Editing Ghost Hunt:Volume 5 Chapter 3 (section)

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“Is doing this all right?”

Everyone was gathered at the Base, and it was Bou-san who spoke.

“There isn’t any choice either. The fact is that we couldn’t find Suzuki-san too…”

“We could have possibly missed her. Can anyone say for certain that we’ve searched this idiotically huge house completely?”

“How is that possible? Then are you saying that Suzuki-san has hid herself? If that’s not the case, we’ve already shouted for her, at the very least she’d respond a little, right?”

“And there’s the possibility she couldn’t respond to us.”

“Why?”

“This, I don’t know either.”

While Bou-san mumbled to himself, Naru spoke softly.

“Only the case for the contact lenses were left; by her own will she got up and went to a certain place – this point is undisputed. Of course, there’s also the possibility of leaving through the window or some other method…”

… yeah.

“What concerns me are those blank spaces… If there are some entry into those hidden rooms, Suzuki-san may have gotten lost there. Whether it is actually errors in measurement or some other reason, it is better to check it once more.”


We checked last night’s tapes once more, but there weren’t any signs of suspicious activity. Having lost the trail, we could only measure the house once more. This time even the thicknesses of the walls were accurately measured. If this still did not match the diagram, then proper measuring equipment would be needed.

“Where could she have run off to?”

We were currently in a second floor room. Bou-san suddenly asked me this. I was speechless for a moment.

“Suzuki-san?”

While I replied as such, I used a safety pin and knocked on the wall. It was exactly 1 meter from the floor. Drawing a string from the diagonal of the room, Bou-san picked up a compass. 

“Aah. Why do you think she would vanish?”

“What do you mean by ‘why’?”

“Did she vanish of her own will, or was she forced to disappear?”

“Haven’t 2 persons already disappeared from this place? Suzuki-san is the third. … As expected this is the good work of spirits. – How many degrees?”

Bou-san measured the angle between the torch-light illuminated compass and the string.

“26°. – That spirit, didn’t it say last night, ‘save me’ or something.”

“… Yeah.”

I drew a diagonal on the diagram, and recorded the angle, while saying, “And there was also, ‘I don’t want to die’. That spirits actually not want to die and what not, really makes one think it strange.”

“Yeah, the supposed spirits could also possibly not know that they are already dead and loiter in this world.”

“He…”

“What I’m concerned about is the discontinuity between the pleading of the spirits to humans for rescue and the action of the spirits that cause people to vanish.”

“That too.”

John, who was measuring the floor with a ruler, nodded somewhere in the darkness.

“Spirits that hope for help basically want to get noticed by others in order to do something. And then, there’re the spirits that are overly impatient and have done something bad. Because hoping for help after calling thus for and summoning people is also normal.”

“Really? What would it do after making people disappear? If there aren’t any people in this house, there wouldn’t be anyone who can help it.”

Yasuhara, who was helping John, who was holding the torch, stood up.

“3.21 meters. – This ‘spirit’, could it possibly take such theoretical actions?”

“This, I can’t say for sure. It’s also common for spirits to lie. But it always feels very strange.”

John, too, nodded.

“0.35 meters. – With regards to spirit matters and the existence of spirits, there are really a lot of theories. However, the spirit believes Suzuki-san is someone who could help it; if we think like that, isn’t there a chance that Suzuki-san could have been brought away because of that?”

I wrote the numbers on the diagram, while saying,

“Didn’t the spirits here say ‘save me’? I think it has always said that. However, until now no one has heard it. Then…”

John clapped his hands.

“‘Ah’, the spirit thinks, ‘this person who heard my words last night, this person can help me.’”

“… this, won’t this hypothesis do?”

“Don’t ask me.”

As we moved to the next room, Yasuhara said,

“How about this? The one who heard the spirits’ voices… or rather, the one who wrote them down, was Suzuki-san, and the one who vanished is also Suzuki-san. For example, the words last night weren’t spoken by spirits, but were written randomly by Suzuki-san, hence she ran away because she was afraid of being exposed.”

“Rejected. If that’s the case how would you explain the words written in blood? And the noises?”

“Ah, yes. Then, what about this? Because Suzuki-san wrote those things on her own accord, the spirits threw a tantrum. Because Suzuki-san was afraid of these, she ran away.”

“Even so this does not explain those words written in blood.”

“… Ah, yes. The probability of that being a prank is minute.”

Yasuhara mumbled to himself while he used the tape measure to measure the floor’s dimensions. Just at that time, John suddenly shouted.

“Wah!”

“What’s up?”

Bou-san shone the torch over there. We saw John, who had apparently fallen over and was frantically pacing around.

“Over here, the ground has sunk down.”

Ai?


Using the torch we looked closely at the place John was pointing to, and saw that beneath the thick layer of dust there was a slight drop.

“What is this?”

Yasuhara gently removed the dust around that area. There was a rectangular cover made of wood. When Yasuhara gently pressed on it, it sank gently a bit more.

“This is already rotten. It’s really lucky that you didn’t fall in.”

While saying that, Yasuhara gently opened the cover.

Beneath the cover we could see a metal ladder, which extended into the darkness beneath.

“… There’s a room beneath.”

Bou-san sprawled at the edge, and shone the torch below.

I looked at the floor plan, relying on the light of John’s torch.

“Isn’t that place near to the wall which we said was strange yesterday? It’s located about at the upper end of that blace.”

“The strange wall… the wall which was 3 meters thick?”

“Yeah.”

Bou-san stared down the hole without moving.

“Is it because there are hidden rooms? It’s because of these that the diagrams do not match.”

“Could it be… that Suzuki-san is here?”

“That shouldn’t be. If she was there should be footprints or signs of movement in the dust.”

“… and there’s that.”

Bou-san nodded with a tense expression.

“Right, let’s go down to take a look. Young man, could I trouble you to illuminate it.”

Handing the torch to Yasuhara, Bou-san climbed down the ladder calmly. He really has courage.

“How’s it? Is there anyone?”

“No, no one. It feels like it’s a very small room.”

Looking from the top, it was a small and narrow room about 3 tatami’s length. Relying on the illumination of the torch, we could see some soft things scattered on the floor.

“… Bou-san, what are those?”

I pointed at the things that were piled into a mountain. Bou-san used the corner of a table (?!) to prod it.

“… I’m not sure, it looks like bedding.”

Bedding? In that type of room?

“The damp is incredible. These floorboards won’t do either. They’re dripping wet.”

While saying that, Bou-san climbed up the ladder. When he got back to the room above, Bou-san held a rag-like item in a hand.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

Bou-san replied while he removed the dust. The strong smell of mould from the narrow room burst forth.

“It’s an overcoat.”

It was a long garment made of thick cloth. It looked, indeed, like an overcoat. Bou-san, who was ruffling through the garment, suddenly stopped.

“There’s a name embroidered here.”

Yasuhara shone the torch on it.

It looked like there was something written on the white cloth on the inside of the collar. The words couldn’t be clearly seen under the light of the torch.

“We can’t see it here. Let’s take it to a brighter place to take a look.”


We brought the over coat to a room facing the outer side of the building. We washed the part of the garment with the label in a nearby washroom. With great difficulty we could finally see the words written in ink on cloth which had changed color.

“Miyama Benevolent Hospital Attached Secured Facility”

“Isn’t that the hospital built 2 generations before?”

He was a great man who even did work in charity.

“Why would this type of thing be in this type of place?” 

“Solution 1: That room was used as a rubbish dump for unwanted things.”

Aiyoh, Bou-san had that disdainful look.

“Rejected. Anything else?”

“The patients from that facility lived there in hiding.”

… There were things that appeared like beddings there.

“Why would they live in hiding in such a place?”

“Don’t ask me. Ah, there’s the possibility that room is a sickroom of some sort.”

“I say.”

Although we conjectured like this, of course we didn’t know the truth.

However, we found the existence of the hidden room,  and this should also be considered a great feat, right?