The Third Person - 現代怪談

Kicking off round 2 of seasonal ghostly fun with a recent favorite・・・

Master Series : The Third Person
A Modern Japanese Kaidan^*

original story copyrighted by author @ syarecowa.moo.jp
translation copyrighted by M. L. Mills, 2010

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In a 2nd grade elementary school classroom, the assignment of “draw your family” came up one day in Art class. Chatting happily, all the children drew away with colored pencils, filling up the construction paper with their pictures.

A mother, a father, and a daughter lined up in a field smiling cheerfully.
Two children playing on what looked like a slide with mother and father watching.
Pictures included grandmothers and grandfathers, too. Not just mother and father.

Many children also added pictures of the family pets – dogs and cats – in their drawings. The feeling that the family pet was also a family member was strong at this stage in their life.

After class, the teacher examined every picture, one after another, then suddenly paused, tilting her head when she came upon the drawing of one student. The picture was drawn by the most well-behaved, quiet boy of the class and at first glance a very lively, merry picture done with an abundant number of colored pencils.

And yet, there was a strange sense of something being 'off' about it.

Drawn on the construction paper was a family sitting around a table-like structure. It was likely a scene from some past pleasant mealtime. Everyone was facing outwards, towards the viewer, but there was something funny in the makeup.

Starting from the left, there was a father-like adult wearing glasses, then a mother-like adult with permed hair, followed by the one boy. But at the far right edge, there was one more person.



Everyone was laughing. She could tell from the exaggerated use of red inside the open mouths, yet only the person on the far right edge sat expressionless with mouth closed, eyes thinly drawn like line of string.

She could tell it was an adult from the size of the body. All the children in class very obviously
distinguished themselves as children from the adults by differences in size.

However, although she could not very well tell the age of the person on the far right, there was not a single “wrinkle” line so at the very least it did not seem to be an elderly person.

Three adults and one child.
… …

It was a picture that made one feel somehow uncomfortable.

The teacher recalled the makeup of the boy's family. The family lived in single room apartment in a large housing complex and consisted of a mother, father, and their only child, the boy.
That would make them only a family of three.

So, whoever was this third adult?
Perhaps a relative had come by for a visit recently?

Considering that, she shook off the lingering unpleasant feeling.
Once she got her mind back on track, she flipped over to the next picture.

Yet way in the back of her mind she could not help wondering why in the midst of that laughing family should only the third adult be drawn without any expression?

Two weeks passed.

It was Class Observation Day – decoratively dressed adults lined the back wall and the children were in a state of distraction. Even the children who were forever up to no good, this one time they were well-behaved, stiff as a rod with nervousness.

At the end of class, the teacher addressed the children.
“Recently in art class we drew our family picture, didn't we?”

The children yelled in excitement.
The teacher gestured to the wall behind the participating parents. “The pictures hung on the wall behind you are those very pictures.”
Simultaneously all the parents turned around and began searching for the picture their child drew, relying on names written at the bottom.

The mothers protested in exaggerated embarrassment.
The fathers grinned wryly in silence.
And each of the children burst into excitement and activity.

Gazing contentedly at the scene before her, the teacher began to step down from her podium and walk to the back of the classroom in order to speak with the parents.

At that very moment an earsplitting scream rang out.

It vibrated throughout the classroom. All movement stopped, both children and adults held their breath. The scream came from a woman with permed-hair looking at a picture hanging at the corner of the wall.

The teacher ran over to her, but the woman continued screaming, eyelids peeled back, fingers like hooks and pressed against her mouth.

As she followed the woman's direct line of sight, the teacher saw the face of the expressionless third person sitting at the edge of the table.




“... a ghost story like that.”, spoke the 'master'.
It was the spring I had just entered university.
He was an upperclassman in my college social group, but completely unrelated to group activities he had a serious dose occult-mania and I tottered along behind him like a disciple or a child.

“Where is this place?”
I asked yet had some inkling of what the answer would be.
We had snuck into one of the (for all intents and purposes) 'abandoned' rooms of a deserted mass apartment building,

On the straw floor mat we crouched upon were old tracks left from shoes, empty cans, marks of things burned. It looked like it had been at least over five years since anyone had lived there.

The master answered. “This is the room that the child lived in with his family. The one who drew the third person ”

“So, it was a real story?”

He nodded when I asked, “Originally, this tale did not spread as an urban ghost story. I collected it through my own connections.” , then switched off the flashlight that had been illuminating the room.

It was past 1AM at night. We were surrounded in blackness.
Why would he turn off the light?, I thought as a creeping sensation of fear raised its head.

“You understand the meaning of this story, yes?” came his master-like voice from the darkness.
In some vague way...yes, I had understood.

In the end, she screamed out because it was strange for that third person to be drawn in there.

It was not someone she absolutely did not know. If that were the case, at most she would have tilted her head and thought, “Who is that?”, not shown such an extreme reaction.

It was someone she knew.
Someone who should never have been there.

But again, if it was a member of the family who had passed away, she would have gotten teary-eyed at her son's display of empathy, certainly not have screamed in overwhelming fear.

Someone she knew.
Someone not in the family.
Someone who should never have been sitting at that table.

The light of the moon bled into the dark room, only faintly illuminating the walls, the pillars, the profile of the master who was supposed to be sitting right in front of me.

I sat stiffly in the cramped living room where once that table stood.

In the darkness, I had a feeling that a pale-white, expressionless face was looming up and was
overcome by an uncontrollable chill.

The master spoke softly, a mere vibration filling the tense air.
“Actually, you may not be aware of this, but there is a natural effect that occurs upon those that hear this story.”

There was a sound of breath being gently expelled.
I, too, breathed in; breathed out.

“Why, having only heard this story, are you already imagining that face?”
My heart beat louder, enough so that I was spurred on by the impulse to cover my ears.

“Why, having only heard it was an adult, are you imagining that face as not the face of a woman, but that of a close-lipped, expressionless man?”

I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes.
On its own my mind was imaging that face floating in nothingness.

From someplace a voice came to me.

“That face is the face of the third person. The one who should not be here.”

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*Kaidan – a traditional Japanese “ghost” story usually involving the unexplainable, a flexible concepts of time and space, strange meetings, love gone wrong, the supernatural… Curious and sometimes terrifying stories, but never centered on nor featuring either gore or sex.

Original text story: syarecowa.moo.jp
(Japanese only.)
Audio recording: www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm11600093
(Account with nicovideo required. Japanese only.)



Stay tuned and happy listening~! (^_-)-☆

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

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