by Jeremy Bates
“Careful!” I warned them.
“Oh boy,” Neil said.
“Oh shit!” Tomo said. “The forest fucking eat her.”
“Grab my legs,” I told them, “so I don’t fall in.”
A moment later I felt hands around my ankles.
“Don’t let go.”
“I don’t, man,” Tomo said.
“Mel,” I said, doing my best to affect calm, even though I felt like a man on very thin ice. “Put your arms around my neck. I’ll put my arms around you. Then Tomo and Neil will pull us free.”
“I can’t let go.”
“Yeah, you can. The hole’s probably not very deep anyway. Don’t think about it.”
“You saw how big those craters were.”
“This is just a small one. Come on. You can do it.”
She looked so scared I thought she might cry. She shifted, so her right armpit was hooked firmly over the branch, then she reached for me with her other arm and snagged the collar of my jacket. I slipped my arm beneath hers.
“Good,” I encouraged her. “Do the same with the other.”
She followed my instruction and now had both arms around me, her hands locked together behind my neck, while my arms encircled her torso.
We had become one big Barrel of Monkeys chain: Mel, me, Tomo, Neil.
“Tomo, you got me?” I called back to him.
“Yeah, man.”
“Neil, you have Tomo?”
“We’re good, mate. Tell us when.”
“Now.”
They began to pull.
“Wait!” Mel cried. “My hands are slipping!”
“I got you,” I told her.
The rearward movement caused my shirt to ride up my stomach. Sharp sticks scraped my bare flesh. Slowly, however, Mel emerged from the hole, the root she’d been dangling by now beneath her navel. Then I was back on solid ground. I rose to a kneeling position, pulling her toward me. Tomo released my ankles and squatted beside me—
Suddenly the roots Mel had moved onto gave with a wicked crack. She screamed and plunged into the darkness below, her hands clawing at the rocky wall as she disappeared.
I pitched forward in a futile effort to grab her. I likely would have fallen in as well had Neil and Tomo not restrained me.
“Mel!” I shouted.
I listened with sick anticipation for her to strike the ground. I heard nothing.
“Mel!”
Tomo and Neil were yelling also.
“Ethan!” Mel’s voice floated up, high-pitched and uncertain.
I couldn’t tell how far down she was.
Had she broken an ankle on impact? A leg?
At least she was alive.
“Mel, what happened?”
“Help me—Oh God!”
“What’s wrong?” I demanded. “What happened?”
“I’m on a ledge or something. There’s—there’s nothing below me.”
For a moment I had an image of a massive subterranean cavern opening below her, filled with the bones of all the animals—and perhaps suicides—that had fallen down the crevice in the past.
I swallowed my fear and said, “Don’t move, Mel. Don’t do anything. We’re going to get you out.” I turned to Neil. “Get your flashlight.”
He scavenged it from his backpack and aimed it into the yawning hole. Mel had taken most of the roots and deadfall that covered the opening with her when she fell, and we had a clear view down. The shaft didn’t follow a straight line but corkscrewed around the vertical axis, resembling the cardboard core of a paper towel roll that had been twisted and untwisted. Mel was fifteen to twenty feet down, standing on a narrow, debris-covered ledge. Her stomach was pressed against the rock face, her arms spread eagle.
Beyond her the shaft continued into blackness.
“Good Lord,” Neil said.
I clenched my jaw.
“How deep is it?” Mel called, unwilling to move at all to look down.
I pretended not to hear her. “Go find a long vine!” I told Neil and Tomo. I turned back to Mel. “We’re getting a vine, Mel. We’re going to get you out.”
“Hurry, Ethan.”
“Don’t move. Don’t do anything until we get the vine—hold on.”
I joined Neil and Tomo, who were two dozen feet away, tugging at a tangle of lianas, trying to pull them free from the tree trunks and branches that their shoots had latched onto.
I shrugged off my backpack and dug through the top pocket for the Swiss Army knife I had brought. I popped the small blade and began sawing at the woody stem of one liana a few inches above where it was rooted in the ground. The diameter was about twice that of a garden hose. It took me close to a minute to cut through it.
I stood and looked up. The severed liana dangled from a mess of branches and other lianas above. Both Tomo and I tugged at it with all our strength, but we couldn’t free it.
“Shit,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.
Then I saw Neil behind me. He was dumping his tent from its nylon sack. Out fell a polyester flysheet, metal poles, several stakes, and guy ropes.
Guy ropes!
There were four of them, each five or six feet in lengths.
“Yes, Neil!” I said.
“We tie them together,” he said, “I reckon we can reach her easy.”
“Mel! We have rope!” I shouted. “We’ll toss it down in a minute!”
Neil was laying the ends of two ropes parallel to each other.
“The knot has to be strong,” I said, wishing I knew something about knot tying.
“I know what I’m bloody doing.”
I watched as he coiled the working end of one rope twice around the second rope, passing it through the inside of the coils. He repeated this with the second rope in the opposite direction. Then he pulled the free ends to tighten the knots.
“That’s it?” I said skeptically. It looked secure, but it seemed too simple.
“A double fisherman’s. It’s the best way to tie two ropes together.”
He attached the third and fourth segments, stood, and held up the finished length proudly.
“Can you tie the end of it in a loop?” I asked.
“Is there enough rope?”
“I think so. If not, we’ll untie it.”
Neil secured the end in a large bowline knot, then we returned to the hole.
Tomo was kneeling at the edge. He glanced at the rope and said, “Neil, man, you fucking James Bond.”
“Mel!” I called. “We’re going to toss down a rope. You ready?”
“Yes!”
Neil passed me the rope. “There’s nothing close enough to anchor it to.”
I nodded and fed out the slack.
“Can you reach it, Mel?”
“I have it!”
“Slide the loop over your head and under your arms.”
“Is this going to work?”
“One hundred percent.”
The best method would be for her to lean back until she was perpendicular with the wall and rappel upward like a rock climber. But I knew she would never attempt this. Also, if she fell, she would tumble head over heels past the ledge all the way to the bottom, however deep that was.
On the other hand, if Tomo, Neil, and I simply pulled her up hand over hand like you pull a fish out of a hole in the ice, and something catastrophic happened such as the rope breaking, she would hopefully slide back down the wall and land on the ledge again.
This was my thinking anyway.
“You ready, Mel?” I said.
“I don’t think I can do this!”
“You have to. It’s the only way out. Look up at the light. It’s not far. It’s only fifteen feet or so.”
“I can’t do this!”
“Yes, you can. We’ll be pulling you, so you just have to hold on.”
“What if I fall?”
“You won’t. Just hold on tight.”
“What if it snaps?”
“It won’t. It’s strong. I promise you. Don’t think about that. You ready?”
She didn’t answer.
“Mel?”
“Yeah.”
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t let go, no matter what.”
“Okay!”
I looked over my shoulder at Neil and Tomo. Like me, they both had their right arm twisted around the length of rope for extra traction.
We heaved while stepping backward. One step, then another, then another. Mel was incredibly heavy. The polyethylene rope dug into my palms, but I ignored the pain.
It was working.
I pictured Mel, peering at the circle of light overhead, her body swinging back and forth as she inched upward, bouncing against the rock face.
If the rope snapped, or the knots came loose…
I didn’t let myself think of that.
Then, what seemed like a very short time later, Mel’s arms appeared over the lip of the crevice, then her head. Her face was a mask of agony and grit. She was so focused she didn’t glance at us. She was squirming, kicking with her legs.
Then she flopped forward on solid ground. She scrambled the rest of the way to us, as if she feared something was about to leap from the hole and drag her back down. She collided into me, gripping me in a fierce hug, and we collapsed together, panting with exertion.
We remained locked in an embrace for several minutes as our heartbeats returned to normal and our nerves settled down. I enjoyed the warmth of Mel’s body against mine, the softness of it. I breathed in the fresh, lemon-scent of her hair.
“Thank you,” she whispered into my neck.
“It’s okay,” I said, stroking her back reassuringly.
“I was so scared.”
“It’s okay.”
When I couldn’t ignore the stinging in my hands any longer, I kissed Mel on the forehead, shifted out from beneath her, and sat up. The rope had left angry red furrows across both palms. Thankfully, the skin hadn’t torn, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it began to blister at some point. I lifted my shirt. There were a couple thin cuts, but that was all. I barely felt them.
I turned my attention to Mel, who was still lying down, eyes closed.
“You good?” I said, squeezing her thigh.
She opened her eyes and nodded.
“You didn’t twist your ankle or anything?”
“I don’t think so.” She glanced at the crevice. “I didn’t even see it.”
“I didn’t either,” I said. “I must have walked straight past it.”
“You were going so fast. I was just trying to keep up.”
“I know, I…” I shrugged, recalling the pull I’d felt.
“How deep do you think it is?”
“Not that deep,” I lied.
“I dropped my phone.”
“Down the hole?”
“When you were pulling me out. It fell from my pocket. I think I heard it land on the ledge below me.”
“You want to go get it?” I said lightly.
“Funny.”
“We’ll get you a new one in Tokyo. It’s about time you updated anyway.”
Neil cleared his throat. “So what do you reckon we do now?” he asked, as he cleaned the lenses of his glasses with his shirt. “Keep going or head back.”
“Keep going, man,” Tomo said, jumping to his feet. “Why not?”
“Because Mel just went through a bit of an ordeal, Tomo. Perhaps she doesn’t want to continue.”
We all looked at her.
“Let’s keep going,” she said. “I actually feel pretty good.”
In a strange way I did too. Alive and invigorated. Maybe it was adrenaline, but I thought it was more than that. We had been challenged, and we not only triumphed, we did so with a cool head and as a team. Really, with Mel now safe, I felt more proud than anything of our accomplishment.
Suicide Forest zero; Team Tokyo one.
“You heard her,” I said. “Let’s move.”
Mel and I walked side by side holding hands, keeping a careful eye on the ground for anymore crevices. Less than five minutes later we spotted a second ribbon. It was blue and continued parallel to the white one for a bit before gradually angling off to the left. I wondered which had been laid down first and whether the person who’d come second would have been comforted by the sight of another ribbon. To know you were in a place where others killed themselves as well. Where it was somewhat acceptable to kill yourself. Where you could disappear and not burden family and friends, who otherwise would have to identify your body at the morgue, arrange a funeral, attend the funeral.
The perfect place to die.
The longer I was in Aokigahara, the more I believed this statement to be true. Despite the pervasive atmosphere of death and struggle and sadness, you felt cocooned here, isolated from the outside world. And wasn’t this exactly what someone contemplating suicide would want? It certainly seemed like a more suitable place to spend your last time on earth than, say, the Golden Gate Bridge, with motorists screaming past, some stopping to stare, some to play hero, as you scaled the suicide barrier.
I was by no means an expert on suicide, but I could relate to the state of mind of someone contemplating it because I had contemplated it myself in the days after Gary died. That had been a shitty time, the worst in my life, and often I would wonder how I was going to get through the next day, or the next week. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that Gary had forfeited: his family, his career, his future. He’d had everything to look forward to. Perhaps this, in some way, was why I felt it should have been me instead. Gary was the star; I was the understudy. I was the disposable of the two of us. Sometimes I wondered if my parents felt this way as well. Parents will always tell you they don’t have a favorite child, but I don’t know if I believe that. How could they not have favored Gary over me? How could anyone not have? He was—Gary.
I’d say the worst of the depression—the suicide-thinking depression—lasted one month, maybe two. During this time I rarely left the apartment except to attend my classes. I had wanted to be by myself. I had wanted nothing to do with the outside world.
I had wanted a place like Aokigahara, a place where I could be left alone and forgotten.
Nevertheless, I’ve always been a pragmatist, and I also understood that my death wouldn’t bring Gary back and, just as those signs we’d passed earlier had insinuated, it would only cause my family and friends more pain.
Unfortunately, I had witnessed this domino effect firsthand. It occurred back when I was in high school. On a Saturday afternoon during summer break six guys I knew had crammed into a car with five seatbelts and were driving to see a Pearl Jam concert. Barry “Weasel” Mitchell was behind the wheel. He was speeding. My close friend Chris, who was in the car, told me he’d wanted him to slow down, but he’d been too timid to say anything. Everyone else was fine with the speed, he figured he could be too. They were passing around a two-foot-tall bong, hot-boxing the car. When the bong came to Weasel, he told his little brother Stevie, who was in shotgun, to hold the steering wheel straight while he took a hit. At this point Chris no longer wanted them to slow down, he wanted them to stop, so he could get out, and he was just working himself up to say something when the car drifted onto the gravel shoulder of the road. Weasel shoved the bong aside and yanked the steering wheel to the left. He overcompensated. The car knifed across the two-lane blacktop. He swung the wheel back the other way. Again he overcompensated. Suddenly the vehicle took on a life of its own, swerving back and forth, back and forth, out of control. Inevitably it launched off the highway, nosed into the shallow culvert, shot back out, and crashed headlong into a tree a little past Blackhawk Airfield.
This was as much as Chris remembered because he was knocked unconscious. Newspapers and the gossip that filtered through our school filled in the gaps for me. A passing motorist called in the accident. The guy who didn’t have his seatbelt on—the
sixth passenger, Anthony Mainardi—was launched through the windshield, but miraculously he was the least injured, suffering only lacerations to his face and some bruising. The other injuries ranged from Kenny Baker needing facial reconstruction surgery to Tom Reynolds suffering several broken ribs and swallowing half his teeth. Stevie, who was two years younger than everyone else, was the sole fatality. The collision with the tree shoved the engine block back several feet, crushing him in his seat. Apparently his guts were squeezed out of him, similar to what happens to roadkill. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Two weeks after Weasel was charged with vehicular homicide by intoxication, he stuffed some socks in the exhaust pipe of his parents’ remaining vehicle, climbed in behind the wheel, started the engine, and got fatally high on carbon monoxide poisoning. His mother had a nervous breakdown shortly after and was checked into Badger Prairie Health Care Center (which in the nineteenth century had been called the Dane County Asylum for the Criminally Insane), where she failed to kill herself by slitting her wrists but succeeded by jumping from an eighth-floor window. The day after she was buried Weasel’s father, a police detective, took his service revolver and blew his brains out—
“Ah, shit,” I heard Tomo say, tugging me back to the present.
Some two dozen feet ahead of us was a glade created when a large tree fell over and knocked down several smaller ones. The white ribbon ended there.
“It’s a dead end,” I stated.
“Looks like it,” Neil said.
As the meaning of this sank in, disappointment welled inside me. We wouldn’t be calling John Scott and the Israelis to come meet us. We would have to walk all the way back to the intertwined trees. And if the others hadn’t found anything either, then this entire excursion would be a bust.
A white ribbon, that was all.
When we stepped into the clearing, I looked up. It was the first time I had seen the sky clearly since we’d started down the secondary trail. It was low and gray and foreboding. I continued forward, my eyes still raised, my hands out, feeling for raindrops, when Mel hissed at me to stop.
I froze, thinking that maybe I was about to step into an unseen hole. But, no, I was on solid ground. Frowning, I turned toward her, my eyes sweeping the forest floor, and I saw what she had seen. My heart locked up in my chest, and I went cold all over.