Where's the Well?

Spiral
Koji Suzuki

Most people would faint if they got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and turned around to find a dead person standing there. That's how people escape from the horrors presented to them; once you faint, you no longer have to endure the unendurable. Only with that cushion of unconsciousness are we able to prepare ourselves to accept reality.

I love ghost stories. I don't scare easily. Rather, I'd like to think I don't scare easily. I can watch horror films and not scream at the slightest instance of "Boo factor." I can read horror stories and not be bothered at all. Well actually it depends. There were times I had to stop reading stuff in the middle of the night because my imagination was making me hyperventilate. I can even cite an example: the first part of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, you know, that creepy feeling of being observed by something you know is out there. I stopped reading that book at night and finished it when the sun was shining so bright it hurt my eyes. Hahaha.

I don't know where to categorize Spiral, Koji Suzuki's sequel to Ring, a book I read and enjoyed awhile back. I also have a history with Ring you see. I've seen the film in both the Japanese original and the Hollywood remake. Even the sequels. I've read the manga version and would you believe that that version induced some nightmares in me. Seriously. So a part of me knows Sadako Yamamura and is afraid of her.

Spiral is different. If you've seen the sequel to the film then it's definitely not that. Not one bit.

Mitsuo Ando autopsied the body of Ryuji Takayama, the latter being the last victim of the first book. It was during the procedure that he discovered Ryuji might have died of a possible virus. It was also there he felt that Ryuji was sending him a message from the great beyond with a crumpled up piece of newspaper found sticking out of his recently sewn up upper body. The paper contained numbers that entailed a bit of code breaking which then resulted in the word, ta-da, Ring.

Wait, I don't think I'm explaining it right. I might be spoiling it for others. So I'll go to the general bits. Ando and another pathologist Miyashita tries to uncover the reasons behind the mysterious death of Ryuji and the other victims of the first book. And this is where my brain got divided into two. Hahaha.

First, let me say that all the discourse on code breaking and scientific explanation of virus infection are compelling. It strays into the medical mystery territory and I love that.

Then there's that ghostly aspect of the whole thing. The unexplainable that made me want to scream for the main character:

Something was moving out there. Now, that something touched him on the patch of exposed skin between the hem of his slacks and the top of his socks, where they'd scrunched down. It brushed against him as it moved past, leaving behind the memory of its slithery touch. The lower half of his body shrank from it, and he let out a cry. He tried to tell himself that it was nothing; maybe a cat that'd been trapped in the room has licked his Achilles tendon. Nothing more. But it didn't work. Every one of his five senses knew that it was something else. Some unknown thing was behind him.

But in the end it failed. For me. If I go by the ratings on Amazon then more than a handful of people liked this book enough to give it a four-star average.

It's probably scary and of course I'd still like to know what happens next (I have the third book and I don't want it to go to waste, hahaha) but let's just say that the conclusion was beyond belief. That despite the scientific backbone of the whole thing. Etcetera, etcetera.

I can surmise that it's way too much like a ghostly science fiction story. I like science fiction. I like ghost story. But when you put too much science into a ghost story then either the mystery is lost somewhere or you end up with something that is a lot to take even if it's logically probable.

Oh well. Still, this is a perilous read.