Hey, can I tell you something?
It's a story from Wakayama… I can't swear to any of it, but once I heard it, I couldn't get it out of my head.
On the border between Yura-cho and Hidaka-cho, wedged between two mountains, there's an old tunnel. The old Yura Tunnel. A new national highway runs right alongside it now, so all the traffic goes that way, and hardly anyone has any reason to use that tunnel anymore. At night, nobody passes through at all. No streetlights to speak of, from what I've heard. Just a dark mouth hanging open in the side of the mountain. That's all it is.
Several people claim to have seen something there.
It's about a rider.
Apparently, a man was driving through that tunnel late one night. This was two or three years ago, from what I understand. I don't know who he was exactly — just that he was a local. A little before the tunnel entrance, he heard a motorcycle coming up behind him. A low, heavy engine. Bwoom, bwoom, bwoom… growing closer. He checked his mirror and saw a single headlight swaying as it bore down on him.
But something felt wrong to him.
The speed didn't match the sound. The headlight was closing in at a pace that wasn't right. Too smooth — like it was gliding across the ground rather than riding it.
He kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes forward as he entered the tunnel. Then the bike surged past him. And in that moment, he looked over.
…There was no head.
Above the shoulders of the rider's leather jacket — nothing. No helmet, no head, nothing at all. Just the base of the neck, open like a hollow in the dark air. Then the red tail light was swallowed by the blackness ahead, and it was gone.
They say he couldn't bring himself to stop the car for a long time after that. Even after clearing the tunnel he kept his foot on the accelerator, and by the time he came back to himself he was driving down some mountain road he had no business being on.
I've also heard a story from a taxi driver. He was working a late shift when a car came up behind him at tremendous speed, and he quickly pulled left to let it pass. But watching in his rearview mirror, he saw the car simply vanish before it even made it through the tunnel. Headlights, engine noise — gone, all at once. He avoided that road for a good while after.
There are whispers among the locals that accidents clustered around that tunnel once, years ago. Several of them, one after another. I don't know the details, but the people who bring it up always lower their voices a little. They say "back then," and then they stop. The ones who know what really happened don't seem to want to talk about it anymore.
Only one thing was told to me plainly.
There was someone who had a motorcycle accident there.
…What that headlight is searching for, still riding through that tunnel after all this time — I don't know. But if that headless rider is out there looking for what was lost.
If, as it passes you in the dark of that tunnel, it turns toward you, and looks at your face.
Hey. You're not planning on taking that road tonight, are you?
