Brave Story (17 page)

It’s her! Where is she speaking to me from this time?

“Traffic?!” his uncle snarled. “You don’t look like a car to me. And what gives you the right to run down children? You think this road only belongs to you?”

“Well, it sure doesn’t belong to you,” the man said with a sneer. “Out of my face, old man. I don’t got time for country bumpkins like you.”

Uncle Lou’s shoulders rose.
He’s going to punch him! What do I do, what do I…

Wataru threw himself to the ground with a shrill cry. “Ouch, ouch, it hurts!”

It worked instantly. His wild bull of an uncle stopped on the verge of charging and spun to face Wataru. “What’s wrong?” Uncle Lou flew to Wataru’s side, and the young man melted into the crowd.

“Hey, that was pretty good!” The girl’s voice sparkled in his head. “That man had a knife on him! Things could have gotten ugly. I have to admit, you’re pretty quick on your feet, aren’t you?”

Wataru sat in a daze, listening to the girl’s voice. His uncle grabbed him and shook him by the shoulders. “Wataru, are you all right? Can you hear me? C’mon, speak to me! Can you see my face? Wataru!”

“Ungh, ugh, argh…” Wataru managed, dizzy from the shaking. “Y-yeah, Uncle Lou, I can hear you fine.”

“You can speak! You’re okay!” His uncle looked to be on the verge of tears.

“I’m f-fine so s-stop sh-sh-shaking me!”

“Oh, sorry! I don’t believe this…here I am supposed to look after you for just a few hours, and I end up letting you get hurt!”

“It’s not bad,” Wataru hurried to say, wiggling his stepped-on fingers. “See? Everything works. No broken bones or anything. I’m feeling a lot better too.”

The demonstration helped to calm Uncle Lou down a little, but his deeply tanned, leathery cheeks still held a touch of red.

“Can you believe that guy?” Uncle Lou said with a long sigh as he helped Wataru upright. “People like him think the world revolves around them. Never a thought for their fellow man, or all the trouble they cause. What gives them the right?”

Wataru silently watched the afternoon shoppers walking by. Some people had glanced over in their direction when it looked like there might be a fight, but now that it was over everyone was busily pretending that nothing had happened and getting on with their day.

The girl hadn’t said anything since praising him for his quick thinking.

“C’mon, let’s go,” Wataru said, tugging on his uncle’s sleeve. “I wanna get away from the crowd.”

His injuries didn’t seem serious enough to go see a doctor, but his hand had swollen a bit.

“I have a first-aid kit with compresses and bandages,” Uncle Lou said “Let’s get you back to the hotel and ice down that hand of yours.”

Uncle Lou took Wataru back to his hotel, a simple place catering to businessmen near the middle of town. It looked pretty cheap from the outside, but the room was surprisingly clean and had twin beds. Wataru recalled the time that he had spent the night in a hotel with his grandparents from Odawara when they took him to Tokyo Disneyland.

“Whoopee!” Wataru shouted, jumping up and down on one of the beds. “Hey, one bed for me and one for you! Can I stay the night?”

“What about school tomorrow?” his uncle scoffed, but his eyes twinkled. “Staying in twin rooms is a little extravagance of mine. Single rooms make me feel like I’m sleeping in a matchbox.”

Uncle Lou had a canvas overnight bag and something that looked like an attaché case.
I guess he really did have business in Tokyo.

As his uncle wrapped a compress around his right hand, Wataru asked, “By the way, what did you have to do in Tokyo? Are you done with your work? If you still have something to do, I can wait for you here.”

His uncle was amazingly deft at first aid. He had emergency response training from his many years as a beach lifeguard. He wasn’t one to brag, so not many people knew, but he had saved more lives in his time than he could count on both hands.

“Nope, I’m all finished. Okay, there you go.” Uncle Lou finished wrapping Wataru’s hand. “No crab or steak dinner for you. You’ll only be able to hold one utensil at a time.”

“How about macaroni and cheese! We can just go to a Denny’s or something.”

“You sure are a cheap date, aren’t you?” Uncle Lou said, laughing. “Let’s take a short break, and then we can wander around and see if we can’t find a place that looks good. I think I’ll have myself a beer before we head out.”

Uncle Lou got an orange juice from the refrigerator for Wataru, who propped himself up against the head of the bed and put up his feet. Sitting in a hotel room like this made him feel like they were on a trip—not just a short errand, but a real voyage to someplace far, far away. It was the perfect time to talk about secrets.

“Actually,” Wataru began, “there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

Relating everything that had happened to him recently, and explaining how he had felt about all of it turned out to be no small task. It was about a hundred times more difficult than giving an oral report at school. It helped that his uncle listened intently to every word he said, never interrupting his story—although he did laugh once or twice at the funny bits. Wataru told him everything: the invisible girl with the voice like honey, the wizard in the haunted building, the ghost in the photo at Mihashi Shrine, every event and every detail he could remember.

By the time Wataru had run out of things to say and the energy to say them, his uncle had finished all the beers in the room’s mini-bar. He crushed the last empty can with a flick of his wrist, and stared at it for a time before suddenly asking, “That haunted building, it’s right near where you live, right?”

“Yeah, on the way from our apartment to the school.”

“Well, after we get something to eat, would you mind stopping by there on our way back home?”

This surprised Wataru. “You want to go inside?”

“Sure. Who wouldn’t want to meet a wizard?”

This wasn’t the reaction Wataru had expected. “Do you think that I’m making all of this up?”

“What? Were you?”

“No, of course not!”

“I didn’t think so. Let’s go see it.”

Uncle Lou stood up from the bed. His face was a little red from the beer, but he seemed to be perfectly sober. His tolerance for liquor was pretty high. “I’ve never met a wizard before,” he said, “and I never play video games, ’cept when you come over. But if there’s some strange old man living in that building and giving children a hard time, that bears checking out.”

Wataru mumbled something through his teeth. He wasn’t sure himself what exactly he wanted to say. He was glad his uncle hadn’t laughed at him outright, but this reaction wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for.

“I don’t think he’s giving children a hard time…actually, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one he’s met.”

“Not likely. A haunted building like that is a kid magnet—there’s bound to be others. Didn’t the old man ask if you’d heard about the place from a friend?”

“Oh, yeah,” Wataru admitted.
I guess he’s right about that one.

“Well,” his uncle said with some authority, “that old man is probably also the ghost, not to mention whatever it is that showed up in that photograph the pretty-boy psycho transfer student took. I bet that’s why he made fun of you and won’t show the photograph to anyone, and why he won’t give it to that stupid sixth-grader Ishioka.” Uncle Lou’s face lit up like a beacon. “Wait a second, I got an idea!” he shouted, clapping his hands together. “What if that wizard guy is Mitsuru’s grandfather?!”

Wataru didn’t know anything about Mitsuru’s family. He didn’t even know if he had a grandfather or not. But he did know that the spell cast on him was real, and he didn’t find his uncle’s theory very amusing. Uncle Lou was laughing so hard his belly shook.

“Wouldn’t that be funny? It’s well within the realm of possibility. There are people out there that’ll do just about anything to cause a stir.”

It had taken a long time for Wataru to tell his tale, and it was already after six-thirty. Uncle Lou suggested they try to visit the haunted building around the same time of evening that Wataru had seen the wizard. Their course of action decided, they grabbed a quick dinner near the hotel. Wataru had been hoping to feast on macaroni and French fries and a chocolate sundae while regaling his uncle with tales of his recent adventures, but somehow things never seemed to go according to plan.

As he ate, Uncle Lou watched him, observing carefully, as though Wataru was some sort of extremely delicate object—yet one which was clearly flawed and needed attention—and he wasn’t quite sure if he had the necessary tools to handle the job. He told his nephew that he should learn to swim the two-hundred-meter crawl this summer. Plus, he reminded him that work at the beach house would be hard, and that he wouldn’t have time to play any video games, since he would inevitably be tuckered out before the seven o’clock news was over.

He didn’t think Wataru was making it all up, so, in that sense, he believed him. Still, it was clear he considered everything—except the old man—the result of an overactive imagination.

And why would Wataru be seeing these things? Why, because he was always playing video games and never went outside to play. What this boy needs is some good, old-fashioned hard work.
It was worse than if he had called him a liar and laughed in his face for telling tall tales.

Things weren’t working out at all in the way that Wataru had hoped. Mechanically, he lifted his spoon and fork to his mouth and chewed on his bitter thoughts.
If he doesn’t understand me, no one can.

Uncle Lou was eager to get to the haunted building as soon as they were finished. If they left now, they would get there just in time. Wataru trudged along behind his uncle.

“You sure are glum. What, you frightened? No worries, Uncle Lou’ll be right by yer side!” he said, slapping a big, thick hand against Wataru’s back. Normally it would have cheered Wataru up immediately, but today things were different. This wasn’t the Uncle Lou that Wataru loved, and even worse, Wataru had a creeping feeling that the events of that night would somehow change their relationship forever.

I shouldn’t have told him anything. I should have just kept it all to myself.
Serves me right for telling a grown-up.

Uncle Lou bought two flashlights at a convenience store. His back was turned to Wataru as he paid.
What would happen if I ran, now, while he’s not looking?
Wataru wondered. He didn’t run, of course.

They took a taxi to a spot near the haunted building, an unusual move for his uncle who was normally allergic to wasting money.

He must really want to see the haunted building bad.

Uncle Lou did seem as excited as a little child. “Is this it?” he asked as they reached the unfinished building. He had a look in his eyes like he was the lead actor in a monster movie, or maybe a cop show. This would be the episode in which the hero would be investigating an abandoned building to arrest a perverted old man suspected of doing bad things to little children.

He looked around, making sure that there was nobody around to see them. He then lifted the edge of the nearest tarp. “This where you went in?”

“Yeah, right there.”

“Right,” he replied, handing Wataru a flashlight. “Be careful, now.” Wataru took the flashlight and ducked under the tarp. Inside, Uncle Lou stationed Wataru at the base of the stairs and began scanning the walls with his flashlight. He moved surprisingly smoothly for someone of his bulk, and he didn’t bump into or trip over anything. His face was drawn as he searched the first floor. For once, he wasn’t making any jokes.

“Let’s check out this staircase next,” he said, climbing the stairs slowly, testing each step. He kept his flashlight trained ahead of him as he ascended, carefully watching the treads.

“I’d expect to see more trash around here if someone was using this place as a hideout.” He stopped on the landing between the second and third floors, scratching his head. “I don’t even see any footprints in the dust.”

Wataru shone his flashlight down at his own feet. There was a layer of coarse dust and powdered concrete everywhere: on the newly laid concrete floor, on the patches of exposed earth, and on places covered with plywood. Only the staircase was clean, with just a tiny bit of dust and dirt collected in the corners of each step. They would find no footprints there, for certain.

Wait, wouldn’t a clean staircase mean someone was using it a lot?
They might have been cleaning it with a broom, to keep their feet from getting dirty. Maybe it was the “friend” that the wizard mentioned.

Maybe it was…Mitsuru?

“Hey, Wataru, the stairs end here!” Uncle Lou called down from the third-floor landing. “That old man you saw was standing right here, you say?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s kinda scary up here,” he said, holding on to a handrail as he slowly looked around. “Not a good place for children and old folks to be wandering around. They need to be more careful about keeping people out. You should tell that boy Mitsuru that it’s dangerous to play in construction sites.”

“Maybe he doesn’t come here.”