Strange Houses

“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.”

In the Prologue, Uketsu preempts the reader with an assurance that the house they are looking at contains a dark secret. This signals the novel’s larger message that things are not always as they appear to be at first glance. The novel cautions the reader not to take everything it presents at face value, but to consider details with a critical eye.

“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.”

This passage both introduces Kurihara and contrasts him with Uketsu by highlighting the former’s subject expertise in architecture. Uketsu needs Kurihara to help him because he cannot articulate why the house is so strange to him. While this signals Kurihara’s importance to Uketsu’s investigation, it also foreshadows the other differences that crop up between them, including Uketsu’s increasing skepticism regarding the theories that Kurihara proposes.

“If you came up from the first 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.”

Uketsu and Kurihara zero in on architectural details that make the dead space feel normal by comparison. These observations expose the dead space as a red herring, an object whose existence distracts the characters from the details that eventually allow them to resolve the conflict.