Moult

By the time our teacher pulled up by the side of the road in the outskirts of a small town somewhere in Tottori Prefecture, we were all tired and wanted nothing more than to find a motel or inn or any place to sleep, but Ms. Ōsawa still had some education up her sleeve. She had us get out of the van and step onto the asphalt to look at some overgrown stairs leading up to a seemingly abandoned shrine, asking us to pair up and ascend the hill to take photographs of the scenery and building at the top.

I immediately called dibs on Nana, elbowing her side to let her know I wanted her to be my partner for this assignment. She was by far the cutest girl in class; every time I saw her, my heart was filled with warmth and the contents of my stomach erupted as butterflies. Judging by her expression, she was somewhat indifferent or apathetic as to whether we would be a pair or not, but at least visibly she didn't express distaste or disappointment.

We were the sixth pair to get to the top and as soon as we did, we joined those that had gotten there before us in their drowsy photographic procession. First I took a picture of Nana standing with her hands pressed together in front of the shrine, flashing an eye-rolling pout to leave no question as to whether she enjoyed this unexpected night-time task or not, and then she took one of me where I made as cheesy a superhero pose as I could with as ridiculous an expression as I could. For the first time ever, she laughed out loud because of something I did. My heart throbbed and I couldn't help but grin like an idiot.

After a few more photos, one of the guys – whose name I could never remember – let out an excited yell from behind the shrine. He had noticed a snaking trail down the opposite side of the hill from the stairs we ascended, a descent into pitch black darkness. The branches of the trees it was flanked by had hanging on them what looked like Tibetan prayer flags, only they were all red and each one had a different symbol that looked like kanji but were unknown to all of us; not even the nerdy Satsuki could read any of them or decipher their meanings, and she had an obsession with rare and ancient kanji.

The jock who found the path dared everyone to go, sneerily declaring as little kids all those who hesitated as he ran down the narrow dirt path. Curiosity almost got the best of me but Nana insisted that we should not go, practically dragging me back towards the stairs to the road where we'd be safe with our teacher. ”We have no idea what's down there,” she said in an almost panicked state. I nodded and, with four other pairs and a lone Satsuki, we started walking in the opposite direction than the daredevils.

We let Ms. Ōsawa know about the creepy path and the fact that more than half of her students had ventured wherever it would take them. She wasn't too worried, saying she'd give them twenty minutes to come back before she'd go looking for them. Regarding the flags and the symbols on them, she somewhat snarkily explained that even if the class nerd didn't recognise them, that didn't mean they weren't just some innocent archaic characters because not even the most comprehensive dictionaries listed all of them. Satsuki tried to get her to concede that it was weird that she hadn't seen any of them before, but the teacher was the adult and would not relent.

Twenty minutes passed. Clearly even Ms. Ōsawa was starting to get concerned. She told us to stay put while she went to look for the other students. I had a horrible feeling in my gut that just like our classmates, she wouldn't come back.

In an attempt to keep calm, the eleven of us sat in the van and began to talk about normal things, like what music and movies we liked. I learned a lot about Nana and made sure she knew we had a lot in common, hoping that she would be the one to remark on it out loud. We didn't keep track of time and as we relaxed more and more, all of a sudden it dawned on me that we were having fun while many of the people we'd seen five days a week for more than two years were somewhere in the woods. For all we knew, they could be dead. That thought made me uncomfortable. I wondered if the others had the same dread growing inside them.

Everyone burst out laughing while I was lost in thought, bringing me back to reality.

Because the van's sliding side door was open and I sat opposite of Nana, past her head I had a clear view to the stairs going up to the shrine. As such, I was the first to notice movement in the treeline and alerted the others.

Emerging from the darkness was Ms. Ōsawa, followed by the rest of the students. They appeared nervous and even the toughest jocks looked pale. Many were trembling. Nobody said a word until the silence was broken by Satsuki. ”What's the matter?”

The teacher cleared her throat and turned to face us. She spoke in a very low and solemn tone, her words coming out disjointed. What she said was hard to believe. ”Dead bodies... mutilated... dozens of them...”

~

We got three rooms at a guesthouse. There were no other guests so the elderly owners came off as particularly welcoming, telling us about the history of the town and how half of its population had moved out to larger towns for school or work. They offered us a nice meal and cups of tea, smiling throughout. Their smiles only faded when they heard about the pile of corpses in the woods behind the shrine, which the jock who first discovered the path blurted out.

Before splitting up to our rooms, a lot of us discussed the night's events. Was there some relation between the shrine and the nearby bodies? Assuming they had been murdered, who did it? Was it someone from this town? And who were the victims? Did they live in this town, or could they have been guests like us? Were we in danger? These were the thoughts we were thinking when we went to bed.

~

The sun was shining and the scenery was verdant. Birds and cicadas were chirping. I saw a shrine in the distance on top of a hill. On the veranda sat a girl in a loose-fitting red robe, looking down at the ground. I sat down next to her.

”Are you okay?” I asked her.

”You're here,” she said in a soft voice and took my hands. I saw that she looked just like Nana, only her eyes were as green as the trees and her hair was such a deep shade of black that it approached the primordial night sky with galaxies swirling between the locks. Her skin was impeccable, not a single blemish to be seen, gently glowing in a luminous hue like a nebulous rainbow. She had a smile on her voluminous lips and her eyes sparkled with warmth.

She licked those luscious lips and leaned in, bringing them together with mine, and slid her slender fingers down my chest, down my belly, down–––

~

Everyone in the room woke up when the door opened and a shriek penetrated the darkness. There was a figure standing at the doorway, trembling and wheezing. It was Ms. Ōsawa, and she was naked.

Her previously pale skin hung loose and blemished with dark red bruises, blood dripping out of her mouth over her lopsided lips and droopy chin. Her torso had one long laceration running down from her throat all the way to her crotch, revealing the muscles and sinews of her chest. The spread-open wound seeped a mixture of blood and some translucent viscous fluid onto the floor as she tore it wider and wider with her bare hands.

”It hurts! It hurts!” she moaned.

It took us a moment to realise that this was actually happening, and when it registered that our teacher really was fumbling towards us in the throes of self-mutilation in the middle of the night, there was a series of gasps and screams.

Two girls ran up to her and tried to stop the bleeding by pressing their pillows against the wound, only to have their faces scratched. She shoved them back and stretched and pulled her skin up over her head in one piece, groaning and gargling as her face came off. The detached skin slid down to her elbows and, lubricated by the blood and slime, snaked down her arms with each twitching motion.

Nana and I sat with our backs against the wall in the corner when Ms. Ōsawa dashed forward, right towards us, her slender arms curled up over her chest with the wrists dangling as she leapt closer and closer. The skin of her torso flapped completely loose at her hips and fell to the floor, still intact apart from the single opening at the front. She slipped on it, increasing the speed at which she was approaching. We barely had enough time to get out of the way. Her face impacted against the wall and made a nasty thud as her nose became flattened and her front teeth scattered on the floor. She screamed like a kettle and turned to face us, licking her exposed gums and slobbering blood all over the mattress.

”Come on!” I yelled and grabbed Nana's arms and pulled her up on her feet, dragging her out of the room. We joined the others on their way out. Everyone was screaming and pushing each other as we stumbled along the narrow corridor.

The second we reached the front door, Nana stopped dead in her tracks. She squeezed my arms and looked me in the eyes with her lower lip quivering. ”Everyone isn't here yet,” she said. ”We have to go back to get them.”

I wanted nothing more than to just run away with everyone else, but she was right. None of the kids who had slept in the same room as Ms. Ōsawa were anywhere to be seen. My gut feeling was that they were all dead but Nana insisted that we couldn't know that for sure and that we should do what we could to help them if they were alive. She was too kind, I thought, but agreed because it was she that suggested it.

Separated from our classmates, the two of us stepped back inside. Even though it was under these circumstances, the fact that Nana was clutching my arm with her body pressed against mine made me blush. We held onto each other and slowly made our way towards the room farthest at the back of the guesthouse. The floorboards creaked under our footsteps. The closer we got, the louder and clearer we heard moaning and shuffling. The closer we got, the louder our hearts beat and the tighter our mutual grip grew.

We stopped before the door of our room to check whether Ms. Ōsawa was still inside. I swallowed and took a quick peek past the doorframe. Our skinless teacher was standing in the middle of the room. Thankfully, she was facing the wall.

”Quickly and quietly,” I whispered in Nana's ear. ”She's right there.”

Each step felt like a step over cracking ice, or like I was walking on a tightrope. Nana must have felt the same way. My eyes were fixed on the slowly swaying red figure that no longer resembled Ms. Ōsawa. I prayed that she wouldn't turn around. My heart beat so fast that it was the only thing I could hear. Cold sweat streamed down the sides of my face.

We made it past the door but didn't dare to breathe a sigh of relief. Instead, we silently exchanged wide-eyed glances and nodded. We came to the last door at the end of the corridor. It, too, was open and the source of the constant moaning and shuffling noises was clearly within.

Our classmates were twisted and tangled together, sprained limbs and mangled faces sticking out of a stringy mess. Their eyes were glazed and spinning wildly in their sockets, their tongues drooping out of their wide-open mouths and dribbling blood-saturated saliva. All skin had slipped clean off their bodies – as if moulted – and the floor was covered in them. Underneath, it was wholly red. The nine flayed bodies had become one, bones dislocating and muscles and tendons extending from one body to the next. The same clear fluid that we had seen gushing out of our teacher's wound coated the entire writhing conglomeration.

Nana gasped. She covered her mouth as soon as the sound came out, but it was too late. The mass began inching closer to the door, the chorus of languished voices gasping and moaning as the joints of the arms and legs that dragged the broken bodies forward popped and cracked with each twitching motion.

We bolted back down the corridor, past the room we had slept in and where our teacher still stood, past the room our classmates who already got out had slept, past the two vacant rooms and past the staircase leading up to the elderly couple's bedroom. We paid no attention to the looks on their wrinkled faces, or even to them being there. It was only when we were outside that it dawned on me that the guesthouse's owners were still inside and that at least I had seen them in the corner of my eye, slowly walking down the stairs. I wondered if Nana had seen them, too. Even if she had, she didn't say anything.

Most of our classmates had run to the van, and we did too. However, when we approached, we had to back away immediately. They were wailing and croaking, blood dripped onto the asphalt from beneath the sliding door and a nauseating stench emanated from within. Whatever was happening inside the guesthouse, it was also happening inside the van.

”We have to find someone who can help,” Nana said, choking back tears. ”The police? A doctor?”

Would such a small town even have a police department or a clinic? I had my doubts, but it was the only course of action that made sense in a situation like this. The two of us getting to safety was the top priority.

~

The police station was a tiny yellow-brick building propped up in the centre of the only intersection in town. Only one officer was on duty, a short and skinny man with pale skin covered in acne scars who looked to barely be in his twenties. He had fallen asleep watching some cute-girls-doing-cute-things anime on his laptop and we had to wake him up.

”Right,” he sighed after a moment of silence following our explanation of the terrifying situation unfolding at the guesthouse and in the van. ”You kids sure you haven't been drinking?”

I wanted to punch him in his smug face, but managed to contain myself. Instead, I just yelled, ”No! They're all bloody and messed up! You have to do something, right?!”

Nana joined me, ”Yeah, help them!”

”Fine, fine,” the cop groaned and yawned. He picked up the receiver of the dusty-looking landline phone and dialed a number with one finger at a snail's pace. He cleared his throat and began talking to whoever it was that he was calling. ”Hey, officer Shinozaki here. Sorry to bother you at this late an hour, but I got a couple of kids here saying their teacher and classmates are... I'm not sure what, exactly, something about bleeding and their skin falling off. Yeah, I know. They said they screamed and seemed to get aggressive. No, they seem normal. Yeah. No, they're just here on an excursion. I don't know, some kind of road trip their teacher arranged. All the way from Tokyo. They stopped here for the night but the teacher made them go up to some abandoned shrine and... oh? Alright, I'll tell them. Okay, thanks. Bye.”

As we waited for him to end the call, our fingers found each other. It just happened naturally that we ended up holding hands and didn't even notice until the cop got off the phone and made a snarky comment about 'young love' before snickering to himself for a good while.

Suddenly, his face went serious and he appeared somewhat hesitant for a second or two. ”As you probably figured, I called the doctor. He said it sounds like it could be some file-virus or whatever the hell. Apparently that's bad, and I can't let you go because you might be infected. He's already on his way here.”

”We're not infected!” we protested in unison, trying to explain that all the others had already shed their skins long ago and that we didn't even touch anybody else, but he remained firm that while he believed us, the doctor was the only one who could make any judgement on the matter. After all, it wasn't unheard of for there to be carriers who didn't get any of the symptoms themselves but could still spread a disease.

For what felt like hours, we sat still with nothing to do while the cop went back to his anime. All we could do to kill time was talk, and we talked about everything. What if we were infected? What if, for some reason, our symptoms were simply delayed and could kick in any second? These were the questions that enabled us to open up to each other like there was no tomorrow, and we did open up about everything from our most ridiculous dreams to our worst nightmares.

Finally, the doctor arrived. His name was Goro Kawauchi and he had to at the very least be in his nineties, bald and wrinkled to such an extent that his head looked like a dried raisin and his hands could've passed for those of a mummified corpse. He had thick rounded glasses and wore a respiratory mask, a lab coat and latex gloves.

The first thing he said to us was ”I'll take your blood for some tests.” Not even a greeting, not even one question about how we were feeling, nothing. I couldn't tell whether it was because this was an urgent matter or because he just didn't care, but based on the callous way he jammed the needle into my arm, I suspected the latter.

After drawing our blood and pocketing the vials, he brought us glasses of water and made sure we drank every last drop. We didn't think anything of his insistence because he hadn't been friendly to begin with, but when my vision began to blur, I realised he had put something in the water.

~

I woke up in a small dimly lit room with Nana sprawled on top of me. The back of my head hurt, as did my back. It was clear that we had been simply thrown in while we were unconscious with no concern for our health or safety. Even though the floor was hard and cold, the warmth and softness of Nana's body felt nice. At first I didn't even want to wake her up, knowing that as soon as I did, she would pull back and I might never get to be as close to her again. However, the situation being what it was, I woke her up without delay.

The door was locked and there was a large mirror on one of the walls. I figured it was a one-way-mirror. In the corner of the ceiling, there was a surveillance camera with a blinking red light. The only furniture in the room were two uncomfortable wooden chairs.

Eventually, the door opened and the doctor came in with a nurse. Neither of them wore any kind of protective gear and he had taken off his white coat. ”How are you feeling?” he asked. Before either of us could respond, he chuckled. ”Well, you two are certainly very lucky.”

Nana got visibly upset and yelled ”Why are we here?! What's going on?!”

The doctor sighed. ”I do owe you an apology, but we had to be sure that you were not infected. You can go home, provided that you will not speak of what happened here. What happens in this town must remain in this town. Promise that you will never tell a soul what you witnessed here and you are free to go.”

”But what happened? Why did our teacher and classmates get... like that?” Nana pressed.

”Yeah, what the hell was that? You can't expect us to just let it go!”

The doctor offered no explanation. He instead insisted that we forget we ever came here and tell our parents that there was a traffic accident that killed everybody except the two of us. After some thinly veiled threats that we would not get out at all if we wouldn't roll with it, we agreed and the doctor escorted us to the nearest train station.

~

I still have nightmares about the events of that night. With time, they have only gotten more detailed and vivid and every time I have them, they feel more real. I feel an inexplicable desire to go back to that small town and walk up those stairs to the shrine and then down the path on the other side of the hill. In my dreams, I follow that path lined by strange prayer flags and come to a cave. I enter the cave and hear something moving in the darkness, coming closer to me. Just before I can make out what it is, I wake up.

Nana has the exact same dreams.