The Two Little Boys

I don’t think I’d ever heard a ghost story until I went to university in Japan. One evening, not long after I’d arrived in the country, there was a party in the Japanese girls’ dormitory. It went on all night, and when the beer and sake had run out, when the music had stopped, when the promise of dawn was on the trill of skylarks in the adjacent woodlands, I found myself sitting on the floor in candlelight with a few people. A couple of Japanese girls were regaling us with urban legends. ‘If children are out on the street after dark,’ one of them said with affected portent, ‘they might come across a woman wearing a surgical mask. The woman will ask the child, “Am I beautiful?” then pull away the mask to reveal that her mouth is slit from ear to ear.’ I appended the narrative with a jolting roar, prompting histrionic squeals from everyone. It was all unmistakably jokey.

But I went on to learn that specters lurked deep in the Japanese psyche.

Every Saturday I taught some English classes at the local municipal hall to earn a bit of extra cash. My last lesson of the day was to a dozen or so Japanese housewives. It was a mixed-ability conversation class and I let the women decide the topics for discussion. The subjects were light and uncontroversial, like foreign travel or film stars. I made a point of not speaking any Japanese to the ladies, insisting that only English be spoken during the lesson. It was surprising that some of them came back week after week as much of what I said went over their heads, but the hour-long session was always filled with laughter; it was more of a social event than a structured class.

One gloomy day in July, at the apogee of the rainy season, the ladies said they wanted to talk about Japanese festivals. There were myriad to choose from, like the Sapporo Snow Festival or the nationwide Doll Festival. I was aware that the next big festival to take place across the country was Obon in August, when families returned to their ancestral homes and visited the graves of their ancestors, but I was ignorant of the significance behind the occasion.  

‘Okay, so let’s start with Obon,’ I said. ‘Why do Japanese celebrate this?’

All the ladies turned to look at Mrs Kuroki, who sat impassively in the back row. They always deferred to Mrs Kuroki when more complex English was required. She was the oldest in the class and also the quietest. I could tell she was well respected by the others judging by the depth of their bows when they greeted her each week. Whenever she spoke or reacted, it was with measure and calculation. The others would laugh at my stupid jokes, but Mrs Kuroki would give up a dim smile. The women would write down new vocabulary, but Mrs Kuroki would scrutinise me as I spelled out the words. There was something vaguely minatory about her; whenever I caught her gaze it felt like she might just spring out of her chair and pounce on me like a mantis.

‘When a person dies,’ Mrs Kuroki began, ‘their spirit leaves the body and enters purgatory until funeral rites have been performed. Only then can they join their ancestors. These spirits then protect the family they have left behind, and return to Earth every August during Obon to receive thanks from the family.’

The women nodded in apparent comprehension.

I was feeling a little mischievous. ‘What about those who haven’t had a proper funeral?’ I asked the group. ‘Does their spirit not watch over and protect their family?’

The ladies turned again to Mrs Kuroki, who retained her composed mien.    

‘No,’ she said. ‘If the proper funeral rites haven’t been carried out, or if a person dies in sudden or violent circumstances, the spirit transforms into a ghost and can return to the physical world. It will forever haunt the Earth until the missing rituals are performed. Or until the emotional conflict tying it to our world is resolved.’

‘Do you all believe in ghosts?’ I asked.

The women nodded earnestly, some of them exchanging knowing glances. Mrs Kuroki regarded me like I was an oddity in a bric-a-brac shop. ‘It’s not a question of belief. We co-exist with spirits and ghosts - the benign and the tormented.’  

I’d never been one to get spooked by the supernatural; I actually laughed watching The Exorcist. There had to be a rational explanation for everything, from the stars in the sky to the unusual ripples and shadows you saw in those grainy photographs of Loch Ness. The notion of wraiths made no sense to me, and I left the English class that day smugly amused by the ladies’ genuine conviction in the unearthly.

Early one evening at the end of the summer holidays, the shrill of cicadas raging against the relentless heat, some mates and I made the journey down the hill from university to the local bar. We hadn’t seen each other for a while; some had been travelling in Asia, others had visited family back in the UK or Australia. I’d stayed on campus all summer, happy to earn some money from my teaching jobs.

It was a typically bibulous evening involving cheap beer and salty conversation. At some point, after much carousing, I teetered between mellow cognizance and fuddled haze. If I didn’t leave soon, my friends would have to carry me back up the hill. I couldn’t be dealing with their protestations when I made to leave, so I slipped away through the side door. 

The night was still and clammy. I staggered up the hill, the humidity almost palpable as I breathed in laden air. Approaching the top, the university came into view around a bend. The contours of the campus buildings conjoined to form a looming silhouette, like a slumbering giant.

My room was on the fourth floor of the foreign students’ dormitory. I cursed at the ‘out of order’ sign on the lift. The internal staircase was avoided by most in the name of laziness, and I only used it on rare occasions like this. I gripped the handrail and began the sluggish climb, my footsteps echoing up the cool concrete well.

As I turned to mount the penultimate flight I saw something that slapped me out of inebriety. The dim lighting caused me to squint hard at the sight before me, to fathom it. Up ahead, on the landing between the third and fourth floors, were two small boys squatting on their haunches side by side, arms resting on their upper legs and heads bent forward, dressed in what looked to be an elementary-school uniform of navy-blue shorts, knee-length socks and black shoes. They both wore yellow caps, which hid their faces.

‘Donai shitenno?’ I surprised myself by asking after them in the local dialect, which I’d never spoken before. They remained motionless. I walked the few steps up to the landing and was about to bend down to touch one of them on the arm when I realised my footfalls hadn’t echoed, as if I’d stepped on cotton wool. The air in the stairwell was all at once close and stale, and the crouching little boys, oddly reminiscent of medieval gargoyles, oozed a hint of menace.  

I sidled past them and turned to climb the last flight of steps. Immediately I lurched forward as two small bodies leapt onto my back, clutching my shoulders, little legs scrambling for grip so as to hoist themselves further up onto me. I grasped the handrail with both hands, spinning around to face the landing as I went down hard on the steps. The beings were instantly gone from my back, and the landing, where the schoolboys had been moments before, was empty. I snapped my head around to see nothing but the few remaining steps leading up to the fourth floor. The stab of pain from where I had landed on my coccyx was almost numbed by a surging wave of panic that pricked my skin like a thousand hot needles.

I got to my feet with the falter of a newborn fawn and turned to hurry up the stairs. The bodies sprang onto my back again like jumping spiders, but this time their feet found a grip. They boosted themselves up and locked their cold little limbs around my neck. Something giggled in my ear, the carefree giggle of a content child. I spun around and at once the presences vanished from my back, but the landing remained mockingly bare. My throat burned where their arms had crushed my windpipe and a throbbing pulse screamed in my head.

Slowly I edged up the stairs backwards, my eyes rooted to the vacant landing. With each step I gripped the handrail hard, steadying myself for another ambush, but nothing happened. Once on the fourth floor I reversed out into the dormitory corridor, and the landing disappeared from view.

But I didn’t dare turn around.

I continued walking trance-like backwards, fixing my gaze straight ahead, until I arrived at my room. Once inside, with the door locked and lights on, I shuffled back towards to the bed, reaching behind until I felt the soft welcoming futon. It was cool to the touch as I lowered myself gently onto the cushioned fabric. The sun was already up when I drifted into a troubled sleep.

© Timothy Collard 2012

Statue Park

The brakes hissed and the engine growled. Guy and Marcus shivered as the bus pulled away, leaving them on the side of a lonely stretch of road on the desolate western fringe of the city. They had spotted the gates to Statue Park through the fog too late and missed their stop. By the time Guy had convinced the driver to pull over, they were half a mile further along the road.

When the two friends arrived in Budapest days earlier a merciless cold and an oppressive fog had greeted them. Much of Hungary was gripped in an icy vise, although the ground remained unseasonably snowless. They felt like the only tourists in town, which was a welcome change to the relentless sweaty throngs they’d encountered in Prague the previous summer. ‘We’re almost forty,’ a weary Marcus had said then, ‘and I feel like we’ve gone into battle.’ The delicious payoff of winter in Budapest was that they had the run of all the museums, thermal baths and cobbled backstreets.

Guy had always been interested in post-war European history and was looking forward to visiting Statue Park, an outdoor repository of monumental statues from Hungary's communist days. They decided to go on their last full day in Budapest. Marcus would have preferred to spend the morning in the soothing thermal waters of the Rácz or the Gellért, especially after the amount of vodka they’d consumed the night before, but he knew how much a visit to Statue Park meant to his friend. Bleary-eyed, they jumped on the 150 bus and thirty minutes later, having missed their stop, were ejected onto the misty roadside.

As the din of the bus faded, Guy tightened the scarf around his neck. ‘It’s not that far back,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Anyway, a brisk walk will clear the cobwebs.’

Marcus felt in his pockets and cursed. ‘I’ve left my gloves on the bus.’ But Guy was already marching back up the road.

There was no footpath, just a narrow strip of grass that dipped steeply into a gully, along which was strewn an array of litter – cans, newspapers, plastic bags, even a washing machine. The taloned steel supports of a pylon came into view in an adjacent field and a low drone of electricity hummed from unseen wires overhead. They listened out for the sound of oncoming vehicles but only heard their own dull syncopated footfalls on the acned bitumen.

Something caught Marcus’s eye ahead in the ditch. At first glance it looked like an overturned wooden sawhorse, like the one his father had kept in the tool shed, but he averted his gaze abruptly when he realised it was a large dog, motionless, its legs rigid like boughs and its short coat of fur tinged light blue. He said nothing to Guy, who hadn’t noticed.

Towering effigies soon appeared through the fog like bruises on waxen skin, and the men found themselves standing in front of the closed gates to Statue Park. A large sign dangled from the chains: ZÁRVA.  

‘Damn,’ said Guy. He looked over to the tall wire fence that encircled the park. ‘We can still get a look from the outside.’

‘I’m not sure –’

‘We’re the only ones here,’ he said eagerly. ‘Come on!’

The visitors were afforded a worthy view of select pieces close to the perimeter as they followed it round. They passed the charging soldiers of the Béla Kun Memorial, then came to the looming Republic of Councils Monument which depicted a striding virile worker, flag flying from one fist, the other poised to strike. Marcus regarded it warily, almost expecting the figure to lunge from its plinth. Guy focused on a point deeper into the park and thought he recognised the silhouettes of Lenin and Engels through the wintry shroud.

They came to a halt at a section of fence by the Martyrs’ Monument, a giant bronze cast of a man, head flung back, arms outstretched and knees buckled, appearing to fall. Guy bent down to grip a corner of fencing that had come loose from the post. He jerked it upwards, creating a small rent.  

Marcus looked at him, puzzled. ‘What are you doing?’

Guy winked. ‘We can crawl through and get a closer - ’

Behind them, a menacing growl brewed from the fog. They turned around and stiffened their bearing. Another growl was now discernible, a little further back. Then two more, one on either side of the men. Caliginous smears began to emerge, becoming more cogent as they drew closer. Quadrupeds, low on their haunches, crept through the slab of fog. They resembled emaciated feral canines. Ribs and vertebrae punctured their thin smoky fur in places. Their eyes were cadaverous voids, as listless as the fog that had borne the breed. The creatures’ snarls intensified, and one of them curled up its lips to unsheathe a ghastly rictus of scything fangs that didn’t belong to any animal the men knew of.

The four beasts edged closer to their quarry. Guy and Marcus backed up against the fence. The creatures were only eight or nine feet away. The men had seconds to act. ‘On the count of three,’ said Guy, his voice a hoarse whisper, ‘climb the fence as fast as you can.’

Marcus was crying. One of the beasts snapped its jaws erratically at him and expelled a deathly reek from its gut that made him want to gag.

‘One –’

The pack surged in an ululating frenzy, felling their prey like woodcutters a rotten oak. Then they gorged. Only when sated did they retreat, wisps of fog almost herding them back under the icy veil.

Snowflakes began to fall on Statue Park, at first in playful sprinkles, then in an unrelenting barrage. The monuments stood defiantly in their wire compound, the martyr’s scream, the soldiers’ roar and the worker’s rage frozen in perpetual tumult.    

© Timothy Collard 2011

The Iris Garden

Kenji manoeuvred his bike around the pitch like an expert. The August sun, low and fat in the late afternoon sky, cast long fluid shadows on the baked earth. He often came to the local elementary school on the other side of the park as it was the ideal place to practise some neat tricks on his BMX. Most of his friends, indeed most other ten-year-olds, were inside playing Super Mario, the current craze gripping Japan as BMX bikes once did, but Kenji never cared for computer games. He missed showing off to his friends on the bike, and kind of resented Mario for it. 

Undeterred by the heat and heavy cloak of humidity, Kenji persevered until he had mastered a new move, and it was only then that he looked at his watch. Six forty-five. Be home by seven, his mother had said. The last time he disobeyed this instruction she locked his bike away for two weeks.

Normally he followed the flat streets bordering the park, but this would take too long now. Kenji pictured the park’s vast network of pathways that meandered through forests of red pine and oak, up and over grassy knolls and along groves of cherry and plum trees. He quickly calculated the fastest route home, stood up on the pedals and powered across the pitch into the park.

The park was the focal point of the neighbourhood, a place everyone could enjoy all year round. But this evening there were no couples strolling, no families clearing up after a picnic, no dogs running off their leashes. It was still and silent. The sun now hid behind Mt Kongo, and Kenji made out the pointed grey roof of the local temple tucked into the foothills like a nesting scops owl. He felt sluggish as he pedaled up a steep incline, like the air was compressing him from above. Gliding down the other side he passed some lavender bushes, and thought it odd that they remained motionless in his wake.

As he rounded a corner he espied old Mrs Kuroki and some other ladies from the neighbourhood down in a clearing, dressed in their colourful summer yukata and in a circle rehearsing their folk dancing for Obon. In a few days Kenji would come here with his parents and many of the local residents to celebrate Obon, a Buddhist custom to honour the spirits of one’s ancestors. It reminded him that he would have to go to the Mie countryside with the family next weekend to visit the graves of his grandparents, and he outwardly groaned at the thought.

The pathway narrowed as he approached a large mature garden of blood irises. There had always been irises growing on this spot, even before there was a park. They stood in their thousands like serried guards, many of them taller than Kenji. Their purple blooms, like delicate folds of silk, were iridescent even in the wanness of dusk.

Kenji slowed a little as he negotiated the sinuous path through the iris garden. He looked ahead to where the pathway widened and led away from the irises up a hillock towards one of the park exits. He wasn’t far now. He checked his watch. Five minutes left.

At that moment a stringy root sprung out from the undergrowth and coiled tightly around Kenji’s ankle, yanking him abruptly. His head collided with the handlebars on the way down, and the teeth of the sprocket gouged deep into his forearm as he was dragged off the bike and into the irises on his back. Instinctively he forced his palms and heels hard into the ground to brake, but they only ploughed through loose topsoil. Iris blooms flashed by, looking down at him like mocking giants, complicit and unmoving. Searing pain began to course through his body as he was crudely drawn deeper into the iris garden. He looked like a rag doll being dragged along by an ungrateful child. Kenji tried to scream but his voice was gone, ripped from him, rendered a guttural rasp. Suddenly he was still, but the ground underneath was not. Manifold roots erupted through the soil and latched onto him like a jellyfish its prey. Adrenalin surged through his little body as he struggled to free himself, but the roots pulled down harder. He watched helplessly as first his legs vanished beneath the surface, then his arms. A tendril snaked across his neck. It felt coarse on his skin, like his mother’s hessian rug. Tears streamed from his eyes. Kenji’s last memory was the taste of earth: rotten and burning. Then silence and stillness descended once again on the iris garden.

*

Old Mrs Kuroki led the ladies through one last sequence of steps. If you had looked into her eyes at that moment you would have seen plumes of dark red ink emanating from her dilated pupils and clouding her sclerae. But no sooner had they formed than they vanished, sucked back into unseen recesses like scurrying trapdoor spiders. Invigorated, Mrs Kuroki smiled and made a mental note to take a detour through the iris garden on her way home. The child’s bike would need to be removed.

© Timothy Collard 2011