Swimming In the Sea of Trees (Novella #8)

by Adam Millard

  “Just try not to stab any poor fuckers,” she said.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. I knew that the knife was useless, that I had more chance of using my cock in Aokigahara than my blade. The poor bastard in the juniper tent wasn’t going to threaten us with violence; if they did, I really wouldn’t know what to do. I would probably shit in my knickers before remembering I was in possession of a knife, by which time it would no doubt be far too late. No, whoever was in that tent was a danger to only one person.

  “Do we call out from here?” Kelly whispered, once again through gritted teeth.

  “I think we should go over there,” I said. Kelly’s eyes widened further; on any other day, and in any other locale, it would have been comical, but there was serious concern there, and it was my job to convince her that we had absolutely nothing to worry about. “If you were in a tent, and you heard someone shouting outside, would you pop your head out?”

  Kelly thought about it for a moment. “Okay,” she said. I could see that she wasn’t convinced.

  “Okay.” I hid the rucksack at the edge of the trail. If we needed to make a run for it, for whatever reason, the pack would only weigh me down. We could always come back and retrieve it later. With the rucksack suitably covered with twigs and leaves, I led Kelly by the hand into the trees.

  The closer we got to the tent, the more my stomach began to turn over. This time, though, it was nerves. There was a marked difference between this discomfort and the one that had threatened to drop me to my knees only a few moments ago. For a start I didn’t feel dazed, separate from my own body. No, as we approached the tent I suddenly became aware of my own tangibility, and that was a good thing. It meant that I—we—weren’t sharing some kind of weird hallucination.

  On the floor at the entrance to the tent, a pair of filthy shoes—too large to belong to anything other than a man—had been carefully arranged. Next to them an unwashed plate, stained with the remnants of some yellow food, drew flies and other creepies. I didn’t know which was worse: leaving one’s shoes next to such a filthy plate or vice versa.

  Kelly squeezed my hand, as if to demonstrate that she, too, thought the scene grotesque. Though she didn’t speak, and neither did I. We simply stepped around the tent, being careful not to tread on anything that might give us away. I had no idea why we were being so clandestine; eventually we would attempt to make contact with the tenant of the tent. That was the whole point, after all.

  At the back of the tent damp clothes had been strung up on a makeshift clothesline. The smell was abysmal, and for some reason reminded me of the many hours I’d spent sitting in a laundrymat as a child while my mother fed coins into the graffiti-plastered machines. The mustiness was almost unbearable.

  On the plus side, the person camping here had no immediate intention to end their own life. One with uncontrollable suicidal thoughts tended not to concern oneself with the cleanliness of one’s undergarments. It came as quite a relief to me; though I was eager to discover something macabre in Aokigahara, I wasn’t quite ready to face it. Instead, I began taking photographs of the tent and its surroundings, much to the disgust of my wife, who sneered at me as if I had just plucked a worm from the earth and swallowed it whole.

  I shrugged and took a few snaps of the laundry, and it was then that something snapped off to the left.

  I turned my head so fast that my neck cracked. I heard Kelly inhale suddenly and deeply as she saw the figure emerging from the trees.

  A young man—couldn’t have been a day over twenty—was buckling his belt, unaware that we were even there. He said something in Japanese—kono yarou?—as he struggled to find the correct belt-hole. It seemed only right that we alert him to our presence.

  “Hello?” I said, holding my hands out in a placatory manner.

  The man looked up suddenly, his eyes wide, eyebrows arched with worry. Poor kid’s mouth fell open with shock, as if we were the last creatures on God’s green earth he’d expected to see standing before him. I knew in that moment that the knife in my back pocket was about as necessary as a snow-shovel out here.

  “It’s okay,” Kelly said. Ten feet separated me and my wife, but she closed that gap, as if it would somehow appease the confused camper. “We saw your tent and thought we’d check up on you.”

  The man was frozen, as if he had taken root and was now as much a part of the forest as the trees around us. I knew I had to say something.

  “English?” I said, lowering my arms in case he perceived them as a threat, an indication of imminent violence. “Do you speak any English?”

  The man frowned and, after a second or two, shook his head. I took that as a good sign; he wasn’t just terrified into silence by us.

  Kelly sighed. “Are you out here on your own?”

  “He just said he didn’t speak English,” I reminded her. She dismissed me with a raised hand before motioning to the tent. “Your shoes,” she said. “One pair.” She made the universal sign of ‘one’ with her finger. “You alone?”

  The man was either being kind or had actually understood her, for he nodded, the hint of a smile appearing on his face. “Hai,” he said. I didn’t know much Japanese, and Kelly was even less familiar with it than I was, but I knew that meant yes.

  “We were just passing through,” I said, walking with my fingers and gesturing to the trail behind. “Are you okay?” I knew what he was here for, even if my wife didn’t. And I think the man knew that I knew. Shame seemed to wash over him.

  “Hai,” he said. He scanned the area around us, as if searching for something, and when he next spoke I realized that it was words he had been looking for. “Sutekina,” he grunted, and then added, “Nice.”

  He was referring to the forest, the tranquillity of it all. “Yes, it is nice,” I agreed. Something, some sense of duty, suddenly hit me, and I pointed to the tent. “You know you’re not allowed to camp in here? No camping? No?” I shook my head, hoping he understood what I was trying to tell him.

  He walked slowly across the glade to where his tent was pitched. “Hai,” he said, running a hand over the canvas. Did he think I was complementing him on his temporary abode? Perhaps. It was a nice tent, under the circumstances. It made me wonder what the wardens would do to it once the man had permanently vacated.

  “He’s okay,” I whispered to Kelly. “We should probably leave him to it.”

  She nodded. To the man she said, “Okay, well I hope you have a lovely day,” and deep inside me I cringed. That wasn’t the kind of thing you said to a man contemplating death by his own hands. She wasn’t to know that, of course.

  “Bye,” I said, waving to the man even though he was less the ten feet away. Unsurprisingly, he waved back. We left him standing there at the entrance to his tent, looking perplexed and nervous, and made our way back to the trail.

  4

  Half an hour later, and with a protein bar in our stomachs, we rested against a tree. The heat was unremitting, and I was starting to sweat so much that it had become uncomfortable to walk unbroken for too long. Nestled against the oak’s trunk, I at least had the chance to dry off before we inevitably pushed on. Kelly sat to my right, picking nuts from her teeth with the sharpened point of an empty wrapper. For some reason, the action annoyed me more than it should have. Perhaps it was the noises she made as she slipped the wrapper through her teeth—slurping, sucking, heavy breathing—in an attempt to extricate the recalcitrant cashew. Whatever it was, I felt the urge to speak up, and before I knew what was happening, I did.

  “Are you trying to wind me up?” I said, more venom in my voice than I had intended.

  With the cessation of the rustling wrapper came an altogether more terrifying sound: complete silence. I could feel her eyes boring into the side of my face. It burned, as if she was flaying me alive with pure hatred.

  “What?” she asked. “What’s your problem?”

  “My problem,” I said, “is that you’re sitting there mining for gold, and it’s r
eally getting on my tits. Show some fucking decorum!” I immediately regretted it, but it was too late now. The cat was out of the bag. The thing was, I hadn’t really meant to say anything; the idea was mine, but the words were not. I would never speak to Kelly like that, not even in jest. And what the hell did I know about decorum? I’m the guy who eats with his mouth open, who blows tiny bubbles with one piece of gum, who cracks his knuckles when he’s anxious. Decorum, to me, is nothing but a fancy word for “do what is expected of you.”

  After a few seconds, in which Kelly was no doubt planning where to bury the body, she said, “What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

  I planted my head in my hands; that terrible emptiness and stirring returned to my stomach. “I…I just don’t feel well,” I said. It was the truth, and yet I couldn’t tell her exactly what the problem was as I didn’t know myself. There was no pain, other than the blister on my right foot; I just didn’t feel…right.

  “Do you want to go back?” She was still angry with me for the way I’d spoken to her. Her monotonous, staccato words were a dead giveaway.

  No, I didn’t want to go back. That was the last thing I wanted. It was still early in the afternoon, and I’d spent the better part of the year looking forward to this. “I’ll be fine,” I told her. “Just need to rest for a minute.” In fucking peace, I thought but didn’t add.

  Kelly sighed. “Why don’t you take a pill if you’re not feeling well?” She made a good point, but I didn’t want to take anything that might impair me further, and I wasn’t sure of the side-effects of the pills in my bag.

  “It’ll pass,” I said. It already had, once. Whatever it was, it seemed to be coming in short bursts. It was the hollowness I felt afterwards that concerned me. I decided to change the subject. Kelly was liable to keep on at me, otherwise. “So what did you make of our friend back there?”

  Kelly repositioned herself against the trunk of the tree. “Who? The happy camper?”

  I nodded. “The very same.”

  “Probably just some kid on the run from something or other,” she said. “Did you happen to notice how many casinos we passed in Gotemba?”

  I lit a cigarette. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and so I didn’t have to worry about the smoke blowing back into Kelly’s face. “You think he ended up sleeping in a forest because he fucked up at the craps table?” Now that I’d said it, it didn’t seem all that far-fetched. People came here to die for all reasons. What was to say that the happy camper hadn’t taken out a loan he could nary afford, stuck it all on red, and ended up here, lost and with no way out?

  “I’m saying that if I suddenly found myself homeless, I would distance myself from the public. Those people that lurk around city centers with a cup on a piece of string dangling from their neck, they’re missing out on a real opportunity.”

  I snorted. Like I said, what did I know about decorum? “Yeah, lucky bastards.”

  “I’m serious, Dan! Okay, you’ve just been turfed out of your home. You’ve got nothing but the clothes on your back and, like the happy camper back there, a tent. Would you hang around shopping malls all day, begging for change, getting spat on by the disgusted passers-by? Or would you head to the nearest beauty-spot for some peace and quiet. No more worries; no bills to pay; a fresh start; the chance to go anywhere you want to; live wherever you lay your hat, away from society—which, by the way, you hate more than anyone I know.”

  When she put it like that, I suddenly found myself jealous of the happy camper. But then I remembered that none of it was true. He wasn’t there to begin a new life; he was there to an end an old one. A shudder coursed through my entire body and the jovial tone of the conversation suddenly seemed wrong.

  I climbed slowly to my feet. Kelly watched me from where she sat. “We can’t sit here all day,” I told her. “Places to go, things to see.”

  She picked herself up and dusted herself down. “What time is it?” she said.

  I glanced down at my watch, and almost relayed the time to her when I realized that it couldn’t be correct. “Hm,” I said, tapping the glass face of the timepiece. “Battery must have gone.” The watch read 11:55, roughly the same time (exactly?) it would have been when we stepped into Aokigahara. Coincidence? Had the watch ceased to work in the same way that compasses failed to function here? I shrugged, for it would have been ridiculous to see it as anything other than happenstance.

  “You’ll have to take it to that guy on the market when we get home,” Kelly said. I knew who she meant; the man of many talents, so long as you needed the sole of a shoe fixing or a replacement key cutting.

  I slipped the watch from my wrist and deposited it in the rucksack. There was no point keeping it on so that its leather strap, covered with my own sweat, could irritate my wrist.

  “So, which way now, Indiana?” She smiled.

  It was a smile that disappeared quickly as a jarring screech assaulted us through the trees; threatened to not only knock us from our feet but to also send us spiraling into the inescapable chasms of insanity.

  * * *

  “You heard it!” Kelly said, reluctant to walk beside me as I strode purposefully along the trail. “What the fuck was that?”

  I knew what it sounded like (a woman in the throes of agony) but it could have been anything. At least, that was what I told myself. “Probably some wild animal,” I said. “Whatever it was, it came from up here.” I hadn’t noticed until now, but at some point in the last five minutes we had left the trail behind. There was no tape to lead us or keep us from entering forbidden zones; there were just trees as far as the eye could see, each as unremarkable as the next. I was loath to tell Kelly that we had drifted somewhat, and that I had failed to take note of our surroundings so that we might easily find our way back to the trail.

  All I cared about was finding the source of the scream, and I knew that when we found it, it wouldn’t be an animal.

  “Slow down!” Kelly had to run to keep up. She was panting like a thirsty dog, but I didn’t want to wait. Something had taken over my body and was pulling me inexorably forwards, deeper into the trees. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could have stopped.

  “If it’s just an animal,” Kelly said, “why the fuck are we chasing after it?”

  “It might be hurt,” I said. She might be hurt. She might be swinging, right now, feet just inches from the floor, the life seeping from her gasping mouth as she tried to remember those things in life she had cherished so that she at least goes to the next world with a sweet taste in her mouth.

  “DAN!” She was shouting now, pulling at my arm in an attempt to slow me down. “What the fuck has gotten into you?”

  I turned on her so fast that it came as quite a shock to both of us. “Nothing!” I said. “Aren’t you the least bit intrigued by this place? Why people come here? Don’t you want to find out for yourself?” None of the words were mine; I had no intention of telling her the truth, not consciously, anyway.

  “You’re acting strange,” she said, her eyes searching mine. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  “That’s a fucking lie, and you know it!” Memories flooded back to me. Seven years ago, upon returning home early from work to find her in a state of undress with a man I had never met before, I had felt exactly like this. Angry. Confused. Murderous.

  I hadn’t thought about that day for years. At the time I had forgiven her and we had moved forward, but as the memories washed over me, the hatred and confusion was as fresh as the day it happened.

  It made no sense, and it took every ounce of my being not to strike out, to inflict the same pain upon my wife as I was feeling in that moment. I gnawed at my lip in an attempt to distract myself. Kelly was on the verge of tears—oh, yeah, here come the fucking waterworks, a mean voice said inside my head.

  I was about to apologize when something dropped from the tree above, thumped into me and knocked me to the ground.

  Kelly screamed for a second before it caught i
n her throat and threatened to choke her.

  I rolled onto my back, my stomach fluttering, and saw the rope tied to the branch of the tree above. The body attached to the noosed end swung back and forth, back and forth, and the rope creaked, and Kelly whimpered, and I lay paralyzed, watching, stupefied, and wondering why my wife had once sought the affections of another man.

  5

  “It’s not real!” I said, climbing to my feet. I was still dazed, but I had to convince Kelly, who was cowering, sobbing with her head in her hands, that the body wasn’t real. I could see that now. It was simply a mannequin; a sick joke left behind to prank an unsuspecting couple. Someone clearly had too much time on their hands.

  Kelly looked at me through her fingertips, then at the plastic dummy swinging at the end of the rope. It was absent clothes; its plastic breasts were small, like those belonging to some underweight catwalk model, and its bald head reminded me of Superman’s arch-enemy, Lex Luthor. Someone had made the thing’s face up to look like a clown. Bright red lips made up the majority of the lower half, while its eyes were dark blue crosses. It was nightmarish, yes, but I reproached myself for scaring so easily, for it was about as lifelike as the waxwork figures in some low-rent Tussauds knock-off.

  Kelly lowered her hands and stared at me—not the gently swinging mannequin—as if I had been the one to set the prank. “What is this?” she said.

  I nudged the mannequin with my shoulder, which sent the thing into a spin. “Obviously meant as a joke,” I said, though even I couldn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing, and I knew of Aokigahara’s secret history.