Suicide Forest by Jeremy Bates Read Free Book Online Page A

“You want us to live with
your mother?”
    “Of course not. But we’d be close. I could
visit with her a few times a week.”
    “Are there even schools in St. Helena where
we could work?” I asked diplomatically.
    “You think I was home taught? The high
school has about five hundred students.”
    “What are the chances they’d have a teaching
position available, let alone two?”
    “It couldn’t hurt to check, could it?”
    I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it.
I didn’t want to fight with Mel, not here, not now. So I merely
shrugged noncommittally.
    She gave me an unreadable look, then picked
up her pace, leaving me behind to ponder the next five years in St.
Helena surrounded by lilacs and grandmothers and perhaps an angry
mob keen on a lynching.
     
     
     
    We’d been walking
for over an hour and a half now, and I was just beginning to get
used to the brooding strangeness of Aokigahara when the path ended
abruptly at two grotesquely fused trees that instilled in me both
fascination and revulsion. They wound serpentine-like around one
another, fighting, grappling, spiraling up and up in a decades-long
struggle to reach the spot of sky that must have opened when
another tree had fallen. They were the perfect embodiment of the
vicious survive-at-any-costs ruthlessness that had taken root
everywhere in the forest, reinforcing my perception that this was a
cruel, primeval, unforgiving place, a slice of hell on earth, even
for plant life.
    Someone had painted what looked to be a
white arrow about ten feet up on each trunk. They pointed in
opposite directions.
    “Are those arrows?” Mel said, frowning.
    “I reckon the police made them,” Neil said,
“to find their way to other trails.”
    “Or bodies,” I said.
    Everyone looked at me.
    “You really think they lead to bodies?” Mel
said.
    “Maybe not anymore,” I admitted. “The police
would have removed them already.”
    “So which way do we go?” John Scott said,
lighting up a cigarette.
    “I don’t think we should leave this path,”
Mel said.
    “We won’t go far,” he assured her.
    Ben nodded. “We will split up. Half of us
will go left for an hour, the other half go right. If either group
sees something, we will call the other.”
    Mel and I checked our phones. We both had
reception.
    “What happens if neither of us find
anything?” Mel asked.
    Ben shrugged. “Then we meet back here in two
hours.”
    “So we good?” John Scott said.
    “Yeah, man,” Tomo said.
    John Scott nodded at Neil. “What do you say,
big guy?”
    Neil was gazing off into the forest. “I
don’t know,” he said. “I have a bad feeling about this place.”
    “Of course you do. It’s fucking freaky as
hell. We’re all freaked. But we’ve already come all this way. We’re
so close to finding something.”
    “Mate, that’s the thing. I don’t reckon I want to find anything.”
    “You don’t want to see a body?”
    “We don’t belong here. It’s wrong what we’re
doing, disrespectful.”
    Mel was nodding.
    “Anyone else want to chicken out?” John
Scott said.
    This pissed Neil off. “I’m not chickening
out.”
    “Then come with us.”
    “Yeah, man,” Tomo said. “Don’t be chicken
guy.”
    Neil threw up his hands. “I’m not a chicken!
And if it will shut you two up, fine, I’ll come.”
    “Hooah!” John Scott cawed idiotically. He
looked at Mel and me.
    Although I’d begun to rethink the wisdom of
what we were doing out here, the arrows had admittedly piqued my
sense of adventure. And John Scott was right. We’d already come all
this way. Why stop now? It was just a little farther to see what
was behind that final corner. Then we could make camp, eat, relax,
and leave here tomorrow with a sense of accomplishment.
    Mel saw my decision in my eyes, and she
relented. “One more hour,” she said. “And that’s it.”
    “One more hour,” Ben agreed, smiling.
“Okay—Nina and me, we will go left. Who would like to join