……This is a story I heard some time ago. I cannot say whether it is true, and who told it to me has grown hazy, like something glimpsed through fog…… Even so, it is a story I find I cannot leave unspoken.
Are you aware that there is a public restroom in Mizunomori Park, in Sendai?
It is a quiet park, thick with trees — the kind of place where, during the day, parents stroll with their children, unhurried and at ease. But come nightfall, I am told, the people disappear, and there are corners where even the streetlamps fail to reach. The restroom, as I heard it, stands in just such a corner.
Late one night, a young man who lived nearby missed the last train and was making his way home on foot, cutting through the park as a shortcut — no particular reason beyond that. It was early autumn, he said, with a slight wind, and the only sound was the dry scrape of fallen leaves against his shoes.
He stopped at the restroom to relieve himself.
The moment he opened the door, the first thing he noticed was — the cold. Far colder than outside, he said. An air that chilled deeper than the autumn night wind struck him full in the face. He thought perhaps the ventilation was poor, but the window was open…… and yet the air did not move at all. It simply sat there, still and heavy.
And then there was the smell.
A damp, earthen smell — like the bank of a river after rain, wet and dense — seemed to seep slowly from the concrete walls, as though bleeding through them, he said. It was not the smell of a restroom. It was something older. Something that came from deep beneath the ground.
The walls were black, he said.
Not painted black — stained black. The black of time, accumulated slowly. And upon them — handprints. Countless handprints.
At first, his eyes had not adjusted, and he did not notice them. But beneath the fluorescent light, they began to emerge, one by one, as though rising to the surface. Some were the size of an adult's hand; some were small. Children's hands, perhaps — though some had fingers too short to say with certainty either way. From low on the walls all the way up toward the ceiling, pressed one over another, overlapping, the pale impressions clung to the surface.
He tried to laugh, he said. He told himself it was a prank, graffiti, something like that.
But he could not laugh.
The reason was…… the direction of the handprints.
They were not facing outward, as though someone inside had pressed against the wall to push through — rather, they faced inward, toward him, palms open, fingers spread, as though something from the other side were pushing through toward this side, he said. As though something beyond the wall were trying to break through.
At that moment, the door behind him creaked.
It was not the wind, he said. There was no wind — he kept repeating that, I was told.
He ran before he could turn around. Whether it was right not to look back, I cannot say. Only that even the following morning, he could not stop checking his own hands, again and again, to make sure he had not touched the walls — that is what he said, apparently.
Among the locals, I hear there are those who say one ought not to go near that park at night. They give no reason. They simply say that, and nothing more.
……Is something inside those walls trying to get out? Or is it someone pressing from within, asking to be let through?
Whether those handprints remain there still, I do not know.
Only that I find I cannot bring myself…… to go and look.
