Suicide Forest (30 page)

“I didn’t see you offering to keep
watch.”

“I wouldn’t have fallen sleep.”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t ‘whatever’ me.”

“Whatever.”

“Gosh, John, you’re such a dick
sometimes.”

Finally, I thought, something about John
Scott that Mel and I could agree upon.

“
You
said that woman had screwed up killing
herself,” Nina said to John Scott. “But what if you were wrong?
What if she was murdered just like Ben and Tomo?”

“No way,” he said immediately.

Another half hour had passed. It was now
9:24 a.m. The daylight was a little brighter, the air a little
warmer. But the sun still refused to show itself, the sky the same
unrelenting gray.

“Why not?” Nina challenged.

“Those screams had been far away. I’d say
over a mile, maybe two. How would he have made his way back here in
the dark?”

“We had a fire. He could see that.”

“Not from a distance. He would be walking
blind.”

“He could do it,” Nina persisted.

John Scott shrugged. “Okay. Fine. Maybe,” he
conceded. “But let’s look at the facts. He killed Ben two nights
ago. Which meant he had been here, nearby. Which meant at some
point between then and early this morning he would have to have
gone wandering around the forest, searching for another potential
victim, stumbling randomly upon the woman, killing her, then coming
all the way back here and killing Tomo in the span of, what, a
couple hours? It seems like a hell of a lot of work to do in one
night.”

“Why us?” Mel said. “Why stalk us?”

“Because we’re different,” I said.

“Huh?”

“We’re foreigners. Maybe he wanted a
change.”

“A change from what?”

“Japanese victims.”

“You think this isn’t the first time he’s
done this?”

“People who kill for no reason,” I said,
“they’re sick. They have issues. They can’t control their desires.
So imagine that was you. Would you go around Tokyo, hunting for
victims, where there was a good possibility you could get caught?
Or would you go somewhere with a constant supply of victims—and
where they were expecting to be found dead? No foul play suspected,
no investigation. You get away every time.”

“You think he’s a serial killer?” Mel said,
aghast.

“Shit, maybe you’re right,” John Scott said.
“The guy wouldn’t care if his targets were going to kill themselves
anyway. He just wants the thrill of taking their lives. Maybe—maybe
he was even watching the parking lot. He chooses who he wants, then
follows them into the forest.”

“This is crazy,” Mel said.

“Or maybe,” John Scott went on, “he was one
of the suicide guys himself. He comes out here to hang himself,
decides he doesn’t want to do it, but he’s still pissed off at
society or whatever so he takes it out on others who come
here.”

“Regardless of who he is,” I said, seeing
that the discussion was upsetting Mel and Nina, “he’s a coward who
only attacks at night, and we’re going to be long gone from here by
then.”

The
following two
hours inched by with painful slowness. I spent much of it
preoccupying myself with the Chicago Blackhawks, who hadn’t won the
Stanley Cup since 1961, but who I’d watched religiously as a kid
growing up. When I was eleven, my father surprised Gary and me with
tickets to a game against the Montreal Canadians. This was way back
in ’88 when the Blackhawks still played in Chicago Stadium, aka
“The Madhouse on Madison.” I’d spent almost as much time gawking at
the triple-tiered seating filled with rambunctious fans as I did
the players on the ice, and I’ve never forgotten the aged smell of
stale beer and sweat that permeated the old arena, or the roar of
the crowd which seemed to shake the building when the Blackhawks
scored, or the circusy music the pipe organ belted out between
whistles.

Eventually I got up to check on Neil,
swooning lightheadedly when I stood.

“Hey, Neil,” I said. “You feeling
better?”

He tried to wet his lips, but had no saliva
to do this with. “Tomo?” he said in a dry whisper.

“Do you need anything?” I asked him,
avoiding the question.

“Tomo?” The word was thick and cumbersome,
as if his tongue was engorged, and sounded like “Dhomo.”

I shook my head.

“Wha’appen?”

“The police are going to be here soon.
Probably an hour or so. We’re getting ready to leave. Do you need
to go to the bathroom before?”

He nodded, and I helped him to his feet. He
baby-stepped into the forest, hunched over, his head down. He might
no longer be puking and moaning, but his condition was serious
bordering on critical.

He stopped by a tree and undid his pants
with clumsy fingers. We hadn’t ventured far from camp, but I
nonetheless felt exposed and vulnerable. I remained vigilant,
scanning the shadows, paranoid John Doe was going to burst from the
vegetation and attack us at any second. I silently urged Neil to
hurry up. Finally I heard a short splash, then he was re-buttoning
his pants. He hadn’t defecated yet today, and I wondered if that
was because he had nothing left inside him, or because he was
constipated, a result of dehydration.

I led him back to his sleeping bag, pulled
it up to his chin, and returned to the campfire.

“How is he?” Mel asked me.

“If you checked on him once in a while,” I
snapped, “you would know.”

“I have checked,” she said defensively.
“Several times. But I just can’t stand seeing him how he is.” She
lowered her voice. “He looks like he’s already half dead.”

“Yeah, I—sorry,” I mumbled, scratching my
hand through my hair, which was itchy and oily. The headache that
had begun the night before was now a steady, thumping pulse,
impossible to ignore. It wasn’t helping my mood any. “He’s weak
from the food poisoning,” I added more sociably. “But the bug has
passed. He’ll get his color back with some water and food.”

“Maybe Kaori has called the police as
well?”

“Kaori?” I frowned, unable to place the
name.

“His wife.”

“Yeah, right.” But I still had no idea what
Mel was talking about. Why would Kaori call the police? Suddenly I
was finding it hard to think straight.

“If this trip went according to plan,” Mel
explained, “we would have been back down Mt. Fuji yesterday
afternoon. Kaori would have been expecting a call from Neil. You
know how he is. Like clockwork with things. So if he didn’t call
her yesterday, she might have gotten worried. When he didn’t call
today, she might have been worried enough to call the police. Then
they’d know for sure we were in serious trouble.”

I nodded, but that was all I offered.
Because whether Kaori had called the police or not really didn’t
matter. They had one more hour to arrive.

After that, we were on our own.

At
a quarter to
noon I think we had all given up hope of a deus ex machina to save
the day, and I said, “We should leave.”

No one agreed vocally, but no one disagreed
either.

“Is Neil able to walk?” Mel asked.

“No.”

Nina frowned. “How will we carry three
people?”

“We need to make a second litter.”

“Yes, but there are
three
people—”

“We can’t take Ben, Nina. I’m sorry.”

There was a vacuous silence.

“We cannot leave Ben here!” Nina
exploded.

“There are only four of us,” I said. “Two
per litter.”

“We will put Ben and Tomo together then,”
she declared.

“That’s going to be too heavy to carry.”

“You and John Scott can do it.”

“For a short distance maybe. But we don’t
know where we are. We’re going to be walking for hours. We need to
move at a fast pace, make the most of our time.”

“Then we will all carry one corner.”

“Nina…”

“We cannot leave Ben’s body here!”

“We’ll leave a trail or something. The
police will be able to come back for him. I’ll come with them.”

“I will not leave his body for that—that
person out here.”

“He’s not interested in the bodies, Nina. He
hanged them for us to find. He’ll likely be following us.”

“Animals. What if they—”

“Have you seen any animals? I haven’t. None
in two days.” I was omitting the deer, of course, but we were
talking about carnivores.

“Why Ben? Why not Tomo?”

I saw the accusation in her eyes:
Because
he is your friend
.

I said, “Ben’s been dead for a day longer.
He’s…decomposing. He smells.”

“Ben is smaller, lighter.”

“They’re about the same size.”

“This is not fair!”

“Do you want to vote—”

“Oh shut up! Just shut up!”

She turned around and began to cry.

John
Scott and I
crafted the second litter using Tomo’s and John Scott’s jackets.
Surprisingly John Scott had surrendered his without a word, tearing
holes in the shoulders with one of his homemade spears.

He saw me watching him and said, “What?”

I shook my head and said, “Nothing.”

When we finished we placed Tomo’s body on
one litter, covering it with his sleeping bag, and Neil on the
other. Neil didn’t question us or protest.

John Scott and I had discussed digging a
temporary grave for Ben, but the topsoil was only a thin membrane
over the solidified magma, no more than a foot deep where we hacked
away at it with rocks. We also decided to leave the tents behind to
lighten our loads. We needed to conserve as much energy as
possible.

“Mel, you and Nina will carry Tomo,” I said.
“John Scott and I will carry Neil.”

“Which way should we go?” Mel asked.

I glanced at John Scott. “You still want to
climb that tree?”

I thought he would tell me to fuck a monkey
or something else creatively undesirable, but he nodded and said,
“Which one?”

“You’re going to climb a tree?” Mel
said.

“It’s too overcast to get a read on the
sun,” he said. “But if I climb a tree, I’ll be able to see Fuji,
which is, what, east of here?”

“Yup,” I said.

Mel craned her neck and looked up at the
towering trees. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said
skeptically.

“I’m a good climber,” John Scott assured
her. “So which one?”

“The tallest,” I said.

After
several
minutes of searching we decided on a species of fir. It wasn’t the
tallest tree around, contrary to what I’d suggested John Scott
attempt, but unlike some larger cedar, the crown reached nearly to
the ground, which meant we could climb it without ropes and
spikes—which of course we didn’t have. Also, the branches stemmed
horizontally from the trunk and were arranged in flattened sprays,
making them perfect for climbing. I guessed it cleared the canopy
at about one hundred feet and topped off at one hundred twenty. The
shape wasn’t conical, like the firs back home in Wisconsin, but
more irregular, the leading shoots drooping downward as if laden
with invisible weights.

“You ready?” I asked John Scott.

He nodded. “Give me a lift.”

I made a stirrup by interlocking the fingers
of my hands and heaved him upward. He grabbed the lowest branch and
started kicking, trying to swing his legs over the branch. One of
his feet struck me in the head. I cursed and watched as he
continued squirming in the manner of a recently birthed tadpole. He
hooked his left leg on the branch, and for a moment it appeared as
though he would be able to pull himself up. But his leg slipped and
lost purchase. He hung for a moment, refusing to concede, before
letting go and dropping to the ground.

All in all it had been a spectacularly
uncoordinated display of athleticism.

“Are we sure about this?” Mel said.

John Scott ignored her. “Give me another
lift,” he said to me.

We repeated the process, though this time he
hoisted himself up with greater finesse.

“Be careful,” Mel cautioned.

John Scott started to climb. Several of the
lower branches appeared dead, or barely alive, due to the
deprivation of sunlight at their lowly level. He avoided these,
opting for the ones sprouting the needle-like leaves. The branches
grew close together, both aiding and hindering his ascent. It made
it easy for him to find hand- and footholds, but it also made for
tight quarters.

Nina, Mel, and I stood with our necks
craned, watching his progress. I didn’t know about the others, but
I was filled with both excitement and dread. If John Scott could
reach the top, we could figure out which way was which and get the
hell out of this prison. However, if he fell— well, he was already
fifty feet up, which was high enough to be fatal.

“He was right,” Mel said from beside me. “He
is a good climber.” Her hands were steepled over her mouth.

“Yeah,” I replied absently.

“He’s going to make it.”

“I think so.”

Up and up he went, getting closer to the
canopy, though his progress had slowed considerably. He was likely
running out of solid branches that could support his weight.

“Can you see anything?” I shouted.

A pause. “Not yet!”

“Make sure the branches aren’t rotten!”

He didn’t answer.

I could barely see him now except for
flashes of his white pullover. I think he had stopped moving.

“Are you there?” Mel shouted.

“Not yet!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Branches are thin!”

“Maybe you should come back down?”

“Little farther!”

There was movement again—then a tremendous
crack, like a starter gun going off. A huge commotion followed,
branches shaking and snapping as if the tree was suddenly full of
riotous monkeys.