Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination (14 page)

One morning I was suddenly awakened by an excited messenger from Tanuma's house.

"A terrible thing has happened! Miss Kimiko wants you to come immediately!" the messenger cried, his face white as a sheet of rice-paper.

"What's the matter?" I asked, hurriedly getting into my clothes.

"We don't know yet," exclaimed the servant. "But for God's sake, come with me at once!"

I tried to question the servant further, but he was so incoherent that I gave up and hurried as fast as I could to Tanuma's laboratory.

Entering that eerie place, the first person I saw was Kimiko, the attractive young parlormaid whom Tanuma had made his mistress. Near her stood several of the other maids, all huddled together and gazing horror-struck at a large spherical object reposing in the center of the room.

This sphere was about twice as large as the ball on which circus clowns often balance themselves. The exterior was completely covered with white cloth. What terrified me was the fantastic way this sphere kept rolling slowly and haphazardly, as if it were alive. Far more terrible, however, was the strange noise that echoed faintly from the interior of the ball—it was a laugh, a spine-chilling laugh that seemed to come from the throat of a creature from some other world.

"What—what's going on? What in the world is happening?" I asked the stunned group.

"We—we don't know," one of the maids replied dazedly. "We think our master's inside. But we can't do anything. We've called several times, but there's been no answer except the weird laughter you hear now."

Hearing this, I approached the sphere gingerly, trying to find out how the sounds got out of the sphere. Soon I discovered several small air holes. Pressing my eye to one of these small openings, I peered inside; but I was blinded by a brilliant light and could see nothing clearly. However, I
did
ascertain one thing—there was a creature inside!

"Tanuma! Tanuma!" I called out several times, putting my mouth against the hole. But the same weird laughter was all that I could hear.

Not knowing what to do next, I stood, uncertainly watching the ball roll about. And then suddenly I noticed the thin lines of a square partition on the smooth exterior surface. I realized at once that this was a door, allowing entry into the sphere. "But if it's a door, where's the knob?" I asked myself. Examining the door carefully, I saw a small screw-hole which must have held some kind of a handle.

At the sight of this I was struck by a terrible thought. "It's quite possible," I told myself, "that the handle has accidentally come loose, trapping inside whoever it is that entered the sphere. If so, the man must have spent the entire night inside, unable to get out."

Searching the floor of the laboratory, I soon found a T-shaped handle. I tried to fit it to the hole, but it would not work, for the stem was broken.

I could not understand why in the world the man inside —if indeed it was a man—didn't shout and scream for help instead of letting out those weird chuckles and laughs. "Maybe," I suddenly reminded myself with a start, "Tanuma is inside and has gone stark raving mad."

I quickly decided that there was but one thing to do. I hurried to the glass works, picked up a heavy hammer, and rushed back into the lab. Aiming carefully, I brought the hammer down on the globe with all my might. Again and again I struck at the strange object, and it was soon reduced to a mass of thick fragments of glass.

The man who crawled out of the debris was indeed none other than Tanuma. But he was almost unrecognizable, for he had undergone a horrible transformation. His face was pulpy and discolored; his eyes kept wandering aimlessly; his hair was a shaggy tangle; his mouth was agape, the saliva dripping down in thin, foamy ribbons. His entire expression was that of a raving maniac.

Even the girl Kimiko recoiled with horror after taking one glance at this monstrosity of a man. Needless to say, Tanuma had gone completely insane.

"But how did this come about?" I asked myself. "Could the mere fact of confinement inside this glass sphere have been enough to drive him mad? Moreover, what was his motive in constructing the globe in the first place?"

Although I questioned the servants still huddled close to me, I could learn nothing, for they all swore they had known nothing of the globe, not even that it had existed.

As though completely oblivious of his whereabouts, Tanuma began to wander about the room, still grinning. Kimiko overcame her initial fright with great effort and tearfully tugged at his sleeves. Just at this moment the chief engineer of the glass works arrived on the scene to report for work.

Ignoring his shock at what he saw, I started to fire questions at him relentlessly. The man was so bewildered that he could barely stammer out his replies. But this is what he told me:

A long time ago Tanuma had ordered him to construct this glass sphere. Its walls were half an inch thick and its diameter about four feet. In order to make the interior a one-unit mirror, Tanuma had the workmen and engineers paint the exterior of the globe with quicksilver, over which they pasted several layers of cotton cloth. The interior of the globe had been built in such a way that there were small cavities here and there as receptacles for electric bulbs which would not protrude. Another feature of the globe was a door just large enough to permit the entrance of an average-sized man.

The engineers and workers had been completely unaware of the purpose of the product, but orders were orders, and so they had gone ahead with their assignment. At last, on the night before, the globe had been finished, complete with an extra-long electric cord fitted to a socket on the outer surface, and it had been carefully brought into the lab. They plugged the cord into a wall socket, and then departed at once, leaving Tanuma alone with the sphere. What happened later was, of course, beyond the realm of their knowledge.

After hearing the chief engineers story, I asked him to leave. Then, putting Tanuma in the custody of the servants, who led him away to the house proper, I continued to stand alone in the laboratory, my eyes fixed on the glass fragments scattered about the room, desperately trying to solve the mystery of what had happened.

For a long while I stood thus, wrestling with the conundrum. Finally I reached the conclusion that Tanuma, after having completely exhausted every new idea in his mania of optics, had decided that he would construct a glass globe, completely lined with a single-unit mirror, which he would enter in order to see his own reflection.

Why would a man become crazy if he entered a glass globe lined with a mirror? What in the name of the devil had he seen there? When these thoughts passed through my mind, I felt as if I had been stabbed through the spine with a sword of ice.

Did he go mad after taking a glance at himself reflected by a completely spherical mirror? Or did he slowly lose his sanity after suddenly discovering that he was trapped inside his horrible round glass coffin—together with "that" reflection?

What, then, I asked myself again, had he seen? It was surely something completely beyond the scope of human imagination. Assuredly, never before had anyone shut himself up within the confines of a mirror-lined sphere. Even a trained physicist could not have guessed exactly what sort of vision would be created inside that sphere. Probably it would be a thing so unthinkable as to be utterly out of this world of ours.

So strange and terrifying must have been this reflection, of whatever shape it was, as it filled Tanuma's complete range of vision, that it would have made any mortal insane.

The only thing we know is the reflection cast by a concave mirror, which is only one section of a spherical whole. It is a monstrously huge magnification. But who could possibly imagine what the result would be when one is wrapped up in a complete succession of concave mirrors?

My hapless friend, undoubtedly, had tried to explore the regions of the unknown, violating sacred taboos, thereby incurring the wrath of the gods. By trying to pry open the secret portals of forbidden knowledge with his weird mania of optics he had destroyed himself.

         TWINS
                               [
A CONDEMNED CRIMINAL'S
                              CONFESSION TO A PRIEST
]

T
ATHER, I'VE FINALLY MADE UP
my mind to confess to you. My day of execution is drawing nearer; and I want to make a clean breast of all my sins, for I feel that this is the only way I can obtain a few days of peace before I die. So I beg you to spare me some of your valuable time to hear the story of my wicked life.

As you know, I've been sentenced to death for the crime of killing a man and stealing two million yen from his safe. I did in fact commit that crime, but no one suspects me of anything more than that. So, now that I am destined to face my Maker, there is no reason on earth why I should confess to another crime far more diabolical. But my heart is set on confessing all while there is yet time; after I have paid the supreme penalty, my lips will be sealed forever.

After you've heard my confession, Father, I beseech you to tell my wife everything, for it is only right that she should know too. The greatest of blackguards often turn out to be good men when death is near at hand. I think my wife would hate me forever if I were to die without confessing to the
other crime
as well. And there's yet one more reason. I've always had a livid fear of the vengeance of the man I murdered! No, I don't mean the one I killed when I stole the money. That case is already closed, for I have already confessed my guilt. The fact is, I committed another murder before that. And whenever I think of my first victim I almost go mad with terror.

The first man I sent to his grave was my elder brother— but he was no ordinary brother. We were twins, born from our mothers womb almost simultaneously.

Although he has long been dead, he haunts me day and night. In my dreams he treads on my chest with the weight of a thousand pounds; and then he clutches me by the throat and chokes me. In the daytime he appears on the wall there and stares at me with ghastly eyes, or shows his face in that window and laughs at me grimly. And the fact that we were twins, identical to each other in looks, in the shapes of our bodies, in everything, made things all the worse. No sooner had I killed him than he began to appear before me every time I looked at myself. When I think about the past it seems to me that it was my brothers desire for revenge that made me commit the second murder, which led to my ultimate undoing.

From the moment I cut off my twin's life, I began to fear all mirrors. In fact, not only mirrors, but everything that reflected. I removed every mirror and all the glassware in my house. But what was the use? All the shops on the streets had show windows, and behind them, more mirrors glittered. The more I tried not to look at them, the more my eyes were attracted to them. And, wherever I gazed, his face—his mad, leering face—stared back at me, full of vengeance; it was, of course, my own face.

Once in front of a mirror-shop I almost fainted, for there I was set upon not just by one face of the man I had killed, but by thousands of his faces, with a number of eyes that seemed incredible.

Although I was greatly dismayed by such illusions, my spirit did not break; I was reassured and emboldened by the firm belief that the scheme which I had concocted in this clever head of mine could never be exposed. And the constant strain on my mind, making it necessary for me to be perpetually on the alert and never to relax even for a fleeting moment, gave me no time to be afraid. But, now that I am a prisoner, my mind is too weak to resist, and his ghost, taking advantage of my monotonous life in prison, has gained complete possession of my senses. Thus ever since being condemned to the gallows, I have been living in a perpetual nightmare.