Swimming In the Sea of Trees (Novella #8) Read online

  "Swimming In the Sea of Trees"

  By: Adam Millard

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Table of Contents

  1

  “They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”—Arthur Schopenhauer

  There are places on this earth that need to be seen. We are only here for a short time, and it should be our mission to witness as much of the world as possible. Whilst some people are content living out their days in the city—frequenting the same coffee shop every morning, hitting the same gym until its layout is ingrained into one’s head, eating at the same Italian restaurant so habitually that the staff no longer feel the need to inquire about one’s choice of food or drink—others seek to appreciate the wilderness, those hidden spots where one might find tranquillity away from the trappings of modern-day life. I am such a person.

  “Where the hell are we?” Kelly asked, slowing the Toyota as it rattled over the gravel beneath us. Her countenance was one of confusion, and why wouldn’t it be? This was my idea; she had no knowledge of this place or its history, and I wanted to keep it that way. While I am certainly an explorer, a fan of the macabre, my wife is not. If she knew we were about to set foot into one of the most cursed forests in Japan, well, let’s just say that there might not be another anniversary past this one.

  “Pull up next to that Honda,” I said, folding the map that had been stretched out in my lap for the last three hours. I stowed it in the glove compartment as Kelly parked. She turned the engine off, removed her seatbelt, and twisted in her seat so that she faced me. “What?” I said, though I knew what was bothering her and decided to pre-empt her inevitable questions. “It’s just a forest,” I said, knowing full well that it wasn’t ‘just’ a forest. “One of the most famous and beautiful landmarks in Japan, as a matter of fact.” She didn’t need to know what it was famous for.

  “It’s not just a forest, is it?” she said, head shaking ever so slightly. “If it was just a forest, we wouldn’t be here.” She unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water and drank. It was hot as hell out there; it was even hotter sitting in the car under the scrutinizing glance of my unconvinced wife. I couldn’t even make eye-contact with her, lest my own eyes betray me into spilling the truth. Kelly had a strange way of knowing when I was lying. Something about the way my lip twitched at the corner. In that moment I became very aware of my mouth, and I hoped it wasn’t giving me away.

  I wound the window down a few inches. “Why do you always do this?” I said. “We’re having a nice time here, and you want to argue over nothing.” I tapped a cigarette out of its packet and fumbled for my lighter. Kelly hated that I still smoked, and so now I made a big deal out of it whenever I did. Maybe I would smoke two or three, wind the window up to trap the fug.

  Kelly sighed. “We are having a nice time,” she said, and I knew by the tone of her voice that I had won, that we would soon be stepping into the forest. “I…Look, Dan, we can explore your stupid forest all day, but tomorrow we’re going to the Golden Pavilion, whether you like it or not, mister.” A slight smile crept onto her face; I pocketed my cigarette for now.

  “Deal,” I said. It was, as far as I was concerned, a fair trade. I had no interest in the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but I knew how much it meant to Kelly and so a compromise was in order.

  Besides, today was my day.

  It was the day we would step into Aokigahara.

  * * *

  “You’re packing a lot,” Kelly said, hovering around the trunk of the car and watching my every move. “We’re not camping in there, I can tell you that right now.”

  Without turning to her—I was too busy stuffing items into my rucksack—I said, “I wouldn’t dream of it, dear.” Though I had dreamt of it. Almost every night for the past six months I had visited the forest, felt its trees beneath my trembling hands, listened as it spoke to me in a voice that chilled and excited me in equal measure. I had researched the place thoroughly, watched documentaries about it on channels Kelly didn’t even know we had, and so when Kelly managed to arrange time off from work for the trip I became frantic, for I knew that we were about to embark upon something very special, a once-in-a-lifetime chance (clichéd, I know) to see this place for ourselves.

  Now we were here, it felt like home.

  “How much water do we have left?” Kelly leaned in close, so close that I could smell the sweat coating her flesh, and while I should have been offended by the scent, I found myself somewhat aroused.

  “Enough,” I told her. “I’ve packed six bottles, but I don’t imagine we’ll make it past four.”

  “Best to be on the safe side,” she said, perching on the edge of the trunk. “Knowing our luck, today will be the day Fuji decides to blow.”

  I snorted and pulled the cord which tightened the neck of the rucksack. “We’re not going in that far, and do you know the last time she erupted?” I knew that she would have no idea, and so quickly pressed on. “1707. People are up and down that thing on a daily basis. You’ve got more chance of Yellowstone kicking off than Fuji.”

  “Either way I don’t trust it,” Kelly said. Her expression told me that she was deadly serious, that in her mind she was envisioning us paddling through lava on melted flip-flops.

  While I continued to pack everything we would need for the day, Kelly wandered between our car and the Honda, sipping at her water bottle and wiping the sweat from her glistening brow. I watched as she noticed the Honda’s flat tires. You would think that the car, belonging to some sad and lost soul, would have been towed away. It had clearly been sitting there for a while. Truth be told, I expected there to be more.

  “Dan?” Kelly said, circling the abandoned Honda, glancing in through its dust-speckled windows.

  “Hm?” I slammed the trunk and hoisted the rucksack onto my shoulder.

  “This car’s been here for a long time.” She wiped dust from the driver’s side window and cupped her hands so that she could better see inside.

  “Probably stolen,” I said. I hated lying to Kelly, but there are things she wouldn’t understand, things that would change her mind about entering Aokigahara, and that simply wouldn’t do. “Believe it or not, Japan has its own subculture of joyriders. I’m just surprised they didn’t burn the thing out.”

  “There’s a map on the passenger seat,” she said, straightening up. She looked at me intently, as if trying to determine whether I was lying. Once again, I hoped my lip wasn’t twitching.

  “Well,” I said, finally lighting my cigarette and exhaling a plume of blue-gray smoke, “This is a popular spot. A helluva lot more popular than your Golden Pavilion. If I was going to dump a car, this would probably be the best place to do it.”

  She didn’t believe me. I could see it in her eyes and the way she gnawed at the inside of her cheek.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “Like you said, it’s been sitting there for a while. Whoever left it is long gone.” Wasn’t that the sorry truth?

  “This place gives me the creeps,” she said, turning to face the wall of evergreens in front of us. “It’s so quiet. It shouldn’t be so quiet. Where are the birds, Dan?”

  I laughed, then immediately stopped. I didn’t want to sound like an asshole. “Jeez, I don’t know, Kelly. I’m sure we’ll see some when we get in there. Do you have your camera? I want to get lots of pictures of this.”

  She fumbled around in her purse; a second later, she was holding the Nikon I had bought for her two
Christmases ago. It wasn’t a modern camera, but it would do the trick. I knew that I could jazz the photos up later on, give them an ominous tinge for the blog post I would be writing later that day.

  I locked the car, leaving the windows cracked a little. The last thing we wanted was to return to an oven, especially after walking for the majority of the day.

  “Ready?”

  She smiled nervously. I could see this was going to be a fun afternoon. I made a mental note to reciprocate tomorrow when Kelly was in her element and I was the one filled to the neck with tedium.

  “Come on then.” I walked between the cars and was about to step onto the dirt at the front of the forest when the low rumble of an engine stopped me in my tracks. I turned, and sure enough, a Mazda was making its way across the deserted parking lot, its sole rider frantically waving at Kelly and I through an open window.

  “Friend of yours?” Kelly said, still nervously smiling. I shook my head and moved closer to her, knowing that was what she wanted from me.

  We stood on the edge of Aokigahara, watching as the driver—an elderly man, I saw, through the windshield of the car—parked beside our own vehicle. Flicking my cigarette into the trees behind us, I told Kelly that it was probably somebody needing directions, not that we would be able to help.

  The man stepped from his car and limped toward us, leaving his door wide open. That, I thought, was a good thing. He wasn’t staying; he certainly wasn’t here to do himself any harm.

  “English?” he said, smiling so hard that his face creased in on itself. His empty gums glistened in the sunlight.

  I looked at Kelly then back at the man. “Yes,” I said. “We’re English. We speak English, I mean.”

  The man nodded. “Ahhh,” he said, turning to investigate our car. Part of me wanted to tell him to hit the road, leave us to our own devices, for I knew now what he was, what he was here for, and I didn’t want Kelly to find out just yet why Aokigahara was so important to me, why I had to go in there, see it for myself.

  The man nodded and smiled at our car for somewhere in the region of a minute before turning back to us. I hadn’t noticed until that moment that Kelly was gripping my hand, so tightly that our knuckles were white.

  “Jus’ tourist?” said the man. The smile had momentarily fallen from his face, and he looked so much younger without it, it made me wonder why he ever smiled at all.

  “Yeah, my wife and I are just tourists,” I said. “This is our first time in Japan.” He continued to nod along with my words, as if each syllable somehow controlled his movements. I hoped to God that he didn’t say anything which would ruin the day. There was no way I could convince Kelly to walk into the forest with me if she knew what it was, what had happened there, and this prick was only one sentence away from spoiling the whole trip, for me and my wife.

  “Good, good,” the man said, rattling his car keys. It was wholly annoying. “You know about the forest?” He was no longer speaking to me…well, us. His question was meant for Kelly and only Kelly. It was as if he didn’t trust me, or that he knew I was fully aware of where I was taking my wife, but was she? Did she have any idea of what we were about to do, the cursed ground we were about to set foot on? I had to think fast.

  “Yes, I’ve done a lot of research,” I said, hoping it would be enough to send the man back to his car. Instead he frowned, as if the answer wasn’t quite good enough.

  “Excuse me,” Kelly said, so unexpectedly that it startled me. “Who are you?”

  The man smiled. “My name is Hayashi,” he said, his eyes still trained upon me, even though Kelly had been the one to question him. “I see a lot of people go in through here.” He pointed to the clearing in the trees, a gap no larger than the width of our car. “A lot of people go in and never come back out.”

  At that, Kelly squeezed my hand tighter. Was she scared? Possibly. Was she dubious about entering Aokigahara now? Most certainly. And it was all thanks to some busybody whose sole purpose was to put the chills up anyone arriving at the site. If I didn’t like the man before, I hated him now.

  “I know how the forest works,” I told Hayashi. “Stick to the trail, don’t cross any tape. We’ll be perfectly safe. We don’t intend to stay too long.” I slipped my hand from Kelly’s and offered it to the man, to thank him for his concern and to draw a line under the conversation. After a moment of staring at it as if it were a bunch of corn snakes, he took it and nodded.

  “Have a pleasant day,” he said. I knew that we didn’t concern him. I doubted many married couples went into the forest with the same intentions as those traveling alone, though I had read tales of struggling, indebted families—entire clans comprising many generations—escaping to Aokigahara; it was the only way out for them, you see.

  As Hayashi turned and walked toward his car, Kelly breathed a sigh of relief. Had she been frightened of little, old Hayashi? Perhaps, though not in the same way he had unsettled me. When he had vacated the parking lot, Kelly folded her arms across her chest and waited for an explanation. Of course, I was still reluctant to offer her the truth.

  “Don’t ask me,” I said. “I know they have wardens around here. The guy’s probably just keeping tabs on us, making sure we’re not going to start any fires or fly-tip a washing-machine.” I thought that was pretty funny; the expression on my wife’s face told me that it was not the time for witticisms.

  After a minute or two of bickering (something we had done a lot of recently) we made our way through the clearing and into the forest proper. Something deep within me rejoiced, before the melancholy washed over me like so much rain.

  2

  The sign, a large brown thing on the right of the trail, spoke only in Japanese. Kelly examined it silently as she swilled water around her mouth before swallowing it. Unless she had taken intensive Japanese courses that I was unaware of, I knew I had nothing to worry about. It would have made about as much sense to her as the Voynich manuscript. I, on the other hand, knew exactly what it said. You didn’t have to look far on the internet for a translation.

  “Your life is something precious that was given to you by your parents. Meditate on your parents, siblings and your children once more. Do not be troubled alone.”

  “It says not to stray from the trail,” I said. It felt wrong to be lying to her, but we had come too far to turn back now, and turn back we would if she knew the truth.

  “Looks like a lot of writing for such a small message,” Kelly said. She was smiling, I noticed, and that was a good thing.

  “I don’t speak Japanese,” I said. “There’s probably something on there about not letting your dog shit in the bushes.” I draped an arm across her shoulder. “Hm, you’re nice and sweaty.” I kissed her tenderly on the neck, tasted the saltiness of her perspiration on my lips; unsurprisingly she shrugged me off.

  “Hang on,” she said, pointing to a chunk of text on the sign. “It says here that there is to be no molestation of one’s spouse whilst in the forest. Looks like you’re shit out of luck.” She grinned and walked backwards a few steps.

  “Actually, it says that only married couples shall partake in sexual activities in Aokigahara, and that unmarried couples will have no choice but to jack off while their partner’s backs are turned.”

  “Is that what it says?” she said, smiling and urging me to follow her deeper into the trees. The strange sensation of despondency I had experienced upon stepping into the forest lifted momentarily, and if it had affected Kelly at all, she made no mention of it.

  There was something peaceful, almost ethereal, about the place. It was impossibly quiet, so still, as we walked languidly along the trail. The trees were so dense around us that even the breeze I had felt earlier, standing at the forest’s entrance, couldn’t penetrate. It was nice to be out of the sun, though, which only occasionally breached the treetops above. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t simply walking through the forest, but swimming. The incongruous silence of Aokigahara made it feel as t
hough we were submerged, pushing through water which in turn offered resistance.

  As we walked along the trail, I gazed into the trees around us, unsure of what I was looking for. Did I hope to see a body hanging from a Mongolian oak, utterly still, decaying, some poor schmuck who couldn’t handle the rigors of modern life? In my thirty-five years of existence, I had yet to see a dead body, though this was the perfect place to pop one’s cherry, as it were. Last year, one hundred and three souls had been claimed in Aokigahara, and those were the ones that had been discovered. You could, I thought, double that figure quite easily…at least. How many bodies were concealed by the plants, shrubs and mosses of the forest floor? How many people had walked so deep into the forest in order to never be found? I had read somewhere that the forest’s wardens—whose job it was to prevent and report suicides on the site—were loath to venture too deep into Aokigahara. It was not unknown for people to find themselves lost amongst the trees, which was why certain areas off the trail were blocked off with orange tape. To ignore it, venture beyond it, was in itself suicidal.

  “Are you okay?” I said. Kelly had slowed a little and was now ambling behind me. At first I didn’t think she heard me; her eyes were fixated upon the ground. She looked a million miles away, but then she looked up and forced a smile.

  “Fine,” she said. “Why?”

  We continued to move forwards, though not with any great alacrity. “You haven’t said a word for the last half mile.”

  “Neither have you.” Her riposte was absolutely true, of course, for I had been far too busy drinking in the atmosphere of the place.

  “Yeah, but I don’t talk half as much as you do,” I said, trying to make light of the situation. “You’re only ever this quiet when you’re eating or you’ve got something on your mind.”

  Her gaze returned to the forest floor and, for now, she stopped walking. “Do you…do you ever think about him?” she said. She kicked a twig with her right foot and watched as it disappeared into the trees to our right. My mouth had become unbearably dry; the pack on my shoulder insufferably heavy. I slipped it off and lowered it to the ground.