Summer Job at Mountain Cabin

(Translated from Japanese by Saya)
This happened a few years ago. Together with my friend, I was searching for a summer job that paid well.

We found one job advertisement that stated, "Looking for someone to take care of a mountain cabin for one day." It paid 20,000 yens a day.
We phoned immediately but were told that "the job has been filled." We were disappointed, but the next week we again found the same advertisement in the magazine, so we called again.

This time we managed to secure a job interview at a family restaurant*1. The wage would be paid the morning after we had spent a night at the cabin.
We somehow decided to take on the job there and then, and were given a copy of a map to the mountain cabin.
And then the appointed day came.



The cabin was closer to a town than we had expected, and situated in the middle of privately owned woods.
There was a sign mounted on the wire fence that read "Private Property - No Trespassing," and beside the sign stood an elderly man.
"I believe you are Mr.__and Mr.__. I have been informed of your coming. Please come this way," he said and handed us the key to the cabin.
We walked for about 10 minutes before the cabin came into our sight.
We had imagined that it would be a proper log cabin, but it was just a cheap looking prefabricated house.

The only downside of the job was that there was no shower or bath and we had to bring food by ourselves, but we were quite happy with the high day wage.
The work only consisted of "cleaning up inside the cabin and watering the potted plants outside in the evening and in the morning."

The cabin didn't even have TV so we whiled away the hours by playing games on handheld consoles or playing card and board games.
It didn't have an air-conditioner either, and we had braced ourselves for a night of hellish heat, but it turned out to be surprisingly cool, perhaps because it was surrounded by so many trees.

Eventually the evening came, and after we had some rice balls*2 and bread from a convenience store for supper, we decided to sleep early, on the pipe-frame makeshift bed that had been prepared for us.

That night I had a very disturbing nightmare. I only remember part of it, but it went something like this: as I lay numerous hands kept groping and pushing my back and my body got torn to pieces by these hands in the end.
Next morning, I woke up with a terrible feeling and found my friend also looking haggard.

"What's wrong? I feel crap because of the weird dream I had."
"A dream? I also had a dream." He told me the content of his dream.
"What? We had the same dream!"

We both felt a little sick and were silent for sometime.
After a while, my friend muttered,
"Hey, the floor of this cabin...maybe it's my imagination, but doesn't it feel a bit wobbly?"

Now that he mentioned it, I felt like I was lying on a waterbed when I woke up.
I thought it was just an aftereffect of the dream, and hadn't thought much of it until then.....

"Let's look under the floor," my friend said.
I recalled how the prefabricated cabin was raised about 10 centimetres above ground and supported by poles at the corners.
I became curious too and agreed to investigate it with him.

We went outside. Even though it was morning, it was still about 5.00 am and the sky was dark.
My friend used the penlight he had on him to light up the space under the floor.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"
"What's the matter!!?"
"ARMS!! ARMS, ARMS,ARMS, AHHHHHH!!"
"SHIT!!"

A large number of amputated arms were scattered around under the floor.
But we soon realised, by looking at their cut sections, that they were not real arms but arms of mannequins.
However, the freakiest thing was that each arm had a photo of a woman's face (polaroid) and a name written with a marker pen stuck on it.
I think there were about 50 or so arms there.
I touched one of those arms to make sure it was really a mannequin's arm.

"What the fuck....some crazy shit...shall we just go home?"
"Are you dumb? We'll wait until we get the money. If they ask us to do something else, then we run. "

We didn't feel like going back inside, so we just stood there zoned out for a long while.
When it was 7.00 am, the elderly man we had seen the day before came over to us.

"Good work, boys. Here is the wage... By the way, I have a suggestion - would you like to stay here for three more nights? Of course, I will pay you 60,000 yens for your extra work."
"Thank you, but I decline,"
We said in unison, and we started walking away as fast as we could.
When I looked back over my shoulder, I saw that the elderly man was now holding a mobile phone to his ear while glaring at us like he was really pissed off.

From then on, we never again saw the same job advertisement in the magazine. I suspect that the prefabricated cabin is no longer there too.

On the way back home, the friend said,
"Maybe that was some sort of an experiment."

I just nodded in agreement.

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Notes:

A famous Family restaurant, Gusto

*1 Family Restaurants (on the left) are popular casual dining restaurants which are found at every corner in Japan, and which provide a wide range of dishes at affordable price. (Five recommended Family Restaurants in Japan)

Onigiri

 *2 Rice Balls (on the right) - Onigiri in the original text.  Onigiri is a Japanese food made from white rice formed into triangular or cylindrical shapes and often wrapped in nori (seaweed). Traditionally, an onigiri is filled with pickled plum (umeboshi), salted salmon, katsuobushi, kombu, tarako, or any other salty or sour ingredient as a natural preservative. Most Japanese convenience stores stock their onigiri with various fillings and flavors. There are even specialized shops which only sell onigiri to take out. (Wikipedia)