(5:50 A.M.)
The stormy night would soon give way to dawn. A thick bank of clouds slowly parted. Mountain tops covered in a pale mist pierced the eastern sky. While the rumbling of thunder and the heavy rain had passed, the fierce wind showed no sign of relenting. The trees in the forest still creaked as they swayed in the wind, the river was high and the three massive mill wheels kept on turning next to the manor hidden deep in the valley.
It had been a long night, one accompanied by the frantic symphony of the rain, wind, thunder, the raging water in the canal and the mill wheels.
But it was not daybreak that brought them such anxiety. The events of the night had already been enough to feed their fear.
A woman fallen from the tower.
A painting disappeared.
A man vanished under seemingly impossible circumstances.
Could anyone tell where they were heading, where all these events pointed?
The night was drawing to a close. A night that had toyed with them. It was only at dawn that finally, the bizarre culmination of all that had happened in the house would become apparent.
The tower was located in the north-west corner of the mansion. in the section of the hallway that circled in an arc south around the ground floor of the tower, there were two black doors near the eastern end. One was open now. It led into the stairwell, where a narrow flight of stairs spiralled down to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs was a large, bleak room. The lantern-like lamps flickered weakly on the bare concrete walls. A washing machine, dryer and a basket full of clothes stood against the wall near the bottom of the stairs. Several ducts crawled along the ceiling.
Six people were gathered at the back of this gloomy room. Five men, and one woman.
One of the men was seated in a wheelchair. A beautiful girl in a snow-white silk negligee stood close behind him. Two men stood on either side of her, as if to protect her. The other two men stood slightly behind this quartet. All the men were in their pyjamas with some clothes thrown on top.
“Could one of you…” the man in the wheelchair said in a hoarse voice. He was wearing a brown nightshirt, too large for his slim frame, and while it was still only September, he was wearing white gloves. He interlaced his hands on his stomach. “Could one of you open that incinerator door?” He pointed to the incinerator on the other side of the room.
A slight tremor could be heard in his voice. It was probably the tension. However, the man’s face was emotionless. This was because he wore a white rubber mask.
One of the men next to the girl stepped forward. He was middle-aged with a ruddy face and a large protruding stomach.
He went over to the incinerator and picked up a black bar lying on the floor. A steel poker.
“Aaah!”
He let out a muffled cry just as he threw the poker away and fell backwards onto the floor.
“What is it, Ōishi?” the masked man in the wheelchair asked.
“It… it’s…”
The man with the ruddy face was sitting on the floor, pointing towards where he had dropped the poker.
The girl let out a shriek. The man in the wheelchair turned around to her.
“Yurie, don’t look.”
“Come on,” said the other man who’d been standing by her side as he put his arm around her shoulder and turned her away. He was
handsome and tall; the opposite of the man with the ruddy face.
The girl nodded weakly, a terrified look on her face, and walked unsteadily back towards the stairs. The two men who had stood behind—a small man with black-rimmed spectacles and a gloomy-looking larger man—moved in front of the girl, forming a wall to block her view.
Once he was safely out of the girl’s sight, the handsome man swiftly walked over to the man with the ruddy face still sitting on the floor, and looked down at him.
“What is it, Mitamura?” the man in the wheelchair asked.
“It’s exactly what it looks like, sir,” the handsome man replied calmly. “A human finger. Looks like the middle or ring finger.”
The man addressed as “sir” pushed his wheelchair over to look for himself. It was ghastly pale, like a dead caterpillar. At one end was an ugly stump covered in dried blood.
“The cut appears to be quite fresh. This finger was probably cut off less than two hours ago,” the handsome man said.
“But… what…?”
“That’s the question.”
The handsome man crouched to get a closer look at the finger lying on the floor.
“Aha… there’s a pretty deep indentation here. A mark left by a ring.”
“Ah.”
The man in the wheelchair put his fingers through the eyeholes of the white mask on his face, placing them on his closed eyelids.
“It has to be Masaki’s.”
“I’m afraid I must agree,” the handsome man replied, standing up once more. The fingers on his right hand started playing with the gold ring on his left ring finger. “I assume it’s the mark left by Masaki’s cat’s eye ring…”
“So he must have murdered Masaki…”
“That I can’t say at the moment.”
The helpless man with the ruddy face finally managed to get up from the floor.
“Mr Fujinuma, does this mean that inside the incinerator…” he asked, but the man in the wheelchair shook his head ambiguously.
The man’s cheeks trembled and he looked like he was about to fall over again. The handsome man shrugged and picked up the poker instead.
“I’ll do it,” he declared as he stepped towards the incinerator. It was a medium-sized incinerator for household garbage, a tarnished silver in colour, set on a concrete base. There was a chimney pipe at the top, right at his eye level, going straight up to the ceiling of the basement room where it disappeared and led outside.
They could hear the crackling of a low fire from inside the metal container. No one, of course, would be burning waste this early in the morning. So why was it lit?
The poker in the handsome man’s hand approached the hot door. A metallic clank echoed through the room as he hooked the end of the poker through the handle.
The door swung open. The fire was blazing red inside.
“Uugh.”
Everyone covered their noses as a sharp, pungent smell wafted out of the incinerator. A few gagged.
It was the smell of burning meat. But what made the smell especially horrifying was that they all knew what was really burning.
“Masaki…” the man in the wheelchair called out mournfully.
“I can’t believe this…”
The handsome man stuck the poker in the incinerator. Several blackened objects lay in the fire on top of each other.
He searched the incinerator. He seemed calm, except for the fact that the hand holding the poker was shaking slightly. Eventually he stuck the poker into one of the burning objects and tried to pull it out.
“Waaah!”
He jumped back. As he was pulling the object out, he had inadvertently brought something else with it, which fell onto the floor.
Several loud cries reverberated around the basement.
The handsome man let out a desolate wail as he stared at the round object that was now lying on the floor.
“How horrible…” he whispered.
It was a decapitated human head, burnt black and still smoking. All the hair had been burnt off and the eyes, nose and lips rendered unrecognizable by the blazing heat.
The poker in the man’s hand was still sticking into the other burnt object.
“This must be an arm then,” he whispered as he threw it into an empty metal bucket nearby, eager to be done with it.
It was indeed an arm.
Like the head on the floor, the arm had been blackened and contorted by the heat. It appeared to be a left arm. But what attracted their attention was the hand: it was missing one finger. The fourth finger counting from the thumb: the left ring finger.
This was the burnt, dead body of a human being.
One body, which had been cut up in six parts, not counting the finger: head, torso, two arms and two legs.
It all happened on a stormy night. And then, finally, dawn arrived.
The shape of the “incidents” inside the house that night had been made clear to everyone present.
The unfortunate woman who fell from the tower. The stolen painting. The suspicious man who disappeared. And in his attempt to catch the thief, another man was killed, cut up in pieces and burnt in the incinerator.
Eventually, the storm passed.
And with that, all the incidents of the night would be buried, hidden away behind one unified explanation.
FUJINUMA KIICHI’S BEDROOM
(8:30 A.M.)
I woke as I usually do. The amber curtains were drawn over the windows facing the courtyard to the east, but the bright morning sun shone right through them into the room. It was quiet outside, but if I listened carefully, I could just make out the faint chirping of the mountain birds, as well as the distant sound of flowing water. I could also hear the heavy rumble of the mill wheels, always revolving by the western side of this house. It was a peaceful morning.
We’d had good weather ever since September came along, but the news last night had reported an approaching typhoon. The forecast said it would start raining in the Chūgoku region this afternoon. This morning was thus, truly, the calm before the storm.
I slowly sat up in the spacious bed. The clock on the wall showed half past eight. The same time I always woke up.
Leaning back against the headboard, I reached for the nightstand with my right hand, picked up my old briar pipe and packed it with tobacco. Soon a mellow scent filled the room, accompanied by cream-coloured smoke.
“A typhoon, eh?” I mumbled out loud to myself. My voice was unnaturally hoarse.
I had to think back to exactly one year ago, 28th September. The morning of that fateful day had been the same as today. There’d been reports of an approaching typhoon then too. And it arrived just as forecast.
One year… A whole year had passed since that blood-soaked night.
I became lost in thought, my hand swaying with the pipe. The tentacles of my mind crept towards the events of that night one year ago, to everything that occurred the following day, and even to what happened afterwards.
I stole a glance at the door in the corner of the room, the bronze doorknob and dark mahogany panelling. That door, which led to the study, would never be opened again…
My lean body suddenly shuddered. An indescribable, inescapable shiver welled up from deep within and ran through my whole being.
It was a quarter to nine now. The phone on my nightstand would ring soon, softly signalling the start of another day.
“Good morning, sir.”
The familiar voice on the other end of the line sounded calm. It was the butler, Kuramoto Shōji.
“I will be bringing you your breakfast right away.”
“Thanks.”
I placed my pipe on its stand and started getting dressed. I took my pyjamas off, put on a shirt and trousers, and a dressing gown on top. When I had managed to do all of this, I put the cotton gloves on both my hands. And finally, it was time to put on my face.
My mask.
That mask was a symbol of my whole life at this time, a symbol of everything that Fujinuma Kiichi now was.
A mask. Indeed, I had no face. I wore that mask every single day to hide my accursed features. The white mask was now the real face of the master of the house. The rubber clung to my skin. A cold death mask worn by a living man.
It was five to nine.
There was a light knock on the door to my right—the door in the corner opposite the study door. This door connected my bedroom to the adjoining sitting room. She—Yurie—had arrived with the usual lovely smile on her face, to bring salvation to my lonely, numb heart.
“Good morning.”
“Have some coffee.”
A clear voice came from between her small full lips. I got out of my bed and moved into my wheelchair.
Yurie looked at me silently as she pushed the serving trolley towards me and poured a cup of coffee. I reached for it, looking back at her with my expressionless white mask.
“It’s been a whole year,” I mumbled, and awaited her reply. But she didn’t say anything, so I thanked her for the coffee and took the cup.
A year. On the surface, it seemed time had passed uneventfully. This place deep in the mountains was always tranquil, almost as if time itself had forgotten about us here. The fresh water flowing through the valley never stopped turning the three mill wheels of the house. Yurie, Kuramoto and myself lived peacefully here. Save for the housekeeper, we had no visitors.
Nothing had changed. At least, nothing appeared to have changed. However, I knew this house had undergone a great transformation. It was, of course, all because of what happened last year.
A man and a woman had died, and another man disappeared… Those events must have had a tremendous impact on the mind of Yurie, this young girl. Perhaps the scars would never heal. I had also changed.
I squinted beneath my mask and watched Yurie as I silently brought the cup to my mouth. Yurie. The only woman I had ever loved. A beautiful girl who had spent her teenage years in solitude in the tower room of this house. ...
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