Brendan opened his eyes but everything remained black – so black that he wondered if he’d gone blind.
Pain started to register in different parts of his body. A weight crushed his legs, a sadistic pressure twisted back his spine and an edge cut deep into his left collarbone. The only part of him he could move was his head, and when he shifted that his left temple cracked against a surface inches away in the blackness.
Then he remembered the moments before the blackness. He’d been standing in an old Japanese street, surrounded by wooden-and-stone facades. He tried to take a photograph of an izakaya. Above its awning was a painted sign showing a zigzag of geese rising from a lake beside Mount Fuji, while under the awning hung an immense red lantern. He suddenly realised that though he was holding the camera steady, the image in the viewfinder was shaking. Puzzled, he lowered the camera and just then masonry started crashing onto the street around him.
“Oh Jesus,” said Brendan aloud. “It was an earthquake.”
In the blackness to the right of his head, a voice said, “Hello?” There was another crack of pain as his head jerked in fright and struck the surface nearby.
*
“I’m sorry,” said the voice. “Did I frighten you?”
A feverish excitement possessed Brendan. “Are you a rescuer?” he babbled. “I must be close to you! If you dig into this rubble, you’ll find me!”
The voice sighed. “I’m afraid I’m not above the rubble. I’m trapped beneath it, like you are.”
Brendan’s disappointment suddenly felt much worse than the pain wracking him. “Trapped? Completely?”
“I can’t move. The front wall of the izakaya building toppled onto the street. It came down on both of us. What about you? Can you move?”
“Only my head.” He realised he could shift his right arm too. It was lodged in the same cavity that surrounded his head, the cavity through which he was speaking to the voice’s owner. “And one arm. That’s all.”
Then he thought about the street again. “That’s strange. I don’t remember anyone being near me when that building collapsed.”
“I was in the izakaya,” the voice explained, “but I ran outside when the earthquake started. I was stupid. During earthquakes you should keep off the streets because there’s debris falling from the buildings. Anyway, you were the last thing I saw – a foreign tourist with a camera.”
Brendan wondered if the voice was male or female. It sounded more female now because it’d become soft and coaxing, as if trying to persuade him that what it was saying was true.
Something else troubled him. “For a Japanese person, your English is exceptional.”
“Thank you,” replied the voice. “I have studied very hard.”
*
Later, though he remained in the same twisted position, Brendan noticed a change. The right side of his face was hot. Around his head, the air seemed to contain an acrid smokiness.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
“This isn’t good,” said the voice. “Things are burning.”
“Burning?”
“This is an old neighbourhood. That’s why things collapsed so easily. The houses were traditional ones, made with lots of wood. And it was the worst time for an earthquake – midday, while people were cooking lunch. Gas cookers, flames… So now the wood in the rubble is burning.”
Brendan fancied he heard a distant sound, muffled but shrill. “Oh God,” he moaned, “I think that was another person trapped. Screaming – maybe the fire’s reached them.”
For the first time the voice sounded afraid. “Actually, it may reach me soon. Where I’m lying is very hot now. Listen. You said you can move your arm?”
“My right arm, yes.”
“You’re on my left. And my left hand is free too… But…” The voice was weakening. “It’s becoming so hot around me…”
Brendan realised he didn’t just perceive the fire’s heat. He saw a greenish light penetrate the blackness to the right of him. “Don’t give up,” he pleaded. “I’m sure there are rescuers searching for us… They could find us at any moment…”
“I’m so frightened,” whispered the voice. “If you could hold my hand, it would be a comfort for me.”
Brendan’s right hand scrabbled through the blackness. “Wait… I’ll find you.”
He managed to grasp something. Then, peering into the green light, he realised it didn’t flicker, like firelight did. It glowed like phosphorescence. He also realised that the partly-slimy, partly-hairy thing he was holding didn’t feel like a hand.
*
A rescuer was exploring the rubble close to a fierce fire – a mangled red lantern lying there suggested it’d been the site of an izakaya – when he saw a camera lying on the ground too. Its strap vanished under a slab of broken concrete.
He called over several more rescuers and together they dug into the rubble until they found the big painted sign from the izakaya. Beneath that was a cavity, into which protruded a dust-covered male head and arm. They wrestled away fallen blocks and beams and freed the man’s body from under them. Because the izakaya sign was the same size and shape as a stretcher, they laid him on top of it and used it to carry him along the devastated street.
The man’s right arm hung over the sign’s edge and dragged something along the ground. Eventually, it slipped out of his hand and was left lying amid the debris – a putrid thing exuding long fibrous strands, like a dead jellyfish or a rotted section of scalp.
The rescuers took him to a clear area of the street where injured people were getting treatment. As they lowered the makeshift stretcher, the first rescuer heard the man murmur something and he crouched beside him. He saw how, beneath the dust, the cast of the man’s face suggested he was a foreigner, an American or European.
Then the man’s eyes opened and the rescuer sprang back, shocked at the greenness that glowed out of them.
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©2011 Jim Mountfield
