you guys had moved out? Even to the point of cutting off the phone line?”

When Teppei didn't respond, Tatsuji shot Misao a pleading look. Misao just gave a helpless shrug.

“Well, anyway, this has really turned into the moving day from hell,” Tatsuji went on in an unnaturally high voice. “I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm just astounded.” With that, he began tossing his keys in the air and then catching them, the way a child might play with a beanbag.

Teppei stood silently in front of the elevator's display panel. 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … When the indicator light for the ground floor finally lit up, the elevator gave a slight shudder and stopped. Slowly, the doors slid open.

Teppei raced toward the front door, with Misao close behind and Tatsuji bringing up the rear. Misao stopped dead in her tracks at almost the exact same moment that Teppei let out an incredulous “
What?!
”

The glass door at the building's entrance was solidly, opaquely white. It looked as though someone had slathered white paint onto the glass, making it impossible to see outside.

“What—what is this?” Tatsuji's eyes were wide with fear and bewilderment. “Is it some kind of prank?”

Teppei didn't reply. Silently, he approached the door. From deep in his throat a hoarse, suffocated cry—somewhere between a wail of anguish and the wheeze of a poorly played flute—fought its way up to his mouth and escaped into the air. Misao and Tatsuji exchanged a fraught glance as Teppei stretched out his arm and pointed at the door with one quivering index finger, then looked back and caught their horrified eyes.

In what felt like a superhuman act of will, Misao forced her gaze to follow Teppei's pointing finger. Not daring to breathe, she walked over to the door.