Hell, Page 2

food receipts. She needed the noise of people around her to rid her mind of the corruption the story had wrought. It was just a story, she thought, dropping a glass in the sink. Glass flew apart, pieces smattered the metal basin, some spiraled down the open garbage disposal. Yoko cursed her clumsiness, plucking her fingers down there quickly. The cold caress of glass met her fingertips. She almost had it. Almost there. Glass. Maybe old food. Something squishy, pulpy like rotted food..., or something else.  

  She jerked her hand out. 

  The super would have to deal with it. It was just one more thing the bastard deserved after claiming most of Satoru's things for back rent. Yoko shrugged her shoulders, wiping her fingers on the thigh of her jeans. The bathroom was next with its single stall shower, western commode with wooden seat and pedestal sink. Satoru's toothbrush rested in a plastic soda cup, a bar of soap and gritty hand towel completed the accessories. Yoko poked through the wicker hamper across from the toilet, scowling at the odor of unwashed socks. 

  Yoko moved on.  

  Beneath an emptied tissue paper box, the ragged edge of a few papers stuck out. What a strange place to leave notes.  

  Or rather the draft of a letter. It was a response to Kotsubaki Haru. For some reason he hadn't finished it...  

  Satoru's writing had progressively gotten worse from the sixteenth, the date of the last paper.  

  ' I've found the secret.'  

  'In an old dictionary with transliterations of the dialect found in that part of the country, I've managed to replicate and rewrite Yaso-shii's poem with its original intent. The accent is...' Part of the paper bore eraser streaks. 'Pronounced in run-on couplets, the goal is for each stanza to end as a question. The answer to them, lies...' Again, the sentence ended. The next page had a half sheet's worth of writing.  

  Yoko read on with increasing interest, her lips forming the words which painted a grotesque nightmare that could only have been born from a corrupted mind. As she came to the last sentence, her throat closed up. She'd been repeating it word for word aloud. Satoru had written more below.  

  'I've sent Kotsubaki-sensei a copy and read it aloud myself. Yamada -sensei would approve of disproving the poem's power.'  

  That was it...  

  Somehow, she felt there'd been more. Looking all over the tiny room, Yoko had bent over the hamper when she heard the sound of a knob rattling. Hurrying from the bathroom, she reentered the foyer. Satoru's computer has turned itself on again, cycling through snapshots of their summer in Odawara again.   

  "Heeey!" The super called through the mail drop. "Why'd you lock the door?"  

  Yoko's brow furrowed. She'd done no such thing. She tried the knob, jiggling it uselessly in her palm. "I didn't!" She called back, pulling on the handle. Twice she checked the lock. Nothing. The door...wouldn't open. "I don't know what's wrong with it! Can you try forcing it open on your side?"  

  The super fumbled with the knob pulling the opposite way. "yeah! I'll go get my tools, be back soon."  

  She listened to his tramping steps, her heart sinking. Who knew how long he'd take. Yoko glanced around the apartment that suddenly seemed smaller the longer she looked around. With a shrug to her shoulders, she forced herself to remain calm. Into packing boxes went the scant traces of her brother's life. Photos, clothes from the closet. At last the only thing that remained was his computer. The screensaver had stayed on the picture of them on a summer day. Yoko smiled at the memory, palming the mouse. The cursor didn't move, frozen on a black eyed Susan.   

  She sighed and felt around the base of the screen for the power button. Instead, her probing fingers found a folded paper. The date was not long before his disappearance. Yoko felt tears form in her eyes as she turned over the paper torn from a notebook. The writing begun in a scrawl ending in stark black lines that made no sense. Yoko stared at it, turning it every which way, but it made no sense. "Backwards...?"   

  The scrawls that made no sense decorating the walls....  

  She emptied the trash bag on the floor, balled up paper scattered everywhere. She began smoothing them out, laying out the pieces around her. They formed a narrative of sorts of a mind descending into insanity.   

  Kotsubaki-sensei was right. I shouldn't have probed into the legend. There's always some truth to them.  

    

  Forgive me, Yoko.   

    

  I discovered the secret...  

    

  I... 

   

  Satoru's writing grew more erratic, the last sentence ended in oblivion off the page. Without being conscious of it, gooseflesh broke out on her arms. Yoko stared around her at the evidences of a mind descending into insanity.  

  The poem. 

  Frantically, she tore through the piles of scattered papers and crumpled balls of paper. In the midst of her search, she heard the soft mechanical whir of the computer. The power button turned green, the screen flickered. She turned slowly around as the screensaver of their summer day vanished. Black spread across the flat panel, consuming brightly colored pixels into a void without light. Something within pulsated uncannily, with life. 

  Paper fluttered to the floor, crackling underfoot. Yoko dove under the desk, trying to pull the power cord from the wall. As her fumbling fingers poked through dust and spider webs, she found the long black length, wordlessly holding the plug up to her face. Quickly, she backed up, jarring the top of her head against the desk bottom. Muffling her cry of pain, she backscrabbled, across the floor into the sudden silence. Before, there had been normal, everyday sounds. Birds, traffic, the ratcheting click of the screwdriver on the locked door mingled with the intermittent swearing of the super.  

  Now nothing.  

  It was too quiet. 

  Only the pulsing blackness, the dark light that spilled from the animated screen drenched everything in its hellish glow. She was afraid, but she didn't know why. Yoko hid her face in her hands, trembling violently. The door was locked, there was nowhere to hide.  

  Yoko lowered her hands from her face.  

  Satoru's apartment was gone.  

  Ahead, a void loomed, pulsating, red as blood. The hue saturated the ground and sky so that they seemed limitless, an eternal boundary where nothing existed. Yoko's brow furrowed as she struggled to comprehend what had happened to her. It defined mortal comprehension, thrusting away all the sanity of the world she lived in. Yoko shivered in the cold twilight, her fingers splayed against the ground, sunk into the pitch black ground like sand beneath her. It was gritty. Her hand came away streaked with dust like from raw coal. Yoko let out a cry of disgust, her first sound in this unending nightmare. 

  The last echoes of it faded in the distance. She clapped her hand over her mouth, breathing noisily through her nose. There was something there, without form or shape, malevolent blackness rising from the ground. Sulfuric fumes clogged her lungs; she tasted its sourness in her mouth.  

  "S—S-Satoru?" She choked out, tears sprang to her eyes. Yoko blinked painfully, rapidly, each flicker bringing relief to her aching eyes.  

  Who is the figure wielding the whip? 

  Satoru's shadow fell over her, he was blackness with definition to his jacket, jeans, hair. Yoko's heart slammed in her throat. But the face...his beloved face – a pit of blackness that split open into a hellish maw of teeth and maniacal laughter – she threw her arm over her face as he raised a jagged switch from his side –  

  And felt nothing. 

  Convulsively, her throat tightened and she gagged, bending over her folded body. Yoko choked on rising acidic juices from her stomach, driven up through disgust and horror. Saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth as she cautiously opened her eyes. The scuffed wooden floor of the dingy apartment building came into focus. Yoko glimpsed the legs of the desk, heard the squeak of the chair's wheels as she pushed it back.  

  Norma
lcy returned.  

  The efforts of her sweeping remained in one corner, the dustpan nearby. A trash bag half full leaned against a stack of cardboard boxes. I was...dreaming? Yoko rubbed at her face, wondering how she could've fallen asleep as a peek at her wristwatch gave the time as three hours past since her arrival. How odd, she thought, yawning, stretching her arms up over her head.  

  Without meaning to, her eyes traveled hesitantly to the single spot on the wall she'd avoided looking at since first uncovering it hours before. Yoko sat up straighter. The picture was gone.  

  The eyes... 

  "You read my poem," whispered a thin, disembodied child's voice. "The right way and now I've come."  

  AN: Continued in Part Two