by Adam Millard
“I want to go now.” Kelly climbed to her feet, her face stony. She watched the dummy spin around; I knew that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The upside-down doll back there had planted a seed of doubt in my wife’s mind, but this had taken a watering-can to it.
“Oh, come on, Kel,” I said, motioning to the mannequin as it swung and spun. “It’s a fucking dummy. I’m not going to let a fucking dummy ruin the day.”
“I want to GO!” She practically yelled the last word, and I knew that no amount of persuasion was going to change her mind.
“Fine!” I said, sounding like a petulant child who couldn’t get its own way. I could understand why she was freaked out; hell, I was more than a little spooked myself. But to draw a line under the afternoon so suddenly, over a fucking mannequin of all things, seemed an overreaction, and I couldn’t help feeling that Kelly was just looking for an excuse to ruin my day. “We’ll go back to the car, but when I have to write this up for the blog, we’re going to sound like a right couple of fucking idiots. Scared of a bloody dummy? Some prank a bunch of kids left behind? What a fucking joke!”
I was clutching at straws, and throughout my tirade I watched for a change in Kelly’s countenance, something that told me she understood how pathetic this was. But nothing changed. She remained impassive, and I knew that she had made her mind up, despite my angry rant.
“A minute ago you were saying how beautiful it was,” I said, pushing the matter and my luck.
“That was before a clown mannequin dropped from the fucking sky!” She folded her arms across her chest. “Look, Dan, I’m not going to stand here arguing with you. If you want to stay out here, roaming around all afternoon, that’s fine, but I want to go back to the car. I’ve got a splitting headache and my stomach is off, and I’ve just about had enough of being scared shitless. I think I’ll be okay once I’ve had a lie down.”
“Your stomach?” I said. Perhaps she had the same thing I did, which made sense as we’d shared a sushi platter.
She nodded and rubbed at her midriff. “Yeah, but look. I don’t want to argue with you over this, okay? I just don’t think I’m capable of walking around out here feeling like this.”
I knew then that she wasn’t trying to ruin my afternoon. She wanted to head back to the car and wait for me there. Whether that had anything to do with the clown mannequin or the upside-down doll, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I could cover more of the forest if I didn’t have her with me, slowing me down and complaining every couple of minutes.
“Okay,” I said, calmly. “I’ll walk you back to the car. We can find out what time it is on the dashboard clock and, if I’ve got time, I’ll come back out here for an hour or so.”
Kelly sighed and shook her head. “Look, it’s fine,” she said. “We came in a straight line. I’m not going to get lost.” Something in her expression changed, and I immediately thought of the happy camper we had passed on the way out. She was a little wary of bumping into him again on the way back; we had been married long enough for me to know when something unnerved her.
“No, I’ll walk back with you,” I said. I wasn’t too keen on the thought of her bumping into the happy camper, either, even though he’d seemed like an affable chap. He was suicidal—wouldn’t be out here on his own if he wasn’t—and you never knew what went through the mind of a man contemplating death.
Kelly turned and walked a few paces away from me and my friend, the swinging mannequin. Across her shoulder she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll see you back at the car when you’re done here. Just don’t be too long, okay? It’s hotter than hell out here.”
I watched her go. “I’ll be back in a while,” I said, though I wasn’t sure she heard me. Louder, I added, “When you get to the trail, stick to it!” She yelled something back, but I didn’t quite catch it. A few seconds later and she had disappeared from view. It was as if the trees had swallowed her up.
As soon as she was out of sight the strange sensation returned to my stomach. The emptiness; the feeling of disconnection, or was it just my mind playing on the fact that my wife had just abandoned me in the middle of a cursed forest?
I lit a cigarette and sighed. And then I began to walk.
* * *
Kelly realized she must have taken a wrong turn when, five minutes after leaving Dan, she still hadn’t come across the bright tape cordoning off certain parts of the woods. She wasn’t frightened; just disappointed that she might have to backtrack. In doing so, there was a chance she would encounter Dan again, and the last thing she wanted was to admit that she was lost.
“I’m not lost,” she assured herself. The trail was somewhere here; she could feel it. Her belly fizzed and popped as she walked through a patch of stiltgrass. The air was thickening, the humidity almost unbearable now. She finished off what little water remained in her bottle before leaving the empty next to a tree. Littering wasn’t something she normally advocated, but the whole forest was covered, in places, with garbage, and so she knew that her one bottle wasn’t going to make much difference.
Up ahead, she could see a new place, somewhere they definitely hadn’t passed on the way out. At first she thought it was the happy camper’s place, and elation washed over her that she wasn’t lost after all, but when she neared she saw that it was something new. A dark blue coat was spiked into the ground with what looked like a homemade javelin. Around it sat six pairs of shoes, all children’s. Some of them were basic black buckle-ups, but there was also a couple of branded pairs, one of which featured the unmistakeable face of Hello Kitty and another pair had a print of Spiderman running along one side. The absence of an adult pair only served to unsettle Kelly more.
There was always something strangely disconcerting about finding a lost shoe; at least Kelly thought so. A glove, yes, people lose gloves all the time. They could fall out of one’s pocket, or drop silently to the ground as you walked along, carrying them. A shoe, however, has to be removed, and even if it comes loose of its own accord, you would surely notice, especially in such a bucolic environment.
Finding a pair of shoes, while certainly odd, does not necessarily send one scrambling for the nearest payphone in order to lodge a missing person’s report with the local constabulary. Perhaps the wearer of the shoes found them too tight, uncomfortable, and switched to something a little less snug. A nice pair of flip-flops or some cotton slip-ons. Why take home a pair of shoes that caused you such discomfort? You would not be wearing them again, unless you were a closet masochist. Take them off, leave them in the forest, it really doesn’t matter…
Finding six pairs of shoes, however, all belonging to children? That was exactly the kind of thing which set alarm-bells ringing.
Frowning, Kelly scanned the surrounding trees. The shoes, whilst a little mucky, did not appear to have been left out in the elements for too long. Maybe the kids to whom they belonged were still here, running around, playing army or whatever it was that kids got up to these days.
Samuel would have liked it out here, she thought. Samuel would have played army all day out here. All he needed was a stick and something to point it at.
“Why are you thinking about him?” she asked herself, reproachfully. She shook her head, as if that might banish the image of her son that seemed to have taken up residence there. She crouched, picked up one of the tiny shoes and turned it over in her hands.
Dan would have loved this, she thought as she examined the shoe, and part of her wanted to go back and find him, to bring him here to see what he made of it. But she knew that he would have moved on by now, headed deeper into the forest in search of God knows what. She could be chasing him around for hours, by which time she would have forgotten where the ring of kid’s shoes were. Dan would have to settle for a description later on; it wasn’t too difficult to picture six pairs of shoes in a concentric circle around a staked coat.
Just then, something moved in the trees to Kelly’s right and she snapped her head across just in t
ime to see a branch quivering.
Her heart skipped a beat. Something had been there, moved through there, had brushed against the branch before disappearing into the much thicker sea of trees behind.
“Hello?” Kelly said as she straightened up. Her voice was low; she doubted anyone could have heard it, and so she repeated herself two more times, keeping her eyes trained upon the section of the forest that was still moving. “Is that you, Dan?”
She didn’t think he would be stupid enough to even attempt to pull a prank on her out here, not after she’d told him how ill she felt. And yet there was something infantile about her husband, and a part of her knew that he was capable of anything, no matter how derisible it seemed to her.
“You’d better not be fucking about, Dan,” she said, searching the trees for signs of life. It was then that something rustled behind her, and she swooped around, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was. But once again all she was faced with was trees settling back into position.
But something had been there! And over there! Two separate incidents. Someone was messing with her—had to be—and knowing that, Kelly wished she’d thought more carefully about Dan’s offer to walk her back to the car. She would have been there now, not lost, not standing in the middle of nowhere while someone—Dan?—played silly fuckers all around her. She had derided Dan for bringing along a knife, but in that moment Kelly would have given her right arm for the miniature blade.
Something crackled behind her, and this time as she turned she caught a glimpse of it before it vanished into the trees once again. Just a swatch of yellow cloth, but it was enough for Kelly. Whatever (whoever) was circling her, it wasn’t her husband. Despite the torrid heat, gooseflesh pushed its way to the surface of her skin and a shiver ran the length of her spine.
The happy camper? Could that man, who had seemed pleasant enough, be the one toying with her?
Why? Why would anyone do something like that? But then she remembered the inverse doll nailed to the oak tree, the swinging mannequin with its painted clown features, and realized that there were plenty of people in the world who were simply out to shock and offend. From somewhere, Kelly found the courage to speak, to question the prowling figure she had just caught a glimpse of.
“What do you want?” she said, reaching for a moderately heavy stick she saw nestled beside her foot. It wasn’t a knife, but it was better than nothing. “Just fuck off and leave me alone!” She searched the trees, anticipating its next move, listening for the crack of twigs or the rustle of disturbed branches, but there was nothing but silence now.
She turned, and turned again, her feet carrying her slowly through the woods. She was adrift in a sea of trees, disorientated and with no idea of how to find her way back to Dan or the car. Heart beating rapidly, stick held out in front of her, she slumped to the ground. Tears filled her eyes; her mouth suddenly dried; what little strength she’d had seeped from her body, and the foreign stirrings in her belly returned with a vengeance. Wretchedness consumed her from head to toe, until she could no longer control the tears.
She began to sob.
The boy in the trees watched.
6
Now that Kelly had cut me loose, I could explore more thoroughly, without worrying about what I might come across. Bringing her to Aokigahara had been a mistake; she would never understand what it meant to me. I was a fool for thinking otherwise, but what was I meant to do? It wasn’t as if I could have come alone. “Sorry, love, but I’m heading into the woods without you. Hope you don’t mind.” Returning to the car was perhaps the best thing that she could have done. I just hoped that old doomsayer, Hayashi, didn’t return to fill her in on the gory details of the forest while I was gone.
It was around fifteen minutes after Kelly had left me that I came across the shrine. Partially buried by new growth, an assortment of colorful items—out of place amongst the greens and browns of the forest—caught my eye. I carefully pulled the vines and shrubs away so that I might see what lay beneath. Down on my knees, I separated the articles and began to take photographs. I’d hit the motherlode.
A child’s painting depicting a nuclear family.
An unopened sweet packet with a rosy-cheeked superhero winking and reaching for what looked like the Japanese equivalent of Gummi Bears.
A bronze pocket-watch which, unsurprisingly, no longer functioned.
A small piece of paper featuring text I would never be able to translate: 死は未来である.
A CD which I saw, when I cleared the dirt from its plastic case, featured music from a band called Bo Ningen.A passport-sized photograph of a young girl with shoulder-length, black hair.
I took pictures of it all, individually and combined, but I kept returning to the small photograph, wondering whether the girl had died here in the forest. Perhaps she had been the girlfriend of the person these things belonged to? The daughter? A friend? I would never know, and speculating would get me nowhere.
With everything suitably documented, I placed the articles back where I found them and covered them, leaving the photograph for last. For some reason, perhaps I was just concerned for the girl, I gave it a kiss before nestling it in with the other items. I wondered how long it would be before someone else came along, and if they, too, would ponder over the whereabouts of the girl, if she’d made it out of the forest alive, or if she’d entered to begin with.
Clambering to my feet, I checked the camera to make sure the pictures were of serviceable quality. They were good enough; nothing a spooky filter wouldn’t take care of.
I picked up my rucksack and was about to move on when a noise came to me through the trees ahead. It was barely audible, but in the absolute silence I had grown used to in the last twenty minutes or so, I heard it just fine.
A moan.
I turned my head to the side, listening for further noises, and I didn’t have to wait long. It came again—definitely a moan—and yet I couldn’t tell if it was human or animal.
I held my breath; the only other sound I could make out was the steady hush-thump of blood in my ears.
Another moan…and this time words followed it. Human words. English words. I didn’t catch what the words were, despite the utter quietness of the place, but my brain did some sort of behind-the-scenes work and told me everything I needed to know.
A woman. An English woman. Moaning (agony?). Begging?
“Kelly,” I muttered. Something large and desiccated wedged in my throat, momentarily preventing me from breathing. I dry-swallowed and reached for the knife I’d tucked away in the seat pocket of my khakis.
Kelly was in trouble. I should never have let her go off alone. What kind of husband does that? A fuck-awful one, that’s who. She was in trouble, and now she was sobbing and begging me to find her.
I took off at a sprint, running toward the moans, hoping I wasn’t too late.
* * *
Realizing what a fool she was being, Kelly composed herself and took several deep breaths. This is silly, she thought. So fucking silly! She was thirsty, that was all. Tired and thirsty. The mind had a tendency to play tricks on you in such ridiculous heat; Kelly knew that, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that there really was someone in the trees, watching, running around, playful and mischievous, a forest imp…
“Pull yourself together,” she reproached herself. The car was all she needed. Once she found the car, everything would be just dandy. She would take a nap with the windows down and the fan on full-power. Dan didn’t bring all of the water, which meant there were several bottles in the trunk, and though it would be warm and not at all pleasant to drink, she needed it.
All she had to do was find the trail.
“Come on, Kelly,” she said, feeling a little better than she had a moment ago. She turned around and began to walk.
* * *
As I got closer to the moaning, I became acutely aware that they weren’t, as I’d initially thought, moans of pain. Neither were they the laments of a
tormented soul, which would have been disturbing in a wholly different way.
They were the groans of a woman in the throes of ecstasy. Once I figured that out, I wasn’t sure I should continue looking for the source. I had to admit, however, that I was more than a little intrigued.
Of course the forest had a terrible history, but that didn’t mean it was forbidden to fornicate within its boundaries, no more than it was taboo to fuck at the base of Everest. People had died at both sites, and I had a feeling there were certain people out there that might get off on Aokigahara’s awful history. You read about people having sex in graveyards, on the stones of fallen soldiers; there was something risky about it, and that’s what people got off on. The jeopardous nature of it only ameliorated the sex. I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed for the couple I could hear or jealous of them.
The woman’s moans got louder, and were now accompanied by the guttural grunts of a man. My hopes it would be an all-girl affair were somewhat callously dashed. I found myself squinting through the trees now, ready to stumble upon the couple. I didn’t want them to see me, of course, and so I became increasingly aware of my own footfall. I felt like a deviant, but I really wanted to get a few pictures of the couple in action. It would be something a little more light-hearted for the blog; a postscript to illustrate that Aokigahara wasn’t all doom and gloom. I’d blur out any private parts, of course. A couple having sex was one thing, but swinging genitals was something else entirely.
I rounded a large oak, using its roots to push silently forward, and that was when I saw something moving up ahead.
Glistening flesh, just enough to confirm I had been right all along. Dirty bastards, I thought as I readied my camera. I couldn’t see much from where I stood, so I stooped and continued forward a few steps. I was confident the couple were too caught up in what they were doing to hear me approach; the woman’s moans of pleasure were enough to conceal the sound of snapping twigs beneath my feet and my own aroused breathing.