by Jeremy Bates
“Excellent, Ethan!” Nina exclaimed.
I shoved my butt off the branch, hung by my hands for a few seconds, then dropped to the ground. My legs, overcome from the exertion I had put them through, and still a little weak with fear, gave out completely. I collapsed to my knees, then keeled over and lay on my side, inhaling the smell of rotten leaves, never so glad to feel solid earth beneath me.
“So if Fuji is that way,” Mel said, computing to herself, “then the parking lot is…” She turned on the spot and pointed. “That way.”
“Hold on,” I said, and sat up. “I saw something else.”
Mel and Nina frowned down at me. John Scott propped himself up on his elbows.
“Smoke,” I said. “Nearby. Maybe a couple miles away.”
“Smoke?” Nina said. “Like a forest fire?”
I shook my head. “Like a campfire.”
“Where?” Mel said quickly.
I indicated the opposite direction of Fuji.
“Who do you think—” She cut herself off.
“It could just be hikers,” I said.
“Hikers aren’t stupid enough to hike in this forest.”
“We did.”
“We were stupid.”
“Someone who…” John Scott started, then stopped. It was obvious speaking had become an effort for him. “Someone who came here…to commit suicide.”
“What does it matter who it is?” Nina said. “We are not going that way, yes?”
“I’m wondering if we should go check,” I said.
Mel looked at me like I was crazy. “We have our own problems right now, Ethan. We don’t have time to go try talking someone else out of suicide.”
“He might have a phone.”
Silence.
“We can keep it powered on until the police track it this time,” I added. “It will be a lot faster than us walking out and walking back in. Not to mention we don’t have to leave anyone behind. John Scott will remain here with Neil. We’ll bring the phone back and stick together.”
“What if whoever it is doesn’t have a phone?” Mel said.
“Everyone in Japan has a phone. Someone coming out here, whether it’s a hiker or a suicide, will have brought theirs in case they got lost or changed their mind about killing themselves. And if it’s the guy who killed Ben and Tomo, well—he has our phones, right?”
Mel said, “You’re just going to ask him, ‘Hey, can we get our phones back to call the cops on you for killing our friends?’”
“We overpower him and take them. There will be three of us. We have the spears. And he won’t be expecting us.”
“What if he has a gun?” Nina said.
“Guns are illegal in Japan and pretty much impossible to get. Besides, if he did have one, he could have simply stormed our camp and shot us all. Instead he’s been hiding out until night and sneaking up on us one by one. That tells me he likely doesn’t have any weapon at all.”
“Do it,” John Scott grunted.
Mel and Nina exchanged glances, equal parts desperation and fortitude.
“Do it,” John Scott repeated.
“Okay,” Mel said grudgingly.
“Okay,” Nina said a moment later.
Nina and Mel gave John Scott a peck on the cheek, and Mel promised him we’d be back soon. I didn’t want to shake his hand, knowing it would be awkward, but I didn’t think I should leave without saying anything, so I told him to hang tough, which sounded fatuous and condescending, though that was not my intent.
Then we started off, unaware that this would be a one-way trip from which none of us would be returning.
CHAPTER 32
Despite Ben and Tomo decaying beneath their sleeping bags, despite Neil holding onto life by a thread and John Scott facing the possibility of amputation and internal hemorrhaging, despite the fact we were still trapped in the most terrifying place I have ever been, despite all of the darkness that had stolen into our lives—invited, if you believe we’d brought it upon ourselves—a tiny kernel of hope burned inside me. We were moving. Finally, we were moving. We had been at the campsite for forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours in any one spot can make you go stir crazy. Add a lack of food and water and everything that had happened and it can make you go asylum crazy. I was exhausted, ill-tempered, dehydrated, jumpy, and scared witless. One more night doing nothing except thinking about death and dying and a lurking killer likely would have pushed me over the edge. So moving was good. It gave me hope. We had a plan. We were going to get through this. We were almost at the end.
The little light that penetrated the canopy was an otherworldly bluish-gray. It permeated the understory unevenly, creating a disconcerting mismatch of floating shadows and emerald foliage. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but the trees seemed even more dense and overcrowded here than they had been anywhere earlier, many growing so close together we would often have to turn sideways to slip between them. There were also more herbaceous plants, ferns, and shrubs, which we could do nothing about but raise our arms and plow straight through.
The farther we went the more anarchic the scenery became. We passed beneath a vine as thick as my leg that at one point in the past had looped itself around a tree several times, only now the tree had died and decayed, leaving the vine suspended in the air like a giant spring. One medium-sized pine, defying the rules of nature, had grown in the form of a horseshoe, almost as if it had decided it did not like the world it found itself in and tried to return to the safe haven belowground. So much deadfall was strewn around the base and the doubled over crown you couldn’t tell where the tree began or ended.
Every minute or two we would stop, scavenge a couple dead branches, and place an X-shaped marker on the ground so we would be able to find our way back again.
The feeling of isolation, of traversing some forbidden corner of the globe, was so extreme I was caught off guard when we came across yet another ribbon. It was blue and intersected our path at a ninety-degree angle. We expressed mild surprise at seeing it, but otherwise forged on. We had a mission to complete. There was no longer time for melancholic reflections.
My thoughts turned to the encounter that awaited us. It was going to be more complicated than I had initially assumed, because it would be impossible to know from a distance whether the person at the campfire was a harmless hiker, a suicide, or the killer himself. This meant we couldn’t simply sneak up and whack him on the head while he was sleeping. We’d have to first confront him, which was not ideal. Killer or not, he might panic and flee. And if he didn’t, and he wasn’t wearing a T-shirt that read “The Aokigahara Murderer,” how were we supposed to determine his guilt or innocence? If he was uncooperative and refused to lend us his phone, or said he didn’t have one, did we forcibly search him and his belongings—even if he was an innocent person?
Yes, I thought. That’s exactly what we’ll do. This was an emergency, martial law declared, fuck civil rights.
By five o’clock the sun had begun to set behind the veil of clouds, and what little light the forest allowed quickly faded to darkness. I guessed we had traveled two miles already—two miles in one hour. It wouldn’t win any races, but it was acceptable given the obstacle-laden terrain. Still, if my calculations were even somewhat accurate, this left us with possibly one more mile to go. This worried me, because soon we would be walking blind. What if we had strayed off course? What if the campfire had been put out? What then? We would no longer have a beacon to home in on. We would have to turn back and return to John Scott and Neil with nothing to show for our efforts except a wasted few hours.
I banished these thoughts. We had made our decision, we had to stand by it, and we would succeed.
We had to succeed.
I picked up a large stick, then a second smaller one. I knelt and placed another X on the ground. Then I turned around and waited for Nina and Mel to catch up. They trudged up to me, panting.
“We can’t be too far away now,” I said.
&n
bsp; “How much longer do you think?” Mel asked.
“Less than a mile. It will likely be dark before we reach the campfire. But that will work to our advantage. We’ll be more difficult to detect while the fire will be easier to see.”
“I am so thirsty,” Nina said.
“There might water there,” I said. “But listen, we’re going to have to keep quiet from here on in. Try to tread lightly. Sound carries.”
“So we just sneak up on him?” Mel asked.
“When we get close enough to see his setup, we’ll make the call. If he’s sitting at his fire, we might have to wait until he returns to his tent so we can corner him there.”
“How will we know if he’s the killer?”
“Hopefully we’ll be able to tell.”
“That’s it? That’s the plan?” Mel said doubtfully.
“We’ll question him. Read it on his face.”
“He might be a good actor.”
“If he’s just some regular guy, he would have no reason not to lend us a phone.”
“And if he refuses?”
“Then it’s probably the killer, and I’ll search him. You two just make sure he doesn’t make a break for it. Got it?”
They nodded tentatively, and we continued on. The shadows lengthened and thickened, layer upon layer, playing tricks with my eyes again. Then, in the span of minutes, the shadows bled together into an undivided stretch of night. I could barely see a few feet in front of me. I didn’t want to turn on the flashlight for fear of giving away our approach, but we didn’t have a choice.
I took it from my pocket and flicked it on.
Even with the light the dense vegetation kept us moving at a snail’s pace, but I refused the impulse to press recklessly ahead. Our footsteps already seemed extra loud in the darkness, and I once more cautioned Mel and Nina to try to make less noise.
Suddenly Nina said, “What’s that? Over there.”
I swung the beam back to where it had been a moment before.
“See it?”
“See what?” I said quietly.
She pointed. After a moment I thought I could make out flowers marking what appeared to be another gravesite. It was perhaps twenty feet away.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “We need to keep going.”
“Wait—I think there’s a bottle,” Mel said. “What if it contains water?”
The temptation was too great to pass up and we detoured—but not before placing another marker. We weren’t taking any chances with wandering off target.
It turned out Mel was right: there was a bottle. Unfortunately it was filled not with water but shōchū. Alongside the dried and long-dead flowers was a silver-framed photograph of a young couple in their mid-thirties. They were both wearing eyeglasses, both smiling, both seemingly in love and happy about their futures together.
There were no scattered personal belongings, and I assumed what had once littered the ground had been cleaned up by the surviving spouse in the picture. He or she must have asked whoever discovered the body to guide them back so they could leave the memorial, just as family members and friends leave roadside crosses, handwritten signs, or personal mementos to commemorate the site where a loved one perished in a car accident.
Then again, I thought somberly, maybe it was a double suicide.
I took the shōchū and stuck it in my pocket, explaining that we could use it to sterilize John Scott’s wounds later.
We made our way back to the path—but couldn’t find the marker.
I was sure I was standing on the spot where I had placed it.
“Where’s the cross?” I said.
Mel and Nina studied the ground in confusion.
“I don’t see it,” Mel said.
“It couldn’t just disappear,” I said.
“Are you sure you placed one here?”
“One hundred percent.”
From somewhere in the darkness a branch cracked.
“Did you hear that?” Mel whispered.
I nodded, realized she couldn’t see me, and said, “Yeah.” I swung the flashlight in the direction of the noise. There was nothing there.
“What was it?” Nina said.
“Just an animal,” I told them. “Come on.”
We continued onward, but I was suddenly feeling extremely vulnerable. What if we were not the hunters, as we imagined we were, but still the hunted? What if the killer had been watching us the entire time we climbed the tree? What if he’d slaughtered Neil and John Scott after we’d left and now had come for us?
Stop it, I told myself. Stop jumping to conclusions. It’s just some nocturnal rodent, a wood mouse or—
Another crack.
I froze. So did Mel and Nina.
Then Nina said in a skeletal hiss: “That was a footstep.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I told her.
“Yes, it was!”
My heart was pounding, the hand holding the flashlight sweating.
Get a grip, Ethan. Get a grip. There are three of us. We have spears. We can take the fucker down. Nothing’s changed. We’re still in control.
I directed the flashlight’s white beam toward where the noise had originated.
Nothing but ghostly trees.
“Told you,” I said.
“Shhh,” Mel said.
A loud crack-snap on the other side of us.
I spun around, jerking the beam with me. The light danced in and out of the trees, almost giving the branches and leaves the illusion of movement.
Nina screamed.
“What?” I said. “What is it?”
Nina continued to scream.
I had no idea what was going on, but I was filled with crazed terror. Something was happening. Something bad.
What had Nina seen?
“Nina!” I said. “Quiet!”
She clamped her mouth closed.
“What is it?” Mel asked. “What did you see?”
Nina merely stared at the trees, unresponsive. Scared to death came to mind.
Was she about to keel over in cardiac arrest?
Was she injured?
I turned the light on her, half expecting to see a bloody arrow protruding from her chest. She appeared physically okay.
“There!” Mel hissed, pointing into the darkness.
I aimed the flashlight. “Where?”
“I saw something move—there!”
I followed her finger, sweeping the flashlight back and forth with quick, jumpy movements. “What was it, Mel? What did you see?”
“I don’t know!”
Movement behind us. We all whirled around.
Mel inhaled sharply. Nina croaked. I couldn’t breathe.
I felt as if I had stepped into a waking nightmare, a world where the impossible was possible. Whatever inner barrier my adult mind had erected to separate reality from fantasy vanished in a heartbeat, and through it flooded a knowledge so dark and cold and inconceivable it left me numb and full of a funereal bleakness.
Illuminated in the white light was a pale, androgynous face peeking out from behind a tree trunk, the onyx-black eyes staring at us with fiendish indifference. Long black hair fell past the shoulders and blended with the night. The thin mouth curled into a smile.
Mel screamed. Nina screamed. I screamed.
This is what it’s like to go crazy, I was thinking, only it wasn’t me thinking this, couldn’t be, because the voice was far too calm to belong to me. This is how it happens, all at once. Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt. It will be over soon enough.
I could almost feel my sanity tearing away from my body, fleeing from this horror even when I couldn’t move.
—you’re right, it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t hurt at all—
I took a step forward. I had to. I was sinking into oblivion and I had to move or I was lost. We were no longer screaming, I realized. My ears were ringing, and now I was thinking, Why are we just standing here? We have to run, get away, before it gets one of us!
I took another step, impossibly slow, my leg as heavy as concrete—
Nina yelped.
I spun toward her just in time to see her vanish into the thick vegetation. She didn’t run. She was dragged or carried away. It happened so fast all I glimpsed was a flash of gray and then—nothing. She was gone.
“Nina!” I shouted.
The only reply was the rustle of the foliage as she was taken deeper into the forest.
“What was that?” Mel blurted from beside me, her voice cracking on that. “What happened to Nina? What was that? Is she dead?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“It was a ghost!”
Was it? I wondered. Could it have been—?
No. Whatever it was had shape and substance.
I heard it.
So it was real. It was a person. It had to be.
“Ethan…” Mel moaned. She had turned away from me. I turned too—it seemed incredibly difficult to do even that—and played the flashlight beam amongst the wraithlike trees. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard more movement. The whoosh of leaves, the rustle of saplings. The noises seemed to be coming from all around us.
Then I spotted a gray-clad form. It slipped from one tree trunk to the next incredibly fast. As I tried to follow its movement, I caught a glimpse of another, and another, each visible for only a moment before melting back into the blackness.
There were several of them out there.
And they had us surrounded.
“What do you want?” I said in a loud, challenging voice as I turned in a tight circle, searching the trees. Mel was glued to my back, moving with me.
“My foressssttttt,” a gravelly voice floated from the dark.
I stiffened. Was that the same voice I heard on my phone two nights ago? I was sure it was. But how could these people have gotten my number? Could they have somehow retrieved Mel’s phone from the crevice? My number would have been at the top of the call log list. So had they been following us even then? Had they been watching Nina and me smoke the joint?
Had they watched me answer the phone?
“You in my forrrreessssstttttt.”
Closer? Farther?
