Suicide Forest (38 page)

He drew the cut across his belly, left to
right, then down in a diagonal, forming a bleeding 7. He started to
slice left to right again, in what would create a Z, but he
faltered. His hands were shaking badly, his face was screwed up in
agony, and he didn’t seem able to complete the cut.

Blood gushed from the wound as he keeled
forward—

Akira brought down his sword across the back
of Hiroshi’s neck, ending his suffering by decapitation.

No, I realized—
near
decapitation, for
he’d left a slight band of flesh between the head and body, so
Hiroshi’s head hung against his chest, as if embraced in his
hands.

Akira walked around the lifeless body and
crouched next to me. His face and neck were leathery, almost scaly,
and wind-creased. His mouth was a severe, unimpressed line, pulled
down at the corners. His eyes were thin and black and widely set.
They stared at me with imperial indifference, as if I were a lowly
peasant, scum of the earth, meaningless to him.

He drew the blade of his sword along my
shirt, cleaning the blood from it.

Then he stood and went to the fireplace,
pierced a burning log with the blade, and set it on the table,
where the flames immediately began to feed off the cotton
tablecloth.

Without another look in my direction, he
left through the front door.

I faded back into the depths of
darkness.

The
Harvest Fair at
the Wisconsin State Fairground was an annual event held during the
last weekend of September. Gary and I had gone every year as kids,
stuffing our faces with cotton candy and caramel apples and running
from one activity to the next. My favorite had always been the
fishing pond, where you had a rod with a magnetic hook to pick up
prizes floating in the plastic tub.

Now, however, it was nighttime and the
fairground was empty as Gary and I made our way down Main
Street.

“I always loved this place,” Gary said as we
passed a scattering of abandoned kiddie tractors and bales of
hay.

“Me too,” I said. “We got our pumpkins here
for Halloween.”

“Right over there, bud,” he said, pointing
to a sprawling pumpkin patch. He waded into it, picked out a
pumpkin, and returned to me. “Not bad, hey?”

The pumpkin was a deep orange, evenly
ribbed, and perfectly round. Gary always had a knack for finding
the best specimens to carve into jack-o-lanterns. I tended to go
for the biggest ones I could find, which were often yellowish, the
skin bumpy and indented.

“It’s perfect, Gare,” I said.

He nodded, though he seemed melancholy. “I
was looking forward to taking Lisa here when she got older. You
think Cher will take her?”

“I don’t know. They’re in Chicago now.”

“With that new guy, right?”

I nodded.

He sighed. “I should never have done
it.”

I looked at him. “Done what, Gare?”

“Stopped to help the punk who shot me. Or I
should have just given him my wallet. If I had, I’d still be
around. I’d be able to take Lisa to the fair. One decision, bud,
that’s all it takes, one decision, and everything can change.”

“I wish you’d just given him your wallet
too.”

“But you never know. That’s the catch. You
never know what that decision is going to lead to. Hell, how could
you have known what you were getting yourself into?”

“You mean Suicide Forest?”

“There’s something I need you to do,
bud.”

“Sure, Gare. What is it? I’ll do anything
for you.”

“I need you to wake up.”

“Wake up?”

“If you don’t wake up, you’re going to die.
Can’t you feel the fire?”

Although the night surrounding us was quiet
and black, it was filled with a pulsating heat I hadn’t noticed
moments before.

“Yeah, I can feel it,” I said.

“You have to get out.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to. You have to help Mel.”

Mel!
“Is she in the fire too?” I
asked urgently.

We arrived at the intersection with
Grandstand Avenue.

Gary patted me on the shoulder and said, “I
gotta go, bud.” He started toward the field that stretched away
before us.

“Gare! Wait!”

“Remember what you have to do.”

“I’ll come with you!”

“Save Mel…”

“I can’t! I don’t know how!”

But then he was gone.

Suddenly the fairground burst into flames
all around me, the heat became a furnace, sucking all the oxygen
out of the air—

I
opened my eyes
again. It was hot, so hot, and smoky, the smoke filling my nose
with its acrid stench. I could barely see, but I could hear the
fire, licking and whooshing. I coughed and sucked back dry,
sauna-like air.

I was lying on my back. I tried to roll onto
my side and succeeded on the second attempt. Everything came back
then.

Hiroshi committing
hara-kiri
.

Akira setting the cabin on fire.

Where was Mel?

Smoke was everywhere, white and thick,
everywhere except for down here, a foot or two off the floor.
Stop, drop, and roll
, I remembered one of my elementary
school teachers telling my class during a fire drill. It wasn’t
bullshit after all.

Then I heard someone calling Mel’s name,
then my own. I crawled in a clumsy circle, searching for Mel, my
eyes stinging, watering.

I bumped something heavy and round. It was
Hiroshi’s head. The band of skin that had connected it to his body
had either torn or melted.

His eyes stared up at me, dull and
unseeing.

I banged it away and collapsed forward in a
coughing fit.

I’m going to die,
I was thinking,
I’m not going to be able to help Mel, I’m going to burn to death
in this cabin
—

Someone began dragging me.

They had me by the back of my shirt collar,
so the neck line strangled me. I tried turning my head, to see who
it was, but I couldn’t seem to do that.

The heat vanished. A cool blackness washed
over me. I thought I had died, this was death and it wasn’t so bad,
before realizing I was outside.

Whoever had rescued me dropped to the ground
and began coughing up a lung. I was coughing just as hard, my
throat stripped raw.

When this finally ended, which for a while I
didn’t believe it would, I extended an arm. A hand gripped mine.
The person was talking to me, shaking me.

My vision focused, and I saw John Scott
looming over me.

“
Where is she, dude? Where’s Mel? Is she
in there?
”

I opened my mouth, but broke into another
coughing fit.

He lurched to his feet with the aid of some
makeshift crutch and limped back into the burning cabin.

I
was getting to my
knees when John Scott stumbled drunkenly through the front door of
the cabin. He made it only a few steps before collapsing to the
ground.

I swayed lightheadedly over to him, grabbed
him by the arms, and pulled him farther into the trees, out of
danger.

I started back toward the cabin, but he
gripped my leg.

“She’s not in there,” he rasped.

“There’s a bedroom—”

“I checked. Everywhere. She’s not
there.”

I stared at the cabin. Smoke billowed out of
the broken window and open door. Behind that, thinly veiled, pulsed
an orange furnace.

Then, dramatically, flames shot up the door
frame, outlining it like a lion tamer’s fiery hoop.

It would be suicide to go back inside. And I
was pretty sure John Scott was right. Mel wasn’t in there. She had
been taken. She was with Nina now.

John Scott sat up, coughing into his hand.
Soot covered his face, leaving only his eyeballs untouched.

“She’s alive,” I told him.

He wiped his forearm across his mouth,
streaking the ash. “Where?”

“I don’t know.” I slumped to the ground. “He
took her.”

“Who took her?”

“Akira.”

“Fuck, Ethos, talk some sense!” The outburst
set off a paroxysm of more body-wracking coughs.

“The guy who killed Tomo and Ben,” I said
when he’d caught his breath.

John Scott hawked and spat. “I saw a body in
the cabin.”

“That’s not him.”

I explained everything as succinctly as I
could.

“Fuck me,” he said. Then: “We have to find
them.”

But he didn’t say anything more. He
understood as well as I did.

They were long gone.

My
eyebrows had
been singed away, as well as the hair on my arms. The skin beneath
the soot was pink and pig-smooth. It continued to hurt to breathe,
making me wonder if I had some sort of pulmonary swelling. My head
throbbed from where I was struck with what I believe must have been
a thrown rock, but it was nothing to the pain in my back and arm,
both of which were bleeding freely. Nevertheless, I inventoried all
of this with distracted interest. I couldn’t stop thinking about
Mel: where she was right now, what she might be going through, both
physically and emotionally.

When some of my strength returned, I
searched for the well Hiroshi had drawn water from. I found it not
far behind the burning cabin. I rotated a crude wooden crank to
retrieve a bucketful of water. My thirst had been slated earlier,
but now it was back, as brutal as ever. I drank greedily, then
raised another bucketful, untied the rope from the metal handle,
and carried it to John Scott.

I prayed the police would bring dogs with
them, like Mel had suggested they might. Because that was our only
hope of finding Mel and Nina, wasn’t it? I could lead the police
back to our camp. They could help Neil, and I could give the dogs
an article of Mel’s clothing, the sweater she’d been sleeping in,
or her underwear. She hadn’t showered for two days. Her trail would
be strong.

“Hey,” I said to John Scott.

We were sitting side by side, staring at the
blazing cabin.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah?”

“You saved my life.”

“My mistake.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am too. I was searching for Mel.”

I looked at him. A smile ghosted his lips,
though it didn’t reach his eyes, which were distant.

“You still saved me.”

“You would have done the same.”

Would I have? I wondered. I hoped I would
have.

“How did you find us?” I asked.

“I heard you guys shouting and screaming and
shit. Mostly Mel and Nina, but I think I heard you too.”

I could barely recall the ambush in the
forest. It was as if I had been so focused on the immediate threats
I’d ignored all the details, or hadn’t had the time to store them
properly.

“You can walk okay with that?” I nodded at
the forked branch-cum-crutch near his feet.

“Not easily.”

“You followed the crosses we left?”

“Until they stopped.”

“That’s when we ran.”

“I was lost for a bit, but Mel started
screaming again. I ended up here.”

A support beam collapsed inside the burning
cabin, causing a large portion of the roof to fold in upon itself
with a thunderous crack.

I remembered the shōchū in my pocket. I
withdrew it, uncapped it, and took a long belt. I passed it to John
Scott. “For your leg—and the pain.”

He accepted the bottle and downed a large
mouthful.

He said, “Mel told me about you, you
know.”

“Yeah?”

“Your brother. He was shot.”

I didn’t reply.

“That sucks.” A pause. “My older bro died
too.”

I looked at him.

“Both him and his wife. Did Mel tell you
that?”

I shook my head.

“They were walking down a street in
Charlotte. We grew up in Raleigh, but he moved there for work. They
were downtown. It was a windy day. A wall blew over and killed
them.”

“A wall?”

He took another swig of the booze. “A
fucking shitty brick thing along a footpath. There were cracks in
the bottom of it. It just blew over. Crushed them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It happened eight years ago. He was a lot
older than me. Still, it changes you. It makes you…hesitant.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“At least for a while anyway.”

“What do you mean ‘hesitant?’”

“About life. The choices you make.”

“What kind of choices?”

“Life choices. The big ones.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Because you haven’t made any yet.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Mel’s a good girl. You two are good
together.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Don’t let her get away,” he said.

“I’m not planning on it,” I said
tightly.

“That’s the thing, dude. You’re not planning
anything. You’ve been together for, what, four years? Why haven’t
you proposed to her?”

“I’m not ready.”

“Do you love her?”

Was I really talking to John Scott about
this?

“Do you, dude?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Just because you lost your bro doesn’t mean
you’re going to lose Mel.”

“I don’t think that.”

“Yeah, you do. I know. I’ve been there. Some
people, after losing someone, they become scared of being alone.
They get clingy, settle down, try to hold onto everything in their
life. Others, like you, like me, we’re the opposite. We become
scared of getting close. We get indifferent toward life. We push
people away. We figure we can’t get hurt again if there’s no one
else close to lose.”

I’ve heard all this pop psychology before,
but hearing it again now, after everything I’d been through in this
forest, with Mel potentially lost from me forever, I realized how
true it was.

I’ve been pushing Mel away, or at least a
life with her away. I’ve been so focused on the future, so scared
of what might or might not happen, I’ve failed to live in the
present and appreciate what I had now—