Editing Ghost Hunt:Volume 5 Chapter 3 (section)

===6===

After the unpleasant breakfast, the psychics said they’d search through Atsugi-san’s belongings while separating to exorcise the building. We returned to the base.

Bou-san hugged his head.

“This is the entrance to the blind alley. How and where should we search?”

This is what they call ‘exhausting all means’. He clearly should be within this building, but there’s nowhere to search.

When everyone hung their heads in deep thought, Lin-san spoke.

“Naru.”

Lin-san had used the figures from our measurements and constructed a 3-D image of the mansion.

“How’s it?”

“Please look at this.”

The monitor showed the vertical aspect of the west side of the mansion. The stones on the wall were white; the window frames and glasses, folding doors etc were drawn with blue lines. Lin-san brought up a photo taken with an idiot-proof camera next to the diagram. He used a similar angle to view the house. Ignoring the minor details, the building in the picture and the diagram were practically the same.

“It’s this part.”

Lin-san pointed to the block that had stuck out from the northern side.

“Ah!”

Bou-san shouted and ran over.

“… It’s taller than the rest.”

Said Naru calmly.

Indeed, the photo and the 3D image were similar structures. That is, besides the protrusion of the roof height on the northern aspect.

In the photo, the roof at that part was slightly higher than the surroundings. However, on the computer image, the height of the roof was lower than that of the rest.

“Is it an error in measurement… or…”

Following Naru’s words, was Bou-san,

“A hidden room.”

“There’s that possibility.”

“However,” Yasuhara cut in.

“We’ve really checked that part all the way till the attics before. Look, outside the attic window, isn’t there a narrow balcony? When we were making the floor plan, even standing on that balcony, we couldn’t see the roof. Haven’t we tried that already?”

“Now that you mention it, such a thing did happen.”

Exactly. Furthermore, the one who performed this unfortunate task was John, who risked falling down too.

“If that’s the case, then it’s below.”

Naru mumbled. He asked Lin-san to bring out the floor plans.

The image on the monitor changed; the first floors’ floor plan appeared. The troublesome area was enlarged. Naru looked at it with intense concentration.

“An extremely large blind alley was built around the North block. Here and here… in total there are 8 sites where there are stairs. Up to the end of the corridor, there are 4 that ascend, and 4 that descend. We have been confused by the stairs. Count it carefully. There are more steps that ascend.”

Looking closely at the diagram, there were indeed more ascending steps.

“I’m afraid this area isn’t a 3 storey structure, but a 4 storey structure. We had planned to walk around the first floor, but without knowing we’d ended up on the second. There are rooms beneath this first floor.”

Ai~

We rushed to the North Block, and once again measured accurately the number of steps and the height of the steps.

And the conclusion was:

There were 26 ascending steps, and 18 descending. And, compared to normal staircases, each ascending step was 2cms taller, and each descending step 2cm shorter.

That is to say, in the course of ascending and descending the 8 flights of stairs in the corridor in the North Block, we had ascended approximately 4.5m, and descended a little over 2m. As the building was itself about 1m above the ground, there would be about 3m of empty space between the floor of the north block and the ground.

“What in the world is going on with this house?”

Bou-san hugged his head, and said those obvious words.


In the end, it turned out that we had to re-measure all the stairs in the house.

We frustratedly re-measured the various locations. Because there was also the possibility only some steps had different heights from others, we measured every single step. Aah, it was getting annoying.

Furthermore, to add to our troubles, upon measuring, there really were some steps that had a different height at certain parts.

Naru etc should at this point still be finding an entrance to the empty space on X level. The empty space that was the X level, and hidden rooms. 3 persons had disappeared in this mansion. If they were closed inside by someone else, and did not have any way to communicate with the outside world, they could only wait there for rescue.

Perhaps destroying this wall by force would be faster, because this might be a matter of human life.

“Mai.”

… Yeah.

“Mai.”

… What? –Ha!

“Y… yes!”

Bou-san wore a shocked expression.

“What are you spacing out for. 16.52cm.”

“Aah, yes.”

I hurriedly entered the number onto the little black board. Although I frequently do get anxious, when I was writing on the black board, my hand slipped, and the pen was flung away.

“Oyo.”

It rolled and rolled and rolled. Chasing after the pen which rolled further away, I pathetically started running.

“I – have – caught – you.”

Pant pant. I glared at the pen I had finally picked up.

“What are you playing at?”

Bou-san shouted from the end of the corridor.

“The pen played a trick on me.”

I hurriedly ran to the corridor.

“That, how many centimeters was it?”

“16.52.”

“Yes.”

Just as I wrote the figure on the black board, Yasuhara suddenly spoke.

“Taniyama-kun, did you just chase that ball pen?”

“Yes, I’m exhausted, really~”

“All the way to the other end of the corridor?”

“… it’s exactly as you’ve seen.”

Yasuhara eyed the corridor.

“If that’s the case, could the floor of this corridor be slanting?”

“Ah.”

Bou-san and John and I shouted in unison.

I turned to the corridor. It was approximately 20m long. If it was slanting, the slope was imperceptible even when walked on.

“Don’t we have a spirit-level?”

Bou-san asked.

“I recall that we have one.”

John said.

We hurried back to base, explained the situation to Lin-san, who remained behind to take care of things, took the spirit level, and ran towards the troublesome corridor in the darkening house.

And then we measured.

The corridor that caused my ballpoint pen to roll away had a slope of around 5 degrees. According to what Yasuhara said, with a 20m corridor sloping at 5 degrees, one end of the corridor would be about 2m higher than the other.

And if all the corridors in this house were sloping?

Although I can’t imagine such a structure, I could only think that. Tomorrow we would have to place the spirit level all over the building’s floors.