Suicide Forest (14 page)

The flames of the fire had shrunk to less
than a foot tall. I glanced around the circle we had formed but
didn’t see any more wood.

“Is that all the firewood?” I said.

“That went fast,” Ben said.

“We need campfire,” Tomo stated.

“Indeed we do,” Neil said. “It’s going to
get colder.”

I cursed myself for falling asleep and not
scavenging more wood earlier. I grabbed a flashlight and stood.
“I’ll go get some.”

“I will join you,” Ben said, pushing himself
to his feet.

“Me too,” Nina said.

“Wait, in the dark?” Mel said. “You might
get lost.”

I shook my head. “We won’t leave the
string.”

I could see her deliberating, weighing the
pros and cons. Apparently heat and light won out over potential
hazards because she handed a flashlight to Ben.

“Fine, but don’t go far,” she told us. “And
watch out for those holes.”

If
Aokigahara was
unsettling during the daylight, it was ten times worse at night and
away from the perceived safety of the fire. The blackness of the
forest pressed against us like a physical force. Ben and I fought
it with our flashlight beams but succeeded only in revealing
patches of the chaos that surrounded us: vines dangling like
nooses, craggy trees bent at demonic angles, roots bubbling out of
the ground, as if ready to snare unsuspecting prey. And everything
remained shrouded in that maddening silence. In contrast, our
footsteps crunched and crackled, seemingly loud enough to wake the
dead and bring all the
yūrei
within a mile radius screaming
toward us.

I was in the lead, on edge and jumpy, with
Nina behind me and Ben bringing up the rear. We were following the
string in what I thought was a westerly direction, passing through
undiscovered territory. We had each brought backpacks to fill with
deadfall—I was using Mel’s—and so far I had collected several
sticks and a large branch I had broken into thirds with my
foot.

The ground began to angle upward. I lowered
myself to all fours as I climbed, careful not to trip or cut my
hands on the volcanic rock. At the top I shone the light down on
Nina and Ben so they could see better.

Then, off in the trees, I heard something. I
snapped the light left.

“What is it?” Nina whispered, moving close
to me.

I played the beam back and forth, but saw
nothing but ghostly tree trunks. “I thought I heard something.”

Ben joined us. “Was it an animal?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of animal?” Nina asked.

I shook my head. “A fox?”

“Should we go back?”

“We have not found enough wood yet,” Ben
said.

“It was probably just a rodent or
something,” I said. “And Ben’s right. We need more wood.”

We began walking again, only now I kept up
conversation. It was reassuring, normalizing, to hear our voices.
Also, I wanted to scare off whatever had been out there.

Ben seemed happy to talk. He told me he was
born in Haifa to French-Algerian Jewish parents and moved to Tel
Aviv when he was eight. He was the third of five children,
graduated from university with a degree in economics, and spent the
last few years in the Israeli Defense Forces. Somehow we got onto
World War II, and he explained that his grandfather was killed in a
concentration camp while his grandmother survived by hiding in a
convent in Czechoslovakia.

“What are you going to do when your time’s
done in the military?” I asked.

“I will move to New York City,” he said.

“He wants to be an actor,” Nina said.

“Is that true?” I asked him.

He nodded. “Many Israelis, you know, are
Hollywood actors. But they always change their nationality to
American. I will remain an Israeli.”

“Maybe you should move to Los Angeles then,
not New York.”

“You think that would be better?”

“New York is more Broadway acting. Stage
stuff. If you want to be in the movies, you should be in Los
Angeles.”

“Thank you, Ethan. I mean, for not saying
‘Why do you want to be an actor?’ or ‘You cannot be an actor.’ That
is what everyone tells me.”

He seemed upset by this and went silent.

“Tell him why you want to be an actor,” Nina
said.

“For the fame, of course,” Ben said, “and
the money. I could move my parents to Los Angeles with me. Away
from the rockets, the fighting.”

“He wants to marry a beautiful American
wife,” Nina said. “He told me that once.”

“I did not!”

“He did. He says he will keep his Israeli
citizenship, but he wants to marry an American. I do not know what
to make of him. He is a madman, I think.”

“I will marry you,” he said.

Nina huffed.

“How about you, Ethan?” Ben asked. “You are
a teacher, yes?”

“How did you know?”

“John Scott told me.”

I frowned. “What else did he say?”

“Nothing else. Only that you teach
kids.”

“Kids?”

“You do not?”

“I teach adults.” Then, for whatever reason,
I added: “A lot of business executives, in fact.”

Kids, I thought. What the fuck? Why would
John Scott say that? He had no idea.

“Sometimes,” I continued, feeling I had
something to prove, “I give seminars to large groups at their
corporate headquarters. Sony. Rakuten. Roche.”

“I see,” Ben said.

I stopped talking. I was making a fool of
myself.

“How long will you live in Japan?” Nina
asked me.

“This is probably my last year.”

“Where will you go?”

“Maybe back to the US.”

“Will you continue to teach there?”

“I think so. I like teaching.”

“Your family is there?”

“My parents.”

“You do not have any brothers or
sisters?”

I hesitated. “No.”

“An only child. How is that?”

“You get used to it.”

I picked up another stick, snapped it in
half, and stuck it in my bag.

Ben said, “John Scott, I like him. How long
have you been friends?”

“We’re not friends,” I said. “I just met him
today.”

“I thought you were friends. I think he said
you were.”

“We’re not.”

Nina said, “But Melissa? She is your
girlfriend?”

“Melinda, yeah—”

“Stop!” Ben hissed.

“What?” I said, freezing mid step.

Nina bumped into the back of me.

“Did you hear that?” His eyes were wide and
white in the darkness. “It sounded like…I do not know. Another
animal?”

We stood perfectly still for ten long
seconds, but we heard nothing more.

“Are you sure you heard something?” I
asked.

“Maybe it was just the wind.”

The wind? I thought. There was no wind.

The forest was a friggin’ vacuum.

Tense with adrenaline, I continued forward.
No one spoke for a little, and I began to wonder what was wrong
with Ben. There was something about the way he was speaking. It was
different than before. More intense yet…spacy. Like he was asking
questions for the sake of asking them, not really listening to my
answers.

Because he was scared?

Nina, at least, was still being Nina.

Still being Nina? I could have laughed at
that. I’d met her all of five or six hours ago, and this was the
first time we’d conversed. Suddenly I realized how little I knew
about the Israelis. They were strangers. And here I was walking in
a dark, sprawling forest with them, alone. What if they were
psychotic? What if they jumped me, bashed my head in with a rock,
and left me here to die?

Ben, I’d noticed back at the hill, hadn’t
picked up any firewood except a four-foot stick, which he was using
to bat vegetation out of the way or slap against tree trunks.

“How did you guys meet?” I asked them.

“We met in Thailand,” Ben said. “At a
full-moon party last month. I was with my friends. We met on the
beach one night.”

“But we lost each other,” Nina added.

“That is right. I did not see her for a
week. Then I was looking for a restaurant one morning and I heard
my name called. She is there.”

“He left his friends and stayed with me,”
Nina said.

“We got a hut. We surfed, we ate food, and
we watched movies.”

“So how long have you been in Japan?” I
asked.

“Just a couple days,” Ben said.

“I have a world ticket,” Nina explained.
“Japan was my next stop after Thailand. You have to keep going in
the same direction around the world, yes? Ben wanted to join
me.”

“How long have you been traveling?”

“Four months or so now,” she said.

“Isn’t that getting expensive?”

“I couch surf. Do you know what that
is?”

“You stay at people’s homes?”

“Yes, you sign up for an account on the
website, say when you will be in a town or city, and people usually
respond and invite you to stay. It is very easy to get a host when
you are a female by yourself. But when you are with someone, it is
much more difficult.”

“So far in Japan we have stayed in hostels,”
Ben said. “It is okay.”

“Isn’t it dangerous for a girl to couch
surf?” I asked.

“Ninety-nine percent of people are
wonderful,” Nina said.

“You had a bad experience?”

“Yes, one.”

Something in her voice made me glance over
my shoulder at her. I couldn’t read her expression in the dark. I
wanted to ask what happened, but didn’t feel it was my place.

“Four months,” I said instead. “Aren’t you
tired of traveling yet?”

“Sometimes. But I meditate. I can sit for
hours on my own. It is very relaxing. I would like to find some
special place to stay for my final month. No TV. No tourists. Just
meditate. I have not found it yet.”

“Have you guys noticed the trees?” Ben said,
his voice taking on a strange timbre. He skipped his flashlight
back and forth among them. “See how close they are?”

It was true. They had become smaller,
thinner, denser.

“I think it is time to go back,” Nina
said.

I checked my wristwatch and was surprised to
note we had only been gone from camp for fifteen minutes. If we
returned after half an hour without enough firewood to last through
the night, I’d never hear the end of it from John Scott, even
though he hadn’t volunteered to help gather any. I said, “Another
five minutes.”

We pressed on. I batted branches from my
face. There was a lot of deadfall here, which I gathered greedily.
I was just standing up, having collected yet another stick, when I
spotted the blood. It was splashed on the trunk of a tree
cater-corner to me, at chest level.

I froze. My skin tightened with a ticklish
fever.

Had someone stuck a pistol in their mouth
and blown their brains out against the tree?

But where was the body?

I saw my hand reach out and touch the blood,
even though a voice inside my head was shouting at me to get the
hell out of there. A flake broke off from the bark. I rubbed it
between my index finger and thumb, grinding it down to a powder. I
smelled it.

“Paint,” I said torpidly. “It’s paint.”

Who had splashed the tree with red paint?
And why?

Operating in some sort of bubble, aware of
little happening around me, I turned in a circle, the flashlight
beam crisscrossing the trees. Nothing. Just trees and more trees
and—
what the hell?

Twenty feet ahead, hanging from a branch by
red suicide ribbon, was a crucifix made with two small sticks and
string. Then I spotted another. Then another beyond that. They were
everywhere. At least a dozen.

Each of them was swinging slightly in the
wind—

There is no wind
.

I closed my eyes, waited a beat, and opened
them again.

The crucifixes were still swinging.

I tried to turn and flee, but my legs
weren’t working correctly, and I stumbled backward, pin-wheeling my
arms for balance.

Something smacked me from behind.

With
the exception
of insects, fish, and perhaps small birds, the sight of a rotting
carcass will almost always give you a jolt. We don’t see death
every day, we’re not programmed to take it in stride. Only a week
ago I was walking along a backstreet in Tokyo, trying to find a
ramen shop Tomo had recommended. You could find ramen shops on
pretty much any corner in the city, but the best ones aren’t
advertised. Lacking signs, and located in rundown, nondescript
buildings, the only way to identify such establishments is the long
line of businessmen waiting out front between 11 a.m. and 2
p.m.

The particular ramen shop I was looking for
was somewhere in the maze of streets behind Omatchi Station, just
off the Yamanote Line. Tomo had said it had a really good cheese
curry ramen. I’d been walking for twenty minutes, fearing I was
getting hopelessly lost, when I spotted out of the corner of my eye
a dead dog on the side of the road. It was a jet-black baby
Labrador retriever. The lips were curled back, revealing pink gums
and bone-white canines. It was less than two feet away from me.

The sight of it made me jump. I wasn’t
scared—just startled to see something dead. The startle quickly
left me, and I studied it more closely.

It appeared as though it had been run over
because the middle section was split open, spilling forth a tangle
of guts. The hind legs were almost completely flat. Flies buzzed
around it, eager to lay their eggs in the spoiled meat.

Death, I’d thought at the time. It stirs
within you so many different emotions.

Fascination.

Disgust.

Sadness.

Relief—at least, relief in the sense that
what you’re seeing isn’t you.

I felt none of this, however, only
mind-numbing fright, when I turned around and saw the body dangling
from a rope behind me.