Corpse Eyes

Several years ago I was living on a Naval base in Japan when I had an encounter that still haunts me today. I met some friends at a club/bar on the base to have a few beers, but left before my friends did (I've never been much of a drinker) After I left the bar I decided to take walk along the sea wall to clear my head before going home. I enjoyed walking along the sea wall because it was usually abandoned at night and the breeze coming off Tokyo Bay seemed fresh and clean to me.

On this particular night I was walking along, not really thinking of anything, when I heard a cough. I looked up and a middle aged woman was walking toward me from the other direction. She was close, not more than twenty feet away, and I was surprised that I hadn't seen her sooner As she approached she kept coughing and I became concern for her because her cough didn't sound good at all, kind of a low, whistling cough as if her breathing was obstructed but she couldn't get enough air in her lungs to clear them. Her head was down and she kept walking right towards so I had to step aside to keep her from running into me. As she started to walk past me I asked if she was alright. She raised her head and looked at me and I had the fright of my life.

I had been a Military Policeman for a few years and one summer we had several accidental deaths. Every time I went to an accident scene the eyes of the bodies always gave me chills. They were flat and dead and horribly empty of all light or life. I always thought of them as corpse eyes. When this woman raised her head and looked at me I found myself staring into corpse eyes.

I froze in terror as she kept walking past me and then the coughing stopped. I wanted to run, but I still couldn't seem to get my legs to work and then for some reason, I still don't know why or even how I did it, I turned to look behind me.

The sea wall was deserted, there was no one there.

Now the history.

When I first reported to that base many years before this incident everyone was talking about a recent murder. It seems a man who lived in government quarters near that section of the sea wall was having an affair with a woman he worked with. This man asked his wife for a divorce, but she refused to grant him one. As the story goes the man and his girlfriend confronted the wife in their home and an arguement quickly turned physical. The man and his girlfriend ended up stabbing the wife several times and, in a panic, carried her body to the sea wall and threw her into Tokyo Bay.

A week later a fisherman caught her body in his nets and, as a result of the following investigation, the man was convicted, but the girlfriend went free.

The Lady of the sea wall became quite a legend here for awhile, several people reported similar incidents over the years, but a few years ago the sea along that section of the sea all was filled in and a sports field was build. I haven't heard of any new reports, but oddly enough a base instruction still prohibits fishing on the sea wall from dusk until dawn.

"What do the staring eyes of the corpse see.... ...they see nothing, nothing and beyond...."