EDGE (52 page)

What Isogai was saying seemed to draw on his own unique viewpoints and wasn’t persuasive on every point. Still, the idea of cutting out a new future made Hashiba feel like the courage to act was being bestowed upon him.

5
When Saeko finally managed to get through to Hashiba’s phone, he immediately began to explain that a wormhole could open just before the phase transition reached Earth. For a moment, it was enough to make Saeko completely forget about the noises she’d heard in the living room.

“I know it’s a lot to take in. Did I explain it well enough?” Hashiba asked uncertainly. He had gone into great detail about the mechanism of the phase transition and the wormhole.

“It makes sense. Yes, that would fit,” Saeko was quick to reassure him.

Wormholes weren’t such a new concept. She remembered the time when her father had explained the basics of spatial inflation theory and the possibility of their existence. It was at least logical that wormholes could open before a phase transition. The other universe might also be suitable for human life since physical laws were preserved in the face of manipulations of CPT—charge, parity, and time.

“Saeko? Hello? I think we’re losing the sig—”

The magnetic anomaly seemed to interfere with communication devices, and Hashiba’s voice faded into a background of static. The line went dead.

Saeko noticed an eerie silence and realized that there were no noises coming from the living room. Whether the TV had been turned off or the volume muted, it felt certain that someone was there.

The quiet and what Hashiba had told her deepened her sense of solitude. Even if a wormhole did open before the phase transition reached them, even if she could cross it to embark on a trans-dimensional journey, there would be nothing there for her. Just loneliness. Soon she would lose all of her friends, everyone she had ever cared for. She’d dealt with the devastating disappearance of her father when she was in high school, and the thought of even more loss was too much to bear. Was there even any point in living under such circumstances? Saeko pulled her jacket together, suddenly cold, as though her loneliness was causing the
temperature of the room to drop.

Her thoughts returned to the room next door. Was it just her imagination? Was she being too jumpy? Just trying to think was making her head spin. She had already locked the door, but would that stop whoever it was from getting into the bedroom? Saeko looked at the thin door; if someone really tried, it wouldn’t be too hard to break in.

If Isogai was correct, a portal to another world could open somewhere in the house. Saeko felt that the living room would be the most likely place. According to the evidence—the half-empty glasses of tea, discarded banana skins, and such—that was where the family had disappeared. If it had opened upstairs, it was possible that only the children would have disappeared. No, it had happened when all four family members had been gathered together.

If she were to stand a chance of escaping the phase transition, she couldn’t stay cooped up in the bedroom. Though she knew she had to get back to the living room, her body wouldn’t play along. Saeko understood something then: you had to be brave in order to act. It took far more courage to make some move than to await salvation.

Her father had not wanted for her a passive life of drifting with the current. Why else had he taught her how to interpret the world? It was so she could overcome obstacles and face strange worlds. Without the courage to take a step into a new realm, life wasn’t worth living.

Saeko was pacing towards the door.

What remained was a matter of will. Should she go, knowing that her loneliness would only worsen? Was it better to step into the unknown and bet on survival?

Saeko turned the lock and crossed the threshold. The Fujimuras’ living room had no door and simply opened up from the hallway. Saeko sneaked to the edge and peeked in.

The TV set glowed under the fluorescent ceiling lights, and the flickering screen showed the sky in California, horizon faintly crimson as dawn approached. From the vantage point of the camera the chasm in the ground resembled a dark belt strapped to the land below and snaking towards San Francisco.

Saeko caught sight of the mirror hanging on the far wall. It reflected the full figure of a man. Somehow, she was able to keep her reaction to a minimum. A part of her had already expected someone to be there.

Conscious of her gaze, he caressed his expressionless face and shook his head in the mirror. He was seated, not deeply, on a sofa set against the
wall, a pair of crutches too large for him arranged at his back in the shape of a cross. He lowered his right hand, with which he’d caressed his face, down to his chin, and turned out the palm of his left hand, which hung loosely to the side of his crotch. His calves appeared swollen; they were set in casts used to keep broken bones in place.

The figure reminded Saeko of the last passages in her father’s manuscript. Examining the image of Viracocha at the Gateway of the Sun, he had seen a half-bird, half-man creature lurking in the background. The creature’s wings were described as overlapping boomerangs on its back; there was mention of horn-like protrusions on its slick reptilian face.

Saeko only had her father’s description to go on since she’d never visited the site. She hadn’t even seen the Polaroid photos. Yet she was certain that the man she beheld was identical to the creature looking out from behind Viracocha. The crutches behind him looked like boomerangs, or wings.

Saeko knew him. The wrinkles had disappeared from his plum-shaped face, which now looked greasy. It was Kota Fujimura’s elder brother, Seiji.

He uttered, “You kept me waiting, you know.”

Saeko felt her legs almost give way at the sound of his voice, and “give way” was an apt turn of phrase. After a discomfiting itch assailed her around the waist, she had the sensation of her pelvis literally disappearing. But she couldn’t afford to collapse. She held out a desperate hand and tried to steady herself.

What he wanted, she immediately intuited, was for her to crumple. There was no way she could show any weakness in front of him; he wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage. Instinctively, she knew that now was the time to stand firm. It was clear that the thing before her was not on her side.

The images on the TV set had changed again, back to Calcutta and the five disks of light in the sky, which now seemed to shine even brighter. Saeko wondered if the lights had indeed grown brighter or the sky had simply become darker due to the planet’s rotation. Either way, it somehow gave her the courage to speak.

“What are you?” she asked, trying to hide the tremors in her voice.

“You know, I like the name ‘winged snake,’ but it’s more like the opposite: a snake with its wings clipped.”

The myth of the plumed serpent was often intertwined with legends of Viracocha in South America. The two were of a kind, benevolent beings both that brought enlightenment, culture, and order to those around them. Seiji was as alien to these concepts as anyone could be. The words
that came to mind with him were: base, depraved. She remembered her evening with Hashiba when Seiji had crashed down on the ground before them.

“Are you the Devil?” she asked. The Devil, who brought fear and evil to society, was depicted throughout the ages in various guises, sometimes as a fallen angel.

“Aww, now even you call me a devil? Heh heh.”

The Devil conquered by working on fears and anxieties that arose in the other. Her instincts had been right; if she’d collapsed or shown any fear, he’d be on top of her licking her face with his serpent tongue.

Bracing herself, Saeko concentrated. Her only way out was through analyzing the situation. First she had to figure out his intent. What did the man want? A solution might present itself if that became clear. She had to keep him talking.

“What did you do with my father?”

Seiji said nothing, seeming to ignore the question. He twisted his upper body slightly and plunged a hand into one of his trouser pockets, scratching liberally at his groin, jangling a set of keys. He was taunting her, making fun of her. The metallic sound echoed down the empty hallway; he knew she hated the sound. Saeko wanted to cover her ears but knew that she couldn’t. She stared back at him, resolute.

While her question about her father had been instinctive, it wasn’t a shot in the dark. A passage from his notes had given rise to it. Her father didn’t know Seiji when he’d seen the half-bird, half-human relief carved behind Viracocha, so he wouldn’t have registered their similarities in appearance. But Saeko was sure that Haruko had been with him at the time. Seeing the bird-like image, Haruko would have seen the similarities to her brother-in-law. What if she had pointed this out to her father? It would have immediately piqued his interest; he was never one to treat such things as mere coincidence. If she had gone so far as to tell him that the carving was an almost exact likeness of her husband’s brother, then all the more so.

That was why he’d needed to visit Takato directly after getting back to Japan. He had felt compelled to meet Seiji.

Something happened here on that day her father disappeared—August 22, 1994. He vanished, leaving only his notebook, later found at the Buddhist altar in the bedroom. She realized now that it wasn’t Haruko who had placed it there, but Seiji. He’d done it to lure her back.

Seiji pulled the keys out from his pocket and placed them on the table
in front of him, slowly, deliberately, hinting at some hidden meaning.

“What happened to your father? Hmm … Some things are better left unknown, toots.”

A burning rage began to spread through Saeko, overpowering her fear. She had been right; this man did have something to do with her father’s disappearance. She looked around for something, anything she could use as a weapon, but the kitchen was too far away and no suitable object caught her eye.

Seiji pulled an ivory toothpick from the key holder and began to pick away at the dirt underneath his fingernails. The whole time he kept his eyes trained on Saeko, as though reading her thoughts. The way he moved was animalistic, repugnant. Despite her desire to look away, Saeko made sure to hold his stare.

Finishing his demonstration, Seiji looked up, raising his chin.

“So, sweet stuff,” he said, poking at the tip of his forefinger with the toothpick, “want me to poke at that lump in your breast?”

Bracing even harder than before, Saeko fought a welling urge to vomit.

6
The six men walked up the pitch-black hillside of the herb gardens. Most were busy calling family and close friends, attempting to explain what was about to happen, what they needed to do. Only Isogai and Chris walked in silence.

Hashiba had just finished his call to his family. To his surprise, his wife had been quick to believe his explanation and had agreed to come directly to Atami. He felt a debt of gratitude to the mass media; the broadcasts of all the abnormal activity around the globe had helped to lend authenticity to his explanations of the impending phase transition. He had also been able to dissuade her from taking the train, which would have taken too long, as she’d wanted to ride via Chigasaki. She had agreed to take a taxi no matter how much it cost; it was by far the best hope for getting to the park on time. Faced with an overwhelming disaster, it was only natural for a person to want clear instructions. Fear and indecision made people ready to cling to anything that sounded decisive.

Even if the roads were clear, it would still take his family two hours to get here from his house in Kunitachi. When they arrived, he would go back down and meet them. All he could do now was pray that the wormhole didn’t open before then. He just finished another couple of calls to close
friends when Isogai stopped him.

“That’s enough already.” His voice bubbled with frustration. All this time Isogai and Chris had been silent, listening to the others making calls to relatives and loved ones. Hashiba realized that the two of them only had each other.

“Okay. Just one more.”

Hashiba felt a duty to call Kitazawa and tell him the whole story since he’d been instrumental in helping them come this far. It had been thanks to him that they had been able to put together the important pieces of the puzzle and link the disappearances to tectonic activity in the first place.

Kitazawa listened quietly as Hashiba explained what was going to happen in the next few hours. Then he asked, “Is Saeko there?”

“She’s in Takato, at the Fujimura residence.”

“Takato …”

“Theoretically, a wormhole should appear there too.”

Kitazawa let out a sigh of relief. “Good. But she’s going to have to find her own way again, isn’t she?”

Hashiba urged Kitazawa to come and join them in Atami, but Kitazawa just laughed him off. He didn’t seem to care whether he survived or not.

“Don’t worry about me. It’s not for me, all that effort just to find a new place. I’m ready to move on. Time to be reunited with my parents and all that. It’s better that way, just going to let be whatever happens.”

“We’re indebted to you,” Hashiba entreated. “We’re all waiting here. If you jump in a taxi and use the highways …”

Kitazawa seemed to brighten a little. “Thanks, I’ll take your advice. My son, Toshiya, will be heading your way. Could you look after him when he gets there?”

“Of course, but you should come together.”

“Ha ha. No, really, I’m okay—trust me.”

“Get off your phones already!” Isogai shouted.

Jolted, Hashiba put a hand around the phone’s mouthpiece. “Just make sure you get here, okay?” he insisted, ending the call.

“What the hell’s gotten into you? Have you all gone mad?”

Hashiba had a hunch as to why the four of them making so many calls vexed Isogai. He hurried forward to catch up with the scientist to find out for sure.

“How many people can get through the wormhole?” Hashiba asked, suddenly worried.

“That depends on how long the wormhole remains open. I don’t
know—that’s the answer. It could be a few minutes. It could be just a few seconds. It’s impossible to know. But it won’t be open for long. It could be just an instant.”