Ju-On Read online

  Kayako, Kazumi thought. Kayako did it.

  Almost absentmindedly, Kazumi opened yet another bound newspaper edition, this time from June of last year.

  “Wife Beats Husband to Death with Frying Pan.”

  “Wife Disappears.”

  Just like in that scrapbook. Last June, Hiroshi Kitada was killed by his wife Yoshimi, who hit him in the side of the head with a frying pan. And Yoshimi, who was reported missing, was also dead by Kayako’s hand. And .. . and now Kayako had said she was going to kill Kazumi and her husband today.

  What should I do … what on earth can I do … ?

  She could not stop trembling. No matter how hard she thought, Kazumi could not comprehend why Kayako had to do this. All she knew was that Kayako was crazy. Kayako was not normal. She was the kind of woman who would sneak into the room of a boy she was in love with, hide under the bed, and listen to that man and his girlfriend having sex. She thought of herself as the unhappiest person on earth, and she put the blame on every other human be~ ing. She believed that she had the right to kill all who were happy.

  What should I do … what on earth can I do … ?

  Still dazed, Kazumi stood up. Leaving the bound newspapers where they were, she staggered out of the library.

  There was the possibility that the scrapbook was a mean-spirited joke by someone who knew about all of these incidents. The police would probably come to that conclusion. Indeed, Kazumi wanted desperately to believe this herself.

  But… but, even if this was the case, how could that person have snuck the scrapbook into the closet?

  She didn’t know. She just didn’t know.

  She arrived back at that house. Her legs were heavy and she was having trouble walking. She decided to believe that scrapbook was all a joke. If she didn’t, she would have never been able to come back.

  She forced herself to walk forward and open the gate. Her hair stood on end with a terrible sense of fear. She finally made it to the front door, which she opened, and called out to her mother-in-law.

  “Mother, I’m back.”

  Her mother-in-law, who always got on Kazumi’s nerves, was actually now a source of courage for the young housewife.

  Kazumi had planned on calling the police. She was going to tell them about this elaborate-but-evil practical joke, and have them arrest the perpetrator.

  “Mother, I’m back,” she said, opening the door to Sachie’s room. The room was facing the garden, and the last light of the day was coming in through the window. As usual, Sachie, wearing a thin cotton kimono known as a yukata, was sitting on top of her futon, staring out into the garden.

  “Mother, I’m home,” Kazumi said gently. Sachie slowly turned around to face her, her face taut with fear.

  “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

  Sachie, her mouth trembling, mumbled.

  “Ka … ya … ko … is… com … ing …”

  Kazumi’s body froze.

  Kayako is coming.

  Sachie clearly said that Kayako was coming.

  “Ka … ya … ko … Ka … ya … ko … “

  Sachie repeated that name over and over. Kazumi pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth and screamed. She scrambled to the kitchen to grab the phone. She pressed the speed dial for Katsuya’s cell phone with trembling fingers. Just then …

  Thud!

  She heard a loud sound from upstairs, as if something heavy had fallen to the floor.

  Her heart jumped. She felt the hair on her head stand on end and gooseflesh crop up over her entire body.

  “Hello? Kazumi? What’s wrong?”

  She heard Katsuya’s voice on the other end.

  “Hello, can you come home, right now?”

  “Hey, what’s going on?”

  Someone is watching — someone is watching. Someone is watching me from the doorway.

  “Hey, Kazumi, what’s wrong! What happened! Kazumi!”

  “Umm, nothing … nothing at all… just, come home early tonight, okay?”

  Katsuya let out a long sigh. “That’s all you called for? I’m working now.”

  “Sorry … sorry.”

  “Give me a break, would ya.”

  She hung up, licked her dry lips, and stepped out into the hallway.

  She felt like someone was watching her from behind again. She turned quickly, like she was playing a game of Red Light, Green Light.

  No one was there. No—that wasn’t true. She clearly saw little, bare footprints on the freshly polished wood. The footprints led to the stairs. Almost like a window clouded with someone’s breath, or like sweaty handprints on the black surface of a piano, the footprints faded one by one, starting with the one closest to Kazumi.

  Someone was here. Just now, someone was here.

  Who? Who? she screamed in her mind.

  Her legs began shaking. The disappearing footprints were very small. That fact gave Kazumi her courage back. Yes, the footprints were not those oi an adult. They belonged to a child.

  Like a hunter following his prey’s tracks in the snow, Kazumi followed the disappearing footprints. She saw footprints on the stairs as well. Yes, the child went up to the second floor. She followed the footsteps up, and turned the corner on the staircase, at the landing.

  Meeoow.

  She saw a black kitten.

  Meeoow.

  The cat turned to face Kazumi and cried again, before lightly bounding up the rest of the stairs. It sat at the top of the stairs, staring at Kazumi.

  Where did that cat come from?

  Kazumi climbed a few more stairs, and stretched her hands out to grab the kitten. Just before she was about to touch the cat, pale arms reached out from the side and snatched up the kitten.

  The arms of a child. Yes, no doubt about it.

  “Who’s there? Who are you?” she screamed as she reached the top o( the stairs.

  She saw the naked back of the child who was holding the cat, the pale back of the young boy, run into the master bedroom.

  Was it him? Did that boy sneak into their home and plant that scrapbook in the closet?

  Kazumi gave chase, and followed the naked boy into the master bedroom. And that’s when she saw it.

  Shock!

  Her breath caught in her throat out of fear and surprise.

  There—in Kazumi and Katsuya’s bedroom—she saw two people. One was a man, and the other was a woman.

  The woman was sitting on the floor, leaning against the corner of the bed, her legs thrown out in front of her. Her hands may have been tied to the leg o^ the bed behind her. One of her legs was twisted at an unnatural angle. Her hair was long, her body unhealthily thin, and she was wearing white. No, not white. The dress she was wearing was undoubtedly once white, but now it was dyed red from the blood dripping from her face and out o{ her mouth.

  Kayako. It had to be.

  Kayako was crying. She was crying, struggling with all her might and screaming. But, oddly enough, Kazumi couldn’t hear her screams.

  The man was standing in front of the woman, shouting as if he was trying to extract information. He kicked the woman in the stomach, grabbed her long hair, and slapped her face as hard as he could, and sliced into her body with the box cutter he was holding. Every time the man’s toes dug into the woman’s skinny stomach, she bent in half, blood gushing from her mouth.

  The man was facing away from Kazumi so she could not see his face. However, she could see that though the balding man was not very tall, he was very strongly built.

  It had to be Takeo Saeki.

  He kept shouting at the woman, but Kazumi could not hear his voice either. Kayako violently shook her head from side to side, as if she was trying to deny something with her whole being. Takeo’s fist slammed into her face and her head snapped backward. Her hair flailed like the mane of a running horse, and a red mist covered the bed.

  Takeo shouted again. Kayako, even as she was slipping out of consciousness, shook her head from side to side again. Takeo ra
ised his box cutter and swung it down. A long cut appeared on Kayako’s cheek, fresh blood pouring out of the newly opened wound. Kayako shook her body like a crazy woman, and the heavy bed dragged on the floor.

  “Stop! Stop it!” Kazumi screamed in Kayako’s place.

  But, they could not hear Kazumi’s voice. Perhaps they could not even see her. Takeo kept shouting and torturing Kayako, and Kayako, her hands tied to the leg of the bed, kept screaming and shaking.

  Kazumi couldn’t watch anymore. She turned to flee the bedroom, but the open door suddenly slammed shut with a bang.

  Could they hear that? Kayako silently lifted her bloodied face. At the same time, Takeo slowly turned around, his clothes splattered with Kayako’s blood.

  Kazumi screamed as she grabbed the doorknob and frantically tried to turn it. But the door wouldn’t open. She felt an unspeakable fear, and she felt the crotch of her underwear go wet with her urine.

  Kayako, who had been facing down, lifted her gaze, as if in slow motion. She looked at Kazumi’s legs in her thin stockings. She looked at her tight skirt. She looked at her blouse, filled out with her bust. And then, Kayako’s eyes met Kazumi’s. She was standing in front of the bedroom door. Kayako smiled, showing her bloody teeth.

  Kazumi’s body went limp, and she collapsed on the spot.

  Katsuya

  A hard evening shower was falling.

  “I’m home,” called Katsuya Tokunaga as he opened the front door. But, the house was dark, and no one answered him.

  “Hey, Kazumi, are you here? Kazumi! Kazumi,” he called out again as he stepped into the house. Turning on the lights as he went, he checked his mother’s room. Sachie was sitting up on her futon in the darkened Japanese-style room right off the kitchen, staring at the wall.

  “Mom, have you seen Kazumi?” he asked, turning on her light. Kazumi looked up, shifting her gaze toward her son. But she was looking through him, at the wall behind him.

  “Mom … what happened?”

  Katsuya bent down, placing a hand on his mother’s shoulder. Her mouth moved ever so slightly.

  “Huh? What?” he asked, moving his ear closer to Sachie’s mouth. Her mouth moved again.

  “Ka … ya … ko … “

  “Huh?”

  “Ka … ya … ko … Ka … ya … ko … “

  “Kayako? What’s that?”

  Of course, Katsuya had no idea what she was talking about. But he did know that something out of the ordinary had happened here. Yes. He definitely felt something bad in the air, something the likes of which he had never felt before.

  Still turning on lights, he called out for his wife, checking the entire first floor. Then he headed up the stairs.

  “Kazumi! What’s wrong?! What happened?” he asked, as he opened the bedroom door.

  At that instant, Katsuya saw something he could not believe.

  Kazumi was in the bedroom. She was leaning on the corner of the bed, her legs stretched out in front of her, her head hanging loosely.

  Upon closer inspection, he saw that both of her arms were tied behind her, strapped to the leg of the bed with rope.

  “Kazumi! What happened!?”

  He rushed over to her, and placed his hand on her jaw.

  “Kazumi! Kazumi!”

  Kazumi lifted her head and looked at Katsuya. But her eyes were dim, out of focus. Her face was pale, as pale as a wax doll.

  “Damn it… Who?! Who the hell did this?!”

  Kazumi’s lips moved, as if in reply to his question, but no words came out.

  “Hang on, I’m going to call the police and an ambulance,” Katsuya said, as he fished his cell phone from his suit pocket. Just as he was about to dial emergency on his phone—he felt something run past his back.

  Reflexively, he spun around.

  “Who’s there!”

  But, there was no one else in the room.

  His hair stood on end. Katsuya knew that it was not a hallucination. It definitely was not his imagination. Someone definitely ran past him while his back was turned.

  “Who’s there?! Get out of here!” he shouted as he closed the door behind him. After checking that the windows were locked, he looked around the room. He looked into the half-open closet.

  Again, he felt a presence behind him.

  He turned around quickly, but again, no one was there.

  Katsuya, his mouth dry with fear, licked his lips. Someone was definitely in this room. Someone was definitely standing right behind him at this very moment.

  There was definitely someone here.

  “Who’s there?! Who are you?!”

  He looked under the double bed that his wife was still tied to. There, he saw it.

  “Waah!” screamed Katsuya as he fell hard on his buttocks. Still seated on the floor, Katsuya scrambled backward.

  That thing crouched on its stomach under the bed began crawling like a giant salamander, and showed itself in front of Katsuya’s eyes. Slowly, it stood up.

  A child—yes. An unnaturally pale, naked child, about five or six years old. Standing up straight in front of Katsuya, it stared at Katsuya with its wide eyes.

  “Wh . .. What are you doing here?! What are you doing here?!” screamed Katsuya, still slumped on the floor. As if to answer him, the child opened its mouth wide. But the sound that came from its mouth was definitely not human.

  Meeoow!

  The child cried with the voice of a cat.

  Meeoow I

  In that instant, Katsuya remembered.

  No, not exactly remembered. It was more like a video recording in which an image other than what was recorded had been burned directly onto the tape. Katsuya’s memories and data had been erased from his brain and overwritten, and other memories—the memories of another man—came back in their place.

  Why did I forget something this important? Katsuya thought, as an unspeakable rage boiled up from his gut. Yes. That’s right. The baby in this woman s belly is not the fruit of my DNA. It is not my child in her stomach. This woman, Kazumi, had another man. A man she had

  been seeing since her college days. Yes, that’s it. That’s why she’s been refusing my advances recently. I’ve been made a fool of by this woman all this time. She’s been playing me ever since we got married.

  Katsuya looked around the room. He noticed a box cutter on the floor.

  He knew what he had to do. He knew just as clearly as if he had done it before.

  Katsuya picked up the box cutter and clicked the blade out. He walked over to his wife, who was tied to the bed and slumped over. He grabbed a handful of her chestnut-brown hair in his left hand and slapped Kazumi’s face as hard as he could with his right hand.

  “Aahh,” Kazumi moaned, slowly opening her eyes. She looked at her husband with those dim, unfocused eyes.

  “Hey, wake up! I said wake up, damn it!”

  Katsuya grabbed his wife’s lapel. Kazumi’s eyes were filled with incredible fear. Katsuya was excited to see this.

  “Hey, Kazumi.”

  Katsuya’s mouth moved. It moved of its own accord.

  “So, why don’t you tell me? Tell me whose kid that is in your belly.”

  Kazumi silently shook her head from side to side.

  “You’re not gonna answer? I asked you whose kid that is, bitch,” Katsuya yelled, loudly. Kazumi’s body shuddered.

  “Whose child? Why, it’s yours, of course … Who else’s would it be?” Kazumi replied. But it was not Kazumi’s voice. It was the voice of another woman. But, of course, Katsuya did not notice this.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” Katsuya screamed, and slapped her face with his palm.

  Kazumi’s head snapped to the side, and spittle flew from her mouth.

  “Stop! Please don’t hurt me! Please tell me what’s going on! I have no idea what’s going on!”

  As she said this, Katsuya’s right fist smashed into his wife’s left eye.

  “Agh!”

  Her face was slapped from both sides a
gain, and Kazumi, dazed, opened her eyes.

  “How long did you think you could keep this hidden from me?” demanded Katsuya, as his right fist this time dug into her abdomen.

  Kazumi’s body doubled over. She tasted bitter bile on her tongue and she had trouble catching her breath.

  “Stop … Please stop … You’ll hurt the baby … What’s gotten into you?”

  Tears overflowed Kazumi’s eyes. Katsuya felt good to see her cry.

  “Still trying to fuck with me, eh?! When are you going stop lying to me?! Shit! Playing me for a fool for all these years!” Katsuya shouted as his fist connected with his wife’s jaw.

  The blow cut her lip, and she tasted blood.

  Katsuya grabbed her hair again, lifting her face. He pressed the box cutter to her battered cheek.

  “Stop! Please don’t kill me!”

  Kazumi’s eyes were wide with terror. A black desire boiled up from Katsuya’s innermost depths.

  “If you tell me the truth, I won’t kill you. What’s it going to be? Whose kid is it? Come on, tell me. You can say it,” Katsuya repeated, smiling, pressing the box cutter to her face.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about… Calm down, please. Just calm down.”

  “Kazumi, you really want me to kill you, don’t you?” Katsuya swung the box cutter in his hand toward Kazumi’s face. Then, fresh blood spurted.

  Ding dong.

  The doorbell rang.

  Who could that be?

  The front door opened.

  “Hello!”

  A young woman’s voice.

  “Hello… I’m coming in!”

  “Who is that?” asked the other man inside of Katsuya.

  “Kazumi-san! Katsuya!”

  Hitomi … my sister, Hitomi.

  The shred oi Katsuya’s memory that remained somewhere in the back of his brain answered the other man.

  He untied his dead wife’s hands from the bed and lifted her corpse. Fresh blood dripped on the floor. Still holding his wife’s body, he opened the closet door and put the cadaver on the top shelf, jumping up beside her. He removed one of the ceiling planks, folded Kazumi’s body in half, lifted her again, and shoved her body up through the hole into the attic. Replacing the ceiling board, he jumped down with a thud onto the hardwood floor.