Dark Lanterns Page 14

  There was no wonder why the pachinko professionals compared their game to the aesthetics of the tea ceremony, or the discipline of the martial arts. All of them required an emptying of the mind, an abolition of thought. A perfect way to get out of the world of bank accounts, back pain, irritating children, the loss of hair and teeth. A perfect way to relax. How strange it was that, even though every seat in the pachinko parlour was occupied now, every player was utterly alone and absorbed in the outcome of their own game. How strange but somehow absurdly appropriate it was that Sugita was relaxed, and communicating perfectly, but to a machine.

  It would have been an interesting thought; but Sugita was not thinking.

  The monks in their burnt-parchment colored robes smiled at him with infinite compassion. Even the demonic oni blinked its multitude of eyes in recognition of him, its claws seeming to rattle as they gripped tighter upon the wheel, the fangs sinking deeper.

  With a grunt of satisfaction, Sugita watched the second 'game over' sign flash up, and heard loud and clear through the parlor's cacophony the machine-gun clatter of his catch-tray filling up again.

  After transferring the balls to the provided cardboard box at the side of the chair, Sugita stretched and yawned. His old bones creaked and clicked deep within his sluggish flesh, and he peered with weak eyes around the darkened parlor, tugging absently on his gray, straggling beard.

  Holding his trophy cardboard box before him, he walked toward the door, and the broker who waited around the corner with a stack of ready cash.

  The doors slid open, and Sugita paused at the threshold.

  He looked out.

  The city lay before him, silent and dark. The decaying wrecks of the skyscrapers were quietly sinking into gelatinous, grayish muck. The road was choked with the blackened, burnt-out shells of Honda and Toyota family sedans, some with doors flung wide open, some with bodywork still licked by the fitful flames of the last of the burning gasoline. The sidewalk was littered with sheets of paper and empty clothing that stirred in the hot, stinking wind.

  Sugita pulled out his packet of cigarettes. Behind him, the doors were still open, releasing the crash of the ball-bearings and the amplified voice of the host as he chanted the numbers of the winning machines. Sugita cleared his throat and carefully spat, a small gobbet that sizzled on the cracked sidewalk like a frying egg.

  He went back inside.

  "The Japanese are finished!" Takashi Hino yelled, stepping on the gas to speed us down the Yamanashi-ken highway. He took one hand off the steering wheel and shook a fist at the pylons, the rice fields, the lonely farmhouses rolling by. "The way the population's declining, a hundred years from now there'll just be a few thousand oyaji rice farmers stuck in some radioactive wasteland wondering what happened to their Rising Sun. And good riddance."

  I'd got used to Hino's rants over the last two weeks, and in my vulnerable position in the passenger seat, resigned myself to making toadying comments, trying to ignore the horseracing results blaring out of the car radio, and concentrating on the task ahead of me.

  Takashi Hino was one of the lieutenants of the Shibuya Sumiyoshi-kai, not an Oyabun, but a fairly big player in the west Tokyo Yakuza. He'd made his mark coordinating dating scams and fake weddings for Thai prostitutes in his native Toyama-prefecture. He'd moved onto bigger things after coming to Tokyo, like running a handful of backstreet loan companies, and but he often talked about the Thai and the Chinese girls he'd 'broken in'. Never forget where you're from, he'd say. I'd been working for Hino for the last two weeks collecting money from Soapland massage parlors — but today, I was out with Hino for the first time, for my 'initiation'.

  Hino slipped another Seven Stars cigarette from the packet, and I hurriedly moved to light it for him. "There it is," he said, gesturing to the left. "Mount Fuji."

  I peered at the misty pyramid shape of dark blue and brown against the skyline. "It doesn't look that big when you get up close," I said.

  Bam! Sparks exploded as the knuckles of his left hand connected with my right cheek. I turned my head, stared at his reddening face. Hold it together, I thought. Keep calm...

  "Well then look at it properly, you son of a bitch," he shouted, "Show some respect! That's the most important site in the whole of Japan, that's our spirit, our pride. You see the snow on the top? But not much on the sides, there, huh, where it's all rocky and black? I saw something on the TV that said there's gonna be another eruption soon. The snow's melting quicker because the volcano's warming up and sometime in the future it's going to blow. Man, I can't wait to see that! Fuji blows its top, and a great cloud of volcanic ash fills the sky and just dumps its load on Tokyo. That'll teach 'em. The Roppongi Hills Megamall is gonna look like another Pompeii. A hundred years from now some archeologists are gonna dig through the ash and find the plaster cast of some office lady with her body curled around her Louis Vuitton bag to try to protect it, and they'll find the bones of a little Chihuahua inside the bag with one of those stupid pink ribbons around the dog's neck, and they'll think, who the fuck were these people?"

  Hold it together, I thought. Keep calm...

  "So what about you, boy?" he asked, after he'd got bored with ranting. "They told me you want into the gang full-time. So what's special about you, Naoto?"

  My story. I looked ahead at the road, recalling the details that the real Naoto Iwasaki had unwillingly given to me.

  "Well, you know ... thrown out of junior high school for pulling a knife on a teacher. Mum died when I was little, Dad was a taxi driver who hit the bottle. One night Dad came back from work, whacked some cash on the table and said, 'I'm too tired for this. Here's half of my savings, pack your bags and just get out.' After that I hung out in Shibuya, sleeping in Internet cafes, until I hooked up with some of your scoutmen who told me the score."

  "Yeah, yeah. I heard it all before. There's plenty where you come from. Well don't worry kid, just do what you're told and you could make a lot of cash. And speaking of cash, here it is . . . our stop. The sea of trees."

  I followed his gesture and looked ahead through the windscreen, to the thick rolling cloud of green coming up on the left. Aokigahara Jukai.

  About fifteen hundred years ago, Mount Fuji erupted, and over time a forest grew over the lava and other unknown matter that had emerged from beneath the earth. Thirty square kilometers of ancient woodland, called the 'sea of trees', because from half way up Mount Fuji it really does look like an ocean. Dense, dark, and forbidding.

  Also the most notorious suicide spot of the entire country.

  "Every year around autumn time, the cops do a sweep of parts of the forest," Hino explained. "They find at least a hundred bodies. I saw this show on TV that said not all the people who die here are suicides. Some of them are hikers who get lost."

  "Who'd actually want to go hiking in a place like this?"

  "You got me, kid. Anyway, the show brought on one of these rent-a-scientists who said there was something weird about the magnetic field around here. GPS devices don't work. Compass needles don't work. This guy actually said," the gangster laughed at the wrong moment and began to cough on his own cigarette smoke, "that some University did an aerial survey, and they couldn't even figure out the size of the place. The forest seemed to be a few meters bigger than it was five years ago."

  I turned my head away and smiled. "That's just crazy," I said.

  We pulled over on the side of the road. With the engine and the radio off, we were suddenly plunged into mournful silence. We got out of the car. The tang of wood smoke hung upon the chill December air, and behind us lay squares of rice paddies and distant farms beneath the cold sunshine, and ahead of us stood a dark tangle of trees that cast everything into shadow.

  "It's half an hour drive to the nearest town," Hino said. "Well, you can't really call it a town. Not much bigger than a village, and half of the buildings are empty and falling down. That's the countryside for you, kid. These bastards can't wait to get out and move to Tokyo."<
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  We wore the uniforms of the local volunteer fire service, and had fake passes stamped with the Fujigoko Fire Department insignia. We also had color-coded plastic tapes to attach to the trees, not only to provide us with a cover story, but also so we could find our way back.

  A gloomy screen of oak, elm, paulownia and chinkapin stood ahead of us. Hino hesitated a little, but then shrugged, pulled out another Seven Stars that I lit for him, and then pushed me forward. We walked under the canopy of leaves onto the public hiking path, and out of the light of day.

  "Boss, there's an old riddle that goes if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and there's nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound," I said.

  Hino blew out smoke and gave me an angry look. "So?"

  "So I was thinking, if a salaryman kills himself in these woods and there's nobody around to hear him, does he really make a sound?"

  "Does anybody give a shit?"

  We came to a rope stretched across the trees, with a sign that said NO PUBLIC ENTRANCE BEYOND THIS POINT — IT IS EASY TO GET LOST.

  There was an even bigger sign above it that said this:

  YOUR LIFE IS A PRECIOUS GIFT FROM YOUR PARENTS.

  IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING SUICIDE, PLEASE TURN BACK.

  DON'T KEEP IT TO YOURSELF: TALK TO SOMEONE.

  Hino flicked his cigarette butt at the sign and laughed. We looked around; in the vague landscape of grey, brown and green, we were the only human figures. We climbed over the rope and started trekking, attaching the tape firmly to the trees as we went.

  As we walked in further, the trunks seemed to huddle closer and closer and closer together, and the quality of the light turned thick and gloomy. We soon came across debris littered sporadically across the leaf mulch; PET bottles, empty plastic bento boxes and disposable wooden chopsticks, rotting manga, crushed cans of coffee.

  "Look for the shoes," Hino told me. "Before they hang themselves, they take off their shoes and line them up neatly under the tree. When you find a body, remember, you're looking for cash, watches and jewelry. Even commuter train passes will do, if it's not out of date. Don't bother with the credit cards or driver's licenses."

  "I heard that someone came down here and found a body with almost a hundred thousand yen in his suit pocket," I said. "And then he found about seventy thousand on another."

  "With your luck, we'll find a suicide who decided to have a little camp fire and burn it all before he topped himself," he moaned with a curse.

  "Boss, have you ever been down here before?"

  "Nope. The Ueno branch picks up homeless guys and brings them down here to search for stuff we can use. I don't have anything to do that, though — today's just my turn on the rota to take the newbie for a walk."

  "Sorry, boss."

  "Shut up and keep looking."

  "Boss," I said a while later, "have you ever heard of the Jinmenju?"

  "Nope."

  "I heard this old story," I told him with a sly glow of pleasure, "about these ghostly trees around here called the Jinmenju. People say they grow fruit on their branches - fruit that have human faces on them. Every time someone kills themselves in the forest, the trees steal their soul, and next season - the dead person's face starts growing on one of the fruit."

  "You cut that out!" he snarled, turning around and aiming a slap at my face, which I flinched away from. "I don't want to hear any crap, okay? Just think of the money and keep your eyes open."

  We trekked on into the desolate, dark green labyrinth. It was getting colder, and the silence was thick and oppressive, broken only by the rasping calls of a few distant crows. There were other tapes strung through the forest, left behind by police patrols and volunteer searchers, looking like the threads of some vast, luminescent cobweb. Some of them may also have been left by individuals who hadn't fully made up their minds about suicide, and wanted to leave a path back to the world they knew.

  We walked past several blue tarpaulin tents that had collapsed to the ground, rotting sleeping bags with no owners inside. We found shoes — four pairs of them, two adults, two children, covered with mould and left on the gnarled roots of an elm. But no bodies, until ...

  "Wait," Hino said finally. "Look up ahead. I think we've got one."

  In the boughs of a tree I saw something. Blue denim jacket, jeans, arms out stiff like a shop manikin. As I got closer, it was obvious. A male figure, suspended in mid-air by the rope around his neck, unmoving in the still, cold air. His torso rested against the branch that he must have climbed upon to fix the noose. Sure enough, beneath him, lined up neatly, was a pair of hiking boots. Just like someone taking off their shoes when they enter a friend's house.

  I stared at the man's face. Japan's winters are cold and dry, and it looked like he'd been mummified. Yellow, parched skin was tight against his cheekbones. His black, shriveled tongue protruded from his lipless mouth and his eyes were dark hollows of shadow.

  "Jackpot," Hino muttered.

  There was a heap of possessions at the base of the tree. Hino put on a pair of white gloves and began to go through them. There was a briefcase full of documents that he tossed onto the leafy ground. He found an envelope, full of photographs of children, in colorful kimonos and elementary school uniforms. He threw them into the bushes with a curse.

  "Okay, time for you to show me what you're made of, kid."

  I trod over the crackling leaf mulch to the body, stood on a clump of roots, and reached up to the jacket with white-gloved hands. I tried to ignore the exotic smell of decayed flesh and dried excrement. I pulled the jacket open and the whole of the man's body twitched, like a marionette on a string.

  "Get on with it," Hino hissed. "The goddamn thing's not going to attack you!"

  I gingerly reached into the inside jacket pocket. There was a wallet still inside; two or three gentle tugs and out it came, dislodging nameless bits of filth that dropped onto the shirt.

  It was almost over. I had to keep myself together, my tender Iwasaki identity, for just a little longer. The trap was ready to close.

  "The wallet," I said, handing it to him.

  "Appreciated."

  I stared past him, my eyes widening. "Boss," I said "There's something on that tree over there . . ."

  "I told you, don't give me any crap!"

  "I know, but . . . isn't that a face?"

  Hino swore at me, but he still turned around to look. That's when I got him.

  With a couple of strides I closed the distance between us and put both hands over his face. It was such a relief to let go, to release the hyphae within me, the thousands of fibrous threads and the millions of spores they carried. They flooded out of the pores of my hands, enveloping his face, burrowing into his mouth, his nose, filling up the jelly of his eyes and pouring through the sockets. He choked for a few seconds and then was quiet, his arms falling down to his sides, his body twitching and jerking in brief, random spasms. The threads shot down his throat and into his guts, eating their way outward into his body cavities, beginning to turn his tissues into sugar.

  I released my grip and leaned him against a tree. His face was as slack as a rubber mask. The outside of his lips looked white and furry, but that would soon fade. It was important to keep his outer shape, his toughened skin, so to everyone else he would still look like Takashi Hino.

  I released the last hold on my adopted shape of Naoto Iwasaki and sank back into the ground, to join with the rest of me. Another part of my consciousness now lived within Hino, lived inside him as he walked out of the forest and returned to Tokyo. I would think his thoughts and look through his eyes as he selected another specimen to bring here to Aokigahara.

  Because some of the people who go into Aokigahara don't die.

  Some of them come back — or to be more accurate, some of them are released. Released by the forest to walk the land, to search the country, looking for food, because the sea of trees is always hungry. The sea of trees needs food to live, to grow, and it will not stop grow
ing until the entire country is one huge forest, dark, silent, each tree with a pair of shoes lined up neatly beneath it.

  And to paraphrase what the guy said, if a man kills himself in the middle of the forest and there's nobody around to hear him, does he make a sound?

  One day. One day you'll find out. And on that day, I'll be right by your side, right there to guide you.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would just like to mention a couple of people who were instrumental in the creation of Dark Lanterns; John Gribble, and the immensely supportive Tokyo Writer's Group - also Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda, authors of the fascinating "Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide", which I used to check some of the legends mentioned in this book.

  "Angel in a Cardboard Box" was previously published in Terror Tales #10, under the title of "The Battle of Corridor 4", 2012.

  "The Flowers of Edo" was previously published in Midnight Street # 9, 2007.

  "Fallen Through" was previously published in Dead Things # 4, 2005.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  January: An Appetite for the Unknown

  February: Blood and Chocolate

  March: Angel in a Cardboard Box

  April: Regrettable Incidents on the Chuo Line

  April: Fallen Through

  May: The Madman in the Park

  June: Kurokabe

  July: Dig Your Own Hole

  August: Days of the Dark Lantern

  August: The Flowers of Edo

  September: The Wings of the Crow

  October: My Lost Face Looking for your Lost Love

  November: The Anatomy of Dependence

  December: Spellbound

  December: Drowning in a Sea of Trees

  Acknowledgements