9: A Pot

I'm going to tell my fearest experience ever. 

In autumn of my first year of the university, my master of occultism was in slump. He seemed to lose his motivation and his hunch. He didn't even join me when I asked him to take me to haunted spots, vacantly mumbling "Nope. It shows a bad sign," as he took some coins out of his pocket and tossed them. Then he lay down on the floor. 

But one day, Master suddenly took my hand. "Let me read your palm," then he continued "Oh, my goodness. This is bad. Too bad to read. You are worried, aren't you? I know you are." 

Selfish. 

"Okay, you're going with me. Let's go." 

I was glad that he was motivated even though it was a bit pushy. Though he didn't mention where we were going, I decided to tag along and got on a train with him. 

We arrived at the station in a regional hub city of next prefecture. We left the station and went into an arcade across from the station. There was a middle-aged man in the arcade. It read 'Palmistry' on a piece of paper stood on the desk in front of him. 

After giving a friendly greeting to the man, Master introduced him as his relative to me. The man introduced his name as Suoh.  

"You came here to see that," Suoh said in a grouchy tone. He was famous among local folks who used the same technique as Hachiro Asano, a well known fortuneteller. Although he read my palm while I didn't understand about palmistry, he didn't say anything bad aside from it indicated that I would suffer from a woman in the future. 

I was pleased when he said a line called Kinsei-kan came out from the base between index finger and middle finger to the base of pinkie clearly drew a half circle. According to him, it was an aspect which was often seen in artists' palm.  When I asked Master if he wated to be read, Suoh glared at him and said, "I don't even need to read his closely. Looks like he's going to die," Master just simpered at it. 

Suoh didn't close his booth earlier than usual for us, having us fully waited for him. After closing his booth, he took us to his house. It was a large Japanese house. It seemed that he did palmisry just for fun. We partook dinner and I took a bath as Suoh recomended us to stay the night at his house. As I finished having a bath, Master came to me.  

"Come with me," he said. We headed to a storehouse in back of the house. There was Suoh wated for us, saying, "I have to admit that you have the right to see that, but I'm not very happy with you to do it." 

"Don't be straight-laced," Ignoring Suoh, Master entered the storehouse. We climbed down a ladder led to the basement. It looked like there was Master's purpouse of this trip there. I felt my heart beating. Because Master had beady eyes. I knew there would be something dangerous for sure when he got the eyes like that. 

The ladder was longer than I previously thought. After whole two floors of going down, we found a basement with tatami-mat flooring. Yellow lamp lights were hung on the ceiling. The basement appared to be approximately 11 square meters, exposing soil on the walls. The tatami-mats seemed to be directly on the earth as well. I was taught later that it was originally a bomb shelter.

There was something strange in the corner of the room. It was a huge pot, hight to my chest and width that I couldn't hold. Moreover, it was neither of the porcelains nor the potterys familiar, but an unglazed pot marked with bondage.

"Isn't it a Jomon pottery?" As I asked, Suoh shook his head.

"No, that's a Yayoi. A vessel for storing grain. "

――Why is there such a thing? As a matter of course, I wondered.

In the meanwhile, Master began to look hard at the pot as he walked up to it.

"This pot was snitched in the chaos of  WWⅡ by his grandfather," Suoh mentioned a very famous ruin which even I knew.
At that time, Master opened his mouth. "You just said this is for storing grain?"
He seemed to be laughing. Even under the yellow lights, the pot showed a dead dark color on its skin.

"His grandfather said that this pot had been for storing human bones. He said he could see the faceof the dead when he looked into this pot," Suoh growled to himself.

I was trembling. Although it was fall, it was still early autumn. I was attacked by a cold, while the season had to be too far from chillness.

"He told me that sometimes the dead crawl out of the pot. They are filled in the room, in the sotre house then cry and howl loudly to be heard all over the town. 

I was shocked as if being beaten on head. It even gave me a diziness. It seemed a swarm of the flies were flying about in my head.  A strong bad smell began to stink around me.

――Dengerous.
――This pot is totally dengerous.

I'd experienced quite a lot of spiritual experiences and  those experience warned me.
Master was looking into the pot saying, "They're coming... crawling up. Crawl up now. Come on, " He had  glaring eyes there. I had an obnoxious noise in my ears. Just like buzzing of a crowd of flies. It suffered me with a ferocious noise I'd never undergone.

The lights suddenly turned off with a crack. At the moment, undoubtedly, I saw pale phosphorus rose into the air from the pot.

"Oh, crap. We've gotta get out of here," Said Suoh, flustered.

"Look! They're still trapped in this pot after all these two thousand years! "

Suoh holded Master who was screaming insainly.

"They've eaten men! This is our original sin! "

I felt like my knees gave away.

"Come over here. If you're my apprentice, come and look at this. Look into and see the darkness inside the pot. You'll find out the darkness of this world is bottomless! There's no salvation like life-in-nirvana. I'm so sure of that, every time I see this! Human beings, full of shits in nature, have no right to be alive!"

I climbed the ladder recklessly to run away. Suoh managed to pull Master out of the storehouse and shut the door behind him saying, "Go to bed for tonight. Depart here tomorrow."

That night, I was asleep blocking my ears from a howling gale blew all throught the night.

After the incident, Master got recovered and motivated again, while I got a mixed feeling.

8: Aruku-san

Master's girl friend was a little strange. Master described her like, "She's greater than I am." 

Well, I'm going to call her Aruku-san for now. She belonged to literature department. I can't remember the specific course, though. 

One day, I had become alone with her in the clubroom when I had just entered this university. She was beautiful. But to be honest, I didn't like her because she rarely reflected her emotion on her face. Besides, it was hard to read what she was thinking. 

While typing something with her laptop, she suddenly looked up and said weird thing. 

"Letters come into my mouth." 

 What? 

 "Sometimes when I write something in the midnight, the letters float up in the air and stream into my mouth." 

 "D-Do they?" 

 W-What the hell was she saying? 

 "Do you see? They don't stop. They are more than I wrote. They keep streaming into my mouth like forever. That's the scarest thing for me,"  She said it with quite serious face. I had no word to describe her at that time though, now I think she definitely was a kind of people called 'Denpa', who had a wild fantasy. 

However, she wasn't just a crazy girl. She was amaizingly smart. I often saw her talk Master down. Also, Aruku-san had a good intuition. She had foretold that a bus would be late. And when she told me "Change the channel," I saw Matsui, a.k.a Godilla, had just hit a homerun right after changing the channel. These kind of things often happened. 

One day, I asked Master about Aruku-san. 

"Do you know Edgar Cayce?" Master said.  

"Of course, I do. He foretells with foresight dreams or hypnotic trans or whatever." 

 "Right. Probably, Aruku is the same." 

 "What do you mean?" 

 "I want you to see her asleep. It's traumatic, really," I didn't understand what would be traumatic but did that Master fudged my question. 

 "I don't know much about Edgar Cayce but I guess Aruku's ability isn't learned or acquired like his case. It's congenital constitution." 

 "Constitution for foresight dreams?" 

 "Dunno. Don't even know if she's awake or not. I only know her foresight dreams can either hit or miss the mark. It might be similar to your simulated experience while the sleep paralysis." 

I often experienced relatively common phenomenon of sleep paralysis like ; 'I was still in my bed while I assumed to be awake.' Sometimes I spent a few hours or even whole day in the experience and in the end, I truely woke up and started over the day again. I used to make 'Sleep paralysis diary' and individually studied about it. 

I'd givven the diary to Master before as he seemed to like it very much and kept telling me to give him. Now I guess he wanted it for data to study Aruku's constitution. 

"So, you intend to keep her to yourself," As I said, Master smirked and took out a floppy disc from the breast pocket, flipping it. The timing was too good. I supposed the floppy was just a bluff but still, I was pretty sure he owned some study files of Aruku-san.

Rather than that, what freezed my blood was what Aruku-san told me  when she graduated the university; "Be careful of a flood." 

I've totally forgotten about that but now I'm in my home town since I failed to find work. And my house is located in an area where could be submerged if a huge erthquake like Nankai Great Earthquake strikes. Recently, it is  predicted that the victims of the erthquake will reach 30 thousand people at most.  

What the fuck. Seriously, it's scary. I wonder how many years are left till it happens.

7: Malformation

I have a master of occultism.

He has his own logic about ghosts and often explains it to me like 'Ghosts should be like this'. According to him, most of them don't understand that they've already dead.

Some of them stay at where they died and keep asking for a help, some simply repeat their living activities without knowing their own death. They are scred of what living people are scared of ; mafias, fierce dogs and insane people. Some of the ghosts even lose their nerve miserably just to be yelled. The thing is there are some ghosts never be scared of a threat. You should stay out of those ghosts that understand what they are.

Things like that are generally said and they make sanse either. But there is another notable thing master told me. I've never heard of any similar examples nor heard someone else have said. Maybe it's just because I'm ignorant but I 'm curious about how you would think about it.

It was in summer when I was a second year university student. I saw strange things three days in a row.

The first one was an old man who sat in front of a pachinko machine. That pachinko parlor was where I went for the first time. I was walking around in the parlor and stopped when I saw his bizarre appearance. His lower lip was extremely swollen and hanged down, almost reaching his breast. I simply thought he had an illness or something with the symptom and left the parlor.

The second one was the next day. I was heading to the city by bus. I noticed that a person who was in front of me had six fingers as I sat on a seat in front of the entrance door. I counted the number of the person's fingers again and again but there were six in one hand. The hand had two thumbs on both end. I thought it might be hyperdactylia. The person got off the bus while no one else stared at the person. I wondered why they didn't notice that fingers, but after that, I came to realize and shamed myself for how thoughtless I was.

Then, the next day, I saw a dowarf.

It was in a pachinko parlor again. There was a kid but the face was exactly like old person's. The face looked either man or woman. He or she was complaining "I can't win with this stupid machine!" with a high tone voice.The person was very short as the legs were bent. The height was just under my breast despite of me not that tall. I didn't stare at him/her this time but felt weird for having seen those unique people this often.

I thought Master would be pleased at the news but he made a vinegary face. Knowing him likes to scare me out, I thought he would say something irresponsible like "You are cursed," but he seemed to be thinking of something for a while, then, he opened his mouth, putting his hands together in a strange form.

"After seeing something unique, you would become to see people closely. There's no wonder but a matter of probability. But do you notice there is something wrong in your story? " said Master. "You know, there is a window on your right side when you sit on a seat in front of the entrance door," He continued as I nodded wondering what he was going to say. "Of course, the seat ahead of yours is the same. Then, here's a question. Which hand did you see on the armrest there, right or left?" I still hadn't understood what he meant, so, I just shaked my head.

"Well, some buses have armrests on the window side. But I'm pretty sure one you saw was on the aisle side because you saw it so clearly that you even wondered why other people didn't notice. Then, its thumb shouldn't be on the left."

As he went on, I began to get a picture.

"You described it as if it was a right hand while it should've been a left hand. You could've noticed not only it had six fingers but also about that. It's strange that you didn't even feel something wrong despite staring at the person, while I felt it just to hear, isn't it?"

I got a feeling that he was going to say something terrible. Cold sweat streamed down on my face.

"In other two stories, you mentioned about their sex or their looks. But you didn't mention about that in the bus episode. You certainly saw the person when the person left the bus, though. Vagueness of your memory about what you've seen means you are unconciously trying to hide the uncertain part and pretending as if it was just a malformed human. Now, I'm going to ask you again. You were the only person who were staring at it, right?"

Master raised his clasping hands.

"Okay. Hold out your dominant hand. Your's is the right. Turn the palm downwards. Put your left hand on the right hand then place each finger on top of each right finger except thumbs. Good. Your ring finger is on top of your right middle finger now. Then adjust your left four fingers to your right four fingers. Now, your right hand has six fingers."

To my readers, if you want to know how it looks like, try doing this with me.

"You've got a symmetrical right hand. How do you feel?"

It felt strange. I could say it was relaxing or relieving. It felt more integrated than just putting both hands together. You can feel it clearer if you move your hands together up and down, left and right.

"That's an ideal shape of a hand that human beings really want to have in the depth of mind. Two symmetry thumbs allow us to grab things with an even strength from right and left. I've ever seen those 'two-thumbed ghosts' for several times."

"You mean it was a ghost no one could see but me?"

"Probably," Master said, grasping my face with his false six-finger hand. "Sometimes we can see them. Some look like while they've been alive, some have two thumbs or two dominant hands... They've unknowingly transformed as if they were trying to hold their unstable existences."

That was a curious story. I'd never heard of a story like he told. Although I'd read quite a lot of books about ghost stories so far, had never seen any description like ambidextrous ghosts or something like that in those books.

At this time, I have no way to know whether it was Master's bluff or a truth of a world I've never known about.

6: Kojoh-Ike Tunnel

It had been relatively often that I couldn't see the ghosts what Master could see. 

It was just before the summer. Master and I had a midnight drive to Kojoh-Ike Tunnel. It was one of the five best haunted places of the prefecture. It was located in K city. There was a lot of haunted places in K city for some reasons.

"They really would appear in the tunnel. The telephon box at the entrance of the tunnel is dangerous enough but in the tunnel, they would even climb into a car," on the way to the tunnel, Master explained me the main point of the place. I'd ever heard of the rumor. "You need to be careful especially when you're in the grounp of three. If there is only one seat left, the ghost gets on." I awfully had a bad feeling about a stuffed animal which sat on the passenger seat next to Master.

"I know you want it get on this car." I gave up on registing him, sitting on the rear seat.

The tunnel was almost there. Although nothing couldn't be seen at the telephone box, the atmosphere had changed once we entered the tunnel. It was darker in the tunnel than I'd imagined. I looked around as the car went ahead. I became sure that ghosts would appear there because I had a ringing in my ears. I was fidgetting in the center of the rear seat, being unable to choose  the right side or the left side to sit on.

Would ghosts come from the opposite lane on the right, or appear on the wall on the left? As I was feeling nervous, Master suddenly shouted. "I'm gonna fucking kill you, ass hole!" I shrunk up, misunderstanding he said it to me. "Keep your head down. Dont' let it touch you," said Master. I couldn't see any ghosts despite hearing a ringing in my ears growing louder and louder. I quickly lowered my head. Imagining an invisible hand was about to touch me got my heart beat skipped. "Don't you fucking run away! You're gonna die once again if you do!" I'd ever heard him speak sharply for several times before though, it was the first time to see him show his rage that much. "Hey, don't let it go. Take a photo in a hurry," Master turned around and said. I had his camera to take photos of the ghosts. But...

"Which side?"

"Right. At the window. Hurry up."

"There's nothing."

"That taxi driver with a hat! You can see. ――Hey, don't fucking run away! I'm gonna kill you!"

"I can't see him!"

As he clicked his toungue, he turned around ahead again. He was about to hit the breaks. I turned pale at it and began to click the shutter of the camera recklessly. I was feeling numb when we finally came out of the tunnel.

In other day, he showed me the photos of the lights of the tunnel.  "I meant the right window in my view," Master said with a displeased voice. I closely looked at the picture again and found a elderly man's frightened face behind my  shoulder in the reflection of the window.

5: Hotel Higashiyama

I have an extreme experience.

I was planning to go to a haunted spot with my friends from the circle just because it was summer. There was a deserted hotel called Hotel Higashiyama. According to the internet, many people had seen ghosts in the hotel. I decided to go there. Some people said they had seen it in burned boiler room. But especially, the fact that the rumors were concentrated on the third floor attracted my interest.  For example, "We heard someone's voice on the third floor," or "Nothing happened and when we were about to go out, we saw someone at the window of the third floor,"  and so on. 

Having played a table turning to be motivated for the haunted place, we headed to the hotel in the midnight. Because we had eight people in the group, everyone seemed to be calm and composed. However, when the huge, charnel silhouette of Hotel Higashiyama came into our sight, the atmosphere had drastically changed. Since I had heard that we could enter the building ground from the back door next to a grave yard, I asked them to wear clothes that were easy to move in. But we couldn't find the grave yard. There was a similar space but it was just a huge vacant lot. "There's no grave yard," one of us said. As we stepped into the vacant lot, holding flashlights up, there was a strange shaped pillar and a stepped alter.

"Hey, something's written here." As one of the members said, I lit up something like a monument. It read 'Cenotaph for the victims of their duty'. Oh, my god...

―― So-and-so    Assistant police inspector 193x-197x

Dozen of  lines like that were written on the cenotaph. Either the appearance of the cenotaph or the deserted hotel scared half of the girls out to cry. Also, guys said, "So dangerous here, seriously." But we had come there all the way. I coaxed them to go and finally, we all crossed a stream in the bottom of the vacant lot and sneaked into the building ground from the back door. There was a window that had been opened. As we got into the building from the window, we saw a broken telephone, trush cans and other various  garbages scattered in the room. Even though the bathtub and the toilet were muddy, they hadn't been broken. We went out of the room and into the hallway. The wall paper had peeled off and the carpet had rolled up. It literally made it a deserted building.  Since we had only two flashlights, we walked as closer to each other as we could, taking photos of each room, toilets and particularly the kitchen where we found all the kitchen tools and account books left as they were at that time. This is just a rumor though, this hotel had folded since the owner went insane.

Having finished searching the first floor, we took courage and began to go up the stairs to the second floor. When we arrived at the second floor and discussed if we should go up straight to the third floor, suddenly, a phone began to go off in the scilence.  It sounded from the third floor. As a girl screamed, restlessness propagated to evereone and some of them rushed down the stares. "Calm down, calm down." In the worst case, their panic could cause an accident.

――Di-li-li-li-li....

While I was hesitating if I should go up or go down, the sound of a phone kept ringing ominously. "Don't rush. Go down slowly." Despite of me saying, they had already gone down. The darkness fell on me and I ran down as they did, feeling creepy. Everyone got together at a lobby in the first floor. As soon as I got there, the phone stopped ringing. "I wanna go home." A girl was even crying. That was awkward. Guys looked pale as well. Then, the oldest guy opened his mouth. It was Master.

"Sorry, sorry. I'm so sorry," said Master, taking a cellphone out from the pocket. "I've never imagined you guys would go panic like that. Sorry, guys." He said he had hidden his cellphon on the third floor during the daytime to surprise us. Then, when we were close to the point, he rang it up with his another phone. ―― What an idiot! That was too much!

As we were bored, we dicided to go home. Wen I was about to go, Master said. "That building is seriously hounted. No jokes." I was almost saying "You are a joke, though," but didn't and listened to him instead. "While we were looking at the cenotaph, there were some people at the window, right?" I didn't see them. I didn't even think of looking at the hotel. "At first, I thought they were bad boys hanging around, but as soon as I entered, I realized they weren't. There were more than 10 on the upper floor."

"What do you mean... ?"

"Do you think I can afford to get another phone just for a joke?"

Ok. I got what he meant.

"That was the hotel's phone. You heard that sound went like 'Dililili'. And how does a cellphone go?"

Yup. A cellphon doesn't go like that.

After sending everyone to their home, an absurd idea came out of Master. "Okay then, we are going back to the hotel." As I said "No way," he released me and went there alone.

A few days later, I asked him how it went.  "The phone went off again," he said with a straight face that was hard to read. "I picked it up and that 'Dililili" sound came out of the receiver. I shouted 'You are no fun!', then every phones in the hotel began to go off. I ran away as it was too dangerous."

4: Disappear of Master

I'm here again because I can't sleep.

I'm still gonna write several stories about Master but I could be tired with writing or take a beating and feel down then eventually stop writing. So just in case, I'm gonna write this episode that is the ending of a series of the events. When I was a third year student (who only had 27 credits. Lol), Master worked as a librarian at the university. He was mentally exhausted at that time and often said things like "There is a woman!", pointing  a blank space. I didn't feel anything but knowing his sixth sense was greater than mine, I thought Master could see something. I was scared  as he did.

It was in autamn of the year that I realized something was going wrong.  I hadn't met him so often compared to before.  One day, we sat in the same table at the cafeteria by chance. He said, "How many people do you see in the table behind you?"

It was just before 9 p.m. and the cafeteria was almost empty. There was no one in the table behind me also. "What do you see?"  As I asked, he began to shake and said, "There are people, right? How many?"  I had neither a ringing in my ears nor distinctive chill of when ghosts appear. So, I thought that he might assume that he was possessed. "No, there aren't, " I said. "There's nothing wrong."

"Yeah... Yeah, right." He assured and seemed to be releaved.  I was sure that there weren't ghosts there. They were in Master's mind. The word 'insanity' came into my head and It made me want to cry so bad. We  had done round of ghost stories and visited many haunted places. We had done lots of cursed things or even tried to summon ghosts. No wonder he got possessed. But I supposed they weren't the reason for his insanity.

Three days later, Master disappeared. I couldn't do anything because he left a message saying 'Don't seek me'. The university contacted his aunt and she came to his apartment to clear his belongings away. His family circumstance seemed to be complicated. She was so rude that I was swept away from the room despite saying I was his bestfriend. I haven't heard from him since then eventually. But I've got this idea. When I was a freshman, there was this rumor about him talked among the older students.

"He's a murderer."

Eventhough everyone said it as a joke, it might be true, I guess.

"The place to bury a body. That's everything."

That's what Master used to say  when he got drunk. There was an unspoken agreement between us that I couldn't ask more about that kind of jokes. However,  his eyes looked bloodcurdling when the topic went. Moreover, there's a thing I can't help but feel creepy about while remembering even now.  It was when we went to a famouse haunted place called 'A house of extermination'.

"When unspecified large number of people secretly take action in the midnight and there is a mysterious rumor, no one can be specified unless there is a grudge," He said. I couldn't understand what he was saying at that time. But now, I guess he was looking for a place to bury while we visited haunted places. What if there was a body in the trunk of the car I usually got in the passenger seat...? That's the scarest thing. He was too mysterious to understand.

One thing certain, however, is that dark part of human's mind is unbeatable even for a person who has a strong sixth sense.  I guess since that 'fine noodle incident' which had changed Master's character, he gradually went crazy. I still can't forget this word Master said to me.

"Why are you so scared of  this stupid darkness? Close your eyes. Now you are facing the darkest darkness in this world."

3: Fine Noodle Incident

Even though this is not a ghost story, it's necessary to be told.

My master of occultism suddenly stopped joining the circle. According to his batchmate, he didn't even come to the university. Worrying about him, I visited his apartment. The door was unlocked as I expected. I  went into the room after knocking on the door, and found him disheartened sleeping on  his futon. 

"I've been having a poor appetite. I only ate fine noodles for a week," Master said. He should be disheartened.

"Isn't there something else to eat here? You're gonna die," I tried to find something he might be able to eat but there was nothing. "You got summer heat fatigue?" Though I asked, he didn't answer. As he didn't say anything, I heartlessly left his apartment. "I don't know anymore."

Although I had a feeling of awe for him, some part of me was making fun of him at the same time because he sometimes acted like a kid.

Two days later, I visited him again and he was sleeping just like before. He said he'd never gone out of the apartment  and kept idling his time away all the day.

"Fine noodles can't keep you alive." While I was saying, Master suddenly retched and rushed into the bath room. I followed him. As I rubbed on his back to help, he started vomitting.
―― White noodles became brown puke.
Having looked at him vomiting, I had that funny thought and realized something. I looked for food again but couldn't find any of it. Even fine noodles couldn't be found in this room.

"What do you eat, Master?"  I held him out for a reply but he didn't say anything. Although I suspected if he was possessed by something, there was nothing I could do for that.
I decided to get him go to the hospital. He was immediately addmited because of malnutrition. He was given a drip and gradually recovered.

Four days later, he left the hospital. But he finally didn't tell me what he was eating while he was being a hermit. However, there was a sudden change in his language for some reasons.
His language used to be rough but after the hospital, it changed to soft tone which sounded like a good child.
During the summer, I often visited lots of haunted places with him and underwent various dengerous situations because of him who had become childish and lost reliability.