Yukkuri

At the intersection, I could go right and head home–but turning left would take me to the source of my nightmare, to the incident I haven’t been brave enough to revisit. To the place I encountered them.

The Abandoned.

The Slow.

I know what you’re thinking. What kind of fool would believe in stupid ghost stories, let alone believe they’d seen them come to life. I had to have been high, right? Or on some kind of reality-altering medication. Not alcohol, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to drive drunk, but maybe, just maybe, a random pill or half-smoked joint might have compelled me to take that trip down Curragh Lane, a meandering road lined by trees so twisted their branches linked in dark embrace above.

To the school that became an abattoir in 2010.

The school I was warned to avoid by mumbling, red-faced farmers and whispering yokels.

I didn’t believe it, like I don’t believe anything anymore. Urban legends always turn out to be fake. Haunted houses are hollow husks. Ghost stories are written by David Walliams. But I’m not one to give up hope, hence why I decided to explore when I heard the rumours.

Against dear Daria’s advice.

“I know what you’re like with a mystery,” she said. “But at your age, you should know better. The only thing your curiosity ever gets you–us–is trouble. Stop chasing phantoms, chase a job, take a course, upskill. Get back on your feet so we can rent somewhere in the city instead of slumming it in your dead grandmother’s cottage.”

That was Daria. Supportive and loving once, now cautious and dull. No sign of the girl I’d met and married. Who used to spend weekends snooping in castle ruins with me and slumming it at horror conventions. Before we had kids and the print industry contracted, before I was made redundant and we had to give up our Kensington apartment and return to Ireland and the county of my birth. Yeah. Before all that. But where was the harm, I said. Being ‘mature, responsible adults’ didn’t mean life had to be all budgets and housework and chores. We could still let our imaginations roam. We could still expect fantasy, hunt for ghosts in attics and faeries in gardens.

The argument might have held water if we weren’t living hand-to-mouth in a damp, rundown hovel in fucking Kildare. All the more reason escape was needed. From bills and failure and reality. But it turned out Daria was right. I found what I was looking for. And yes, it was trouble. And no, I wasn’t drunk and I hadn’t smoked or taken drugs. If I had, it would have been easier. To explain away the things I know I saw. The slow things lurking in the shadows.

Curragh Lane ended at the School, the ex-residence of an Earl from a bygone era. In the 90s, it was bought and converted into an academy, the Yukkuri Academy, to cater to the children of wealthy Japanese businessmen who’d relocated to Ireland to work in the booming equestrian industry. Yukkuri. The Japanese word for ‘slowly’, to emphasise a steady pace of learning. For a time, it did well and flourished, but when recession hit in the Noughties it received a swift bullet to the head. As trainer contracts were cancelled, breeders were retrenched and veterinarians were laid off, families packed up and went home, and the school, without traffic, became redundant.

By the end of 2010, its student numbers had dropped from 80 to just over a dozen boarders, whose parents had already returned to Japan or been sent on to work in other countries, leaving their children behind. To finish out the term. To not interrupt their education. Or just because they didn’t want to bring them. To Dubai, or Riyadh, or Chantilly. Because living your life and following dreams is not so easy with kids.

I might be being unfair. I’m sure those parents really did want the best for their children. A solid education, fluency in English, business acumen. By all accounts, Yukkuri offered top class academics and a prestigious international staff–Americans, Canadians, Brits. All of whom lost their jobs as enrollment dropped. As families took their kids and vacated. All except the parents of those who had nowhere to go when the school shut down.

The Abandoned.

The Slow.

I wasn’t around when it happened so I don’t know how it all panned out. I only have the stories, that tell of how the Principal, Higasaki, kept the place going while he waited for the parents to return. Some did accept their responsibilities as the bearers of humans and collected or sent for their kids. Others chose to delay the happy reunion. Or washed their hands of their burdens. Whatever the case, as the story goes, sometime between November 2010 and February 2011 (when some finally invested parents did show up), during one of the harshest winters Ireland h suffered in years, something happened, and Higasaki and his boarders, kids aged 13 to 16, were killed. Stabbed, strangled, suffocated, dismembered or drowned. And nobody could figure out who was responsible.

Yukkuri’s power was cut off due to lack of funds. Oil tanks hadn’t been refilled. Phone bills hadn’t been paid so all lines of communication to the outside world were severed. Not that it was that far off the grid. I mean, it’s right there. At the end of this lane, a twisty, turny, tree-throttled road with one stop.

Once, they’d have called it a manor. Stables and outhouses scattered across the grounds, east and west wings spread wide like welcoming arms. Gables rose into the sky, pillars held up balconies that had faded with time. Ivy-covered walls, weed-filled driveways, overgrown gardens. Metal fencing traced the perimeter of the estate and at its mouth stood a rusty, wrought iron gate. Real movie stuff. Eerie, noir. Especially after it was deserted and left to rot. Fifteen years in the past. Forgotten in the middle of horse county.

When I went to explore it in April, I was impressed. It was more intimidating than I’d had any right to expect. The gates had been secured by investigating officers after they removed bodies and parts, secured evidence, hosed the place down, but my trusty bolt cutters were up for the job. Not the first time I’d used them, but it was the first time I’d done it without Daria keeping watch for nosy neighbours. She’d refused point blank to come. Too busy looking after the kids. Dinner had to be made, homework done, laundry folded. And a pissy teenager unhappy with having to leave her friends in the UK to move to a ‘backwoods, miserable shithole’ needed to be placated.

Of course.

But that wasn’t going to stop me.

My sense of adventure.

Local rumours said the school was haunted by the ghosts of Higasaki and his students, shadowy beings that slithered and slunk inside the academy’s grounds, creeping and crawling at a sluggish, otherworldly pace. They’d been spotted by passers-by, dog walkers, farmers searching for lost sheep. Had become the stuff of local legend. And I was on a mission to be disappointed.

Or I just wanted to get out of the house. Away from the nagging. From the job sites and negative bank statements and rejections from courses I didn’t have the qualifications to enroll in. From the moaning and complaining about how hard it was to run a household and feed a family and survive on shoestring social welfare benefits. From the accusations and the snark and the blame. Though I didn’t see her trying to get a job.

Equality. Ha. The only equality I knew were the weights of pressure and expectation on my shoulders so I had to get out, grasp at the frayed threads of fancy. Let myself believe, again, for a moment, that some ghost stories might be true and there could be something more that offered meaning.

Newsflash–there is.

No, nobody ever figured out what happened in Yukkuri. The evidence wasn’t there to put it together. Plenty of theories. Easiest to arrive at was that Higasaki murdered the kids then took himself out. His motivation? Not much about his past came to light this side of the world but maybe he did it as a mercy. When he realised the kids’ parents weren’t coming back. That they were unwanted, had nowhere to go. Maybe he didn’t either. Maybe he came to the school to hide from his own past and demons. And faced with the prospect of returning to them… Maybe it was best for them all.

Or maybe he went Jack Torrence in The Shining. Trapped inside a snowbound school with thirteen sulking teens during one of the coldest winters on record. Angry teens who’d been left to fend for themselves. Maybe they hated each other. Maybe Higasaki hated them. Because he couldn’t leave. Couldn’t go home or to Dubai to bask in the sun. He was responsible. For his ‘family’. And he took that responsibility seriously. Like any good ‘father’.

Until he couldn’t.

Plausible but doesn’t explain Higasaki’s own dismemberment, unless he was very creative. Maybe one of the kids did it? Maybe a random stranger. Or Yukkuri itself. Maybe I’ll find out, if I go back. Turn left instead of right, drive to the end of Curragh Lane, park outside the gates I left gaping open, when I fled from the ghosts in the manor, the ones I disturbed by intruding. Exploring. Reading English entries in homework journals and diaries that had been left behind, trying to solve the mystery.

Trying to get myself in trouble.

They sensed it. They knew. My tortured soul called and they came, but instead of accepting them and reveling in the discovery that my years of belief in the supernatural had yielded results, I acted like an idiot and panicked. I screamed, ran, stumbled through halls and down stairs; charged around overgrown gardens as I tried to escape, from faceless shapes shuffling out of shadows, smoky-armed and sluggish, trying to touch me.

I got away. Three months ago. But did I really?

Daria didn’t believe me. Neither did the kids. Or the morons on the forums because ‘pics or it didn’t happen’. Only the bottle believed me. And the pills and smokes. I wasn’t drunk, drowsy or high the day I went to the school but I have been every day since. To escape a family that hated me. A cottage crumbling around me. Employers and courses that didn’t want me. The nightmares. But the nightmares persisted. In the dead of night, in my darkest hours, Higasaki and his students haunted my dreams.

And now I know I need to escape from it all. I can’t go ‘home’. Ever again.

So I make my decision, put the car into gear and go left. The time is now. To get my answers. To find out what happened to the Japanese kids and their Tutor. To find out if I can join them.

I can’t return to that quiet house of corpses and flies so I choose a different path, accepting my fate as I enter the foreboding lane and pass over faded painted letters.

And I smirk as I read: “Slow School Ahead.”