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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
The addictive million-copy bestseller mystery taking Japan by storm, from the author of The Times Bestseller Strange Pictures A twisty puzzle in which the reader is the detective, examining a series of creepy floorplans for clues 'Deliciously unsettling and refreshingly unique, Strange Houses will lure you in and keep you captive with every clever twist' - Kristen Perrin, author of How to Solve Your Own Murder A sinister hidden room. A dead space between two walls. A sealed cellar. A child's face glimpsed at a window. Every house hides secrets. But some secrets are far darker than others. More than a million readers have discovered the terrible truth behind these strange houses. Now it's your turn. PRAISE FOR UKETSU 'Part Rubik's Cube, part Russian doll, part kaleidoscope and altogether irresistible. Strange Pictures is heady, giddy, genre-blurring stuff and so fizzy with invention and possibility that I almost pity the next novel I read' - A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window 'A superlative puzzle made of multiple parts that interconnect in unexpected ways, told inventively through pictures and text. Every twist and turn steepens the sense of foreboding. Original, intricate and deeply unsettling. I've never read anything like it' - Alex Pavesi, author of Eight Detectives 'Absolutely loved this clever little banger. An addictive murder mystery that unfolds like pointillism on the page: only when you reach the end, step back and view the bigger picture does each of its parts click into place. Exceptional!' - Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller 'An intricately woven, at times unsettling, but always mesmerising piece of work' - Ian Moore, author of Death and Croissants EditBuild
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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123
STRANGE PICTURES
UKETSU
TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY JIM RION
STRANGE HOUSES
6
7
This is the floor plan of a certain house.
Do you see anything strange about it?
At first glance, it probably looks totally normal, like a house anyone might live in. But if you look very closely, you might notice things here and there that seem somehow… off. Those ‘off’ details pile up and link together to lead to one inescapable truth.
A truth so terrifying, you won’t want to believe it. 8
Contents
Chapter One
12A Strange House
13
A MESSAGE FROM A FRIEND
I’m a freelance writer, my specialty being stories of the macabre. Given this line of work, lots of people approach me with their personal experiences of the eerie and unpleasant.
Lots of these have to do with houses.
‘I keep hearing footsteps on the floor upstairs, even when no one else is home.’
‘I can feel someone watching me when I’m alone.’
‘There are voices coming from the wardrobe.’
I can’t tell you how many people have told me their scary house stories.
But none of them can compare to the houses in this story. These strange, strange houses.
· · ·
It all started in September 2019. A friend of mine, Yanaoka, messaged me in need of some advice. Yanaoka’s a sales representative with an editing and production company. We’ve known each other for a few years and get together on occasion for dinner.
He told me that he and his wife were expecting their first child, so they had begun to search for their first house. Finding a good family home is hard work, he said, having spent many a 14late night scrolling through listings. Then, finally, he came across something that looked ideal.
It was a two-storey house in a quiet residential street, near a station but not far from forested hillsides, and although it was officially preowned, it was still very new. The couple went to see it, and it was so spacious and bright that they both fell in love.
But there was one thing on the floor plan that bothered them.
On the ground floor, there was a mysterious dead space between the kitchen and living room.
It had no doors, so it was completely inaccessible. The couple asked the estate agents for an explanation, but, clueless, they didn’t have one to offer. It was nothing that would affect the couple if they lived there, but something about it felt unsettling, so they decided to hold off pursuing the property for the time being. 15
Yanaoka said he decided to consult with me since I ‘know a lot about weird things’. I admit that I did find myself attracted by the words ‘mysterious dead space’. But I don’t know the first thing about architecture, and I’m not even sure I know how to read a floor plan properly.
So, I decided to get some help.
KURIHARA
Among my acquaintances is a man named Kurihara. Not only is he a draughtsman with a prestigious architecture firm, but also a fellow fan of horror and mystery stories, so I thought he might be interested in this.
I emailed him the details and a copy of the floor plan Yanaoka had sent, and we decided to talk things over on the phone.
Here is a transcript of our conversation:
Those two walls in the kitchen, do you see? Without those, there’s no dead space, and the kitchen would have actually been bigger. They actively built walls that made the kitchen smaller. Clearly, the space must have been put there for a reason.
AUTHOR:I see what you mean. So, what do you think they might have needed it for?KURIHARA:Maybe they had intended it to be a storage space at first.
If they had put doors opening onto the living room, it could have been a cupboard; or a set on the kitchen side could have made a pantry. But then maybe they changed their minds, or ran out of money or something, and gave up on the idea.
AUTHOR:I see. Since they were already in the middle of construction, then, you think they just left it there without altering the plan?KURIHARA:It seems a natural explanation.AUTHOR:So, there’s nothing ominous or creepy about it at all…KURIHARA:I suppose not. It’s just…Kurihara’s tone suddenly turned sombre. 17
18I finally understood what he was getting at.
Exactly. The child’s room has a vestibule outside the door, which is very unusual for a private home.
And the location of the entrance to that child’s room is strange, too. If you came up from the ground floor, you’d have to walk all the way around to the other side of the house to get to the kid’s room. Why make it so much trouble?
AUTHOR:That is odd.KURIHARA:And the room doesn’t have a single window.19I immediately saw he was right. There were no windows marked on the floor plan.
It’s possible. If we follow that train of thought, then I might almost say the parents didn’t want anyone to know the child was there.
Look at the overall first-floor layout. Doesn’t it look like everything else is arranged to hide the child’s room? Of course, without windows, it’s not like anyone could see the kid anyway.
The parents kept the child locked in that room and hid their existence completely. That’s what I think.
AUTHOR:But why would they do that? 21KURIHARA:Who knows? But if I’m reading this floor plan right, there was something very strange going on with that family.TWO BATHROOMS
There’s a double bed in there. Do you think it’s the parents’ room?
KURIHARA:I’d imagine so. Unlike the child’s room, it’s really open and airy. It’s got lots of windows, see? 22I recalled Yanaoka talking about the house being ‘spacious and bright’.
You’re right…
It’s rather an unsettling house in general, isn’t it? Well, do you think my friend should hold off from buying it?
KURIHARA:It’s hard to say anything for sure just from the layout, but if it were me, I wouldn’t. 2325I thanked Kurihara and hung up the phone.
I looked over the floor plan again. My imagination ran wild. A child trapped in a windowless room. Parents sleeping peacefully nearby in their big double bed.
I compared the layouts of the two floors. It would be a fairly normal house if you only looked at the ground floor. Apart from that mysterious dead space, of course. And what about that? Kurihara called it an unfinished storage space, but was that the real explanation?
Then, a new idea arose unbidden from the depths of my mind. A ridiculous one. Even as it occurred to me, I was already telling myself it was simply too out there. Still… I had to make sure. I laid the two floor plans over each other.
Defying all reason, they supported my new hypothesis perfectly.
It must be a coincidence, I thought. Or perhaps not…
THE MYSTERIOUS SPACE
I called Kurihara again.
Could that… I mean, I’m no expert at reading floor plans, but could it be that the ground-floor space is some kind of passageway?
There could be a hole in the floor of the child’s room, and another leading up into the bathroom. This space on the ground floor could connect them both. I think, then, the child could pass between the sealed room and the bathroom through the passage. The parents were hiding the existence of their child.
Think about it. Whenever the child went to take a bath, they’d have to pass through a windowed corridor and there would be a risk of them being spotted. So, the parents built a hidden passage connecting the child’s room to the bathroom, then the child could take a bath without being seen. And then they put a set of shelves in the child’s room over the hole to hide it. Or, at least, that’s what I was thinking. What do you say?
I was suddenly embarrassed at how sure I’d been. Clearly, my thoughts had strayed too far from reality. Just when I was trying to escape from the conversation, though, I heard Kurihara mumbling to himself.
I suppose that must be it. People must have come to stay, from time to time. But, by putting together the guests, the windowless child’s room and the separate shower room, along with your passage idea, I think I start to see a story emerge.
I mean, it’s pretty outlandish, but, if you don’t mind, indulge my little daydream.
29DAYDREAM
This house was once home to a couple and their only child. The child, for some unknown reason, was imprisoned in its bedroom. The couple occasionally invited guests to stay.
They would chat in the living room before serving dinner in the dining room. Perhaps the husband would pour a few too many drinks. The guest would drink up, enjoying the meal and generally getting into good spirits. 30
Then, when the guest realized they’d had a bit too much, the missus would suggest, ‘Why don’t you stay the night? We’ve got a spare bedroom. We’ve even run a bath already. Go on!’ 31
They would lead their unwitting guest to the windowless bathroom on the first floor.
When they were sure their guest was washing in the bathroom, they would send some kind of signal to the child’s room. The child would climb down through the hole in their floor, crawl through the ground-floor passage, and up into the bathroom. And then… stab the guest to death.
AUTHOR:What?! Where on earth did that idea come from?KURIHARA:Well, like I said, it’s just a little daydream of mine.
You have this guest, naked and defenceless, groggy with drink, completely unsuspecting. They can’t put up a fight. Then the child creeps in and plunges a knife into them. Over and over. Blood stains the water. And the guest, uncomprehending to the very end, slips beneath the water and dies.
In other words, this house was built for murder.
AUTHOR:You must be joking!KURIHARA:Sure, mostly. But… it’s not out of the question.
Have you ever looked up ‘unsolved murders’ on the internet? There are loads of them out there, and plenty that rival the most frightening horror novel. Crimes that are twisted beyond imagination, happening in real life.
So, this? A couple who have a house built, then use their child to commit murders without getting their 32own hands dirty? I wouldn’t say it’s impossible at all, personally.
AUTHOR:Well, all right, but… Let’s say you’re right. Why would they do it?KURIHARA:That is the question… I doubt they’d have gone to such lengths just to kill one person. Clearly, they must have been killing people on a somewhat regular basis. And, if that’s the case, the murders wouldn’t have been carried out to satisfy a personal grudge. Maybe they were doing it on contract.AUTHOR:Contract?KURIHARA:There are plenty of sites advertising killers for hire. Part of the whole ‘dark web’ thing that was such a big deal in the news a while ago. Most of them are nothing more than scams, but I hear some are real. And some people will kill for as little as two or three hundred thousand yen. They might just be amateur hitmen, but as time moves on, their MOs get cleverer and more varied.AUTHOR:So, you’re saying this house is like a hired killer workshop?KURIHARA:I’m just saying that’s one way of thinking about it. Still, like I said, it’s all just daydreaming on my part.A couple of killers for hire using their child to murder people. It was pretty wild, even for a daydream. 33
I’ve got one more daydream. You said earlier that they used the shelves to hide the secret passageway. Well, the child’s room has another set, right? 34
Couldn’t we assume there’s another passage under that second set?
AUTHOR:Well…KURIHARA:And if that’s the case, where does that hole lead to?AUTHOR:To the storage room.KURIHARA:Right. The storage room. So, we might say that this house has also been designed for easy disposal of bodies.AUTHOR:You’ve lost me.KURIHARA:Let’s go back to what I was saying earlier.
The couple’s murder is all done. But it’s not like they can just leave the body there in the bath. They have to get rid of it without anyone seeing. So, they use the passage again—this time, to move the body. But the passage is too small for an adult to get through. So, the couple use a saw or something to cut the body into smaller pieces. Pieces just small enough to pass through the holes, and for a child to carry.
AUTHOR:What?! 35KURIHARA:So, the couple drop the cut-up pieces through the hole.
The child takes each piece up into their room and then drops it through the other hole. That’s how they move the body from the bath into the storage room, which is next to the garage. So, they can easily pack the body into the boot of their car and drive straight to some mountainside or forest to dispose of it.
Itwasnearastation,notfarfromforestedhillsides. That was one of the house’s selling points.
We were on Kurihara’s turf here, so I wasn’t prepared to challenge him. But there was one thing still bothering me…
Right. Look at the floor plan again. This house has a lot of windows.
I counted them. There are sixteen altogether. It’s almost like they’re saying to the outside world, ‘Go ahead, look at us. We have nothing to hide.’ I’m sure they’re actually a way of camouflaging the rooms that mustn’t be seen.
AUTHOR:You really think so?KURIHARA:Well, you know, this is all speculation. Don’t take it too seriously, please.I ended my call with Kurihara and sat mulling it over.
If I accepted Kurihara’s story at face value, what should I do? Tell the police? Impossible. They’d never take it seriously enough to investigate.
The whole idea of ‘a family of hired killers who built a murder house’ was so bizarre that I’d be more concerned if they did in fact believe me. In fact, Kurihara might have concocted the whole story to tease me in the first place.
But right then, I had one important job to do: contact Yanaoka, who had asked for my advice on the house, and tell him what Kurihara and I had discussed. Setting aside the whole ‘murder house’ idea, he should know about the odd child’s bedroom, at the very least. 38
