Sea of Trees

by James Russell, Robert

  “I come every month or so,” he says. “I hike, pray, try to keep young people like yourselves from getting lost in the woods. It is very easy to do.”

  “Yeah, it’s a maze in here.”

  “Mmm,” he says, looking to the sky then back to us. “We should keep moving. We are almost there.”

  “Almost where?”

  “The hokura,” he says and starts up the path again. I look at Junko, unsure of what he means.

  “It is a shrine,” she says. “A small roadside shrine. Shinto.”

  “Oh.”

  We follow the path which narrows some then slopes up a small incline and back down, and see tucked between two large bushes at the side a small wooden shrine built up on a stack of large gray rocks, red paint faded from age and weather, Kanji characters painted in yellow along the side facing us.

  “This is where you pray?” I ask.

  “Yes, where I pray for my son.”

  We stand still for a moment before he gets to his knees and brushes some leaves off of the shrine, cleaning it, a small smile forming as if this small act brings him great joy.

  “Back at the tent you mentioned something about a suicide team?”

  “Suicide Patrol, yes,” he says standing. “Part of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Our national military. They come to the woods to look for bodies and people camping out who have not yet attempted to take their lives.”

  “And you’re part of this Patrol?”

  “Mmm. It is also made up of many volunteers. Last year we only found sixty bodies. I stopped five young men myself. I found them camping in the woods, talked them out of it and sent them back home. When I saw you two in the woods, at first I thought you had come here, like the others.”

  “No. Junko, she lost someone.” I look back and Junko is glaring at me, not amused by my revelation to this man. This stranger.

  “Excuse me,” she says pulling out her MP3 player from her pocket.

  She brushes past us, up the path but not too far away. She puts the headphones in and stares at the trees along the path, looking through them to the dark forest.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Seicho. “This is all very emotional. Her sister . . . she came here a year ago.”

  “I am sorry,” he says looking at Junko, studying her. “Were they close?”

  “Very, I think. We . . . we met at university, six months ago. She asked me to come with her, to try to find some evidence of her, that Izumi had been here. Anything.”

  “For peace of mind.”

  “Yes, exactly. But truthfully,” I say leaning in, “I told her not to get her hopes up. This place is massive.”

  “I think many feel as she does. They hope to come here, find a piece of clothing. A trinket. Something to make sense. But they rarely do.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “When I had heard about my son, I came here for a week. I was obsessed. But I found nothing, except a few other bodies, not his. And I built this hokura as something to represent him here. Something physical I could come and talk to.”

  I look at Junko, how beautiful she is, then to Seicho, who is looking back at the shrine. “To be honest, she’s been acting odd since we got here. I think she hadn’t expected it to be so difficult.”

  Seicho looks up at me, then into the trees overhead. “These woods, they are powerful. For centuries they were believed to be the home of yurei.” He stops, looks at me, adds: “Ghosts.”

  “Oh.”

  “Even a generation ago some would bring the elderly to these woods, those they could not care for . . . and they would leave them to die.” He steps forward, past the shrine, rubbing his jaw. “Japan has a dark past like that. Remove the parts of society that do not work. Things most Westerners do not know.”

  “That’s awful,” I say.

  “Mmm.” He walks over to the tree line behind the shrine and places his hand on a bare tree trunk, rubbing it gently. “There are dark memories here, of this place. And most Japanese are taught this as children. I think it should be hard here for her, or then you would have more to worry about.”

  “Good point,” I say.

  “Are you camping here tonight?”

  “We just drove in for the day.”

  “That is good. Staying here for too long can be bad for your health, ghosts or not. Too much death has seen these woods, and it makes your mind think too much about such things.”

  “Well, don’t worry about that. We brought just enough stuff for the day.”

  Seicho looks at me and smiles, then back down to Junko again. “It is an epidemic in this country, suicide. My son, Junji, we had a fight. Many bad fights. I did not agree with his lifestyle, with his choices. After the last fight he left, and I received a letter in the mail a week later telling me where he had gone and what he had done. It is hard not to blame yourself, even though it is their own actions. I think, for her, maybe she feels like she could have stopped her if she was here. If she was by her side.”

  “She doesn’t talk to her family much anymore, because of everything. They all blame each other, think everyone else is at fault.”

  “These people, they are determined, for the most part. If they want to end their lives, they will. There is nothing anyone can do. The ones we save, they are the ones who are not sure yet. They are just thinking about it. The other ones, my son, her sister, there is nothing anyone can do, I think.”

  I nod, not saying anything, then check my watch and see it’s already past two. “I actually think we need to get going. She wants to try to get to the lake today, and we still have to make it back.”

  “Saiko?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “It is quite far still, goes off this main path here.”

  “Yeah, we saw the sign when we first came in. I told her we could go only quickly, look around, then head back.”

  “Here,” he says taking off his backpack and rummaging inside for a moment, producing a stack of half-foot yellow ribbons. “Take these. The Suicide Patrol uses these to mark the trees near bodies, or camps. They are also useful if you find yourself going off the path into the woods. So you can find your way back.”

  “Thanks,” I say grabbing them and looking them over. “So, if I see these in the woods . . . ?”

  “It is possible that is where someone has died, yes.”

  I smile, nervous for the first time being here, putting them in my own bag. “Thanks for everything. For talking to me. It’s a bit lonely out here. Even with the two of us.”

  Seicho extends his hand, smiling at first, then turning grave, serious, looking deep into my eyes. “Please be careful. There are many bodies still in these woods. Many that the volunteers will never be able to find. Bodies lost to all but the yurei. And if you find one, it can be very shocking. Very traumatizing for you both.”

  “Yeah, I’m hoping to avoid that, if we can.”

  “Mmm. Many come here hoping to find what you are, but leave changed. Aokigahara is a dark place, even in the daylight. Make sure you are back to your car by sunset.”

  “I will.”

  I start on my way, looking back at the tiny man in the red tracksuit kneeling again at the shrine, caring for it. When I reach Junko she’s sitting on a tree stump next to the path, pulling her headphones out as I help her up.

  “You really should have talked with him a little bit,” I say.

  She looks down the path at him, then back to me. “I did not come here to make friends,” she says. “I came here to find Izumi.”

  “I know, but he was only trying to be nice. He even gave me some ribbons to tie on the trees, in case we go off the path.”

  “Oh,” she says looking back at him. “Well, I doubt we will need them.”

  “Good to have anyway,” I say, stroking her arm. She looks up at me, into my eyes. “Seicho told me that some people think there are ghosts here, in the woods. Have you heard that?”

  “Many people say many things,” she says pulling away from m
e. “It does not mean they are true.”

  “I know that. But you have to admit this place is creepy. What if we would’ve found someone in the tent, you know?”

  “Then we will be careful the rest of the time, yes?”

  “Yes. Very careful.”

  She steps away from me and stretches her back, her backpack weighing her down, but she doesn’t remove it, so I reach out to try to help her, offering to hold it a while. When she sees me she freaks out, pushes my hand away. “What are you doing?” she asks, stepping back.

  “It looks heavy. I just wanted to help.”

  “Well,” she says stepping close to me again, “thank you but I am fine.”

  “Look, I’m here to help. I don’t appreciate being treated like that.”

  “I just have personal things in here. Izumi’s things that I thought I could place in the woods, if we find something. I feel . . . very protective.”

  “I get it, just . . . I’m on your side here, okay?”

  “I know,” she says, wrapping her arms around me again. “Izumi would have liked you.”

  “I’m sure I would’ve liked her too,” I say kissing the top of her head. “C’mon, let’s keep going. It’s getting late and we still have quite a bit more to go.”

  Junko pulls away from me, still smiling, and I can’t tell if it’s forced or not. We start up the path and after a few steps I look back at Seicho, see him standing now and facing us, no expression on his face, studying us like he knows how it’s all going to end.

  In hindsight, Makoto should have seen it coming—he hadn’t had anything to drink at the birthday party, his daughter Misaki’s eighth—but the phone, his weakness, would not stop ringing, and every call seemed to be more important than the last, distracting him from the road and from getting them home safely during rush hour. And it was with the fourth call he received, from his boss, dodging a traffic light while checking his e-mail, when they were struck, hard, by a truck. By the time paramedics had arrived, Misaki was already unconscious, and Makoto, distraught and bleeding, desperately tried to get in touch with his wife, Noriko, who had stayed behind with friends.

  It was later, at the hospital, after the doctors explained to Makoto and Noriko that Misaki had slipped into a coma, that Noriko slapped her husband and blamed him—that he could have prevented it if he had only been paying attention. He did not argue with her.

  Weeks turned to months while Misaki lay there, neither getting worse or better. Makoto was there as often as he could be—he and Noriko, at first, would go together, but as the realization set in that their daughter, their little girl, might never wake up, their relationship began to crumble, impossible to repair, so eventually they took shifts at the hospital—Noriko during the mornings and afternoons, Makoto in the evenings, so they would not see one another. This continued for another seven months when, unexpectedly, the little girl opened her eyes among great rejoicing. Makoto was called at work, and when he arrived he was met by the doctor and Noriko—the first time he had seen her in weeks—her eyes swollen and red from crying.

  “What is it?” Makoto pleaded. “I thought you said she was awake? Can I see her?”

  “Unfortunately,” the doctor replied, “your daughter seems to have suffered brain damage from the accident. She will never truly be the same as she was before.”

  And she wasn’t. Misaki—once bright and outgoing and full of energy—was now reduced to a catatonic state, hardly able to perform her own bodily functions, let alone communicate in any way. In fact, other than her eyes, which seemed to drink in all around her, there was no true visible sense she was there with them at all. Any chance of reuniting their family was now lost and Noriko, only a few days later, served Makoto with divorce papers, telling him that every time she looked at their poor daughter, she could only think of what he had done, and any love that used to exist between them had been replaced with a unyielding disgust. In fact, the last words Noriko spoke to him were: “We would all be better off with you dead, Makoto.”

  Time passed, and Misaki, under constant supervision, went to live with Noriko and her parents—Makoto was told explicitly that he was never allowed to visit them there. Everyone, it seemed, blamed him for what had happened to their sweet girl. And why shouldn’t they, he thought, and his heart broke daily as the events, no matter how hard he tried, replayed in his mind. Noriko finally agreed to let Makoto see them in a park, in public, for a short period of time, and the entire length of the visit was spent with him crying and pleading for more opportunities to see their daughter. But Noriko, who now had sole guardianship of Misaki, would not allow such a thing, as she did not trust her ex-husband, and told him to enjoy the time he had with her while he had it.

  After they parted ways, Makoto thought of what Noriko had told him, that they—everyone—would be better off without him, and realizing he alone was responsible for what had happened to Misaki, that his negligence was to blame and that he had failed as a parent on nearly every possible level, that Noriko was right. He would do the right thing and end his life and that maybe, perhaps, in his death, they all might be able to move on.

  So Makoto found a place of quiet where he could be alone with his sins—Aokigahara—and took with him only a single photograph of the family in happier times, at the birthday party before the accident. The entire drive to the forest he cried, thinking of the hollow way his daughter looked at him in the park, more than likely, like everyone else, blaming him for her condition, reminding him he was indeed doing the right thing. At the parking lot he left the keys in the ignition and a letter on the driver’s seat he had written to Misaki, a letter he hoped Noriko would read to her one day, apologizing for everything he had done, and deep in he began looking for the spot, the perfect spot, thinking of Misaki’s face the entire time, her blank stare, what would have been if only he had been more careful. Makoto finally settled on a large cropping of rocks and, climbing carefully to the top—about eight feet or so, stacked on top of one another like crates—he looked down to see more of the jagged lava rock on the forest floor greeting him. He then pulled out the picture and kissed it, looked up to the tree tops and to the peaks of grey sky showing between the branches, and without thinking dove head first, hoping only that maybe, in another life, they might all forgive him for what he had done.

  Beauty

  “Izumi was a beautiful girl,” Junko tells me while we’re eating granola bars. “All of the boys wanted to date her in high school.”

  “I’m sure you were just as beautiful,” I say between bites, smiling at her.

  “No, she was more beautiful,” she says, angry, looking at the ground and chewing slowly. “Do not tell me about my own sister, Bill. Especially when you did not know her.”

  I sit back and swallow, looking down at the dark rock we’re sitting on next to the path. A slight breeze hits the tops of the trees. “I just meant,” I say, slowly, “that I think you’re beautiful too. I wasn’t trying to tell you about her, okay?”

  She looks up at me and finishes chewing, her expression blank. “There was a boy, Daiki. He was a year older, in Izumi’s grade. He had asked her out for months, but she always said no. She said no to most boys.”

  “Why is that?” I ask, watching as Junko smiles a bit, kicking the dirt with her feet.

  “It was her way. A game,” she says. “She often said she did not want what other girls her age wanted. She . . . always thought of herself as a woman, even when we were just girls. So these boys, they were not what she wanted.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Then one day Daiki asked me out. I was flattered. He was very handsome. Too handsome for me. My mother even said so. Told me to be lucky any boy would talk to me.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “And I knew he had only asked me so he could be close to Izumi,” she says, not acknowledging me. “But I was okay with it. Because, for a moment, I felt beautiful. Like her.”

  “What happened with him?”

&
nbsp; She looks at me and smiles. “Izumi found out what he was doing, that he was using me. She took very private photographs of him, told him she would spread them around school if he ever came around again.” She starts laughing. “She was very protective of me.”

  “She sounds like a good sister.”

  “She was,” she says looking back to the ground again, thoughtful. Happy. Then: “Do you know where we are?”

  I look at my watch: four-fifteen. “Well, we’ve been walking about an hour since we saw the last sign.”

  “How long until we take the trail to the lake?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe another thirty minutes?”

  She sighs, loudly, finishes her granola bar and tucks the wrapper in her backpack. “This is taking much longer than I thought it would.”

  “Well, you can’t just expect to walk in here and stumble on some sort of clue or something, right? I mean, you don’t know anything that happened to her.”

  Junko goes quiet again, staring at the ground then back at me, angry. “I did not know what to expect. You know this.”

  “Exactly, so you shouldn’t get your hopes up. And, to be fair, I don’t like the idea of being out here any later than we need to.”

  “I will stay out here as long as I please,” she says standing. “You can go back any time you want.”

  “I’m not leaving you out here alone. And I didn’t say we had to leave now, but you have to be reasonable. There are dead bodies everywhere, and we have no idea where we’re going or what we’re looking for.”

  “I know perfectly well.”

  “Then just agree that we’ll look a little bit longer then head back. Okay?”

  “Not before we get to the lake.”

  “If we don’t make it there soon, then we should forget the lake.”

  “No,” she says, tears in her eyes. “The lake . . . we have to go there. I think . . . that is where she would have gone.”

  “I get it, but are we going to stay out here at the risk of getting ourselves lost?”