Moon Child
by Peter Ninnes
Part 1 appears
in this issue.
conclusion
I let go of Runako’s head, and she sat up.
“You didn’t have to push so hard. You squashed my nose. And I am so hot!” She pulled off her helmet, balaclava and gloves.
“Put those back on.”
“The guard won’t be back for hours.”
“It doesn’t matter. You said your room had a view of the town and the river. We could be visible when we’re in there, especially if we don’t get out before moonrise.”
“We can just close the curtains.”
I stood up, sick of her attitude. “Since you know everything, you can get the elixir yourself. I’m going back.”
“How am I meant to get in there by myself?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t have any tools.” She jumped up and grabbed my arm. “Please don’t go. I can’t do it myself. I need you.”
“Well, put that balaclava and stuff back on and don’t say a word unless I ask you something.”
She gave her pouty sigh and covered her face. “Okay.”
“Shh! I said, don’t say a word unless I ask.”
She clamped her hands on her hips, eyes fixed on mine, a muffled snort erupting from her throat.
I ignored her and walked back to the broken window. I wrapped my electric screwdriver in a small towel to muffle the noise, and quickly removed the plywood. A noisome odour burst through the fabric of our balaclavas and assaulted our airways. Behind me, Runako stifled a sneeze.
I turned on the miniature camera on my helmet, and we shone our flashlights around the interior of the traditional Japanese hotel room. Runako’s beam wobbled unsteadily across the room. The crevice ran across the floor, the tatami mats torn asunder and black with mould. One futon lay dishevelled on the floor, while a second hung half in the hole. I heard Runako swallow hard.
Across the other side of the room, the polished wood panelling of the corridor glinted through the open sliding door. The light fitting hung at an odd angle, and my flashlight beam disappeared into the blackness of the gaping crack in the ceiling.
The cupboard doors had fallen to the floor, their idyllic mural of mountains, pine trees and herons in disarray. I felt no desire to clean up the mess. Rather, I was struck by the cruel and beautiful depiction of life’s impermanence frozen before me.
I imagined the couple sleeping on their futons, the man spread-eagled on his back, snoring, while the woman curled up like a cat before a fire. No doubt they’d bathed in the hot springs in the early evening.
Then the staff would have brought in trays with many little bowls and plates of Japanese cuisine. I could see them sitting on cushions at the low table, dressed in their evening kimonos, their chopsticks clacking, and murmuring oishii as each delicious morsel reached their taste buds. Perhaps after dinner they’d made love or just had sex, the man eager and straining, the woman bored, waiting for it to be over so that she could go back to reading her book. One of them had probably gone down the hole, while the other had fared a little better in life’s lottery.
Runako elbowed me. “Wake up, dopey!”
I placed my towel over the shards of glass protruding from the base of the frame, and broke them off with a few gentle taps of my hammer. I eased my lanky legs over the sill, making sure not to snag the crotch of my overalls. Then I turned and helped Runako. Halfway over, her back foot caught on the sill. She tumbled forward, screaming as she knocked us both onto the futon, inches from the hole. I clamped my hand over her mouth again, then rolled her off me, away from the gap.
She’d had the good sense not to drop her flashlight, and its beam revealed a dense cloud of mould spores enveloping us. An intense pain split my sinuses, my eyes started to water, and I could barely breathe. Runako covered her face with her hands and emitted a series of short sneezes beneath her balaclava.
“Let’s get out of here!” I gasped. I picked her up and plonked her back outside, ignoring her squeal. Then I clambered out the window, turned off my camera, grabbed her hand, and pulled her back along the veranda, away from the open window.
“Why didn’t you have the good sense to bring masks?” Runako asked between sneezes. “And I didn’t say you could hold my hand.”
I ignored her remonstrations. “Sneeze properly, so that you blow the stuff out. Those stifled little sneezes you Japanese women produce just don’t cut it.”
“We’re being polite. Besides, you made me wear this stupid face thing. Do you want it full of snot?”
I rummaged in my backpack and found two small dark purple towels, souvenirs from a hot springs resort in Gunma. I handed one to Runako. “Wrap this around your face.”
“I won’t need it. I’m not going back in there.”
“But you won’t let me find your precious medicine alone. Who’s going to do it?”
“Let’s find another entrance.”
“All the rooms will be the same. The place has been exposed to the weather for seven years.”
“But not all of them have a hole in the ceiling that goes right up to the roof and lets the rain in.”
I hated to admit it, but she had a point. “Okay. We find another entrance. But your room had a crack in it, right? Because your husb—” I stopped abruptly. Runako’s eyes narrowed as if sending me a warning.
“Just wrap the towel around the lower part of your balaclava,” I said.
We walked to the far end of the building, where a flight of steps led down the side of the hotel. A tall hedge ran wild to the left of the stairs. Our reconnaissance indicated that the area beyond the base of the stairs held the hotel’s hot spring baths. We’d seen the tall wooden fence, which maintained the privacy of the guests soaking naked in the outdoor pools. But the fence and the hedge together had hidden from sight the lower corner of the building.
“Would you look at this,” I said, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
Where the wooden fence met the wall, a door stood open.
“Well, obviously it’s the emergency exit,” Runako said. “How come you didn’t see it before? It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”
I switched my helmet camera back on and shone my flashlight through the doorway. A set of concrete stairs led up to the right. My spirits rose. With any luck, I’d be rid of this tiresome woman sooner rather than later.
I flicked my flashlight briefly at Runako, checking she hadn’t removed her helmet, balaclava, gloves or towel-mask. I found a rock and placed it near the door frame, to keep the door ajar if the wind sprang up.
“This is the basement. Your room must be three floors up. Stick right behind me.”
We reached the first floor, and I pulled down on the door handle, wondering if it could be opened from inside the stairwell. The door swung towards me, and a long corridor swallowed my flashlight beam. I eased the door shut, and continued up four more flights of stairs until we reached a door with a large “3”. We slipped into the corridor. The place smelled musty, but nowhere near as suffocating as the lower room.
The first guest room on the left was number 358. Inside, it was like the first room: futons in disarray, cupboard doors fallen down, open suitcases with clothes spilling out, picture frames smashed on the tatami mats, curtains awry. It only lacked a fissure in the floor. Dodging debris, we tiptoed down the corridor. All the rooms were variations on the theme: sliding doors open, contents in chaos. We reached room 346, and Runako pushed past me, her limp miraculously absent.
“Watch out for the crack!” I hissed, seeing a gap in the floor a few metres ahead. But the entrance to room 344 was before the crack. Runako stopped. Unlike every other room, this door was closed. She glanced at me, and slid it open. She gasped and grabbed my arm.
“What?” I asked, shining my flashlight into the room. “Oh my God!”
The skin on my scalp crawled. The hairs on my forearms stood straight up. My lower bowel felt like I would regret the extra-large serve of curried beef I’d had for lunch.
The cupboard doors were closed, their murals in perfect condition. The tatami mat was clean, although torn in two by the large crack along the wall. The futons were neatly laid out, end to end, next to the cupboard doors. The low table squatted in the middle of the room, and the pictures all hung straight on the wall, their intact glass reflecting the torch light. Two overnight suitcases stood at attention against the wall, their lids zipped shut. Even the wide crack in the ceiling seemed orderly, providing sturdy support to the unblemished light fitting. The room smelled like air freshener, although the intact window was open to the night.
Runako, fearless or desperate or both, recovered her composure quickly, released her grip on my arm, slipped off her sneakers, and stepped over the threshold.
“Be careful!”
She shone her flashlight around the room until it came to rest on the alcove beside the right-hand curtain. On the shelf sat a large brown bottle.
“You know,” she said, “I think that’s my elixir there, but I’m certain I left it in the suitcase.” She tiptoed over and grasped the bottle by the neck, illuminating it with her flashlight. Giving me a wide-eyed nod, she started back towards the door. She stopped and looked at one of the suitcases, then back at her bottle, frowned, and her flashlight beam wavered as a shiver ran through her bones.
Returning to the corridor, her hands were still shaking as she held up the bottle. “This is it. How did it get on the shelf?”
“And how did everything get tidied up like this? Let’s get the freak out of here,” I said, giving the improbable room one final glance. Runako pulled on her sneakers, and we turned toward the exit.
Behind us, the floor creaked. We both stopped, as if a hand had grasped our shoulders. Twisted around by a strange force that overwhelmed my desire to run, I followed Runako’s gaze. The blood drained out of my face, and I only vaguely registered the warm dampness in my underwear.
On the other side of the wide crack in the floor stood a man, clearly visible even without our flashlights shining directly on him. His white socks contrasted with the rich timber of the floor, and his dark blue evening kimono sported the hotel’s name in white kanji characters down the left side. He had an up-and-coming salaryman’s haircut. But it was unclear if he was looking at us, since his bruised and bloodied eyes were swollen shut.
My constricted throat trapped a scream. Runako turned to me. Her eyes, framed by her balaclava, were hauntingly serene, suggesting she recognised him. She looked back at the man, and his battered lips curled away to reveal his teeth, broken or missing altogether. He reached out towards her, blood dripping from the stumps where his hands had once been.
For a moment, I feared she was about to fling herself into his arms. But then she spun around and dashed off towards the exit, clutching the bottle against her chest. I caught up with her at the stairs, and slammed the emergency door shut behind us. We flew down to the basement level and took the outside stairs two at a time. Runako’s unathletic frame sprinted ahead of me across the car park, but I caught up with her as she looked for the disconnected fence panels.
I lifted the concrete foot to open a gap. A roar suddenly filled the air, as if a Japanese self-defence force jet were taking off from the car park behind us. I turned towards the din.
“Eh?” Runako exclaimed, with the curious rising intonation Japanese people use. Her surprise was not without reason. The white rectangle of the abandoned hotel was losing its shape. The side which we’d entered, to the left of the crack, seemed in the dim light to be shrinking.
I couldn’t understand until Runako yelled, “It’s falling! Run!” She slipped through the gap and sprinted towards the far corner of the fence. I dashed after her. The sinking structure spewed a white cloud across the car park like fog rolling in from the sea.
We reached the top of the track heading down to the town, but dared not slow our pace. Halfway along the side fence, the dust reached us. The balaclava and hot springs towel kept it out of my nose and mouth, but my eyes stung, and I lost sight of the track altogether. In a few moments, however, we were out of the cloud, shielded by the portion of the hotel that remained standing.
Within minutes, I was propped against the back wall of the Kamida Snack Bar, deafened by the blood hammering in my ears and rubbing my eyes to clear the grit. The rumbling had been replaced by the excited chatter of the townsfolk gathering in the street a few metres from us, roused from their futons by the mysterious thunder. Runako squatted in the shadows, catching her breath, and gazing at her precious prize.
“Retrieved it just in time, even though you nearly got us both killed,” she whispered, unscrewing the bottle. She pulled down the front of her balaclava and took a swig.
“Is that the right dose?” I asked, reaching up and switching off my camera.
“Who cares? And what is that smell? Did you wet yourself?”
My face burned under my balaclava. “A dog must have peed in the grass around here.”
The voices in the street faded as the townsfolk shrugged their shoulders, remarked that there was nothing they could do about it, and retreated to their beds. We crept back towards the Route Inn, whose façade brightened as the moon chose that moment to peek over the mountains.
Runako led me across the road to the public footbath.
She removed her headwear and sneakers. “Excuse me,” she said, turning her back. She stepped out of her shorts and leggings, and shook out her hair, which she’d tied in a bun under the balaclava. Putting her shorts back on, she sat on the bench, splashing water from the bath on her face. She swung her legs over to soak her feet in the hot water, while the steam carried whiffs of sulphur up my nose.
“Who was that back there in the corridor?” I ventured, sitting on the concrete to untie my bootlaces.
“In the corridor?”
“Yes. Outside your hotel room.”
“I didn’t see anybody. Just you, me and my bottle.”
I stared at her, one boot half off, struggling for a response, and aching to view my helmet camera recording.
The moon dripped light upon Runako’s bare legs, drawing my eyes to them. How strangely pristine they seemed. I leaned forward, puzzled, and shone my flashlight on her knees.
“Pervert!” she snapped, pushing the light away. But I’d illuminated her legs long enough to see the last of the grazes inflicted by the car park bitumen disappear before my very eyes.
“Close your mouth, Jerry. You look like a fool. But I have my bottle, and now, here’s your money.”
She handed me an envelope from her shorts’ pocket. It was stuffed with crisp, congenial ten-thousand yen notes. My wife would count each one with glee.
“Thank you,” I said.
Runako dismissed me with a toss of her head. So far, the swig of elixir had not improved her personality. Perhaps even an old Gifu apothecary’s magic potion has its limits.
Ignoring my presence, Runako stretched out her arms to her lunar companion like a woman welcoming her lover. “Ah, Mr Moon, you make me feel so, so good!”
Copyright © 2018 by Peter Ninnes
