The Complete Ring Trilogy: Ring, Spiral, Loop

Yoshino thought of the place where the car had been found. He’d actually gone there himself and still had a clear impression. The car was parked on an overgrown piece of vacant land in a little ravine just off the unpaved prefectural road that led from Ashina to Mt Okusu. Cars coming up the road could just catch the reflection of its taillights as they passed. It wasn’t hard to imagine why the prep school kid, who’d been driving, had chosen this place to park in. After nightfall hardly any cars used this road, and with the thick growth of trees providing cover, it made for a perfect hideaway for a penniless young couple.

“Then, you’ve got the guy with his head jammed up against the steering wheel and the side window. Meanwhile, the girl’s got her head buried between the passenger seat and the door. That’s how they died. I saw them being taken out of the car, with my own eyes. Each body came tumbling out the moment the doors were opened. It’s like at the moment of death some sort of force had been pushing them from the inside, didn’t stop when they died but kept pushing for thirty hours or so until the investigators opened the doors, and then burst out. Now, are you with me here? This car was a two-door, one of those where you can’t lock the doors with the key still inside. And the key was in the ignition, but the doors … well, you catch my drift. The car was completely sealed. It’s hard to imagine that any force from the outside could have affected them. And what kind of expression do you suppose they had on their dead faces? They were both scared shitless. Faces contorted with terror.”

Yoshino paused to catch his breath. There was a loud gulping sound. It wasn’t clear which of them had swallowed his saliva.

“Think about it. Suppose, just for the hell of it, that some fearsome beast had come out of the woods. They’d have been scared, and they would have huddled close to each other. Even if he hadn’t, the girl would absolutely have clung to him. After all, they were lovers. But instead, their backs were pressed up against the doors, as if they were trying to get as far away from each other as they could.”

Yoshino threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Beats the hell out of me.”

If it hadn’t been for the shipwreck in the waters off Yokosuka, the article might have been given more space. And if it had, there would have been a lot of readers who would have enjoyed trying to solve the puzzle, playing detective. But … But. A consensus had spread, an atmosphere, among the investigators and everybody else who had been at the scene. They all thought more or less the same thing, and all of them were on the verge of blurting it out, but nobody actually did. That kind of consensus. Even though it was completely impossible for two young people to die of heart attacks at exactly the same moment, even though none of them really believed it, everybody told themselves the medical lie that it had happened just like that. It wasn’t that people refrained from saying anything out of fear of being laughed at for being unscientific. It was that they felt they’d be drawing unto themselves some unimaginable horror by admitting it. It was more convenient to indulge in the scientific explanation, no matter how unconvincing it was.

A chill ran up Asakawa’s spine and Yoshino’s simultaneously. Unsurprisingly, they were both thinking the same thing. The silence only confirmed the premonition which was welling up in each man’s breast. It’s not over—it’s only just started. No matter how much scientific knowledge they fill themselves with, on a very basic level, people believe in the existence of something that the laws of science can’t explain.

“When they were discovered … where were their hands?” Asakawa suddenly asked.

“On their heads. Or, well, it was more like they were covering their faces with their hands.”

“Were they by any chance pulling at their hair, like this?” Asakawa tugged at his own hair to demonstrate.

“Eh?”

“In other words, were they tearing at their heads, or pulling out their hair, or anything like that?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“I see. Could I get their names and addresses, Yoshino?”

“Sure. But don’t forget your promise.”

Asakawa smiled and nodded, and Yoshino got up. As he stood the table swayed and their coffee spilled into their saucers. Yoshino hadn’t even touched his.

5 (#ulink_4f1bee4b-6670-56b7-95d9-3995a7c6ff48)

Asakawa kept investigating the four victims’ backgrounds whenever he had a free minute, but had so much work to do that he wasn’t getting as far as he’d hoped. Before he knew it a week had passed, it was a new month, and both August’s rain-soaked humidity and September’s summery heat became distant memories pushed aside by the signs of deepening autumn. Nothing happened for a while. He’d been making a point of reading every inch of the local-news pages, but without coming across anything remotely similar. Or was it just that something horrible was advancing, slowly but surely, where Asakawa couldn’t see? But the more time elapsed, the more inclined he was to think that the four deaths were just coincidences, unconnected in any way. He hadn’t seen Yoshino since then, either. He had probably forgotten the whole thing, too. If he hadn’t, he would have contacted Asakawa by now.

Whenever his passion for the case showed signs of waning, Asakawa would take four cards out from his pocket and be reminded once again that it couldn’t have been a coincidence. On the cards he’d written the deceased’s names, addresses, and other pertinent information, and on the remaining space he planned to record their activities during the months of August and September, their upbringing, and anything else his research turned up.

CARD 1:

TOMOKO OISHI

Date of birth: 10/21/72

Keisei School for Girls, senior, age 17

Address: 1-7 Motomachi, Honmoku, Naka Ward, Yokohama

Approx. 11 pm, Sept. 5: dies in kitchen on first floor of home, parents away. Cause of death sudden heart failure.

CARD 2:

SHUICHI IWATA

Date of birth: 5/26/71

Eishin Preparatory Academy, first year, age 19

Address: 1-5-23 Nishi Nakanobu, Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo

10:54 pm, Sept. 5: falls over and dies at intersection in front of Shinagawa Sta. Cause of death cardiac infarction.

CARD 3:

HARUKO TSUJI

Date of birth: 1/12/73

Keisei School for Girls, senior, age 17

Address: 5-19 Mori, Isogo Ward, Yokohama

Late night, Sept. 5 (or early next morning): dies in car off pref. road at foot of Mt Okusu. Cause of death sudden heart failure.

CARD 4:

TAKEHIKO NOMI

Date of birth: 12/4/70

Eishin Preparatory Academy, second year, age 19 Address: 1-10-4 Uehara, Shibuya Ward, Tokyo

Late night, Sept. 5 (or early next morning): dies w/Haruko Tsuji in car at foot of Mt Okusu. Cause of death sudden heart failure.

Tomoko Oishi and Haruko Tsuji went to the same high school and were friends; Shuichi Iwata and Takehiko Nomi studied at the same prep school and were friends: this much had been clear prior to legwork, which indeed confirmed it. And from the simple fact that Tsuji and Nomi had gone for a drive together on Mt Okusu in Yokosuka on the night of September 5th, it was obvious that they were, if not quite lovers, at least fooling around. When he’d asked her friends, he’d heard the rumor that Tsuji had been dating a prep school guy from Tokyo. However, Asakawa still didn’t know when or how they’d met. Naturally, he suspected that Oishi and Iwata were going out, too, but he couldn’t find anything to back this up. It was equally possible that Oishi and Iwata had never even seen each other. In which case, what was there to link these four? They seemed far too closely related for this unknown being to have picked them totally at random. Maybe there was some secret that only the four of them knew, and they’d been killed for it … Asakawa tried out a more scientific explanation with himself: perhaps the four of them had been in the same place at the same time, and all four had been infected with a virus that attacks the heart.

Hey, now. Asakawa shook his head as he walked. A virus that causes sudden heart failure? Come on.

He climbed the stairs, muttering to himself, a virus, a virus. Indeed, he should start out with attempts at scientific explanation. Well, suppose there was a virus that caused heart attacks. At least it was a little more realistic than imagining that something supernatural was behind it all; it seemed less likely to get him laughed at. Even if such a virus hadn’t yet been discovered on earth, maybe it had just recently fallen to earth inside a meteor. Or maybe it had been developed as a biological weapon and had somehow escaped. You couldn’t rule out the possibility. Sure. He’d try thinking of it as a kind of virus for a while. Not that this would satisfy all his doubts. Why had they all died with looks of astonishment on their faces? Why had Tsuji and Nomi died on opposite sides of that small car, as if they were trying to get away from each other? Why hadn’t the autopsies revealed anything? The possibility of an escaped germ weapon could at least answer the third question. There would have been a gag order.

If he were to pursue this hypothesis further, he could deduce that the fact that there hadn’t been any other victims yet meant that the virus was not airborne. It was either blood-borne, like AIDS, or was fairly noncontagious. But more importantly, where had these four picked it up? He’d have to go back and sift through their activities in August and September again and look for places and times they had in common. Since the participants’ mouths had been shut permanently, it wouldn’t be easy. If their meeting had been a secret among the four of them, something neither parents nor friends knew about, then how was he to ferret it out? But he was sure that these four kids had some time, some place, some thing in common.

Sitting down at his word processor Asakawa chased the unknown virus from his thoughts. He needed to get out the notes he’d just taken, to sum up the contents of the cassette he’d made. He had to get this article finished today. Tomorrow, Sunday, he and his wife Shizu were going to visit her sister, Yoshimi Oishi. He wanted to see with his own eyes the spot where Tomoko had died, to feel on his own flesh whatever air still lingered. His wife had agreed to go to Honmoku to console her bereaved older sister; she had no inkling of her husband’s true motives.

Asakawa started pounding the keys of the word processor before he’d come up with a decent outline.

6 (#ulink_28e0d358-16cf-597a-9458-303cc82d011c)

Shizu was seeing her parents for the first time in a month. Ever since their granddaughter Tomoko had died, they came to Tokyo from their home in Ashikaga whenever they could, not only to console their daughter but to be consoled in turn. Shizu only understood this today. Her heart ached when she saw her aged parents’ thin, grief-stricken faces. They had once had three grandchildren: their oldest daughter Yoshimi’s daughter Tomoko, their second daughter Kazuko’s son Kenichi, and Shizu’s daughter Yoko. One grandchild from each of their three daughters—not all that common. Tomoko had been their first grandchild, and their faces had crinkled up every time they had seen her; they had enjoyed spoiling her. Now they were so depressed that it was impossible to say whose grief was deeper, the parents’ or the grandparents’.