The Adventure of the House of Darkness

Deep into that darkness peering

"The Raven"

Started with the Answer chapters of Higurashi: When They Cry! First one up is Meakashi, and it appears I was on the right track! Added my thoughts/inferences about that episode (and previous episodes) to the memo page for my playthrough of Higurashi: When They Cry. I'll have to do a few console-exclusive chapters first before moving on with the original Answer chapters though...

Man, the covers of these rereleases are really gorgeous!

Disclosure: I translated Ayatsuji Yukito's The Decagon House Murders.

It is a four hour drive from Tokyo to reach Usakino, a location deep within the luscious green mountains that's perfect for recreation... or at least, that's what project developers and investors had hoped for, but things didn't quite go as planned and in the decade or so that has passed since everybody realized this wasn't going to be a hit, nature has not troubled by tourists very much. One of the people who got burned by the project falling through was by the uncle of Yuuki Takuya, who bought a second home here with the expectation that the location would be developed further, but now he just has a house in the middle of nowhere. Takuya, a university student, asks his uncle if he could use the small house during summer, as he has to read and translate a German book for his thesis, and the house would be ideal to force himself to focus on his project. On the day Takuya is driving to the house, his car accidentally lightly hits a boy who came running out of the woods onto the road. The young boy, around ten years old, is soon followed by another boy who is not only about the same age, but looks very similar. Takuya learns that the two handsome boys are Enjouji Mado and Miya, two brothers who are in fact not twins. They live in the Enjouji Manor, basically Takuya's neighbor (even if it's a modest walk from one house to the another through the forest) and are living there with their mother, their aunt and a tutor during summer. Takuya drives the boys back to their home, where he meets their father, a very strict man who seems to have forgotten that boys should enjoy their time as boys, before becoming adults, Takuya also meets with Haruka, the boys' tutor and a nurse-in-training, who takes care of the mother. The following day, Takuya is visited by Haruka, who confides with him that she's actually here with an ulterior reason: her friend had been the previous tutor of the boys here, but she died in some freak accident in the forest, but strangely enough her hair had been cut short. Haruka thinks something's wrong about the Enjouji Manor, which Takuya also feels: the boys, who seem to have grown to like the newcomer, are very secretive, but seem to have been meeting with someone in the forest before they got in the accident. Takuya agrees to support Haruka during his stay here and go poking around himself too, but then new deaths occur in the forest, and it appears that Mado and Miya are found at the center of things in Ayatsuji Yukito's Kurayami no Sasayaki (1989), which also has the English title Whispering in the Dark on the cover.

Kurayami no Sasayaki is the second book in the Whispering series, which Ayatsuji started after writing the first three books in his House series that started with 1987's The Decagon House Murders. The concept behind the series was that Ayatsuji wanted to fan out, so these books are actually more horror than detective, Nowadays, Ayatsuji is known for both his mystery and horror novels, and he has also written a few hybrids, of which Another is undoubtedly the best known worldwide. But his first published steps into the horror genre are found here. Last year, I read the first book in this series, Hiiro no Sasayaki ("The Scarlet Whispering" 1988), a slasher mystery that was greatly influenced by the famous Dario Argento giallo film Suspiria. But while the focus in that novel definitely lay on the gruesome murders and the suspense arising from those murders, there was also an okay whodunnit mystery plot there and while as a detective novel, Hiiro no Sasayaki wasn't going to blow your mind like an axe to your head, I found it an amusing read and I wrote in my review that I enjoyed it as a palate cleanser, and that I'd probably read the other two books in the series too.

I mentioned in the other review that I am not a fan of the horror genre per se: I do read horror manga once in a while, mostly thr work of Umezu Kazuo and Itou Junji (not the most original choices, but they're really good!!), but I don't watch slasher or horror films at all for example. I am of course familiar with horror (film) tropes of course through other media, and many mystery novels do often incorporate horror elements. So even I managed to recognize the "creepy twins" trope in Kurayami no Sasayaki, even if Mado and Miya aren't really twins. But they are described as being rather handsome for their age, and that coupled with their otherwordliness due to their isolated upbringing within the Enjouji clan and the fact they keep mostly to themselves, it's clear that the two brothers aren't quite normal, giving the reader (and Takuya and Haruka) a distinct feeling of uneasiness. And the fact creepy, often gruesome murders around these boys probably doesn't help either. For the faint of heart: the murders in Kurayami no Sasayaki are on the whole not as bloody as in Hiiro no Sasayaki, but the plot device of the murders in this book is definitely not to function as a focal point in an investigation, but to function as suspenseful plot devices, so the descriptions are written in a way to get some visceral reactions.

Oh, and about gorey murders, the books in the Whispering series aren't really connected save for the theme (so no characters carrying over, or at least, not in the first two books), but apparently, this book is connected to another horror novel by Ayatsuji, Satsujinki. I haven't read that one, and I also don't know exactly how "tight" the connection is, but apparently events described in the prologue of Kurayami no Sasayaki are worked out in more detail in Satsujinki. So if you have read that book already, it might be worth it to take a look at this book too.

But the most important thing to write about on this blog is of course: can Kurayami no Sasayaki also be read as a detective novel? Just like Hiiro no Sasayaki, the book does take on the format of a mystery story most of the time despite the focus on the horror elements: we learn early on in the book that Haruka is investigating the death of her friend, and the reader also learns that other mysterious deaths have occured in this region, all with a common, yet unexplicable link: for some reason all the bodies had some part of them removed, like their hair. Takuya too knows there's something the boys are hiding from the adults, but breaking their defenses is rather hard, as Mado and Miya do seem very intent on keeping their secret a secret. Ultimately though, you won't find a detective character summing up all the clues and logically proving who the murderer was by combining fact A, B and C and overturning that one perfect alibi. Like Hiiro no Sasayaki however, there is a twist somewhere in the book that makes you realize you had been looking at the facts in the wrong way and that the truth had been staring you in the face all that time, but I'd argue that the twist, seen solely as a "mystery plot twist" was better in Hiiro no Sasayaki, compared to its sequel. Kurayami no Sasayaki, when read as a mystery novel, feels not as fair as the first novel, nor is the clewing as good. There's no way you're going to figure out why the bodily parts have been removed for example, you just have to accept the explanation because it's basically impossible to deduce the truth based on the clues you get. The "big" twist is better, but still feels not as fair in set-up as the one in Hiiro no Sasayaki.

Overall though, I think that if you liked Hiiro no Sasayaki, you'll like Kurayami no Sasayaki too. Like the first entry, a lot of the horror touches of this second novel will feel familiar, purposely so, invoking familiar tropes from horror films. The plot is designed as a mix of these horror films, with some of the plotting and twists we know from Ayatsuji's work and in that sense, I'd say Kurayami no Sasayaki is definitely recognizable as one of his creations. I do think the first one was better if read with a mystery cap on, but I'm still interested enough to also want to pick up the last volume in the series in due time.

Original Japanese title(s): 綾辻行人『暗闇の囁き』