Moon Child

by Peter Ninnes

part 1

Runako flatly refused to hold my hand while we strolled down the empty cobblestone street. I’d hoped that the hand-in-hand routine would convince anyone peeking through the darkened windows of the nightclubs and hostess joints that we were a pair of black-clad Gothic lovers. Instead, we probably looked like a couple of regular crooks.

I grabbed Runako’s arm and pulled her into the shadowy lane between the Kamida Snack Bar and a concrete retaining wall.

“Don’t touch me, Jerry-perv.”

“If you had any manners, you’d call me ‘Jerry-san’. Now, be quiet and put these on.” I handed her a balaclava, helmet and gloves from my backpack.

“It’s way too hot, Jerry-perv.” She dabbed at the drops accumulating on her upper lip. “And stop telling me how to behave. What would a foreigner like you know about Japanese etiquette?”

If the previous evening’s performance was any indication, Runako’s idea of etiquette involved sitting in izakaya bars chugging jugs of Asahi bitter and scoffing excessive quantities of fried chicken. It was little wonder that the slightest exertion had her solid frame dripping sweat.

“If you don’t put them on, we’re going straight back to the hotel, and you’re never going to get your precious elixir.”

It was too dark to see the pout I knew would be hanging from her face. I’d first met Runako the previous day, but I’d already filed her under W for “whinger” in my client classification system. She objected to all my suggestions, agreeing only when I threatened to call off the job.

I put on my own balaclava, gloves and helmet, then flicked my flashlight at her face, confirming she’d donned her gear. We climbed until we reached a temporary fence, comprised of metal-framed cyclone wire panels set on concrete feet. The air in the valley was stiller than a corpse and warm like the last breaths of a dying puppy. The night belonged to the incessant rasping of the cicadas, the strangled gurgling of the river below, and incongruous couples engaged in nefarious deeds.

Runako’s jaw cracked as she stifled a yawn. I looked at my phone. “Two hours until moonrise,” I said. “It might be enough time, or it might not.”

“Well, you better have allowed enough time to find it, because I can’t survive on only half the usual dose,” she said. Another yawn escaped her snarky mouth.

I stood up, tightening my helmet’s chinstrap. “Room 344, you said? That’s the third floor?”

“Yes, we’d booked it for two nights but, of course, on the first night...” Her voice trailed away.

* * *

Seven years earlier, the Great East Japan Earthquake had shocked the nation. The following day, at 3:26 a.m, a secondary tremblor shook northern Nagano residents in their beds. A few traditional houses collapsed, crushing their occupants under tonnes of roofing tiles. Runako’s accommodation here in Hinabita Onsen Town cracked right down the middle, from the top floor to the basement. The fissure consumed several guests, including Runako’s husband, abruptly ending any dreams he may have been having about the previous day’s nuptials.

By morning, the building had been evacuated and, by noon, a local company had fenced off the ruin. Guests’ personal effects were not returned. The structure was too unsafe to retrieve anything except human remains, the officials said. With that grim task accomplished, a Shinto priest performed a rite to placate the souls of the departed, and the site was declared off-limits.

Runako last saw her husband when the lid closed on his wooden, brass-handled box. As she related these events over jugs of beer, she seemed to be more concerned about the one litre of medicine she believed she’d left in the hotel room, tucked in the suitcase she’d abandoned when she ran screaming from the roaring earth and swaying walls.

The hotel company went broke, lacking sufficient earthquake insurance to repair or demolish the building. The ruins remained above the town, a stark monument to the perils of private enterprise.

To our right, beyond the fence, a moonless sky framed the white monolith. A few stars blinked at the hotel’s jagged scar, seemingly puzzled that two sets of builders had started from opposite ends but failed to make them meet.

Runako’s physicians had been unable to diagnose or treat a condition that did not appear in their textbooks. They all agreed, however, that she functioned properly only when the moon was in her half of the sky. At whatever time of the day or night Earth’s companion slipped below the horizon, Runako lapsed into a trance-like state, unable to perform even basic everyday activities without assistance.

Runako lived her childhood as a partial invalid, but in her sixteenth year, her mother heard of an apothecary in the mountains in eastern Gifu. This wizened old woman used a secret recipe to concoct an elixir that completely cured Runako, who thereafter lived a normal life. She finished high school, completed a diploma in English language, and commenced work at a school in Fujioka.

When the earthquake struck, Runako had a stockpile of the medicine at home. Now the old woman had died, the formula had disappeared with her, and Runako was reduced to taking half doses from her last bottle. Without the elixir, Runako’s well-being would once again be dictated by the lunar cycle. I figured that whatever I could do to improve her mood would be appreciated by humanity at large.

Runako had contacted me two months ago through my blog.

“I need someone to help me recover a life-saving item,” she wrote, leaving her contact details.

I’d never heard of Runako’s condition. It must have been rare, because there wasn’t even a Japanese Wikipedia article on the subject. She said they called it tsuki byou, literally, “moon sickness”. I made her send me the doctors’ reports, which my wife helped me translate. At least I knew it was real and not just a ruse to meet a foreign guy for free English lessons or to avoid an arranged marriage.

I also insisted Runako send me a copy of her driver’s licence. Then I passed her personal details to an acquaintance working in a government department who had access to relevant databases. The last thing I wanted was to be stung by an undercover cop. Of course, I wasn’t doing any harm. I did dig under a fence from time to time, but I wasn’t vandalising property. In Japan, however, the rules are the rules, whether sane or silly, and my salvage work inevitably involved bending them a lot. Sometimes a lot a lot.

Runako’s details checked out. I rang her up.

“Why me, and not some Japanese haikyo otaku?” I asked, using the phrase for members of the clandestine group who break into and explore abandoned structures.

“The Japanese otaku say it’s too dangerous for a girl.”

“You’re not a girl. According to your licence, you’re 33. Besides, why do you need to go yourself? Tell me where the stuff is, and I can get it.”

I prefer to work alone and wasn’t too keen on taking an inexperienced person with me, but Runako said, “I can’t entrust the goods to anyone else. They’re too valuable.”

She described the site, and I asked, “Aren’t you scared of ghosts?”

Everyone in Japan believes in ghosts. I even knew a teacher of physics — it’s a rational field, supposedly — who thought there was a ghost living in a storeroom on the upper floor of his school. My wife’s no better. Before baby Sa-chan came along, I’d tried to convince her to accompany me to a hot springs resort destroyed by a typhoon passing along the Niigata coast, but she’d freaked out at the idea.

“Jerry, people died there,” she’d said.

“They retrieved all the bodies. You won’t bump into one.”

“It’s not the bodies that remain behind.” My wife stroked the back of her neck, as if trying to make the tiny black hairs lie down.

To my surprise, Runako had no such inhibitions. “There are no ghosts. When you’re dead, you’re dead.”

“You’re not a Buddhist?”

“Only when necessary.”

My wife is practical, decisive and resilient. She wants to send our daughter to a private pre-school next year. She listened patiently to my long-winded list of reservations, then asked, “How much is she paying you?”

“One million yen.”

“Do it.”

* * *

On the Sunday afternoon, Runako met me at the Hinabita Onsen Town station. She had no trouble recognising me. The place was so remote that I was the only white person who disembarked. We checked in separately at the Route Inn, she on a smoking floor, me in the clean-air section two floors below.

On Monday, we spent the morning walking around the town and adjacent areas, surreptitiously reconnoitring the site. Now, as planned, we snuck along the fence, feeling our way in the darkness, keeping one hand raised to brush away branches and spider webs encroaching on the path.

I shone my flashlight briefly on a sign attached to one of the panels.

“It’s the name of the security company for this site,” Runako said. “I hope you’ve thought about what we’ll do if we get caught by the guard.”

“I doubt if there’s a guard on site. They just drive past once or twice each night. We’ll use our flashlights as little as possible, and keep our ears open for their approaching car.”

We reached the back corner where the fence turned and cut across the weed-infested car park. The towering ruin eclipsed the lights of the town below. Behind us, the car park stretched a few more metres until it reached the approach road and the dark, rising slope of the mountain.

“There’s the front door,” I whispered, pointing at the roofed drop-off area.

“Of course, it is. I told you yesterday. You go in there to the front desk.”

While Runako held the flashlight, I began untwisting the wire joining two panels.

“Won’t you get in trouble for breaking the fence? Why don’t we just go in the gate?”

I paused and looked at her eyes suspended in a sea of black. “We passed the gate back there, and it had a big lock on it. What do you think we should have done? Called out to the doorman?”

I hung the untwisted wire on the fence. Then I bent my knees, grasped the side of one fence panel, and lifted. The concrete foot made a loud clunk as I placed it down. We slipped through the opening, and then I lifted the panel back into place, without reattaching the wires.

We set off across the car park, keeping the flashlights off.

“Can you slow down a bit? I’m feeling very tir—” Runako let out a squawk, there was a heavy thud, and her flashlight crashed onto the bitumen and skidded away ahead of us. She howled so loud a dog starting barking in the distance.

“Shh!” I said, sitting her up and putting my arm around her shoulder. My flashlight revealed torn leggings and blood seeping from grazes on both knees.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I tripped.”

“There’s one of those concrete bollards at the end of each car parking space. Be careful.” I picked up her flashlight. It was dead. I took out the spare and gave it to her. “This is my last flashlight. The idea is to use it to watch where you’re going.”

Runako hobbled the last ten metres to the front door without further calamity.

We’d seen earlier the plywood covering all the ground floor windows and doors. Up close, I observed that the sheet blocking the front door had been nailed to the door frame without being cut to size. I shone my flashlight through the gaps.

“The glass is still intact, and the door is locked with a chain.”

“My knee hurts,” Runako said.

“Sit on this bench while I go a bit farther along. And turn your flashlight off.”

“Don’t go too far,” Runako whined. I hoped little Sa-chan loved her new pre-school, because it was costing me a lifetime of patience.

I moved along the wall until I reached the massive cleft created by the earthquake. The crack went right through one of the ground-floor windows. My boots crunched on the broken glass at the base of the wall. The wall on one side of the hole had been pushed out about twenty centimetres. The plywood was crooked, and some of the screws attaching it had barely reached the frame.

Just then, a car engine revved nearby. I switched off my flashlight and looked back at the road. Light waltzed around the forest canopy away to the right. I glanced back at Runako. Damn it! Her flashlight beam was shining on the front door. I ran back to her, grabbed the light, and extinguished it.

“Get down!”

“Why?”

“Are you deaf and blind without your grog?” I hissed, dragging her off the bench and behind an overgrown planter box.

“Stop it, you pervert!” She pulled my hand off her arm.

“There’s a car!”

The headlights appeared at the far corner of the car park.

“Keep your face down!”

I covered my eyes with my gloved hand, peering out between my fingers. The vehicle stopped at the gate with the engine running. A door slammed, and a powerful flashlight beam pierced the gloom. It scanned along the fence, past the panel through which we’d entered, and all the way to the corner. Then it swung back to the other end.

“It’s hot with my face down,” Runako whispered loudly. I hoped the sound of the engine drowned her out. I considered pushing her face into the tiles, but I expected she’d screech like a cockatoo.

Now the beam headed straight towards us. I sank down behind the planter box, and placed my hand on the back of Runako’s helmet. She wiggled until the beam fell on the door behind us, and then she stopped moving. The beam moved away towards the cracked wall, before roaming past us to the other corner.

We heard the chain jangle on the gate.

“He’s coming—” Runako began, her voice cutting out as I pressed her face against the tiles.

The car door slammed again, and the headlights shone into the car park, then arced away. The sound of the engine faded, and, for a few minutes, we lay motionless, like a pair of chicken drumsticks in a butcher’s display cabinet.

Proceed to part 2...