Ancient Illusions

by Joanne Pence

  Lady Nakamura insisted Michael and Ceinwen join her for a simple tempura dinner. Afterward, they talked to the retainers and maids in the Nakamura estate to see if any of them ever saw or overheard anything that might give any clue as to where Seiji and Rachel might have gone—and none had. They then returned to the Hearn house.

  It was evening, and they sat by the koi pond as the sun set.

  “Why do you stare at the pond so intensely, Michael?” Ceinwen asked. “I’ve seen you do that a number of times.”

  He lifted his gaze. “It’s nothing. Sometimes, the water forms an interesting pattern. But it’s nothing.”

  Ceinwen waited for Michael to bring up Seiji and Rachel, but when he didn’t, she asked, “What do you think?” She didn’t have to say about what.

  “If the two were as unhappy as Lady Nakamura believes, it’s probably because they reached the end of the Snow Woman story and learned she leaves Taishi and their children because he breaks a promise to her. In the story, it’s very sad.”

  “That’s the end? She just leaves him?”

  “Actually, she had threatened to kill him if he broke his promise, but because she fell in love with him, she spared his life. Still things couldn’t continue as they had, and she was the one who had to disappear.”

  Ceinwen looked appalled.

  “It sounds as if they wanted to somehow overcome the separation that was forced on them by the Snow Woman tale,” Michael said. “But I don’t know how they could have done it.”

  Ceinwen thought a moment. “You’ve said that every one of Rachel’s dreams came from a Lafcadio Hearn story. Maybe we need to find out where his stories went next.”

  Michael looked intrigued. “You may be right. I like it. I know Snow Woman was a story in Kwaidan which was published in the year of Hearn’s death. He died of a sudden heart attack so that could mean that whatever he was working on next is among his unpublished papers.”

  “If such papers still exist,” Ceinwen said.

  “They do, and I have a bunch of them here. If we find nothing, we can try the Hearn museum in Matsue.”

  She was surprised. “How did you get your hands on Hearn’s unpublished writings?”

  His lips pursed. “My interest in Hearn wasn’t altogether by chance. When I was visiting my father, I discovered the papers, and that Hearn was very likely a relative.”

  “Your father …” She thought about the diary she’d read. “So your parents are still alive? And do you visit them often?”

  “Only my father is. My mother died when I was very young. And it was during the first visit I’d paid to my father in many years that I found those papers.”

  She drew in her breath, wanting to ask what had happened to Jane, but not daring to. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  “These things happen in families.”

  “Yes,” she said as she pieced together all he had told her. “So, if I have this correct, you may have some genetic connection to Lafcadio Hearn. Rachel has some odd connection to you. And your father was the keeper of all Hearn’s books and papers. That’s bizarre.”

  Michael nodded. “That’s one word for it.”

  Chapter 47

  Later that night, seated on pillows by a kerosene lamp in the tatami room, Michael and Ceinwen went through Hearn’s papers. The only fiction was a bare-bones draft of a story that took place in a haunted forest, a forest filled with ghosts of suicide victims. In it, a ronin—a samurai without a daimyo master—traveled with his fellow ronin to a forest known as a place for suicides and filled with ghosts of the dead. They planned to kill themselves because they had failed to protect their master. But when they reached it, the daimyo appeared before them. He was a ghost and wanted revenge on his enemy—the usurper and his family—who had killed him and took over his fiefdom. The ghost then possessed the ronin, but at that point the story abruptly stopped.

  “This story is genuinely creepy,” Ceinwen said after they had both finished reading it.

  Michael paced, lost in thought.

  “It would have been a hell of a story if Hearn had lived to tell it,” Ceinwen said. “A forest that’s home to ghosts of the dead. Wow. But does that fit with the demons? I don’t think so.”

  “I disagree.” Michael cast bleak eyes her way. “It could be the next phase in the journey of Taishi and O-Yuki.”

  “A suicide forest?” Ceinwen was appalled. “I hope they aren’t thinking along those lines. I’ll go along with the idea that the two are possessed, but that means none of the things happening around them are real. We’ve got to be sure they understand that.”

  “We can try, but it sounds as if Rachel and Seiji believed it was real,” Michael said. “And what are beliefs and feelings anyway, but nebulous things?”

  “It’s up to us to show them they’re wrong,” Ceinwen cried. “If you’re right, we’ve got to find them as quickly as possible.”

  Michael agreed. “We need to find the forest Hearn was talking about.”

  “You know, a few years back, I saw a horror film about a forest in Japan,” Ceinwen said. “Did you see it?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you scholarly types get out at all?”

  “Obviously not enough to watch Japanese horror films, besides Kwaidan, of course,” Michael said.

  “I'll have to fix that.” Ceinwen’s mouth wrinkled as she continued to page through Hearn’s papers. “Who would have thought that something written over a hundred years ago could affect a young American girl now?”

  She stopped and stared at a page, her face turning ashen as she read. “Oh, no. Michael, read this. Now, I know we have no time to waste.”

  She handed him one of Hearn’s studies on the Japanese character:

  * * *

  Falling in love at first sight is less common in Japan than in the West … Love suicides, on the other hand, are not infrequent….

  The suicide is not the result of a blind, quick frenzy of pain. It is not only cool and methodical: it is sacramental. It involves a marriage of which the certificate is death. The twain pledge themselves to each other in the presence of the gods, write their farewell letters, and die. No pledge can be more profoundly sacred than this.

  Chapter 48

  Early the next morning, Michael and Ceinwen visited Lady Nakamura and asked if she knew a place called a “suicide forest” in the area. She paled and nodded, then rushed off. A short while later she was back with a map showing an area called “Aokigahara.” It was about an hour’s drive deeper into the mountains. Soon after, several servants appeared carrying a supply of food, water, and some light camping gear. They loaded everything into Michael’s car and Lady Nakamura bowed deeply, wishing them good fortune as they set off.

  They were surprised to find that the forest had a specific entry point that wasn’t some remote, isolated spot, but had a gift shop, food, drinks, and a parking lot filled with cars.

  “This is getting stranger every minute,” Michael said as he parked.

  “I can’t imagine anyone committing suicide around so many people.” Ceinwen got out of the rental and lifted the backpack to her shoulders. “Maybe the Hearn writings caused us to overreact.”

  “A lot has changed in the past hundred years,” Michael said.

  Ceinwen noticed that some cars had amassed quite a bit of debris in the slot where the windshield wipers were. The leaves and grit had piled up onto the windshields, as if the cars had been parked there a while. As she wondered why anyone would leave a car here that long, an answer to the question came to her, causing a chill along her spine. She hurried to Michael’s side, refusing to let herself think more about it.

  They saw a yakisoba stand and decided to eat before going into the forest. Ceinwen couldn’t help but flash back to one of Rachel’s nightmares. Fortunately, this soba seller had a face.

  At the stand, Ceinwen picked up a pamphlet about the forest. She read it as they ate. “The forest is called ‘sea of trees’ or jukai,” she sai
d as she perused the information, “because the trees are so thick they look like a sea. It’s around fourteen square miles. That sounds huge. Anyway, the forest was created only a thousand or so years ago after a nearby volcano erupted.”

  He frowned. “That means it has a lot of lava on the ground. It’ll interfere with compass readings and even GPS.”

  Ceinwen read aloud, “In the 19th century, people practiced what they called ubasute, which was taking a sick or old relative into the forest and leaving them to starve to death. Sheesh. That’s not good. They say their ghosts haunt the forest to this day.” She shuddered. “It sounds like assisted suicide, where the ‘assistance’ was not necessarily requested.”

  “A good reason for a haunting,” Michael added, looking bemused at Ceinwen’s reaction to the area’s history.

  “Oh my! Listen to this,” she said. “In the 1960s, a book called Tower of Waves by Seichō Matsumoto ended with a couple that couldn’t stay together deciding to commit suicide inside this forest. It was a romantic, popular book, and brought unhappy couples here to kill themselves.”

  “Who said romance is dead?”

  Ceinwen scowled at him before continuing. “When the suicides rose to over two a week in 2003, the government stopped reporting the number, feeling the suicides were being sensationalized. However, many bodies have not been found to this day, and many mysteries surrounding the forest remain unsolved. My God, that’s disgusting.” She put the pamphlet down. “Are we sure we want to go in there?”

  Despite the gloomy statistics, as they approached the forest, Ceinwen felt a surge of hope about finding Seiji and Rachel and getting them out of there safely. The forest was green and lush, and she remarked on its beauty as they followed the foot path to the entry point. A crowd of people were entering at the same time, and many of them were talking and laughing.

  Once inside, however, the crowd turned quiet. Lining the pathway were pairs of shoes—men’s and women’s—looking as if they were waiting for their owners to come and get them. But judging from the discoloration and conditions of the shoes, the owners never did.

  Everyone hurried past the sad and lengthy display.

  The abandoned shoes cast a pall as Michael and Ceinwen followed the crowd deeper into the forest. They hadn’t gone far when they saw a large sign on the side of the trail. It was written only in Japanese, which was rare in Japan, where almost every tourist spot included an English translation.

  Ceinwen hushed her voice. “I read somewhere in the brochure that signs in the forest tell people not to kill themselves and to think of those they’ll be leaving behind. I suspect that’s one such sign.”

  Michael quickened his step, and they hurried past it.

  After about twenty minutes, the trail was still wide and well-trodden, but the crowd had thinned. As they continued, the trees grew thicker, blocked the sunlight, and made the air chilly.

  They stopped at a spot with a rope strung across it. A “No Entry” sign hung from the rope.

  “We need to leave the main path,” Michael said. “In there is most likely where we’ll find Rachel and Seiji, if they’re here.”

  Ceinwen shuddered as she stepped over the rope. The trail soon vanished.

  They walked single-file, eying the ground with each step. Dried volcanic magma was so hard the tree roots couldn’t bore into it and lay twisted above the ground. The shallow roots caused many trees to topple, creating their own kind of hazard. Leaves and vines many inches thick covered the ground, and more than once Ceinwen took a step thinking the ground was solid, and stepped into a hole.

  Near the forest entrance, birds chirped and sang, and they heard ripples from mountain streams. But as they went deeper, the thick canopy of trees darkened the land, and all was silent except for the crunch of leaves with each step they took.

  “What’s that?” Ceinwen said, pointing at something pink and yellow. “Over there.”

  They approached to see a small bouquet, now wilted, propped up against a tree. A box of chocolates lay beside it. “Someone must have died here.” Michael’s words were scarcely more than a whisper.

  She could feel the sadness in the air. Their expressions grim, they continued on.

  Michael checked his cell phone. “As expected, there’s no cell or GPS out here.” He took off his backpack and reached for his compass. It spun, never settling on magnetic north. “And no compass. We’ll need to find a spot where there isn’t much lava to get our true bearings.”

  “Do you think there are many such spots?” Ceinwen asked.

  Michael swallowed. “Probably not.”

  “As much as we can, we keep going straight,” Michael said as they walked again. “As long as we don’t let ourselves go in circles, we’ll be all right.”

  A few steps further, they saw a blue tape tied to a tree and then stretched out and tied to a second tree. “What’s that?” Ceinwen asked.

  “It’s a smart way to keep from getting lost if you don’t intend to go very far,” Michael said. “Whoever did it wanted a means to find his or her way back. After a while, all these trees look the same, and it’s easy to get turned around.”

  “They already all look the same,” Ceinwen admitted.

  “The tape is a good idea,” Michael said. “We should have brought some, but since we didn’t …”

  He cut the tape, but left the piece tied onto the tree. He took hold of the loose end and gathered it as he followed it to the second tree. There, he tied some tape to the trunk, and gathered tape as they continued on to the third tree.

  “If we keep this up, will have enough tape to help us mark our own route,” he explained.

  "Good!" Ceinwen exclaimed.

  But when they reached the last strand of tape tied to a tree, they found a rope hanging from a limb. The end of the rope was frayed as if someone had cut it.

  They met each other’s eyes and silently searched through the nearby leaves. It didn’t take long to find what they had feared: a noose.

  Ceinwen took a shuddering breath. “I guess whoever strung the tape didn’t use it to find his way back, but as a means for others to find him.” She gazed up at the tree, contemplating the level of despair it would take to kill oneself that way.

  “Let’s keep going,” Michael said, his expression troubled.

  As the forest grew even darker, they knew it was time to make camp. It was an eerie, unsettling place to sleep.

  With the aluminum poles, stakes, and clips, they set up the lightweight tent Lady Nakamura had given them, and then put their bedrolls in it, side by side. They slept with their arms intertwined, feeling better inside the enclosure than outside in the forbidding forest.

  Chapter 49

  Michael was cooking biscuits when a yawning Ceinwen joined him by the campfire.

  “Hey, sleepyhead. I didn’t hear you stir all night,” he said.

  “I slept soundly despite my dreams. They were weird.”

  “I had the same problem,” Michael poured her some coffee. Just then, they heard a bone-chilling scream far in the distance. They couldn’t tell which direction it came from, or if it was human, bird, or animal.

  They remained still, but the sound didn’t come again.

  “This really is the forest primeval,” Ceinwen said.

  “Ah, yes, ‘Evangeline,’” Michael said. “It was a favorite of my mother’s:

  This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

  Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight…”

  “Yes. A sad poem, that one is. It’s as if Longfellow knew this place,” Ceinwen said. She rubbed her arms to ward off the cold.

  After eating, they started out again in the direction they believed would lead them deeper into the forest.

  They saw no trail, so they tried to walk in a straight line. But felled trees, high roots, and the holes of burrowing animals, forced them to make turns. Michael continued to use the blue tape, tying it to trees to mark
the trail.

  They found a tent and sleeping bag covered with leaves and dirt as if they had been abandoned for some time. Michael was searching for a clue as to who they might have belonged to when he noticed a woman wearing a white kimono walking among the trees. “Wait! Chotto matte!” He’d been asked to “wait” often enough by Lady Nakamura that the expression came to him now.

  He ran after her, but soon realized she had disappeared. He stopped and waited for Ceinwen to catch up to him. “Did you see her?”

  “Just an instant,” Ceinwen said. “All in white—like a bride.”

  “White is the traditional color of death in Japan,” Michael said.

  “We should go back to the abandoned tent and mark the trail,” Ceinwen said.

  They returned in the direction they had come.

  “We should be able to see the tent by now,” Michael said after a while.

  “Maybe we ran faster than we thought we had,” Ceinwen suggested.

  “If we were just a bit off as we backtracked,” Michael pointed out, “we’d miss it. And the farther we go, the more distant from the tent we’ll be. We’d better mark a new trail from here.”

  “Wherever here is.”

  They continued on and found a tree with a piece of paper nailed to it. It was written in a stylized Japanese script. “I suspect it’s a suicide note,” Ceinwen murmured. “This forest is truly getting on my nerves. What a horrid place!”

  Michael agreed. It was almost making him physically ill. He took a step back from the tree and heard a “snap.” He pushed back a few dried leaves and found a woman’s comb—a fancy type worn as a hair ornament. His footstep had broken it in half. He stared at it, saying nothing.

  “How sad,” Ceinwen whispered.

  “It reminds me of the haiku I once read,” Michael murmured, then quoted: