‘It was indeed a miracle. His Reverence merely touched that burned old violin, and there it was as good as new again! But as if that wasn’t enough—yes, there’s even more to come—at the same instant Miss Yatabe’s finger was mended! You know, she had visited dozens of doctors and none of them could do anything! What powers His Reverence possesses!’
Yoneko, hearing this, was inclined to think that there had been some trickery involved in the miraculous restoration of the violin, but she could not but be impressed by the story of Suwa’s finger.
The story spread, so that it was featured in an article in a monthly magazine, and soon hardly a day passed without someone in the apartment block discovering something they had lost, or some prophecy of a relative being involved in a motor accident turning out to be true, all as the result of the Three Spirit Faith seances. And then Tomiko Iyoda told Yoneko that Chikako Ueda was to have a seance to try and locate a missing friend. Yoneko could not repress her curiosity any longer.
‘Could I perhaps attend too?’
This time it was she who asked, for Tomiko had let it be known that the growing popularity of the cult had led to capacity audiences and people were having to be turned away of late. However, on this occasion, Tomiko agreed to squeeze Yoneko in as a special concession. The new rule was that to be sure of admittance you had to have attended at least four previous sessions and to make an offering on each occasion of at least one thousand yen.
Yoneko went down to Tomiko’s room a full thirty minutes early on this occasion, but there were already some six or seven people in the room when she arrived. The priest and the medium had not yet appeared, and neither had Chikako, on whose behalf the seance was being held. She sat on a cushion in the second row, next to a superior-looking woman in her mid forties who obviously came from outside. Tomiko went around the group and without showing any sign of boredom repeated the same things time and again—how the seances had proved to be of such value, how prophecies had been fulfilled, and how people’s lives had been changed thereby and so forth. Her audience were all quite prepared to agree with her, and sat nodding their heads and murmuring assent. It seemed as if this was part of the process of getting people into the right frame of mind for the seance.
At just before eight, the priest appeared, dressed as before in a black double-breasted suit and accompanied by the medium in her red ceremonial priestess’ skirt. The audience bowed deeply, sucking in their breath as a sign of respect. There was even one old lady who prostrated herself, touching her forehead to the floor, as the priest passed by.
The priest took his seat, and, addressing a woman in the front row, asked her how her relations with her husband were recently. This made everyone laugh, but Yoneko felt it was a contrived informality and did not join in. This sort of banter and discussion continued for a few more minutes, whereupon the priest broke off and said:
‘Leave the door open. The person on whose behalf we are met together tonight is on her way here.’
And the medium lit the candles, as before, and the electric lights were switched off. When the room became thus dark, Chikako Ueda made her entry, accompanied by the white-haired Haru Santo. It was some time since Yoneko had seen Haru, and she tried to catch sight of her face, but somehow there always seemed to be someone else’s head in the way. Yoneko reflected that Haru had only come into the room once it was dark on the last occasion, too. Meanwhile, Chikako took up her seat in the very front, facing the medium.
It was the first time that Yoneko had got so close to Chikako. As it was so dark, she could stare at her without embarrassment. In the flickering candlelight, she examined Chikako’s profile and saw a woman who, although in her forties, still had the dimples and fringe of a young girl. There was something very attractively feminine about Chikako, and it looked as if she was a woman who had ceased to age some years back.
As before, the priest adopted a commanding tone of voice and ordered all present to link their hands. Yoneko, thinking that the whole thing was like a staged performance, nonetheless obeyed, although it was with some reservations that she took the hand of the woman from outside who was her neighbour. Chikako then spoke in a clear and firm voice, giving the date of birth and name of the man she sought.
Yoneko tried to work out the age of the man, and found herself confused by the Japanese era system of dates, but at last calculated that he must be in his mid-thirties, and so must have been in his late twenties seven years ago. So he must have been a good ten years younger than Chikako. Could Chikako have had a love affair with a man so much younger than herself? And then Yoneko could not help but think of Keiko, who had married a man more than ten years her senior. In each case, it seemed that the hoped-for bliss had ended in sorrow. Why was it that so many people had such unhappy experiences in love?
While she was thinking over these things, the medium had entered her trance and now once again her whole body was shuddering in the throes of demonic possession.
What happened in the next ten minutes remained engraved in Yoneko’s mind for the rest of her life. The medium fell, as before, flat on her face and rolled around on the floor repeating meaningless and garbled words, with an occasional real word mixed amongst them. As these words emerged one by one from the jumbled mass of sound, they stuck in the mind of the hearers, until gradually they could piece together in their minds what was being said. It went like this:
‘Ow! It hurts… I can’t see anything… I’m in a suitcase, it’s hard… A man is putting me into a hole… There’s another grown-up with him… A lady! She has opened the bag… She’s looking at me… At my face… Now I can hear someone mixing concrete… I see a shovel… Oh, they’re shovelling concrete into my suitcase… It’s awful… I can’t see anything any more… They’re burying me in the dark… Mother! Mother!’
This was what Yoneko pieced together, word by word, from amongst the medium’s gibberish.
At this point, the priest laid his hands on the medium’s head, and cried out, ‘Stop! It’s the wrong spirit!’
And then, in ringing tones: ‘Spirit, I command you to be gone!—Get thee hence!’
Someone in front of Yoneko spoke in a quavering voice.
‘Saints protect us! It’s an evil spirit in our midst.’
In obedience to the priest’s command, the medium became silent and lay motionless, only the whites showing in her open eyes. The priest called for the lights to be put on, and the tension was lowered and everyone stretched themselves in their seats and waited expectantly. The priest called out Chikako Ueda’s name.
Chikako did not reply. Yoneko looked at her, and observed that the healthy and youthful appearance she had observed a few minutes earlier had vanished. Now Chikako’s whole complexion seemed to have turned grey, and she was staring vacantly into the middle distance, her mouth hanging open, her jaw slack. Tomiko lay her hand on her shoulder and called out.
‘Miss Ueda! Miss Ueda!’
Chikako just brushed Tomiko’s hand away with an unnatural force. She rolled her eyes up into her lids, and gave every appearance of having entered a catatonic state.