by Jeremy Bates
This was all nonsensical, of course, but you don’t think or act rationally on mushrooms. Less than an hour into my trip I was so fucked up I couldn’t speak with anybody and ended up outside, wandering the perimeter of the woods that lined the campus. I was wired, unable to sleep, and wanted nothing more than to be sober again. The anxiety and paranoia got so bad I began brainstorming nonlethal ways to knock myself out. And it all started from something as simple as a phone call (which, I learned the following day from Amy herself, was no big deal at all; Amy’s mother had simply been making conversation).
So was this what happened to Ben, only on a more devastating scale? Had the mushrooms turned against him, his trip compounding so much he decided the only way to end it was to hang himself? After all, who knew the potency of the mushrooms out here, or how much he’d eaten. They wouldn’t have been dried and sliced into slivers and placed in a baggie. He could have unknowingly taken a self-destructive dose.
Anger at John Scott’s stupidity rose in me again, but I forced it aside.
The phones.
Why would Ben take them? Was he so delusional he’d thought we were his enemy? Had he convinced himself we’d killed the man with the pen in his front pocket? Had he hidden the string and the phones so we would be doomed to perish in Aokigahara with him?
This didn’t sit right with me. I felt as if I were forcing an explanation to fit the conclusion I’d already drawn.
I approached the enigma from a dozen different angles, but after another thirty minutes of no progress I began to reexamine what I had seen in Nina’s eyes and had summarily dismissed earlier: the paranormal.
I’ve never believed in ghosts and the like because the idea of spirits trapped between this world and the next seemed too hokey pokey to me, religious propaganda, more the stuff of Hollywood and TV programs than real life.
But what if there was a more scientific explanation?
I thought back to something I’d read in an old dog-eared Popular Science magazine I’d thumbed through at a Barcelona hostel a few days before my foolish attempt to cross the Camino del Ray. The article in question was titled: “The Science Behind Unseen Phenomena.” Citing string theory and quantum physics and other stuff I was unable to recall in detail now, the author argued that there existed not one but billions of universes, forming a kind of cosmic foam in which there were an infinite number of dimensions and timelines. When one of those timelines or dimensions overlapped ours, it was possible for us to catch an electromagnetic glimpse of someone or something existing on a different plane.
I suppose I preferred this to trapped spirits because it was based on science and not blind faith. The problem, of course, was that said science was unproven. Not to mention the whole concept, although neat in a metaphysical way, still sounded iffy, almost like a cheap magic trick, something that would go over great at a party when everyone was drunk, but which would undoubtedly be derided and deconstructed on closer reflection the next morning.
Then I recalled what a Chinese girl named Bingbing Wong who lived in my guesthouse had once told me. One evening we had gotten onto the topic of ghosts, and she admitted that as a child she’d often heard footsteps outside her room in the middle of the night. She had always been too scared to check if anyone was there, but her dog would sit by the door and growl until the footsteps stopped. Years later she learned from her parents that the original owner had built the home for his fiancée as a wedding gift, but she died before the wedding, and he later hanged himself from the attic fan.
Bings was one of the smartest and most rational people I knew, so I wasn’t surprised when she justified this story by saying that certain rocks and minerals within the earth, or even large bodies of water above- or belowground, were conductive to storing the residual energy left behind when someone died, and this energy could play back for years, decades, or even centuries. This was why most ghosts didn’t seem to possess an intelligence, personality, or mass, and why their actions were always the same; they were the three-dimensional equivalent of old TV programs playing over the air long after the actors in them had died.
Thinking over Bings’ argument now, I began to get carried away as I wondered whether the iron deposits in the solidified magma underlying Aokigahara Jukai could constitute a geological formation conductive to storing and replaying the images of the dead who had killed themselves here—until I realized what I was overlooking.
If ghosts were mere recordings imprinted upon the environment, without intelligence and mass, and thus had no way to interact with our world, how did you explain the swinging crucifixes or the missing phones?
I sat there, frowning, as I tried to envision other possibilities that would explain the existence of ghosts. This had become a game for me, a way to pass the time. But I could come up with nothing more. I had played devil’s advocate with myself and lost. Ghosts didn’t exist, and I couldn’t convince myself otherwise. I had been right all along. Ghost sightings were nothing but psychological phenomena or, as I’d told Nina, projections: you see what you want or expect to see. The grieving widow sees her dead husband because she needs the comfort of knowing he is all right and happy in the afterlife. Her mind allows her to hallucinate to help her cope with the stress of the loss.
I guess if you wanted to get crazy—and this whole train of thought had been crazy, so why the hell not—you could take this idea of projecting farther and argue that sightings were not just hallucinations but real physical manifestations, created either by your subconscious or someone else’s. Psychokinetic energy or whatever it’s called. And why not? Science has yet to fully understand the powers of the human mind. How much of it did the common person use? Ten percent? Fifteen? There was so much about it that we didn’t know that it was certainly possible it was capable of producing manifestations and noises.
Which brought me back to the beginning of my ruminations and the only possible culprit for the missing phones: Ben. He’d been delusional, paranoid, and for reasons we may never know he took them, hid them, then killed himself.
I shook my head slightly, not liking the uncertain, cheating feeling that persisted in my gut—then I became aware of the forest around me once again. It had darkened as the day faded to dusk, swelling with hidden malevolence and dread.
I got up and joined the others, eager to call the police back.
Nina and Mel sat next to one another, holding hands, staring mutely at the ground before them. John Scott had taken off his leather jacket and was doing pushups. I’d like to think he was being a pompous meathead, but exercise was likely his way of dispelling nervous energy. I knew I could have done with a good jog had a track been handy. Tomo was twenty feet away from everyone, crouched next to Neil, looking helpless as Neil lay curled in a fetal position, arms clamped around his stomach, rocking back and forth, moaning.
My stomach had been growling for the past couple hours, and I considered divvying up Ben’s uneaten breakfast ration, but I decided to save it—just in case.
“Are you ready to call the police again, Tomo?” I asked him.
“Hell, yeah,” he said, coming over.
Suddenly he was the center of attention, everyone crowding around him. He pressed the phone’s power button. The DoCoMo logo appeared with a cute musical jig.
Although the tension among us was palpable, no one produced a celebratory reaction. Eyes remained fixed on the display. We were far from home free yet.
Tomo dialed the police and stuck the phone to his ear. A voice answered. It sounded small and mechanical. Tomo spoke quickly. He began nodding, giving us the thumbs-up.
Then he jerked the phone away from his ear, as if it had bitten him.
The display was black.
“Oh shit!” he said.
Everyone was speaking:
“It’s dead!”
“It can’t be dead.”
“Try again!”
Tomo attempted to power it up to no avail.
I turned away, kicking at pine need
les.
“I told you, Ethos,” John Scott said. “I told you we shouldn’t turn it off. Now we’re as fucked as a soup sandwich.”
I whirled on him. ‘The hell you did!”
“This is your fault—”
I lunged at him, but he ducked behind Tomo, out of my reach.
Suddenly Mel was in front of me, yelling at me to stop.
“No more!” she said. “Not again! Cool it you two!”
I made a last-ditch attempt to grab John Scott, then gave up.
The fucker had a smirk on his face.
“Lying prick,” I said.
“Go suck balls—”
“Enough!” It was Mel again, her voice like a knife. “Will you two grow up and stop bickering. We have more serious matters to deal with here, don’t you think?”
She was right, of course. I stepped away from her, considered a feint-dash to reach John Scott, but decided he wasn’t worth it.
“We have to get out of here,” she said more softly. “We have to figure out a way out of here.”
“I think that way,” Tomo said, pointing past me.
“It’s that way,” John Scott said, jutting his chin in a different direction.
I had no idea anymore and didn’t speculate.
Nina said, “Maybe the police were able to trace the call?”
“After five seconds?” I said.
“Maybe.”
“I doubt it.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
“So we wait?” Tomo asked.
Nina nodded. “Yes. That is what we should do.”
I agreed. “Even if they weren’t able to trace the call,” I said, “they know we’re here. They’ll organize a search party.”
“But Aokigahara too big,” Tomo said. “How they find us?”
“They have the video of us entering the forest,” I said. “They’ll know we at least went up that path. They’ll suspect we followed the arrows left or right. It can’t be that hard for them to track us down.”
“What about Neil?” Mel said.
We all glanced at him. His eyes were closed. I thought he might have been sleeping until I saw the tight lines around his eyes and mouth.
Not sleeping. In pain.
“He can’t walk anyway,” John Scott said. “Best let him rest.”
“So when will they come?” Nina asked. “The search party? Tonight?”
I shook my head. “There’s only a couple hours of light left. By the time they got anything organized it would be dark. I’m guessing they start the search first thing tomorrow morning.”
“I can’t spend another night in this forest,” Mel said, folding her arms across her chest. “No way. There’s… I think there’s…”
“What?” John Scott said.
“There’s something out there.”
“Something?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said, clearly uncomfortable.
“Ghosts,” Nina stated.
“You gotta be fucking kidding?” John Scott said.
“Then what happened to our phones?”
“Ben—” I began.
“That is not true,” Nina said sharply. “And you know it.”
John Scott guffawed. “Have you girls lost it?”
“This isn’t funny, John,” Mel said.
“You’ve watched too many horror movies.”
“Our phones are gone. The red ribbon is gone—”
“We don’t know it’s gone.”
“Why would Ben take everything?” she plowed on. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Why would a ghost?”
“Because it doesn’t want us to leave.”
“Right,” John Scott said, grinning. “Hey, maybe Ben didn’t kill himself. Maybe the ghost possessed him and made him to do.”
The silence that followed was charged with thoughtful consideration. I could almost see Mel and Nina nodding mentally.
“For fuck’s sake,” John Scott said. “Tomo, are you buying this?”
“Killer ghost?”
“Yeah.”
“No way, man.”
“Ethos?”
“I’m not ruling anything out,” I said, mainly because I didn’t want John Scott to think I was on his side.
“But you want to stay here overnight?”
“It’s better than wandering aimlessly. We need to conserve our energy.” I shrugged, getting impatient with all this talk of the supernatural. “Look, it’s only one more night. If you’re worried something is out there, Mel, then John Scott, Tomo, and I will take turns keeping watch. There are six of us. We’ll be fine.”
I could see in Mel’s eyes what she was thinking but what she undoubtedly felt silly speaking out loud: six people, or six hundred people, it made no difference against a ghost.
“There’s still light,” she said. “You keep saying we might go the wrong way. But if we go the right way, then we could be out of here before nightfall.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked her. “Vote on this?”
She bit her lower lip in frustration. She knew she was outnumbered.
John Scott stuck up his hand. “I say we should stay put.”
Tomo raised his hand. Then, after a moment, Nina raised hers as well.
Mel looked at me, angry and pleading at the same time.
“It doesn’t matter how I vote,” I told her. “It’s already three to one.”
“What about Neil?”
“He can’t vote.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“He can barely walk.”
“He’ll want to leave. I know he will. He needs help.”
“Whoa, hold on,” John Scott said. “Ethos, just vote.”
“I’m sorry, Mel,” I said. “I think we should stay.”
She glared at me, tears glistening in her eyes, then turned away.
23
Shadows emerged from their daytime sanctuaries, perverting the trees more than they already were, turning them into looming monsters out of a sadistic fairytale. Grays became charcoals, and charcoals, blacks. Then night was upon us like a thief, swiftly and silently. If anyone tells you they’re not afraid of the dark, that’s because they have never spent a night in Aokigahara Jukai. It doesn’t matter how brave you think you are, there is something so deranged and wrong about this forest that it worms its way into the deepest closets of your mind and awakens your most primitive fears.
Not wanting to get caught out again without the reassurance of a fire, we’d spent the last of the daylight erecting our tents and collecting more than enough firewood to last us until morning. Now we sat in a circle around three-foot-tall flames, everything the same as the evening before—except for the fact we didn’t have any food or water, and one of us was dead.
The group mentality was bad. Nobody spoke. Nobody did much of anything. We sat and waited, either for the police to miraculously show, or for sleep to whisk us to morning. I wanted to say something, to break the suffocating silence, but there was nothing to say.
My stomach was sour with an unpleasant mix of anxiety and hunger. My mouth was dry, my head and body ached, and I was growing lightheaded as well.
I glanced at Neil. He remained a good fifteen feet away from the rest of us at his stubborn insistence. When he wasn’t curled in a fetal position rocking back and forth, he was either vomiting or shitting. He could barely muster the strength to lug himself to his feet, and he never got farther than a dozen yards or so from camp before performing these bodily functions. His constant moaning and toilet trips began to grate on my nerves. I knew he couldn’t help himself, but I was irritable and in a somber frame of mind, and it seemed almost disrespectful to Ben’s memory that Neil would go and get food poisoning now out of all times and places.
It wasn’t just me who was irrationally unsympathetic. In the flickering firelight I caught everyone shoot Neil a vexed look at one point or another.
Feeling guilty for
harboring these thoughts, I went over to check on him again. He was on his side, turned away from me. His face was sheathed in perspiration. His shirt was likely drenched as well, though I couldn’t see it. His sleeping bag covered his body, cinched tightly around his neck. He looked like a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon, with only its head poking free.
“Hey, Neil,” I said, crouching beside him. “It’s Ethan.”
He didn’t respond, let alone acknowledge my voice. I touched his forehead gently with the back of my hand. He was burning up.
“How you doing over here?” It was a stupid question. But what else was there to say? Is your will up to date, old buddy? Any last words you want me to pass on to Kaori?
I didn’t think Neil was in mortal danger. He’d been sick for close to a day already. The symptoms should lessen overnight. If not, the police would be here tomorrow. They would get him to a hospital.
And if the symptoms don’t lessen? I asked myself. And if the police don’t come? What then? I’ll tell ya. Neil really will be in mortal danger. He’ll die right here, in this forest, wasted and putrid, probably from organ failure, but, hey, anything is possible, maybe he’ll suffer a stroke…or decide he was a goner anyway and take his own life. This was sure the place to do something like that.
He mumbled something.
“What’s that, Neil?” I asked, bending close to him.
“Wadda.” The word was dry, papery.
“We don’t have any. We finished it this morning.”
His response was to squeeze his eyes shut tighter.
I stared at him helplessly. How long could you last without water? Three days? That sounded about right. Three days under normal circumstances, though after two you would be pretty wretched. So how about when you had a raging fever and were sweating and pissing and shitting every last drop of liquid out of you? Half that time? Less?
If only it would rain, I thought wistfully, we could string up the tents between the trees to act as large nylon buckets. We would have enough water to bath in. But the tantalizingly low and pregnant storm clouds remained impossibly distant. Who knew how long they would retain their precious load for, or if they would blow over completely.