Strange buildings, p.1
Strange Buildings, page 1
On a cold, windy day, I walked through the streets of Umegaoka towards my friend the draughtsman’s flat. I was carrying eleven files.
My book Strange Houses came out a while back.
It exposed the stories behind some strange floor plans that my friend, an architectural draughtsman, and I investigated. Together, we uncovered the chilling reason that the houses had been built and the terrifying things that happened there.
I am happy to say that Strange Houses was well received and read by a great number of people, with the result that many of those same readers began sending me their own ‘house’ stories:
‘I read your book. The fact is, my house has a strange floor plan, too…’
‘Once, when I went to play at my grandmother’s house, I heard odd noises coming from an empty room…’
‘There was this weird pillar at a bed and breakfast I once stayed at…’
It turns out there are far more ‘strange houses’ around Japan than I could have ever imagined.
This second book consists of my research into eleven of those many, many strange buildings.
At first glance, their stories seem totally unrelated. But on careful reading, they begin to intertwine, telling one incredible tale.
I encourage you try to spot the connections yourself as you read.
CONTENTS
Title Page
file 1: The Hallway to Nowhere
file 2: Nurturing Darkness
file 3: The Watermill in the Woods
file 4: The Mousetrap House
file 5: The House Where It Happened
file 6: The Hall of Rebirth
file 7: Uncle’s House
file 8: The String Phone
file 9: Footsteps to Murder
file 10: No Escape
file 11: The Vanishing Room
Kurihara’s Deductions
Coming Soon from Pushkin Vertigo
Copyright
FILE 1
The Hallway to Nowhere
17TH OCTOBER 2022
Record of research and interview with Yayoi Negishi
I was sitting in a café in Toyama Prefecture, with a woman across the table from me.
Her name was Yayoi Negishi. She was a part-time worker in her thirties, living in Toyama City. She and I were meeting because she said she had some long-standing worries about her childhood home.
Her son, Kazuki, would soon be turning seven. She told me that one day, he had brought home a copy of Strange Houses from his elementary school library. Apparently, the floor-plan on the cover had caught his eye.
However, he’d struggled with the decidedly adult book and couldn’t read many of the words, so he asked his mum to read it to him. Negishi promised to do just that, but for only ten minutes a day, just before bed.
She told me that as they progressed through the book, though, it started to stir up old memories. Slightly unsettling memories that had been buried deep in her subconscious.
NEGISHI: There was something odd about the house I grew up in. But the place was torn down ages ago, and things are so busy now that I just stopped thinking about it. I suppose I had actually buried those memories. But as I read that book, little by little, they came back to me. Memories of that house and my mum.
Negishi’s expression darkened at the mention of her mother.
NEGISHI: Ever since, it’s all I can think about. While I’m doing the washing up, while I’m at work, all the time. I thought talking to whoever wrote that book might help me feel better, so I contacted your publisher.
It’s not like I’m expecting you to uncover some hidden truth. I think I’m just hoping that telling someone will help free me from the burden of my own past. But really, I’m just putting you out. I’m sorry.
AUTHOR: No, not at all. I’ve been talking to lots of people about all kinds of houses and floor plans ever since my book came out. It seems that collecting stories about strange floor plans is becoming my life’s work.
And it sounds like your story certainly falls within that field, so it’s no trouble at all. In fact, I like the idea that your taking part in my little hobby like this might also help bring you some peace. Two birds with one stone, and all that.
NEGISHI: I’m glad to hear you say so.
Negishi took out a notebook and opened it on the table between us, revealing a house floor plan drawn in pencil. There were obvious traces of lines rubbed out and sections scribbled over. It seemed clear that she had been slowly dredging up faint memories as she drew, rubbing out and redrawing over and over as she recalled details.
NEGISHI: My childhood home was in a residential neighbourhood in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture. It was a single-storey house. It never felt uncomfortable or poorly laid out, but this section right here always struck me as odd. Even as a child, I wondered about it.
She pointed at one part of the drawing.
NEGISHI: What is this hallway for?
AUTHOR: How exactly do you mean?
NEGISHI: It doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s a dead end. And if it weren’t there, my parents’ room could have been that much larger. It always bothered me. Why on earth did they waste that space when they built the house?
When she put it that way, it did seem odd. The spot was too narrow to serve as storage, and there were no doors or windows there. You could only call it a ‘hallway to nowhere’.
NEGISHI: I did ask my dad about it when I was a child. Just once. I asked what it was there for.
For some reason, he changed the subject. It was like he didn’t even hear me. Him ignoring my question irritated me, and I threw a bit of a tantrum. I kept at him, whining and asking over and over, ‘What is it there for?’
Dad doted on me, and normally he’d have given in immediately, but that time he simply refused. He wouldn’t say a word about it.
AUTHOR: It sounds like he must have had a very strong reason to avoid speaking about it.
NEGISHI: I can only assume so. My parents both helped the construction company to set out the floor plan, so he must have known why they included that hallway. So, when he was so reluctant to tell me… I started to feel like he was hiding something.
AUTHOR: And what about your mother?
Negishi’s expression darkened again.
NEGISHI: I never asked her. Or, rather, I suppose I couldn’t. We didn’t have that kind of relationship.
In my experience, you couldn’t truly understand the secrets of a house without understanding the people living there first. I had a feeling that Negishi’s problem with her mother would be key to unlocking the mystery in this case.
AUTHOR: Would you be willing to tell me about your mother?
Only as much as you’re comfortable with, of course.
NEGISHI: All right. When she was speaking with the neighbours or my dad, Mum was a normal, cheerful person. But with me—and only me—she was always terribly strict. I can barely remember her offering a word of praise, and she would blow up at me over the smallest thing. I suppose that probably sounds like your usual strict mother, but there were times when I caught her looking at me with something like fear in her eyes…
I came to wonder if she was actually afraid of me… Or maybe she just didn’t like being around me. All I know was that her attitude towards me wasn’t normal.
AUTHOR: Do you have any idea why?
NEGISHI: No. I honestly don’t. It was always like that. As far back as I can remember, I simply felt that my mum didn’t like me. It was just the way it was.
Now, though, I don’t think it was that simple. Mum had a harsh side, but she could also be overprotective.
I was born prematurely. I was small and frail, apparently, and I think that’s why she was always asking me if I was all right, or if I was hurt or something. Oh, and she was forever asking, ‘You didn’t go near the big road, did you?’
AUTHOR: The big road?
NEGISHI: Right. I should probably explain that, too. Our house faced a main street to the south. There were other houses to the north, east and west, with narrow lanes between us.
Mum always said, ‘No matter what, you’re never to go on the big road. If you have to go anywhere in the neighbourhood, use the lanes.’ The pavement along that main street was really narrow. I could see the danger, of course, but we didn’t live in a big city or anything, so the traffic wasn’t very heavy. I always thought she worried too much. Anyway. If I didn’t do as she said, she’d scream at me, so I listened.
So, on the one hand, her mother smothered her with criticism, and on the other with overprotective rules. I suddenly had a thought. Could it be that Yayoi’s mother simply didn’t understand how to show love?
I know that there are parents who struggle to find ways to appropriately express love for their children, even though they want to. Instead, they are so fixated on being ‘responsible parents’ that they become overprotective.
But children can often sense the tension of that struggle, which can cause communication to break down. Which then leads to impatience, irritation and distance on both sides. Some parents respond to this with overprotectiveness as well, which only adds to the child’s stress. And, if that was the case here, I had another thought.
AUTHOR: Ms Negishi, what you said has given me an idea. Could it have been your mother who proposed this hallway?
The hallway in question was between the parents’ bedroom and hers. Maybe its true purpose was to create some distance between the two rooms?
While overprotective parents seem to want to keep their children close, they may se cretly want the opposite. This hallway might have been a kind of barrier born of that unconscious emotional contradiction.
I tried to explain, as gently as I could, so as not to hurt her feelings. But when I finished, she slowly shook her head.
NEGISHI: No, I don’t think so. Honestly, the same idea occurred to me. That maybe Mum wanted to get away from me. But it doesn’t fit. This house was finished in September 1990. That’s only six months after I was born.
NEGISHI: I don’t care how much they rushed it, there’s no way they could have gone from house planning to completion in six months. So, this layout had to have been decided well before I was born. I just can’t believe she wanted to put space between us that early.
I had to agree. It was hard to imagine a parent craving distance from their child before they were even born.
NEGISHI: I’m sorry, I should have told you that earlier.
AUTHOR: Not at all. But that fact does offer an important clue.
NEGISHI: It does?
AUTHOR: From the timing, I’d say that your parents decided to have this house built when they found out they were having a baby.
So, in a sense you could almost say this house was built for you. In which case, this hallway may very well have been there because of you, specifically. I can’t say for sure, though.
NEGISHI: If that’s true, I really should have got my parents to tell me.
AUTHOR: Forgive me, but… About your parents. Are they…?
NEGISHI: They both passed away years ago.
She went on to describe their final days.
NEGISHI: It was in the winter of my third year at elementary school. The three of us went out to dinner. My mum suddenly said she had a headache, then she collapsed on the spot. We called the emergency services, but it was during the big year’s-end holiday, so all the ambulances were already on dispatch. It took for ever for one to arrive.
When Yayoi’s mother got to hospital, the tests revealed she’d had a stroke.
The delay in response meant she was bedridden from that day on. Yayoi’s father quit his job to care for her, working part time and piecemeal when he could, barely sleeping. Yayoi herself had to help with housework while keeping up with school.
Things went on like that for two years. When Yayoi was eleven, her mother contracted pneumonia and died. Her father also fell ill and died soon after, as if he simply couldn’t bear losing his wife after those two painful years of caregiving.
NEGISHI: After that, I went to live with some distant relatives. Our house went up for sale, but there were no buyers. I heard that it was torn down to make way for a block of flats.
She took a sip of coffee, then put her cup down with a loud clink.
NEGISHI: After they died, I found a couple of odd things while going through their belongings. First there was the money—an envelope in my mother’s drawer stuffed with 10,000-yen bills. Sixty-eight of them. I guess it was her secret stash or something.
AUTHOR: 680,000 yen. That’s quite a stash.
NEGISHI: When Mum was still healthy, she worked part time at a bento shop. It wasn’t an impossible amount for her to have saved up, but I was surprised, because she never struck me as that fixated on money. Still, if that had been all, I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but…
AUTHOR: What else did you find?
NEGISHI: A doll. A wooden doll all wrapped up in newspaper and hidden in the closet in the tatami room. I don’t know who it belonged to—Mum or Dad.
The odd thing is, the doll… It was missing one leg and one arm. Like it was made that way, not broken.
AUTHOR: Really?
NEGISHI: I thought it was creepy, so I threw it out. But to this day, I don’t know what it was for, or why it was missing those limbs.
The mysterious hallway, the mother’s behaviour, the hidden money, the misshapen doll. This seemingly unrelated, fragmentary information spun around in my mind.
A sudden clattering sound brought me out of my reverie. I looked down and saw that Negishi’s hands were shaking, making her cup rattle against its saucer.
AUTHOR: Are you all right?
NEGISHI: Yes, sorry. I just feel so anxious all of a sudden.
AUTHOR: You do? Why now?
NEGISHI: The truth is… We still haven’t got to the real reason I wanted to talk to you today.
· · ·
Negishi stared down at her still-trembling fingers and went on, her voice nearly a whisper.
NEGISHI: I couldn’t stop thinking about the secret of that house, even after my parents died. It stayed with me, on and on. I started reading books on architecture, taking notes of everything that seemed important. For years. Then, I finally found what I think is the answer.
AUTHOR: You’re saying you already solved the mystery?
NEGISHI: Yes, maybe. But there’s no proof. And more than that… If my answer is right, then the whole thing was so dark, so miserable, I just… I’ve tried to put it out of my mind. To forget it.
But I couldn’t. All through the years, even after I’d grown up, got married and had my own children. Whenever something happened that reminded me of it, I would find myself afraid. Like right now. Just trying to talk about it, I get… Like this. So nervous. I just want to run away from it all.
At the very start of our interview, she’d expressed the hope that telling me her story might free her of the burden of her past. This answer she was tiptoeing around must have been the ‘burden’ she meant.
And she was hoping that telling me about it would ease her anxiety.
AUTHOR: This must have been hard for you. To be honest, I’m not sure if I can judge whether the answer you’ve found is correct or not.
Still, talking about it might help you feel better. So, please, let me hear your story. At your own pace.
NEGISHI: Thank you.
She gently cleared her throat and began.
NEGISHI: So, why did they build this ‘hallway to nowhere’? At first, that was all I kept asking myself. But then, one day, I realized that I might have been looking at it all wrong.
Maybe it wasn’t a ‘hallway to nowhere’. Maybe it was a ‘hallway to somewhere that had disappeared’.
Negishi took a biro from her bag and drew something on the layout.
AUTHOR: A door to the garden?
NEGISHI: That’s what I thought at first. That they’d originally planned to put a doorway at the end of the hallway. But there’s already a door to the garden from the living room. Why would they need another?
Also, if they eventually decided against the door to the garden, why keep the hallway? Then, I thought of another possibility.
She picked up the biro again.
AUTHOR: Ah, a room…
NEGISHI: The original plans for the house included another room, which this hallway led to. But just before construction started, they made a last-minute change and removed the room, leaving just the hallway behind.
AUTHOR: But suddenly removing a whole room is a huge change.
NEGISHI: Right. Which means there must have been an important reason, something that made it necessary. For example… the loss of a family member.
AUTHOR: What?!
Negishi explained that this room must have been intended for a relative: a grandfather, a grandmother, an uncle, an aunt, a cousin… Whoever it was, just before construction started, that person must have died.
AUTHOR: But even then, why remove the whole room?
NEGISHI: Normally, you probably wouldn’t. So, whoever it was wasn’t a ‘normal’ person to my parents. They must have been special.
While I sat pondering who it could possibly have been, I noticed something else.
NEGISHI: This room kind of looks like mine. It’s about the same size, and it faces the garden, the same as mine. Like… a twin.
