Chapter 7:

The basement

My first life was a bore, so now I got another 7?!


It was clear that I couldn’t stay where I was, if I was right and she had in fact seen me, then I wouldn’t want to be there the moment she checked on me.

How long would it take her to reach the door? 5 seconds? 10 seconds?

There was no use in thinking about this now.

I held one hand in front of the flame and tried to run as fast as I could. First, I had to run downstairs, not seeing more than the next three steps each and taking them in one big leap every time without hesitation. Pure luck kept me from falling while I was running as fast as the candle allowed it.

How much time had passed? 3 seconds? Or more? Likely more. How much time was left? What should I do after reaching the end of the stairs? The stairs ended. I took the last steps with a huge jump and kept running.

When I just passed the point which I thought I remembered could be seen from upstairs, I heard the door spring open. Miwako seemed to wait for a moment before she eventually turned the light on

It took some time for the energy to reach the lamps, which gave the impression, the basement was growing during this process. I wet my thumb and index with my tongue and quickly turned off the candle, to create as little smoke as possible and kept on running as quickly and silently as possible.

Meanwhile I heard her walking down the stairs slowly. She knew I was here and that I couldn’t escape her. I needed a place to hide. So far, I only ran straight ahead. There was a series of doors starting with the first one next to me right at that moment. I passed the first five and then tried to open one after another, suppressing my rising panic. Only the tenth door opened and I slipped in.

The room was completely dark. Would it be a good decision to search for a light switch or turn on the candle? I needed a place to hide in case Miwako would enter this room, but she might smell the smoke of the candle after I turned it off and if I found a hiding spot after turning on the lights, I wouldn’t be able to turn it off again without going back to where I started.

I would need some light. Without light I would only stumble and lead her right to me. So these were my chances. Getting caught immediately, or just a little later. What should I do now?

“Come here, Kid!”, said a weak male voice in the darkness.

I stared into the darkness, unable to move for a moment.

“Who are you? I have a knife!”, I bluffed.

“No, you don’t. No need to be afraid. I know why you are here.”

The voice sounded friendly. Not Miwakos friendliness, which looking back now sounded always a little icy. The person it belonged to seemed to be pretty old already. The voice was shaking and it even broke at times, indicating that it hadn’t been used in a while.

“Then tell me.”, I said, partly because I wanted his help in finding a way out, partly because I wanted to know if he really knew what I was planning to do.

“You want to find a way out of here of course.”, the voice laughed weakly.

“What are you doing down here?”, I asked.

“I was locked inside here.”

“But the door is opened.”

“Oh. Is it? Last time I checked, it wasn’t.”, he seemed to think.

“Well now it is. Let’s leave together.”

“My bones don’t allow me. I am old already. Too old to…”, he paused.

“Fast. Take two steps to the right and stand still.”

“Wai… why?”

“No questions! Do it!”

The urgency in his voice made me stop questioning his commands and I took two quick steps to the right, hoping I wouldn’t hit anything. Then I pushed myself against the wall and silently waited. There were steps outside of the door. They came closer and came to a halt when they reached the door to the room, I was currently in.

It opened with a silent creak and Miwako looked inside the room. The lights from the hallway filled the middle of the room and painted her silhouette onto the floor. I held my breath.

On the other side of the room there was a leg in a worn out hakama stretched into the part of the room that was now filled with light.

“Anything new, father?”, she asked with a cold voice.

“Hehehe…. That’s a good one. Can I tell it to my friends?”, the voice responded.

She snorted apparently not amused by his comment and slammed the door shut again.

We waited for a few seconds before we continued to talk.

“Father? Are you Saburo?”

“Indeed. She told you already about me?”

“She said you would have to stay in your bed.”

“Pah!”, he laughed, “In my bed!”

“You said you knew a way out of here. Can you show me?”

“I can’t show anything to anyone. But I can tell you. Wait here until she went upstairs again. At the end of the hallway there is a small room. It was used to store coal back when we still used it for heating. You should be able to climb up the old delivery shaft”

“What about you?”, I asked.

“Every help would be wasted on me.”

“Don’t say such things.”, I said while grabbing the matches and trying to light one of them. It worked at the third try and I held the match high in the air.

Thanks to the total darkness in the room the matches tiny flame, covered the whole room in a very dim shaking red light.

“Come on, Sabu….”, I dropped the match and stumbled backwards.

I was shaking. Did I really just see, what I thought to have seen?

“Saburo?”, I asked questioningly.

“Still here, boy.”, he answered.

With still shaking hands I lit a second match.

I approached the person on the floor again. The skin on the head was brown and leathery and the eye sockets were empty.

“What do you think, where you are holding this thing?”

I stumbled backwards, this time in disbelief.

My mind didn’t agree with the possibility of what it had seen and heard just now. Saburo was definitely dead. But still he was talking to me just in this moment.

The first question that came to my mind after this realization was: “So Miwako is…?”

There was no need to finish the question.

“Worse. I just couldn’t find peace. She actively came back.”

“But how? Why?”

“One day she brought this boy home. His name was Hiro. She had fallen head over heels for him and this was her only mistake. At first everything was fine but then after the wedding he started to drink. One day, after I forced Kenzo to join me on a trip, we came back home and he was gone. She said she didn’t know where he went to. I myself wasn’t too sad about it, as I had already recognized that he wasn’t the right one for her anyways. But something wasn’t right about Miwako as well. I had never seen her eat or sleep after we returned. This did of course worry me but she seemed healthy, so I thought that she was simply eating when nobody was around. It was two weeks later when I found both of their bodies down here. He had killed her while we were gone and her soul had returned from the dead to take revenge. Of course she couldn’t let anyone know. So she locked me up inside here….”, he stopped talking like nothing else had to be said.

I nodded silently. I took these news more calmly than I usually would have expected it but it explained, in a way at least, what I had already felt since I had gone to Look after her.

“And Kenzo?”, I asked.

“I haven’t left this room since then but I can imagine she didn’t leave him be.”

I nodded again.

“Did you see him?”, he asked

“Only for a few seconds. Awfully thin….”

“He always was.”

We both got lost in our thoughts for a moment. What were the reasons that turned you into a ghost? Getting killed? The grief? All the things you couldn’t finish while still walking among the truly living? Or was it just a feature of this world? And what would happen to me? I had lots of regrets, lots of things I wanted to do but never dared to or talked myself into believing I couldn’t do them or would do them later. Way too many things. I wouldn’t leave anything unfinished, because I never started anything to begin with. My whole life had been wasted and all it took was a meeting with a ghost to finally realize it. Saburo had had it all, but lost it in an instant. Killed by the ghost of his own daughter, unable to protect his whole family.

Thinking about it, Kenzo and Miwako could apparently walk the house freely. Likely the only thing that kept Saburo down here was his own pain. The amount of anger, betrayal and emotional pain he must have felt during these last days, was immeasurable for sure.

When I was just trying to stop thinking about all of this, I again heard steps approaching the door.

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