Suicide Forest (34 page)

Yes
, I thought.
That’s exactly
what we’ll do
. This was an emergency, martial law declared,
fuck civil rights.

By five o’clock the sun had begun to set
behind the veil of clouds, and what little light the forest allowed
quickly faded to darkness. I guessed we had traveled two miles
already—two miles in one hour. It wouldn’t win any races, but it
was acceptable given the obstacle-laden terrain. Still, if my
calculations were even somewhat accurate, this left us with
possibly one more mile to go. This worried me, because soon we
would be walking blind. What if we had strayed off course? What if
the campfire had been put out? What then? We would no longer have a
beacon to home in on. We would have to turn back and return to John
Scott and Neil with nothing to show for our efforts except a wasted
few hours.

I banished these thoughts. We had made our
decision, we had to stand by it, and we would succeed.

We had to succeed.

I picked up a large stick, then a second
smaller one. I knelt and placed another X on the ground. Then I
turned around and waited for Nina and Mel to catch up. They trudged
up to me, panting.

“We can’t be too far away now,” I said.

“How much longer do you think?” Mel
asked.

“Less than a mile. It will likely be dark
before we reach the campfire. But that will work to our advantage.
We’ll be more difficult to detect while the fire will be easier to
see.”

“I am so thirsty,” Nina said.

“There might water there,” I said. “But
listen, we’re going to have to keep quiet from here on in. Try to
tread lightly. Sound carries.”

“So we just sneak up on him?” Mel asked.

“When we get close enough to see his setup,
we’ll make the call. If he’s sitting at his fire, we might have to
wait until he returns to his tent so we can corner him there.”

“How will we know if he’s the killer?”

“Hopefully we’ll be able to tell.”

“That’s it? That’s the plan?” Mel said
doubtfully.

“We’ll question him. Read it on his
face.”

“He might be a good actor.”

“If he’s just some regular guy, he would
have no reason not to lend us a phone.”

“And if he refuses?”

“Then it’s probably the killer, and I’ll
search him. You two just make sure he doesn’t make a break for it.
Got it?”

They nodded tentatively, and we continued
on. The shadows lengthened and thickened, layer upon layer, playing
tricks with my eyes again. Then, in the span of minutes, the
shadows bled together into an undivided stretch of night. I could
barely see a few feet in front of me. I didn’t want to turn on the
flashlight for fear of giving away our approach, but we didn’t have
a choice.

I took it from my pocket and flicked it
on.

Even with the light the dense vegetation
kept us moving at a snail’s pace, but I refused the impulse to
press recklessly ahead. Our footsteps already seemed extra loud in
the darkness, and I once more cautioned Mel and Nina to try to make
less noise.

Suddenly Nina said, “What’s that? Over
there.”

I swung the beam back to where it had been a
moment before.

“See it?”

“See what?” I said quietly.

She pointed. After a moment I thought I
could make out flowers marking what appeared to be another
gravesite. It was perhaps twenty feet away.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “We need to
keep going.”

“Wait—I think there’s a bottle,” Mel said.
“What if it contains water?”

The temptation was too great to pass up and
we detoured—but not before placing another marker. We weren’t
taking any chances with wandering off target.

It turned out Mel was right: there was a
bottle. Unfortunately it was filled not with water but shōchū.
Alongside the dried and long-dead flowers was a silver-framed
photograph of a young couple in their mid-thirties. They were both
wearing eyeglasses, both smiling, both seemingly in love and happy
about their futures together.

There were no scattered personal belongings,
and I assumed what had once littered the ground had been cleaned up
by the surviving spouse in the picture. He or she must have asked
whoever discovered the body to guide them back so they could leave
the memorial, just as family members and friends leave roadside
crosses, handwritten signs, or personal mementos to commemorate the
site where a loved one perished in a car accident.

Then again, I thought somberly, maybe it was
a double suicide.

I took the shōchū and stuck it in my pocket,
explaining that we could use it to sterilize John Scott’s wounds
later.

We made our way back to the path—but
couldn’t find the marker.

I was sure I was standing on the spot where
I had placed it.

“Where’s the cross?” I said.

Mel and Nina studied the ground in
confusion.

“I don’t see it,” Mel said.

“It couldn’t just disappear,” I said.

“Are you sure you placed one here?”

“One hundred percent.”

From somewhere in the darkness a branch
cracked.

“Did you hear that?” Mel whispered.

I nodded, realized she couldn’t see me, and
said, “Yeah.” I swung the flashlight in the direction of the noise.
There was nothing there.

“What was it?” Nina said.

“Just an animal,” I told them. “Come
on.”

We continued onward, but I was suddenly
feeling extremely vulnerable. What if we were not the hunters, as
we imagined we were, but still the hunted? What if the killer had
been watching us the entire time we climbed the tree? What if he’d
slaughtered Neil and John Scott after we’d left and now had come
for us?

Stop it
, I told myself.
Stop
jumping to conclusions. It’s just some nocturnal rodent, a wood
mouse or
—

Another crack.

I froze. So did Mel and Nina.

Then Nina said in a skeletal hiss: “That was
a footstep.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I told her.

“Yes, it was!”

My heart was pounding, the hand holding the
flashlight sweating.

Get a grip, Ethan. Get a grip. There are
three of us. We have spears. We can take the fucker down. Nothing’s
changed. We’re still in control
.

I directed the flashlight’s white beam
toward where the noise had originated.

Nothing but ghostly trees.

“Told you,” I said.

“Shhh,” Mel said.

A loud crack-snap on the other side of
us.

I spun around, jerking the beam with me. The
light danced in and out of the trees, almost giving the branches
and leaves the illusion of movement.

Nina screamed.

“
What?
” I said. “What is it?”

Nina continued to scream.

I had no idea what was going on, but I was
filled with crazed terror.
Something
was happening.
Something bad.

What had Nina seen?

“Nina!” I said. “Quiet!”

She clamped her mouth closed.

“What is it?” Mel asked. “What did you
see?”

Nina merely stared at the trees,
unresponsive.
Scared to death
came to mind.

Was she about to keel over in cardiac
arrest?

Was she injured?

I turned the light on her, half expecting to
see a bloody arrow protruding from her chest. She appeared
physically okay.

“There!” Mel hissed, pointing into the
darkness.

I aimed the flashlight. “Where?”

“I saw something move—there!”

I followed her finger, sweeping the
flashlight back and forth with quick, jumpy movements. “What was
it, Mel? What did you see?”

“I don’t know!”

Movement behind us. We all whirled
around.

Mel inhaled sharply. Nina croaked. I
couldn’t breathe.

I felt as if I had stepped into a waking
nightmare, a world where the impossible was possible. Whatever
inner barrier my adult mind had erected to separate reality from
fantasy vanished in a heartbeat, and through it flooded a knowledge
so dark and cold and inconceivable it left me numb and full of a
funereal bleakness.

Illuminated in the white light was a pale,
androgynous face peeking out from behind a tree trunk, the
onyx-black eyes staring at us with fiendish indifference. Long
black hair fell past the shoulders and blended with the night. The
thin mouth curled into a smile.

Mel screamed. Nina screamed. I screamed.

This is what it’s like to go crazy
, I
was thinking, only it wasn’t me thinking this, couldn’t be, because
the voice was far too calm to belong to me.
This is how it
happens, all at once. Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt. It will be over
soon enough
.

I could almost feel my sanity tearing away
from my body, fleeing from this horror even when I couldn’t
move.

—
you’re right, it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t
hurt at all—

I took a step forward. I had to. I was
sinking into oblivion and I had to move or I was lost. We were no
longer screaming, I realized. My ears were ringing, and now I was
thinking,
Why are we just standing here? We have to run, get
away, before it gets one of us!

I took another step, impossibly slow, my leg
as heavy as concrete—

Nina yelped.

I spun toward her just in time to see her
vanish into the thick vegetation. She didn’t run. She was dragged
or carried away. It happened so fast all I glimpsed was a flash of
gray and then—nothing. She was gone.

“Nina!” I shouted.

The only reply was the rustle of the foliage
as she was taken deeper into the forest.

“
What was that?
” Mel blurted from
beside me, her voice cracking on
that
. “What happened to
Nina?
What was that?
Is she
dead
?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“It was a ghost!”

Was it? I wondered. Could it have been—?

No. Whatever it was had shape and
substance.

I
heard
it.

So it was real. It was a person. It had to
be.

“Ethan…” Mel moaned. She had turned away
from me. I turned too—it seemed incredibly difficult to do even
that—and played the flashlight beam amongst the wraithlike trees. I
couldn’t see anything, but I heard more movement. The whoosh of
leaves, the rustle of saplings. The noises seemed to be coming from
all around us.

Then I spotted a gray-clad form. It slipped
from one tree trunk to the next incredibly fast. As I tried to
follow its movement, I caught a glimpse of another, and another,
each visible for only a moment before melting back into the
blackness.

There were several of them out there.

And they had us surrounded.

“What do you want?” I said in a loud,
challenging voice as I turned in a tight circle, searching the
trees. Mel was glued to my back, moving with me.

“My foressssttttt,” a gravelly voice floated
from the dark.

I stiffened.
Was that the same voice I
heard on my phone two nights ago?
I was sure it was. But how
could these people have gotten my number? Could they have somehow
retrieved Mel’s phone from the crevice? My number would have been
at the top of the call log list. So had they been following us even
then? Had they been watching Nina and me smoke the joint?

Had they watched me answer the phone?

“
You in my forrrreessssstttttt
.”

Closer? Farther?

I couldn’t tell.

“We’re leaving,” I said. “Okay? We’re
leaving.”

“
You in my foresssstttt. You
dieeeeeeeee
.”

Finally I spied the speaker. He was perhaps
twenty feet away. A spectral figure standing tall between two
trees. In his hand a blade glinted sharply.

Mel, presumably seeing this too, tugged me
so hard I almost fell over backward.

“Run,” I instructed her under my breath.
“Don’t stop.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll be right behind you—now go!”

I heard her take off. I remained facing the
speaker, wanting to give her a head start.

Then I turned and fled as well.

I
only made it
two-dozen feet before an icy pain spread throughout my back. I
staggered to my knees, regained my feet clumsily, and continued
forward, all the while reaching over my shoulder for the dagger I
knew was stuck in my back.

My fingers touched the handle. It was below
my left shoulder bone. The blade had gone straight through Mel’s
backpack, which had likely protected me somewhat. I gripped the
handle tightly and yanked hard. I grunted and almost blacked out,
but the jolt lasted for only a moment.

I knew I couldn’t keep running. If I did, I
would get another dagger in the back. I whirled about, holding the
bloody weapon high in front of me.

Three pursuers were directly behind me. They
appeared almost identical to one another. Gray robes, black eyes,
black hair falling in tangles around ephemeral faces. I was shocked
to discover they were young, teenagers only, though they were lean
and muscular and didn’t appear to have an ounce of fat shared
between them.

They stopped now, as if we were playing a
life-or-death game of Red Light Green Light.

Then, without a word, they began spreading
out, slinking silently from tree to tree, apparently intent on
flanking me. I shone the flashlight from one to the other,
following their progress, not wanting them to get out of my direct
field of vision.

“Stop!” I shouted, needing to buy some
time.

Amazingly they did.

“Do you speak English?”

They stared at me, their pale faces almost
glowing in the harsh beam of the flashlight. They didn’t seem fazed
in the least that I was bigger than them, or that I was holding a
bloody dagger in my hand and had several spears poking from my
backpack, within quick reach.