The Sea of Trees

Startled by a single thud of turbulence, Sean Crawford awoke from his nap aboard Takai Airlines, flight 672. Taking a moment to collect himself, he looked out the window. Peering out into the expanse, Sean thought that the layer of clouds looked like a rough ocean that the plane was flying just above. Thoughts like these had entertained him his whole life. Nothing can keep a man occupied like a wandering mind, especially on a 13 hour flight from JFK to Narita Airport in Tokyo.

“Can I bring you anything to drink?” The flight attendant asked as she walked by with her cart. He thought of having a whiskey, but then again he’d never been much of a drinker. Sean looked up at her, admiring her well kept beauty and eager eyes, but respectfully declined with a polite wave of the hand and shake of the head. He returned to looking out the window, allowing the hum of the engines to lure him into a trance that kept him transfixed on the ocean of clouds outside. Occasionally the aircraft would wisp through one so quickly that you almost missed it. Sean liked this, he thought as his eyes closed once again.

“Not like this, please baby I’m not ready.”

His eyes shot open. There wasn’t a day in the last year that those words hadn’t shot through his head like lightning. Her voice was clear as a bell, and it made his stomach turn. Like he had done a million times before, Sean purged these words from his head, making himself change the subject. He thought about his job in Brooklyn, and how lucky he was to get his vacation approved on such short notice. Sean worked for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, covering high school sports. Not the most glamorous job, as he was always quick to admit, but one that he enjoyed. It was nice not being stuck in the office all day. Hired straight out of Syracuse University eight years ago, he’d been working for the Eagle for his entire tenure as a journalist.

He then looked to his right and thought about how nice it was having this row of seats all to himself. The only thing more awkward than trying to avoid the gaze of someone who didn’t speak your language for thirteen hours was trying to sustain small talk with someone who did. Sean was alone, exactly as he wanted to be.

Sean looked up at the speaker, as people tend to do, as the captains voice interrupted the hum of the flight. At first all that he heard was Japanese, but he knew that this would be followed by the English translation soon enough...

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the captain would like you to know that we are going to begin our final descent into Tokyo in approximately fifteen minutes, and that we should be on the ground within the hour.” Sean smirked, thinking the meek voice of the eager eyed flight attendant had been far more soothing than the severe language of the Captain.

Sean looked out the window as the setting sun began to turn his cloud ocean a blood red. He watched the passing clouds attentively, remarking that the white on blue sky had been much more tranquil. Tranquility has nothing to do with this, he thought. He was right, this trip was about closure. This trip was about never hearing that voice in his head again. This trip was about silencing demons.

* * *

“Good God!” Sean said aloud as he slunk into the rental car that was smaller than he could have ever imagined. Sean had always been a slender man, but this car prompted him to suck in the tiny gut that his thirty six years had afforded him. As he turned the ignition, he glanced in the rear view mirror at his duffel bag in the back seat, and the map in the passenger seat. He navigated his way out of the parking garage, thinking back on how the language barrier had not been as much of an obstacle as he had anticipated. Most of the people that he had encountered since deplaning had spoken English in one degree of accuracy or another, right down to the clerk at the rental car counter. He thought about the benefits of bilinguallity as the quickly approaching tail lights brought him back to reality. He hit his brakes, he had been flying in this lightweight car. Completely aloof to his speed, he almost plowed into a car waiting to turn left out of the garage.The sound of his rental car’s squealing tires reverberated off of the parking garage walls loudly, instantly taking him back a year...

“Baby, I’m scared. God dammit I’m dizzy, please don’t leave. Please.”

Sean closed his eyes and exhaled. They say smell is the quickest way to trigger a memory; but the sound of those squealing tires brought Sean back to her voice far quicker than the smell of her clothes ever did. Even if they still hung in the closet of their apartment.

Shrugging these thoughts off, as he had become so skilled at doing, Sean turned left. Entering traffic, Sean played out the route ahead. He’d played it over and over again in his mind over the last month. He’d memorized the map. Where he was headed was the foot of Mt. Fuji. Sean had heard that determination and patience rarely share the same venue; however Sean was far more careful in his driving after his near collision. He truly enjoyed his resolve. Exhaling again, he thought: A man who is following a plan, is a man satisfied.

* * *

Driving cautiously through the winding roads, Sean mentally inventoried the contents of his bags. In his checked bag: a small tent, a battery operated lantern, a summer weight sleeping bag, two protein bars, a pocket knife and a flint. In his carry on: his map of the Jukai Forest, a list of supplies to grab from the market, and a picture of her. Sean smiled as he thought of the picture, as he had done so many times before. He thought of her smiling for his camera, her body turned to the side as her hand sat atop a growing belly.

Turning right into the Shijo, Sean’s hand reached into the bag on the passenger floor and found the supply list. Looking at it with familiarity, he knew he didn’t need it. He had memorized this by the time he had written it. But everything needed to be perfect. And everything would be.

Returning to his car with everything on the list, Sean drew closer to the foot of Mt. Fuji. However, it never seemed any closer. Its shape was silhouetted by moonlight, becoming lost in the forest that lay before him. Sean thought about how he had never seen the great mountain in the daylight, and this bothered him. After a drive of two hours, Sean had reached the end of his drive. All but the peak of the silhouetted mountain were obscured by the cover of the dense forest.

There were a handful of parking lots at the entrance to the Jukai Forest. Sean had chosen this one for its seclusion. It was a vast parking lot, and most of the spaces went unfilled. There were a few cars parked in the lot, but all of them seemed to have the look of cars that had been there for some time. Sean had expected there to be more than the headlights of the rental car to guide him into the lot. However the lot was pitch black outside of the light of his headlights. The unfamiliar sights, smells, and sounds poked at his resolve, and he decided to sleep in the rental for the night. Best to start in the morning, Sean thought, more tired than he thought he would become. He turned off the headlights, reclined the driver’s seat, and let the pitch black lull him to sleep...

Before a year ago, Sean had always thought that nightmares were the manifestation of our worst fears: terrifying images that scared you awake. Sean longed for these. If the last year had taught him anything, it was that a true nightmare is the dream of a happiness you would never feel again. The kind of blissful lucidity that you want to never wake you...

“I’m scared too Sean, but we can do this. Neither of us are getting any younger, and this baby will change our lives. I’m ready for that. I KNOW you are too. I love you, baby. So much.”

Her words stirred him awake as they did every night for the last year. He woke with only the sounds of his own breath and the darkness that surrounded him to calm his nerves.

“I’m tired of hearing your voice!” He said, alone. She was why he was here. The accident had brought him to this forest at the other end of the world. If it wasn’t for that baby shower her office had thrown her....

Eleven Months and Twenty Nine Days Before...

He kissed her on the forehead and rubbed her on the belly as he let her out of the pickup. She smiled and pulled her auburn hair back from her face as she walked into the brownstone. He drove six blocks up to Cloverdale’s Tavern. A soon to be father deserved a couple beers and a bacon burger, he remembered thinking.

“My God, come save me from this! I’m tired and I just want to sleep!” Her text read two hours later. Sean paid his tab and headed back down, six blocks. The engine idled as he watched her emerge from the brownstone. He helped her with her bags full of gifts, and then climbed into the passenger seat, knowing she would insist on driving: “I don’t care if you only had two beers, were driving for three!” He knew this would be her argument, and he intuitively knew that arguing with his pregnant wife was not going to help anyone, anywhere. He’d made it eight months into this pregnancy without a devastating argument, surely he would survive one more unharmed.

Beginning the two mile drive back to Bushwick, they laughed together about the absurdity of the baby shower. She had been happy to have one, she explained, although she was tired from the continual flow of graciousness. Neither of them saw the SUV running the light to their right, because the driver, Troy Vanderman hadn’t bothered to turn his headlights on. The only thing that Sean heard was the sound of shattering glass and spinning wheels as they came at his face. The wreck skidded both vehicles toward a light pole that the passenger side of Sean’s truck hit with a force that he will never forget. Sean blacked out for twenty minutes, or so the paramedics told him later.

* * *

Sean woke up, staring at what he knew was a hospital ceiling. For the briefest of seconds he took comfort in knowing that he was alive; but almost as soon as he woke, he said, “My wife, my baby.”

Troy Vanderman died instantly, as he was asleep at the wheel. He’d been drinking since noon, and was just headed home to catch some shuteye before his shift at the Pretzel Knot started at noon the following day. Sean’s left arm and a few right ribs were broken from when they had hit the pole. She fought, though.

She told Sean that she wasn’t ready. She made Sean feel strong....

* * *

Morning light reminded Sean that he was in Japan. The brightness made his pupils tighten quickly as his eyes opened. He had parked his rental in front of a lightly graveled path that led into an inviting, lush woods. Opening his car door, he let himself out with his duffel bag and messenger bag in hand. As he walked toward the trail opening, he paused to look back at his rental. What a sad little thing, he thought. Sean walked toward the forest, feeling a deep resolve yet again.

The pictures of the forest he’d seen online did it no justice. The trees were short and twisted, growing no higher than twenty feet. Just high enough to block out the sun, they grew from the volcanic bedrock that had been furnished by the mountain itself. On most trees, the roots came up from the ground, looking like knuckles grasping to keep the trees rooted in the earth. The gravel path was clear and wide, at least at this point, and Sean took comfort at how quiet it was in the Jukai. Looking behind him, Sean noticed that the parking lot had disappeared from view. He walked for about thirty minutes along the straight path, leading him deeper into the woods. It was funny, he thought, that he hadn’t seen or heard any sign of wildlife. The woods were devastatingly quiet, as he’d read they would be. The farther he walked, the more he noticed that the trees became denser, the ancient trunks twisting more dramatically than the ones near the parking lot.

The long straight path came to an end at a single path, intersecting at a ninety degree angle. Sean looked left to right and then straight ahead at a large, carved wooden sign that stood at the path’s end. The top half of the sign was written in Japanese, while the bottom half shared both English and German translations of the sign’s plea: “You are in the Jukai Forest. If you are here of an ill state of mind, we urge you to reconsider. Life is a gift.”

Sean had seen pictures of this sign dozens of times online since he first read about the Jukai over a month ago. This sign was a kind of macabre symbol for everything that this forest had come to represent over the last sixty years. The Jukai was a dark place indeed, and Sean had no illusions about that.

Turning right, Sean started down the eastbound path. This path was far more narrow and uneven, the tree branches forming a sort of tunnel overhead that only seemed to become more narrow the longer that Sean walked. The forest seemed even quieter now, the tree branches becoming so dense that they were impregnable even to the wind, which he could hear only faintly as it skipped off of the tops of the trees. After taking this path for only a short time, Sean was able to make out a pink length of ribbon that was tied around one of the trees at the paths end. The ribbon disappeared into the darkness of the wood, left by another walker as a sort of tether. This is how they find their way back to the path, if they come back, Sean thought to himself, quickening his pace. He knew that these ribbons would increase in frequency the deeper he walked into the Jukai. In fact, he had his own spool of ribbon that he had picked up from the Shijo the night before.

Sean walked until mid morning gave way to early afternoon. He stopped and looked up at the sun overhead, its beams struggling to make their way through the forest that seemed to only grow, thicker, quieter and more inviting. This is as good a place as any, Sean decided as he looked from the path and into the wood. He tied his ribbon around the nearest tree, and let it unspool as he descended cautiously into the darkness of the forest, abandoning the narrow path. The only sounds he heard now were his boots breaking sticks underfoot, and his ever elevating breath as he struggled to navigate the volcanic terrain.

Having studied and familiarizing himself with this forest over the last month still did not change one inalienable fact: This was the most foreign place that Sean had ever been. It seemed almost Tolkien like, a place that only imagination could create. However here he was, and he was here with purpose.

It was customary to leave your trail of ribbon, as it was customary to set up camp. Sean had a deep respect for the contemplative nature of the Japanese people, and it was this principle that led him to the Jukai in the first place. He knew that he had no plans to ever leave this forest, at least not of his own volition. He also knew that it never hurt to weigh your options, even right up to the end.

* * *

By mid afternoon Sean had set up his camp on the most level ground that he could find, which was not saying much. He had been lucky enough to find a small clearing. He ate one of the protein bars as he looked around at his camp. The blue and white backpackers tent had served them well over the years, having been their residence on many a camping trip to the Finger Lakes. He thought of how loudly she had laughed when she pushed him off the dock and into the Seneca Lake, in front of his friends no less. His embarrassment was only strengthened by their laughter. They had both been able to laugh about it later, but now Sean just smiled wryly as he thought about how that seemed a lifetime ago, and thousands of miles away.

The sun was beginning to cast long shadows through the forest as evening set in. Sean began to collect firewood and pile it beside the tent, knowing that the darkness would be as thick as iron within a couple of hours. The wood was mostly damp, but it would burn. He wasn’t feeling too particular about that, anyway.

He’d known that darkness falls much quicker in the forest, but he was not prepared for how quickly it descended on the Jukai. It seemed to happen all in an instant, and his eyes struggled to find his lighter and the flint. The fire that he made was small, just enough to fill his campsite with a small sphere of light that was easily swallowed by the dense Jukai around him. The quiet of night here put him ill at ease, the quiet seemed to have a voyeuristic quality; like someone watching him with bated breath.

He reached past the eight foot bundle of cord in his bag and grabbed for the bottle of Hibiki he’d picked up last night. He ran his hands across the smooth glass of the whiskey bottle; the flicker of the fire making the brown liquid seem to glow from within. It was true, he had never been much of a drinker, but something about the circumstances just felt right. Why the hell not? He’d thought as set the bottle into his shopping basket.

Sean sipped his whiskey from the bottle slowly as he watched the fire. It burned in his mostly empty stomach, but he paid no attention to this. Time to think, he said aloud, the sound of his own voice felt unnatural against the deafening quiet. The more he tried to think, though, the more he found that he had already made up his mind. There was nothing more to deliberate. He had come all the way to the Jukai to die, and die is exactly what he would do tonight. He never again wanted to hear her voice in his head. He never again wanted to wish that it had been him driving that night. He never again wanted to wake up alone from a dream of the family that was ripped from him that night. He never again wanted to imagine the face of the child that he never met.

“I followed your ribbon.” A voice said from the edge of the campsite, heavily accented. Fear and adrenaline widened his pupils as he searched the treeline for the owner of that voice.

“Who’s there?” Sean asked to the forest, desperately trying to conceal the panic in his voice. His eyes still searched the treeline. Who would follow a ribbon for two hundred yards into total darkness? Sean asked himself, fearing the answer.

“I was leaving a ribbon of my own when I found yours, what a coincidence.” The voice said playfully. What stepped from the woods was a tall, slender Japanese man. He was in his mid forties, and dressed like he had no business this far into the Jukai. Wearing khakis and a button down shirt, he looked at Sean, smiling widely. The firelight danced off of his eyes, which were the eyes of a man exhausted.

“What, why, you followed me in here?” Sean asked the smiling stranger, fear still coursing hot through his veins.

“No, I just found your ribbon as I was leaving my own. I saw your firelight and thought you might enjoy some company in this dark place.” The stranger said this with such a coolness that it made Sean even more uneasy.

“And why are you leaving a ribbon?” Sean asked, his voice soaked in distrust.

“For the same reason you have, I would imagine.” The stranger retorted innocently, “So that I might find my way out in the morning.”

The stranger took a few steps closer to where Sean sat uncomfortably on the volcanic ground. His smile had not begun to drop, and he looked at Sean with an intensity that was frightening, yet somewhat inviting.

“May I sit with you awhile?” The stranger asked, waiting for permission.

Sean thought about how this man might slit his throat from ear to ear, grabbing his wallet as his blood spilled into the porous volcanic earth. But there was something that told him that this man would not. And if he did, what was the difference? It would just be different means to the same end. Sean knew he had nothing to lose by letting this well dressed stranger join him in the woods on the last night of his life.

“Sure, have a seat. Would you like some whiskey?” Sean asked, holding out the bottle.

“Thank you but I must decline,” The man said graciously as he took a seat on the ground across the fire from Sean.

Silence seemed to draw out for an expanse of time as both men gazed into the fire, transfixed. There were so many questions that Sean could have been asking this man, but in truth he didn’t care all that much and was perfectly content with the silence, however strange the circumstances. After a few minutes of this the stranger broke the silence again:

“My name is Daisuke Kudo.”

“Sean Crawford.”

“What brings a man camping so deep in the Jukai?” The stranger asked, his patronizing tone all too apparent to Sean.

“The same set of circumstances that brings a man this far into the Jukai in his work clothes, I’d imagine.” Sean snapped back, looking up at his inquisitive guest.

Both men knew why the other was there. This was the Jukai, the Aokigahara, The Sea of Trees. This was the forest where men who have nothing left come to die. It has been this way for hundreds of years. If you follow the ribbons into the forest you are more than likely to find camps just like this one at the end of them. More often than not with a body swaying quietly from a twisted branch, the victims feet usually only inches from the ground. Those that don’t leave ribbons are usually not discovered for many years, their bones piled below weathered neuses.

“You are guarded,” Daisuke said with a smile.

“You got it.” Sean said, not enthused.

Sean lifted the bottle of whiskey to his lips. He drank as he watched Daisuke watch him. He thought about his life back in Brooklyn as the whiskey went down. He thought about the furrow browed stares of concern he got from friends and family when he told them that he wanted to spend the one year anniversary of his wife’s death alone, halfway around the world. Hopefully they would all think that he had just disappeared, he thought futilely.

“Tell me, Sean, why does a young man like yourself crave death?” Daisuke’s tone had become far more serious, and personal. The bluntness of the question caught Sean off guard, and he looked up to meet Daisuke’s gaze. The smile on his face had been replaced with a solemness that told Sean that he had better answer the strangers question.

Sean thought before he answered, “My wife and unborn child died in my arms, one year ago today.” He answered blankly.

Daisuke gave a single nod and returned his gaze to the fire. Sean studied him as he looked pensively into the flames. Daisuke had the look of a man that had seen far too much, even for his years. Sean had been dismissive of Daisuke’s presence at his camp before this moment; but now he was intrigued. Something about this didn’t feel accidental. Sean now yearned for answers.

“And why do you crave death?” Sean asked.

Daisuke seemed to not hear the question, instead continuing to stare into the flames for some time.

Breaking the silence, Daisuke began: “My wife called my office and told me I needed to come home, to make her change her mind. She had not been well for months, especially after the last miscarriage. She told me that today was the day, and if I was to stop her that I needed to make it home, and soon. I then heard only dial tone. I immediately called the police, praying that they could get there before I did. I rushed home, arriving fifteen minutes after the call, and five minutes before the police. There she was, in the bathtub. The faucet still running as red water flowed over the sides. Her eyes were wide open staring toward the door. The razor she had used was pinched delicately between her thumb and forefinger. She was gone.”

Daisuke never looked up from the fire as he told this story, however Sean could not take his eyes off of the storyteller. He told the story as though he had told it a thousand times. An expressionless recital of facts, he’d thought.

Both men returned to enjoying the silence for a time, and Sean drank from the bottle until it was nearly half gone. I’m drunk, he thought to himself, pretending to be surprised. After a while Sean began to feel as though his guest had worn out his welcome. He found he was losing his resolve, if only temporarily.

He looked up at Daisuke again, who had still not averted his eyes from the fire since telling his tale. “Daisuke, it was very nice to have met you but-”

“Do you know what the last real feeling I had on this earth was?” Daisuke interrupted with authority, “It was my legs being soaked by my own piss as I gasped for air.” Daisuke was not looking into the fire anymore. He was looking directly at Sean.

The whiskey had slowed Sean’s reaction time considerably, and he found himself unable to grasp what the stranger had just said to him. Still, Daisuke stared into Sean, a smile creeping onto the strangers face as Sean saw him for what he truly was. Daisuke’s skin now looked purple and pale, and black rotted blood ran down from his nose and into his mouth, turning his teeth black. The air was sweet with the smell of rotting flesh and the deafening buzz of flies.

Sean could hear the footsteps of others circling the campsite. He could see them moving but could not see their faces. Still Daisuke stared at Sean, a constant in this sea of chaos. Smiling wider now, his clothes looked weather battered and sun stained. Daisuke spoke again, the rot of his breath reaching over the campfire,

“This is what I became, and this is what you will become. Those of us who take our own lives in the Jukai do not get the pleasure of leaving.”

Suddenly all of the footsteps and noise stopped, and from the treeline Sean could feel hundreds of eyes upon him in the silent dark. They’re all around me, Sean thought. Daisuke appeared normal again, still sitting up straight, still staring through Sean.

Sean was unable to move, and he sat staring back at a now solemn faced Daisuke. That terrifying smile gone now, Daisuke spoke softly to Sean as the eyes and ears of the forest watched and listened to his every word.

“I came to the Jukai in the spring of 1974, and ended my life. Pickpockets and thieves stole my possessions off of my body as it swung from a tree. One man followed by ribbon just to take my shoes.There are pains worse than loss. We can never leave this place.”

Sean sat speechless as Daisuke rose to his feet. He could hear the others at the woods edge retreating back into the forest. Once again it was just the two of them. Daisuke took one last look at Sean, and then disappeared into the forest as well.

* * *

The earliest morning light woke Sean, who had slept the whole night outside of his tent. His head throbbed, the taste of stale whiskey in his mouth nauseated him. I just passed out, Sean thought, convinced that everything from last night was an alcohol induced nightmare. Did he even remember going to sleep? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he felt alive with fear, and his pulse quickened at the idea of getting out of this forest as quickly as possible, and never returning. He grabbed his bags, noticing that his eight feet of cord were missing.

He abandoned the tent, and followed his ribbon back toward the trail. His breath heaved, his head throbbed, and the sweat poured as he followed the ribbon as quickly as he could. After finding the trail, Sean ran as fast as he could. He swore he felt eyes on his back urging him out of there faster than he could have ever imagined. Turning left on the main trail, he took comfort in the fact that the trees were becoming more sparse. Sunlight danced off of the leaves.

Sean could see the parking lot coming on the horizon, and his feeble rental car standing alone in the lot. Sean had been running for what felt like hours, and seeing that car brought a smile to his face for the first time in a long time. He opened the door, threw his bags in the back and sank into the drivers seat, exhausted. It must have been noon by now, he thought. His suspicions were confirmed as he turned over the ignition, the car’s clock telling him that it was 12:03. Last night wasn’t real, he thought, desperately trying to convince himself of this notion. He put the car in drive and pulled away. From the woods edge, an unnoticed Daisuke watched the car pull away, and smiled his black smile.