The Watch Cabin

(Translated by Saya)

My high school building was ancient, something like 120 years old*1
It had undergone so many renovations and extension works in the past that its layout had become a total mess.
For example, even though it was a one-storey building, it had a staircase reaching from one end of a corridor to the ceiling.
There were also a music room right next to the entrance, and an inaccessible door embedded into a wall (seen from the outside, it was conspicuously covered over by plywood boards).
The oddest of them all was what they called the "Watch Cabin."

A countryside village in Kyoto with traditional farmhouses *2

My home was far from school, so I sometimes stayed overnight in houses of friends and teachers who lived locally.
One day I couldn't find anyone who could let me stay in their house, so I decided to spend a night in the said "Watch Cabin".
Outwardly, the Watch Cabin looked like a normal country house. It came with one 8-jo*3 room, an old telephone and a small kitchen.

And I was about to find out why the place was called the Watch Cabin through the experience I had that very night.

Another person, a friend of mine, was going to stay with me in the Cabin.
We were in high spirits, as if we were on a school trip, as we cheerful spread out futons on the floor.

Futons on Tatami mats

While we talked and ate our supper, suddenly the telephone went off.
It made us jump, but when I picked up the handset, I discovered it was just a school janitor checking on us.
He was worried because we were all alone by ourselves.
He told me not to play around too much and so on. Just as I tried to hang up, he said,
"And one more thing.... Make sure you close the curtains of the window on the west side."
At the time, I replied, "sure" without thinking and hang up, but when I thought about it again, it didn't make sense.
I didn't remember there being anything notable on the west side, so we were saying "What was he talking about?" as my friend opened the curtains to look out.
What we saw there was an old, sinister-looking well encircled by a hemp rope, like something you might see in a shrine.

A well in a shrine

Until then I had never noticed it, because it was hidden away in a secluded spot, sandwiched by the school building and Cabin.
 I felt a shiver ran down my spine the moment I laid my eyes on it.
"I don't know what that is but it looks a bit creepy, isn't it?" We said, and went to bed after we had rearranged our futons so that they were laid even more closer to each other, side by side.

I don't know how long I slept --- but I awoke feeling chills around my shoulder.
I looked around and noticed my friend was missing.
The Cabin didn't have a bathroom and I thought she had gone to the teachers' boarding house to use the bathroom there, but she wouldn't come back no matter how long I waited.
I opened the door and looked outside, but there was no sign of her coming back from the boarding house.

"Where has she gone?"
I felt uneasy as I went back inside the room.
Then without thinking, I opened the curtains of the windows on the west side.

What came into view then was my friend standing only in her underwear beside the old well.
Her hands were groping around her waist.
"What? Is she trying to pee there?" I was a bit scandalised by it but tried to close the curtains and go back to sleep. But then, I felt there was something odd about the way she was moving, and looked again - and nearly screamed.

I realised she was trying to tie the rope around her waist.
And then she squatted down and continued to tie a large stone to the rope.
I became so scared I couldn't even utter a word.
The next thing I saw was a white hand slithering out of the well.
At first, the hand was moving as if it were searching for something, and then stopped once it found the rope nearby.
My friend stood with her head bent, dead-still and unresponsive.
The hand began to slowly tug at the rope in an attempt to draw the stone closer to itself.
I tried to shout but no voice came out of my throat.

Oh, no....she's going to be taken away...!
It was just then that the shrill ringing sound of the telephone pierced the stillness.
At the same instant, I lost balance and fell, landing on the futon on the floor on my backside.
Immediately I felt my body - which, I realised, had been paralysed before - become lighter.
Before I knew, I was out of the door and dashing towards my friend next to the well.

I dragged my stupefied friend into the Cabin and shouted her names again and again.
Soon my friend regained her consciousness and started crying.
I felt so relieved that I started crying with her.
My next thought was we needed help and I made a grab for the telephone, but again I ended up falling on my bottom along with my friend who was cringing to me.
That was because the telephone only retained the shell, and it had no machine parts inside, let alone telephone line connection.

It was only at a later date that we found out the old story surrounding the well.

When the school first opened, students kept committing suicide by throwing themselves down the well. The school tried to bury the well, but the attempt never came to fruition because the people who tried to bury it started dying one after the other.

In the end the school gave up on the idea of burying the well, and decided to renovate and extend the school building instead in a way that would enclose the well and make it less conspicuous.
But even then people would still come and throw themselves into the well, so they finally decided to build the "Watch Cabin" there and station a watchman inside.
However, the watchman himself ended up jumping down the well, so since then the Watch Cabin had been empty.

How did the telephone call warning us not to open the curtains reach us?
Who was the man who called? Was he the watchman who threw himself into the well?

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*1 Many old buildings in Japan are made of wood, so a 120 year-old building would be considered quite old.
*2 This is a picture of Miyama village in Kyoto, and has nothing to do with the story, but I just wanted to give you an idea of how a Japanese countryside might look like.
*3 1-jo (畳) equals the size of 1 tatami mat (Wikipedia).