Another, Vol. 2 (20 page)

“There…It was over there.”

Teshigawara pointed in that direction.

“Argh. I can’t see him from here. It’s on the other side of that bush…”

It was at this point that I took my cell phone from my pocket. I was planning to call the police or an ambulance. Spotting my movement, Teshigawara said, “H-hey, Sakaki. You’d sell your friend out to the cops?”

“Don’t be stupid!” I replied, my mind flashing back to that detective I’d met.

That older detective who’d questioned me about Ms. Mizuno’s accident, and whom I had run into once on the street outside the school. His name was Oba. He’d told me he had a daughter in elementary school. He’d written his cell phone number on the back of a business card and told me, “If you ever think I might be able to help…” I had put the number in my address book, in case there was ever anything. If we told him what had happened, he would probably understand, to a certain extent.

I moved away from Teshigawara and rushed to try the number. However…

It didn’t go through.

When I checked the screen, I saw a single bar. But the phone wouldn’t connect.

“Sakakibara?”

I heard Mei’s voice. She was looking through the window at me, not coming out onto the balcony.

She was quietly and yet emphatically shaking her head. And then she told me, in a low, controlled voice that Teshigawara wouldn’t hear:
“It’s not Kazami.”

“…Oh.”

So her “doll’s eye” had told her “it’s not Kazami.” The “extra person” was someone else.

“Teshigawara!” I called, with force. “First of all, we need to go find out if he’s still alive. If he is, he needs first aid right away. Agreed?”

“Y-yeah,” Teshigawara replied without conviction, pulling his chest away from the railing.

Faced with the sagging defeat of this bleached puppet, I said, “Don’t give up and throw yourself over yet.” And I didn’t mean it as a joke.

“Um, right.”

“Hurry up. Let’s go.”

When we ran out of room 223, we headed straight for the front door. We ran down the corridor on the second floor until we reached the staircase in the center of the building, then ran down the stairs to the foyer. And on the way there…

I got a sudden strange feeling.

A premonition, a feeling in my bones…No, it wasn’t quite that. Thinking about it rationally, there was no way it could have been anything as supernatural as that.

An echo…Yes. I felt an echo of something.

A strange kind of echo. An unsettling echo. A terrible echo. Thinking about it rationally, it had to be because of something I’d glimpsed in my quick scan of the area when we came down the stairs.

Teshigawara and Mei headed for the front door without a backward glance. I was the only one whose feet came to an involuntary halt.

I was in the foyer late at night, with the main lights all turned off. The hallway stretched away as if being sucked into the gloom. And there…

A single door stood open, though only a few centimeters. That’s what I’d glimpsed.

The door to the dining hall?

No light spilled from within. It was darker even than the darkness of the hallway. Deep within the darkness visible through the gap in the door, I sensed something—something intensely disturbing. I suppose that was the origin of the “echo” I’d felt.

I was reluctant to call the others back. I drew nearer to the door without them and took the dully gleaming knob in my hand.

I felt it slip.

Was it sweat? No, this wasn’t sweat. It was…

I took my hand off the knob and turned my palm up to squint at it. In the darkness, I could just barely make
something
out. It wasn’t sweat. It was something darker that stained my palm. It was…

…Blood?

Blood? But why?

I had the option to withdraw and go after the others, who had rushed out ahead of me. But I couldn’t do it. Before I’d even thought everything over, I had pushed the door open and moved into the dining hall. It was too dark to be able to see much, so I was moving ahead one step at a time, feeling along the wall, when…

“Ack!”

I let out a wild cry because, out of nowhere, something grabbed my ankle.

“Agh! Wh—”

What was that? Who was it?

I leapt back.

Something—someone was lying facedown on the floor. Since my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I could make out the shape thanks to the frail beams of moonlight slipping in through the windows at the back of the room.

“Wh…What the?”

I spoke to it, terrified.

“Who is it? What are you…”

It looked as if they were dressed in a student’s summer uniform. And they were wearing pants, so it was a boy’s uniform.

Since
he
was lying facedown, I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t know who it was. His right hand was thrown out in front of him. He must have grabbed my ankle with that hand. I’d been totally surprised by how sudden it had been, but the force behind the grip was incredibly feeble.

“Are you okay?”

I went back to his side and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, are all right? Why are you…”

His body twitched in response to my voice. I clamped my hand around his outstretched right hand. And then…

The same slippery sensation I’d felt on the doorknob was on his hand, too.

“Are you hurt?”

He groaned in a low, strained tone.

I put my hand back on his shoulder and tried to pull him up. But…

“Don’t bother…”

A reedier voice than any I might have imagined escaped his lips.

“It’s no use…”

“Why not?” I asked, when finally I noticed. On the white shirt he wore, a dark stain ran down his back to his hips. The shirt was soaked with blood.

“You…Were you stabbed?” I asked. I pressed my own cheek against the floor to get a look at his face. The dark and the fact that even his face was smeared with blood made it hard to recognize him, but…

“Maejima?”

Maejima, who’d been the one untiringly rubbing Wakui’s back when he suffered that asthma attack after dinner. Maejima with the small frame and baby face, who was for all that actually a warrior in the kendo club. I was almost positive it was him.

“How did this happen?”

I brought my mouth close to his ear.

“Did someone stab you? Did someone…”

He gave another low, pained moan, and then finally spoke in panting intervals. Almost as if he was using up the last of his strength.

“P-pulled a kitchen…kitchen knife…”

“A kitchen knife? What happened?”

“Pulled it…Th-the care…taker…”

“The caretaker?” I shook Maejima’s shoulder. “Mr. Numata? What did he do?”

I asked him question after question, but I got no further answer. I looked into his face, and this time his eyes were closed.

He must have lost consciousness. Or could he have died? I couldn’t calm down and get myself together enough to check…

I lifted myself up and, battling the fear that had crystallized all in a moment, I started walking. Even without finding a light switch, just by the light of the moon I could make out the door to the kitchen all the way at the back of the room.

That old guy is so fishy.

The comments Teshigawara had treated me to only a few hours earlier in this very room played over again in my mind.

Ever since we got here, he’s had this scary look in his eye when he’s looking at us, y’know?

No…It couldn’t be.

I bet you there are tons of old men who just lose it one day and kill their own grandkids or whatever.

He couldn’t have…

Better not take your eyes off that guy.

When I’d reached the door to the kitchen, yet again I felt a strange hint of something. This time it wasn’t due to information I’d gotten visually. It was auditory and olfactory…

I could hear a faint, unusual sound from behind the door; I didn’t know what.

I could smell a faint, unusual odor—yes, from behind this door, but I didn’t know what.

But…

You shouldn’t open it. Don’t open it.
Defying the internal warnings, I reached out for the doorknob.

Instantly, my palm felt
heat
. Luckily it wasn’t bad enough to burn me, but the knob itself was surprisingly hot.

Maybe I should have given the idea up at that point. But without hesitating, I turned the knob and then forcefully kicked the door the rest of the way open.

In that instant, I realized the source of the odd sound and of the odd smell. It was a fire.

Flames were burning through the entire room.

Intensely hot air and smoke billowed out at me, and I retreated hastily. I raised an arm in front of my face and stopped breathing. Even as I did it, in that same moment…

I caught sight of something, obvious in the light of the flames.

The form of
that man
lying in the kitchen, surrounded by flames.

His head was pointed in my direction. The fire was threatening to catch on his clothes any second. Even so, he didn’t even flinch, possibly because he was already dead. Several
objects
plunged deeply into his neck and face were probably the immediate cause of death…And, if I wasn’t mistaken,
those objects
were the metal skewers we’d used at dinner.

The flames raged. Even if there had been a fire extinguisher handy, it didn’t seem as if that would stop them.

I ran back to where Maejima was lying, and shouted at him over and over. “Hey! Maejima! It’s bad! There’s a fire…Come on! If we don’t get out of here, we’re going to die!”

Maejima was breathing. I saw a tiny movement in response to my voice.

I was worried about his wounds and the amount of blood he’d lost, but there was absolutely no way I was leaving him here. I urged him, “Stay with me now!” over and over again in order to keep him alert, and somehow I managed to lift him up and drag him out to the hallway. The flames in the kitchen were already spreading into the dining room by that point.

I was pulling the door closed, thinking,
If I can just stop the fire from advancing, even for a second…
when—

“Where’d you go, Sakakibara?”

Someone called to me from the foyer. It was Mei. She must have come back to look for me since she’d lost sight of me.

“Why are you in—what the…?”

She stopped her advance toward me.

“Who is that?”

She wore her suspicion openly.

“What happened?”

“He’s hurt really badly,” I answered, shouting. “But there’s a fire in the kitchen!”

“A…A fire?”

“The caretaker…Mr. Numata is in there. Dead. He’s been murdered. And I bet the person who did it started that fire, too.”

Even as I was telling her the situation, my tongue tripping over the words, a thought whispered through my mind:
Oh.

…It was then.

When I’d peered through a window in the hallway to look outside before going into Mei’s room at ten o’clock.

I’d seen a building like a storage shed in the backyard and a light on inside it. I’d accepted it at the time, thinking that the caretakers had probably gone to get something they needed out of it. But that…

It might have been the killer going in there after murdering Mr. Numata, or maybe going in before killing him to grab some kerosene or something to start the fire afterward.

“Is that Maejima? What happened to him?”

“He was lying in the dining hall. It looks like he’s been stabbed in the back with a knife. It’s got to be the same person who did this.”

“Are the cuts deep?”

“He’s lost a lot of blood.”

With Mei’s help, each of us supporting Maejima on one side, we headed for the foyer. The wide-open front door finally came into sight.

“Can you get him out on your own?” Mei asked.

“Probably. But he needs treatment soon.”

“You’re right.”

“Where’s Teshigawara? And Kazami?”

“Kazami is fine. The ground is muddy from the rain, so that made it softer. He twisted his leg pretty badly, but he didn’t hurt his head much. He woke up, too.”

“That’s good.”

Taking on the dead weight of Maejima’s body, I hurried toward the front door. As I went, Mei spun in a
180
.

“Hey…Where are you going?”

“I have to tell everyone about the fire.”

She was totally right. But if she went back up to the second floor now…

It was dangerous. Naturally there was the danger presented by the fire, but there might still be a murderer roaming the building with a knife, too…

“Hold on, Misaki.”

But by the time I spoke up to stop her, she had already run up the stairs. I wanted to go after her, but I had Maejima, who couldn’t move on his own. Feeling torn, I lifted his weight and took him outside.

I saw Teshigawara coming toward the front stoop. Beside him was Kazami, looking pained and caked in mud. His glasses were gone and had probably flown off his face when he fell. He was dragging his right leg behind him in obvious pain, and Teshigawara was lending him a shoulder.

“No! Get away from the building!” I ordered.

“Huh?” Teshigawara’s eyes landed on me. “Who’s that? Maejima? Sakaki, where did you…”

“There’s a fire!” I shouted. “A fire started in the kitchen, and I don’t think we can put it out. It might be arson.”

“No way! Are you kidding me?”

“Someone attacked Maejima. He’s hurt really bad.”

“Are you for real?!”

“Look, we have to get out of here!”

“R-right.”

Each of us helping one of the wounded—Teshigawara with Kazami and me with Maejima—we got away from the stoop. Hobbling, slow and dragging, we moved down the path into the front yard.

At length, there came a violent noise from behind us. Turning around, to the right on the first floor—on the side where the dining hall was—I saw a window shatter and fire come roaring out. Fanned by the night’s strong winds, the fire crawled up the outside wall of the building as I watched.

Just then I heard a shrill alarm bell from inside the lodge.

The automatic fire detector must have activated. Or else someone had activated it by hand. Either way, this ought to make everyone in their rooms on the second floor aware that something strange was happening.
Come on, everybody…Before the fire reaches you…