When bestsellers blending mystery and horror by an anonymous Japanese author are published in English, the fans of creepy tales are in for a treat. The fact that the author appears masked on videos and speaks in a distorted voice only adds to the weird quotient and his cult status. With stories steeped in intrigue and an adequate amount of the dark and grim, author Uketsu is his own ambience.
His two books, Strange Pictures and Strange Houses, translated into English by Jim Rion, unfold like traditional puzzles, layering the mysteries into a parfait of missing people, etchings that need a second look, murders and grisly rituals. In some way, he reminds the Indian reader of Satyajit Ray’s fiction. Uketsu cuts up his story into chapters that unfold like short stories, with chills reminiscent of Ray’s straightforward style. While the latter builds an atmosphere of unearthliness with each tale, the former gives us one complete arc with seemingly disparate dispatches, coming to the main story with a series of subplots. An anecdotal air is maintained throughout, with old friends talking and eating, and calling each other up again with a new thought or because they happened to remember something.
There is a brevity to the writing, as if only essentials are being shared, which is a tricky premise in fiction that must mystify and keep us sleepless. The setting and scenery are pared down to plot points, dialogues are strictly conversational with a marked lack of flourishes, and the plot thins down to the understandable instead of thickening into wordy expositions. No twist is seen coming, and yet there they are, hiding in plain sight. Is this person a serial killer? Does that person believe in iffy altar offerings? Maybe not, but the public face that everyone puts on is roughly the same, so it is difficult to be sure. The nurturing of doubt, the sustaining of suspense, is an art, especially when this genre must engage with red herrings and unreliable narrators. It’s not the clue that we are staring at; it’s the clue that is staring at us.
While one book goes into art, the other gives us architecture. Strange Pictures goes all squiggly on us with its drawings and drawings inside drawings. Even smudges have their say. Pictures are piled on each other till they speak thousand words. People draw and die, even sketching alibis. Strange Houses, on the other hand, talks about pile driving, floor plans, trap doors and dead space. Boxed-up unventilated spaces form the ‘where’ when bodies missing their left hands start to dot the bushes. The way the author builds the cases—whether they be about runaway little boys or about young girls who go missing from their families—he incorporates his readers into the espionage. We are all detectives, as there is no single hero sleuth who gets to solve the case.
While words lead us into a maze where strangeness rears its head at sharp corners, the telling remains misleadingly prosaic. Psychological insights intersperse casual chat, drawing attention to missed details and sometimes even readerly oversight. For fans of mystery with a pinch of horror, Uketsu throws in delicious shivers. He is very much in control of the hair at the back of your neck.
Memories of abuse surface now and then, entire families vanish overnight. All stories carry in their fist a dark baton, unexpected characters reveal an unsettling past, and the macabre turn is assured. What seems like a viable property soon goes into grey realty. Who seems like a doting mother is caught without makeup one day. The woman in a picture is either standing or lying down, depending on which way up we view it. It is this stealthy relook that loops the reader in. The hook is to play co-detective. Lists and timetables appear at regular intervals, summing up events so far, mixing up the insignificant with the significant just enough to make us turn the page. Pictures are repeated but with different instructions. It is the way we see.
Take, for instance, Yuta in Strange Pictures. He is six and trying to remember what his father had told him. Or Yuzuki in Strange Houses, who soon admits she is not who she said she was. Back stories tumble out just as closets give up their skeletons, and facts back themselves into a corner, even though not everything ties up prettily—or even clearly—at the end.
Perhaps we are surrounded by monsters wearing masks. When everyone speaks politely in a book, all the time bowing and apologising, the minute details of a different culture only add to the thrills. Suburban Tokyo harbours sinister secrets. Too many things bump in the night in these rooms measured in tatami mats. In Uketsu’s world, everything we seem to know turn into strange puzzles.