This is something I heard in Yanaka… I can't say for certain it's true, so please keep that in mind as you listen.
It was the end of autumn, apparently. Early November, around that time.
There was a man named Tanaka-san — worked at some company or other. Late thirties, grinding through overtime night after night, worn down to the bone. That evening, too, he left the office on the second-to-last train and was walking to the nearest station. He always took the main road straight through, but that night, for no particular reason, he wandered into one of the Yanaka backstreets. No reason for it. Just drifted in, he said. He was tired. His guard was down, I think.
Do you know Yanaka? In the daytime people call it the city of cats, the city of temples — tourists come through. But at night it's different. The alleys are narrow, the streetlamps are few, and the gaps between the houses go very dark. Old plank walls stretch on and on, and through the cracks between them you can see slivers of black sky. It's the kind of place that makes you forget you're still inside Tokyo.
Almost as soon as Tanaka-san started walking, he sensed something behind him. He turned around, but there was no one. Not even a cat. Only the air, which seemed to have grown a little colder, he said. Being November, that alone wouldn't be strange.
But then there was the smell.
Not incense, he said. Something wetter. Closer to soil. The kind of smell you sometimes catch when you walk near a graveyard. When Tanaka-san breathed it in, he felt his legs grow slightly heavy.
And then, as he kept walking, he heard a voice.
At first he thought it was conversation drifting from one of the nearby houses — that happens even at night. But not one of the houses had a light on. That entire stretch of alley, every single house, was dark. Not a single glow in any window.
The voice was drawing closer.
He didn't realize it was calling his name until it was already quite near, he said. "Tanaka-san." Not just once — again and again. "Tanaka-san, Tanaka-san."
The quality of the voice unsettled him deeply. Neither high nor low, the gender impossible to place, and utterly without feeling. Not angry. Not sorrowful. Simply calling. That, he said, was what frightened him most.
He turned around, and it was there.
Something in the shape of a person, standing perhaps three meters behind him. Even in the darkness it had a clearly defined outline. Neither man nor woman. Just standing. Not moving.
At that moment, Tanaka-san found he couldn't move his legs. He knew he had to run, but his knees wouldn't obey. He couldn't make a sound. He could only stand there and look at it.
And that was when he noticed.
The thing cast no shadow.
The light from the streetlamp fell directly on it, and yet nothing was reflected on the ground. Nothing at all.
Only then did Tanaka-san break into a run, sprinting all the way to the main road without stopping. He never looked back. He could hear the voice behind him for part of the way — but the instant he reached the main road, it stopped. Clean and sudden.
The next morning, something occurred to Tanaka-san.
Had he ever told anyone his name that night?
He had no acquaintances in Yanaka. He hadn't dropped a business card, nothing like that. No one from work, no one from the neighborhood. And yet, unmistakably, he had been called.
Something that already knew his name had been waiting for him in that alley.
