by Jeremy Bates
“Va te faire foutre!” I shouted, flicking him the bird in return.
“Hold on,” Okubo said—and jerked the steering wheel left. The Honda’s flank broadsided the SUV. Metal popped and crunched, and I had the satisfaction of seeing Tighty-Whitey’s gloating, vulpine smile dissolve into apoplectic rage.
The driver dropped his speed. The SUV fell behind us.
“Mon Dieu!” I cried, grinning wickedly at Okubo. “You are mad!”
“He deserved it!”
For the next several kilometers the Lexus SUV remained several meters behind us, the driver no doubt wary of Okubo pulling another stunt. The highway narrowed to two lanes separated by a solid yellow line, perhaps further enhancing the driver’s caution.
The temporary reprieve from the all-out chase was welcomed, and I asked, “Where are we heading?”
“West,” she replied.
“What’s west?”
“The ocean.”
“Great.”
“It’s a nice night for a coastal drive.”
“You really are mad,” I said.
In the distance, visible in the ample starlight, jagged hills rose against the night sky. I glanced at the fuel gauge: less than a quarter of a tank.
“We are running low on gas, chérie,” I pointed out.
“I used most of it on the drive from Tokyo.”
“Might be a problem.”
“Want me to stop at the next service station?”
“I could use a toilet break.”
“Kuchi sabishii,” she said, which could be loosely translated to mean Lonely mouth.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Fear works up an appetite.”
I glanced in the side mirror. The Lexus’s slanted headlights and bold spindle grille made it appear as though it were scowling at us.
I wondered how much gas it had remaining.
And was that the yakuza’s strategy? To tail us until we ran out of fuel?
As I pondered this, the commercial buildings and houses and vegetable stands dotting the highway gradually disappeared until there was nothing on either side of us but dense forest.
“Are we in a national forest?” I asked.
“Aokigahara Jukai,” she said.
“You mean—”
“Hold on!” she said, cutting me off. “They’re coming!”
My eyes went to the side mirror. All I could see was a wall of light a moment before the Lexus rammed the back of the Honda, causing the smaller vehicle to lurch forward.
Okubo and I both cried out.
“Slow down!” I said.
“They’ll hit us again!”
“They are going to hit us again regardless—”
Crunch.
The Honda jumped wildly.
Okubo braked, our speed dropping quickly to 100, then 80, lower.
“What should I do?” she asked, speaking in that oddly calm voice again.
“Pull over,” I told her grimly.
“What? No!”
“There is no choice,” I said. “If they run us off the road, then we will both be dead.”
“I’m not going to let them—”
The SUV rammed us a third time. Although the impact wasn’t as jarring as the previous two collisions, the driver didn’t back off and indeed began pushing us.
“Help!” Okubo cried as the Honda’s tires lost traction and the car’s rear swayed left. Instead of turning into the skid, she made the mistake of turning in the opposite direction.
I grabbed the steering wheel to correct the move, but it was too late.
Chapter 48
If we’d been traveling faster, the Honda would have likely flipped and rolled, reducing it—and perhaps us—to a dismembered collection of individual parts. But because Okubo had already slowed our speed to fifty or sixty, the vehicle’s wheels remained in contact with the asphalt as it performed a drunken slalom before slewing off the road and into the forest.
∆∆∆
Airbags are not soft fluffy pillows. They inflate fast and hard. The one that burst from the dashboard in front of me sounded and felt like a hot shotgun blast to my chest. For a moment I remained pinned to the seat, winded, a crisp, acrid stench in my nostrils. When the bag began to deflate, I sucked back a gulp of air and immediately started coughing, as I’d inhaled some of the talcum-like powder that clouded the air. I heard Okubo coughing too and looked over at her.
“Okay?” I rasped, still coughing. The car was making that ding-ding-ding noise when the keys are in the ignition and a door is open.
“Ugh…” she groaned softly.
Pushing aside the airbag, I released my seatbelt and shoved open the door. It struck a tree trunk with a flat crack, though there was enough room for me to extract myself. I rounded the car on jellied legs, keeping my shaking hands on the warm hood for balance. The front quarter panel of the Honda had merged into the thick trunk of a tall tree. I could smell leaking coolant.
When I reached Okubo’s battered door, I ripped it open. She was slumped in her seat like a wilted flower and bleeding from the nose. Friction burns reddened her forearms. The band of her metal wristwatch had clipped open, and the watch was now lodged around her bicep.
Presumably she’d raised her arms to protect herself, and the rapid deployment of the airbag had smashed them into her face while driving the watch up her arm. Currently the airbag dangled limply over the steering wheel, wearing a smear of red lipstick and splatters of darker blood.
I unbuckled Okubo’s seatbelt—noticing some of her teeth scattered on her lap—and asked, “Can you get out?”
She nodded but didn’t move.
“They will be coming.”
“Leave me here…” she said, the words reduced to fricatives as they squeezed between her barely parted lips.
I bent into the car, hooked my arms beneath her legs and back, and lifted her out. Her lithe body didn’t weigh much, especially with adrenaline coursing through my veins.
My hearing seemed especially crystalline, and I made out conversation and footsteps coming from the road.
Holding Okubo tight to my chest, I picked my way deeper into the forest.
Chapter 49
Five minutes later I came to a red ribbon snaking into the sepulchral darkness, and I remembered where Okubo had said we were.
Aokigahara, also known as Aokigahara Jukai, as an aerial view of the dense, unbroken emerald forest gives the illusion of a “forest sea”—a jukai.
Those in the West call it the Sea of Trees.
Or Suicide Forest.
Chapter 50
I’d first learned about Suicide Forest fifteen or so years ago when a group of foreigners teaching English in Japan became lost in its depths. Some of them were attacked and murdered, and the story of their deaths made headlines around the world.
The forest is a sprawling thirty-square-kilometer tract of woodland. Due to the honorable (if not glorified) nature of suicide in Japan, as well as the stigma prohibiting the solicitation of psychiatric help, thousands of down-and-out Japanese have traveled to the hauntingly beautiful forest over the years on a one-way pilgrimage, believing it to be an ideal place to end their lives. During monthly sweeps, local police and firefighters and volunteers often recovered dozens of bodies in various stages of decomposition. They trailed behind them color-coded ribbons to indicate where they had searched and where they have found bodies or abandoned campsites. They also used the ribbons to mark the way they had come so they could find their way back out of the sylvan graveyard again.
I followed the red ribbon I’d come across through the fecund undergrowth, over mossy logs and volcanic rocks, between towering cypress and pines. Okubo’s body quickly grew heavy in my arms, and I began resting against the trunks of trees to allow my strength to return. During these stationary moments, I listened. The forest was always perfectly and eerily silent, a chasm of emptiness. No leaves shivering in the wind. No animals rustling through leaf litter.
Only my rapid, ragged breathing, which sounded as loud as a lion’s roar in the stillness.
After about ten minutes of this stop-and-go travel, I came to a shadowed, root-strewn glade. Slumping again against another tree trunk, I decided I could go no further. I would hide here and—
My heart clogged my throat.
Someone was crouched in a small hollow at the base of a nearby tree, watching me. I could only make out a face and red shirt in the darkness, but it was definitely a person.
Breathless, I said, “Hello?”
The person didn’t respond.
“Hello?” I repeated. “Konbanwa?”
No reply—and a ghastly realization struck me.
Gently, I lowered Okubo to the ground. I stepped toward the person. In the moonlight penetrating the canopy above me, I could see it was a man with a noose around his neck. He was not crouching but curled up into a tight ball like the carapace of a dead spider. Strands of black hair matted his nearly bald head. His pasty white face was wrinkled and sunken, his eyes stolen by scavengers, leaving behind wounded holes. His red shirt draped his wasted-away torso like a sail. Black pants did little to conceal knobby legs, while mummified ankles protruded from the hems. An open black briefcase lay next to him, as did water-bloated magazines, a defunct cell phone, crushed beer cans, and an empty bottle of booze.
I forced my gaze away from the gibbeted corpse and returned to Okubo, kneeling next to her.
“Chérie,” I whispered in a skeletal voice, brushing her bangs away from her clammy face. “Can you hear me?”
Her eyes fluttered open, almost luminescent in the darkness, yet there was no recognition of me in them. They closed once again.
“What is wrong? Where do you hurt?”
When she didn’t reply, my concern spiked. Up until this moment I’d assumed she’d been mildly concussed. Now I was wondering if it might be something more severe. A serious brain injury? Fractured bones and internal bleeding? Spinal trauma?
Delicately, I spread open her black leather jacket and slid her yellow tee-shirt up her chest.
A virulent bruise ran diagonally across her chest and horizontally across her abdomen, forming a Z with no top line—contusions made by the decelerating force of her body impacting the seatbelt.
I thought again of broken bones and internal bleeding and cursed. Had I known her condition was so dire, I would have left her in the car. Yes, the yakuza would have found her, but their vendetta wasn’t with her; it was with me. They would have taken her to a hospital. She would have received medical attention.
What had I been thinking?
I looked around the glade with a breathless feeling of near panic. No help anywhere, of course. I was going to have to take her back to the highway, set her on the shoulder, get the yakuza goons’ attention so they knew she was there. They might catch me before I could flee, but I couldn’t keep her here without knowing the extent of her injuries.
When I returned my attention to her, I noticed something was…wrong. I couldn’t immediately pinpoint what it was, yet the longer I studied her, the more I knew it was serious.
I pressed my ear to her lips.
She was no longer breathing.
I nearly scooped her into my arms and charged toward the highway. However, she needed immediate help. I placed the heel of one hand above her bruised sternum, placed the other hand on top of it, interlocked my fingers—and hesitated. What if she had broken ribs? What if the compressions pushed the bones through her lungs or heart or aorta?
Moot point, I decided. She’d only just stopped breathing. She wasn’t clinically dead, and although CPR might cause collateral damage, it offered the possibility of reviving her. If I did nothing, she’d go from being mostly dead to all dead very quickly.
I started CPR.
Chapter 51
I performed two compressions per second for several exhausting minutes, stopping only to administer intermittent rescue breaths.
∆∆∆
At some point—five minutes later or twenty; time had lost all significance—I resigned myself to the fact she was dead, all dead.
∆∆∆
Out of shock I tried to stand but couldn’t. Instead I pulled Okubo’s lifeless body against mine and buried my nose in her hair. Even dead, she smelled of lemon cupcakes.
It’s called Shalimar, I thought, making a vague decision to buy a bottle at some point. Then with more clarity: She shouldn’t be dead. It’s my fault. Smiley died because of me, and now Okubo died because of me…
An anguished sound escaped my lips and echoed through the shrouded forest in mournful, ghostly half notes.
Chapter 52
“You killed her,” a voice said.
I surfaced from the abyss into which I’d sunken to see Tighty-Whitey, limned in moonlight, stepping into the glade. With his tailor-cut suit and expertly styled shag and ten-thousand-dollar wristwatch, he couldn’t have been more out of place in the insidious, primeval forest.
“You killed her.”
“Should have let us get her help.”
Rage bloodied my vision, not only because of the apathetic manner in which he was speaking about Okubo’s death, as though it held no more significance than the passing of a pet budgie, but also because he was right.
“How’d she die?” he asked. “Hit her head? Crushed her chest?”
Pushing myself to my feet, I glowered at Tighty-Whitey with a hatred more intense than I had ever felt before. If it weren’t for him, I would be back in Tokyo with Okubo, in her bed, sleeping soundly. Not in this death-stained forest that had just claimed another body and soul as its own.
Someone called out in Japanese. He sounded far away.
I expected Tighty-Whitey to call back. When he did not, I believed he was going to honor a fair fight…until he pushed a button on a knife that had been concealed in his right hand, causing a blade to spring forth from the handle.
“Coward,” I hissed venomously.
“Any other last words?”
I spat on the ground.
He came at me holding the knife in a hammer grip, the blade above his thumb. He swung it like a swashbuckler, carving the air with fast attacks from multiple angles.
I escaped unscathed only by ducking backward. He kept coming, slicing and stabbing. Knowing it was inevitable I would get cut, I positioned myself sideways, offering my left arm as a target rather than my chest and vital organs.
Slashes crisscrossed the flesh of my biceps and forearm. I countered with a right hook, my knuckles shanking his chin.
Tighty-Whitey issued an “Ooph!” and jabbed the blade blindly, grazing my stomach. I attempted another right hook. He stepped out of the way.
Bleeding from the lip, he now appeared cagey rather than smug. He flipped the knife in his hand to an icepick grip.
Tighty lunged and tried to sink the blade into the side of my neck. I evaded the fatal attack with centimeters to spare. I threw up my forearms and batted his knife arm down and away. A third of a second later I smashed an elbow into the side of his skull.
He swung the knife, cutting me across the chest from shoulder to shoulder. I slapped my palm down on his face, shattering his nose. He noodled to his knees before keeling over as if he’d been poleaxed, his head dipping toward the ground.
With a grunt, I kicked him in the ribs, lifting him into the air and dropping him to his belly. I stepped on his right wrist and tried to pry the knife from his hand. His fingers were a vice on the handle.
I looked around for a broken tree branch or rock or some other blunt object to finish him off.
When I saw nothing suitable, I retrieved the red ribbon.
Crouching over Tighty-Whitey, I looped the ligature of satin around his neck and pulled it taut while pressing my knees into his back.
Tighty’s body stiffened and lurched as he tried to buck me off him. His limbs flailed with uncoordinated convulsions. Quickly he lost consciousness, and then ceased moving and br
eathing altogether.
It took a couple of minutes longer before the oxygen supply in his bloodstream was exhausted and I was convinced he was dead.
Chapter 53
I didn’t immediately move from Tighty-Whitey’s corpse. His partner continued to call to him, sometimes sounding closer, sometimes farther away, but never nearby. Not that I cared whether he discovered me or not. My desire for revenge was spent.
So too was my desire to live.
Although a thousand thoughts battled inside my head, there was one louder and more insistent than all the others: I can’t go on.
Okubo had been my single hope in this alien world. Now she was gone, and I was on my own again, with not only the Japanese police out to get me, but fate as well.
No Okubo. No Damien. No way out of Japan. No way home.
I was fortune’s fool, God’s little joke, a cosmic error, and it was all too much.
I glanced over at the old man in the red shirt. Judging by his state of dissolution, he had hanged himself months ago. I contemplated the bleak starkness of death, and while the mystery of it frightened me, it also calmed me. I would simply be going back to where I’d come from, wherever that was, and my problems would be over.
I pushed myself up and off Tighty-Whitey and went to the old man. I reversed the slipknot in the stiff and scratchy rope and lifted the noose over the man’s head. His brittle body slumped farther onto its side.
He’d secured the anchor end of the rope to a branch only six feet off the ground. I gave the rope a tug. The branch seemed sturdy enough. I lowered the noose over my head and tightened the knot until the rope dug snugly into my throat.
Without thinking too much more about it, I leaned forward and let my weight do the work.
Chapter 54
I was seeing flashing lights and hearing ringing sounds and then a louder crack! Then I was falling through space and darkness.