by Jeremy Bates
“The police know where we are,” I told Mel. “They’re coming right now.”
“How long will they be?”
“Not long—”
“Ethan!” she yelped, pointing at the front door.
I spun around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“What, Mel? What is it?”
“The doorknob! It was moving back and forth. Someone’s trying to get in!”
CHAPTER 39
I hefted the ax and went to the door and double-checked the lock. It was secure. I peeked out the window and saw a low, dark shape dash between the trees before moving beyond my field of view.
I swore, pressing my back to the wall.
“You still think me lie?” Hiroshi said.
“Tell them to go away.”
“Why I do that?”
“Because if you let them attack us, you’re going to be in big trouble.”
“I already big trouble.”
“No, you’re not—”
“You tell your friend about me. Then Sumiko, she tells police about me.”
“We can work this out.”
“Why you think I explain you Akira? Because pain? Because you hit me?” He shook his head. “No, I already in big trouble.”
I stalked over to him and shoved the head of the ax against his chest. “Tell them to leave us alone, otherwise I’ll kill you right now.”
“You learn nothing in Jukai?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Suicide! Death! You learn nothing? You don’t afraid death. Death no problem, death exit. Life, that you scared. Life is monster. Life, there so much pain. You want kill me? Do it! I die with honor.”
A loud bang shook the front door.
Mel yelled, stumbling backward into the wall. She slid down it like Jell-O, wrapped her arms around her knees.
“It’s okay, Mel,” I said, trying to parlay an absurd casualness. “They can’t get in—”
Bang!
“Call them off!” I shouted at Hiroshi.
BANG!
“Call them—”
A heavy tree branch crashed through the window behind me, sending glass everywhere. I spun, swinging the ax blindly.
The blade whistled through the air and lodged with a heavy thunk into the empty window frame.
More glass shattered, from another part of the cabin. The bedroom! I’d forgotten about the window in the bedroom.
As I tried to jig the ax free I sensed something hurtling toward me. It struck me in the head. I staggered but remained on my feet. My hand instinctively went to the injury and came away wet with blood.
I stumbled to the center of the room.
“Stay down, Mel!” I told her.
There was more banging at the door. But the lock was holding.
I moved past Hiroshi. The bedroom door was on my right. I shoved it open. A kid was crouched on the windowsill, half in the room.
He glowered at me from behind long hair that had fallen in front of his face.
I clenched the haft of the ax with both hands and rushed him.
He sprang back outside into the night. I stuck my head through the broken window pane, inhaling the brisk air. It was all but pitch black, and I couldn’t see where he’d gone.
I turned around just as another kid with a long horse face leapt at me from the bed, swinging a dagger. I parried to the left and smashed the flat of the ax head against the back of his skull. He landed in a heap at my feet.
A third kid was already coming around the bed toward me, dagger raised. He and the one on the floor must have been concealed behind the door when I entered the room a few seconds ago.
I pointed the ax at him, keeping him at bay.
He drew back his lips in a grimace, revealing several missing teeth, and hurled the dagger. I twisted sideways, to create the narrowest possible target. The blade sank into my triceps. I yelled, dropping the ax. The kid barreled into me, driving me into the wall, trapping my arms to my sides.
I was amazed by his strength. He was a tightly coiled ball of muscle, and I couldn’t shove him aside no matter how much I struggled. He was snorting and grunting and reeked of sour body odor.
From the other room Mel screamed.
I bit the kid’s ear, tugging at it as if it were a tough piece of beef, tasting blood. He shrieked and loosened his hold. I broke free and seized him around his throat with both hands, at the same time driving him toward the window. I shoved his head through the open space, so his back was on the sill, and leaned forward with all my weight. His hands scraped at me. I gave him a final thrust. He dropped the five feet to the ground below and landed hard. He hollered something savage and guttural at me, then crab-crawled away.
Mel screamed again.
With fading strength I plucked the dagger from my arm, seized Horseface by the collar of his yukata, and dragged him into the main room.
I registered the scene in a split second: Mel against the wall where I’d left her, her eyes locked on the largest kid yet, who just now hopped from the front windowsill to the floor. One hand was pressed against his shoulder. He must have been the one I’d struck with the dagger earlier. In his other hand he held a long stick. I noticed he had a black sash tied around his robes, while Horseface and Toothless had gray ones.
Was this arbitrary? I wondered. Or was he some sort of black-belt karate expert? That seemed a ridiculous conclusion, but karate was a Japanese tradition. And what else did you did with your time growing up in a forest? Martial arts seemed like a reasonable pursuit.
“Mel,” I grunted, “get over here.”
“Ethan!” she cried, seeing me for the first time. She dashed past Hiroshi, who was writhing in his chair, trying to free himself, and ducked behind me.
I hauled semi-unconscious Horseface to his feet and held him against my chest. I pressed the blade of the dagger to his throat.
“Get out of here!” I told Blackbelt. “Or I’ll kill him.”
He stared at me but didn’t move.
“Leave!”
Still, he didn’t move.
Horseface groaned, then wriggled in my hold. He was coming around.
Blackbelt took a step forward.
“Stop! Now!”
Another step.
I plunged the dagger into Horseface’s thigh. He howled and thrashed. I shoved the blade back against his throat.
“I’ll kill him! I’ll slit his throat!”
Blackbelt stopped, then backed up slowly.
“Keep going,” I said, “keep going—”
Mel shouted a warning.
I reeled around and saw a much older man with a topknot moving quickly toward us. He tossed Mel against the wall as if she weighed nothing and in the same movement bashed me in the head with the pommel of the sword he was holding.
The world bucked, then I was falling, spinning into darkness.
CHAPTER 40
I opened my eyes. A burst of jagged pain ripped through my head. I noticed two people. They seemed to be swimming, shape-shifting, blending into one another. Gradually, however, they focused. One was Akira. He was holding a samurai sword close to his chest, the tip pointed toward the ceiling. Directly in front of him Hiroshi sat on the floor, cross-legged, staring at a middle distance. He unbuttoned his shirt, tugging the tails from his pants, revealing his nearly hairless chest and stomach. He picked up a dagger from a plate before him, holding it by a portion of cloth wrapped around the blade.
He plunged it into his abdomen.
Even as I fought to stay conscious, I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Seppuku, or hara-kiri, was originally practiced by the samurai class in feudal Japan, an honorable way to die by disembowelment if they’d shamed themselves or failed their masters or wanted to avoid falling into enemy hands.
So was this Hiroshi’s punishment for letting himself get captured by me, his way to avoid prosecution by the police?
I recalled what he’d said earlier, gibberish about dying with
honor.
He drew the cut across his belly, left to right, then down in a diagonal, forming a bleeding 7. He started to slice left to right again, in what would create a Z, but he faltered. His hands were shaking badly, his face was screwed up in agony, and he didn’t seem able to complete the cut.
Blood gushed from the wound as he keeled forward—
Akira brought down his sword across the back of Hiroshi’s neck, ending his suffering by decapitation.
No, I realized—near decapitation, for he’d left a slight band of flesh between the head and body, so Hiroshi’s head hung against his chest, as if embraced in his hands.
Akira walked around the lifeless body and crouched next to me. His face and neck were leathery, almost scaly, and wind-creased. His mouth was a severe, unimpressed line, pulled down at the corners. His eyes were thin and black and widely set. They stared at me with imperial indifference, as if I were a lowly peasant, scum of the earth, meaningless to him.
He drew the blade of his sword along my shirt, cleaning the blood from it.
Then he stood and went to the fireplace, pierced a burning log with the blade, and set it on the table, where the flames immediately began to feed off the cotton tablecloth.
Without another look in my direction, he left through the front door.
I faded back into the depths of darkness.
The Harvest Fair at the Wisconsin State Fairground was an annual event held during the last weekend of September. Gary and I had gone every year as kids, stuffing our faces with cotton candy and caramel apples and running from one activity to the next. My favorite had always been the fishing pond, where you had a rod with a magnetic hook to pick up prizes floating in the plastic tub.
Now, however, it was nighttime and the fairground was empty as Gary and I made our way down Main Street.
“I always loved this place,” Gary said as we passed a scattering of abandoned kiddie tractors and bales of hay.
“Me too,” I said. “We got our pumpkins here for Halloween.”
“Right over there, bud,” he said, pointing to a sprawling pumpkin patch. He waded into it, picked out a pumpkin, and returned to me. “Not bad, hey?”
The pumpkin was a deep orange, evenly ribbed, and perfectly round. Gary always had a knack for finding the best specimens to carve into jack-o-lanterns. I tended to go for the biggest ones I could find, which were often yellowish, the skin bumpy and indented.
“It’s perfect, Gare,” I said.
He nodded, though he seemed melancholy. “I was looking forward to taking Lisa here when she got older. You think Cher will take her?”
“I don’t know. They’re in Chicago now.”
“With that new guy, right?”
I nodded.
He sighed. “I should never have done it.”
I looked at him. “Done what, Gare?”
“Stopped to help the punk who shot me. Or I should have just given him my wallet. If I had, I’d still be around. I’d be able to take Lisa to the fair. One decision, bud, that’s all it takes, one decision, and everything can change.”
“I wish you’d just given him your wallet too.”
“But you never know. That’s the catch. You never know what that decision is going to lead to. Hell, how could you have known what you were getting yourself into?”
“You mean Suicide Forest?”
“There’s something I need you to do, bud.”
“Sure, Gare. What is it? I’ll do anything for you.”
“I need you to wake up.”
“Wake up?”
“If you don’t wake up, you’re going to die. Can’t you feel the fire?”
Although the night surrounding us was quiet and black, it was filled with a pulsating heat I hadn’t noticed moments before.
“Yeah, I can feel it,” I said.
“You have to get out.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to. You have to help Mel.”
Mel! “Is she in the fire too?” I asked urgently.
We arrived at the intersection with Grandstand Avenue.
Gary patted me on the shoulder and said, “I gotta go, bud.” He started toward the field that stretched away before us.
“Gare! Wait!”
“Remember what you have to do.”
“I’ll come with you!”
“Save Mel…”
“I can’t! I don’t know how!”
But then he was gone.
Suddenly the fairground burst into flames all around me, the heat became a furnace, sucking all the oxygen out of the air—
I opened my eyes again. It was hot, so hot, and smoky, the smoke filling my nose with its acrid stench. I could barely see, but I could hear the fire, licking and whooshing. I coughed and sucked back dry, sauna-like air.
I was lying on my back. I tried to roll onto my side and succeeded on the second attempt. Everything came back then.
Hiroshi committing hara-kiri.
Akira setting the cabin on fire.
Where was Mel?
Smoke was everywhere, white and thick, everywhere except for down here, a foot or two off the floor. Stop, drop, and roll, I remembered one of my elementary school teachers telling my class during a fire drill. It wasn’t bullshit after all.
Then I heard someone calling Mel’s name, then my own. I crawled in a clumsy circle, searching for Mel, my eyes stinging, watering.
I bumped something heavy and round. It was Hiroshi’s head. The band of skin that had connected it to his body had either torn or melted.
His eyes stared up at me, dull and unseeing.
I banged it away and collapsed forward in a coughing fit.
I’m going to die, I was thinking, I’m not going to be able to help Mel, I’m going to burn to death in this cabin—
Someone began dragging me.
They had me by the back of my shirt collar, so the neck line strangled me. I tried turning my head, to see who it was, but I couldn’t seem to do that.
The heat vanished. A cool blackness washed over me. I thought I had died, this was death and it wasn’t so bad, before realizing I was outside.
Whoever had rescued me dropped to the ground and began coughing up a lung. I was coughing just as hard, my throat stripped raw.
When this finally ended, which for a while I didn’t believe it would, I extended an arm. A hand gripped mine. The person was talking to me, shaking me.
My vision focused, and I saw John Scott looming over me.
“Where is she, dude? Where’s Mel? Is she in there?”
I opened my mouth, but broke into another coughing fit.
He lurched to his feet with the aid of some makeshift crutch and limped back into the burning cabin.
CHAPTER 41
I was getting to my knees when John Scott stumbled drunkenly through the front door of the cabin. He made it only a few steps before collapsing to the ground.
I swayed lightheadedly over to him, grabbed him by the arms, and pulled him farther into the trees, out of danger.
I started back toward the cabin, but he gripped my leg.
“She’s not in there,” he rasped.
“There’s a bedroom—”
“I checked. Everywhere. She’s not there.”
I stared at the cabin. Smoke billowed out of the broken window and open door. Behind that, thinly veiled, pulsed an orange furnace.
Then, dramatically, flames shot up the door frame, outlining it like a lion tamer’s fiery hoop.
It would be suicide to go back inside. And I was pretty sure John Scott was right. Mel wasn’t in there. She had been taken. She was with Nina now.
John Scott sat up, coughing into his hand. Soot covered his face, leaving only his eyeballs untouched.
“She’s alive,” I told him.
He wiped his forearm across his mouth, streaking the ash. “Where?”
“I don’t know.” I slumped to the ground. “He took her.”
“Who took her?”
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“Akira.”
“Fuck, Ethos, talk some sense!” The outburst set off a paroxysm of more body-wracking coughs.
“The guy who killed Tomo and Ben,” I said when he’d caught his breath.
John Scott hawked and spat. “I saw a body in the cabin.”
“That’s not him.”
I explained everything as succinctly as I could.
“Fuck me,” he said. Then: “We have to find them.”
But he didn’t say anything more. He understood as well as I did.
They were long gone.
My eyebrows had been singed away, as well as the hair on my arms. The skin beneath the soot was pink and pig-smooth. It continued to hurt to breathe, making me wonder if I had some sort of pulmonary swelling. My head throbbed from where I was struck with what I believe must have been a thrown rock, but it was nothing to the pain in my back and arm, both of which were bleeding freely. Nevertheless, I inventoried all of this with distracted interest. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mel: where she was right now, what she might be going through, both physically and emotionally.
When some of my strength returned, I searched for the well Hiroshi had drawn water from. I found it not far behind the burning cabin. I rotated a crude wooden crank to retrieve a bucketful of water. My thirst had been slated earlier, but now it was back, as brutal as ever. I drank greedily, then raised another bucketful, untied the rope from the metal handle, and carried it to John Scott.
I prayed the police would bring dogs with them, like Mel had suggested they might. Because that was our only hope of finding Mel and Nina, wasn’t it? I could lead the police back to our camp. They could help Neil, and I could give the dogs an article of Mel’s clothing, the sweater she’d been sleeping in, or her underwear. She hadn’t showered for two days. Her trail would be strong.
“Hey,” I said to John Scott.
We were sitting side by side, staring at the blazing cabin.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah?”
“You saved my life.”
“My mistake.”
“I’m serious.”
