The Graveyard Apartment (34 page)

From a distance, it had appeared to be covered with white paint, but up close Misao saw that wasn't the case. Rather, the door was plastered with innumerable handprints.

The prints had clearly been made by a horde of people—or something. It looked as though those entities, whatever they were, had dipped the palms of their hands into some kind of wet, pastelike white substance and then slapped them all over the door until the glass was completely obscured. The handprints were so thick that not even the tiniest bit of light seeped in from outside. Small hands, large hands, muscular hands, smooth hands, wrinkled hands; the imprints were so clear that you could distinguish the whorls on the individual fingertips, and one of the prints had clearly been made by a hand that was missing a finger.

Missing a finger…?
As Misao pondered the significance of that mind-boggling discovery, she felt her morning coffee making its way back up her esophagus, borne along on a wave of gastric acid. Just then Tatsuji, looking like someone who had suddenly taken leave of his senses, flew toward the door and tried to open it. When that failed, he began hurling himself against the glass, but the door was as impregnable as the entrance to any metal bank vault.

“We need to use something to break it down!” Teppei shouted. “That's the only way we'll be able to get out.”

“What's going on? What's wrong with this door?”

“There's no time to explain now,” Teppei told his brother. “We just need to concentrate on getting out of here as quickly as possible.”

“But, but—” Tatsuji sputtered, saliva flying from the corners of his mouth like salt spray on the crest of a wave. “But Tepp, those things, the marks on the door … those are people's handprints!”

“Yes, I know.”

“So it has to be a prank, or vandalism, right? Somebody was just fooling around late at night. Maybe some bored teenagers, or something like that.”

Ignoring his brother's question, Teppei reached out and grabbed Misao's wrist. His eyelids were twitching, but he managed to speak in a calm, gentle tone. “Could you please run upstairs and get the hammer? If you can't find it, just bring us a sturdy chair or something. Anything we can use to break down this door would be fine.”

Wait, you're going to break it down?
That's what Misao intended to say, but when she opened her mouth to speak, no sound emerged. After swallowing repeatedly in a futile attempt to moisten her dry throat, she finally managed to croak, “I'll go and get it right now.”

She took the elevator up to the eighth floor, and no sooner had she walked into the apartment than Naomi came rushing up in a full-blown tizzy. “What's going on?” she demanded, her face distorted by anxiety.

“I need to find the hammer,” Misao replied as she brushed by.

“A hammer? What do you need that for? Nobody ever tells me anything. And where are Tatsuji and Teppei, anyway?”

“They're downstairs.” Misao was certain she had put a hammer, a couple of screwdrivers, and some other basic tools into a large plastic bag, on the assumption that those items would be needed very soon after they arrived at the new house. But where had she put that bag? She began to rummage frantically through some cardboard packing boxes that hadn't yet been taped up. Finally she found the hammer and, holding it up like a weapon, made a beeline for the door.

“Mama!” Tamao came running after her. “I'm going with you.”

Misao was standing in the entryway with one sandal on and one still off, but now she stopped and looked intently at her daughter. Tamao's face was oddly flat and bloated, as though she might be running a low-grade fever, and she wore an expression of undisguised distress.

“Everything's going to be all right,” Misao said firmly. “We'll find a way to make it work.”

“What are you talking about? Find a way to make
what
work?” Naomi screamed. “What's going on down there?”

Misao averted her eyes. There wasn't time to explain everything right now, but she knew she needed to say something. “The front door of the building won't open,” she finally said. “So we're going to use this hammer to break it down.”

“What? Please, tell me this is all a sick joke.”

“I wish I could.” Misao sighed.

Naomi burst into the kind of loud, raucous laughter Misao remembered hearing on numerous festive occasions when her sister-in-law had guzzled a few too many cocktails. “Okay, Misao,” she said, her face suddenly stony. “Let me get this straight. You're telling me the only way to get out of this building is to break the glass door? That's ridiculous. If this is some kind of elaborate practical joke it needs to end right now, because it isn't funny at all.”

“Unfortunately, it isn't a joke,” Misao said coolly. “Listen, please just wait here with Tamao, and I'll be back before you know it.”

Naomi stood in stunned silence, rapidly blinking her eyes. Misao blew Tamao a quick kiss, then strode to the elevator without a backward glance.

When she reached the ground floor, she saw Tatsuji staggering around the lobby with tears in his eyes, clutching one arm and emitting loud moans. “What happened to him?” Misao asked Teppei when she reached the door.

“He was throwing himself against the door, trying to force it open, and he banged his elbow,” Teppei said, snatching the hammer out of Misao's hand. “You'd better stand back, 'cause there's going to be a lot of broken glass.”

Misao joined Tatsuji at a safe distance from the entrance and they watched as Teppei began to attack the door, wielding the hammer with the kind of focused energy you might expect from a lumberjack using an ax to split logs.

“Damn it to hell! Shit! Son of a bitch!” With every blow he aimed at the glass, Teppei shouted out a different profanity.

The sounds of violence filled the lobby, and Misao closed her eyes. The noises grew louder as Teppei's verbal and physical assault on the door became increasingly frenetic. “Worthless piece of shit!” he bellowed in a voice that seemed to emanate from an angry, foul-mouthed giant.

When Misao opened her eyes a crack, she saw her husband still pounding insanely on the glass door with the hammer. His entire face, neck, and body were drenched in sweat, and with every blow he struck, a fine spray of perspiration flew off into space. Misao felt as if an eternity had passed since she came downstairs, but she knew it couldn't have been more than a minute or two. Opening her eyes all the way, she stared fixedly at the door.

Even if it was made from some kind of extra-strong reinforced glass, by now it would normally be covered with a cobweb-like network of cracks, at the very least. However, the glass didn't appear to have been affected by Teppei's onslaught in any way. Undaunted, he continued to assault the door with the hammer, and after every strike he gave the glass a swift kick for good measure. His face was totally transformed, and he looked like a rampaging demon.

“Hey, Tepp, maybe it's time to take a break?” Tatsuji asked, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “I mean, nothing seems to be working.”

Teppei paused and glanced over his shoulder at Misao. “Did you find any other tools?” he asked calmly, like someone who has abruptly regained his equilibrium after a particularly manic episode.

“What do you mean?”

“I can't break down the door with this hammer. I need something else.”

“But…” Misao stared at Teppei with a brief surge of hope, fueled by wishful thinking, but it was soon quashed by common sense. If a large, reasonably fit man couldn't make so much as a crack in a glass door after repeatedly hitting it with a cast-iron hammer, using every ounce of his strength, what sort of tool did he think would enable him to reduce the door to rubble?

“Listen, how about taking a break from this and going back up to the apartment?” she suggested. “I was thinking that if we could get the balcony door open, we could go out there and call down to the movers when they turn up. Then they could probably find a way to open the door from outside.”

“Oh, no, look at this,” Tatsuji said in a quavering voice. “I think there are even more of them now than before.”

“Huh? More of what?” Teppei asked distractedly, but Misao knew immediately what Tatsuji was talking about.

They all turned to stare at the door, where a new layer of handprints had begun to appear on the glass, one after another. It was as though there were dozens—maybe even hundreds—of people on the other side of the door, standing in line waiting to take a turn at slapping their prints onto the glass.

“Oh, lord, someone please help us,” Tatsuji keened, as tears rolled down his face.

“Tatsuji, I'm begging you, please try to keep it together,” Teppei implored in a cool, steady tone. “I'll explain everything later. For now, let's go upstairs, okay? And then, like Misao said, we can try to find a way to break down the door to the balcony.”

Tatsuji was still blubbering like an elementary school student, but Teppei and Misao each took one of his arms and gently propelled him across the lobby to the elevator. They could, at least, take comfort from the fact that the elevator was still working without a hitch.

When the trio got back to the apartment, Naomi and Tamao were waiting at the door, their faces creased with alarm. Naomi was about to say something when she noticed that her husband was crying like a baby, and she quickly closed her mouth. Tamao cast a stricken glance at her weeping uncle, then reached out and grabbed hold of Misao's jeans with one tiny hand.

Without a moment's hesitation, Teppei clumped noisily into the living room. “Hey, everyone, this could get dangerous, so you'd better stand back.” He brought the hammer down, hard, on the glass door that led to the balcony, and Cookie began to howl.

After striking a single blow, Teppei tossed the hammer aside with a grimace and began flapping his right hand up and down. It was evident that he'd swung the tool with so much force that his hand had gone numb. His face still contorted with pain, he grabbed a nearby barstool by its upholstered seat and began to pound on the window.

The barstool's wooden legs soon began to splinter from the impact of smashing repeatedly against the apparently indestructible glass, and before long all three legs had broken off, one after another. Teppei tossed the ruined stool into a corner of the room and, wearing a look of ferocious exasperation, picked up a crystal ashtray. Without bothering to dump out the contents, he hurled it at the window with all his strength. The ashtray made a muffled thump as it collided with the window, then bounced harmlessly back into the room. Cigarette ashes flew in every direction, but the ashtray itself rolled across the floor, seemingly none the worse for wear.

“This window might as well be made of rubber,” Teppei marveled when he paused to catch his breath. “Everything just ricochets off. How is this even possible?”

“Teppei, stop! Could you please just stop for a minute?” Misao pleaded. “We need to sit down and figure out what to do.”

Tatsuji was sitting on the couch in a stupor, staring at the opposite wall with unseeing eyes. Misao bent down and scooped Tamao into her arms, then turned away from the window. Cookie continued her nonstop yowling, and the plaintive sound echoed through the otherwise silent apartment.

“What time is it now?” Teppei asked after a while. His arms hung limply by his sides, as if he had finally run out of energy.

“It's nearly ten,” Misao replied. “The truck should be here any minute.”

“I guess they're our last hope,” Teppei said. “Maybe there's a chance they'll somehow be able to open the downstairs door from the outside. And even if they can't do that, they'll probably try to call us and find out what's going on.”

“But there's no phone service here.”

“Well, if they try to call us and don't get through, that should make them even more suspicious, don't you think?”

“Yes, ideally, though it seems just as likely that they would assume we were some irresponsible scatterbrains who already moved out on a different day and didn't bother to cancel the appointment. In which case—”

“Anyway, we just need to wait for the moving guys to get here,” Teppei interrupted. His throat vibrated as he took a deep gulp of air. “There's nothing else we can do.”

Tamao lay motionless in Misao's arms, her flushed face pressed against her mother's damp, perspiring neck. She began to sob, and as Misao stroked Tamao's heaving back she racked her brain for something comforting to say, but came up empty.

Naomi was perched next to Tatsuji on the sofa. “Darling?” she said in a brittle tone. “What did you see downstairs? Tell me what you saw!”

Tatsuji swiveled his gaze, moving his eyes—which now resembled two bottomless pits—so slowly that the shift was almost imperceptible. “Handprints,” he said, staring vacantly at his wife.

“Huh? What?”

“You know, handprints—marks made by people's hands. The glass door was covered with all these sticky-looking handprints, and there were more being added right before our eyes. Nobody seemed to be around, but the door was completely white with those handprints, as if it had been painted over. It was impossible to see outside, and the handprints just kept multiplying.”

Naomi gaped at Tatsuji in disgust and disbelief. “I can't take any more of this!” she exclaimed, whipping her head from side to side. “You've all lost your minds! I'm not kidding—I can't take it anymore. I don't care if I have to take the train by myself; I'm going home right now.” She grabbed her Gucci bag, which was beside her on the couch, then jumped to her feet with extraordinary force and strode resolutely across the living room, heading straight for the front door. No one made any move to stop her, and Tatsuji just sat and watched his retreating wife through glazed eyes. The front door slammed loudly, and Tatsuji let out a long, deep, piteous sigh.