“So we go into this forest,” Eliza said, “and set up our trap.”
“Essentially,” Roy said. “We’ll take camping equipment, since it might take a while to work. I’m going to rig two large mirrors that we can raise with ropes. All we have to do is get the demon between them when Steven is ready to perform the amplification.”
“Can I see them?” Eliza asked Steven. “Your markings?”
“Sure,” Steven said. “Let me get the glass.”
Steven walked into his bedroom and retrieved the planchette he’d brought back from Eximere. He showed it to Eliza.
“Oh, I remember seeing this!” she said as she took it from his hands. “These markings are quite beautiful.”
Steven held out his hands, and Eliza held the glass up to them and looked through it.
She tried to suppress her surprise, but Steven could see her suck in air as she got a glimpse. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. She moved the glass closer to his hands, really examining the detail. After a minute, she stopped looking and leaned back. She handed the planchette back to Steven and looked up at him.
“Wow!” she said, and smiled. “You’re special! But we knew that already.”
“I don’t know why I have them,” Steven said.
“It’s something you’re born with, right?” she asked.
“I think so,” Steven said. “Have you ever met anyone with them before?”
“No, never,” she said, and smiled at him. If he felt any concern that the marks might somehow change their friendship, her smile put it to rest. “So, demons avoid you because of them?” she asked.
“That’s what I was told,” Steven said, “and it’s what seemed to happen at June’s house. Somehow I made myself ‘intriguing’ to Aka Manah during this whole process and they don’t seem to repel him like the others.”
“Well,” she said, “repelling demons seems like a good thing to me. Sounds like they’re useful.”
“Unless the demon wants to cut them off,” Roy said, “as a trophy. Not so useful then.”
“When do we go to the forest?” Eliza asked.
“Tomorrow,” Roy said. “I have a few more things to pick up in the morning before we go. We should be able to get set up by the afternoon, well before it gets dark.”
“Alright,” she said. “What will you want me to do?”
“Well,” Roy said, “we’re hoping we can set Steven out, like bait. The demon should feel comfortable there, and we’re hoping it’ll approach him.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Eliza asked.
“I’ll try to invite it, somehow,” Steven said.
“How?” she asked.
“The book said that openings are mainly mental,” Steven said. “I’ll try to trance or at least concentrate on inviting it.”
“And then what?” she asked.
“I’ve built the mirrors on hinges,” Roy said. “We’ll cover them with leaves. As soon as the demon is between them, Steven can perform the amplification and we’ll raise the mirrors with ropes. If he gets a good enough shock, he should back off for good.”
“That is according to the book,” Steven said. “Provided it works.”
“It’s too bad we can’t run the plan past an expert,” Eliza said.
“In a way, this plan has come from an expert,” Steven said. “Judith gave me the book. I think she knew I’d come across the interior book. I don’t know why she didn’t just tell me about it.”
“Since it took your markings for it to manifest,” Eliza said, “she must have known you’d figure it out. And perhaps it’s important to keep the information as secret as possible?”
“Who knows with that nut job,” Roy said.
“I don’t know any other experts,” Steven said. “Dixon seemed to think she was the best around.”
“I’ve heard of her,” Eliza said. “She was a big deal years ago. Haven’t heard much about her recently though.”
“I think she’s retired,” Steven said. “Every time we saw her, she was resting on a day bed. She hardly moved.”
“Do you trust her?” Eliza asked.
“I don’t,” Roy said.
“I think I do,” Steven said. “She steered us in the right direction with Evie. And she’s been right about a lot of what’s happened. She’s probably right about this.”
“OK then,” Eliza said. “Let’s hope you’re right.”
Chapter Twelve
By noon the next day they were in Roy’s truck, traveling east of Eatonville on a small road through the national forest. Steven was navigating from an old faded map that Roy handed to him, a red ‘X’ penciled on it.
“How did people ever get to this?” Eliza said. “It seems so remote. I can’t believe anyone would even try.”
“It was easier to get to back then,” Roy said. “The forest service has cut back on the number of roads in here and made it hard to pull off to the side. There’s nothing but a deep ditch down there,” he said, pointing to the edge of the road.
“They used to send out patrols,” Roy said, “back when people would come out here. They wanted to remove the bodies before wild animals drug off the remains. It wasn’t hard to do, practically no animals come into this part of the forest. Don’t know if it’s because of the ground itself, the demons, or what. But the bodies would stay hanging in trees for weeks until someone cut them down.”
“Hanging?” Steven asked. “That’s how they’d do it?”
“It was the main method,” Roy said. “It was the surest way to do it. If you didn’t snap your neck, you’d eventually strangle to death. Sure, people would shoot themselves, or try to overdose on something. But those methods didn’t always work, not unless you put the gun in your mouth, which most people can’t bring themselves to do.”
“It’s got to be around here, on the left,” Steven said. “Your red ‘X’ is off the road in this area.”
Roy drove the truck until he found a pull off, and parked the truck about two hundred feet off the main road. “That’s far enough it shouldn’t catch a ranger’s eye,” Roy said. Steven removed his handheld GPS from the glove compartment and marked their location. “I hope that thing will work in there,” Roy said. “The rumor was that a compass wouldn’t work. One of the reasons people got lost.”
“Looks to me like we’ve got a good hike to reach where you’ve marked,” Steven said.
“Come on,” Roy said, “let’s load up.”
◊
“Maybe people still come out here,” Roy said, holding a bit of plastic tape in his hand. The tape stretched into the forest beyond him and twisted out of sight.
“What’s that?” Steven asked, looking at the tape Roy was holding.
“They’d use this to find their way out,” Roy said. “The trees in this part of the forest are different. They spread out at the top to make a canopy. Everything starts to look the same. You can’t just look up and see Mount Rainer or the sun and have some idea of which direction is east. If they got inside and changed their mind, they could follow this out.”
“Wouldn’t they remove the tape as they came out?” Steven asked.
“Look,” Eliza said, “there’s another tape over there, heading in a different direction.”
“I don’t know if they’d remove it or not,” Roy said. “People are lazy. But I know I don’t want to follow one of these to its end. I’m pretty sure they lead to something unpleasant. I’m surprised rangers haven’t cleaned these up.”
They followed Roy as he followed the tape deeper into the forest. He had a heavy backpack and was carrying several large planks, as was Steven. “Watch your step,” Roy said. “The ground here can be full of holes. You don’t want to get your foot caught in one.”
The trees around them began to all look the same, and except for the red plastic tape running ahead of them, the green and brown of the forest blended together.
“It’s peaceful in here,” Eliza said. “And beautiful. I gue
ss if you were going to go out, this is as good a place as any.”
“More tapes,” Steven said, pointing through the trees away from them. “Over there.”
“Christ,” Roy said. “I thought this place was long forgotten. Looks like some people still use it.”
Under the canopy it was dimmer and a little cooler. They were higher in elevation than Seattle. Hiking through the woods kept them warm. Steven trudged behind Eliza, trying to keep up. She was behind Roy.
“How much further?” Eliza asked.
“I’d say we’re halfway,” Roy answered. “The place I’ve marked on the map was a clearing I remember from a visit here many years ago. We should be able to set up there.”
“If there aren’t people camping there already,” Steven said. “These tapes trailing off into the distance are unnerving, and they make me think there must be people around.”
“Oh no,” Eliza said, stopping. “I think we’ve run into someone.”
“Where?” Steven whispered, walking over to her.
“There,” she said, pointing upward through the trees to the right. “About a hundred feet. Do you see it? I think those are legs.”
In the distance a body was dangling from a rope. The unfortunate victim had climbed the tree some twenty feet off the ground before tying their noose to a branch and jumping. It was far enough away that they couldn’t make out anything but its shape.
“Christ,” Steven said, observing the image, unsure if it was a body until he noticed it sway in the breeze. “Can you see if it’s a man or a woman?”
Roy set down the planks he was carrying and removed a small set of binoculars from his backpack. He glanced up into the trees. “Can’t tell,” he said. “The body is too bloated.”
“Should we cut it down?” Eliza said, sounding somewhat reticent to do it.
“Not right now,” Roy said. “We’ll report it on our way out.”
“I’ve been in some creepy places over the years,” Eliza said, “but this has to be one of the worst. Everything is so quiet and peaceful, then you run into that!”
“That’s the effect we’re hoping to recreate for the demon,” Steven said. “Extreme reaction from peaceful to shocked.”
“So this forest is haunted with demons already?” Eliza asked, looking around.
“Yes, that was always the reputation,” Roy said. “I remember talking about it with my father. He said the holes in the ground combined with the high levels of human misery and death were perfect for them. He told me to never come here.”
“And here we are,” Steven said.
A mist began to develop in the forest, causing trees in the distance to become fuzzy and disappear. Now they couldn’t see quite as far as before. The effect heightened Steven’s claustrophobia and he swallowed to keep his anxiety in check.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” Steven said. “It’ll make being out here even more miserable.” He stepped over a single tennis shoe, lying on its side, partially overgrown with moss. He wondered to whom it had belonged.
Steven decided to drop into the River and see if he could detect anything. The effect startled him – instead of a flow around him, there was no movement in the River at all. Things had come to a stop.
“You might want to try jumping in,” Steven said to Roy and Eliza. “Something’s wrong here.”
Roy and Eliza both stopped walking, and Steven saw them enter the flow with him.
Boy, really wrong, Eliza thought. Nothing’s moving.
It’s like everything’s dead here, Steven thought.
The trees aren’t dead, Roy thought. The forest is completely alive. I think the River is just different here. It doesn’t move the same way. Probably why animals don’t care to hang out here.
And probably why people feel compelled to die here, Eliza thought. It’s not normal. It feels so stagnant, like nothing has changed in years, and nothing will ever change. Just the kind of feeling that makes you depressed.
Come on, let’s keep moving, Roy thought, slipping out of the flow and continuing his trek.
Steven and Eliza dropped out too, and began to follow him. After another ten minutes the tapes began to disappear. The monotony of the forest began to make Steven feel tired.
“Here it is,” Roy said, emerging into a small clearing around ninety feet in diameter. The sun was able to get through here, lighting up the middle of the area. Steven looked up and saw little beads of mist moving through the sunlight, reflecting and refracting the light as they moved. It looked like the sunlight was full of a fine, powdery dust.
“Things are flat enough here that we can set up a tent and our trap,” Roy said, walking to the center of the clearing.
“I can honestly say I hate this place,” Eliza said. “And I love forests.”
“I know what you mean,” Steven said. “This is nothing like when we dug up Samuel Stone.”
“Well,” Roy said, “that was a normal forest. This one is abnormal. Demonic.”
“Hope we can get this done and get out of here soon,” Eliza said.
“Let’s not waste any time,” Roy said. “Steven, give me a hand. We’ll arrange these planks and the mirrors.”
“You’re going to need trees for the ropes,” Steven said. “We’ll have to set it up just inside the periphery.”
They scanned the edge of the clearing. “How about over there?” Roy said, pointing back towards where they’d entered. “It looks relatively flat.” He started carrying the planks toward the spot.
“Sure,” Steven said, following him.
“I’ll get the tent going here in the middle,” Eliza said as they walked off.
◊
Steven assisted Roy as he constructed the hinged mirrors and arranged the ropes that would raise them from the forest floor. It was starting to get dark.
“You know,” Steven said, “if Aka Manah doesn’t show up on his own, I’m going to need to call him somehow.”
“Uh huh,” Roy said, trying to adjust a hinge. “Hand me a screwdriver, will you?”
“Are you listening to me?” Steven said, retrieving the screwdriver and handing it to Roy. “I’ll have to trance.”
“Yeah, so?” Roy said, taking the screwdriver. “No, no, no! A Philips head!”
Steven rummaged through the bag of tools until he found an old Philips head screwdriver and handed it to Roy. “So, I don’t know how to trance,” Steven said. “You’ve never taught me.”
“Sure I did,” Roy said, fighting with the hinge. “When we were dealing with Lukas.”
“I don’t remember being taught,” Steven said. “That seemed more like an accident.”
“It wasn’t,” Roy said. “You tranced because you had to. You knew if you didn’t, I’d be a goner.”
“I don’t get it,” Steven said. “When you trance, you imagine something that extreme?”
“No,” Roy said, “the extreme situation helped to focus you solely on what you needed to do. That’s all trancing is. Focus.”
“I wasn’t able to do it with the others at the Unser Estate,” Steven said.
“What were you thinking about?” Roy said. “I’m guessing you were thinking about the other people in the circle, how you were supposed to do it, why it wasn’t happening, all that. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” Steven said. “That’s right.”
“You’ve got to be focused on the single act of entering the trance and the purpose of the trance. Nothing else. When you tranced with Lukas, you were focused. You need to have the same focus. Then it’ll start to form around you, and you have to maintain the focus until the trance is fully formed. If you stop and start marveling at it happening, it’ll go away. You’ve seen it takes me five or ten minutes just to get calm enough to start it, and it takes a couple of minutes more for it to be fully formed. Once you get to that stage, you’re good. You can invite others in. Don’t rush it, just stick with it until it’s complete.”
“Should I practice?” Steven asked.
“Sure, go practice,” Roy said. “I got this.”
Steven walked back to Eliza, who had finished setting up the tent they planned on sleeping in that night. “Done already?” she asked as he approached.
“I’m going to practice trancing,” Steven said. “Roy gave me some pointers. I think I’ll do it over there, so I’ve got some privacy.” Steven nodded to a spot away from the tent.
“Take one of the camping chairs,” Eliza said. “It’s a lot easier if you’re comfortable.” She gave him a big smile.
Steven grabbed one of the chairs and marched off towards his selected spot. He placed the chair down and looked around. Eliza was fifty feet away in one direction, and Roy was about fifty feet in the other. He faced the chair away from both of them, and sat in it.
OK, let’s clear the mind, Steven thought. What do I concentrate on? Not Aka Manah, surely. The trap isn’t ready yet. I need something else to focus on.
He looked around. Directly in front of him was another twenty feet of clearing, and beyond that, the edge of the forest.
I’ll focus on this place, Steven thought. Might as well understand my surroundings. That’s probably how Roy does it when he trances at a new place we’re exploring – he probably just focuses on the place, to see what’s hidden within it.
Steven closed his eyes. He couldn’t hear any sounds except Roy rustling in the distance. No birds or insect noises, he thought. He slipped into the River. Normally it would wash over him, but here the River was unmoving, and he felt like he’d stepped into Jello.
He picked a spot in the distance – a tree at the edge of the clearing. He watched the tree intently, and tried to let all other thoughts go away. Everything became about the tree. What had gone on around it? What had it seen? What was in this forest?
He stared at the tree from within the River for what seemed like half an hour. He was about to give up, when he began to feel something radiating from himself. Don’t lose it, he thought, and the radiation immediately went away. Roy warned me not to do that. How stupid of me.
The Suicide Forest (The River Book 5) Page 14