Elspeth’s disguise of sunglasses and the now slightly soggy flu mask is just as effective in the suburbs as it was in the city–so far, none of her fellow passengers have spared her a second glance. But as she alights at Otsuki–a rickety station that looks like it’s stuck in the 1950s–a uniformed man barks something at her. She feels a momentary panic, then realises he’s only asking for her ticket. Stupid. She bobs her head, hands it over and he waves her towards an elderly locomotive waiting at an adjacent platform. A whistle blows and she scrambles on board, relieved that the carriage is empty. She sinks onto the bench seat and tries to relax. As the train jolts, shudders, then finds its stride, she looks through grimed windows onto snow-dusted fields, slope-roofed wooden houses and a series of small frozen allotments, barren but for a crop of ice-rotten cabbages. Icy air seeps through cracks in the train’s sides; a light drift of snow brushes against the windows. She reminds herself that there are fourteen stops to Kawaguchiko–the end of the line.
She concentrates on the clack of the wheels; tries not to think too deeply about where she’s headed. At the third stop, a man with a face as rumpled as his clothes climbs into her carriage, and she stiffens as he chooses the seat opposite hers. She prays that he won’t try to engage her in conversation. He grunts, digs in a large shopping bag, and hauls out a packet of what look to be giant nori rolls. He stuffs one in his mouth, then offers her the bag. Deciding that it would be rude to refuse, she murmurs ‘Arigato,’ and takes one. Instead of rice encased in seaweed, she bites into some sort of light crispy candy that tastes of Splenda. She takes her time eating it in case he offers her another (she’s already nauseous) then drops her head as if she’s taking a nap. It’s only partly an act; she’s exhausted after a sleepless night.
When she next looks up, she’s stunned to see a giant roller-coaster filling the window, its rusting frame shaggy with icicle teeth. It must be attached to one of the now-defunct Mount Fuji resorts Daniel told her about; an incongruous dinosaur stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Last stop.
Giving her an enormous smile that makes her feel guilty for pretending to sleep, the old man departs. She hangs back, then follows him across the tracks and into the deserted station, a wooden structure clad in shiny pine that looks as if it would be more at home in an Alpine ski resort. Hurdy-gurdy music plays from somewhere, loud enough to follow her when she exits into the station forecourt. The tourist booth to her right has the aura of a mausoleum, but she spies a single taxi parked next to a bus stop, smoke pouring out of its exhaust.
She digs out the scrap of paper on which Daniel had (reluctantly) written her destination, folds it around a ten thousand yen note and approaches the car. She hands it to the driver, who shows no emotion as he glances at it. He nods, tucks the money into his jacket and stares straight ahead. The taxi’s interior reeks of stale cigarette smoke and despair. How many people has this man ferried to the forest, knowing that more than likely they wouldn’t be returning? The driver guns the engine before she’s even managed to secure her seat belt, and whips through the deserted village. Most of the stores are boarded up; the gas station pumps are padlocked. They pass a single vehicle–an empty school bus.
Within minutes they’re skirting a wide glassy lake, and Elspeth has to cling to the door handle as the driver throws the car around the narrow road’s curves; clearly he’s as keen to be done with the journey as she is. She takes in the sagging skeleton of a large shrine, a forest of neglected grave markers in front of it; a row of rotting kayaks and the burned limbs of several holiday shacks peeking gamely through the snow. Mount Fuji looms in the background, mist cloaking its top.
They leave the lake behind, and the driver swings onto a deserted highway before turning sharply and speeding down a narrower road, lumped with snow and slick with ice. The forest creeps up around them. She knows it has to be Aokigahara–she recognises the bulbous roots that sit above the forest floor’s volcanic base. They pass several snow-shrouded cars abandoned by the side of the road. In one, she’s almost certain she can discern the shape of a slumped figure behind the wheel.
The taxi driver spins the car into a parking lot and jerks to a stop next to a low shuttered building that screams neglect. He points to a wooden sign strung across a pathway that leads into the forest.
There are several vehicle-shaped humps here, too.
How in the hell is she going to get back to the station? There’s a bus stop on the other side of the road, but who knows if they’re even running?
The driver taps the steering-wheel impatiently.
Elspeth has no choice but to try to communicate with him. ‘Um… do you know where I might find Chiyoko Kamamoto? She lives around here.’
He shakes his head. Points at the forest again.
What now? What the fuck did she expect to find? Chiyoko waiting for her in a limousine? She should have listened to Daniel. This was a mistake. But she’s here now–what would be the point of going back to Tokyo without exploring all her options? She knows there are villages around here. She’ll have to make her way to one of them if the buses aren’t running. She murmurs, ‘Arigato,’ but the driver doesn’t respond. He accelerates away the second she closes the back door.
She stands still for several seconds, letting the silence settle around her. Glances at the pathway’s dark mouth. Shouldn’t the hungry spirits who lurk in the forest be attempting to lure her into the trees by now? After all, she thinks, they target the vulnerable and damaged, don’t they? And what is she if not vulnerable and damaged?
Ridiculous.
Trying not to look too closely at the abandoned vehicles, she picks her way through several deep drifts, and heads towards the snow-covered mounds, which are arranged in a circle in front of the building. She’s read that there are several memorials to the crash victims in the area, and she brushes ice crystals from the top of one of them, revealing a wooden marker. Behind it, partially hidden behind another drift, she spots the shape of a Western-style cross. Elspeth wipes away the snow, the melting ice starting to seep through her gloves, and reads the words, ‘Pamela May Donald. Never Forget.’ She wonders if Captain Seto has a marker here; she’s heard that despite the evidence, some of the passengers’ families still blamed him for what happened. Perhaps that really would have been a story worth pursuing. Untold Stories from Black Thursday. Sam was right: she is so full of shit.
A voice behind her makes her jump. She whirls, sees a stooped figure in a bright red windbreaker trudging towards her from behind the building. He snarls something at her.
There’s no point hiding. She whips off her sunglasses, the light making her blink.
He hesitates. ‘What are you doing here?’ His English is tinged with a slight Californian accent.
‘I came to see the memorial,’ she finds herself lying–she’s not sure why.
‘Why?’
‘I was curious.’
‘We do not get Westerners coming here any more.’
‘I’m sure. Um… your English is very good.’
He smiles suddenly and fiercely. His teeth are ill-fitting and there’s a gap between them and his gums. He sucks them back into his mouth. ‘I learned it many years ago. From the radio.’
‘Are you the custodian?’
He frowns. ‘I do not understand.’
She gestures at the dilapidated building. ‘Do you live here? Take care of the place?’
‘Ah!’ Another teeth-snapping smile. ‘Yes, I live here.’ She wonders if he could possibly be Yomijuri Miyajima, the suicide monitor who rescued Hiro and came across the remains of Ryu. But that would be too serendipitous, wouldn’t it? ‘I go into the forest to collect the things that people leave behind. I can trade them.’
Elspeth shivers violently as the cold bites into her cheeks, making her eyes water. She stamps her feet. It doesn’t help. ‘You get a lot of people coming here?’ She nods at the cars.
‘Yes. You want to go in?’
‘To the forest?’
‘It is a long walk to the site where the plane crashed. But I can take you there. You have money?’
‘How much?’
‘Five thousand.’
She digs in her pocket, hands him a note. Does she really want to do this? She finds that she does. But this isn’t why she’s here. What she should be doing is asking him if he knows the whereabouts of Chiyoko, but… she’s come this far, why not go into the forest?
The man turns and strides towards the pathway and Elspeth scrambles to catch up. His legs are bowed and he’s at least three decades her senior, but he appears to have the vigour of a twenty-year-old.
He unclicks a chain strung across the pathway and skirts a wooden sign, the writing on it peeling and faded. The trees shower her with snow blossoms, the flakes finding their way into her neck where her scarf has slipped. She can hear her own breath, ragged in her ears. The old man cuts across the main path, heading into the depths of the forest. Elspeth hesitates. No one, except for Daniel, knows she’s here (Sam might not even read the email she sent her this morning) and he’ll be leaving Japan in a few days. If she runs into trouble, she’s screwed. She checks her phone. No signal. Of course. She tries to take note of her surroundings, searching for landmarks that might help her find her way back to the parking lot, but within minutes the trees swallow her whole. She’s surprised when she doesn’t feel the sense of foreboding she was expecting. It’s actually, she thinks, quite beautiful. There are brown pockets of earth where the forest’s canopy blocks out the sky, and there’s something charming about the trees’ knobby roots. Samuel Hockemeier–the marine who’d been on the scene a couple of days after the crash–had said they were otherworldly and forbidding.
Still, as she crumps her way through the snow, following in the old man’s footsteps, she can’t forget that this is where it all started. A sequence of events that was kicked off, not by three children surviving plane crashes, but by a seemingly innocuous message left by a Texan housewife as she died.
The man stops suddenly, then veers off to the right. Elspeth hangs back, not quite sure what to do. He doesn’t go far. She steals forward cautiously, stopping dead when she sees a flash of dark blue in the snow. There’s a figure curled in a foetal position at the foot of a tree. The remains of a rope snake into the branches above the body, the frayed end crisp with ice crystals.
The man sinks to his haunches next to it, and starts rooting through the pockets of its dark blue windbreaker. Its head is bowed, so she can’t tell if it’s male or female. The backpack next to it is half-unzipped, revealing a cellphone and what looks to be some kind of diary. Its hands are blue and furled, the nails white. The sweet roll the old man on the train gave her lumps in her gut.
Elspeth stares at the body with a kind of morbid fascination, her brain unable to process what she’s seeing. With no warning, a hot rush of bile floods into her mouth and she turns away, gripping a tree trunk as she dry heaves. She drags air into her lungs, wipes her eyes.
‘You see?’ the man says matter-of-factly. ‘This man died two days ago, I think. Last week I found five. Two couples. We get many who choose to die together.’
Elspeth realises she’s shaking. ‘What will you do with the body?’
He shrugs. ‘They will only come to collect it when the weather is warmer.’
‘What about his family? They might be looking for him.’
‘It is possible.’
He pockets the cellphone and straightens. Then he turns and walks on.
Elspeth has seen all she wants to see of this place. How could she have found it beautiful?
‘Wait.’ She calls after him. ‘I’m looking for someone. A young woman who lives around here. Chiyoko Kamamoto.’ The man stops in his tracks, but doesn’t turn around. ‘Do you know where she lives?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you take me to her? I can pay you.’
‘How much?’
‘How much will it take?’
His shoulders slump. ‘Come.’
She steps back to allow him to pass, then follows him towards the parking lot.
She doesn’t look back at the corpse.
Jogging to catch up to him, she flails as she hits a patch of ice, managing to catch her balance at the last moment.
He hauls open a pair of double doors at the side of the building, disappears inside and seconds later Elspeth hears the stutter of an engine trying to start.
A car backs out, its engine chugging asthmatically.
‘Get in,’ he snaps through the window. It’s clear that she’s offended him in some way–because she didn’t want to go up to the crash site, or because she mentioned Chiyoko?
She climbs in before he can change his mind. He pulls out of the parking lot and onto the road, as heedless of the snow and ice on the road as the taxi driver. He appears to be keeping to the edges of the forest, and as they round a bend, she makes out the snow-dusted roofs of several wooden houses.
The old man slows the car to a crawl, and they creep past a series of draughty-looking single-storey residences. She notes a rusting vending machine, a child’s tricycle half-hidden in the snow next to the side of the road, a pile of icicled wood slumped against the side of one of the houses. As they reach the outskirts of the village, he doubles back towards the forest’s edge. The road here is hidden beneath untouched snow–not a footstep or animal print marring it.
‘Does anyone live here?’
The man ignores her, revs the accelerator and the car lurches awkwardly up a slight incline, and stops a hundred yards from a small structure constructed out of peeling boards that lurks in its own gloomy pocket adjacent to the forest. If not for the sagging veranda huddled around it and the shuttered windows, it would resemble a shed. ‘This is the place you want.’
‘Chiyoko lives here?’
The old man sucks his teeth, stares straight ahead. Elspeth pulls off a sodden glove and scrabbles in her pocket for the money. ‘Arigato,’ she says, handing it over. ‘If I need a ride back can I—’
‘Go.’
‘You have not offended me. I don’t like this place.’
This from a man who strips corpses for a living. Elspeth shivers again. He takes the money and she climbs out. She waits while he backs away, the car farting a black cloud of exhaust smoke. She resists the urge to scream ‘wait!’ after him. The engine’s whine fades quickly; too quickly, as if the atmosphere is greedily absorbing every sound. In some ways the forest was more hospitable. And she’s getting that crawly sensation at the back of her neck, as if eyes are on her.
She climbs up onto the wooden porch in front of the house, noting with relief that the floor is littered with cigarette butts. A sign of life. She knocks on the door. Her breath condenses, and for the first time in years she finds herself wishing for a cigarette. She knocks again. Elspeth decides that if no one answers this time, she’ll get the hell out of here.
But a second later, the door is opened by an overweight woman dressed in a grubby pink yukata. Elspeth tries to dredge up a memory of the photographs she’s seen of Chiyoko. She recalls a pudgy, hard-eyed teenager, her expression defiant. Elspeth thinks the eyes might be the same. ‘Are you Chiyoko? Chiyoko Kamamoto?’
The woman’s broad face splits into a grin and she gives a small bow. ‘Come in, please,’ she says. Her English is flawless, and like the old man’s, holds a trace of an American accent.
Elspeth steps into a narrow entrance room–the frigid air is no more forgiving in here–and kicks off her sodden boots, wincing as the cold wood bites through her tights. She places her boots on a shelf next to a pair of blood-red high heels and several grimy slippers.
Chiyoko (if it is Chiyoko–Elspeth still isn’t sure) waves her through a door and into an equally chilly interior, which appears to be far smaller than it looked from the outside. A short corridor bisects two areas partially hidden behind screens; at the far end, Elspeth can make out what looks to be a small kitchen.
She follows Chiyoko through the screen to her left and into a dimly lit square room, the floor covered in tattered tatami mats. A low stained table squats in the middle of it, several faded grey cushions scattered around it.
‘Sit.’ Chiyoko gestures to one of the cushions. ‘I will bring you some tea.’
Elspeth does as she is told, her knees popping as she kneels. It’s only slightly warmer in here, and the air smells faintly of fish. The coffee table is smeared with sauce and wormed with dried noodles.
She hears the murmur of voices, followed by a giggle. A child’s giggle?
The woman returns, carrying a tray containing a teapot and two round cups. She places it on the table, then sinks to her knees with more grace than her bulk should allow. She pours the tea, hands Elspeth a cup.
‘You are Chiyoko, aren’t you?’
A smirk. ‘Yes.’
‘You and Ryu… What happened? They found your shoes in the forest.’
‘Do you know why you must remove your shoes before you die?’
‘No.’
‘So you don’t track mud in the afterlife. That’s why there are so many ghosts without feet.’ A giggle.
Elspeth takes a sip of the tea. It’s cold, tastes bitter. She makes herself take another, barely stops herself from gagging. ‘Why did you move here?’
‘I like it here. I get visitors. Some of them come before they go into the forest to die. Lovers who think they are being noble and will never be forgotten. As if anyone cares! They always ask me if they should do it. And do you know what I tell them?’ Chiyoko gives Elspeth a sly sidelong smile. ‘I tell them do it. Most of them bring me an offering–food, wood sometimes. As if I am a shrine! They have written books about me, songs about me. There’s even a fucking manga series. Have you seen it?’
‘I’ve seen it.’
She nods, grimaces. ‘Oh yes. You mentioned it in your book.’
‘You know who I am?’
‘Yes.’
Elspeth jumps as a high-pitched yell sounds from behind the screen door. ‘What was that?’
Chiyoko sighs. ‘That is Hiro. It is almost time to feed him.’
‘What?’
‘Ryu’s child. We only did it once.’ Another giggle. ‘It wasn’t very good. He was a virgin.’
Elspeth waits for Chiyoko to get up and go to the child, but it appears she has no intention of doing so. ‘Did Ryu know he was going to be a father?’
‘No.’
‘Was that his body they found in the forest?’
‘Yes. Poor Ryu. An otaku without a cause. I helped him get what he wanted. You want me to tell you how it went? It’s a good story. You can put it in a book.’
‘Yes.’
‘He said he would follow me anywhere. And when I said I wanted to die, he said he would follow me to the afterlife, too. He joined an online suicide group before we met, did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘Nobody knew. It was just before we started talking. He couldn’t go through with it. He needed to be pushed.’
‘And I’m guessing you pushed him?’
A shrug. ‘It didn’t take much.’
‘And you? You tried too, didn’t you?’
Chiyoko laughs and pushes up her sleeves. There are no scars on her wrists or forearms. ‘No. Fanciful stories. Have you ever felt like that? Like you wanted to die?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everyone has. It is fear that stops people in the end. The fear of the unknown. Of what we might find in the next world. But there is no reason to be afraid. It just keeps on going and going.’
‘What does?’
‘Life. Death. Hiro and I have spent many hours talking about this very thing.’
‘You mean your son?’
Chiyoko laughs in derision. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He is just a baby. I mean the other Hiro, of course.’
‘Hiro Yanagida?’
‘Yes. Would you like to talk to him?’
‘Hiro is here? How can Hiro be here? He was killed by that marine. Shot.’
‘Was he?’ Chiyoko gets smoothly to her feet. ‘Come. You must have many questions for him.’
Elspeth stands, her thigh muscles aching from crouching on the floor. Her vision wavers, her stomach cramps, and for a horrible moment she wonders if Chiyoko has drugged her. The woman is definitely unhinged and if what she’s saying about Ryu and the suicidal people who visit her is the truth, she’s dangerous. And she can’t forget the old man’s reaction to the place. Her mouth fills with saliva and she pinches her left arm, refusing to give in to her faintness. It passes. She’s light-headed from exhaustion. Worn out.
She follows Chiyoko to the other screened-off room across the passageway.
‘Come,’ Chiyoko says, opening the screen wide enough for Elspeth to slip through. It’s dark in here; the wooden shutters are closed. Elspeth squints, and as her eyes adjust, she can make out a crib on the left side of the room, and a futon piled with pillows beneath the windows. The fishy odour is stronger in here. She shudders, remembering Paul Craddock’s delusion about his dead brother. Chiyoko plucks a toddler out of the crib, and the child wraps his arms around her neck.
‘I thought you said Hiro was here?’
‘He is.’
Slinging the toddler on her hip, Chiyoko opens one of the shutters, letting in a shaft of light.
Elspeth was wrong–the pillows on the futon aren’t pillows at all, but a figure slumped against the wall, its legs outstretched.
‘I will leave you two alone,’ Chiyoko says.
Elspeth doesn’t respond. As she stares at the surrabot of Hiro Yanagida, it blinks, a fraction too slowly to be convincingly human. Its skin is nicked in places; its clothes are frayed.
‘Hello.’ The voice–unmistakably a child’s–makes Elspeth jump. ‘Hello,’ the android says again.
‘Is that you, Hiro?’ Elspeth says. The sheer insanity of her situation finally hits her. She’s in Japan. Talking to a robot. She’s talking to a fucking robot.
‘It’s me.’
‘Can I… can I talk to you?’
‘You are talking to me.’
Elspeth steps closer to it. There are small brown droplets on the dull skin of its face–dried blood? ‘What are you?’
The android yawns. ‘I’m me.’
Elspeth’s feeling that same kind of disconnect she felt when she was in Kenji Yanagida’s workshop. Her mind goes blank. She has no idea what to ask first. ‘How did you survive the crash?’
‘We chose to. But sometimes we get it wrong.’
‘And Jessica? And Bobby? Where are they? Are they actually dead?’
‘They got bored. They usually do. They knew how it would end.’
‘And how does it end?’ It blinks at her again. After several seconds of silence, Elspeth asks: ‘Is there… is there a fourth child?’
‘No.’
‘What about the fourth plane crash?’
The robot’s head jerks slightly to the side. ‘We knew that would be the day to do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Arrive.’
‘So… why children?’
‘We’re not always children.’
‘What does that mean?’
The thing’s head twitches and it yawns again. Elspeth gets the impression it’s intimating: figure it out, bitch. Then it makes a sound that could be a laugh, its jaw opening just a fraction too wide. There’s something familiar about the way it’s been framing its words. Elspeth knows how it works. She’s seen the footage of the camera capturing Kenji Yanagida’s facial movements. But there’s no sign of a computer in the room. And… wouldn’t that require some kind of signal? There’s no signal here, is there? She checks her phone again to be sure. But Chiyoko could be operating the android from another room, couldn’t she?
‘Chiyoko? Is that you? It is, isn’t it?’
The surrabot’s chest rises and falls, then stills.
Elspeth runs from the room, her feet slipping on the tatami mats. She hauls open the door next to the empty kitchen, revealing a tiny bathroom, the small tub swimming with filthy cloth nappies. She backtracks and rips back the screen to the only other room. Chiyoko’s son looks up at her from where he’s lying on the floor, playing with a dirty stuffed animal, and laughs.
She opens the front door and sees Chiyoko standing on the porch, cigarette smoke coiling around her head. Could she have made it out here while Elspeth was searching the house? She’s not sure. She pulls on her boots and joins her.
‘Was that you, Chiyoko? Talking through the android?’
Chiyoko stubs her cigarette out on the balustrade; lights another one. ‘Did you think it was me?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
The cold air isn’t helping to clear her head and Elspeth is sick of all this talking in riddles. ‘Okay… If it wasn’t you, what were–are–they? The Three, I mean?’
‘You’ve seen what Hiro is.’
‘All I’ve seen is a fucking android.’
A shrug. ‘All things have souls.’
‘So is that what he is? A soul?’
‘In a sense.’
Jesus. ‘Can you please just give me a straight answer?’
Another infuriating smile. ‘Ask me a straight question.’
‘Okay… Did Hiro–the real Hiro–tell you why The Three, whatever the fuck they are, came here and took over the bodies of the kids?’
‘Why would they need a reason? Why do we hunt when we have enough to eat? Why do we kill each other over trifles? What makes you think they needed any more motivation other than to simply see what might happen?’
‘Hiro implied that they’ve been here before. I’ve also heard that from Jessica Craddock’s uncle.’
A shrug. ‘All religions have prophecies about the end of the world.’
‘So? What does that have to do with The Three being here before?’
Chiyoko makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snort. ‘For a journalist, you are very bad at thinking things through. What if they came here before in order to plant the seed?’
Elspeth starts. ‘No way. Are you trying to say that they came here thousands of years ago and set this whole thing up–just so that they could return years later and see if the so-called seed they planted causes the goddamned end of the world? That’s insane.’
‘Of course it is.’
Elspeth has had enough. She’s so tired the marrow in her bones aches. ‘Now what?’
Chiyoko yawns; several of her back teeth are missing. She wipes her mouth with her sleeve. ‘Do your job. You’re a journalist. You have found what you were looking for. Go back and tell them what you’ve seen. Write an article.’
‘You really think anyone’s going to believe me if I say that I’ve spoken to a goddamned android harbouring the… soul or whatever of one of The Three?’
‘People will believe what they want to believe.’
‘And if they do believe it… They’ll think… they’ll say…’
‘They’ll say Hiro is a god.’
‘And is he?’
Chiyoko shrugs. ‘Shikata ga nai,’ she says. ‘What does it matter?’ She stubs her cigarette out on the top of the balustrade and walks into the house.
Elspeth stands stock still for several minutes, and with no other option, she zips up her jacket and starts walking away.