Suicide Forest (22 page)

And this was just for possession. If John
Scott was convicted of supplying a controlled substance and
involuntary manslaughter, he could be looking at a long, long time
behind bars.

He might be an American soldier, but his
crime was committed off-base. There was nothing Uncle Sam could do
for him if he was already in Japanese custody.

Finally I could continue no further. I was
about to tell John Scott to hold up, but he beat me to it, calling
for me to set down the litter.

I did so quickly and wrung out my arms,
which felt like overcooked noodles. Mel, Tomo, Nina, and especially
Neil all seemed grateful for the break.

“So where is it?” Mel said, brushing back
the hair that had fallen in front of her face. “Where’s the
ribbon?”

“That’s why I stopped,” John Scott said. “I
think we’re lost.”

“
We
can’t be lost,” I said, surprised that he
would make such a fear-mongering statement. “We just haven’t
reached the ribbon yet.”

John Scott shook his head. “We’ve been
walking for forty-five minutes. The walk in was only thirty.”

“It was longer than that.”

“I kept track.” He tapped his wristwatch.
“Thirty, thirty-five, tops.”

“We’re carrying Ben. We’re not walking as
fast.”

“We’re keeping the same pace, dude. Now
listen to me. We should have come to the ribbon at least ten
minutes ago. We haven’t.”

Mel frowned. “So we’ve been going in the
wrong direction?”

“We strayed somehow.”

“No way,” I said. “The ribbon continued for
hundreds of feet in both directions from where it intersected the
string. There’s no way we strayed around it.”

“Then we’ve gotten totally turned
about.”

I glanced about at the forest, a sinking
feeling in my gut.

“I think him right,” Tomo said. “We walk too
long.”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” Mel said.

“Knew what?” I asked, well aware her comment
was directed at me. I’d been the one who’d confidently stated we
wouldn’t get lost.

“Heading off without the string to
follow.”

“What should we have done, Mel?”

“Does anyone have a compass?” she asked.

“They don’t work here,” Tomo said. “The rock
fuck them.”

“The rock what?” John Scott said.

“The rock. The iron. Fucks them. It
true.”

“Bullshit.”

“Did anyone bring a compass anyway?” I
asked. When no one replied, I added: “So what does it matter?”

“Maybe Ben took it,” Mel said.

I looked at her. “The ribbon?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s really unlikely, Mel,” John Scott
said.

“Well, he took the string, didn’t he?”

“Because he needed it to, you know.”

“Where is the rest of it?” Nina asked.

We all turned to her. She’d been quiet until
now. Her face was expressionless, her eyes unreadable. She seemed
small, fragile, under the weight of her backpack.

“Ben did not need a kilometer of string to
hang himself,” she went on. “So what did he do with the rest of
it?”

“He must have tossed it away somewhere,”
John Scott said.

“Why would he reel in so much string? Why
not cut off what he needed and leave the rest where it was?”

“Who knows? He was fucked up.”

Neil, I noticed, was shuffling off into the
trees. The others watched him go too. A moment later we heard him
retching.

“He needs water,” Mel said.

I glanced up and could make out dark patches
of storm clouds between breaks in the canopy. I wanted to tell her
that it might rain, that we could collect rainwater, but I didn’t.
The need to resort to such a measure would be an admission we were
not leaving the forest anytime soon.

“So what we do?” Tomo asked.

“We have to find our way out of here,” I
said.

“No kidding,” John Scott said.

“What do you suggest?” I said. “If we keep
walking, and we’re going in the wrong direction, then we’re
screwed. We’ll get more lost.”

“We will stay here,” Nina said, slipping off
her backpack. “We will call the police.”

Mel said, “How will they find us if we don’t
even know where we are?”

“They can track the phone’s signal,” John
Scott said.

“They can do that? Track a mobile
phone?”

I was skeptical as well.

John Scott nodded sagely. “Sure. Why
not?”

“So we just wait here for them?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

He was right, I decided. “Okay, Tomo. Can
you call them?”

“What I say?”

“Tell them someone is dead and someone is
very sick. Tell them we’re lost in Aokogihara Jukai. We need them
to come find us.”

Tomo dumped his backpack on the ground and
began fussing through it. He started with the top pouch, then moved
on to the main pocket. Soon all his clothes and comic books were
scattered around him on the ground. He patted down his jacket and
pants. “Shit, man,” he said. “Where my phone?”

John Scott dug through his rucksack, looking
for his, while I checked Mel’s pack, where I had stuck mine the
night before.

They were both missing.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “There’s no
way we’ve all lost our phones.”

“I dropped mine in the crevice,” Mel
reminded me.

“But where are Tomo’s, John Scott’s, and
mine?”

John Scott looked pissed. “Seriously, if
someone is playing a joke, you got us. Now where the hell are
they?”

“Would Ben have taken them?” Mel asked.

“Why would he do that?” Nina said.

“He was tripping,” John Scott said. “Maybe
he thought they were teleportation devices that could beam him
home. The fucker!”

“Ben did not take them,” Nina said firmly.
“He was tripping, yes. But he was not crazy.”

“He took the goddamn string, didn’t he?”

“Should we go back?” I suggested.

Mel looked at me. “To the camp?”

“He might have stashed them somewhere.”

John Scott was shaking his head. “We don’t
even know which way the camp is anymore.”

We stood there silently, all perplexed
faces. Would Ben really have taken our phones? I wondered. It
seemed so unlikely.

I felt Nina’s eyes on me. I met them and
immediately knew what she was thinking. The swinging crucifixes,
the apparition-like blur in the photograph, the mysterious phone
call. I contemplated the possibility that something supernatural
was going on, I
believed
it for a moment—but only for a
moment. Ghosts didn’t exist. There was no such thing as a haunted
forest. I shook my head. She turned away from me.

I lifted Ben’s backpack off the litter and
went through it. “What the…?” I said, holding up a copy of the
Complete Manuel of Suicide
.

“That’s the book that was at that woman’s
gravesite!” Mel exclaimed. “Why would Ben have a copy—” She caught
herself. “That’s hers, isn’t it? He took it.”

She was right. It was old and weatherworn,
the same condition Yumi’s had been in.

“Did you know he had this?” I asked
Nina.

“I—no.” She shook her head. “No, I had no
idea.”

“Why would he take it?” John Scott said.

“For souvenir?” Tomo suggested.

“Tell them what you told me,” I said to
Nina. “Last night, in the woods. Tell them why Ben wanted to come
to Suicide Forest.”

She appeared uncomfortable.

“Spill it,” John Scott said.

“Ben,” she said reluctantly, “he knew
someone who killed themselves. He has been obsessed with suicide
ever since.”

Silence.

Then John Scott: “See—it
wasn’t
the
mushrooms. He was planning suicide all along.” He wasn’t so much
having a revelation as stating a fact for our benefit. That Ben’s
death was a premeditated suicide got him off the hook. Goodbye
manslaughter charge, thank you very much.

“That is not true,” Nina hissed.

“Sure it is,” John Scott continued
triumphantly. “He was obsessed with suicide. You said so yourself.
Everyone here heard you.”

She was seething. “You are a pig.”

“Whatever. I just want answers. Also, this
proves Ben took the phones.”

“How does it do that?”

“He’s a thief.”

“He is
not
a thief. Do not call him
that.”

“The book was in his bag. It didn’t belong
to him. That sounds like a thief to me.”

Neil emerged from the trees, interrupting
the argument. He sensed the animosity in the air and said, “Sorry.
I can’t control it.” He sank to the ground, holding his stomach,
grimacing. “I don’t think I can go any farther.”

“Can I check your bag for your phone?” I
asked him.

“Why?”

“We need it.”

He withdrew his phone from that pouch he
kept on his belt, which had been hidden by his jacket. My
exclamation of elation was lost in everybody else’s.

Neil frowned at us, confused.

“We need to call the police so they can come
get us,” I said simply.

I took the phone—it was a basic flip model
from DoCoMo—and glanced at the tiny monochrome display. There were
two reception bars and one battery bar.

“It’s almost out of battery,” I said and
passed it to Tomo. “Call the police, quickly.”

He punched in the three-digit number and a
moment later was speaking Japanese to someone. After a couple
minutes he turned to us and said, “They want call back.”

John Scott was outraged. “Why?”

“She need talk someone else.”

“Well, tell her to go get him! Now!”

Tomo relayed the message. He shook his head.
“He’s not there. She need call the guy.”

“Tomo,” I said evenly, “tell her the phone’s
battery is almost dead. Tell her we can’t wait.”

He spoke to the dispatcher again for several
minutes.

I paced, furious with the police, cursing,
probably unfairly, their ineptitude.

“How much battery is left, Tomo?” I asked,
interrupting him midsentence.

He checked. “Empty square.”

“Tell them to hurry up!” John Scott
bellowed. “Where is this guy? The fucking moon?”

Tomo spoke for another two minutes, his
voice rising in frustration.

Then he hung up.

“Well?” I said, knowing it was going to be
bad news.

“They call phone company first, then us.
Phone company trace.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“Don’t know. They call back.”

John Scott scoffed. “What good is that going
to do if the phone is dead?”

“I try, man.”

“So what should we do?” Mel asked.

“What can we do?” John Scott said. “Hope
they call back before the phone dies.”

“Turn it off,” I said promptly.

Tomo frowned. “Huh?”

“Turn the phone off. Save the battery. We’ll
call
them
in a few hours. They should have things sorted by
then and be standing by to get the trace going quickly.”

Tomo looked at the others.

“It might not come back on,” John Scott
said.

“That’s a risk we have to take,” I said.

He weighed that, shrugged. “This is your
call, Ethos.”

I glared at him. He was willing to go along
with my suggestion, but if it didn’t work out, he was making sure
the onus would be squarely on me while he remained blame-free for
being too chicken shit to make a decision.

“Do it, Tomo,” I said.

He powered off the phone.

Our
situation had
gone to hell remarkably quickly, I mused as I sat on my own, away
from the others. Ben had hanged himself, we were lost, and Neil was
getting sicker by the minute. My thoughts were bunting around
inside my head, and I tried to slow them down, sort them out. There
was nothing we could do for Ben, so I pushed him to the backburner.
Deciding to remain where we were was probably a smart move. The
last thing we wanted was to get more disorientated. It was a
two-hour-plus hike to the parking lot, which put us in a very
remote spot. Hopefully the police would be able to triangulate our
position and come get us. If not, they knew we were here, we were
lost, and we had one dead and one sick. They would coordinate a
search party. In the meantime we would have to sit tight and try to
find a water source.

Which led to the most pressing concern.
Neil. I’d had food poisoning once when I was eight years old. My
parents had been away for the weekend. Gary had been tasked with
looking after me and making my meals. The first evening he cooked
chicken burgers on the barbeque on the back deck. The chicken
breast was mushy inside and unappealing. Gary, only thirteen then,
told me to add more onions and other toppings to it, which I did,
masking the unpleasant taste. The next morning—God, the abdominal
cramps. I was positive an alien was growing inside me, ready to
burst forth from my gut. I spent the entire day in bed, making
regular visits to the bathroom, never knowing what end stuff was
going to come out. Eventually I became too weak to make the trips
and plopped down in front of the toilet. Gary remained with me the
entire time, bringing me glass after glass of water so I could
rehydrate. If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know what would have
happened in a worst-case scenario. I’d heard of fit and healthy
people dying from food poisoning, even when they had access to
water and medicine. Really, it came down to the toxicity of the
poisoning.

So how toxic was the virus or bacteria
inside Neil? Would he be able to wait out another day or two if it
came to that?

I glanced over at him. He was lying on his
back, his hands on his stomach, his knees pointing toward the sky.
He appeared almost peaceful. I thought he might be asleep until he
convulsed suddenly, crying out gruffly, as if someone had struck
his abdomen with a golf club.

The others either ignored him or eyed him
helplessly.