The Complete Ring Trilogy: Ring, Spiral, Loop. Koji Suzuki

probably have used the membership to rent one of the cottages on the cheap. They were only five thousand yen a night for members, which came to a little over a thousand apiece.

      He had the phone number for Villa Log Cabin at hand. He put his notes on the table. The quickest thing would be to simply call the front desk and ask if a party of four had stayed there under the name Nonoyama. But they’d never tell him over the phone. Naturally, anybody who had risen within the firm to the position of rental cottage manager would have been well trained to consider it his duty to protect guests’ privacy. Even if he revealed his position as a reporter for a major newspaper and clearly stated his reasons for inquiring, the manager would never tell him over the phone. Asakawa considered contacting the local bureau and getting them to use a lawyer with whom they had connections to ask for a look at the guest register. The only people a manager was legally bound to show the register to were the police and attorneys. Asakawa could try to pose as one or the other, but he’d probably be spotted immediately, and that would mean trouble for the newspaper. It was safer and more effective to go through channels.

      But that would take at least three or four days, and he hated to wait that long. He wanted to know now. His passion for the case was such that he couldn’t bear to wait three days. What in the world was going to come of this? If indeed the four of them had stayed the night at Villa Log Cabin at Pacific Land in South Hakone at the end of August, and if indeed that clue allowed him to unravel the riddle of their deaths—well, what could it have been anyway? Virus, virus. He was all too aware that the only reason he was calling it a virus was to keep himself from being overawed by the thought of some mysterious thing being behind it all. It made sense—to a degree—to marshal the power of science in facing down supernatural power. He wasn’t going to get anywhere fighting a thing he didn’t understand with words he didn’t understand. He had to translate the thing he didn’t understand into words he did.

      Asakawa recalled Yoko’s cries. Why was she so frightened when she saw the demon mask this afternoon? On the way home on the train, he’d asked his wife, “Hey, have you been teaching Yoko about demons?”

      “What?”

      “You know, with picture books or something like that. Have you been teaching her to be afraid of demons?”

      “No way. Why would I?”

      The conversation had ended there. Shizu was unconcerned, but Asakawa worried. That kind of fear only existed on a deep, spiritual level. It was different from fearing something because you had been taught to fear it. Ever since he’d come down out of the trees, man had lived in fear of something or other. Thunder, typhoons, wild beasts, volcanic eruptions, the dark … The first time a child experiences thunder and lightning, he or she feels an instinctive fear—that was understandable. To begin with, thunder was real. It really existed. But what about demons? The dictionary would tell you that demons were imaginary monsters, or the spirits of dead people. If Yoko was going to be afraid of the demon because it looked scary, then she should also have been afraid of models of Godzilla—after all, they were made to look fearsome, too. She’d seen one, once, in a department store show window: a cunningly-made Godzilla replica. Far from being frightened, she had stared at it intently, eyes glowing with curiosity. How did you explain that? The only thing he knew for sure was that Godzilla, no matter how you looked at it, was an imaginary monster. So what about demons …? And are demons unique to Japan? No, other cultures have the same type of thing. Devils … The second beer wasn’t tasting as good as the first one. Is there anything else Yoko’s afraid of? That’s right, there is. Darkness. She’s terribly afraid of the dark. She absolutely never goes into an unlit room alone. “Yo-ko,” sun-child. But darkness, too, really existed, as light’s opposite pole. Even now, Yoko was asleep in her mother’s embrace, in a dark room.

PART TWO

1

       October 11—Thursday

      The rain was coming down harder now, and Asakawa turned his wipers on high. The weather at Hakone was liable to change at any moment. The skies had been clear down in Odawara, but the higher he climbed, the moister the air, and as he neared the pass he’d encountered several pockets of wind and rain. If it had been daytime, he would have been able to guess at the weather on the mountains from the appearance of the clouds over Mt Hakone. But it was night, and his attention was fixed on whatever came into the beams of his headlights. It wasn’t until he had stopped the car and looked up at the sky that he’d realized the stars had disappeared. When he’d got on the Kodama bullet-train at Tokyo Station, the city had still been wrapped in twilight. When he’d rented the car at Atami Station, the moon was still intermittently peeking out from gaps in the clouds. But now the fine water droplets drifting across his headlight beams were growing into a full-fledged downpour, pounding on his windshield.

      The digital clock over the speedometer said 7:32. Asakawa quickly calculated how long it had taken him to come this far. He’d taken the 5:16 down from Tokyo, arriving in Atami at 6:07. By the time he’d left the gates and finished the paperwork at the rent-a-car place it had been 6:30. He’d stopped at a market and bought two packs of cup o’ noodles and a small bottle of whiskey; it had been seven by the time he’d found his way through the maze of one-way streets and out of town.

      A tunnel loomed in front of him, its entrance outlined in brilliant orange light. On the other side, just after he entered the Atami-Kannami Highway, he should start to see signs for South Hakone Pacific Land. The long tunnel would take him through the Tanna Ridge. As he entered it the sound of the wind changed. At the same time, his flesh, the passenger seat, and everything else in the car was bathed in orange light. He could feel his calm slipping away, he could feel his hackles rise. There were no cars coming from the opposite direction. The wipers squeaked as they rubbed against the now-dry windshield. He turned them off. He should reach his destination by eight. He didn’t feel quite like flooring it, although the road was empty. Subconsciously, Asakawa was dreading the place he was heading to.

      At 4:20 this afternoon, Asakawa had watched as a fax had crawled out of the machine at the office. It was a reply from the Atami bureau, and he had expected it to contain a copy of the Villa Log Cabin’s guest register for August 27th through the 30th. When he saw it he did a little dance. His hunch was right. There were four names he recognized: Nonoyama, Tomoko Oishi, Haruko Tsuji, and Takehiko Nomi. The four of them had spent the night of the 29th in cabin B-4. Obviously, Shuichi Iwata had used Nonoyama’s name. With this he knew when and where the four had been together: on Wednesday, August 29th, at South Hakone Pacific Land, Villa Log Cabin, No. B-4. It was exactly a week prior to their mysterious deaths.

      There and then he’d picked up the receiver and dialed the number for Villa Log Cabin to make a reservation for tonight for cabin B-4. All he had tomorrow was a staff meeting at eleven. He could spend the night down in Hakone and easily be back in time.

       … Well, that’s it. I’m going. The actual place.

      He was eager. Never in his wildest dreams could he imagine what awaited him there.

      There was a tollbooth just as he came out of the tunnel, and as he handed over three hundred-yen coins he asked the attendant, “Is South Hakone Pacific Land up ahead?”

      He knew full well it was. He’d checked his map any number of times. He just felt like it had been a long time since he’d seen another human being, and something within him wanted to talk.

      “There’s a sign just up ahead. Make a left there.”

      He took his receipt. With so little traffic, it hardly seemed worth having someone stationed here. How long was this guy planning to stand there in his booth? Asakawa made no move to drive off, and the man began to give him a suspicious look. Asakawa forced a smile and pulled away slowly.

      The joy he’d felt a few hours ago at establishing a common time and place for the four victims had withered and died. Their faces flickered behind his eyelids. They’d died exactly