by Jeremy Bates
“We don’t have any. We finished it this morning.”
His response was to squeeze his eyes shut tighter.
I stared at him helplessly. How long could you last without water? Three days? That sounded about right. Three days under normal circumstances, though after two you would be pretty wretched. So how about when you had a raging fever and were sweating and pissing and shitting every last drop of liquid out of you? Half that time? Less?
If only it would rain, I thought wistfully, we could string up the tents between the trees to act as large nylon buckets. We would have enough water to bath in. But the tantalizingly low and pregnant storm clouds remained impossibly distant. Who knew how long they would retain their precious load for, or if they would blow over completely.
I tried to recall movies I’d seen in which the main characters were stranded somewhere without water. A couple vague images materialized in my mind’s eye. One was of a guy wrapping his shins in old rags, then stomping through tall grass to catch dew. Another guy—or maybe it was the same one—made a belowground sill. The mechanics of this took me a few seconds to puzzle out, but I thought I got it. You dig a bowl-shaped hole about three feet across and two feet deep. You make a sump and place a container in it. You cover the hole with plastic and set a rock in the center so it hangs about a foot or so directly over the container to form an inverted cone. The moisture from the ground reacts with heat from the sun to produce condensation on the plastic, which runs down the sill and drips into the container.
It was a good concept in theory, but would it work? Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to test it out until morning. And even then we would need a clear day and an open glade where the sunlight could penetrate the overstory to the forest floor.
Urine? I wondered desperately. Could he drink urine?
Although it was mostly water, it was also laced with all the toxic electrolytes your body expelled. These would contribute to dehydration, which meant you couldn’t sustain yourself on it for long. But would it serve as a quick fix?
I simply didn’t know.
“Help me,” Neil rasped.
“What do you need?” I asked quickly.
“Bathroom.”
I slipped my arms beneath his armpits and hiked him to his feet. I was right; his shirt was saturated with salty sweat stains. He wobbled unsteadily, teetering back and forth. I heard John Scott calling to me, asking if I needed help. But the offer came too late as Neil and I were already lumbering into the trees. For one awful moment Neil lurched over, dry-retching, while I waited expectantly for him to puke all over my trainers. Nothing came out thankfully, and we continued onward. When we reached a thick tree he let go of me and fumbled with the button on his pants. I moved away several paces, facing camp. I could see the glow of the fire, but that was all.
Neil shat. The sound was like a faucet fully throttled. I pulled my T-shirt up over my nose.
“Neil?” I said, after a break in activity on his part. “You okay?”
“Wait.”
Ten seconds later there was a gaseous noise, then another, then nothing.
“Neil?”
“What?”
“You ready?”
“No.”
I waited another two minutes. The thin cotton stretched over my nose was hardly a gas mask, and I could taste the foul stench in the back of my throat. This almost made me lose my breakfast, but I bit back the gag reflex.
Then I heard something, or I thought I did, a rustle of vegetation, somewhere ahead of me. I strained my ears—and heard a crack.
A twig snapping?
I stared into the darkness, but there were no other noises.
I glanced over my shoulder. Neil was crouching, his pants around his ankles, his head resting on his forearms, which were folded across his fish-belly white knees. His penis dangled below him like a pale slug.
Was he sleeping?
“Neil?”
“Gimme a sec.”
Thirty seconds or so later I heard him rising, pulling his pants up. I turned around just in time to see him keel over and vomit stringy, watery black gunk. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then shuffled toward me. I led him back to where he’d been resting. He collapsed on the spot, the last of his strength used up.
I draped his sleeping bag over his body, up to his chin, and hoped to hell the worst of his sickness had passed.
I glimpsed Mel through the door flap of our tent. She was lying on her side, reading a book with one of the flashlights. I was about to tell her to turn it off, tell her we needed to save the batteries, but I was too exhausted for another confrontation.
“How’s Neil?” John Scott asked me. He was sitting cross-legged, smoking a Marlboro. I had an almost irresistible desire to bum one from him right then.
“Bad,” I said, eyeing the cigarette.
“He want anything?”
“Water.”
“We shouldn’t have drank it all.”
I waited for him to blame me for whatever reason. Instead he tossed a chunk of dirt at the fire.
Tomo’s eyes were closed. I didn’t know if he was sleeping or thinking. I remained standing. If I sat, I would likely have to keep speaking to John Scott.
I scanned the trees and saw Nina some distance away, sitting at the base of a fir, at the periphery of the glow cast by the fire. She raised a hand in a half wave. I took this as an invitation to join her even if it wasn’t and went over.
“He is very sick,” she stated. She was staring past me, toward Neil. “Will he be okay during the night?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“What can we do?”
“Nothing.”
She made a grim face.
I sat beside her. “You don’t have another joint, do you?”
She shook her head.
Probably for the best, I thought. I would have liked a few tokes to relax and to dose my cigarette craving, but I didn’t know how introspective or philosophical I wanted to get right then.
“How are you doing?” I asked her.
She shrugged.
“Ben—he was a good guy.” I winced inwardly at how lame that sounded.
“It is okay,” Nina said.
“What is?”
“You do not have to say anything.”
I nodded, relieved I didn’t have to wax bullshit. If I’d known Ben better, I would have told Nina a story about him, a heartfelt memory we could both smile at. But I didn’t even know his last name, let alone something nostalgic, and I was content to leave it at “He was a good guy.”
“He wanted to be an actor,” Nina said. “Can you believe that? An actor?”
I didn’t say anything.
“He was smart,” she went on. “There were so many things he could be, yes? A doctor. A lawyer. An entrepreneur. But he wanted to be an actor—a famous actor.” She wiped a tear that had crept into her eye. “And you know what? He might have made it. That is the thing. Everyone told him it was an impossible dream. But how is it impossible if other people achieve that same dream? Because they do. You see them on the TV, in the movies. So some people reach those dreams. Ben, he might have been one of those people. He was so likeable. He had so much passion. He could do many impersonations. Woody Allen. He could do him. Many others.”
“Had he acted in anything?” I asked.
“No, nothing.”
“A commercial? A school production?”
“Not that he told me. He was scared of performing in front of people.”
I raised my eyebrows. “But he wanted to be an actor!”
“What a stupid guy, yes?”
After an uncertain pause, I chuckled self-consciously. It felt good. For a brief moment I saw Ben full of his boyish optimism. This was how I would like to remember him. Not blue and bloated and hanging from a rope.
I heard John Scott and Tomo talking and glanced over at them. Tomo was passing John Scott one of his manga comics. Nina picked up a small stick beside her and drove
it into the ground. This wasn’t anything dramatic. Just a quick, hard jab, which she repeated three times.
“He did not kill himself,” she said suddenly.
“Nina, we’ve talked about—”
“You saw the photograph.”
I thought about it again: the ghostly shape superimposed over the fire, the hard edges that outlined it. The vague formation of a face.
“It was a dirty lens,” I said, “a distortion.”
“That affected only one picture?”
“You’re believing what you want to believe.”
“Projecting,” she said tightly.
“Yes.”
“Ethan, open your mind! Just because you cannot see something does not mean it does not exist. Millions of people believe in ghosts. Are you to say they are all misled?”
“Yes.”
“You are a fool then.”
“Millions of people believe in a god. That doesn’t mean one exists.”
“Ah,” she said.
“Ah what?”
“Are you Christian?”
“I was baptized. But, no, I’m not religious.”
“That is what I thought, and that is your problem.”
“What is?”
“You do not believe in anything. You have no faith in anything. You are a forever skeptic. I am arguing against a brick wall.”
“With a wall.”
She made a face. “Do you wish to continue in Hebrew?”
“Against a wall is fine.”
“So what do you think happens when we die, Ethan?”
“Nothing.”
“That is very depressing, yes?”
“I guess. But saying I believe in something isn’t going to change how I feel.”
“Well, I believe, Ethan. I believe in a god and an afterlife. Because we are here. We exist and have purpose. Something is responsible for that. And just because you do not know what happens next does not mean there is nothing.”
I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t going to start preaching, and my lack of response seemed to anger her. She shook her head and exhaled loudly.
“Ben would not kill himself,” she said. “He was happy. He wanted to be an actor. You do not have such a dream one day and then kill yourself the next.”
“I agree with you there.”
“Well?”
“He was on drugs.”
“That is a stupid excuse.”
“No, it’s not. They mess with your mind. They make you do things.”
“Not Ben,” she insisted stubbornly.
“Nina, you said Ben was obsessed with suicide. Maybe you didn’t know the entire picture. Maybe John Scott was right and Ben was a bit suicidal himself. Some people…you can never tell. If he was, and he took drugs…”
Nina began fiddling with the stick and wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “There is something I have to tell you,” she said. “I have not been honest with you.”
I frowned. “What about?”
“Ben was not obsessed with suicide. It was not his idea to come to Suicide Forest.”
“But you said his friend—”
“His friend did not commit suicide. She attempted to. She took a sharp knife from the kitchen, ran a hot bath, climbed in the tub, and slit both her wrists.”
“What—who found her?”
“The Chinese woman whose house she had been staying in. She called the police. Doctors saved her life.”
I blinked as understanding registered. I looked at Nina’s wrists. They were hidden by the sleeves of her yellow rain jacket.
Smiling sadly, she rolled up the cuffs, then the pink sweatbands she wore around each wrist, revealing a series of white, ragged scars. The cuts appeared to have been made recently.
“Jesus, Nina, why—” I stopped myself. “He raped you.”
“I did not karate chop him in the throat. I did not escape him. He raped me in that alleyway, and then he got in his taxi and drove away.”
“I’m—I’m so sorry. God, Nina—I’m sorry.”
She nodded silently.
“So…” I said, believing I had to say something, “it was your idea to come to Suicide Forest?”
She nodded again.
“And it was you who took that book about suicide from the gravesite?”
“We kept our food in my backpack. I did not want the book near our food. So I put it in Ben’s.”
“Does—did Ben know? I mean, your wrists…”
“No, I never told him about the rape or the suicide attempt.”
“He never saw those scars?”
“I never showed him. You know, Ethan, Ben and I—we were more friends than partners. We never had sex. We slept in the same bed, we kissed sometimes, but we never had sex. Do you believe that? He tried one night in Thailand, but I made it clear I did not want to. He did not try anymore. As I told you before, I think he loved me. Or he was in love with the idea of loving me. He was very romantic like that. He would have done anything I asked.” She set the stick aside. “Do you think I am crazy, Ethan? Do you think less of me now?”
“No, not at all,” I said honestly.
“Good. Because I care what you think of me.”
She leaned close and kissed me on the mouth. Her lips were soft, and they lingered for a long moment. I was so surprised I didn’t move—or pull away.
Then she got up and went to her tent.
CHAPTER 24
I tried not to read too much into the kiss. Nina was under duress, emotionally distraught. She was appreciative she could talk to me. That was all. Believing there to be something more between us would be baseless—and dangerous. So instead I focused on her confession. I was amazed she had tried to kill herself, and I told myself I shouldn’t be. Just because she was young, intelligent, and beautiful didn’t exclude her from being suicidal. Most people who knew me would never suspect I had once contemplated suicide. It was a sickness, a disease that could affect anyone, anytime.
Nevertheless, her admission that Ben hadn’t been obsessed with suicide didn’t change my mind regarding what caused his death, didn’t make me jump on the ghost bandwagon with her. Whether Nina wanted to believe it or not, Ben had taken his own life, and the drugs were responsible. It was the only terrestrial and thus logical explanation.
I stood and returned to the campfire where John Scott and Tomo were silently reading their comic books. Nina had zipped the door flap of her tent tight while Mel, still inside our tent, had turned off the flashlight and was either lying awake in the dark or sleeping. Maybe I was feeling guilty about the kiss, but I no longer gave a damn about Mel and John Scott’s sketchy relationship, no longer cared what he was doing here. All I wanted was to slip under the crappy emergency blanket next to her, pull her against me, and tell her I was sorry—sorry for everything. For bringing her to this forest, for not being straightforward with the Shelly situation, for siding with the others and voting not to leave. This last point bothered me the most. She was my girlfriend, my future fiancée, my future wife. She was scared and, old-fashioned or not, it was my job to take care of her. I could see why she was pissed off. In her eyes I had betrayed her.
Still, what could I have done differently? Packed our bags and tried to forge our way out of Aokigahara an hour or two before dark? I hadn’t thought it was a good idea then, and I still didn’t now. Survival 101: if you get lost, remain at ground zero until rescuers find you. Statistically, the heroes who wander off to search for help are more likely to get caught out by the climate or geography and die from exposure.
There was a guy I knew in college who punched his ticket just that way. His name was Craig “Stag” VanOrd. He was six foot two, a rugby player with spikey blond hair and pale gray eyes, and probably the most popular student in our year. He was the guy you talked to if you wanted to know where the party was that night. The guy you talked to if you wanted to score pot, mushrooms, ecstasy, blow, whatever popped your button. He wasn’t a dealer. He didn’t make money selling th
e stuff. He didn’t need money; his parents were loaded. He simply knew who had what and got it for you. He wasn’t stupid though. He didn’t do this for anyone. You had to be a friend, or at least a close friend of one of his friends.
I wasn’t certain why he was nicknamed Stag, but I imagined it had to do with the fact he had his way with women. Rumor had it, to kick off Frosh Week, he was one of the guys responsible for hanging twenty-foot banners on the freeway overpasses near the college which read: “THANK YOU FATHERS FOR YOUR DAUGHTERS!” Stag must have burned through two dozen of those daughters between the time school began in September and when he died in February. This number always amazed me because the girls he wooed back to his room would be well aware of his reputation. Even more, they likely knew most of the other girls he slept with. Nevertheless, he not only pulled it off, but did so with panache, somehow remaining on good terms with all his one-night stands, so much so they never said a bad word about him behind his back.
Needless to say I was astounded when Shelly—my ex, Shelly—told me she had slept with him. My first question was whether she had been tested for STDs. She thought I was joking, which I was not, and told me breezily that she got tested every year. My second question—and this felt odd to admit because Stag had been in a grave for three years at that point—was whether he was any good in bed or not. Shelly smirked and did some mysterious shrug of her shoulders. I left it at that, deciding I didn’t want to know.
To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Stag took his latest girl, Jenny Walton, to his parents’ cabin in the Pocono Mountains, a three-hour drive east in Pennsylvania. They squeezed the trip into a long weekend and were driving back late Monday night when Stag lost control of his Jeep and shot off the road down a fifty-foot rocky embankment (rumor was that Jenny had been giving him head at the time). Although Jenny was beat up badly in the accident, Stag came away from it without a scratch. You would think the guy had been blessed at birth by the angel Gabriel himself to lead a charmed existence…if you didn’t know what happened next.
It was twenty below zero in the mountains. The Jeep’s engine was demolished in the crash, which meant Stag and Jenny couldn’t run the heater to stay warm. Moreover, it was late, the road they’d skidded off was little used to begin with, and the embankment was too steep to climb, so Stag decided to head down the mountain on foot to find help.
