Frayed Edges

Monday, 6.50 p.m.

Sitting hunched over the scratched, wooden surface of the desk in the corner of his room, Hideo Nakamura froze mid-brush stroke and stiffened, the hairs on the back of his neck rising up in response to the sudden, inexplicable certainty that he was being watched.

He was home alone, had been for days, the house was deathly quiet and the night was still. He’d been buried so deep in silent concentration while he practiced his kanji that he could have heard a moth flap its wings or a spider scuttle across the floor. Nobody, not a living, breathing soul, could have come down the hall, slid open his door or entered his room without him noticing.

Not a living, breathing soul.

And yet now he spun on his stool expecting to find one.

His breath caught in his throat as he came around and rose, arm up in readiness of defence, calligraphy brush brandished like a weapon.

Nobody was there, but the sensation of being watched didn’t leave him.

His room was small, just eight tatami mats in size, and from where he stood to the wardrobe ahead was only a couple of paces. To his right, next to his desk and flush against the wall, was a thin, uncomfortable mattress, which lay, without a base, flat on the floor. Three of the bedroom walls, those to his left and right and the one that held a curtained window behind him, were made of brick and plywood. The one ahead, which separated his room from the corridor, was a two-panel traditional shoji, a latticework of bamboo in a wooden frame, covered with sheets of translucent paper. The outermost panel was on a track so it could slide, but it was closed now, the way he’d left it after entering the room.

A bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, illuminating the room sufficiently. Apart from a few boxes full of textbooks and a rack on which sat some pairs of shoes, there was nothing in the room behind which anything that shouldn’t have been there could have hidden. The only place any such thing could have been concealed was inside the wardrobe, which was built into the wall and sealed by another sliding door.

It was this door that captured Hideo’s attention, a second after he stood. Or, more specifically, it was the almond-shaped tear in the centre-most paper panel and the blackness beyond that his eyes came to rest on.

The tear had been made a few days prior, when his feet got caught in the blankets as he hopped out of bed, causing him to stumble and plunge his thumb through the delicate paper. Ordinarily, this would have been a cause of concern for Hideo, but with his father away, there had been no need to panic. What his father didn’t know couldn’t turn him into that wrecking ball of rage Hideo had become all too familiar with since the passing of his mother, so it was a blessing he wasn’t there to discover the damage. As minor as it was, it would have pushed him over the edge, the way every slight inconvenience seemed to these days.

His father’s unpredictability had been growing steadily these past months, along with his dependency on alcohol, and Hideo could no longer anticipate when or where he might snap. They didn’t speak much anymore, not even by text, and he had no idea how long this latest ‘business trip’ might last. It might be days like the last one, or weeks like the one the time before. Whatever the case, he really did need to find time to re-paper that shoji. For all he knew, his father could return that very evening, and that would mean trouble, and bruises. If only he could fit it in around studying for his exams, practising for the upcoming calligraphy contest his school had put him forward for and training for the baseball league finals, all would be good.

Or at least as good as it could be, while walking on eggshells.

An unexpected flicker of motion in the darkness behind the tear made Hideo jump and he staggered, bumping into his seat and knocking it over. He didn’t know what he’d seen, but he didn’t hesitate in dropping his brush and snatching up the wooden stool in panic.

Turning back towards the wardrobe, he half expected to find the door sliding open, or something hideous wriggling out through the hole. Instead, he found there was no longer darkness behind the tear, and he thought he could see the sleeve of his jacket. He creased his brow and took a step closer, squinting to peer through the hole. Yes, that was it, his white and blue baseball jacket, hanging where it always hung, in silence.

And with that realisation, he no longer felt he was being watched.

Just my imagination, he thought, lowering the stool to the floor and catching his breath. Studying too hard, too much time alone in this empty house.

Whatever he’d felt, whatever he’d thought, it was just a con of the senses, his mind playing tricks, telling him it was time to take a break. Deciding to do just that, Hideo picked up his brush, put it back on the desk, then made his way out of the room, heading down the hall to a lonely kitchen.

*

Tuesday, 5.45 a.m.

An hour before his phone alarm blared, he came alert, woken not by hunger pangs, nightmares about his father or fears of being late for an exam, but by the horrible, goose-bump raising sensation of once again being intensely watched.

In the dark, he fumbled on the floor for his phone, snatched it up when he found it and jabbed it out into the room. The screen lit up with the press of a button and he scanned it around, searching for anything out of the ordinary. His surroundings were illuminated only slightly, but it was enough for him to see that all looked normal. His door was shut, his curtains drawn, the light bulb dangled darkly. His desk, his stool, his boxes of books and his shoes. Everything exactly as it should be.

His hand stopped moving when the glow from his phone found the tear in the closed wardrobe shoji. There was a darkness beyond that was darker than that of his room and seemed to throb. Panic seized his chest and he jumped up, casting off his blankets and the textbooks he’d fallen asleep with and stepping forward, free hand searching for a cord above his head, tugging it when he found it to ignite the bulb.

“Is somebody there?” he asked, dropping his phone on the mattress and advancing in his shorts towards the wardrobe. Don’t be stupid, he thought. Of course nobody’s there, how could anyone be there, it’s just the wardrobe!

He was at the door in a second, reaching out with one hand, slipping his fingers around the edge of the panel’s wooden frame to slide it open. The light from the bulb rushed in, proving at once what he already knew, that there was nothing to discover within except dangling clothes, the smell of mothballs, and towers of folded blankets on the floor.

The darkness, if it had been there to begin with, was gone now the door had been opened and Hideo stared in bewilderment. The wardrobe was void of evil, peeping entities and he no longer sensed any presence.

What is wrong with me? he wondered, wiping sweat from his brow as he slid the door shut. Why am I so on edge?

Telling himself it had to be exam stress, performance anxiety, exhaustion, looming deadlines, (fear of his father), grief over the loss of his mother, or some kind of mind-warping, paranoia-inducing combination of it all, he slid the door shut and returned to his mattress, switching off the light as he passed beneath it and crawling under the blankets to get more sleep.

*

Wednesday, 7.58 p.m.

The second he entered the room, sweaty in his mud-stained baseball uniform, aluminium bat resting lightly on one shoulder, he could sense the presence watching him again.

Stopped in his tracks in mid-yawn, he spun to glare at the tear in the brittle square of paper. His ceiling light was on, as he’d left it, and though earlier it had shone into the hole, allowing him a glimpse of the clothes within, all he could see there now was darkness.

His face flushed as his eyes probed the black-as-pitch nothing, which seemed to be staring at him. His blood ran cold, his heart thumped loud, a lump stuck firmly in his throat.

“Who’s there?” he said, voice trembling, fully convinced now someone was hiding in the wardrobe. “Whoever you are, you better come out! I’ve a baseball bat and I’ll use it!”

Not a sound came back in response, not a whisper, not a giggle, not a growl. If it was a ghost or a demon or something otherworldly, haunting him and spying from beyond, it didn’t play its tricks to established rules. If it was human or a thing of flesh and bone, it didn’t care a jot it had been rumbled.

Maybe it was because he’d just come home from training and his body was pumped full of adrenalin. Maybe it was because the baseball bat felt powerful in his hands. Maybe it was just that he was sick of being weak and quaking before others like a baby. Whatever it was, Hideo forced down the lump in his throat and strode to the door, slamming it back and stepping through, brandishing his weapon in both hands.

As before, there was nothing out of the ordinary to be found, and nothing to be seen other than undisturbed clothes on metal hangers and neatly folded blankets on the floor. He jabbed his bat forward into his shirts, slid them aside, checked every inch of the back wall.

There was nothing. There was no one. It was empty.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Hideo said, lowering his bat. He was inside the wardrobe fully, in the space between threshold and clothes. He decided he should examine the torn paper panel from this side, in case there was something he was missing, so he took hold of the sliding door and pulled it shut.

Almost at once a chill seemed to descend, and he felt like he’d entered a vaccuum. It could only have been his imagination again, brought on by the uneasiness of the moment, so he forced the notion from his mind and told himself it wasn’t as cold as he thought.

“Is it you?” he asked, craning his neck to examine the frayed edges of the tear. “Are you mad because I ripped you? Are you trying to drive me insane?”

There was no logical thought behind his words. A shoji panel couldn’t feel anger, nor did it have the ability to haunt or stare, regardless of how old it might have been. And old it was, which was clear from its brittleness and discolouration. Who knew how many people had slept in this room and used this wardrobe? Who knew what this door might have seen had it only had eyes? Logic didn’t seem to factor into the current situation, so Hideo thought nothing of it when it occurred to him the tear did look like an eye, and he suddenly had the urge to peer out through it.

Slowly, carefully, he moved his face closer and positioned himself right behind the hole. Squeezing one eye shut, he squinted to see out through it, only to be punched in the gut by the shock of seeing someone on his stool, hunched over his desk, apparently writing.

Terrified, Hideo spat the air from his lungs and fell back, dropping to crouch amongst the blankets.

What the Hell? his mind raced, trying to process what he’d seen. What the Hell was that?

Starting to question his sanity and clutching his bat in both hands, he straightened back up and returned his eye to the hole. He had to have been mistaken, he couldn’t have seen what he thought, it was impossible.

As impossible as the fact it was now somehow dark inside the room.

Someone had switched off the light. The person who’d been sitting on his stool? He couldn’t see much, but he could tell right away that person was gone. He could make out shapes in the darkness, like the stool and the desk, and the mattress lying flat against the wall. There was something else too, a large mound on the bed, and just as he realised what that was, a light blazed into life, a rectangular light he knew came from a phone.

He was frozen, captivated by what he saw, unable to look away. He watched the rectangle of light rise and bob acround the room like a ghostly lantern. He knew, before it happened, the ceiling light was going to come on, like he knew who’d be beneath it when it did.

“Is somebody there?” he saw himself ask, before jerking his head away and shuffling back, burying himself deep in shirts and jackets.

No no no no, he panicked, pressing himself back against the wall and clutching the bat to his chest. Eyes shut, he thought he heard the familiar swooshing sound of the shoji door opening.

Impossible, he thought, squeezing his eyes so tightly shut he felt they would burst. This isn’t real, this isn’t real, it can’t be.

Swoosh, again, then bang and his eyes jerked open.

Had the door opened and closed? Had someone peered inside?

No. I’m imagining it. This can’t be happening. It can't.

The first time he’d felt like he was being watched, he’d been sitting at his desk drawing kanji. The second time he’d felt it he’d been lying in bed, disturbed from a restless slumber. The third time had been just a few minutes before, when he’d entered his room and sensed the presence.

And what had he done then?

As completely immersed in this nightmare as he was, Hideo didn’t believe the door would open (again?) until it did. Nor did he believe a version of himself, a doppelgänger, a demon, would step across the threshold and enter the wardrobe.

But. It. Did.

It was dressed like him, it carried a baseball bat like him, it was dirty from sliding in mud like him, but it wasn’t him, because he was there, shrinking back into the corner, watching it prod its bat into the clothes to sweep them aside.

Steel hangers screeched along a tarnished metal rail like witches shrieking, and the noise cut right to his core. Just a minute ago he’d done the same thing, examining the back of the wardrobe and finding nothing. This one wouldn’t come away so empty-handed. This one was going to find him. And with that thought, that fear, that panic-inducing, life-threatening realisation, Hideo acted.

The scream surged from the depths of his being and he pushed himself up and lunged forward, swinging his bat as he did, striking the shocked-looking doppelgänger square in the face and knocking it out of the wardrobe.

He didn’t stop. The adrenaline coursing through his veins was electrifying, it made his body burn and flooded him with rage. This was a fight for survival, a battle to retain his place in the world, to protect his identity, and he couldn’t let this phoney Hideo hurt him.

And so he hit it as it fell to the floor, again and again on the head, pounding it into submission, pummelling it brutally until the feeble, desperate cries it made fell silent and its spasming, copycat limbs lay deathly still.

He stood over it then, panting, wheezing, sweat dripping off his brow, blood dripping off his bat. He stared at the demon’s battered face, found he was unable to focus on it, didn’t want to. Instead, he examined the blood splatter that decorated the tatami mats around it. The patterns looked like kanji characters painted in thick, red ink.

“Hideo! I’m home! Come say hello to your father!”

The shout that seemed to come from the kitchen at the bottom of the hall startled him, and he jerked his head to stare at the bedroom door. His father was home? Since when? He hadn’t heard him enter. Had he been there all along? If so, what had he heard? And what would he say about the torn paper shoji, let alone the monster on the floor?

Wincing, afraid to see the mess he’d made and the demon’s caved-in face, he looked back down. There was nothing there. No doppelgänger. No splatter. No kanji characters sketched in crimson blood.

“Hideo! Get your ass out here, boy!”

Confused, panicked, Hideo caught a glimpse of his reflection in the shiny, polished surface of his bat and shuddered when he didn’t recognise it. It was his face, of that there was no doubt, but something was different, something had changed, something seemed missing from his eyes.

That’s when he noticed the bat wasn’t covered in blood.

But he knew that it could be.

“I’m hungry, Hideo! Come and cook something! Don’t make me go in and get you!”

“There’s no food in the house,” he muttered, too quiet to be heard by anyone other than himself. “There’s nothing in this house at all.”

“Hideo!”

He knew what it was now.

“Hideo!”

He knew what was missing from his eyes.

“Hideo!”

It was fear, and worry, and sorrow; grief, and loneliness, and hate. All of it gone, as if it had drained out of him, leaving just the one thing he had left.

Anger.

“Coming!” he shouted back, then he went out of his room to greet his father.

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

Edgar Allen Poe