Suicide Forest (20 page)

It was one of pure horror.

“Come on!” I shouted at Nina, already
running, my heart drumming inside my chest.

Mel and Neil were not far away, and I
reached them quickly. Through the trees I saw them standing side by
side, their backs to me.

Abruptly the forest took on a surreal
quality, because ahead, past them, I glimpsed what they were
staring at.

When I reached Mel, I spun her away from the
grisly sight, pulling her against my chest, shushing her softly,
telling her that everything was going to be all right, which, of
course, was the farthest thing from the truth.

As
I stood there
holding onto Mel, facing Ben, I felt as though I had fallen down
the rabbit’s hole—either that or I had been whacked in the face
with a stupid stick—and it was with a detached clinical eye that I
studied the husk of what had once been the go-happy Israeli.

He was suspended several feet in the air
above the ground, which led me to believe he had climbed the tall
pine tree from which he was hanging, stood on one of the lower
branches, tied the rope above his head to a higher branch, and
stepped to his death.

His head seemed too large, at least larger
than I remembered it, in comparison to the rest of his body. Then I
realized his head wasn’t too big at all; his neck was too thin, too
elongated. The rope was knotted snug beneath his jawline, pulled
impossibly high and tight by gravity and his own body weight,
crushing the soft tissue in his throat, providing the illusion that
his neck had been stretched.

His eyes were closed, his mouth a gaping
orifice, from which his tongue protruded, swelled thick, a
blood-purple color. I couldn’t be sure given the distance between
us, but it appeared as though his face was covered with small red
blotches, almost as if he had developed a bad case of the measles,
and it took me a moment to realize these were likely the result of
burst capillaries that had bled into his skin.

In the still forest his body drooped
bonelessly, resembling a puppet at rest, except there were no
strings or rods connected to a puppeteer’s hands, only the rope,
the horrible rope, stretched taut and groaning softly as it
struggled with the weight of the burden it bore.

Ben was wearing the same clothes as he had
the day before, though his jumper was unzipped, revealing a T-shirt
with the words “Meat is Murder—Tasty, Tasty Murder”—a joke that
seemed terribly wrong right then. The inside legs of his jeans were
damp and colored brown, an indication he’d urinated and defecated
on himself.

This last detail made me think of a
documentary on capital punishment I had once seen. The program had
dedicated a considerable amount of time to hangings, given that
they remained a legal method of judicial execution in sixty or so
countries, including in some parts of the United States. From what
I recalled, the goal in an ideal hanging was to break the subject’s
neck and sever the spine. Brain death would then take a couple
minutes to occur while complete death could take up to twenty
minutes—yet the subject would lose consciousness almost instantly
and not experience any of it. On the other hand, if the distance of
the drop through the trapdoor was miscalculated, and not enough
torque was created to break the subject’s neck, he or she would
either die of decapitation if the drop was too long or
strangulation if the drop was too short.

I couldn’t help but wonder now what happened
to Ben. Had he died quickly—or had he dangled from the tree branch
for a protracted period of time, kicking and twitching in a
gruesome, extended fashion?

The vacuum I’d been in while all these
thoughts plowed through my mind abruptly burst. Once again I became
aware of Mel hugging me, mumbling something over and over. My first
guess was “I can’t feel;” then, more likely, “This can’t be
real.”

Behind me vegetation thrashed, and a moment
later Nina burst past us, making a strange moaning sound. When she
came to Ben’s body, she stopped, as if couldn’t bring herself to
touch it. That moaning became a whimper, higher pitched but just as
awful.

John Scott and Tomo appeared. John Scott
paused for a moment, swore to himself, then scrambled up the tree.
He tugged furiously at the anchor end of the rope, but couldn’t get
it undone.

Seeing him take charge kicked me into
gear.

Maybe Ben was still alive
.

It seemed impossible, but…

I released Mel and went to Ben. I wrapped my
arms around his waist and lifted, so the pressure from the noose
was off his throat. His body was as stiff as a mannequin’s. The
stench of his feces almost made me puke. It smelled worse than
shit—blood-and-guts rancid—almost as if he had discharged his
internal organs into the seat of his pants.

“Get my knife!” I shouted, then recalled I
had forgotten it back at the crevice. “Get a rock! Something!”

Tomo and Neil dashed away in different
directions. John Scott continued to work at the knot. I remained
where I was, elevating Ben. He seemed incredibly light, though I
imagined that was due to the adrenaline coursing me. In fact, my
thinking thus far seemed to be remarkably clear.

“He’s already dead!” Mel blurted. “He’s
dead!”

Nina dropped to her knees and stared up at
Ben, her arms outstretched. It was a strangely religious pose,
almost as if she were praying to him.

“He’s already dead!” Mel wailed.

I knew this was true—it was as obvious as
day—but I continued to hold out hope, however illogical.

John Scott shouted triumphantly from above
me, and suddenly Ben was free. I tried to lower him gracefully to
the ground, but ended up dropping him like a board.

I knelt beside him and pressed my fingers to
his neck, waited, then lowered my ear to his chest.

I looked at Nina and shook my head.

The
pandemonium
passed. We calmed down somewhat, although everyone’s nerves
remained frayed and raw. Consciously or subconsciously, I wasn’t
sure which, we’d moved as a group a dozen feet away from Ben’s body
and kept our backs to it. He wasn’t very long dead, but death was
still death. No one wanted anything to do with it.

Mel and Nina gravitated toward each other
and hugged. Nina cried softly while Mel stroked her hair. Tomo
stared at the ground, Jay Gatsby cap in one hand, scratching his
messy hair with the other, as if he couldn’t figure out what
happened. Neil was nowhere in sight; I wasn’t sure where he’d gone.
John Scott had lit a smoke and was pacing, his face a mask of
concentration. He was likely thinking about the repercussions that
Ben’s death would have on him. As he should be; he was in some
serious trouble.

After five minutes of this bizarre game of
theater—nothing seemed real right then, more like a staged play, we
the actors—I felt obliged to say something, though it wasn’t very
inspired.

“I’m sorry, Nina, I—” I shook my head, the
rest of what I was going to say faltering on the tip of my
tongue.

“I cannot believe he would do this!” she
blurted, wiping tears from her eyes and shaking her head. “He was
happy. Why would he do this?”

I waited for John Scott to say something.
When he didn’t, I fixed him with an expectant stare.

“What?” he said. Challenge in his voice.

“Why do you think Ben did this?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“Are you serious…? Are you
serious
?”
I might have kept my cool if the recalcitrant asshole had shown any
signs of compunction. He didn’t. Zero.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to blame this on
the mushrooms?”

“He was tripping out all night,” I said. “He
took off into the forest on his own. Then he kills himself. What
other explanation is there?”

“Nobody hangs themselves while on
mushrooms.”

“Apparently they do!”

“It wasn’t the ’shrooms,” he said
defiantly.

“So what happened? He decided to give
suicide a whirl? See what it felt like?”

John Scott’s brow beetled over storming
eyes. He balled his hands into fists, as if he were about to take a
swing at me.

I wanted him to.

“You’re going to lay this on me?” he
snarled. “You’re really going to try to lay this on me?”

I was too appalled to answer him. I looked
at Tomo. “You have to call the police.”

“And say what?” he asked. He was eyeing John
Scott apprehensively.

“Tell them our friend is dead. They need to
get out here.”

“How they find us?”

It was true, I realized. We’d have to meet
them in the parking lot.

John Scott said, “We tell the cops that Ben
picked the mushrooms on his own.”

Nina blinked, as if coming out of her
stupor. “
Stom ta’peh!
” she spat. “
You
picked
them.”

“What does it matter? Why do any of us need
to get involved in this? There’s nothing that can be changed.”

“You did this to him! You take
responsibility!”

“I didn’t do a fucking thing!” He jabbed a
finger in Ben’s direction. “
He
was the one who fucking
hanged himself.”

“I will tell the police I saw you pick them.
I will tell them I saw you give them to him. He did not even want
them. But you told him it was okay. That is manslaughter.”

John Scott took an aggressive step toward
Nina. I moved between them and shoved him hard. He lost his footing
and fell on his ass. I had little time to enjoy the surprised look
on his face because he rolled forward quickly onto his knees and
sprang at me. His head rammed my gut, knocking the breath from my
lungs. Before I could recover he dragged me to the ground. I
couldn’t shake him as he drove elbows into my face. Then one of the
wild haymakers I was throwing connected with his jaw and he tumbled
off me. I jumped on top of him and raised my fist. His eyes were
unfocused, his jaw slack. I wanted to hit him so bad—for sleeping
with Mel, for giving Ben the mushrooms, for threatening Nina—but I
couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I planted my hand on his head and pushed
off, shoving his face into the ground.

Everyone was looking at me. No one seemed to
know what to say.

“He was going to hit Nina,” I said.

“The fuck I was,” John Scott mumbled.

“You’re bleeding, Ethan.” Mel pressed her
fingertips to a spot near my right temple.

I winced and jerked away. “I’m okay.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine.”

John Scott pushed himself unsteadily to his
feet. He glared at me. For a moment I thought he was going to
continue the fight. Instead he turned to Nina and said, “It’s my
word against yours. You tell the cops I gave Ben the mushrooms,
I’ll tell them you gave them to him.”

Nina threw her arms in the air. “Everyone
here knows it was you!”

He must have tasted the blood leaking from
his lip because he drew the heel of his hand across the cut. “Who
was with me?” he said. “Just you and Tomo. And Tomo’s not going to
say anything, right dude?”

“Leave me out,” Tomo said, holding up his
hands.

“You have admitted you gave them to him!”
Nina exploded.

“Bullshit!” He leveled a stare at Tomo, then
Mel, then me. He returned to Mel, his best ally. “Mel?”

She wouldn’t look at him. “What?”

“Did I say I gave him the mushrooms?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. I
couldn’t tell if she was siding with him or if she was simply in
denial that any of this was happening.

“Mel?” he repeated.

“Lord!” She spun away. I rested my hand on
her shoulder, telling her not to listen to him.

“Don’t you guys fucking peg this on me!”
John Scott roared. “Tomo!” He opened his hands in a gesture of
clemency. “Tomo?”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”

“You killed him!” Nina shrieked. She leapt
at John Scott, pounding his chest with her small fists. He raised
his arms in a half-assed attempt to block the blows. It was such a
pathetic sight—such a humbling sight—I finally found pity for
him.

I moved to pull Nina away. She didn’t come
easy. I had to lift her off her feet. She continued to swing her
arms and kick madly. When I set her down, she glared at me, fury in
her eyes, then collapsed on the spot. She pulled her legs to her
chest, rested her forehead on her knees, and began to cry
again.

Aside from Nina, the rest of us were
sullenly quiet. John Scott gave me a brief glance and an even
briefer nod, which pissed me off.

“Listen,” I said, deciding that we needed to
put blame aside for now. “This isn’t helping any. We need to figure
out what to do.”

“We have to get out of here,” Mel said. “We
have to get out of here right now.”

“I meant with Ben’s body. Do we leave it
here or take it with us?”

“We cannot leave it here,” Nina said
sharply.

“But how do we carry it?”

“We can make a litter,” John Scott
suggested.

Mel folded her arms across her chest. “Won’t
we be, I don’t know, contaminating the scene?” she said.

“We’ve already taken him down,” I said. “I
can’t see how moving him will hurt. We’ll bring the police back
here later.”

Mel’s lips tightened and her eyes hardened,
as if she were just realizing the scope of this, the fallout.
Getting Ben out of the forest was just the beginning. There would
be interviews, statements, possible detainment until the facts were
sorted out, perhaps a trial, all of it happening in a foreign
language, in a foreign country.

“Oh God,” she mumbled. “Oh God.”

And that about summed it up.

According
to John
Scott we needed two tent poles and two jackets to make a litter.
You turn the jackets inside out and zip them up, leaving the
sleeves on the inside. Next you tear out the shoulders, slip the
poles through the holes you made, through the sleeves, and out the
bottom, one jacket after the other, like a skewer through a
kebab.